Ward is the second work in the Parahumans series, and reading Worm↗︎︎ first is strongly recommended. A lot of this won’t make sense otherwise and if you do find yourself a fan of the universe, the spoilers in Ward will affect the reading of the other work.

Ward is not recommended for young or sensitive readers.

The Glow-worm chapters were a teaser event leading up to Worm 2. They aren’t required reading but offer flavor and additional angles by which to view certain characters. They take the form of forum posts, chat conversations and emails.

They’re best described as a kind of a post-epilogue, pseudo-prologue bridge between the series. Those who read them on the Worm site shouldn’t feel the need to read them again – they’re included here for convenience’s sake, with a few readability improvements.

If you’re not interested or find this hard to read, click here to jump to chapter 1.

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♦ Topic: We’re Back Online
In: Boards ► Parahumans Online
Hope_In_Pithos (Admin)
Posted on August 15th, Y1:

To call the efforts of everyone involved heroic would be grossly understating things. This IT project required the efforts of seventy eight PHO staff members, employees of Stateside Online, former officials of the US government, former members of the United States space program, members of international space programs, the Guild (Masamune in particular), and numerous independent experts and volunteers. At a time when we’re all stretched thin and there is an incredible amount of work still to be done, seven hundred and eight individuals devoted spare time and valuable resources to get us and six other partners online.

Things will be clunky and frustrating. For most, with congestion being what it is, things will be slow enough that people can get a cup of coffee and come back to find the page hasn’t fully loaded. We’ve stripped away a bit of the polish and the gloss: the header images, badge graphics and the ability to include video or images are gone for now, to keep things simple and easy. We will be moderating very carefully to ensure nobody disrupts anyone’s ability to access the site. It will be painful. Help each other, be patient, and contribute the best you can.

In so many ways, things will be frustrating, slow, and painful. Care, helpfulness, patience, and contribution will make literal worlds of difference. In so many ways.

But we’re back. Stay tuned for bigger, better things. Bear with us as we sort through it all.

(Showing Page 34 of 34)

► I♥Lethe
Replied on August 16th, Y1:
@ Dgators – Generally, you want to be careful because you won’t get any updates to OS360 or other PC OSes, no patches to your phone. There is no tech support and there is little recourse for anyone hit with malware. Plausibly there’s a lot of desperate people out there who see that the defenses are down and we’re in early days. It’s probably easier for someone to come up with new means of attack than it is for anyone to roll out a proper patch. Presumably if they wanted to infect systems or get access they would want to do it now when it would probably let them get access to things that follow.

► KillDestroyKiss (Library)
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
Library project is moving ahead! Plenty of people brought laptops and phones and we’re piecing things together by loading from cache. It is more zombie net than real net but we’re finding things. There are more coming but people want to delete their search histories before they hand their computers over. Because porn.

Downside is now a lot more people know about the net access at the library. Hours-long wait times Q.Q

► Point_Me_@_The_Sky
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
I have access through the portal at the east of the city. When I go through I’ve been doing loops through the old neighborhoods to see what I can scrounge up. If you need something to fill major gaps I can try looking. If not, I’m going to see if I can round off my collection. Would be nice to have a good excuse if I get accused of smuggling or looting tho

► boaty5
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
what collection?

► Point_Me_@_The_Sky
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
Any/all of: Masque/Costumes Under Clothes/Heroine/Shine On

► boaty5
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
fuck that. I regret asking. screw the capes. screw everything about celebrating the capes. they. failed. us.
Site administrators discussed this post. We’re leaving up the first half as we feel it is important for people to process and address these feelings and sentiments. We’ve removed the second half (personal insults) and delivered one infraction.

► Point_Me_@_The_Sky
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
[Edit: removed this myself- I decided I don’t really want to get into this]

► boaty5
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
just because I’m on a site about capes doesn’t mean I like them. it means I recognize how important they are to what happened and what happens next

► KillDestroyKiss (Library)
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
Hm! @ Point_Me_@_The_Sky – We’re looking to get everything we can recorded digitally. Would you be okay with letting us scan your collection? You’re in the city?

► Point_Me_@_The_Sky
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
100%. I can bring it to your library. PM me with location & times good for you. Information is too important

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … 32, 33, 34

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♦ Topic: [Headline] Refugees Barred Access
In: Boards ► World News ► Main
Boo-chan
Posted on August 17th, Y1:

[Transcribed from print] Conrad James Freed and his family could tell a harrowing tale of their trip across Earth Bet’s America. They have finally reached the Northeastern Bet-Gimel portal, hearing rumor of wait times, only to be told there is a possibility they may not be allowed in at all.

They had been driving, hitchhiking and hiking for four months.

“They aren’t giving us answers,” he told Bulletin News on Saturday.

Their family had been trying to subsist on their rural property in Wisconsin when the weather took a turn for the worse. Though it was June, Conrad says he saw snow falling on the fields where he had planted the first crop of the season.

Two days later, there would be a knock at his door. Authorities had flown over and saw the lights of his house. They warned him the snowfall and the groundwater was contaminated. It would be the last straw, as the unseasonably cold weather had cut into the already thin initial harvest.

Conrad says the authorities wanted him and his family to leave right away. “They didn’t give us a chance to pack. One of the men even grabbed my daughter. He bruised her wrist, he held her so hard. I promised I would cooperate if he would only give us five minutes. I was in shock.”

He and his wife decided to make the harrowing trip to the nearest portal without the assistance of authorities, a decision he says he made on the spur of the moment, after the manhandling of his daughter and the manner in which he was forced from his home. “I came to regret that decision.”

Conrad’s story is far from unique. Evacuation is still underway even two years and two months after Gold Morning. Where things took a turn for the worse for Conrad and his family, and where an undisclosed change in policy may affect uncountable refugees from Earth Bet, is that the border agents have apparently ceased processing refugees.

Tensions are rising and as the number of people in the refugee settlement slowly climbs and resources are stretched thinner, people are speaking out. Conrad says, “We know there is more than enough space on the other side. We see people coming and going but they won’t let us through or even meet us to answer our questions. We’re willing to settle outside of the city. I know agriculture and I know they desperately need farmers. Even if they give us a minimum of supplies and tools, it has to be better than this.”

Bulletin News reached out to authorities and received no response.

–Thoughts? Anyone know what was up?

(Showing Page 19 of 20)

► K.G. Ray (City: West Point)
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
They’re letting people through again now, and they’re letting a lot through. Speculation might have been right. Article might have been more about political pressure than anything else.

► Geronimo
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
Official word is that they wanted to pause and get organized so they could double the number of people coming through. Doesn’t make a lot of sense when it comes to their silence until now.

► Nakyak (Cape Geek)
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
lots of capes stationed at the portal.
some thinkers like Squint and Danger Zone are there.
pretty sure if you watch how they rotate in and out there will always be one thinker on duty.
screening refugees?

► Point_Me_@_The_Sky
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
@ Nakyak – could be. Could be that it means less need for pain in the ass background checks with internet running at 33K. Danger Zone sees likelihood a person commits violence to each and every person around them, recency, flavor of violence. Squint sees contraband, possible other hazards. Skip background check, move people along.

► Boosher
Replied on August 17th, Y1
Speaking of security, there was another thread where someone said something about rock & a hard place? It’s apparently being talked about a lot among the refugees.

► Nutty
Replied on August 17th, Y1
@ Boosher – This article, search for Nancy Y’s statement. People traveling across the US to get to portals are being warned about multiple threats. Word on the capevine is that with everyone having pulled out, all former quarantine zones are breached. In the US and elsewhere. Nilbog is the one everyone knows about. He’s in custody, his children aren’t. If you’re paying attention to hero groups and their movements, they’re making lots of trips out. They’re tired and people say they’re aloof.
I say they’re fighting a hard fight and they’re keeping their distance from public and media because they don’t want us to know it.

► boaty5
Replied on August 17th, Y1
they don’t want to tell us a lot of things. what even happened? the world ended and nobody is willing to explain.

► Point_Me_@_The_Sky
Replied on August 17th, Y1
@ Boosher – a big part of what was being talked about in other similar articles was the threat of bandits, bad weather, the wasteland and chasms, unstoppable robot armies, the food shortages. Edit: Nutty beat me to it. Slow internet sucks. I think boaty is a good example of why they’re aloof. People want to assign blame. Assign the blame to the man who did this. In times of crisis, look to the people who are helping. Support them or try to be one of them.

► ✘ [Post removed & user infracted]

► Deepwell5
Replied on August 17th, Y1
I agree for the most part, Point@, but it’s more complicated than that. I gotta side with boaty. We made a covenant with the capes. We put up with a lot. In exchange, they were supposed to protect us. It’s pretty clear they didn’t. Maybe it was impossible. That’s fine. But let’s not ignore that they broke their end of the contract. Let’s not ignore that the PRT is gone, we no longer have non-capes in charge of them, and they have more proportional power than ever. Let’s not ignore that they’re making a new PRT without any of the key rules that defined the last one. Less communication, no oversight.

I’m scared. You should be too.

► DonJon
Replied on August 17th, Y1
Amen

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … 18, 19, 20

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♦ Private Messages from Glitzglam:

Glitzglam: u cant engage with them. u gotta let it lie.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’m worried what happens if the wrong ideas get traction.
Glitzglam: So am I. Im more worried about u. Thought u might need pep talk.
Glitzglam: Have u got that email yet?
Glitzglam: ? ? ?
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: If this is a pep talk it isn’t a very good one.
Glitzglam: Thats a no huh? fuck
Glitzglam: u right though
Glitzglam: I hate typing on phone. Ice cream or coffee. I pep talk u in person. When u can fit it into cray schedule
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You’re a beautiful person. Yes. Sounds nice. Soon
Glitzglam: We can talk about how gang is getting together for big shebang and what a disaster it will be.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: you’re doing the terrible pep talk thing again. :0
Glitzglam *New Message*:

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Glow-worm – 0.2

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♦ Topic: Info & Update
In: Boards ► Teams ► Reach (Private)
Moonsong
Posted on August 18th, Y1:

PHO is back on and they are letting the chats run. That’s where we usually meet, but I’ve been warned it’s choppy and slow. I’ll be there.

This took me three hours to just get started with. It’s hard.

It is with the heaviest of hearts that I inform you that Coiffure did pass. When Gold Morning arrived, we suspected something might have happened, given the reports. She was killed in one of the initial strikes on the East coast. She was a friend, a teammate, and she was a true hero. She elevated others around her to be better people by the standards she lived by.

Coiffure is survived by only her father. Her mother was one of my favorite adults. She was kind, she was cool, and she was a genuinely good mom to Coiffure. When we went back to school in the fall, she gave us really cool back to school supplies. It remains in my memory as one of the most randomly nice things a relative stranger has done for me.

You’ll also remember her siblings Arthur and Cal, though you might not remember their names. When the family came by, Arthur would be the one curled up in the big chair near the front desk, with one of his game things. Cal would be watching over his big brother’s shoulder. I always thought it was hilarious how uninterested they were in capes.

We can expect they all died instantaneously. I’ve talked to Coiffure’s father. I would suggest that if you happen to run into him, leave him be. He doesn’t want reminders.

Furcate decided to fight on that monumental day and that says so much when not everyone was brave enough to do that. Furcate was wild and tortured and beautiful. They were a handful and yet they rewarded us with ten positive things for every negative we had to overcome. I’d like to think they got something out of putting up with us in much the same way.

I want what I say here to be honest. I did not get along with Furcate the vast majority of the time. Furcate did not get along with me. I still respected them immensely. They said one word for every thousand the rest of us said and yet they could convey so much in their actions. I keep saying those things, using math like ‘ten times over’, but it’s so very Furcate. They overflowed, they swelled. The cup runneth over. I look back and I’m dazed by how much of a place they found in my heart and my thoughts.

It might be crass to say, but I don’t know if anyone’s going to have words for them. Scritch and Scratch were the closest thing we had to a nemesis. They had their scummy moments. They also kept to the rules. They were killed during one of the lulls in the fighting, by a group I won’t name.

The fates of Tribute, Boundless, Capricorn and Steamwheel are yet unknown. I hope you guys are okay.

I’m alive, obviously. Figurehead is alive but you all should know his issues with being controlled. The events really shook him. He’s retired in large part, he’ll be doing something capey, but he’s said he isn’t coming on PHO. He asked me to wish you all the best.

(Showing Page 1 of 1)

No Replies.

End of Page 1.

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Connecting to “pChat.ParahumansOnline.TeamReach(6667)” (Attempt 90)
Resolving Host Name
Connecting…
Connected.
Using identity “Cap”
Welcome to Team Reach Private Chat. Forum thread.
[Click here to see messages older than 3 days.]

[Old Message: A16 22:24] Moonsong has joined the chat.
[Old Message: A16 22:53] Moonsong has changed the chat topic: Welcome to Team Reach Private Chat. List of Alive & Dead.
[Old Message: A16 23:20] Moonsong: Post made in the forum. I only mentioned the team members. See topic links for the staff members and others I know about.
[Old Message: A17 1:03] Moonsong: I’ve edited the post to add Scritch and Scratch.
[Old Message: A17 4:15] Moonsong has left the chat.
[Old Message: A17 10:15] Moonsong has joined the chat.
[Old Message: A18 2:01] Moonsong has left the chat.
[Old Message: A18 9:50] Moonsong has joined the chat.

[A18 11:04:20] Cap has joined the chat.
[A18 11:04:25] Cap: hey

[A18 11:06:43] Moonsong: Hi Tristan

[A18 11:06:55] Cap: haha. every time.
[A18 11:07:07] Cap: The universe has a dark sense of humor, it seems.

[A18 11:07:09] Moonsong: I’m glad you’re alive, Tristan
[A18 11:07:12] Moonsong: I suppose it does.

[A18 11:07:30] Cap: i’m glad you’re alive too
[A18 11:07:34] Cap: believe it or not

[A18 11:08:11] Moonsong: Were you there?

[A18 11:08:44] Cap: was dragged into it. glad I was though.

[A18 11:09:01] Moonsong: *nods*
[A18 11:09:01] Moonsong: How is your brother?

[A18 11:09:16] Cap: doing well as can be expected

[A18 11:11:47] Moonsong: And your family? Your parents? I liked them when I saw them.

[A18 11:12:00] Cap: alive. we’re in the city. they’re trying to come to terms with things
[A18 11:12:35] Cap: things are really coming together like crazy. new skyscrapers every day, new stores. good and almost like a city in Earth Bet but it isn’t really home

[A18 11:15:08] Moonsong: It isn’t. We’re in the city too.

[A18 11:16:17] Cap: You and your folks? they’reokay?

[A18 11:17:40] Moonsong: They’re good. Dad is taking a shot at mayor or councilman. We’ll see what happens.

[A18 11:17:59] Cap: good for him. thriving?

[A18 11:22:55] Moonsong: nobody is thriving these days. but he’s in his element

[A18 11:23:24] Cap: some are thriving. we’re all playing nice. truce in full effect. masterminds and chessmasters are having a ball out there. guarantee it

[A18 11:25:31] Moonsong: I suppose we’ll see.

[A18 11:28:40] Cap: I read your post, btw
[A18 11:28:42] Cap: good words
[A18 11:28:45] Cap: kudos

[A18 11:28:50] Moonsong: Thank you.

[A18 11:29:27] Cap: I’m surprised you’re here though
[A18 11:29:35] Cap: is Reach still a thing?

[A18 11:29:56] Moonsong: I consider the others friends and teammates.
[A18 11:30:11] Moonsong: I consider myself a member of Reach

[A18 11:30:33] Cap: I get that
[A18 11:30:35] Cap: doesn’t answer my question
[A18 11:30:40] Cap: will it carry on? what happens?

[A18 11:43:50] Moonsong: It won’t. I don’t think so anyway. There’s a lot of hero teams out there and its hard for a sponsored team to get traction even without people feeling betrayed.

[A18 11:44:02] Cap: yeah

[A18 11:46:14] Moonsong: A lot of teams are gathering under the Wardens. PRT-like. They’re walking a fine line between emulating PRT and being PRT. Lots of teams under the umbrella. I’m not sure it’s working. I don’t know if I want to get on board with that. I don’t know if the others would.

[A18 11:46:23] Cap: that’s fair

[A18 11:47:50] Moonsong: I will always be a member of Reach. Even if the team has dissolved.

[A18 11:48:42] Cap: I like that
[A18 11:48:53] Cap: since when were you so good with words?

[A18 11:50:37] Moonsong: Since when did you pay attention to anyone but yourself?

[A18 11:50:43] Cap: …

[A18 11:51:12] Moonsong: ?

[A18 11:52:36] Cap: 45 minutes of something approaching civility has to be a record for us

[A18 11:52:57] Moonsong: I see. Yes. It could be.

[A18 11:53:06] Cap: I would have liked to keep that streak going
[A18 11:53:20] Cap: oh well

[A18 11:54:31] Moonsong: Are you well, Tristan?

[A18 11:55:21] Cap: I see we’re going straight to the barbs

[A18 11:56:32] Moonsong: No barbs. I genuinely want to know.

[A18 11:57:14] Cap: how uncharacteristicaly nice of you

[A18 11:58:23] Moonsong: Do I need to worry about you?

[A18 11:58:45] Cap: no
[A18 11:58:56] Cap: you “helped” more than enough

[A18 12:00:19] Moonsong: I don’t know.

[A18 12:01:08] Cap: don’t you?

[A18 12:02:07] Moonsong: I’ve spent a lot of time hoping you died.

[A18 12:03:34] Cap: WOW
[A18 12:03:58] Cap: geez

[A18 12:04:06] Moonsong: *shrug*

[A18 12:05:27] Cap: geez. there is no humanity in there at all is there?
[A18 12:05:51] Cap: just takes the world to end beforeI get a glimpse of the real you

[A18 12:06:45] Moonsong: Lets not pretend, Tristan.

[A18 12:07:01] Cap: pretend what?
[A18 12:07:42] Cap: you decided you hated me before you ever got to know me
[A18 12:08:37] Cap: you’re really your fathers daughter. two-faced. anyone reading between the lines can see what you really thought about furcate

[A18 12:10:39] Moonsong: I meant what I wrote.

[A18 12:11:47] Cap: a thinly veiled outline of furcates many problems
[A18 12:11:56] Cap: you couldn’t resist saying you didn’t like them

[A18 12:11:23] Moonsong: Are you done?

[A18 12:12:13] Cap: you made furcate more miserable than anyone

[A18 12:12:26] Moonsong: Apparently not

[A18 12:12:29] Cap: you never once tried to understand them just like you never once tried to understand me
[A18 12:13:12] Cap: you had your notions of how everyone was supposed to behave
[A18 12:13:36] Cap: how everyone was supposed to be
[A18 12:13:45] Cap: you know what they call people who come to judgment about people before they have the facts?
[A18 12:14:19] Cap: the label applies, moonsong
[A18 12:14:29] Cap: you wedged yourself into a situation you didn’t understand and you made it so much worse
[A18 12:14:48] Cap: what guts me is you think you were right to do it.

[A18 12:16:39] Moonsong: I didn’t like furcate. I did love and respect him as a teammate.
[A18 12:16:51] Moonsong: I damn well held him at the end. For a long time. I talked to him the entire time.
[A18 12:18:23] Moonsong: Motherfucker.
[A18 12:18:41] Moonsong: I’m crying now.
[A18 12:19:04] Moonsong: And no. I don’t know if I was right, Tristan.

[A18 12:20:08] Cap: moonsong admitting she might be wrong? Did the world end or something?

[A18 12:21:12] Moonsong: Go fuck yourself, Tristan. That wound is too fresh.

[A18 12:22:13] Cap: …
[A18 12:22:24] Cap: yeah
[A18 12:22:29] Cap: I’ll own up to that

[A18 12:23:43] Moonsong: You’re admitting you’re wrong? What happened to you in these past few years?

[A18 12:23:50] Cap: not enough. not nearly enough.

[A18 12:24:48] Moonsong: Guess not. What a shame.

[A18 12:25:23] Cap: that wound is fresh in its own way
[A18 12:25:56] Cap: just so you know

[A18 12:26:54] Moonsong: Alright.

[A18 12:27:45] Cap: fuck
[A18 12:28:20] Cap: this is a mess. we should keep our distance

[A18 12:29:17] Moonsong: Do I need to come after you?

[A18 12:30:38] Cap: no
[A18 12:30:57] Cap: fuck you. no
[A18 12:31:40] Cap: what the fuck was that about not thinking you were right?
[A18 12:31:48] Cap: don’t answer that. do me a favor and shut up for a second.
[A18 12:32:00] Cap: ====——====——====——====——====
[A18 12:32:24] Cap: members of reach – don’t scroll up past this line
[A18 12:32:37] Cap: its just moonsong and i being shitty at each other
[A18 12:33:23] Cap: if you joined the team after I left you probably won’t get it
[A18 12:34:44] Cap: Furcate –azúcar- you were one of my favorite
[A18 12:35:17] Cap: those days were some of my best and some of my worst
[A18 12:36:11] Cap: you were some of the best parts of the best days
[A18 12:38:21] Cap: Coif– after everything that happened I thought I might not want to be a hero anymore
[A18 12:39:50] Cap: your example is the only reason I still want to
[A18 12:39:55] Cap: you were one of the good few
[A18 12:40:44] Cap: to the rest who aren’t here— be well
[A18 12:41:09] Cap: …
[A18 12:41:41] Cap: I’m better at saying stuff in person.

[A18 12:42:12] Moonsong: I’ll let the others know you said it.

[A18 12:42:18] Cap: Thanks

[A18 12:45:06] Moonsong: Tristan.

[A18 12:46:48] Cap: yeah?

[A18 12:48:41] Moonsong: When I said I was wrong in how I handled things?
[A18 12:49:19] Moonsong: I wonder every day if I should have gone further and killed you.

[A18 12:51:40] Cap: lovely
[A18 12:51:48] Cap: you had to spoil it.
[A18 12:52:06] Cap has disconnected.

⊙

Connecting to “4’&{N8\<v%369ZAM”
Resolving Host Name
Connecting…
Connected.
Using identity “3A::u@T_Enki”
No Topic Set

X29V5n: you’re the latino kid?

3A::u@T_Enki: yeah. how does this work?

X29V5n: You into memorabilia then?

3A::u@T_Enki: sure. memorabilia. I miss my old collection

X29V5n: The person who referred you should have explained most of it

3A::u@T_Enki: some

X29V5n: Let’s say you’re into commemorative plates. Plate with a hero or a villian’s face on it. You care a lot about the plate and its delivery

3A::u@T_Enki: sure

X29V5n: We ensure you get the result you want.
X29V5n: Insurance

3A::u@T_Enki: sounds like just what I need

X29V5n: We offer tiers. Different tiers for various degrees of thoroughness.

3A::u@T_Enki: can you give me a quick rundown?

X29V5n: Most basic tier, you throw a few hundred our way, depending on who is involved, who we put forward and who you expect is going to need to hear it, words. We talk, we let them know we’re serious about wanting X, Y & Z. No hassle. We throw our weight around a bit. Yeah?

3A::u@T_Enki: yeah

X29V5n: Maybe you want to ensure that plate ends up in the most ideal condition. A thousand or a few thousand covers a bit of roughing up. Scratch on the face, scuffing, the sort of thing that can be fixed up.

3A::u@T_Enki: can we maybe not talk about commemorative plates? maybe action figures? plates make me think of my abuela

X29V5n: If you want more coverage for your action figures, depending if we’re talking b-lister or a-lister or something bigger, we might be talking upwards of five, ten thou for more severe damage. Ruined leg, arm, the sort of damage to the face that would take an expert to restore.

3A::u@T_Enki: getting pretty steep

X29V5n: We’re talking cape shit. It’s in high demand, limited supply. Prices climb.

3A::u@T_Enki: just observing. is there a higher tier? what’s the highest tier?

X29V5n: Highest tier covers complete and total destruction. Pulling out all the stops. Starts at twenty thou, but I gotta warn you, the sky is the limit.

3A::u@T_Enki: that sounds good

X29V5n: Good.

3A::u@T_Enki: would you be willing to let me pay half upfront? we’d keep you guys in reserve? particulars get complicated

X29V5n: We work with complicated. Yes. That could be workable.
X29V5n: We will need to negotiate pricing. Did they tell you how to send the image of the product?

3A::u@T_Enki: u5zxN8wEXAKpbBeqzvzy.i

X29V5n: Perfect.
X29V5n: No wait.
X29V5n: You got the instructions very wrong, kid.

3A::u@T_Enki: it’s fine

X29V5n: You’re sure? There’s something deeply wrong with this.

3A::u@T_Enki: why don’t we meet for the rest? I’ll send you the first half now
3A::u@T_Enki: there

X29V5n: Alright. Let’s talk meeting places.

⊙

Connecting to “pChat.ParahumansOnline.TeamReach(6667)” (Attempt 80)
Resolving Host Name
Connecting…
Connected.
Using identity “Cap”
Welcome to Team Reach Private Chat. Forum thread.
Could not load chat archive. Click here to try again.
[A18 22:08:16] Cap has joined the chat.
[A18 22:08:31] Cap: hey

[A18 22:09:43] Tribute: Fuck me

[A18 22:10:51] Moonsong: It’s fine. Don’t stress.

[A18 22:11:22] Cap: hi moo – wish I knew how you did that

[A18 22:12:45] Moonsong: Hi boo. How are you doing?

[A18 22:13:18] Cap: doing okay. just had a very surreal experience talking to a certain kind of professional.

[A18 22:14:20] Moonsong: That’s good to hear, I think.

[A18 22:14:33] Tribute: ?

[A18 22:15:21] Moonsong: Best not to talk about it, though.

[A18 22:16:30] Cap: yeah

[A18 22:17:55] Moonsong: I’ve missed you terribly, boo. We should catch up.

[A18 22:18:18] Cap: I want to
[A18 22:18:30] Cap: I don’t know if we should

[A18 22:19:34] Moonsong: *nods*

[A18 22:19:51] Cap: I just wanted to say hi
[A18 22:20:00] Cap: maybe bye
[A18 22:20:09] Cap: ask you not to come after me or anything

[A18 22:21:58] Moonsong: *nods*
[A18 22:23:10] Moonsong: So long as the professional you hired has it covered.

[A18 22:23:50] Cap: yeah. covered

Glow-worm – 0.3

Welcome to the Parahumans Online message boards.
You are currently logged in, Mangled_Wings
You are viewing:
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⊙

♦ Topic: Amnesty & The Devil We Know
In: Boards ► News ► Events ► Gimel.US
E.S.Reaver
Posted on August 19th, Y1:

I’ve seen a few articles and wanted to compile them. There’s a narrative here, if you don’t grasp it then bear with me an I’ll sum up my thoughts at the end.

Article: Strange Reversals: Villain to Hero & Forum Thread
The number of heroes is rising. Multiple known villains have shucked off the black capes for white ones. Which is a good thing, right?

Article: No Witnesses Remain & Forum Thread
The article identifies three villains who we know about in heroic groups – two with the Wardens and one with Shelter. They committed crimes, we have some limited information or scraps of wiki articles, but the witnesses of those past crimes are either dead or yet to establish themselves. We established standards for amnesty, but sometimes those standards can’t be met. The ex-villains find places on the team with nobody to naysay.

Article: Two Black Raincoats & Forum Thread
Let’s get to the examples. Four youths tried to get superpowers by working off of the ‘trigger’ theory of power gain, and became a newsworthy case in 2004. The event got out of hand, one boy and one girl took charge and preyed on the two younger members of the group, torturing them over the course of a weekend. Nobody gained powers, the search for the missing children led to the two older children being identified as they went into town on the Monday to get food and buy power tools, including a circular saw. They revealed the location of their victims; one of whom apparently lost fingers as the wire that was used to attach them to the toilet tank was too tight. Unnamed Boy was sent to juvie. Unnamed Girl was sent to psychiatric care. Both gained powers while in care, both were released in or around 2009. Reuniting, now with powers, they killed three people, wearing black raincoats to keep the blood off, and were not caught. They have been spotted in several locations at the Rochester span, wearing the black raincoats.

“For the time being, the amnesty applies,” Chief Armstrong stated to the media. “We know where they are and we’re keeping tabs.”

Good enough?

Article: “Rended”, “Torn Up”, “Dismembered” & Forum Thread
Written after Miss Militia and Vista, heroines under the Wardens, were seen on several occasions in the company of Hellhound, also known as Bitch or Rachel Lindt. Raises questions about the moral compromise the amnesty has wrought and the longstanding allegations that the Protectorate team in Brockton Bay was cooperating with the local villains. Once the relationship is established and we’re reminded of the past examples, the article devotes the latter half to reminding us of some of Rachel Lindt’s deeds when she was working with a group of warlords to seize Brockton Bay.

“Every day, I wake up and I try to move my leg. The wind gets knocked out of me when it doesn’t move like it should. If I’m active at all during the day, then the pain hits me in the evening.”

Article: Fallen: What You Need To Know & Forum Thread
The Fallen operate as a cult and they’re one of the largest cape groups around. The article doesn’t talk about it directly, but the forum thread has some great posts on the subject (see page 3 and 12). Their recruitment numbers are swelling and I (and others!) think it’s the amnesty that’s letting them get away with it. There’s a lot of talk of Lachlan Hund [article linked] elsewhere and there might be a court case revolving around what others are saying was a powers-assisted abduction. Totally Fallen M.O. for years prior, family says Lachlan never showed any pro-Fallen sentiment before this.

Article: No Cost & Forum Thread
Same article author as ‘No Witnesses Remain’. Following up on several villains who didn’t turn hero, the author finds two villains, both anonymous, who claim they received accommodations, at a time when many were still living in the tent cities. They got ahead of the ‘line’, they got basic apartments and utilities paid for, and they contribute nothing except the fact that they aren’t (as far as we know) committing crimes these days. It’s like we’ve caved to extortion.

We need to have a dead serious conversation about the amnesty. Justice shouldn’t fall by the wayside. Absolutely horrific individuals get their second chances but they get them at the expense of the safety and peace of mind of others. They get things easier.

We heard the arguments why at the start. We had other things to think about and deal with. Heroes had other things. We thought. We dealt. The heroes handled the biggest needs. That was then.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not buying into the anti-cape sentiment you see here and there.

But I’m anti-these-capes. I’m anti-this.

(Showing Page 52 of 52)

► Dive Bucket
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
Where do they go tho? What are we supposed to do?
• No birdcage
• No max-sec prisons
• Bare bones legal system
• No stable government to put either of those in place
• No resources
• No records
• No witnesses (as OP says)

► Erasmus
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
We have strict control over the portals. Send them out to Bet. Close the doors. Or guard them

► mlekk (is mlekk)
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
/mlekk oozes in
mlekk thinks that would cause more probselms than it solves
mlekk thinks they would want to attack the doors
mlekk thinks of the refugees who haven’t made it to us yet
mlekk decides BAD IDEA
/mlekk oozes out

► Mangled_Wings
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
What’s wrong with extortion? What’s wrong with taking measures?

If you stand at the bottom of a hill and a car starts rolling down it with nobody in the drivers seat what do you do?

The way some of you imbeciles are talking about this I can’t help but think you would stand there bitching about the situation until the car hits you.

Get out of their way first and then make sure it wasn’t one part of bigger problem or disaster.

Then and only then do you address the problem with your indignation and sense of injustice cold, clear, and gripped in steady hands. Find some weapon or power and take action.

► Team_Lancer
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
@ Mangled_Wings
1) villains aren’t cars. villains are humans. they’re accountable for their actions.
2) we have more choices than ‘get out of their way’. We’re part of a greater society. We have the choice of catering to them or treating them like the scumbags they are. we’re accountable for how we respond to them. our government is accountable for how they respond to them.
3) ‘imbeciles’ isn’t helping foster good discussion
4) can someone please ban mlekk? They’re in every other thread. Admin said they would deal with low-investment content
5) why the fuck is mlekk one of the only people with working badges?

► Mangled_Wings
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
There are three kinds of villain. There are villains at rest that don’t do anything unless bothered and they may be easy to bother. Don’t bother them unless you’re sure you’re stronger than them. If you don’t have powers you aren’t stronger than them.

There are villains in motion. They want something or they’re going somewhere. Don’t get in their way unless you’re a lot stronger than them. Catch them from the flanks or from behind if you’re strong and clever enough.

These two kinds of villain don’t budge. I’ve known a lot of them. I know how they operate. It takes a lot to move the ones at rest and it takes a lot to change the course of the ones in motion. You can’t do either. Don’t try.

The third kind is the kind worth paying attention to and they’re the ones that are changing or that can change. Objects in motion stay in motion and objects at rest stay at rest and the times and situations to watch out for are when they change states.

The people bitching here don’t know enough and don’t have the power to handle any of that. Get stronger. Get smarter. Leave it to the people who know stuff to tell each group apart and to know when to handle things.

► New_Ohmstar
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
Like you?
You act like you’re the only one who understands the situation
What guarantee is there that they’re ever going to handle things?
People and institutions do what is easiest.
(P.S. Mlekk is only one deserving of badge. Cult of mlekk!)

► Ron_of_Couches
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
Adding articles, part III (Keeping to OP’s format):

Valkyrie Interviewed and Thread Link
Rising star in the Wardens. Exceptionally powerful, many references to the Green Maiden or something? Might harken back to before my time. She is asked directly about this in the interview and deflects.

Shepherd’s Crook and Thread Link (not many posts)
Team started up and fell apart. Reason why? One ex-nemesis and lover of the team leader was invited to the team. They went full yoko. Shepherds no more.

Endemic is the word.

► Mangled_Wings
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
Like me, New_Ohmstar. I have worked with more than twenty villains. I am a villain. When I give you recommendations about leaving sleeping dogs alone I am referring to myself. When I tell you that you want to get out of the way if I have something I want? Referring to myself.

I am not one of the leeches. I pay for my own apartment. I make no trouble. Yet. Yes I am talking to the heroes. They keep their eye on me and I keep my eye on them. There are other factors. This makes degrees of sense you are not equipped to comprehend. For now it is fine and you should take my word for it.

I’m aiming to get stronger. I’m aiming to get smarter. I am not the only one doing this. If you spend your time bitching on the internet instead of doing the same then you’re one of the imbeciles because things are changing and you will fall behind.

I can verify any of this if I must but I don’t know how as I am new to this site.

► Point_Me_@_The_Sky
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
If you send me a private message, I can walk you through it. It would be faster to contact an active admin directly.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … 50, 51, 52

⊙

♦ Private Conversation with Point_Me_@_The_Sky

Mangled_Wings: You said you’d help.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Hello to you too.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Click on your username while reading any thread you’ve posted in. Go to the Help panel. There will be a list of options. Third box, second option, badge verification You might want to open a new window so you can go back from this convo to that

Mangled_Wings: It says import image.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Take a picture of yourself in costume and a piece of paper with your username on it. Connect phone or camera to computer. Find the image and select it, hit the ‘select’ button on the bottom corner of the window.

Mangled_Wings: I don’t have a phone or camera.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Does your computer have a camera built into the monitor?

Mangled_Wings: Yes.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: OS360?

Mangled_Wings: Yes. I think.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Draw the circle in the center of the desktop to open the radial menu. Hit ‘C’ and camera should be something visible. Open it, wait for your image to appear. You’ll want to be in costume. Hit space.

Mangled_Wings: It made a shutter sound.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You were in costume already?

Mangled_Wings: It’s fine.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Sure. You’ll find the picture in the ‘pictures’ bubble

Mangled_Wings: Thank you. I found it. I imported it. It wants me to put in a label before I hit select.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: ‘Villain’, I guess. I don’t know if you really want to do that. You might want to go ‘Cape’ if you want to fly under the radar. People are sore about villains these days.

Mangled_Wings: I don’t fly under the radar. I know what I am and I know what I’ll be, if I don’t die first. Thank you for the help. I respect this more than I respect the more self-pitying of the invertebrates out there.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Alright.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’m unfortunately afflicted with desire to help people.

Mangled_Wings: A dire inflection, that.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: 0:) I don’t know if you’re at rest or moving or if you’re open to change, but you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Things will go smoother if you don’t call them invertebrates or imbeciles
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: And maybe stay at rest a little longer, given the chance?
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I think they really need it
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: We all need it.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Also. It just occurred to me. If you connect at a library, you’ll want to delete the image before you go. Overwrite it once it is deleted to be sure.

Mangled_Wings: You kill more flies with vinegar in reality.
Mangled_Wings: A person can rest only so long. I’m restless.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: What a pity.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Spend more time online. Geek out. Learn! Less time spent being bad!

Mangled_Wings: I am not averse to learning. We will see if there is any pity to be had.
Mangled_Wings: I am at a library. I will do that.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You can draw the circle and hit ‘o’ to find overwrite.

Mangled_Wings: I already found it. Thank you. Goodbye.

⊙

♦ Invitation to Group Conversation by Strange_Mammal

Strange_Mammal: aaaaand I think this is her…

Mangled_Wings: I’m here.

Strange_Mammal: we thought you’d be one of the stragglers

Mangled_Wings: I don’t straggle. At worst I am fashionably late.

Strange_Mammal: you said you hadn’t really used a computer before

Mangled_Wings: I hadn’t. I’m a fast learner.

Cap: this is A?

Strange_Mammal: it’s A…
Strange_Mammal: …we’re using first-letters to stay on down-low…
Strange_Mammal: …until we figure out what we’re doing

Cap: how long did it take to figure it out, A?

Mangled_Wings: Less than an hour. Mammal is?

Strange_Mammal: C.

Mangled_Wings: I see.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: !!! A!

Mangled_Wings: This would be K.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i was viewing old videos and saw some vids of u

Mangled_Wings: I didn’t know I had any.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: so cool
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: so x-ited to b working with u.

Strange_Mammal: @ K / Heart_Shaped_Pupil…
Strange_Mammal: …type like a grown up…
Strange_Mammal: …my eyes are already bleeding

Cap: hahaha

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Got it!
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m saving vids. Show you at next face2face meet.

Mangled_Wings: Okay.

Cap: we still waiting on S & R

Strange_Mammal: they said they would have some trouble getting access

Cap: yes. I got to go. we check in again same time. hammer something out?

Mangled_Wings: Yes.

Strange_Mammal: I will keep an eye out for R & S

Cap has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Downloading downloading…
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Getting off chat to download faster. Bye!
Heart_Shaped_Pupil has left the conversation.

Mangled_Wings: Bye.
Mangled_Wings: Ah. That was fast.
Mangled_Wings: I’ll go too.

Strange_Mammal: fyi?

Mangled_Wings: I don’t know this word.

Strange_Mammal: for your information…
Strange_Mammal: …others can see time you spend online on your profile. you spent longer than one hour…
Strange_Mammal: …you’ve been online all day.

Mangled_Wings: I am at the library. Something to do with that, I’d think.

Strange_Mammal: it doesn’t work that way. I am 95% sure.
Strange_Mammal: there is no need to lie, A
Strange_Mammal: the reason for this project is supposed to be we know each other
Strange_Mammal: K will find out if she does not already know. she pays attention to those things

Mangled_Wings: If you are 95% sure there is still 5% chance you are wrong. Assume you are wrong before you get on my bad side.
Mangled_Wings: You do not want to get on my bad side.

Strange_Mammal: ok

You have left the conversation.

Glow-worm – 0.4

Welcome to the Parahumans Online message boards.
You are currently logged in, of5

Searching for:
• Threads…
• …with the term Multi-trigger or…
• …with the term Grab-Bag or…
• …with the term Cluster-trigger or…
• …with the term Mosaic and the term Powers and…
• …give higher relevance to the term Article and…
• …give higher relevance to the term Science and…
• …ignore capitalization and punctuation and…
• …show topics and replies made within the last year.

⊙

♦ Topic: [JRPNA] Use of Cluster Powers, Serial Powers, Matched Powers, and Nth-generation Powers to identify ‘Hinge Points’ in Power Expression – 1998
In: Boards ► Parahuman Science
Azavael (PRT Science)
Posted on : June 4th, 2002

[Article] Studies into Parahuman abilities presently catalogue studied powers into three major databases: the PRT database in the US, the Cambridge Parahuman Studies facility, and the EUJP International Listing. The lists are formed by way of interview and laboratory studies with each institution using universally standardized forms in addition to supplementary material. Each of these three institutions have stated an express or strongly-implied desire to understand and predict expressions of power and tie these expressions to the inciting incidents. However, a longstanding problem in this process is that powers expressed, inciting incidents, and contextual factors can be dramatically different across individual cases. While some common themes can be drawn out, derived results are traditionally very big-picture. It is only recently that databases have begun to include sufficient numbers of special-case triggers that allow more focused study of how powers are expressed. We identified cluster powers, serial powers, matched powers, and Nth-generation powers as the special cases to focus on in more focused examination of how power instances can be mapped and we posit a ‘Hinge Point’ illustration of power expression and theory.

[Definitions] • Cluster powers are defined as powers wherein multiple inciting incidents occur either simultaneously or within a minute of one another. Such parahumans will have a collection of smaller powers related to the others. • Serial powers are defined as cases where an individual or multiple individuals in longstanding proximity to a parahuman will develop powers…

[Click to read full article]

(5 of 280 replies match search criteria)

► of5
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
Link is broken.

► WMD377 (PRT Science Admin)
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
Yes. Tagged. It’s good to keep track and note this. This article was pretty important to the time. It would be worth finding someone with it in print and transcribing. Keep letting us know. It helps us track which articles are most important & desired. What’s your field?

► Doubletime_Collies
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
I have this one. I can transcribe over the weekend. Want me to DM you the transcription, of5?

► of5
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
That would be helpful. Thank you. No field – I am furthest thing from scholar. Lot of this is going over my head. Personal interest only.

► WMD377 (PRT Science Admin)
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
Keep in mind that serial and Nth-Generation (2nd gen, 3rd gen) powers are now the same thing.

End of Page 1. Click to view full list of pages.

⊙

♦ Topic: Multi-Trigger Case Studies – Parahumans 303 Class Notes (Spinky) – September 15th 2009
In: Boards ► Parahuman Science ►Non-Articles
Rightsector
Posted on : September 17th, 2009

From Wednesdays with Prof Spinky. Posted with permission. Cleaned up where I could

Overview: What are clusters?
Other names are mosaic p. expression, grabbag, multi
Effect on resulting power
Why important & Importance to study.
Case studies
Greater effects, things to keep in mind

Pt. 1: What are clusters?
2-6 people trigger at same time or very close together. Each gets a suite of powers. Person A gets Person A primary power and fragment of B, C, D, E, F.
Person B gets Person B primary power and fragment A, C, D, etc.

Pt 2: Effect on resulting power
Term secondary expressions. Weaker or subtle power. Can be conditional.
Primary powers may be weaker than if they had triggered alone?
Powers inspired by others but not identical. Relation may be tertiary.
Example given firebreath -> fire something or something breath
Prof stresses this is very basic example
Term for staying element is hinge (old) or dominant (current). Relates to 1998 article.

Pt 3: Why important & importance to study
Suggests powers aren’t 100% predetermined. Certain elements are highlighted or made dominant.
We can extrapolate from studies like this & serial triggers to work out key elements of existing triggers. What changes & why = what factors are important in standalone non-special trigger?

Case Studies: two cases & how we look at them
Two case studies. Interview, self-reporting, examination

Case Study #1: Sunder Bros
Take note for future week: matched powers. We come back to this.
Brother #1 – Destruction caused to objects ripples out indefinitely, stopping at clear demarcations (images included in lecture notes). Weapon extension without limit (except convenience)
Brother #2 – Weapon sweep extension – some range extension – wider arcs, shockwaves left/right of swing. Stomp to destroy ground in immediate area.

Class pauses, prof asks & responds to input re: dominant factors in each power.

Cute girl in red top finally comes up with answer that satisfies Spinky. Destruction & weapon attack augmentation dominant/staying/hinge factors. Question of range vs. breadth between brothers. Not very lopsided in power difference b/w primary & secondary power. Spinky’s stress on not.

We get some slides of brother’s recreation of trigger circumstance. Distance from threat. Prof Spinky highlights personality traits brothers used on forms they filled out. All as reasoning for different power expressions.

Case Study #2: Fowl & Fair (foreign capes, names that follow are badly translated)
Oxfair – Physical augmentation; size, strength, speed, agility (<- primary), deafening roar, transfer harm from falls/some impacts to nearby others, pain resistance/faster healing
Ramfair – Emotion affecting chant, size increase, some ability to heal very recent damage of others listening to chant/that touching, gather strength/concentrate -> giant leaps
Foulcock (yes, the class laughed) – Flight with build-up of speed over time, speed is transferred to touched others, interrupting flight to deliver high-impact blows. Increased agility, deafening shriek, fast recovery of smaller wounds (scratches yes, no recovery of larger wounds).
Foulpig – Personal biokinesis, swell into flesh bubble with fast recovery/personal mutations if not ‘popped’ in time. Some strength & size increase, but slower while grown. Ability to ‘roll’ with incoming impacts (mover expression? Turns into boulder). Guttural noise (flatulence? Burps?) to interrupt thought processes – turn off others’ brains momentarily.

Discussion of dynamic. Fair & foul on opposite sides post-trigger. Only fair provided answers & allowed power testing, rest has to be inferred. Handouts.

Some discussion of trigger event (see slides for images), some discussion of resulting ‘package’. Powers for each individual distinct but play off each other in semi-complementary way. Reflective of personality? Or ‘guiding hand’ principle?

Pt. 4: Greater effects & things to keep in mind – things touched on in homework reading:
Kill / Kiss – more on this in parahuman psychology class in a few weeks
Personality Bleed – personality traits bleed over from 1 individual to other? Messy
Higher incidences of paranoia, confrontation, aggression, PTSD. Less bounce back?
Higher rate of death post-trigger. Kill / kiss again. Graph
Prof Spinky stresses emotional states may play into the above. Triggers that are sufficient to draw in multiple individuals are worse than average. Can’t jump 2 conclusions. Correlation =/= causation.

(2 of 1140 replies match search criteria)

► of5
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
Lecture slides & graph missing.

► DigaWell
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
ty again of5. nothing we can do about that one

End of Page 1. Click to view full list of pages.

⊙

♦ Joined Group Conversation: Questionable_Mammal, Heart_Shaped_Pupil, Cap

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: R!

of5: Hi K. Missed you earlier. Am at library with friend. Researching.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: this is friend you’ve talked about 😉 ?
of5: She is the friend. She is helping with technical side, searches.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hi friend! Thank you for being good to our R!
of5: She at another computer now. I got her bored. I wouldn’t join this chat if she was watching.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: aw

of5: We stumped atm. Everythink links to outside articles. Dead ends. Most stuff I already know.
of5: and I know v. little
of5: a isn’t here?

Questionable_Mammal: I scared her off…
Questionable_Mammal: …she will be back I think. We still waiting on S. Technical issues. She’s @ workshop later this week…
Questionable_Mammal: …you need A?

of5: No. j/w.
of5: Wanted k actually.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: yuss! \♥/

of5: you know this site. I want search terms to find some people. Articles, anything else. Would need to cover a lot of bases. Normal site search limits # of terms.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: uh. that hard. you want packaged search string
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i can try

Questionable_Mammal: you’re looking for others in your set?

of5: yes

Questionable_Mammal: I can make attempt. gimme time. you might want to fine tune after.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: aw!

of5: Thanks. I owe you one.
Questionable_Mammal: I got games btw. Will give on next meet.
of5: I owe you two

Questionable_Mammal: no. not big deal…
Questionable_Mammal: …go keep researching
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: entertain lady friend!
Questionable_Mammal: …and that

of5: getting off chat. friend blames slow connection through node.
of5: ty again

Questionable_Mammal: I DM you when I have something…
Questionable_Mammal: …keep eye out

⊙

♦ Topic: [EUJPR] Relationship Entanglement in Cluster-Triggers – 2005
In: Boards ► Parahuman Science
Jr_Max
Posted on : February 18th, 2005

[Translation] Colloquially known as the kill/kiss dynamic, in cluster-triggers, there is a very high tendency toward passionate relationships, either hostility or partnership. Clusters have a 40% chance of one member murdering another, rising to a 50% chance when including attempted murder, 25% chance of a partnership forming, and a 10% incidence of partnership and murder coinciding. The term partnership is used for romantic pairings in instances where sexuality and gender allow, and close friendship or formed teams with members in other cases. In some (10% of) cases of close partnerships forming, the romantic pairing occurred despite one’s typical sexuality. The relationship entanglement study looks at existing cases and clusters to investigate why.

The most dramatic case in recent memory is the Stáj, also known as the Stable, or the Foul and the Fair. The Good Ox was turned into a grisly display […]

[Click to read full article]

(3 of 79 replies match search criteria)

► of5
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
No article on click.

► Dana & Evan (Student)
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
It wasn’t a terribly good one. Doesn’t read as a solid study so much as a commentary. I’d give it a pass. The same details are covered in more depth elsewhere. I’ll see what I can dig up.

► of5
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
Thanks

End of Page 1. Click to view full list of pages.

⊙

♦ Private message from 17593Q183H17953R9713E714693

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: 974641T17953A8209746413R173901761R796520

of5: ?

■

♦ Joined Group Conversation: Questionable_Mammal, Heart_Shaped_Pupil

of5: Got a strange message. Friend says it might be a bot. String of numbers & letters?

Questionable_Mammal: could be.

of5: Could be s?

Questionable_Mammal: S isn’t that bad with computers…
Questionable_Mammal: …Block & move on….
Questionable_Mammal: …btw, here is search result for you.

■

♦ Private message from 17593Q183H17953R9713E714693

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: Had to check.

of5: ??

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: If you were one of mine.

of5: I’m going to do what my friends said and block you if you don’t explain.

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: You’re clearly looking for info on multis.

of5: Yes
of5: I am.

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: I can provide.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: We can collaborate.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: Is important to have others to watch your back

of5: I’ve found some people.

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: Unless you are a member of a very new cluster, limited # of people you can be.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: I found most of the group at I-275. Rest of them wouldn’t be searching online like you are.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: I found two members of the shipwreck group. They might be doing what you’re doing with the searching but they know the code. They’re friends of mine. Third member of that group is dead.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: The lecture hall: if you were one of them, you wouldn’t be so naive.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: That leaves three options. The Kansas Cornfield massacre: 3 dead, 1 alive with no reason to care about multis. He ate the rest of his cluster.

of5: Ate?

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: The book fair. Only ones still alive there are within spitting distance of me.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: Ate. I know why, too. I can share, but not for free.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: Leaves two good options. I can skip one because it’s mine.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: You’re part of the new cluster from the mall.

of5: No comment.

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: I found one of you already. I reached out to him first. He said no. Bad for him. Lucky for you.

of5: Lucky?

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: The one I talked to said there’s a woman, two boys, and him. I’m going to assume you’re the one I’ve termed the runt. The smallest, easiest target.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: The woman is gathering funds to hire mercenaries and come after you. The one I talked to hired an information broker to find you. Her name is Tattletale. She’s good. She has resources. including the mercenaries I just mentioned. She’s also preoccupied for now.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: A favor from me to you.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: That leaves you & the last one. It sounds like all 3 are coordinating vs. you.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: I can just about guarantee the people they’re gathering together are better than the ones you got.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: You need help. You’ve got a case of Kiss/Kill like I never saw and I don’t think they’re reaching for the chapstick.

of5: You’re wrong

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: About the need for help?

of5: It isn’t Kiss/Kill.
of5: I’ll take any help I can get.
of5: Provided I can get some clue you’re legit.

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: Glad to hear.

of5: and some idea of what you’re really after

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: You. And a chance to deal with some mutual enemies.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: I’ll be in touch.

■

Searched for:
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• Showing only relevant section, preceding paragraph and following paragraph.

One result.

♦ Topic: Public Incident Report [Aug 16]
In: Boards ► Teams ► Gunslingers
Lucky Luke (Hero)
Posted on : August 16th, Y1

[…] We were ultimately unable to stop them, as they had two capes we had no information or records on. The first of the capes may have been a thinker, likely the same that shot down our flier. We were unable to glean much more from them, other than the fact they wore fur in the midst of a heatwave.

The second individual seems to be a grab-bag cape. She was a woman with a fanged mask covering her lower face, and a form-fitting dress with a slit up the side of one leg. She displayed a mover power [fourth term] with the ability to run on walls. She produced an emotion-affecting [third term] roar, which broke the ranks of one of the cooperating teams, and had metal claws [second term] which looked to be of tinker make. These claws may have been what enabled her to tear [First term not met, but within allowance] down doors and other barricades with the ease she did. We have the beginnings of a work-up going online shortly.

The attack on the store opening was a failure on our side. We were late to the scene due to geography and we lacked full knowledge of our adversaries. It is our belief that with PHO in working order and more collaborative tools and measure being put in place every day, that we will succeed next time where we failed this once. We are working with authorities to keep an eye out for the stolen merchandise.[…]

■

♦ Joined Group Conversation: Questionable_Mammal, Heart_Shaped_Pupil, Cap

of5: Thank you, c.

Questionable_Mammal: I thought that one result looked good

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: pretty nasty customer

of5: It is. She is.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: are you looking after your friend?

of5: not nearly enough

Questionable_Mammal: did you get the bot thing handled?

of5: Bot thing handled. blocked & moved on.
of5: This woman… concerns me. I’ll figure out a plan of action later.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: we’ll figure out a plan of action later >:)
of5: Thanks. And thanks again, c.
of5: You’re good kids.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: 😀

Cap has joined the chat.

Questionable_Mammal: no personal details online, ya?

Cap: ?

of5: Right. Sorry.

Questionable_Mammal: nothing big, Cap

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Go get ur friend a thank you treat. Giant heart-shaped cookie!

Cap: subtle

of5: I don’t know about cookies. There’s a place to get ice cream.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Go, shoo!

You have left the conversation.

Glow-worm – 0.5

Subject: Your Nilles University Application
August 21st, Y1
Dear Applicant (Point_Me_@_The_Sky@mail)

We regret to inform you that your application for graduate study in our department was turned down. We look at each application and applicant as a whole and decisions are based on a composite of information including your previous academic performance, referrals, relevant professional activities, proposed research statements, and test scores.

Due to a high volume of applicants, this message has been partially automated. Your application was received by paper and email and discussed by me and one other faculty member. We responded by email as per your preference. We would like to stress, for your particular application:
• That we would very much like you to apply again in future years.
• That we would encourage you to use the same email address, as we can easily tie it back to this application.
• We felt your academics were very strong.
• We felt your extracurriculars were exceptional.
• We felt your references were exceptional.
• In a time when records are often lacking and references may be hard to identify or contact, your application stood above and beyond in how complete and thorough it was.

Nilles is one of three Universities serving an estimated population of fifty million on Earth Gimel and its associated territories, and it is the sole post-secondary institution offering graduate studies. Over one and a half million bright and eager minds have applied to Nilles in avid hope of starting or resuming their educations, and regretfully, with our current facilities, we cannot accept more than twenty thousand.

Although these circumstances mean we must regretfully send you an unfavorable response, we appreciate your application. We wish you the best in your future endeavors and look forward to hearing from you next year.

Yours truly,
Dr. Marilyn Ginbar
Graduate Advisor

⊙

♦ Private Messages from Glitzglam:

Glitzglam: Friend said emails out today

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I got mine this morning.

Glitzglam: And? ? ?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Same as last year.

Glitzglam: : (

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: We have completed a review of your applic’n. Paperwork good. Grades good. X’lars good. Refs good. You’re perfect.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: But the world ended two years ago, sorry! No place for you now. Please apply next year. We’ll keep track of your applic’n and the fact you applied last year, we promise!
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: no mention in this yrs letter about me applying last year so I do have my doubts

Glitzglam: aw hon 🙁
Glitzglam: why tho? My friend got in and I know his ap wasn’t as good

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: why do you think?
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: That’s a serious Q’n btw. Because I don’t know
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Rational part of me thinks high demand program + only so many grad students allowed in
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: That part of me outnumbered 14 to 1 tho

Glitzglam: hm hm
Glitzglam: very specific #

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’ve been thinking about it all day. Made a list. Lots of unreasonable answers that are semi-possible. sentiment / reference backstabs me / people with ties to uni staff get in first / uni tied to gov + gov wants specific focus for research
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I could go on. I know some of those sound crazy
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: + all of that? If true then no reason to think next year will be different. Last year was a third the number applicants, they accepted 2.5%. This year, what? 1.4%?

Glitzglam: um

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Could be multiple of above. could be none.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Enough about me. How is training going?

Glitzglam: is fine. not important.
Glitzglam: Im going to visit as soon as possible
Glitzglam: k?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: No need to treat me with kid gloves. We all suspected this would happen.

Glitzglam: honestly ?
Glitzglam: we all were saying 2 temper expectations
Glitzglam: but we would wink as we said it
Glitzglam: we thought u would get in

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: That doesn’t make me feel better

Glitzglam: have u told everyone?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: no
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Today I have stuff to do. I work and think.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Might go for long trip before h.school semester starts + I get busy with work. Visit home.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Share after I get back I think.

Glitzglam: K. Im visiting 2. field exercises today tomorrow. team want to meet for drinks on day off. I think I might take off nstead. home 4 sure. m/b u?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’m okay. But do me a favor?

Glitzglam: anything

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: If you stop by? I set up tarps by house. Make sure they still there & no water getting through? Lost cause maybe

Glitzglam: can do
Glitzglam: u sure u ok?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’m not. But I’m the ok sort of not ok. I’ve gotten good at effective brooding
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Our little parcel of humanity is sprawled haphazardly across 15+ alt earths. Has to be a place for us somewhere right?

Glitzglam: right
Glitzglam: and speaking of places. I got 2 take off becuz my place is 2 be doing drills

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Be safe. Say hi to the family for me. I’ll drop by soon.

Glow-worm – 0.6

You have logged out, Questionable_Cephalopod
Click here to login.

⊙

Welcome to the Parahumans Online message boards.
You are currently logged in, Curious_Cephalopod
You are viewing:
• Threads in your curated list. Edit that list Here.
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♦ Private Conversation with A_real (Admin):
Please note that conversations with site administrators may be recorded and reviewed.

Curious_Cephalopod: hello?

A_real: Hello. Thank you for the prompt response. I’m Sydney

Curious_Cephalopod: I can guess what this is about

A_real: According to our systems you have 32 individual accounts that you’re rotating through.

Curious_Cephalopod: this is true

A_real: Is it really needed to have one individual account for each day of the month and one for what I assume are holidays?

Curious_Cephalopod: not what I was doing…
Curious_Cephalopod: …but would be amusing with some reshuffling…
Curious_Cephalopod: …assuming it was allowed…
Curious_Cephalopod: …I’m guessing you will say it isn’t

A_real: Duplicate accounts are of concern when it comes to tracking action across accounts

Curious_Cephalopod: I see

A_real: Isn’t that a hassle to manage 32 separate accounts?

Curious_Cephalopod: I use a program to copy over settings

A_real: I see.

Curious_Cephalopod: I checked ToS. I don’t think any of this is against the rules

A_real: But why do it?

Curious_Cephalopod: security. I’m being surveilled…
Curious_Cephalopod: …doing this lets me find out things

A_real: Surveilled?

Curious_Cephalopod: yes

A_real: On PHO?

Curious_Cephalopod: if they were stalking me elsewere and not here where it’s stalker central then they would be bad at what they do…
Curious_Cephalopod: *elsewhere…
Curious_Cephalopod: …and they aren’t

A_real: If you’re trying to obfuscate, I have to question why you use a chain of names that connect to one another.

Curious_Cephalopod: I’m not trying to hide. I’m trying to find out things.

A_real: Do I need to notify authorities? If you’re joking, you need to tell me now.

Curious_Cephalopod: that would cause more problems than it fixes…
Curious_Cephalopod: …can we just say I’m joking and you agree and you can tell me what my punishment is…
Curious_Cephalopod: …or what I need to do to fix this issue?

A_real: I remain concerned.

Curious_Cephalopod: how about this?…
Curious_Cephalopod: …one second…
Curious_Cephalopod: …there. It should be in my user images.

A_real: Verification_For_Sydney.i
A_real: I see it. I see. I’m assuming that in a matter of days, if you’re an avian of some sort…

Curious_Cephalopod: Insect. Yes, I could supply a different verification image…
Curious_Cephalopod: …so can we chalk this up to a peculiarity of mine? Powers weirdness?

A_real: I’ll have to discuss with others.

Curious_Cephalopod: alright

A_real: I’m not wholly satisfied with this resolution. Either you were joking about something serious
A_real: Or you’re being cavalier about something serious

Curious_Cephalopod: Or I’m being watched and I’ve been under various kinds of observation for some time…
Curious_Cephalopod: …and this isn’t that serious. Consider me a curious sort of multi-limbed invertebrate who would be happy to be left alone…
Curious_Cephalopod: …except there’s always someone on the other side of the glass, tapping or taking notes. Ears pressed up against the walls. constant whispers…
Curious_Cephalopod: …things moved in my habitat when I’m not looking…

A_real: I think I have a sense of what you’re getting at.

Curious_Cephalopod: …anohd thgis poartiocular obdserver is benign

A_real: ?

Curious_Cephalopod: software glitch. it doesn’t like interruptions

A_real: I see.
A_real: I’m putting you down as a verified cape, with some notes. I’m not going to make this available to anyone looking at your profile unless you want it.

Curious_Cephalopod: I don’t

A_real: I would like to link all of your 32 accounts together. This might take a few hours of fiddling on my end. It would only be info available to us and to you

Curious_Cephalopod: and to any outside parties with access to my computer?

A_real: I would avoid letting anyone have that access, if possible.

Curious_Cephalopod: that will be fine. I will try and I’m fine with being linked up.

A_real: Thank you for cooperating. Have a good day.

⊙

♦ Topic: Multiversal Travel Warnings
In: Boards ► Gimel.US
Khain (Guild Staff)
Posted on August 22nd, Y1:

The Guild is presently established in three facilities outside of the city in Gimel.US, supporting authorities and serving as bodyguards and representatives for the onetime denizens of Earth Bet, as new areas are surveyed and contact with new cultures is made.

The process is exciting and interesting, and we report back as much as we are able, but it does have its hazards. After two recent incidents, we have decided to reach out to those we are familiar with, who are familiar with us. This forum is one of many places we’ll be striving to communicate needs and necessities.

Humans are explorers by nature. Our best count right now, excepting areas we cannot fully access, is that portals, devices, and tears between realities are currently allowing access to forty-seven Earths. Six of those Earths have been blocked off due to implicit threats or are fundamentally inaccessible. Two more have been closed off at the request of their denizens. Earth Aleph, which most Earth Bet residents are or were familiar with, has been blocked off as well.

Speak with authorities before making any trips to territories unknown. We don’t and can’t mount effective rescue operations if someone leaves and fails to return, but we have some ability to do so if and when authorities know where you’ve gone and you’ve stuck to the established route. People got lost or stranded in the wilderness on Earth in 2012, with all that world’s satellites. It can and will happen in new universes.

Do not travel to inhabited worlds. Absolutely do not make first contact. The first of the two incidents noted above was one where a family traveled across Earth Chamesh and happened across a settlement we were currently talking to. Much confusion and concern was had and we are still recovering.

The second is to please stick to charted territories. Exploring the uncharted is exciting, but if you aren’t equipped, you can come to harm, even if the world is uninhabited. One ex-Bet government (which shall remain unnamed) sent one expedition to Earth Achat. The Europe of that world was home to an invasive species, which grew as a tubular mold in dark, shadowed spaces, particularly in forest. Eating food exposed to the spores these molds created causes stomach cramps that progress to reflexive vomiting over the course of two to five days. The vomiting then lasts another two to five days, causing death by dehydration for any who don’t receive care.

Be aware:
• Earth Gimel has been partially explored and checked by thinkers. There are no guarantees. Except for some rare indigenous colonies, it is unsettled. Gimel has five major points of settlement, with civilization finding its foothold around these points. The City, as of yet unnamed, is the primary US point of settlement and one of the primary waypoints. The City is a megalopolis with a commonly cited population of fifty million. A rough map (one month out of date) here.
• Earth Mem has been partially settled by others from Bet. We are currently trying to establish some kind of communication and link.
For novice explorers and those looking to settle new territories, we would encourage Gimel and Mem as largely safe options.

• Earth Bet has been deemed uninhabitable. Contrary to popular belief, radiation is not a major concern. However, many industrial sites were either destroyed or have weathered the last two years of neglect poorly, with chemicals leeching into groundwater and settling in valleys. Terrible numbers of deceased humans and other living species have led to other health concerns, particularly in previously heavily settled areas that received heavy damage. There will always be those who attempt to hold onto what we have lost, and many persist in trying to maintain some existence on Bet. However, new incidents arise on what seems to be a weekly or twice-weekly basis, with one in three having to do with powers, the powered, untended tinker technology, masters, and lingering threats. We may one day return to Bet, as some groups have fervently expressed a desire to do, but we have a great deal of work to do before this is possible. It may not happen in our generation or our children’s generation. Be aware that if you choose to return to Bet (and most authorities agree you have the fundamental right to do so) you may have to re-apply for entry and you will very likely be putting your well being in peril.

Speak with authorities before traveling to any other worlds. More information on multiversal threats.

More information to be disclosed about outside threats and cultures as we have it.

(Showing Page 108 of 270)

► Ohearn
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
It’s about concentration. The fight happened near here. Scion attacked. We don’t know why but it might have had to do with the Slaughterhouse Nine, going by the news reports and what some have said. It might have had to do with the Simurgh. It could have been something else altogether. But things wrapped up near here. People came through and most of us picked two worlds to settle in, with Gimel as the big one.

But a lot of people fought. A lot of capes. Many were foreign. The fight ended… and then? We are doing or did our best to get them home, but not all want to go home. Or Scion didn’t leave them a home to go back to. A lot of them have gathered into like groups. That’s where we get the weird corner-world settlements.

► Venturain
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
the corner world places aren’t inherently bad tho, right? we (my family) just got into the city one month ago. right away pressure pressure. we can move into city but standardized rent and we need to earn wage and we may be asked to move. best option is to move to city periphery and farm. they say they will give us tools and resources to get started but good spots are taken or very far away and farming isn’t easy

corner worlds are closer in a way. go to noon, go to wherever from there.

if we aren’t reconstruction or farming we aren’t wanted. so why become cogs in the city’s machine? we can strike off on our own. minor risk but total freedom

► Slayer of Isaac
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
@ Venturain – that was our mindset. My family tried it.
We had the bad fortune of settling at one corner settlement. Two points removed. We got off to an okay start. Shelter up, food out, basic needs covered. Regular trips to the city to supply up and cover more advanced needs.

Winter of Year Zero caught us off guard. We thought we were ahead of what we needed but staying warm gets hard and getting warm means chopping wood, which means physical effort, which means needing more food.

I was handling most trips into the city. I was worn out and got real sick. My brother handled one trip, asked for help, came back with capes.

They helped, yeah. Then they took over. It was bad. You can find my photo diary on my user page.

My brother went out and asked for help again. The second time around, the capes were willing to fix the problem and leave. Most of us moved back to the city. Bitter feelings.

► Athonic
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
@ Venturain – there’s need for other work. doctors. teachers. there’s a need for people that are good at finding and vetting the skilled labor. finding qualified doctors and getting them to hospitals, finding teachers and helping to establish new schools.

organization is the hardest part.

many injured, many with special needs. i’m in robotics and prosthetics and there’s no shortage of need. my friend is a radiologist and he’s in high demand.

► Lex_Dogbell
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
Many of those things require education. Letters started arriving yesterday. Rejected, rejected, rejected. No education. My friends are saying government is holding off on setting up schools because there is so much need for physical labor, industry, agriculture.

► mlekk (was mlekk)
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
[User was banned for this post, badge changed]

► Ferris (Cape Dad)
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
Right now we don’t seem to have many threats at home. Things are quiet. The monsters are out there if they’re even alive. Sleeper is still in Zayin and seems contained there. The Birdcage was abandoned and we don’t know if the residents were left to starve. Few of the real monsters seem to be here. The dictators don’t have the infrastructure. Our best capes are off doing good work and seeing what’s out there. Our capes at home are calm and quiet. I’m okay with that.

► Fishmon
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
Not all of the dictators. Not every place was ruined. There are monsters out there who I will not name out of fear for my safety. They were kept in check back on Bet and nothing holds them back now that much of the world has evacuated. The weather may be bad there but they may not have had industry or other problems to taint things. Things are looking up here but there I think it may be hellish for the citizens. Who can help them? Is difficult. If calamity comes in plague or bugs or rats then the people suffer, but dictators will not let them escape. I make calls every day.

► Moor (Guild)
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
I’m going to reach out to you by direct message, Fishmon. Tell me what you can.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … 107, 108, 109 … 268, 269, 270

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♦ Joined Group Conversation: Cap, Heart_Shaped_Pupil, of5, Mangled_Wings:

Cap: I don’t know that much

Mangled_Wings: You know some. You were a corporate hero.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Share. Don’t be shy. 😉

Cap: I was a man on the ground in a flashy costume. I was told to do things and I did them. my mental energy went toward figuring out what I would do when I had discretion.
Cap: Some of it.

of5: I know what you mean about mental energy.

Cap: right? time management is a nightmare even without complications. add family, team drama, having to look good for the cameras and magazines and I wasn’t exactly thinking about upper management. I listened to the boss and I winked at the intern with the cute butt sometimes.
Cap: I didn’t dwell on the ins and outs. so if you want me to supply info on the ins and outs of how the corporate capes work as a business, I can’t. I don’t even want to dwell on it. those were bad times for me. there’s a reason I left it behind.

Mangled_Wings: I hope you can share what you do know at some point.

Cap: Of course.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Spending a lot of mental energy lately, R?

of5: I might have to go to ground. I may not be able to travel to the next town to use library hookup until our next meeting. I have some indications that some people are after me. More than they were the day before yesterday.

Cap: do you need me to come? My brother and I can visit, hang out, offer you some backup. I might not remember much about the nuances of the corp team, but I have pride in my ability in a scrap

of5: I appreciate that.

Cap: it could be fun. you’re the closest thing I have to a best friend atm, so we might as well hang at some point.

of5: Oof. Yes. We get along best, out of the group. It would be good in other times, maybe. But I don’t know what vectors they can use to attack or track me. This whole thing is a mess.

Cap: I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with the cluster-trigger clusterfuck

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Amen.

Mangled_Wings: Agreed.

of5: Easiest if I just drop off the radar for a bit. We can touch base later. I might check in to see if S showed and we can go from there. Otherwise I see you in a few days.

Cap: help is available if you need it.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i was going to say. i’d ♥love♥ to be of help

of5: I’m safe where I am for now. in a sense.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: With family?

of5: Mostly. Obviously not when I’m here. Hard to strike a balance. It’s not good times.

Mangled_Wings: My sympathies.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: !

of5: I… really appreciate that, a.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: !!

Curious_Cephalopod: please, K. Let it be.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Ok. 🙂

Cap: C. good to see you stepping out of the shadows.
Cap: I wondered if you would speak up

Curious_Cephalopod: the shadows are where it’s comfortable and safe.

Mangled_Wings: The shadows are where the real monsters lurk

Curious_Cephalopod: that too, A…
Curious_Cephalopod: …that too.

Cap: why are you curious, out of curiosity?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Doing research?

Curious_Cephalopod: curious in the british sense…
Curious_Cephalopod: …odd, quirky, eccentric…
Curious_Cephalopod: …I was doing research, as a matter of fact.

Mangled_Wings: On?

Curious_Cephalopod: figuring out the landscape. looking at maps. where we want to set up.

Cap: and?

Curious_Cephalopod: and it feels like the A-listers are busy. everyone else is in the shadows…
Curious_Cephalopod: …waiting for someone else to break the peace and take the hate when they get blamed…
Curious_Cephalopod: …the problem is we’re so geographically spread out. even if we discount R.

of5: I’m aiming to move into the city. There are complications

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: your friend

of5: a lot of things.

Curious_Cephalopod: the megalopolis makes for bad logistics.

Cap: I do hope you’ll step out of those shadows more, c.
Cap: it’s been interesting talking to you online and seeing how talkative you are here.
Cap: I like what you contribute when you speak up

Curious_Cephalopod: that’s me being an introvert.

Cap: that’s fixable

Curious_Cephalopod: I think you badly underestimate my introversion, T…

of5: Okay, hold on.

Cap: holding on

Curious_Cephalopod: [error]!
Curious_Cephalopod: [error]!
Curious_Cephalopod: [error]!

You have disconnected from chat
You have reconnected to chat

of5: As the person who knows capricorn best, I’m going to step in and say this convo should end. It’s going to end in hurt feelings.

Curious_Cephalopod: my feelings are fine.

of5: Ok

Cap: I’m fine.

of5: Let’s end the convo here. We’re here to back each other up. Let’s be more cautious than not.

Cap: sure. I’m annoyed but I can take a break.
Cap has left the conversation.

of5: I hope I didn’t make things awkward.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It’s fine. Made sense.

Curious_Cephalopod: balances to be struck

of5: Yeah

⊙

♦ Private message from Heart_Shaped_Pupil

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: She said something nice!

Curious_Cephalopod: ?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: A!

Curious_Cephalopod: Ah.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Good things good feelings. I’m psyched because this all feels positive.

Curious_Cephalopod: maybe

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: On the topic of positivity…

Curious_Cephalopod: ? Did you disconnect?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: So I was thinking we should meet in the city. You were talking about logistics and I was thinking about where eveyrone was. you’re closest to me and we’re the same age I think? So I was thinking we could meet and talk strategy over fast food. We could even do something after and build team bonds and things like that. Maybe a movie or arcade. Whatever you want to do.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: No pressure.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Sorry. I wrote and rewrote that three times

Curious_Cephalopod: You mean a date?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I didn’t say a date.

Curious_Cephalopod: But you mean a date.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Maybe. Sure. Springtime of youth and all that pizazz.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Or pre-springtime. Tweentime of spring? The thawing of the slush doesn’t have the same conotations

Curious_Cephalopod: I think there are about a hundred different reasons why I should say no to that. actually…
Curious_Cephalopod: …make that two hundred. I legitimately think I could name two hundred reasons why that’s a terrible idea.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Really? Two hundred?

Curious_Cephalopod: The more I think of it, the more reasons I come up with…
Curious_Cephalopod: …no, K.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Can I ask why?

Curious_Cephalopod: because you’re you and I’m me…
Curious_Cephalopod: …no and don’t ask again.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Ok. 🙂
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Can I ask another question?

Curious_Cephalopod: will I regret saying yes?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: When you were talking to Ms. Sydney earlier
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: You hinted at having a reason for the changing nicks.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: What was it?

Curious_Cephalopod: Honestly?…
Curious_Cephalopod: …I wanted to see if you’d get curious enough to reveal yourself.

Glow-worm – 0.7

Welcome to the Parahumans Online message boards.
You are currently logged in, Heart_Shaped_Pupil
You are viewing:
• Private message conversations with new replies
• Ordered chronologically
Note: With your current settings, you may find your homepage to be rather sparse! Consider re-enabling default settings, selecting some general categories, people, teams, locations or topics to follow, or refine terms to review threads you’ve visited in the past.

⊙

Connecting to “gChat.ParahumansOnline.Treefort_Lookout(6667)” (Attempt 20)
Resolving Host Name
Connecting…
Connected.
Using identity “Heart_Shaped_Pupil”
Welcome to the Treefort_Lookout! A hangout for those 16 and under with inquisitive minds and an eye on the goings on around them. Keep conversation focused on sharing info. Other discussion belongs in our Pillowfort_Lazytalk or Snowfort_Mission rooms.

Maxtag: Hi Kenzie
Toxicfish216: Heya. Wanting to get right to business?
Thistlesoup: *hugs* Hi love

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: *hugs back* Hi thistle, hi max, hi tox.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: no rush on business. i’m starting my day

My_Own_Gren: Hi K. We were talking about stuff just now. There’s a bit to catch up on.
Dogtooth: Heya, optics. Good to see you.
Magnep: hi kenzie. what’s up?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: hi Peter, hi Megan, hi nep
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: not much is up
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: how are you guys? does anyone need help with anything?

Asnag: I don’t think so. We were talking about your stuff, actually.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: neat. i’m getting breakfast so i’ll be a second before I’m settled

Tockta: How are you doing? You said you were feeling down in Pillowfort last night.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i’m better
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i’m ready to start the day. i’m excited at the idea of getting info.

Thistlesoup: That’s good to hear. 🙂
Milldross: You wanted us to nag you about your punctuation and capitals. Your friend got irritated about it.
Flying_Kevin: this is the girl that was the Ward, right?
Flying_Kevin: I’m new btw

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I did. Thank you mill.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I did. I just woke up.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I am. Hi Kevin.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: *rubs hands together* get me started.

Johnsonjar: Hi K. 🙂 You wanted us to keep an eye out for your old teammates.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: !
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: who? where?

Johnsonjar: We found two of them. One second.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: !! Who?

Johnsonjar: Aven and Houndstooth

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Thank you! Good job! You’re awesome!
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Ima go talk to Aven first.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Away

You have marked yourself as away.

⊙

♦ Private message sent to AvenG

AvenG: ?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hi Aven. It’s Kenzie

AvenG: Oh. Kenzie M?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: That me.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m not supposed to be sharing out my name and tying it to this account but I figure in this context it’s okay. You’ve seen my face, you know my name, you know my powers, I trust you.

AvenG: Yeah.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I don’t want to be a pest. I just wanted to say hi and say I’m glad you’re alive. I always thought you were cool.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: and if you ever want to talk or meet or whatever, you know where I’m at and you can send me a message.

AvenG: Ok.
AvenG: No offense, but I probably won’t.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: ok.

AvenG: Sorry. I’m trying to get a fresh start, the Wards were pretty good times but that was then. You and I didn’t talk then, with the age difference, so it’s strange to talk now.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It’s okay. You were frontline and I was backline. You were a teenager, I was the brat.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: There are lots of reasons I’m sure but ‘no’ is the only one that matters. I wish you the best. 🙂

AvenG: thank you. Good luck with whatever you end up doing, Kenzie.

⊙

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /back

You have marked yourself as back
Welcome back to the Treefort_Lookout!

Tockta: How did it go?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Not great. She didn’t want to talk.

Tockta: Aw. 🙁
Thistlesoup: *hugs*

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: *hugs back*

Maxtag: We’ve got your back.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m going to talk to the next one. Wish me luck!
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Away

You have marked yourself as away.

Doones: Good luck!

⊙

♦ Private message sent to Houndstooth

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hi H.T.

Houndstooth: Hi Kenzie.
Houndstooth: I’m in the middle of a conversation with Ave. She said you reached out.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m keeping an eye out for my old teammates.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m glad you’re alive, houndstooth.

Houndstooth: I’m glad you’re alive too, Kenzie.
Houndstooth: What are you up to these days?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m looking at joining a team. Kind of. We’re still figuring a lot out. It’s exciting. they’re neat.

Houndstooth: That’s really good to hear
Houndstooth: I’ve talked to some of the others offline. We made out better than most. The only question mark is 10-59, but I’m suspicious they’re okay.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I already found them. they’re alive and well.

Houndstooth: Did you? ok. good. great. Then we only lost Pigeonhole, but you knew about them. We made out better than most.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: it’s great. I’m so relieved.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I really liked the team. Everyone was so cool.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It was an important time for me. Coming back to Baltimore to join the team was the first time I got to stop and settle down.

Houndstooth: Yeah

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It was home
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: so it means alot to me to hear you say **we** when talking about us making it out mostly okay.

Houndstooth: You know that was then, don’t you?
Houndstooth: Back in the past. Things have changed.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: uh huh

Houndstooth: You got a bad deal, Kenzie. Not the worst I’ve seen but I’ve seen a lot of people get better hands than what you got. You tried as hard as anyone and you did really good work.
Houndstooth: You were a better hero when you were four and a half feet tall than some adult capes I know today

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’ve heard this speech before H.T.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: variants of it
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: you gave me a version of it once
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: you don’t have to let me down easy. I’m tough. 🙂
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: just cut to the chase. 😉

Houndstooth: I think you shouldn’t contact the others.
Houndstooth: They have their own things to work through. They’re rebuilding. Everyone’s looking forward.
Houndstooth: You have a new team. That’s great.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: huh. was i really that bad?

Houndstooth: You weren’t bad okay?
Houndstooth: You weren’t bad.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: but?

Houndstooth: But…
Houndstooth: give me a second to type.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: HT… i was ten
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: iv’e grown up some
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i was there for the end of the world
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i did stuff. i actually really helped

Houndstooth: Absolutely
Houndstooth: I keep typing responses and deleting them
Houndstooth: People are gunshy

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: gunshy?
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: of me?

Houndstooth: Shit. Now I feel bad.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Don’t
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i’m disappointed is all

Houndstooth: I can’t stress enough that I have a lot of respect for you.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: thank you 🙂
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: can you give me one shot then?
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: not even as friends. it can be business. I’m useful. you’ve been prasing my work ethic. I’m smart. I have a kind of team. If you do me the favor of giving me a shot I can do you one favor for free.

Houndstooth: I don’t know

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: you’re a smart guy and you were a good leader. you know how these things work. you know my power has its uses. others would kidnap me for it. I am offering myself to you and you would be stupid to turn me down. use me. please.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: if you respect me so much then let me prove myself

Houndstooth: Okay.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Yes?

Houndstooth: Sure. Absolutely.
Houndstooth: I can contact you here?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: yes

Houndstooth: I will be in touch.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: ok

Houndstooth: I will also talk to the others. I will leave your contact info with them. If they are comfortable with it they can reach out to you.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: got it
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’ll cross my fingers.

Houndstooth: I have to run.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: thanks for making the time to talk to me

Houndstooth: Keep up the good work. Bye.

⊙

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /back

You have marked yourself as back
Welcome back to the Treefort_Lookout!

Tockta: How did it go? Is your day looking up?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: The high point of the conversation was toward the end when he said don’t call us we’ll call you.

Tockta: I don’t understand
Flying_Kevin: ?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It doesn’t matter. I’m choosing to view this in a positive light. My day has to get better from here.

Tockta: That’s positive.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It is!
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: For now I need a distraction.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Any other news?

Maxtag: Tattletale took on a new mission that’s taking her to Earth N. She’ll be busy for a short while.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: !
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Priorities!

Maxtag: I didn’t know it was important.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It is. Information about my new teammates is key.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: be right back.

Thistlesoup: Bye!

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Away

You have marked yourself as away.

⊙

♦ Joined Group Conversation: Cap, Mangled_Wings (away), Weird_Cephalopod

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: was R around?

Weird_Cephalopod has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Bye C.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Rawr. K is here. everyone run away! >:3

Cap: R left. he dropped off the grid

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Arrrg

Cap: C was saying he had to go get lunch soon.
Cap: I think that’s why he left
Cap: A is eating too. she practically living at library now I think.
Cap: but she has to leave it to eat.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: ok
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: it’s good that she’s there. good to learn and study.

Cap: why?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Tattletale is out of town. They probbaly won’t attack without her around to act. There is a repreive. I got some info on her late last night too

Cap: that’s great. hopefully he swings by the library and we can let him know.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: great

Cap: is quiet today. lazy sunday. how are you doing?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: today has been interesting. i’m looking forward to S getting here and to the next meet.

Cap: agreed on the first two parts. partial agree on the last. I think we’re going to get yelled at

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I can not imagine that.

Cap: shoot. would love to chat but am being asked to go to church.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: at noon?

Cap: family is asking. church gets overcrowded these days so we attend during certain blocks of time.
Cap: you and me. we talk later, yeah?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: for sure.

Cap: good work on the tattletale info. strategy will be so key if R ends up in trouble. you a champ.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: not a problem

Cap: sorry to duck and run

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: go, you dork! it’s ok 🙂

Cap has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /twiddle thumbs

twiddle thumbs: Unknown Command

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Yeah

You have left the conversation.

⊙

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /back

You have marked yourself as back
Welcome back to the Treefort_Lookout!

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hit me with some more of that business

Maxtag: Hi Kenzie
Maxtag: You said teammate related things were important.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Yes. You have more?

Maxtag: I’m not sure. It’s minor but you said it was related to two of your teammates.
Maxtag: Weld is back. Article here.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Oh. He was away? The people I’d tell about it are away for lunch.

Maxtag: I don’t follow.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It’s okay.

You currently have one alert about possible admin action. Please click to review and open a conversation with a site administrator about conduct issues.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hahahahaha XD

Doones: What’s so funny?
Magnep: ? 🙂
Flying_Kevin: I don’t understand.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Today has been quite a day. I’m having a run of bad luck. Admins want to talk to me and I think I know why. Haha.

Doones: Good luck!

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: can I get a bit of a hug, Thistle?

Thistlesoup: *hugs*

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: You’re the best.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Away

You have marked yourself as away.

⊙

♦ Private Conversation with Shower (Admin):
Please note that conversations with site administrators may be recorded and reviewed.

Shower: I’d like a moment if you can spare it.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hello.

Shower: Thank you for the prompt response. I’m Graham. I’m with the PHO IT team. You can call me by my name or just ‘shower’.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hi Shower. What can I do for you?

Shower: We had some unusual search activity that seemed to be causing congestion. Would you happen to know anything about this?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I might. It would have been during off-peak hours though.

Shower: We update infrastructure during off-peak hours. it slowed us down. It stalled us for three hours last night.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: oh that’s not good.

Shower: You’re piggybacking off of our servers?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I was trying to help. We’ve been updating the wikis as much as we can and three-fifths of the work is gathering data that’s helpful to others.

Shower: We?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It was a stupid hobby project. I was thinking of what everyone wanted the most and information seemed most critical. I had some guys I knew from way before and I thought I’d get everyone up to date and on the same page.

Shower: We often encourage hobby projects on PHO, though we cannot when resources are as tight as they are, and it would depend on scale and the amount of mess created. How easy is this to dismantle, and do I need to talk to anyone else?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Nobody else. It was me alone. I can fix it right now.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: How bad of a problem is this? Is there any leeway?

Shower: It’s interfering with others’ ability to access things. It might not seem like a problem here, because you’re close to the home node, but there are people on the periphery or far-flung regions and they’re going from satellite to ground to satellite to here, across several Earths.
Shower: I think it’s best if you clean up as much of it as you can.

Shower: I think that since you’re a chat member in good standing, we’d be willing to let this slide with a warning if it can be promptly dealt with without any mess.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’ll have to reboot.

Shower: I’ll talk to you shortly.

You have left the conversation.

⊙

Connecting to “gChat.ParahumansOnline.Treefort_Lookout(6667)” (Attempt 32)
Resolving Host Name
Connecting…
Connected.
Using identity “Heart_Shaped_Pupil”
Welcome to the Treefort_Lookout! A hangout for those 16 and under with inquisitive minds and an eye on the goings on around them. Keep conversation focused on sharing info. Other discussion belongs in our Pillowfort_Lazytalk or Snowfort_Mission rooms.

Toxicfish216: Heya. Wanting to get right to business?
Maxtag: Hi Kenzie
Thistlesoup: *hugs* Hi love
My_Own_Gren: Hi K. We were talking about stuff while you were disconnected. There’s only a little to catch up on.
Dogtooth: Heya, optics.
Magnep: hi kenzie. how are you this afternoon?
Tockta: How are you doing? You sounded positive the last time I asked.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: yeah
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: right to business

Johnsonjar: What do you need?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I need everyone to be quiet.

You have been auto-set to away as you have been idle for five minutes

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill Toxicfish216

You are no longer set to away

Toxicfish216: BusinessOrPleasureBot disconnecting…
Toxicfish has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill Maxtag

Maxtag: MissionBot1 disconnecting…
Maxtag has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill JohnsonJar

JohnsonJar: MissionBot2 disconnecting…
Johnsonjar has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill My_Own_Gren

My_Own_Gren: NewsAmountBot disconnecting…
My_Own_Gren has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill Dogtooth

Dogtooth: HTBot disconnecting…
Dogtooth has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill Magnep

Magnep: CasualConvoBot disconnecting…
Magnep has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill Flying_Kevin

FlyingKevin: InstantNewGuyBot disconnecting…
FlyingKevin has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill TMI_Mom

TMI_Mom: DelayedNewGuyBot disconnecting…
TMI_Mom has left the conversation

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Thistle, can I ask for something?

Thistlesoup: You don’t even need to ask, love
Shower (Admin) has joined the conversation.
Thistlesoup: *Big Hugs*
Shower: I thought you might be dealing with the problem. Or is it dealt with?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Haha. This is embarassing.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m dealing.

Thistlesoup: Do you want another?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Be quiet thistle.

Shower: Are they A.I.?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Haha. No. They’re as dumb as dog farts.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Trigger phrases or phrases a set time after login. Different bots for different tasks. I’ve taken care of some of the most problematic. I’ll clean up the ones that are here for appearances.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I wanted to see if I could make them just realistic enough to fool anyone who accidentally stumbled in.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /kill thistlesoup

Thistlesoup: HugBot disconnecting…
Thistlesoup has left the conversation
Shower: I see.
Shower: I don’t know if I was here long enough to be fooled, but I’m definitely confused.
Shower: You’re sure they’re not AI?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: If they were A.I. I could be a potential S-class threat.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m just really lame
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: it’s hobby programming. Not my focus or specialty.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /kill Doones

Doones: LuckBot disconnecting…
Doones has left the conversation
Shower: I’ll leave you to it, unless there’s something I can help you with?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I built a server to manage any CPU load from the more complicated search bots. Can I donate it or something?

Shower: You built a server?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I emulated what you guys run and set it up intermediary.

Shower: I don’t even think that’s possible. But it might explain some of the other things we’ve had go wrong, actually. No, we’ll need you to shut it down.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: You can have it. It’s probably better than what you have.

Shower: Absolutely not. The security issues with that would be horrendous. It would allow snooping, spoofing- no. Take it down ASAP

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: ASAP. Got it

Shower: We’ll talk before the day is out. I need to make sure we have a handle on everything involved here.
Shower has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: okay then.

You have been auto-set to away as you have been idle for five minutes

Executioner404 has joined the conversation.

Executioner404: /Kill Goatfish
Goatfish: WIP_Capbot is disconnecting…
Goatfish has left the conversation.
Executioner404: /kill Shameful_Manatee
Shameful_Manatee: WIP_Chrisbot is disconnecting…
Shameful_Manatee has left the conversation.

You have set the topic to: “.”

Executioner404: /kill AvianB

You have set the room name to “Chat114”
You have cleared the chat logs.
You have left the conversation.

⊙

♦ Private message from Mangled_Wings

Mangled_Wings: I have a question. Are you busy?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: staring at a blank screen.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: What’s the question?

Mangled_Wings: I’ve been called Queen Dark twice and King Dark once.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: oh

Mangled_Wings: What does it mean? there are no dictionary websites that explain. I searched and I keep seeing the same paragraph.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: The paragraph is a paste. Queen Dark is a mean joke.

Mangled_Wings: they mock me?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m sorry.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: You’ve gone quiet. You shouldn’t reply to them, you know.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: You’re still quiet. I don’t think the internet suits you, A.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I think you are beautiful and stunning and terrifying in person. In a good way, I think. Because you and I are on the same side.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Your voice doesn’t translate well.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I think you’re intimidating and you want to be intimidating on the internet and that doesn’t work at all. C is the intimidating one here. Somehow. He has that knack. That atmosphere. The skill.

Mangled_Wings: C is?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Funny, isn’t it?

Mangled_Wings: I think I hate the internet to the very center of my being.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: If you think about it, with powers and all, the center of your being could include the vast monster in another dimension that’s all hooked up into you. Passenger stuff. The center of mass could be in the middle of an alien god monster the size of a mountain or moon. I imagine it has the energy of a small star stored in it.

Mangled_Wings: This serves to illustrate the depth and energy of my hate for a setting where C might be more intimidating than I am.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I think I might agree with you on the hate thing. I want to meet face to face and hang out with S and you and maybe C and definitely Cap and R. I want that to work out.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: If that fails, I dunno.

Mangled_Wings: You don’t know?
Mangled_Wings: I thought we had a deal.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I wasn’t sure if you were being serious.

Mangled_Wings: I am always serious.
Mangled_Wings: We’ll handle this project. I aim to learn all I can. When or if it falls through, I will be an independent villain again. I aim to be a successful one.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Yeah.

Mangled_Wings: You’ll work for me. I’ll pay you, of course.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hm.

Mangled_Wings: What?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: people run scared from me. it seems even non-people run from me, if I pay attention to what happened in the last hour.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: you aren’t running

Mangled_Wings: I don’t scare.
Mangled_Wings: The world is filled with blithering idiots. More are only blither and more are silent idiots. You’re the exception. If you will work for me then I’ll damn well make good use of you. I’ll incentivize you to stay around.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: okay.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: you’re one of the cooler people I know, you know?

Mangled_Wings: See? Not a blithering idiot.

Glow-worm – 0.8

Subject: PHO Technical Assistance
August 24th, Y1
After discussion among the moderation team, we have agreed to allow the name change. As we discussed in the tech help chat, our primary concern in these situations is an abuse of the system or a lack of accountability. This being said, your account is in good standing and you’ve agreed to a probationary status.

Your in-account email, curated lists, private messages, badges, and accesses will remain intact, as will your forum account’s connection to your wiki contributions.

Let us know if there is anything else we can help you with.
Graham at PHO

Subject: Re: PHO Technical Assistance
August 24th, Y1
Thank you so much! I am having another problem. I’ve been getting caught up on my PMs/DMs/Emails and there is a lot of abusive content. All of the recent messages are very hostile or vulgar. It seems to have started before I even signed back on. I don’t know why. I’m so sorry to raise problems when I’m probationary.

Subject: Re: Re: PHO Technical Assistance
August 24th, Y1
Graham here. I looked at the incident log and found one major incident that another site admin handled. An article came out here. Two groups online identified the people in that article and shared out their screen names and other information. We took action when people used PHO resources (direct messages, email) to harass one of the individuals in the article. We took action and removed them, but they may be returning with the use of new accounts and expanding the number of people targeted.

If you could report any or all of those involved, it would help us a great deal. For solutions, I can think of three options: you can continue to report so we can continue to take action (as these are not the people we want on PHO) and we can hope this quiets down, you can move to a new account and start fresh, or you can agree to give PHO staff access to your private messages so we can take action. This would involve us reading anything private in the conversations, and it would mean anyone messaging you was notified that PHO staff can read your things. We would limit this to only recent and new senders, so your friends and pre-existnig conversation partners would stay private. As a bonus the notification could help stem the influx.
-Graham with PHO

Subject: Re: re: re: PHO Technical Assistance
August 24th, Y1
I’m not comfortable giving you access as I might receive sensitive or personal messages (and I would want to). I’ll report what I can.

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♦ Private message from AnonymousEDT103:

AnonymousEDT103: you’re not one of us and you’ll never be
User has been reported. We’ll look into it soon. Thank you!

⊙

♦ Topic: [Article] Weld to Warden
In: Boards ► News ► Events ►Gimel.US
Ball-Chan
Posted on August 23rd Y1:

[Article Text, Editorial]His list of credentials starts off good. A two year tenure as a member of the Boston Wards with no offenses or misconduct reported to the media. He was the third monstrous cape to feature as an actor on a television show, the first to make a second appearance on TV, and the first monstrous cape with an onscreen kiss. He was the subject of a viral online image, released with various humorous captions, and it was a combination of this and arguably his small-network television appearances that gave him his popularity. He rode this success to a position as the first monstrous cape to be the team leader of the Wards. Ambitious fellow, isn’t he?

Weld’s popularity and time in the spotlight made him a figure of interest when, following undisclosed events in Brockton Bay, he turned from the established heroes and brought the vast majority of the monstrous capes in the Protectorate and Wards with him. Speculation flew as to why, and Weld was cagey when asked. No comment, the teenager said.

Weld’s team was dubbed ‘The Irregulars’ in a play on the term for unconventional military squadrons and on the team being wholly made up of monstrous capes. At this stage, it was still possible to praise Weld for his efforts. He reached out to monstrous parahumans both American and international, and he kept his team together while carrying out deeds for the camera. Maintaining a group of such size isn’t an easy task when its numbers are swelling like his group’s did. He wasn’t too open about his methods or his team’s motivations.

Things take an ugly turn from here. When Chevalier announced that the PRT was mending its ways and that the person at the heart of the organization’s corruption had been defeated, Weld’s irregular team of monstrous capes kept away and kept silent. Heroes called for unity, the Suits answered that call, sending many members to America to serve, following a schism of their own.

Even the defeat of Behemoth or the appearance of the new Endbringers didn’t serve to bring Weld back into the fold. If anything, Weld seemed to note that his team’s numbers were dropping. He and the monstrous capes serving under him stopped making as many public appearances. We don’t know what he started doing at this time, but his team was still recruiting. No comment, Weld said.

It’s telling, too, that Weld’s appearance changed. He decorated himself with horns and scales. To those with an eye for the symbolic, Weld was a monstrous cape who was embracing the monster and turning his back on the cape side of things.

More time passed, and more silence followed. No comment, he said, on the rare occasions when he appeared in front of the cameras. No comment.

On that Thursday, June 20th, 2013, Scion took our world from us. He took almost everything from us. Based on our limited accounts of what happened, Weld was there for the initial foray, an organized series of attacks mounted from an oil rig. He was not there after, leading a substantial portion of his team to other venues. There’s no indication of what he was doing, but we do know he wasn’t there for the skirmishes on other worlds, against other major organized groups of parahumans. We do know he wasn’t there for the follow-up confrontation on the beachhead.

Many will argue it was a chaotic time. No reports are wholly accurate, the world was ending, and the number of parahumans fighting was no doubt mind-boggling. Why make a point of this in particular?

To start with, today was the day Weld returned to Gimel after some time elsewhere. We’ve been told he was doing a combination of work in Earth Bet and spending some time touring other worlds in the company of the mass-murderer codenamed ‘Garotte’ and a pair of unnamed capes the two were friendly with. He was extended an offer to join the Wardens as a leader of one of the group’s cells, and he accepted.

People are applauding, it seems. Weld led a rather formidable team of monstrous capes away from the field of battle, at that critical point in our recent history. He came back practically alone, his team gone. He’s tight-lipped as to why.

His Wards team didn’t do very well either, for the record. We haven’t heard the full story from him there either. He claimed that he didn’t want to disparage his former employer, and that they were still on positive terms.

Does he deserve the position?
Is he trustworthy?
Is he even that good of a cape or a leader?

I’ll remind you of two of his favorite words, while you mull over those questions.

“No comment.”

(Showing Page 13 of 13)

► Wytchmlj
Replied on August 23rd, Y1:
Nobody is saying why things happened like they did. Some are hinting @ it tho.
A lot are hinting at it. Conspiracy of silence.
Weld seems to know things and like the article says he’s keeping his mouth shut.
It is his right to keep quiet. It is our right to say he’s an asshole for doing it.

► Capricorn (Hero)
Replied on August 23rd
Guys guys guys. this is a hit piece and it’s a bad one at that.

Full disclosure: I know Weld some. he was and is one of my favorite people

But come the fuck on. Everyone has a motivation driving them. skimming through the comments on this article makes that v. clear. YES absolutely wonder at weld’s motivations. wonder about everyone’s. wonder about the people who are pushing hard for moving forward and about the people who want to go back to the way things were. wonder about the person who wrote this article and why he has the focus he does.

but don’t make the mistake of focusing so much on the question marks that you forget about the other punctuation marks & if someone shows you who they are then believe them. Weld’s teammates in Boston and Brockton Bay only had nice things to say about him. Period. Weld did charity work with kids he definitely didn’t have to do. Period. Weld served as team leader for a city in need and he kept his wards alive thru the Slaughterhouse Nine and God knows what else- exclamation mark.

Weld has never shown himself to be anything but decent. if you’re filling in the blanks or raising questions then take your cue from that first & foremost.

► Tdren
Replied on August 23rd
Silence isn’t an option. Things are heating up, people are scared and we’re scared for a justifiable reason. Powers came out, and we started seeing broken powers. People with mutations, people with no off switch. Monsters who needed to be quarantined. Endbringers.

Now we’ve got a different kind of broken power.

It keeps getting worse. It gets worse in a linear and steady way. These things follow from one another. There is a visible pattern and there is a sense to be made of things. The new broken powers follow from the people made monstrous by their powers. If Weld knows something we have to ask.

We have no authorities. We have no system of government. We have no national cape team or licensed heroes. We can’t even agree on a name for Gimel’s megalopolis!

We can discuss all day but at some point we need to make decisions. We need to say we deserve to know and if you won’t tell us then no you can’t represent us and no we won’t trust you to have our back.

► FFlash
Replied on August 23rd
@ Capricorn – I think you have some bias you’re not admitting to here. You disappeared too, didn’t you? You left Reach and disappeared. A couple of your old teammates are saying they’re thinking about joining the Attendant and you’re not included in that. Why? Are we supposed to use your metrics to evaluate you? Go by the face you presented to the public?

I think I’d rather read between the lines. Your old team doesn’t want you for a reason

► AtoLo
Replied on August 23rd
1000000000s of human beings died or have yet to make their way to us.

1000000000s.

1000000000s of humans with families. mothers and fathers. good days and bad days.

i say 1000000000s instead of billions because billions barely sounds different from millions and i think the zeroes drive it home

the city is as big as it is because we were lucky. we only lost about half of those close to us in N.E. US.

refugees of Earth Shin say a parahuman took over their Earth a decade ago. one woman. she went back home to continue ruling them.

there is a world not far from us which is at constant war. there are tears in reality they can use to reach us and they have a lot of incentive to do so. they have parahumans too.

there is a theocratic state which is more distant but they have some parahumans too.

there is a world of monsters like Weld and his irregulars.

there are others, smaller. there are probably others who we haven’t been told about.

every week we get a handful of reports of people triggering with broken powers. They burn bright and burn fast and they do a lot of damage.

on the smallest level we are quiet and still because we are afraid to disturb the peace. but on the big level our new neighbors aren’t focused 100% on us. we’re important. we’re a powerful few even though we lost 1000000000s. the tyrant queen is looking at us but also watching over her shoulder for the war world and the monsters and the broken triggers. the war world is wanting to venture out but maybe an expedition is hard to field and they get broken triggers too. they’re getting more regular triggers.

the truce will break, both on the small level and the big

we are hurting from the loss of 1,000,000,000s and we are only just now reaching the point where we need to make decisions. what do we call ourselves? what direction do we go? Do we move forward or backward?

Like i said we are smaller in number than we should be. we’re hurting. we’re distracted and scattered.

but i think we have the most powers at our disposal. that’s important.

and i think we’re best equipped to have the answers when others come asking. i think that’s the most important thing by far. they are going to ask and we are going to want to have answers to offer them

i think we need people to start telling instead of hinting. information is the most valuable resource at all.

► Yipper
Replied on August 23rd
Information is also more volatile than oil, nitro, or nuclear material. Look at the secret identity leaks going on in this thread. Targeted harassment of Weld & others. If hundreds or thousands agree to keep quiet about things then maybe there’s a reason.

Let’s not turn into a rabid mob

► Space_Squid
Replied on August 23rd
Humanity has seen its worst test yet and it came out the other side.

I’d like to draw a comparison. I’ve read some of these pages and I see an effort to make us out to be the enemy. the monstrous capes are this mysterious thing and some of us are made out to know things that we aren’t saying

I can tell you who we are. just like you we’re scarred. we were hurt very badly and altered very dramatically and we didn’t get to know why. we desperately wanted answers because our histories friends and families were taken from us. we were forced out of our homes and thrust into a strange place and many of us were left desperate or dangerous. Just like some of you.

We learned some partial truths and that made things worse. Then after a very long time and a lot of pain we learned most of the rest of the truth.

I won’t pretend its easy. I struggled every day and then I struggled more after the end of the world.

But we fought a hard fight whether it was to save the world or to get to safety or to climb out of dark angry depths. We came out the other side. Every day we survive is a day we can say “I was THAT strong so I can definitely survive this.” Replace I with WE because we are all together in this.

I don’t know if that will work for you but it helped me

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … 11, 12, 13

⊙

♦ Topic: help
In: Boards ► Groups ► C53
Casey_F08
Posted on August 23rd Y1:

I would like to thank you all for reading this. I was invited to post here by Quasi after I posted in some other places. Quasi has been talking to me and resurring me.

I remember hearing about the monster heroes and I never payed much attention to them. Now I think I am one.

My name is Casey Forks and I would be starting high school this fall if things hadn’t gone bad. My mom hasn’t been well for a long time and my brother has the same condition so we decided to stick it out and whether things. we had a shelter and we had some food. my dad and I went to stores and raided them for more foods that would last and we stocked up.

The shelter didn’t work out. we all got headaches and dad said the air filters weren’t sufficent. we went upstairs into the house and sealed all the gaps and dad tried to fix up the filters. long story short that didn’t work out either. I should have tried to get somewhere safe but I stayed. I shouldn’t have stayed.

I didn’t think enough about monster capes or about those with powers but now I am both. Maybe I am not Casey anymore. I am frozen like the dead people who have lying on the ground for the years since the world ended, like a mummy without bandages. Mold grows on me and grows around me and it covers everything I can see and think about. I am a god of death and decay and I am an open fridge door with mold growing inside it and spilling out. with every passing day and hour and minute I am less like casesy and more a god of gross fridge stuff. my world of mold gets bigger every moment

I grew mold on my dads body and I could make him move. I grew mold on his brain and I got him to think and with his thinking I finally got the generator and the router and the phones working. It helped that I grew mold on the pieces and parts.

Now I am making my sister type because I cannot move any part of me a milimeter and I am asking heroes for help. I’m internet famous and there are articles written about my situation so that gives me some hope

But more importantly I am trying not to lose my mind. Quasi is helping me with that and he said you would all help by sharing your stories.

I am so scared that the heroes won’t save me but I am just as scared they’ll save me but they won’t be able to fix me. I am scared that I won’t be able to move. I am scared I won’t be able to hug a pretty girl or lie next to her in bed. I never cared about the rude stuff that much I thought that the cuddling would be the nicest part. I want to see the world through eyes that aren’t moldy and to take a deep breath and scream or even laugh. I want to play soccer again with all my friends there and I want my parents to be there and be proud.

Tell me I’ll be ok.

(Showing Page 3 of 3)

► Casey_F08
Replied on August 23rd, Y1
Thank you thank you for your words. they give me hope.

►Engel
Replied on August 23rd, Y1
Be strong brother. With powers all things are possible. Through trauma and struggle we find ourselves so much stronger. It takes time to adjust and it takes time and effort to find the right keys to the right locks. With help (and you have so much help!) Clocks can be turned back and flesh can be reshaped. We killed a god and the worst is behind us. Slowly but surely we will put the pieces back together. If I did not believe this 100% then I would not be here to write this message to you. Be strong.

► Casey_F08
Replied on August 23rd, Y1
I am trying.

► Casey_F08
Replied on August 23rd, Y1
thank you all so much

► Space_Squid
Replied on August 23rd, Y1
I read some of your old posts Casey. when you fractured your ankle playing soccer you were worried you would never play again but you got there. When powers are involved the lows are so much lower but the highs are high enough to make it all so very worth it. You are funny, smart and cool and people wouldn’t be rooting for you if you weren’t. Your fears echo mine when I realized what had happened to me. I worried I would never have control or have a boy next to me or anything else. I can tell you it is possible.

► Fishie (Board Admin)
Replied on August 23rd, Y1
Thread locked. Article with details/wrap-up here.

Casey has been added to the names thread here. We won’t tolerate objections on the matter. He was close enough to being one of us.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3

⊙

♦ Private message from Whippersnap:

Whippersnap: I saw you in the casey thread. you had your name changed but you did a bad job of covering up the change.

Space_Squid: I didn’t cover it up. The old name was a lark at a time I needed to laugh but I’m done with it. Its embarrassing now

Whippersnap: some of us were talking in the chat and we agree you weren’t an ally in the end.

Space_Squid: I see

Whippersnap: Egg was only one to come back from there. he said you and Weld stopped us from getting justice

Space_Squid: the messages I got. They weren’t from angry civilians. They were from you?

Whippersnap: from us.

Space_Squid: okay. no need to worry then. I won’t come back. I wish you all the best.

Whippersnap: fuck you

Space_Squid: You should know I killed her. The one who did this.

Whippersnap: you stopped us from getting our justice and took it for yourself.

Space_Squid: I guess so

You have left the conversation.

⊙

Subject: PHO Technical Assistance
August 24th, Y1
Hi Graham,
Space Squid here.
I hate to be a pain. I’d like to ask if it’s okay if I just deleted my account and started fresh.

⊙

♦ Joined Group Conversation: Cap, Mangled_Wings, Weird_Insect, of5, Heart_Shaped_Pupil

Cap: pisses me off

of5: Its the way it goes. He’s a tough guy. He can roll with it.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: S!

Mangled_Wings: Hi S.

Kraken_in_a_Jar: hi

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: ! ! ! ! ! ! Yes !

Kraken_in_a_Jar: *hugs Kenzie to get her to stop wiggling*

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: *dies*

Weird_Insect: geez K, that’s not funny…
Weird_Insect: …we’re using short-form names btw, S.

Kraken_in_a_Jar: Oh I see. I don’t really see the point but ok

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: sorry

Kraken_in_a_Jar: its ok
Kraken_in_a_Jar: It put a smile on my face K.

of5: here we are. it’s really good to see you, S. Keyboard got?

Kraken_in_a_Jar: I got my fancy keyboard. Everything fine tuned. Saw the worlds. Spent time with my favorite person.

Cap: speaking of

Kraken_in_a_Jar: it’s ok. he’s tough.
Kraken_in_a_Jar: thank you for rooting for him.
Kraken_in_a_Jar: it meant a lot to see your name there.
Kraken_in_a_Jar: I see the anger and the agitation and I think really people are not complaining about what they are complainng about.

Cap: How is Weld doing?

Kraken_in_a_Jar: Hes good. Hard to tell sometimes because he is so strong. Emotionally. He busy but good. New position means a lot even if I can’t go with him.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: You’re with us

Kraken_in_a_Jar: Absolutely

Cap: things are stirring. world is about to shift. we ride the wave.

Weird_Insect: we have work to do first. organization to do. things to figure out.

Cap: (he’s so different online)

of5: don’t start cap.

Kraken_in_a_Jar: did I miss much?

of5: someone put a hit out on me. that’s fun

Kraken_in_a_Jar: !?

of5: It’s no big deal. Nothing is happening just yet. You’ve been gone 5 days?

Kraken_in_a_Jar: 5 days. Weld left to go talk to people and brought me with. we had to wait for keyboard order so we got a boat and permission and went looking. Tried to find my place of birth. no luck but was some of the best days of my life

Cap: I’ll take that as a challenge. see if we can’t top your boat trip.

Kraken_in_a_Jar: you didn’t make any major decisions?

Weird_Insect: No. we wanted to wait for everyone. Cap saw you online and figured it was you. he got ahold of R and I made sure the others stuck around.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I wouldn’t have let them either for the record. you’re one of my favorite people

Kraken_in_a_Jar: Thank you, C. *hugs K*

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: *dies*

Kraken_in_a_Jar: it means a lot to me.

Mangled_Wings: Strength in numbers

Kraken_in_a_Jar: Not in numbers.
Kraken_in_a_Jar: I don’t think so.
Kraken_in_a_Jar: I think its strength in difference. We all stand at different angles and places. See things differently. we can support one another and hold each other up because of that. but we have commonalities. A and me. K and me. K and C. R and B.

Weird_Insect: T&A.

of5: Haha

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: !!!!

Cap: oh my god, C. you can’t go being funny like that. you’re not allowed.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’ll PM you to explain, A.

Mangled_Wings: No need. I didn’t think it’s funny.

Weird_Insect: thank you, A…
Weird_Insect: …it was a lame lame joke…
Weird_Insect: …rest of you don’t laugh too much or I am going to quit

Kraken_in_a_Jar: we’re doing this because we work together.

of5: It’s been weird not having you around, s. I think the balance is defintely something we need to keep an eye on

Kraken_in_a_Jar: Balance 100%.
Kraken_in_a_Jar: we represent the lead we want others to follow
Kraken_in_a_Jar: stability

Cap: yeah

Kraken_in_a_Jar: strength

Mangled_Wings: Absolutely.

Kraken_in_a_Jar: cooperation

of5: Yep

Kraken_in_a_Jar: and honesty and good health and kindness and moving forward and all of that junk. I feel really awkward now because people keep saying yes and now there are expectations and I feel like there’s an order to it.

Weird_Insect: all that junk, yes.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Don’t feel awkward! no expectations. Well, some. but is good. we should have you be leader for this project and do the speeches.

Kraken_in_a_Jar: I am not a leader. Let me think on the speeches
Kraken_in_a_Jar: and I’m really tired of pulling on these knobs especially after all the travel. I think I’m going to get myself free and find another.

Weird_Insect: nobody say it

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: another knob? ! ! !

Weird_Insect: damn it, K

Kraken_in_a_Jar: He’s definitely not a knob
Kraken_in_a_Jar: I’ll probably see you all online at some point. if I don’t I’ll see you at the next meeting. Soon.

Mangled_Wings: Soon

Glow-worm – 0.9

♦ You have four unread private messages from an Anonymous account. Click here to read.

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♦ Private Messages from Anonymous Sender
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Anonymous [Old Message]: Hi. I think we talked a few times a while ago and I wanted to ask something
Anonymous [Old Message]: I’m not sure if I’m DMing the right person or if I got punctuation wrong. Last time we talked was was years ago when you did the photoshoot.
Anonymous [Old Message]: I feel really lost. I have questions but I don’t know who to ask. I thought of you and I hope I’m not bothering you or getting the wrong person. I really need some advice or perspective
Anonymous [Old Message]: I sent message anonymously so if I’m wrong or if I’m bothering you you can refuse

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: That’s me. I barely remember the photoshoot. That was a busy time for me.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Sorry for late reply. I had work to do for coming semester. If you need advice I can try to give it- I will say that I keep putting myself in a position to give advice and I may not be the best person to give it.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Can you make a regular account and message me? I keep getting notifications because you’re anonymous

⊙

♦ Private Messages from FlippinMad

FlippinMad: Hi.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Hi. How can I help?

FlippinMad: Thank you
FlippinMad: I’ve been thinking about things for a long time and I’ve been digging for info and answers and trying to put it all together. Is hard because people don’t want to talk about things and a lot of people don’t want to talk to me in particular. People get upset

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: The world ended. It’s kind of upsetting

FlippinMad: I know. I know
FlippinMad: you were there?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: We were all there toward the end. Very few exceptions.

FlippinMad: thousands of capes were there and nobody wants to talk about the specifics

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: The answer will come out in time. It may already be out there in places. Communication is limited. Pockets of humanity are spread out and the people who have a say in info getting from city A to city B are probably wanting to keep things peaceful for now. Gov’t or what we have that passes for gov’t, PHO and the 12ish other online bodies…
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: they control info. But they can’t stop word of mouth. Not easily. We will hear the full story one day. I don’t know if it will be a good day but we will hear it.

FlippinMad: Ok
FlippinMad: I’m stressing about it so I’m not sure if I can wait
FlippinMad: Can I ask questions and you can decide if you want to say or not?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: you can ask. I can’t promise any answers.

FlippinMad: Thank you
FlippinMad: Did you know Skitter? Weaver I guess

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I didn’t know her. Not really
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: We crossed paths.

FlippinMad: She’s one of the people I ask people about and they get mad or defensive. Or they tell me they have something to do and never get back to me

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Yep.

FlippinMad: Why?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Short answer: I can’t/won’t say

FlippinMad: Okay

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Longer answer: I don’t know how things unfolded, but I think people fall into types and categories. I don’t know enough to say one way or the other but I think she was looking for something.

FlippinMad: I don’t know if I understand

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You’ve seen the video stuff?
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She hurt someone you know?

FlippinMad: I tried to find everything I could get. I’ve seen the cell phone movie from the cafeteria. I saw a few. not just the big one that was on the news. Then I went back to find other news and footage. Then I followed along
FlippinMad: Her joining the heroes and later with her talking to schoolkids but there wasn’t much good video with that second one. I saw the movie of her in New Delhi and I saw her on TV here and there.
FlippinMad: She hurt people I care about I guess. That’s not why I’m asking

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’ve seen the same. I saw her as the novice warlord
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She hurt an awful lot of people. A crazy lot.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She killed one of our best heroes
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She also joined the Levi fight. She apparently helped against the S9. She joined the Wards
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: It’s hard to reconcile

FlippinMad: That’s my problem
FlippinMad: I want to figure it out but there are gaps

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I don’t have the answers for you. I can only theorize
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I read a thread on PHO a few days ago and it made me think. I said I think she’s someone who was looking hard for an answer. I think she was wounded and lost and for this reason & probably because of other factors she did a lot of damage while looking. The people she was with. Things being primed for everything to fall down. Timing or bad luck. Personality.

FlippinMad: Wounded

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’m looking at my history and I’m having trouble finding the thread
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: there are people who are searching I think and there are people who just are. I think both can be good and both can be toxic. Some people are searching because of something that pushed them. A lot of capes just are. Some are doing the pushing, instead. And there’s all sorts of types.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I don’t know her nearly well enough to say which she was but I don’t think she stood still. Or when she did stand still it was because she was on a precipice, looking for a push or for something to push. But again I don’t know her.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You would have to explain more about what you want to know for me to give you any more of an answer

FlippinMad: I pushed her

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You pushed her?

FlippinMad: I really hope you don’t block me or ignore me
FlippinMad: I’ll try to explain but give me a moment.
FlippinMad: Do you remember me? We met a few times but I think the only time we had a conversation was before the Vice-Versa photoshoot. There were six of us who were around the same age and the designers were taking a while.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I remember that. A bunch of non-capes from around the city, dressed up as capes, some of us local capes in fancy dress. Skitter wasn’t a part of that, obviously.

FlippinMad: Yeah. I’m starting back at the beginning
FlippinMad: They picked top athletes, valedictorians, bunch of others.
FlippinMad: You were hanging out with us. Shadow Stalker and the rest of us were joking around.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I remember now. Emma?

FlippinMad: Her friend. I’m the short one. It was her biggest shoot ever and she was super psyched. I tagged along. We were joking around and you were laughing with us and the staff were running around freaking out and trying to do last minute costume changes
FlippinMad: You were in fancy clothes and you had one of those masks on a stick, and Clockblocker was nearby complaining about having to hold his mask up until Ageis (sp?) got some ribbon and tied it to his head for him, which made the hairdresser freak out

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Aegis
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: They catered those nonalcoholic soda cocktails with layered colors. We drank them like they were water
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: and the one woman’s eyes bugged out when she saw what the bill was. I felt so sorry for her.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: We gave the staff so much grief.

FlippinMad: But that was part of the fun
FlippinMad: Yeah. It was like a dream, hanging out with heroes and cool people. Everyone was so fancy, including my friend. It was the one time in my life where I felt like I was one of the teens in one of those overly polished scenes in a teen movie where everyone looks so perfect
FlippinMad: I was really really hoping that they were going to just pull me in as an extra
FlippinMad: Because one of the kids they’d invited had backed out.
FlippinMad: But it didn’t look like it was going to happen and I was having enough fun that I didn’t mind too much. I said things and people laughed at it. And everything was great until then

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I said something didn’t I?

FlippinMad: You called us a bunch of bitches

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: That was it.

FlippinMad: You said ‘This was such a nice night and you c-words had to spoil it by being disgusting. Come on.’
FlippinMad: and then you walked away and most of the heroes and heroines went with you or whatever. Leaving just me and Emma and a couple of others.
FlippinMad: They 100% went into…
FlippinMad: I don’t know what you call it. Defense mode. They wanted to bring things back to center. Normalize. They were saying things like “what’s bugging her? We weren’t saying anything that bad”
FlippinMad: And I was sitting there being quiet and I remember thinking they were wrong. we were kind of being bitches and we were kind of going too far when ragging on people who weren’t there.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: The disabled girl I think. We were having to wait because they were having to adjust her costume to work around her back brace.

FlippinMad: Yeah.
FlippinMad: We said something loud enough for her to hear from the other end of the room and you spoke up and then you went to go hang with her instead
FlippinMad: The night didn’t seem as magical after all that. I was really bothered.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I barely remember beyond that. I did the photoshoot and we tried to cheer the girl up. It was mostly great and I saw Emma a few times after that and there were no problems but we weren’t friendly

FlippinMad: It was the first time in my life I stopped and took stock and asked myself “am I a good person?”

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: To an extent you get a pass. To an extent. We were 13-20 I think. You were closer to 13 than 20. Teenagers are shitty and most teenagers make a couple of mistakes. Not excusing it. It sucked as a thing. But teenagers being asshats mitigates it

FlippinMad: No
FlippinMad: I was really fucking shitty.
FlippinMad: I think its worse because I had this wake up call and I asked myself if I was a good person
FlippinMad: Except I never got around to answering that question. I kept putting it off and feeling shitty about it
FlippinMad: We kept being bitches. And then a couple months after that we put Taylor in the hospital. Skitter. I don’t know if she had powers then but if she did then I don’t know why she didn’t murder us all

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You’re the bullies that pushed her over the edge

FlippinMad: Me and Emma and our friend Sophia and Julia and a few others. But we were the main three or four

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I feel dumb not connecting those dots before. Preoccupied atm and I was preoccupied then. Fuck me. Emma was one of them? They kept your names out of the media

FlippinMad: Word still got out.
FlippinMad: So this is where I am because I almost feel responsible? Or I don’t know if I’m responsible
FlippinMad: But we pushed her
FlippinMad: And after that she joined bad guys and robbed a bank
FlippinMad: And then somewhere after that the empire got upset at her and her group and called them out before attacking the city and RIGHT after that the Endbringer attacked.
FlippinMad: There were all these theories about why it attacked Brockton Bay and the big two were that there was a holy grail or something? I didn’t follow that one. They said it might have to do with why people wanted to control the city?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: A target. Something that would make the city valuable. Or someone. Endbringers have gone after specific people before

FlippinMad: Ok. I don’t know. The other one was that the city saw so much fighting in a short time. Taylor was a part of that and I’m part of what pushed her out there
FlippinMad: I know I sound narcissistic and shit but…

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Are you gonna finish that sentence?

FlippinMad: I don’t know. I feel responsible
FlippinMad: I was pretty much there at the beginning and I pushed her and…
FlippinMad: it feels like I was at the top of a hill and I pushed a rock down it and it rolled down out of sight
FlippinMad: and then this rockslide starts further down the hill and wipes out a town and kills this really important person and a whole bunch of other horrible things.
FlippinMad: …and I go looking and my rock is lying there in the devastation. Nobody’s saying what happened. her wiki page is gone and people get annoyed or upset when I ask. I want to know what happened when I couldn’t see. Every non-answer I get makes it worse

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She was her own person. She made her own decisions along the line.

FlippinMad: I know that

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You don’t own her. You don’t own every decision she made or the whole fallout

FlippinMad: I know. But I didn’t help matters.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: No. You definitely own some of it.

FlippinMad: And you can’t tell me what happened.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I can’t & won’t. But I guess I can say this.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: With the evidence we have we know she did some good things. She did some bad things. She did some incredibly controversial things. She was more vicious and ruthless than she needed to be maybe.

FlippinMad: Am I responsible for that extra viciousness and ruthlessness?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Can’t say. Neither can you. But it probably didn’t fill her with smiles and joy did it?

FlippinMad: I spat on her once. It was Emma who really got to her and Sophia who went out of her way to hurt her. I was…
FlippinMad: I put her backpack in the toilet once. Books, notebooks and all. The water was clear but it was still the toilet and yeah. I put glue on her desk and juice on her seat and I stood by when the others were doing the worst stuff.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Fucking why?

FlippinMad: I don’t know. I never really stopped to think about it. My friend was a model and my other friend was a top athlete. Maybe I wanted to keep up. I told myself it was prank tier stuff but at the same time
FlippinMad: I’m saying this because this is like I’m confessing but like…
FlippinMad: Some time between when that photoshoot happened and when we put her in the hospital we were talking. Emma Sophia Julia and I. We figured we were falling into a pattern and we kept knocking her down when she picked herself up too much.
FlippinMad: and I had this moment where I saw she was really low and I spat on her. I remember the look on her face
FlippinMad: what the hell was wrong with me? I didn’t wake up to what I was doing until I got fucking caught which is just so doubly shitty. My parents found out when we all got called to school and that was the last time I interacted with Taylor. Moved away with Leviathan.
FlippinMad: I fucking spat on her face

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Stop now please

FlippinMad: ok

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Ok.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: If you kept going I would’ve closed this and left you to it. Now I’m going to try to give you your answer here. Ok?
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Even though you probably don’t deserve it.

FlippinMad: Yeah

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Draw your own conclusions. Look at who she was and extrapolate. She did good she did bad. As time passed yes the bad things might have faded some but the controversial stuff she did might have gotten worse. Extrapolate.

FlippinMad: You’re saying that’s what happened? At the end. She did some good and she did some bad but she did something super controversial?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I am saying *nothing*. I am suggesting that if you are wondering what happened when you couldn’t see then you can make some educated guesses.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She killed people. She hurt people. She may have played a part in a war over the city. She threatened innocents with bugs and choked more than one person to death or nearly to death by shoving spiders and centipedes down their throats. She killed Alexandria at a time when we needed Alexandria most.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She consorted with rapists terrorists and monsters.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: And because it eneds to be said yes she became a hero. That counts for something maybe. Maybe she had to. Maybe not.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She was there at the end and whatever she did, nobody will speak of it, at least for now. Fill in the blank
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Now she’s gone and you’re still here.

FlippinMad: Gone?
FlippinMad: she retired? Or she’s dead? Gone gone?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She is *gone*.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: But listen to me. because you made the choices and you carried on when you could’ve stopped and you spat on her and I’m not ignoring that. I’ve been holding back so I can get to it now.

FlippinMad: I’m listening

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She was all of those things and she might have still been a better person than you

FlippinMad: …

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Feel shitty? Good. Is it weighing on you or eating at you or making you wonder? Fucking good. That’s the way it should be.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Carry it. Own it. Make allowances for the fact that you were a teenager but don’t you dare excuse it or ignore it
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: If owning it means you assume the worst case scenario? that you pushed her and she took action and that line of action ended in the end of the world being uglier than they needed to be? Fine. Make do.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Maybe things would be better. Maybe they would be worse. Maybe someone else would have taken the same role. Maybe we would all be dead. You might not ever get a clean answer and that might be her justice against you

FlippinMad: Yeah

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: All this I’m saying? I feel like I can say it because I have my own regrets and misdeeds. I’m trying to own them just like I’m telling you to. I didn’t fucking spit on a girl when she was already having a bad day or make fun of a disabled girl on what should’ve been one of the top ten days of her life but I could probably make a priest’s jaw drop if I were the type to visit a confessional
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’m not giving you advice I wouldn’t take myself
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Carry it. Take it with you and use it as motivation to make things better. We need a fucking lot of that motivation.

FlippinMad: I’m training to be a teacher

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Then I hope 10x as much that you own this and learn from it

FlippinMad: Yeah
FlippinMad: Thats kind of the plan. I want to anyway but the school turned me down.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Anything else?

FlippinMad: When do I get to put this behind me? When do I get forgiven or get to forgive myself?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You’re asking me? Never.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I don’t believe in forgive & forget. Not for the things I’ve done. not for what others have done to people I care about. Not for what’s been done to me.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: The moment we forget is the moment we allow those wrongs to be done again.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Forgiveness is the easy way out. Less to carry.

FlippinMad: That doesn’t seem fair

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Villains outnumbered the heroes. Now heroes outnumber villains. Allegedly. People lost everything and they didn’t deserve to. Some people get powers and some don’t. Things are the furthest thing from fair.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Maybe it’s not fair that she’s gone and you’re here.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Maybe you will get the answer about what happened and you’ll feel better and that’ll be unfair because you shouldn’t.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Maybe the opposite is true and no good answer will come out and she’ll be forgotten without tombstone or anything else.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I expect we’ll get the answer and it’ll be an unhappy compromise between the two

FlippinMad: It doesn’t seem fair to yourself I mean

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’ll handle me. You handle you. You focus on making sure no girl you teach gets spat on, short girl from the photoshoot.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: It’s easy enough to keep something moving once it’s already moving, but getting it going in the first place is hard. That’s the thing about second chances and fresh starts. It’s a (re)start. You gotta get things moving all over again, the second time around.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Let’s try to make sure things are moving in the right direction. Alright? Deal?

FlippinMad: Alright.
FlippinMad: Not quite the response I expected

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I had the impression it’s the response you were asking for

FlippinMad: You might be right.
FlippinMad: Thanks

FlippinMad has left the conversation

Daybreak – 1.1

Ward is the second work in the Parahumans series, and reading Worm↗︎︎ first is strongly recommended. A lot of this won’t make sense otherwise and if you do find yourself a fan of the universe, the spoilers in Ward will affect the reading of the other work.

Ward is not recommended for young or sensitive readers.

⊙

It was a second chance for humanity as a whole, and they’d gone and screwed it up from the start by coloring the city gold, of all colors.

The skyline was a half-and-half mix of skyscrapers and buildings in progress. The latter were skeletons of tall buildings in the process of being filled in and put together, and hazard signs, tarps, the materials that made up the countless cranes and the painted letters on steel girders were all in bright yellows. The completed skyscrapers were paneled with mirrored or reflective glass that were tinted in that same hue. All put together, the light that bounced off of the city and reached skyward gave the clouds linings that were gold, not silver.

It was such a fucking shame that it had to be the case, intentional or not.

My phone was buzzing with texts. I pulled it from my skirt pocket and looked while I walked.

Parental Unit 1:
BBQ tonight with everyone
My house
Can you come?

I glanced around to make sure I wasn’t going to walk into anyone, then stepped off the sidewalk, into a gap between two display windows that bowed out and forward. In front of me, an assortment of people walked. People in business clothes walked briskly, while some elderly people meandered. A whole herd of kids were hurrying off to school.

I typed out my reply.

Me:
That’s short notice

Parental Unit 1:
Michael is swinging by
There has been talk of everyone getting together.
It seemed worth trying to arrange
If you can’t come that’s ok I understand

Me:
If I didn’t come, would be because of work. New semester & lots to do. Might come very late

Parental Unit 1:
Spur of moment thing that is almost pulled together
Only missing you
Not to guilt you ha ha

Ha ha. She never liked using shorthand like ‘lol’.

No. No guilt at all, mom.

Parental Unit 1:
Come if you can
Will save you dessert just in case

My typed reply was interrupted by a crash. The stride of every person on the sidewalk in front of me and every person on the other side of the street was interrupted, as they stopped, heads turning.

I put the phone away, the message half finished. The impact had been at the nearest intersection, where a smaller road cut through one of the downtown areas. I had to push through the bystanders closest to the scene to get there, and I could hear the victim’s wail of distress before I was halfway through.

A car accident. There were no injuries, and I couldn’t see blood. Nothing suggested that anyone had died. Not that anyone would have guessed by the sounds the man was making.

A teenager stood outside her car, the front corner and passenger-side mirror trashed. She’d hit one of the pillars that lined the street.

An older man was doubled over, but he was on the far side of the pillar, not a location that suggested he could have been hit. He was elderly, with gray hair that still had color in it. Two people had already drawn close to him, supporting him while he knelt, rocking slightly in place. The sound he made was the heartbroken, strained sound that people made when they couldn’t even draw in a full breath.

Such shitty, shitty bad luck, that he’d been here when the collision happened.

‘Pillar’ was the wrong word, but the right word felt wrong. ‘Monument’ implied something huge, but it was barely taller than I was, maybe three feet across at the base, tapering to two feet across at the top. Plaques were recessed into three of the four faces – the fourth had come free and fallen after the collision. Each plaque bore an etching of a face, a name, a date of birth, a date of death, a message.

I looked down the length of the one-lane road. There were as many pillars as there were trees, and there were a lot of trees, enough that the sunlight that peeked past them was dappled. This pillar was one of what had to be over a thousand that had been set throughout the city by now, punctuating quaint streets and surrounding parks. Places that were nice.

They were part of an initiative by an independent cape, a hero turned rogue, helping out.

There could easily be a thousand more of these pillars before the year was over, that number repeated every year thereafter, and if that work continued for another fifty or a hundred years, there wouldn’t be a pillar for one percent of the people we’d lost. Not even if ‘we’ were just the people who hailed from the northeastern U.S..

The girl who’d been driving the car had a thousand-yard stare as she faced down the small crowd. She looked like she’d just hit a real person and reality was sinking in.

The wailing stopped. People were consoling the old man, some shooting hard looks at the girl who didn’t seem to be registering much of anything.

“Hey,” I called out.

She didn’t seem to register that I was talking to her, as she stared at the lower portion of the pillar that had crumbled, stone chunks broken away, cracks webbing across the surface.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

She nodded, said, “I’m so sorry.”

The old man looked up at her.

People in the crowd were staring, apparently angry on the old man’s behalf. One hapless teenager and thirty or forty very upset people.

“Listen,” I told her. “Stay close by, okay? I’m sure someone in the crowd there is calling for help-”

Someone in the crowd raised a hand to get my attention. They had a phone to their ear.

“-They’re calling for help. They’ll be here shortly. Don’t go anywhere, you can explain what happened, alright?”

That seemed to get through to her. She nodded again, retreating to her car, apparently to sit in the front seat. Good. That was handled.

Until she stopped at the door, turned around, and addressed the old man and the crowd, “I’m really goddamn sorry I broke your thing.”

The grieving man rose to his feet, stepping forward at the same time. He pulled away from the supporting hands of the people around him, his face contorting.

I stepped in his way, my arm out. He pushed forward, and I caught him in a half-hug with one arm, stopping him. He reached out and tried to push me aside, and I caught his arm.

He was a guy, but he was an elderly guy. It wasn’t much of a contest. The moment he met resistance, he sagged, and I did what I could to keep him from outright collapsing as he slowly sank to his knees again, sobbing openly.

I took the opportunity to turn him a fraction so he wouldn’t be looking at the girl or the pillar as he knelt there.

In the background, that girl seemed to flounder in shock, useless, not sure what to do with herself in the face of this moment of violent grief. She looked at me, but I didn’t want to say anything that might agitate the man I was dealing with. She looked to the crowd, and she saw only angry stares.

I wasn’t sure what she’d seen, if it was a motion from someone, a particular emotion on a particular face, but she found the reason to get moving again, getting into the car, slamming the door behind her. The man I was holding jumped at the sound.

The man stopped resisting altogether. It had been a fast enough change in attitude that I had to wonder at what he would have done if I hadn’t intervened. Shouted in her face? Grabbed her? Would he have lashed out and struck the girl? If he would’ve gone so far as to use violence, would it have been relentless, requiring people to pull him off, or would he have stopped the moment he was interrupted?

I gradually relaxed my hold on him.

The crowd, too, seemed to realize that the situation had mostly de-escalated. The girl was in her car, the old man wasn’t an apparent danger to himself or others so long as I was here. That was enough for the assembled group to start breaking up.

I stepped back, hands partially raised in case he started forward again, and to enable me to act if he seemed like he might fall. I couldn’t just say the pillar would get fixed, or that things would be okay. The old man hadn’t shed tears for the pillar.

I didn’t want to say ‘sorry’, and echo the kid in the car.

I almost asked if there was anyone I could call. I stopped myself when I realized the answer could be no.

“How about we get away from here?” I asked, keeping my voice soft. “We can go grab a coffee or tea, and you and I can talk.”

The man looked at me, as if just now realizing there was a person right next to him.

“It’s got to be better than violence,” I said.

“I don’t – I’m not violent,” he said, sounding very small.

The heads of the crowd turned in reaction to something outside my field of view, and the old man’s head turned as well.

Behind me, it seemed. A man in costume. It was a good outfit, too, more in the dollars that had been put into it than in terms of looks, but that was personal opinion. Partial discs of metal seemed to intersect his body, forming a look where he looked like a blender caught mid-whirl, axe blades and metal rings jutting from his breastplate, armguards, leg armor, and even his face, with blades running along one brow and cheekbone to frame one eye.

There were heavier blades at his hands and feet, such that it looked like he shouldn’t be able to walk or even stand without difficulty. As it was, he had one end of his long-handled axe resting on the ground, the length of it bowing beneath his weight as he perched on it, one arm outstretched to one side, hand gripping the head. He was crouching on the thing while it rested at a diagonal, in a way that looked like he’d wipe out if the end of the weapon lost traction on the roadtop.

Fuck me. Not what we needed right now.

The old man started to stand. I helped him.

“Can I do anything to help?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Minor accident, we’re just waiting for cops to come and assess things, take numbers.”

I was barely done speaking when someone in the crowd said, “We don’t need you.”

I watched him glance over the small crowd, looking for the person who had spoken. He kept looking out for the speaker as he told us, “There’s some police on their way. With all the reconstruction and the lower priority, they’re trying to get through the traffic right now.”

“That’s good to know,” I said. “Thank you.”

He nodded. He looked deeply disturbed by the one comment he’d heard. I caught a glimpse of the emblem on his sleeve. A badge, not a personal symbol or icon, but part of the team he belonged to. Advance Guard. They were a team with an agenda to push. The world had ended, and they were pushing hard for a better and different tomorrow.

I could respect that.

I could also cringe inwardly at the fact that our superhero here was implicitly sporting a ‘move forward’ ideology when that was the last thing this old man probably wanted to hear with a freshly reopened emotional wound. Time and place. Unfortunately, because of the team emblem the cape had on his breast- a stylized figure holding a shield shaped like a greater-than symbol, the guy represented that ideology every time, in every place.

He walked over to the car, still watching the crowd, and he exchanged a few words with the girl in the driver’s seat. I was glad for that, at least. I had my hands full with the old guy and nobody else was stepping up to do it.

The cape stepped away from the car, looked at me and the old man. “He’s okay?”

“The pillar. It’s for his-” I started, looking at the plate on the pillar for a clue.

“Son. My son,” the man said.

“My condolences,” the hero said.

The man tensed. They were words that made it worse, not better, somehow.

“Go,” someone in the crowd said. A different person than the last. “We’re fine.”

The people that had been splintering away were holding position now. I could see the hostility. The summer heat was holding out through the start of September, making things just a little more uncomfortable, tempers a little shorter.

“Yeah,” the hero said, more to himself.

It put me in mind of a scene from the history books and the grainy old news footage of an event from the mid-80s. Back in the day, when the superheroes could be counted on the fingers of both hands, there had been a riot over a sports match. The anger and chaos had outweighed the respect the rioters had for the hero that had stepped in. Someone had struck out with a blunt object and hit the hero. He’d died before he reached the hospital. We’d called him the second cape after Scion, but he might well have been the first, after all.

Did I think that would happen here? No. Too small a group, the emotions were different, there wasn’t enough chaos.

Still, the general setpieces were here. The barely restrained emotion. The lack of care. The ill-timed intervention of the man in costume. The lack of respect in particular was in play. For Vikare, it had been because so many people hadn’t truly believed the powers were real, and he had apparently held back to avoid scaring people.

For this cape from Advance Guard, it was the opposite. He’d gone all out, we’d gone all out. Capes still hadn’t been able to stop the world from ending.

We were back at the beginning in so many ways.

“Yeah,” the hero said again. He seemed to wrestle with what he was going to say next before deciding on, “I’m going to go.”

I wanted there to be people in the crowd who spoke up. I wanted there to be other things besides this sentiment of hostility and rejection. For this guy and for all the rest of us. Were there any people who wanted to say something positive?

Nobody. Or if there was anyone, they were afraid to speak out against the herd. I didn’t want to leave it like this.

“Nice response time,” I said.

He turned my way and raised an eyebrow.

“You showed up quick. It was impressive.”

He nodded, studying me as if trying to find the catch. “It’s what I do.”

I wanted to say something more, but I didn’t want to push my luck. It would have been nice if he’d been less dismissive when I was throwing him a bone.

“Take care,” he said. “Cops are on their way. I’ll go let them know what’s up.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You take care too.”

He stepped down from the pole of his battleaxe and set foot on the road. Pavement splashed as if he’d stepped in a puddle. More splashed and rippled as he moved his axe in a circle around him.

When he took a step and moved, it was faster than I could track. I could see the splash that followed behind, a cresting wave that quickly settled, leaving only a faint wavy pattern in the road as it dissipated.

I’d spoken against the herd. I tried not to pay too much attention to them or give them any excuse to push back against me, instead turning my attention to the old man.

“I’m offering tea or coffee, my treat. We can talk it out, or talk about something else entirely,” I told him. “As soon as the police are done.”

He still looked like he was carrying that fresh pain, in expression and posture. He flinched some as he looked at his son’s memorial pillar. He gave the girl in the car a hard look, then seemed to let the anger out, sagging.

She was in the driver’s seat, both hands and forehead on the wheel.

“No,” he said. “You’ll have some place to be. I shouldn’t keep you more than I have. I’ll be fine.”

“Work,” I said. “They wouldn’t fire me, especially if I explained. I’d get in trouble, maybe, but I wouldn’t mind much. Job is… a seven out of ten fit.”

“Seventy percent is a lot better than some are getting,” the man said. “Keep that job. I’ll manage now.”

I glanced at the girl in the car. She had barely moved.

“You’ll leave her alone?” I asked.

The old man heaved out a sigh.

“She’s a kid who made a stupid mistake,” I said, in case he was trying to come to a decision. “You don’t have to forgive her, but you can’t go and hurt her or anything.”

“I wouldn’t have…” he said, and he didn’t finish the sentence. Because he might have, or because he didn’t know what he wouldn’t have done.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s good.”

“Go. Work. Don’t let me keep you,” he said. “I’ll be straight with the police there.”

“I’ll stick around for the cops and then duck out.”

The police cars had appeared at the edge of the block, but with traffic on the narrow road slowed by the girl’s car, they’d stopped there. The cars couldn’t progress, but the police were getting out.

One officer went to talk to the girl, another to the old man. I waited around a minute, then gave a statement and my info.

As in most things having to do with law or bureaucracy, it took longer than it should have, for a relatively simple process. I hurried to the high school once they were done with me, and I arrived rather late.

High school.

We still weren’t at the point where we had nice lawns and yards. This schoolyard was no exception. We had grass and fields, yes, but it was coarse and the ground beneath wasn’t usually landscaped. The area was large with large trees left untouched in the corners, chain link fence separating the field from the roads on two sides, the grade school formed the third boundary to the west, and the high school formed the fourth boundary to the north. The ground was uneven, more hilly than flat, and there were still large stones here and there, and a seemingly out of place play structure for the grade schoolers.

It was an odd thing. So often, nature was transplanted into a city, and it was new and inauthentic, made overly neat. Trees, lawns, flowers. Here, the nature was rough and unpolished, the city itself new and somewhat artificial in how overly tidy it was, untouched by time or elements.

A sports field in the middle section separated the grade schoolers’ area from the theater. It was a stage in the old Roman style, slabs of stone set into the ground like stairs, stepping down as they got closer to the stage, where the platform sat.

Hundreds of students had gathered on the stone seats, and more stood around the top edge of the theater, watching and listening. They were our survivors, our next generation. Not so different from the crowd I’d had to deflect earlier. A third of them still wore the very simple clothes that were handed out with supplies in the tent cities. Some had even taken to strategically ripping and dressing up those clothes. I didn’t fault them for it. It was hot.

A speaker carried the voice to those of us on the top edge.

The teachers of the school were on the stage, but they weren’t speaking. It was a series of community leaders and volunteers instead.

“…And I make that a guarantee to you,” a man in an orange vest was saying. “If you take those credentials, bring good shoes and work clothes, and if you don’t screw around, you can walk into any lot and you can be working within the hour and get your pay by that day’s end. Good pay. You can do whatever you want, after school, but you’ll always have this as a fallback, you’ll have the security of being able to walk into a lot and have a job waiting for you. We can always use more hands.”

Not enough seats at this school either. High school was and might well continue to be a half-day thing. The people on the stage were telling the kids their other options for the other half of the day.

I spotted Gilpatrick on the stage. He wore a black t-shirt and gray pants with boots, and in the summer heat he was sweating a fair amount. He had no hair on his head, but he had a five o’clock shadow well before five o’clock, bushy eyebrows and thick hair on thick forearms. Everyone else looked like they were trying to make their best pitch, in dressing nice and wearing smiles. Gilpatrick looked like he was trying to scare his prospects away.

Some of the non-prospects were standing around the upper edge, looking down at the new students and the stage. Most were senior students who’d picked what they’d do with their half-days last year, now waiting to induct the others. Some were siblings of those seniors, or younger friends. Others were like me, miscellaneous staff for miscellaneous roles.

I joined them.

“We wondered if you’d bailed,” Jasper said. He was very much a teenager, with acne, thin chin-hair and black hair that had had product in it, that had turned spiky from sweat.

“Delayed by a car accident.”

“Everyone’s okay?” he asked.

“Yep.” Insofar as anyone is okay. “Has Gil done his five pounds of gun thing? I was kind of looking forward to it, it’s so corny.”

“I think he’s saving it for the deeper explanation later. He mostly talked about how he was going to make it his objective to make people quit, he isn’t going to pay anyone, job prospects suck, he’s going to make people march in the heat and the cold for miles while carrying unreasonable burdens. The ‘five pounds’ speech isn’t bad, you know. It gets through to the kids,” Jasper said. For all that he was defending the speech, he smirked a bit.

“It gets through to most,” Cubs said. He was a big guy, tall, broad-shouldered, fit, with his hair cut short. He thought for a second and then amended his statement, “some.”

“Us,” Jasper said.

“Guess so, yeah,” Cubs said.

I didn’t miss the glance he shot at the girl at the far end of our little sub-group. Cami wore an expression I might have termed ‘resting angry face’. Perpetually pissed.

All three of them, and many other members of the group besides, were dressed in similar shades as Gilpatrick. Blacks and grays.

“I’m going to duck into my office,” I said. “I want to check my email and make sure it’s nice and neat if anyone stops in.”

“Only a short bit before we migrate over,” Cubs said. “One more speaker.”

“I’ll let Gilpatrick know you’re there,” Jasper said. He extended a fist. I rolled my eyes and instead of tapping it with my own, pushed it away. Jasper smiled.

My destination wasn’t in the high school, but was across the street. It was an open building with a partial second floor. The main floor was hardwood, with mats folded and piled up at the side. A few more senior students were already there- some were just entering or leaving the showers. It seemed like a good idea for cooling down, but I didn’t have the time.

I waved at some of the seniors in passing and headed up the stairs. The stairwell ran up one wall, unbounded by barriers, so it offered a view of everything below.

My office was the closest thing I had to a home, in this world. It was narrow and long, with a bookshelf at the right wall, a desk, computer and chair. Some boxes were piled up in the corners.

The bookshelf was my accomplishment. My fingers ran along the spines of books and other texts. Many of the works were collections of articles or official documents, bound by hand with a three-hole punch, rings, and patience.

Parahuman science. University textbooks, old workbooks with notes- not all mine. There were important articles, copied to plain text and printed out, with a lean toward the sciences, the nuances, the big revelations and reveals.

Official files. Classification documents. Then there were the notes for case one, case fifteen, case thirty-two, case fifty-three, case ninety. The ‘cases’ were the events the PRT had deemed of interest. Riddles both solved and unsolved. My collection there was incomplete, but some were official enough to be confidential, and I’d never had that access. Others were closed, the mystery deemed nonexistent or something to be folded into popular knowledge.

I had other files. There were names on those files. Whittler, Bilious, King Crow were some of the many on the shelf I’d deemed ‘independents’. For teams, there were ones like the Ambassadors, Green Tea, N.N., Ossuary, Empire Eighty-Eight, and the Clans. I’d made it a priority to collect those. I worried we might need them.

On the bottom shelf, I had my magazines. Costumes Under Clothes, Gleam, Heroines, Masque, Shine On. Some of the boxes in the corner had my latest haul. Much of it would be duplicates. Maybe I’d give some of them out to seniors.

I could still smell a faint mildewy smell, and promised myself I’d identify the source when I had time. I’d left the window open, and the weather was warm, which was helping. A lot of this was what I’d salvaged from the office back home; I’d retrieved it from boxes and filing cabinets and hauled it here over a dozen trips. I’d rigged up tarps to keep the water off that corner of the house, but some of that moisture had been coming up from below. I would have to find the source of the smell and transcribe the text before throwing it out.

Maybe I could get Gilpatrick to get a kid who needed punishing to do it for me.

Information was too important. Even if that information was from the glossy, superficial magazines about superheroines that had been pitched to girls just like me eight to ten years ago.

Faint smells aside, I could draw in a deep breath and feel muscles from shoulder to calf relax. This was more of that seventy percent part of the seventy percent fit where the job suited me.

That thirty percent, though. I wouldn’t stay here forever. I hoped. It had been a thing that I’d hoped would look good on my college applications. That hadn’t worked.

I could hear the commotion as the mob of kids started coming in downstairs.

I walked over to my computer and booted it up. It booted up instantly, but the connection to the internet took a while. I opened a notebook and began searching through it.

I found the name before the internet succeeded in connecting. I closed the conversation from the day prior and waited for the internet before composing an email.

To: Deferent.I@Mail
Subject: Damaged pillar
I was a bystander when a car crashed into a pillar on Small St, near Basil Ave. Thought I’d let you know it’s damaged. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help or any info I can provide.

Thanks for what you do.

I sent it, then stood, walking to the window. I didn’t have much of a view- mostly the side of a building and a bit of the alley. If I stuck my head out the window, I could see a sliver of the school and some of the street. Students were milling around, some undecided on where they were going.

My computer chimed.

From: Deferent.I@Mail
Subject: Re: Damaged Pillar
I already heard. Advance Guard were on the scene and let me know. Will have it fixed tomorrow. Thanks.

That would be fixed soon then. I thought the things were an eyesore, really, but people clearly felt like they were important.

I was caught up in checking recent events online when there was a knock on the door.

Gilpatrick.

“Shouldn’t you be handing out guns to kids?” I asked. “Or giving a hard-assed speech that sends them running?”

“I wish,” he said. “Can’t give them guns until later. Give me a week, we’ll see how many of them I can get rid of. Can you show your face downstairs for me, so they know who to look for?”

“Sure,” I said. “Let me get organized and I’ll be right there.”

He didn’t step out of the doorway. His arms remained folded, and he had paper in one of his hands, held where I might not notice it.

“…Actually,” he said.

“No,” I said. I gave him a stern look. “No. Don’t ‘actually’ me. Please.”

“Do you know anything about Fume Hood?”

I raised one eyebrow, keeping that stern look otherwise in place. “Fume Hood? No.”

“She apparently went by another name, a while back. Poison Apple?”

“Then I do know stuff. She went by Bad Apple,” I said. “And a few other Nom De Pommes. I know some of her story. She was controversial.”

“She’s a hero now,” he said. “She’s getting announced as one member of a new team today.”

I nodded slowly, taking that in. “That could be bad.”

“It’s looking like it will be,” Gilpatrick said. He revealed the papers. “Can you brief my seniors? Fill them in on who she is?”

“That I can do,” I said. I approached him and took the papers.

He didn’t let go of them. He opened his mouth.

“No,” I said.

“I’ve got too many new kids,” he said.

“No, Gilpatrick.”

“My hands are full. I don’t have enough seniors to manage them all. I don’t want this to be fun or even tolerable and that requires more supervision.”

I let go of the paper, backing up. “No.”

“I won’t force you,” he said. “People connected the new heroine Fume Hood to her old persona. They’re upset. Enough that they’re hiring people to kick up a fuss, and we don’t know just who or what’s going to happen.”

I thought of the people who’d been in the crowd when the pillar had been hit. I could picture it.

“Just that they’re hiring people?” I asked.

“From one of the more distant settlements. Police know and are taking precautions, hero teams have been notified, but it’s messy.”

“Messy how?” I asked.

“Jurisdictions. Our apple heroine is on a new team, announcing themselves in a new jurisdiction…”

“…It makes them look bad if they accept outside help or have other teams elbowing in on their big first day.”

“Something like that,” he said. “Apple girl is getting a lot of serious hate thrown her way online. If you can tell us anything about how she might react to this situation, or anything else, that’d help.”

“That I can do.”

He went on, “And if you could captain a squad of some new guys I’ve got from another school, let me know if they’re decent and trustworthy, and just do a bit of standing guard, giving advice and information to the officers at the scene, it would be a massive help.”

I gave Gilpatrick my best angry glare, hands on my hips.

“I won’t force you,” he said. “Superiors are pressuring me to handle this. If you say no then I’ll figure something else out.”

“You know I’m taking it easy with all this stuff. I told you on day one I wouldn’t be one of your patrolers. I’m only here to dispense some advice.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“I’m not frontline. I can’t be frontline.”

“You’re a natural leader,” he said.

I shook my head.

“I really didn’t want to use Jasper. He was joking about my speech, so I’m going to make him deliver it to the recruits,” he said.

I smiled, despite myself. That would be partially my fault, for reminding Jasper.

“Can you do the briefing, at least?” Gilpatrick asked.

“Yeah,” I said. I dropped my hands from my hips. “She really called herself Fume Hood?”

“Yeah,” Gilpatrick said. “I don’t take many of the names seriously. This doesn’t seem much worse.”

“It’s really terrible,” I said. “A heroine calling herself a hood? As in a gangster?”

“I think she has an actual hood as part of her costume.”

“I really hope so,” I said. I sighed and looked at my shelves. “Give me a second to review files? I’ll be right downstairs.”

“Just one second,” he said. “I’m going to have Jasper start with the recruits. Try to be done before I send them scurrying off.”

I checked the papers. Forum transcripts, some intercepted emails, some notes on Fume Hood.

I had a folder on my shelf. Notes from home. She was from Boston, among other places. Itinerant.

There were a lot of newspaper articles. She’d drawn a lot of attention once. Everyone was supposed to be getting a second chance, and it seemed that people’s memories were long enough that she wasn’t necessarily getting hers.

I gathered everything together, and I headed downstairs.

Jasper was in front of an assembly of roughly a hundred kids. Boys and girls. Not all were ninth graders, new to high school. Some would be refugees, their educations interrupted by the rather massive inconvenience of the world ending.

“…mostly long treks into the middle of nowhere to deliver supplies or check on things. If we’re lucky, we get a car. It’s not glamorous. Seriously. Run away,” he was saying. He spotted me coming down the stairs, and a smile crossed his face. “Once you’ve been with us for two years, you get one of these embarrassments and you have to be seen in public with them-”

He held up a gun with slide back and magazine removed, a bright red bike lock threaded through the bottom of the gun and out the top.

Jasper went on, “And you’ll be expected to clean it as well as the gun you use on the range. You’ll have to treat it like a real, loaded gun. That means you pretend it’s loaded, you don’t aim it at anything or anyone you wouldn’t want to destroy, you never leave it unattended, and so on. We’ll drill it into your skull and frankly, we’re really hoping you make a mistake so we can kick you to the curb.”

The other senior students were dressed in their uniforms now. Black clothes with some body armor worn over them, and the body armor was recognizable. In places, flakes of the letters and symbols that had once been stenciled onto the armor panels in white were still visible, having survived the steel wool and turpentine scrub. PRT issue, salvaged.

When they’d been trying to figure out what to do with the high school kids when there weren’t enough schools and seats for all of them, some idiot in the administration had come up with this. Some teenagers could go help on farms, some could get trained in construction, some would work, the ones who could keep their grades up enough could take afternoon classes too, and so on. There were sports teams and clubs. Finally, there was the patrol group. Us.

Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame it on an idiot in charge. Maybe it was inevitable. Some wanted to feel like they had power, when the capes had dropped the ball. Some wanted answers. We talked and ran errands pertaining to power stuff. Some of the kids might go on to police, investigate, or study the power stuff, as more informed police officers. Possibly.

This was the thirty percent I didn’t like. The question mark. The places this could lead, theoretically. Places we were already starting to edge toward, slowly but surely.

“Less than five pounds of gun, if you even have a gun,” Jasper said, holding up the gun with the bike lock threaded through it. He caught my eye as he said it and he had a gleam in his eye. “Fifteen pounds of armor. It’ll be twenty-five pounds of armor if you’re with us for the long haul. These backpacks? They’re heavy. They’re miserable. Twenty-five pounds strapped to you. Food, water, first aid, tools.”

He holstered his gun and lifted up the bag with two hands, grunting a bit.

“Pay attention to those ratios. Twenty-five pounds of stuff to support and help…”

He dropped the bag and gave it a pat.

“…A good bit of protection…”

He rapped knuckles against the armor he wore on his chest.

“…And possibly a bit of offense.”

He tapped the gun where it was in its holster, the bike lock draped down and resting against his leg

Gilpatrick stepped up beside Jasper. “Good.”

“Thank you sir.”

“Students, if you’ll turn around to see the young lady on the stairs…”

The students did.

“…She’s our resident cape expert. If you’re sticking with us here in patrol block, if her door is open, you can go ask her questions. She knows her stuff. If you’re not sticking with us and her door is open, you can go ask her questions and we’ll let you cut to the head of the line. You’ll find her office upstairs and to the left.”

I hadn’t heard that part before. Priority to people who weren’t part of the club. I smiled.

We had more kids than we wanted or could use, even though we didn’t pay any wages until they’d been with us at least a year, and we did everything we could to keep them miserable. Powers were compelling. Too many had reasons for wanting to be here.

An unfortunate share of the students were here because they were angry. Because the patrol block had been started up by some ex-PRT folk and Gilpatrick’s speech aside, a lot of people looked at the armor, looked at the guns, looked at how we touched on the power stuff and the portals, and connected the dots.

“You want to go brief my seniors?” he asked me, from the far end of the room, over the heads of hundreds of new students.

I gave him a mock salute, then finished descending the stairs, joining the seniors while he resumed outlining things for the new kids. I motioned to the door, indicating for the group to follow.

A few of them were new, Gilpatrick had said. I didn’t like how angry or naturally resentful some of them looked. Cami was among them.

“New team is having its grand unveiling at one of the community centers,” I said. “One member is Fume Hood. She was a B-list villain, once upon a time. She’s what we term itinerant. Wandered from city to city, looking for opportunities or teams to join. Petty robbery, grand larceny, mischief, vandalism, criminal mercenary work. A lot of the time she was one of the low-rate hangers-on in a group that a bigger villain would hire to pull a bigger job. You could even call her a professional distraction. She started when she was sixteen, stopped at twenty-four or so. She’d be twenty-nine now.”

They were listening intently, even the new guys. That was good.

“As a villain, she went by Bad Apple, Poison Apple, Pomme De Sang, probably called herself Applesauce, I don’t even know. I guess she wanted to corner the market on apple-related names so nobody would have something similar. She spent a lot of time palling around with a biotinker called Blasto. She kept going back to him to pair up. Might have been boyfriend-girlfriend, even. That ended when the Slaughterhouse Nine passed through Boston. We don’t know what happened to Blasto, but we can guess it wasn’t good. Poison Apple got a little reckless after that, even though she hadn’t met up with him in over a year at that point.”

I opened my folder and found one of the articles. I laid it against the front of the folder and held it out so they could read it.

“She pulled together a group of some old teammates and new teenage villains and pulled a shopping spree, hit a mall and took what they wanted. Heroes showed up, they ran.”

“Miscarriage,” one of the new people in the group said, reading from the article.

“Poison Apple makes globes in her hands. One of the tricks she can pull with them is send them flying off in straight lines. They explode on contact with hard surfaces, just enough oomph to knock you to the ground, and they create clouds of gas or splashes of liquid poison. Usually enough to make you nauseous, a little bit feeble, more if you touch the poison in its liquid form. Nonlethal and mostly nonviolent, most of the time. Except this time, a pregnant lady was caught in the gas, or in the explosion. She lost her baby, and it became a thing in the media. Poison Apple turned herself in, partially because of the backlash she’d generated. She was serving time for pled down charges of assault and battery when Gold Morning came around,” I said.

A couple of the angry faces in the group looked a little angrier.

“She did her time,” I said. “She made a mistake, she paid for it as much as she was able. We don’t have enough good jails and so she’s free, and it looks like she’s trying to do good. That’s pretty decent, really. She’s not the enemy here.”

“Isn’t she?” someone asked. Their name might have been James. They’d been around last year.

“The threat is the people targeting her. They’ve recruited help. We don’t know how much, but the intel Gilpatrick gave me said money changed hands. You guys know the basics when it comes to capes, you can inform the cops if something comes up, you know her story, and you’ll be a few more people in uniform keeping the peace and giving protesters a little more reason to hang back. If it gets bad, any real danger, you back off.”

There were a few nods.

There were also a few looks on a handful of faces that made me concerned. Too heated, or too cold. They weren’t the majority, but I wasn’t sure the majority was on Fume Hood’s side, either.

It put me in mind of the crowd and the broken pillar. If it was just this, I might have been able to let it lie. I could have accepted that the students here were among the angriest and most invested in the grittier side of the cape stuff. That it was just them.

Except it wasn’t. The old man, the girl who couldn’t drive, the crowd there and the response to the visiting cape… there was so much emotion bound up in things, I couldn’t trust that this was an isolated thing.

I couldn’t stand by and let this be the new normal, without any opposing voices. Even if my voice was a badly biased one.

With the climate, both general and even the fact that it was hot and tempers would be short, it would be so easy for us to see another Vikare.

I glanced over my shoulder and through the door. I saw Gilpatrick with Jasper and the kids.

Damn it, Gilpatrick.

“I’ll come with you,” I decided. “We’ll do our part to keep people organized and keep the peace.”

What did it say about the state of things, if I was increasingly the voice of restraint and reason?

I turned my attention back to the squad.

“For those of you who’ve just joined us, my name is Victoria Dallon, and I’ll be your squad captain today.”

Daybreak – 1.2

I had badly neglected my locker. I had an office, so my locker in the changing room was more for the things I didn’t use much at all.

Bag. The backpack was light, but it only had the nonperishables in it. I’d done a few patrols for Gilpatrick over the winter, visiting some of the settlements that were a little further afield, while many of the students were taking Christmas off. I’d also used it for my fitness test.

I set it on the table in the center of the room. Something to weigh when I was done getting outfitted. For now, I just needed it out of my locker. The bag took up the bottom half, the armor took up the upper half.

Outfit change. I couldn’t go out in a skirt and body armor. I had some self respect. The pants in my locker were part of an emergency change of clothes, heavier fabric intended for winter and trips to Bet when the weather was bad.

I hadn’t put the pants through the wash since having to shovel snow over the winter, but I hadn’t worn them much either. There was still salt crusting the heels, white against black fabric. I walked over to the sink and rinsed the worst of the salt off, then rolled up the cuffs a bit so I wouldn’t have wet pants slapping against my ankle.

I kicked off my shoes and hiked up the pants so they were under my skirt, then unfastened the skirt.

“Victoria,” Gilpatrick said, behind me, a deep male voice in the girl’s change room. I jumped a little. “Are you free to talk?”

I turned my head. There wasn’t a door to the girl’s changing room, but there was a solid wall blocking the view. I could see the edge of Gilpatrick’s arm – he stood with his back to the wall and the changing room.

Camisola was in the room too, unpacking and repacking her kits for her bag. She met my eyes.

“I’ll step out,” she said.

“Thank you, Cami,” Gilpatrick said. I pulled my shoes back on and laced them as Cami left the room.

Belt. Holster. I threaded the belt through my belt loops, careful to position the holster.

Cami was apparently out of earshot, because Gil spoke again. “Thank you, Victoria.”

“Give me Jasper,” I said. “For my squad.”

“Jasper?” he asked. “Why?”

Well, that said a lot, didn’t it?

“Because I’m paranoid,” I said. Paranoid on more than one front, but I wouldn’t tell Gilpatrick that. I had suspicions and his willingness to give me Jasper would tell me things. “Is anyone else standing outside the door?”

“This conversation is just you and me.”

“Okay. I know Jasper, and I’m honestly more worried about the attitudes of the people you gave me than I am about the protest or whatever it is people are going to pull with Bad Apple.”

“Jasper’s attitude isn’t great.”

“Jasper is a joker and he can be immature, but he can give that five pounds of gun speech because he believes it. He’s in this because he thinks capes are cool, not because he’s pissed. Give me one person I know will agree with me.”

“I kind of need every senior I can get. But I’ll give you that.”

I bit my lip, thinking as I worked the combination of the safe at the topmost section of my locker. I pulled out the pistol and holstered it. I kept my hand there, reminding myself of the weapon’s weight as I tried to figure out how to word my question, and if I wanted to ask it.

“Then how about you take some of the angry ones? The new guys you were giving me.”

“That was a quick assessment.”

I gathered the pistol magazines and slotted them into the pouch, before setting to attaching the pouch to my leg and belt. “I don’t want them. I don’t want to get some people from elsewhere with their own habits and ways of doing things, and have to train them on top of doing this thing.”

“Take them, Victoria,” Gilpatrick said. “They came with good recommendations, they know their stuff, and if it does wind up being a protest, you’ll want the extra bodies. If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t matter.”

“Things are never that simple, Gil,” I said.

“Take them,” he said, firm.

“You owe me for this,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

I sighed.

Armor. I pulled my vest from the bottom of the locker. I saved it for last because once it was on, I wouldn’t be able to bend down or move as easily. The old name and number was still visible by the impression that had been made in the armor when it had been punched in and painted on. The steel-wool scrubbing I’d given it hadn’t erased the whole impression.

I didn’t know who Cameron was or where they’d ended up, but I wore their armor now. I tucked the papers in between my chest and the armor, where the straps would help keep them in place.

I spoke, “It’s a cushy job, I get to geek out and show off, and I like my office and the access I get to the portal, I don’t want to take that for granted, but you owe me a few already. This is one more.”

“I know,” he said. “I’ll make it up to you. I’ve got to run. Kids to torture. I’ll send Jasper your way.”

“Alright,” I said. “Do I need my full pack?”

“No,” he said. “No, I wouldn’t do that to you. Full pack is a torment I reserve for the newbies.”

I was glad to put my bag back in the locker. I heard Gilpatrick walking away, raising his voice to shout orders.

I used fingernails to comb my hair back, then began braiding it. I had to look in the mirror to make sure I’d gotten all of the stray strands.

Hi me, I thought, as I made eye contact.

How to describe that feeling? Something resembling relief and a sinking feeling at the same time. It was a small feeling but still one that I would carry with me for the rest of the day. That day would be a little bit worse because of the moment, but it would feel more stable for the reminder, too.

I had a good two years of experience to draw from, in figuring that out.

I’d stopped braiding my hair, I realized, and I’d started holding my breath without realizing it. I exhaled, closed the safe, spun the dial, closed the locker, and walked out onto the floor of the building, resuming the braiding of my hair.

Forward. Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. Moving on with the day.

I caught up with Jasper as he joined the group.

“I’m driving, apparently,” Jasper said, wangling the keys in front of me. “And keeping you company. Gilpatrick explained the situation.”

“Good,” I said. I pointed in the direction of the bus. We started walking.

“You’re friends?” one of the new guys asked.

Still braiding, I looked over at Jasper. “Enhh.”

“You can tell she’s really diplomatic,” Jasper said.

“Work friends, kind of?” I said.

“We don’t hang out,” Jasper said. “I’m not sure what we’d do if we did. We don’t have anything in common.”

“We got stuck together for jobs and errands enough times we became familiar with each other,” I said. “We get on okay. Jasper’s cool. Just don’t ask him about the tattoo.”

“Tattoo?” someone asked.

“I’ll explain when we’re driving,” Jasper said, smiling.

We reached the bus. It wasn’t pretty. A half-size school bus, rust had been mostly scrubbed away and it had received a paint job in black with white sides. The emergency exit at the back had been redone so it was the main way in and out, and a passenger seat had been added at the front. There was an area for supplies and bags to be stowed between the wheels at the right side.

I wrapped my braid around itself a few times, and tied it there in a slightly messy bun-coil, then climbed up to the passenger seat. The seniors climbed into the back. There were a few faces I recognized but couldn’t name, a dozen more that I didn’t recognize and definitely couldn’t name. I could tell that they were from elsewhere by the fact that the armor they’d brought with them had been painted black, rather than have the white letters scrubbed away. Twenty-four in all.

Jasper took the driver’s seat, starting up the bus immediately.

Even parked in the shade, even in September, the heat was such that the seats were uncomfortably hot. I’d thought about removing my armor once my hands were free, and carrying it by hand, but I decided to keep it on for the extra buffer.

Didn’t do anything to spare my ass from the warm faux-leather seat. I didn’t like being aware of my body to that extent.

“Where to?” Jasper asked, rescuing me from my thoughts.

“Norwalk-Fairfield span,” I said.

“Rural, isn’t that?” Jasper asked.

“Last I heard.”

Jasper had to almost stand up to get the perspective to see through the open back of the bus. He reversed out of the lot and took us onto the road.

“Maybe you guys can answer. What’s the deal with stretches and spans?” one of the new guys asked.

I turned sideways in my seat, looking back. Now that I was sitting and looking back at them, they were older, I noted. Seventeen at a minimum. “You guys are from one of the denser parts of the city?”

“New York Central. Near the Bet-Gimel portal,” a girl said.

One of the two big ones, then. We’d bled into the areas surrounding the portals. Brockton Bay had been the first, but we’d had a few in a few major cities and New York was a big one. The cluster of settlements around the portals in the northeastern US and people’s desire to have ready access to that cluster and the resources, community, information and security it afforded had played a big part in the megalopolis forming.

One blob around New York, one blob around the New Brockton settlement, clusters south of New Brockton, near what would or should be Boston, and everything had spread out or extended from there, mostly hugging the coast and connecting to one another.

I explained, “We’ve got these long narrow bands of mingled city and agriculture connecting the primary settlement points, to the point it’s hard to say where one thing starts and the other ends. And instead of building five big houses they’d rather build an apartment building that hosts twenty, which makes things fuzzy with the distinctions of urban and rural. So we get the ever-expanding megalopolis blob and we can’t figure out what to call it, even though it’s already this monster.”

Our progress out of the city center was slow. Construction. Endless construction. Jasper seemed happy to be driving, even at a crawl.

“Yeah,” the first guy spoke.

“In terms of the bands that rope everything in together, we go by the cities and locations that were there beforehand. If you look at where Norwalk would be on a map, that’s the name for the region we’re heading to. If it’s east-west it’s a span. If it’s north-south it’s a stretch. But it’s all a part of the city.”

“What if it’s both?” someone asked.

“Then it’s neither,” Jasper said. “You just give it a name.”

“More accurately, you try to give it a name and end up in a heated, months-long debate about what to call the area, with way too many emotions tied up into things,” I said.

The guy from right behind me said, “I don’t see why we can’t just give the individual areas names like they used to have. If it’s close to Norwalk, then we call it fucking Norwalk.”

“Hey,” I said. I gave a stern look to the guy who’d said it. “Swearing’s fine, but not if you’re getting heated. We’re chatting, not getting up in arms.”

“Right. Sorry,” the guy said. He didn’t look particularly sorry.

We picked up speed as we pulled onto a street with less construction. With the back of the bus open and the windows on either side of Jasper and me rolled all the way down, the wind whipped through the bus. The city smelled like dust, drywall, and hot pavement.

I dangled one arm out the window, moving my fingers and feeling the air moving against them.

“It gets complicated,” I said. “Geography’s slightly different, they’re hardly checking longitude and latitude exactly when we settle in one place or another. They’re doing what the surroundings allow. Means the Norwalk we’re going to might actually be between two places, or off to one side.”

Jasper chimed in, “I always remember the Norwalk-Fairfield span because it’s close to the portal for Earth N. N for Norwalk.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess that works.”

“I’ve got a question for you, though,” he said.

“You want to talk about your tattoo idea.”

“Yes,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “Do what you want.”

He turned his head so he could talk to the back of the bus while watching the road. “We’re doing the squad thing, right? And a lot of us are doing this with the idea we’ll police the capes, or help them out.”

“Police them, mostly,” a guy said.

“Opinions vary,” Jasper said, “But I don’t want to get sidetracked. What I’m thinking is, what’s better than a good callsign? We have nicknames to call each other. The trouble is getting a good one to stick.”

“Opinions on what a good callsign is are going to vary,” I said.

“Quiet you,” Jasper said. “You and I have talked about this and I’ve determined you have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to this. You know the cape stuff, sure, but you clearly don’t get this.”

“You want to decide your own callsign?” the girl from the back asked.

“Jester,” Jasper said. “And I swear, if people don’t start using it, I’m going to make it happen by getting a tattoo of a jester and ‘fool’ written beneath it, right on my bicep.”

The protests, naturally, started rolling in from the rest of the bus. He couldn’t decide his own callsign, why would he have it say fool if he wanted the callsign to be Jester, why even have it be Jester?

I tuned it out, sticking my head out the window. Jasper tried to sell the rest of the bus on his idea and was very thoroughly shot down. In this, at least, all was right with the world. It was a bad idea. Forty year-old Jasper didn’t need to live with the mistakes of seventeen year-old Jasper.

We drove past skyscrapers paneled in gold-tinted glass. Solar glass, it was supposed to be called. We drove past parks with the same rough-edged slice of nature that touched the schoolyard back at the high school. We drove past a lot of construction, and we were lucky that it didn’t slow us down much.

“Victoria Dallon.”

I’d heard my name. I was broken from my reverie. How long had we been driving now? The city was seemingly unending and I didn’t recognize the landmarks enough to nail anything down.

Victoria Dallon. I looked at myself in the bus’ side view mirror.

“What was that?” Jasper asked, while I remained silent.

“Name sounds familiar,” the voice said, from the back. It sounded almost smug, knowing. “Can’t quite place it.”

“That so?” Jasper asked. “Maybe keep it to yourself, then.”

“Is that how this is?”

“I think it’s how everything is,” Jasper said. “Not just this. When you’re bringing up the past, whoever you’re talking to, there are two likely possibilities. First, it’s good, and we miss the shit out of it, or, second, it’s bad and why would you bring up the bad except to be a tool?”

“It could be important,” the guy said. “It’s good to know who or what we’re dealing with.”

“Could be,” Jasper said. “But I can tell you this. Gil trusts her. I trust her. If you want to know who you’re dealing with, why don’t you start by taking our cue?”

There was no response from the back.

“Otherwise, if you’re not going to listen to us,” Jasper said, “why are you on our bus?”

Again, no response.

Then, belated, one of the others uttered a quiet, “Leave it.”

Not aimed at Jasper. My detractor had been about to say something, I took it, and he’d been told to be quiet. Not the best result, but it seemed to end the line of questioning.

I wondered if there was something nice I could do for Jasper, for sparing me having to handle that.

I fished the papers out from my vest, smoothing them against my lap. I glanced out the window. The city had thinned out, and I could see farms and tent cities further out.

We had to be pretty close to our destination now.

I twisted around in my seat again, looking at the people in the back. I could tell by the way one of them held himself, shoulders square, eye contact forced, that he’d been the one to speak out against me. He studied me like he would an opponent.

I addressed them, “When we get there, we stay together. We’ll have a quick chat with the people in charge, all together. If the police have orders for us, those are the orders we follow. If not, I’ll tell you guys to get to work. You head to the crowd, and you say hi.”

“Say hi?”

“Mingle. Show your faces, let people know we’re around. Ask how they’re doing. What do they think? Look for anyone antsy, especially anyone antsy that we’re there. Don’t engage if there’s trouble. Let the police know and let me know, and we’ll figure it out.”

“I like looping through the crowds,” Jasper said. “We did that once or twice, when Gilpatrick was calling the shots, last year. People don’t see the face or the hair, only the uniform. If you loop back, it looks like there are more of us than there are.”

“Give them second thoughts?” the girl from the back asked.

“Something like that,” Jasper said.

I wrapped up. “When we get settled and things are going to start, we’ll be keeping eyes out or standing guard, probably. We regroup before then, we’ll figure out what’s up, and see where we’re needed.”

I saw people nod, then turned around in my seat.

“Which street?” Jasper asked.

“Myrtle.”

“I think that’s it down there,” he said.

There were still a lot of tents and cubicle houses hereabouts, it seemed. On the southern side of the main road, to our left, we had apartment buildings, stores, and something that looked like a brand spanking new swathe of city. On the other side, it was more construction, tents, farm, and the houses that weren’t real houses- more like mock houses made of panels that had been bolted together, like overlarge tents with hard exteriors.

We turned away from the main road, into the deeper section of the city. The community center was made of stone, had a squat clock tower situated on top, and looked stately, even with the tall buildings surrounding it, many at least as tall as the community center was. A patch of park with a fountain sat squarely in front of it.

School was just getting out, it seemed. Students were streaming through the area. They walked through and along the road to the point that we couldn’t get very close. Many heads turned our way, curious.

Jasper found a parking space a block away from the center, and parked there. Our people climbed out the back while Jasper and I got organized at the front.

“Jasper,” I said.

“Special orders for me?”

“When and if the rest of them are going through the crowd, stay near the front door. If anyone gets nervous and ducks out, it might be something.”

“Should I follow?”

“Probably not. Keep an eye out, let me know if anything happens.”

“And why is this a secret from the others?”

Because I didn’t trust the others. They’d been foisted on me, they had clear attitudes, and I was worried that if push came to shove, they might let a troublemaker go if it meant fucking with the capes.

“Paranoia,” I said. I started to climb out of my seat. “Thanks for the backup back there. Jester.”

Jasper grinned as my face fell.

“I’m sorry, but it sounds bad,” I said. “I can’t make this a thing.”

“It sounds bad when you’re saying it as if someone’s pulling your fingernails out while you’re talking.”

“They might as well be,” I said.

“It’s good,” he said. “It’s cool.”

“It’s against everything I stand for,” I said. I climbed down from my seat.

“It’s great,” Jasper said, from the other side of the bus. He tossed the keys into the air and caught them.

Some of the others were pulling on the armor they’d left off while sitting on the bus. Once we were set, we moved as a group toward the town hall.

The fact that the community center was actually in the center of this neighborhood meant that the foot traffic was heavy. A lot of it was moving around the crowd that had formed. A lot of people with signs, but a lot of young and eager eyes. Kids aged ten to seventeen, all fresh from their first day of school, genuinely interested in their fledgling hero team.

No police parked outside, at a glance. No barricades, either.

Inside, it was standing room only. Cheap plastic chairs were arranged in rows and columns, and there were many places where parent and young child shared chairs.

I saw some people up at the front perk up at our appearance, and the crowd parted to let us through.

I identified a woman with gray and black hair and a gray suit-dress that the other people up at the front seemed to be standing around. I approached her.

“You’re in charge?” I asked.

“I’m the closest thing to someone in charge. District representative,” she said. “We don’t have a group like yours here. You’re all so young.”

I kept still, not letting my emotions show. I felt the sinking feeling again, without the relief, and without the steadiness that I got from seeing myself in the mirror.

Not a big thing. It was like treading water and a hand on my forehead pushing me down, before pulling away. Surfacing again, finding my equilibrium, realizing how tired I was as I resumed treading water.

I was very aware of the eyes on us.

“Do you have more outside?” the representative asked.

“More… of us?” I asked, finding my composure again.

“Yes.”

“No. No we don’t have more outside.”

She looked spooked. More spooked after my ‘no’.

“I can’t help but notice that you have no police presence at all,” I said.

“We have some, but not many. It’s the way it is in Norfair span.”

“Norfair,” I said, noting the coined name. “It’s not really a presence, is it?”

“No,” she said. “We didn’t expect this many naysayers. With this many, they had to have come from outside the community.”

The crowd in the room with us looked eager and happy enough. A few frowns, but rare. Had it been just this, overlapping conversations, anticipation, bright eyes and parents with kids, maybe a few people ready to raise some pointed questions if given the opportunity, then all would have been well.

It wasn’t just them. The protesters outside were audible, even with stone walls between us and them. Two angry voices outside, for every one quiet, polite person inside.

I didn’t like how much this was stacking up against us. The police not having much presence, the controversy, the number of protesters.

Paranoia again, that I couldn’t help but wonder about the recruits I’d been given. Forced to take, as it had turned out.

Too many things together.

“I think we should talk to the capes,” I said.

“Please,” the district rep said.

She led us into the back room, just behind where the de-facto stage was. The team of heroes was there, anxious, waiting to be announced and to step out in front of the crowd.

Four of them. Their costumes were close to being clothing, but had just enough stylization to make them something more. The masks and face-coverings helped to make them more cape-like.

Fume Hood did have a hood, as part of a green hooded coat she wore. Fans were built into the coat, only partially disguised, each of them much like the ones that were built into the back of a computer, and they made her coat, hair, and hood flap.

There was a man in a deep purple tank top and skinny pants with glass jutting from his skin at the elbows and hands, his upper face only a craggy mass of glass or jewel-like shards sticking out of flesh, just beautiful enough to not be macabre.

A man about my age slouched in a chair, looking dejected. He had something that looked like small shields over the back of each hand, three large scimitar-like blades jutting from the back of each shield like they were oversize claws. He wore a top that showed his muscular stomach, with shorts that reached his knees. A two-part icon was displayed on chest and belt buckle.

The last was a woman in overalls, muscular, with hair shorter than most of the boys in my troupe, something that looked like thick paint slashed across her eyes and nose, and covering her arms up to the elbows. The paint was black at the very edges, where it was thinner, but pure white elsewhere. Her eyes were black from corner to corner.

“Great,” the woman with the paint said, sarcastic. “Just what we needed.”

“We’re here to help,” I said.

“We might need it,” Fume Hood said.

“Do you know who’s after you?” I asked. “Or what’s going on?”

She shook her head.

“I might be being paranoid, but this feels off,” I said.

“A lot of little things,” Fume Hood said. “Crystalclear’s getting a bad vibe.”

I nodded. I looked at the man with the glass chunks where his nose, eyes, brow and scalp should be.

“Have you considered canceling the event?” I asked.

“We were actively debating it before you came in,” the man in purple said. “We’re split.”

“Can we break the tie?” I asked.

They exchanged glances.

The painted woman scowled, “You can.”

The man with the claws stood abruptly, shoving his chair to the ground in the process, before stalking off.

“Okay,” the painted woman said, again. She looked at the district rep. “We’re sorry. Can you have them disperse? Tell the protesters they win.”

The rep nodded, hurrying from the room to where the people were seated.

“Death knell for our group,” the painted woman said.

“Maybe. Probably,” Fume said. She looked at Crystalclear. “Feeling better?”

“No,” he said.

Fume nodded at that.

“Would you stick around?” Crystalclear addressed us. “I wouldn’t mind the backup, if you’re here to help, and I have the sense this is going to get worse before it gets better.”

“Gut feeling sense or… power sense?” I asked.

I could hear the commotion as people started to leave. I could hear the complaining. Even before he answered, my gut feeling sense was that he wasn’t wrong.

“The latter,” Crystalclear said, corroborating.

Daybreak – 1.3

This was the point in time that I would have liked to be able to take to the skies. Information was important, and if I didn’t have surveillance cameras, I would have been pretty content with a bird’s eye view of the scene.

I clenched one fist, cracking my knuckles, before wrapping my other hand around it, cracking them again for good measure.

I turned to look at the people from the patrol. “Set up around the building. Watch what’s going on outside, stay in touch, report anything unusual. Jasper? Hang back.”

The others turned to go, some looking back at the capes one last time before leaving. Interest, other things.

“Can’t hurt,” the painted lady said.

“I’m Victoria,” I said. “That’s Jasper. I know Fume Hood from the notes we got, and I caught Crystalclear’s name.”

“Longscratch is the one who just left,” the painted lady said. “I’m Tempera.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Good to meet you. Crystalclear, can you fill me in on your power? What are you getting?”

“I see through everything,” Crystalclear said, tapping the chunk of crystal that stood out from the lower edge of his eye socket. “As if everything was crystal. I’ve learned there’s a lot of nuance to it. A little bit of seeing into the past, a little bit of seeing into the future, a little bit of a sense of people’s focus.”

“He has a blaster power too,” Tempera said. “Goes through walls and the ground. Synergy.”

“I really hope it doesn’t come to actually using that. Right now, I’m more interested in how this points to possible trouble in the future,” I said.

“Uh,” Crystalclear said. He looked around. “It’s hard to explain because it’s not a sense anyone else has. Say I was looking at a wall. It looks like a chunk of clear glass and the light catches at the edges and corners and they’re highlighted.”

My eye roved over the room. It was reminiscent of a teacher’s lounge, but it had less of an emphasis on the lounging. Coffee cups sat on windowsills and there were places where furniture had been stacked once, and the furniture had been moved out into the open room at the front of the building, where all the people were or had been seated. Glass cases with model buildings had been brought inside and carefully stacked against the wall. A long table that might have served as a conference table was folded up in one corner.

I tried to imagine it like Crystalclear was describing it. A sketch in three dimensions, only the lines visible. “I follow you so far.”

“The edges of walls and floor are usually clear, crisp, and closer to white. Solid objects don’t change, so there’s no reason for that to change. It’s blurred. Blue tinted.”

“Future sight,” Tempera added. “Past-sight is red, future-sight is blue. Like the doppler.”

Crystalclear went on, “In the future, that wall vibrates. Similar effect with people, but they move around more. I see you all as streaks, shifting around, white-edged where you’re resting in present. There is refraction and some fractures around people’s heads, representing focus and kind of thinking.”

“That gets blueshifted redshifted?” I asked. “It’s not displayed as color?”

Crystalclear nodded his head. It was a motion made more weighty by the heavy growth at the top of his head. “Not as color. It’s… edges to the light around them, sharpness and softness, distortions like how you can look at a glass of water with a straw in it and the straw isn’t straight, or you see multiple straws. The worst breaks in focus look like grooves or outright breaks. A lot of people here are going to be distorted soon. Or were. They’re leaving and they’re clearing up.”

His head turned as he focused on things on the other sides of the walls.

“What about, say, Jasper?” I asked.

“Hey,” Jasper said. “Use yourself as an example.”

Crystalclear looked at Jasper. “Hard to say. Whatever it is, it’s small or it’s distant.”

Crystalclear glanced over at Tempetera and Fume Hood. “Not just him either. It doesn’t give me much to work with.”

He turned his attention to me.

I cut right to asking my next question, before he could comment. “Do you see the direction of it? Anything big and blue that’s suggesting a major thing coming in sometime in the future? One section of the building that gets hit harder?”

He shook his head. “I’d have to see it before I saw how things were around it, and even then there’s nuance.”

“You’re thinking of a parahuman or weapon?” Tempera asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “If I was a civilian with an issue, and I was going after capes, I’d go big or I wouldn’t try at all. If we’re talking something that shakes this whole community center… bomb? Parahumans are definitely possible, except I’m not sure how using parahumans squares with the sentiment toward parahumans.”

Fume Hood spoke up from the background. “Set us against each other, they benefit either way.”

“Could be,” I said. I paused. “As soon as the crowd has dispersed enough, I want to get you guys clear of here. Do you have a decent mover power to use?”

“Longscratch does,” Tempera said.

“Not a mass mover power, is it?” I asked. At the negation, I turned to Jasper. “Can you bring the bus close? If the crowd is thinning out, you should be able to pull right up to the door. Take someone with you, if we’re delayed, do like I discussed earlier. Keep an eye out.”

Jasper saluted, turning to go.

The bus wasn’t elegant, but hopefully it would take us away from vulnerable civilians or areas.

“How is Longscratch?” Tempera asked Crystalclear.

“He’s fine. Stalked off. He’s keeping an eye out for trouble,” Crystalclear said. He pointed up and off to one side. On an upper floor, it seemed, or on the roof.

“That’s how he is. I won’t bother him. I’ll go talk to the district representative, instead, if that’s alright,” Tempera said, looking my way.

“If the coast is clear,” I said.

“Most people have cleared out of the main hall,” Crystalclear said. “The ones who are hanging back seem like the types to be doing it for good reason. Parents with kids, teenagers hoping to get a glimpse of the heroes they came to see.”

“That’s positive,” Tempera said. “I’ll give them a glimpse then. Thank you, Victoria.”

“I’m going to get a glass of water and get my head straight,” Fume Hood said. “I’ll catch up with the rest of you in a minute.”

“Don’t go running off,” Tempera said. “Get your water, take a minute, but come back after. I don’t want you to throw yourselves to the wolves.”

“I won’t,” Fume Hood said.

“Or whatever variant on that plan you might be thinking. I can see you trying to lead the enemy way from us,” Tempera said.

“I won’t,” Fume Hood said, annoyed.

“It wouldn’t work anyway,” Crystalclear added.

“Your future sight telling you that?” Fume Hood asked, her annoyance becoming something more bitter.

“I don’t see the future like that. You know that. But I do know that they’re mad at all of us. Our fortunes are intertwined, and their hate is- it’s not very targeted.”

“Not hate,” I said.

They looked my way.

“It’s easy to see it as hate, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” I said. “It’s not that. It’s blame.”

“Blame,” Fume Hood said.

“I don’t think it’s a reflection on you. Humanity is hurt. It’s hurt in a way that makes it a little bit animal. Reactive. They’re snapping at any target that presents itself, because the hurt is fresh. They’re taking that hurt and they’re looking for anyone they can put it onto. You…”

I trailed off.

“We presented ourselves,” Tempera said.

“Not in a bad way,” I said. “This isn’t your fault.”

“I’ll get my water,” Fume Hood said, curt. She didn’t wait for a response, heading into the adjacent room, further from the front of the building.

Once Fume Hood was gone, Tempera nudged Crystalclear. “Keep an eye on them?”

Crystalclear nodded.

Tempera gave me a nod before stepping out the door.

“Is Fume Hood going to be okay?” I asked.

“Who knows?” he asked.

“Trouble still isn’t imminent?”

Crystalclear shook his head. “At least fifteen minutes off. I’m thinking we should go get a better vantage point, see if I can’t spot any troublemakers.”

“Watch out for my guys,” I said.

“Watch out for what?”

I glanced at the door. “Blame.”

“Got it,” he said. “I shouldn’t stick my neck out or draw attention to myself, then?”

“Not unless I’m there.”

“And where will you be?” he asked.

I looked at the other door. The one Fume Hood had taken. “I was thinking I’d get a glass of water. Unless you think that would be overstepping.”

He looked in the direction Fume Hood had gone. His voice was soft as he said, “I have no fucking idea.”

“I’ll catch up with you,” I said, clapping a hand on his shoulder in passing.

The area adjacent to the conference room was a kitchen, set up with multiple stovetops and long counters. Catering-focused, at a glance. The stoves were of different makes and models. Scavenged.

Fume Hood was standing by the sink, a glass of water in hand. She looked at me, her eyes barely visible with the surrounding mask and the overhanging hood.

“Can I grab some water? The bus ride was warm, even with the windows rolled down.”

She filled a glass, then slid it along the counter to me, so it met me halfway as I made my approach.

“What was the plan?” I asked.

“The plan?”

“Corporate? Sponsored? Ideology-driven? There are a lot of those nowadays. Move forward, rebuild, hold to the past, unity in strength, religion…”

“No ideology,” she said. “No sponsorship. No business partnerships. I’m not even sure what we would have done about the money.”

“That can be hard,” I said. I drank my water.

“It wasn’t supposed to be easy.”

I finished my water, then approached the sink to get more. Fume Hood turned around, leaning against the counter just beside me.

She said, “It was community focused. Serving the area, hometown heroes like the old days. I thought of it as community service, in more than one way.”

“I like that,” I said.

She shrugged. “I’m not sure if there’s anything to like about it.”

“It’s a good idea. It sounds positive. Maybe it’s worth trying again later.”

“It won’t come together again like this later. Tempera is pretty good at this whole thing, and she needs to do the cape stuff, so she’ll find a team to join. Crystalclear will get poached because decent thinker powers are in demand. Longscratch… I don’t know why he’s even here. Tempera suggested it to him, for some reason, he accepted for some reason. He’s upset it fell apart. Next time, he’ll just say no. He’ll steer clear so he doesn’t have reason to get upset again.”

“Mover psychology?” I asked.

“I don’t know about that stuff. I just know he’s a weird mix of wants and needs and he’s really cool when things are good and he’s impossible to understand when they aren’t. Which they aren’t.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“You wouldn’t be sorry if you knew,” she said. She stood taller, stretching a bit. She tossed the empty glass between her hands. “It’s my fault.”

“You orchestrated this?” I asked.

“I hurt a pregnant lady and she lost her child and I don’t even feel that bad about it,” Fume Hood said. “I turned myself in, but it was because people thought I’d become a PR problem for capes in general. I’d run out of friends and places to run to. It seemed like the only way to get things to cool down.”

The glass smacked against each of her hands as she tossed it back and forth.

I drank my water, still watching her.

“I’m pissed,” she said. “People are making such a big deal over this, and I can’t bring myself to see it their way. It was an accident. I told the civilians to sit and stay put, and this stupid-”

She stopped there, clenching her fist.

Fume Hood continued, “-stupid fucking woman. She ran right to where I was shooting out a display window, gets knocked on her ass, breathes in the gas.”

“I wonder what she was thinking,” I said.

“I’ve wondered that every day since. I’m mostly caught between thinking she wanted to get hurt and lose the baby, it was so blatant, or that she thought the broken display window was an escape route, even though there were others she could have run for,” Fume Hood said. “I was so pissed. I shouted at people to take her outside and get her some fresh air, even though I knew it made everything harder with the robbery. They’d contact authorities, we’d have to protect ourselves, whatever. I thought I was pretty fair. She got medical attention and shit.”

“Could have been worse,” I said.

“I shouldn’t have pulled that robbery at the mall. I know that. But it’s not one of my big regrets. Her being a stupid fucking idiot isn’t one of them either, obviously.”

“You turned yourself in after that.”

“The heat got too much, like I said. And- and I was tired, you know?”

Her voice had cracked on the ‘tired’.

She sounded tired now.

“It had been years, trying to get by. A lot of it was fun. The drugs, the robberies and mercenary work, the adventure, new places and really interesting people. Some shitty people, lots of scary people, but they were always interesting. Capes are interesting in a way you probably wouldn’t get if you didn’t know any for real.”

“I grew up with capes,” I said.

She stopped passing the glass from hand to hand, holding it in both instead. “Did you? Huh.”

I shrugged. My glass was empty. I put it on the counter and, finger on the inside, spun it in a circle, the bottom rattling on the metal countertop.

She continued, “Well, all I know is, the crime stuff started to feel like work. The drugs stopped feeling like they were a plus and started feeling like they were something I had to do. I was never addicted, I never craved it, I never had withdrawal after. This analogy I’ve been thinking of is it’s like I had to go to the bathroom every half hour and who wants to do that, you know? Who wants to keep interrupting their day for something they aren’t even enjoying anymore?”

“No idea,” I said. “But I can see what you’re saying.”

“The cool people started dropping away. A couple dead, others just stopped being cool. High people are really boring to be around. So like a genius, I thought hey, let’s just go to prison. I made a deal. I wanted a bit of an education, training at some job or another, safety, I didn’t want to be stuck in there too long.”

“How’d it work out?”

“Deal worked out fine. Judge agreed, heroes agreed, it was one less parahuman on the streets that people were really upset about. Jail isn’t fun, but it was what I needed, I think.”

“Shows character, I think,” I said. “Realizing where you were at, where you were headed, and changing course.”

“I don’t have character,” Fume Hood said. “It was selfish and self-centered. It was me, me, me, I’m bored, I’m done with the drugs, I’m scared of being caught by angry people, I want this deal, I want some education. I don’t and I never cared about that pregnant idiot.”

She met my eyes as she said that last bit.

Challenging me.

I spun the glass on the countertop again. “The community service hero stuff?”

“Me, me, me,” she said, her voice quiet. “I thought it gave me the best chance of dodging any lingering heat. Ha.”

I took my finger away from the glass. It spun in a circle before settling with a rattle.

“I don’t buy it,” I said.

She shrugged, tossing the glass into the air, catching it.

“You said before that you have real regrets,” I said. “And you can call yourself selfish, but I think the dots connect here. Your reasons, your regrets.”

She tossed the glass into the air, caught it.

She did it a few more times.

“We should go,” she said. “Check on the others. Do our part.”

“We should,” I said.

The water from the faucet we’d used deposited a fat droplet on the metal bottom of the large sink, producing a hollow sound. Neither of us budged.

“I got friends into the soft drugs and I egged them on instead of stopping them when they got themselves into the harder stuff. I regret that, I turned myself in for that, even though I was supposed to be serving the punishment for the pregnant woman. For other stuff, more on that level. I turned myself in for the” -she took a deep breath, as if to signify magnitude- “years of being a low to mid tier nusiance. For being tiresome. And because I was tired of it.”

“I’m not a priest,” I said. “I don’t have the power to say some words and absolve you. It’s up to society to decide how angry they are and how they come to terms with it. It’s up to you to decide how willing you are to face your deeds. When it comes to me… I can say I respect a lot of what you’re saying. I definitely think you should own up more to what you did to that woman, stop calling her stupid. It’s not a point in your favor.”

Fume Hood nodded.

“Honestly,” I said, “I really like the community hero idea. I’d really like you to try it again, after a bit. For that to be your way of working through it all, from influencing your friends to hurting that woman. We’re dealing with blame, not hate, and blame finds a place to roost eventually. There has to be another shot at making this happen.”

“Blame seems like too small a word for what Crystal was saying.”

“Blame can be big,” I said. “Blame has led to the ruin of nations.”

She nodded. “That sort of helps, actually.”

“I’m glad to have sort of helped.”

“Blame can become something else, given time, can’t it?” she asked.

“It can,” I admitted. “I’m spooked at the idea it will. For now, just… be a hero,” I said. “Don’t walk away from this sort of thing for good.”

“You guys keep saying stuff to me, like, don’t run off, don’t sacrifice yourself, be a hero, as if it’s implied I’ve got ideas I haven’t said out loud.”

“You’re a self-described shitty person and an ex-villain. We’re not allowed to be suspicious?” I asked.

That got a half-smile out of her.

“Come on,” I said. “I’m getting worried about my guys and I’ll get yelled at by my boss if I leave them to their own devices for too long.”

“This is your thing, then?” she asked. She followed me as I left, setting her glass next to where I’d left mine. “You joined the junior-PRT to convince shitty people to be less shitty?”

“On the most basic level, I got into this because capes are what I know,” I said.

“Because you grew up with them.”

“Yeah, but keep that under the lid for now,” I said. “I’m not broadcasting it to the world.”

“Lips zipped.”

I pushed the door open, stepping back into the now-empty conference room. “I want to help. I could have helped with construction or farming or whatever else, but like I said-”

“Capes are what you know.”

“Yeah. I knew so many great people and I don’t know if all of them made it, but I want to be in a position to help them through whatever comes next. I want to figure things out, because the lack of answers is what fucks us over, and fucks them over. I want to talk to people like you, if you happen to be on the fence, so maybe you land on the side where you’re more likely to help out those really cool, great people.”

“I thought you junior-PRT kids were all about training so you can go after the monsters.”

She’d created a hard green sphere, the size of a billiard ball. She tossed it between her hands as she had the glass. It smacked against each palm.

I answered her, “Don’t get me wrong, but I have pretty strong feelings when it comes to the monsters. I’m pretty far from being okay with them.”

She gave me a sidelong glance while opening the door to the main room.

“But I don’t think you’re one of them,” I said. “Sorry, but you’re safe from me.”

She threw the ball to the right, but instead of smacking into her palm, it curved in the air, orbiting her hand in a long ellipse as a moon might a planet.

“What a relief,” she said. She was smiling a bit more, now.

The smile faltered a bit more as we faced the situation at hand.

Some of the police had come inside. My guys were standing near the windows, looking out. Some were talking to the police.

A share of the crowd had remained behind. Community leaders, possibly.

Fume Hood hung back as I approached them all.

“You’re in charge?” a police officer asked. He had a mustache. It bothered me, because I’d never really got mustaches, barring the truly awesome ones. This was lip decoration, bristly and at odds with how his hair was combed back and close to his head.

“Yessir. I’m Victoria, I take my orders from Instructor Gilpatrick at Wayfair High School.”

“They said you told them to follow our orders?”

“Or to keep a lookout for trouble. There’s still people here? Is there a problem?”

“No,” the officer said. He sighed. “I don’t know what to do with them. Yours or with the others. Situation seems to be resolving itself, but the teenagers in uniform are insisting it isn’t.”

“The capes say it isn’t,” I said. “I’d believe them.”

“Huh,” he said.

I took a deep breath, exhaling slowly, while the officer took a look around at the situation.

“Haven’t you talked to them?” I asked. “The capes?”

“A little bit,” he said. “Not recently. I don’t really know how.”

“They’re people,” I said. “Capable people who want to help.”

“They’ve got the eye thing, and the masks. One doesn’t have eyes at all,” he said. “He has these crystals. He pulled one out of the top of his head earlier, and it made a wet sound. It was in so deep it should’ve been inside his brain.”

“They’re people,” I said, again.

“It’s disconcerting,” the man said.

I wanted to say things to that, but I bit my tongue. I could hardly criticize when I’d been talking to Fume Hood.

I’d just- I’d really hoped for better.

“If you need me to be a liason, let me know,” I said. He didn’t give me an immediate response, so I called out to the squaddies. “Get back from the windows, guys! The working theory is a bomb, heavy impact, cape power, or something like an earthquake, and you don’t want your nose pressed against the glass when it comes!”

They shuffled back.

“Bomb?” the officer asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Can you get everyone here clear of danger?”

“To somewhere inside or further outside?”

I looked around. Crystalclear and the others hadn’t come to find us, so I was left to imagine the danger wasn’t super imminent. Inside posed risks.

I didn’t like making the calls, but I said, “Outside, but hurry it up. If there’s any remaining crowd outside, get them further back or get them to go.”

“Alright,” he said. “Makes sense.”

He whistled for the attention of his people and the crowd that had gathered closer to the front door.

While he handled that, I looked at the others, “Where’s Jasper?”

“Still out there. He has Mar and Landon with him. The crowd is in their way.”

I hurried to approach the window. I could hear a commotion behind me, as others entered the room, but my focus was on the commotion outside. My view was briefly blocked by the cops and the people they were leading outside and across the street to our left, away from both the building and the lingering protesters.

“Victoria,” Crystalclear said, behind me. He was with a small few members of the community center staff, including the district rep, and he had Longscratch and Tempera with him.

He would be here because trouble was imminent.

“How soon?” I asked.

“Two impacts in a couple of minutes. Six or seven.”

Two. Six or seven minutes gave us a window to act.

I watched the scene in progress through the window. Jasper wouldn’t make it to the front door in two or three minutes. Some of the protest had dispersed, but a lot of it had spread out from the square of grass, sidewalks, fountain and trees just in front of the community center, dotting the streets. A share of them occupied the street Jasper needed to come down to reach us, and a lot of them had their back to him. He honked, not for the first time, and one of them gave him the finger.

“I’m going to help Jasper out, get us our bus so we can drive out of here without being mobbed,” I said. “Is there a side door?”

Crystalclear pointed at what would have been the south side of the building, to my left.

“Go there, stay clear of windows. Protect my people, keep them clear of danger. The moment there’s real trouble, they’re just high schoolers and should be treated as such. High schoolers- you guys protect Fume Hood. Protect the capes. Be good.”

“Do you need help?” Tempera asked.

She couldn’t help. She would cause more problems than she fixed, being in costume.

No. I shook my head, heading to the front door.

Was this an emergency? Yes.

Did I like using my power? No.

I marched toward the bus, glaring at the first person in my way. I activated my aura.

“Move,” I said, and I pushed out with my power. Heads turned, noticing. Maybe they would put their finger on why they’d noticed. Maybe not. I was nudging, here.

I could see the man’s reaction. He took a partial step back.

I stepped it up a notch, not with more use of my power, but by raising the volume of my voice. “Out of the way!”

He got out of the way. That and me drawing nearer made it easier for the next person to come through.

“Bus!” I called out to Jasper. “Get moving! Side door to the right of the building! South side!”

People looking back at the bus and back to me had more pressure to deal with. That was easier. They got clear of the bus’ path.

The one who had given Jasper the finger, though, he had just a little bit more to prove. I put my hands on him. I pushed him, and he resisted.

I pushed him with my aura, small, closer to center, a pulse of intimidation just for him, to break his posture and resolve. My hands pushed him the rest of the way. He landed on his ass.

He wasn’t wholly out of the way, but Jasper was able to drive up on the sidewalk. His door was open and the stairs leading up to his seat were there. I hopped up, grabbing the bar that the driver used to climb into the seat, hanging off the side.

“Things okay?” he asked.

“They’re about to be not okay,” I said. “We’ve got four or five minutes, probably. I want to be gone by-”

Jasper’s two passengers, Mar and Landon, were at the window behind Jasper’s seat. They were looking out and over my shoulder.

I turned to look. In the crowd, a man was standing there, shuddering. People were backing away from him.

He wore a black hooded sweatshirt and black pants, and he stood so the hood hid his face. His arms were at his side, vibrating. Head, arms, body and legs all moved like he had a paint shaker wedged up his ass, moving more violently by the second.

Building up to something.

“Take cover!” I shouted the words.

Some people did. They ran, they sprinted for mailboxes, for trees. But it was too open an area for everyone to find something.

I threw up my personal forcefield, shielding Jasper, my arm out toward the windows the other two were looking at.

The man in the crowd exploded, showering the crowd with chunks of bone, flesh, and a mist of blood. More than should have been contained in a human body. Some of the windows in the bus had cracked, and my forcefield was down.

The people over the square of grass, around the fountain, on the sidewalks and the streets surrounding the explosion all stood, calm.

Streaked with blood, they looked around, every single head turning left, then turning right. All in unison.

“Drive,” I said.

Jasper stomped on the gas.

Further up the street, the cops that had been evacuating people from the building and across the road were standing near the street. They’d been touched by the gore-explosion, and now they were drawing their guns.

“Don’t hit them!”

“I’m not going to hit them!” Jasper called out, swerving so the side and then the rear of the bus was between us and them.

It hadn’t been five or six minutes yet. It couldn’t have been. The building hadn’t been hit yet.

I climbed up higher, standing on the headrest of Jasper’s seat to reach a higher point on the bus, looking over the roof.

Where?

The worst possible location.

An eighteen wheeled logging truck was coming down the road. The front had been reinforced with metal braces. It was coming from the direction of the water, only four hundred or so feet of road between the waterline they’d started near and the community center, but it was going full speed, straight for the side door.

“Fuck me.” Jasper’s voice.

Even if Crystalclear saw-

“Hit it!” I called out.

“What? Are you insane?”

“Hit it! The others are waiting on the other side of the door!”

I scrambled to get in position.

“Trusting you,” Jasper said, and the bus picked up speed.

You shouldn’t, I thought.

I had one partial glimpse of the inside of the truck.

Multiple costumes.

And then the impact.

Daybreak – 1.4

There was no way to process the series of collisions that followed me hurling myself down between the logging truck and the school bus. My focus was on deflecting the impact, clawing at the logging truck with everything I had to try to put it off course, before the bus made contact and hopefully moved it further. As the two vehicles came together, I extended my whole body, trying to push them apart in a way that would keep the collision from being the head-on sort that might kill Jasper.

In no particular order, the school bus hit the logging truck, the logging truck hit the school bus and the wall, and I, my forcefields down, hit the ground rolling.

I came to a stop and lay where I was, face down. I felt the sting of the scrapes where I’d come into contact with the road, and waited for the real pain to start. I wanted to know where the real damage was before I moved the wrong part and made it worse. My ears rang from the sharp noises and impacts. Playing dead helped, too, because the villains were rousing, opening the door of the truck cab, glass tinkling down to the street below.

“What the hell?” someone asked. They were younger- probably teenager. I couldn’t pinpoint if they were male or female.

“Are you okay?” a deeper voice asked. The nature of the voice made me think brute. “Any injuries?”

“I think I have whiplash,” the teenager said. “I wasn’t expecting that. What the hell?”

“You were intercepted before impact. It looks like teenagers in uniform. With a bus.”

“I can see that,” the teenager said.

“You missed the side door you were supposed to drive through.”

“I can see that too,” the teenager said.

“I can’t tell what you’re looking at, Blindside. Let me know if you need help. Snag?”

“I’m fine,” was the response, a rasp. I heard metal creak.

“Your arm isn’t,” the teenager said. They would be Blindside, going by what the Brute had said.

“I’m fine.”

I heard the sound of someone hopping down to land on the street, not all that far away from me. Metal struck the road shortly after.

I only saw a glimpse of him. Work boots, a long coat that hung down low enough that it almost looked like his legs were only two feet long, and arms long enough that his wrists made contact with the ground. The hands rested flat on the road, fingers splayed. He wore gauntlets.

I wanted to see something more than just his feet, but as I started to raise my eyes, looking through the hair that had come loose from my braid, my eyes were forced down, until they were staring at the road. I heard the scrape of another person’s feet as they climbed down from the truck to the street.

“My fucking neck,” Blindside said. The person in question.

Try as I might, I couldn’t look at them. My eyes and head refused to cooperate and do what was necessary to put them in my field of vision.

“Don’t complain,” said the Brute.

“You weren’t on the truck. You don’t get to tell me what I can or can’t complain about. Fuck, I wasn’t expecting that hit. Did both K.C. and Nursery fuck up?”

“The timing was wrong,” a woman said. Nursery, I assumed.

There were so many of them. The Brute, Snag, Blindside, Nursery, and K.C.- I really hoped that K.C. was the mass-master I’d seen in the crowd. If they weren’t, then there were six of them in total. Six and the crowd that the exploding parahuman had control of.

We had four capes on the inside, me, and a bunch of high schoolers, some of whom had guns. None of whom, cape or student, that I wanted involved in this conflict.

The five or six attacking capes wouldn’t be attacking like this if they weren’t sure they could win.

“Don’t be stupid,” Snag said, his voice a rough growl, volume raised.

He wasn’t talking to me. He was directing that at Jasper and the other two.

Drive away, I thought, willing Jasper to think the same. Be okay, drive away. Leave me.

I heard the chugging of the bus, the battered engine protesting as the vehicle started to reverse, pulling away.

At the edge of my Blindside-limited field of vision, Snag’s metal, long-fingered hand lifted from the ground. He leaped toward the bus without making the movements necessary to jump. I didn’t want to move my head and risk being seen just to see him land, but I heard the metal-on-metal sound, the impact of a heavy body on the hood.

Every set of eyes, mine excepted, had to be on him and the retreating bus. It was an opening, and it was an opening our side opted to use. The side door of the building opened without a sound. Fume Hood and Crystalclear were in the doorway.

Crystalclear threw a chunk of crystal at the ground, and the chunk passed through without sound or apparent impact. Fume Hood had six green orbs with her, all around her hand. She sent one out in the direction of the bus, then, a moment later, sent a second. Both exploded, off to one side.

Crystalclear’s shot passed through walls. Tempera had let me know that. Apparently, it needed to pass through walls, or the ground in this case. He’d thrown it into the ground, and a moment after Fume had released her two shots, both landing, Crystalclear’s shot emerged from the ground, an explosion of vapor, glass splinters, and fragments of road.

One of the villains, the Brute, only laughed.

Fume Hood paused, her four orbs around her hand. Her head was turned so she could only see me with one eye- Blindside’s power was limiting them there.

Through the hair that had fallen over my face, I could see Fume Hood look at me. Making eye contact.

I couldn’t see the villains, so I knew the action was risky. I had to hope they were more focused on her than on me.

I raised my head up and motioned for her to go, moving one hand, swiping my fingers toward her.

The pattern was much the same as with her first shot. One shot, then firing the remaining three all at once. One to gauge how it would fly, then the rest to deliver the hit.

They slammed the door shut, just before the three near-simultaneous explosions. The detonations were small and sharp, and produced a wind that blew my hair away from my face. I held my breath.

The Brute laughed again.

I really didn’t want to pick a fight with four capes at once. The bus was gone, the door was shut.

“This is going to slow us down,” the Brute said.

“You don’t have to sound so happy about it,” Blindside said.

The Brute chuckled, and climbed down from the roof of the truck, and in the doing, he put himself between me and Blindside. It blocked my view of Blindside, and it gave me a chance to get a glimpse of him. The ground smoked around where his boots touched pavement, and the smoke solidified into formations that looked like branches and twists of metal, all in an ashen white-grey. His entire body was made of the stuff, as if he wore armor made of white-grey bandages made solid and immobile by resin, all of the ends curling up and away from him in horns or branches.

I knew him, even just seeing his legs. Or I knew of him, to be precise. Yeah, based on what I knew of Fume Hood’s group, they might be outclassed.

The big guy was the Lord of Loss. There were two ways a cape could go with a name like that. The most obvious was to fuck up just once, and forever after have people wondering out loud what he was thinking, taking a name like that. Being called a loser.

The other way was to succeed and ascend the name, to take that name and make it a title. The Lord of Loss had managed that.

He had been one of the villains in a big city on the West coast, and now he was one of the villains running a settlement on one of the corner worlds. Was it Earth-N? Not far from here, if it was. He wasn’t top tier, as capes went, but he was A-list.

He was a Brute with Breaker flavor. He cloaked himself in abstract forms, with a set selection. I knew one resembled a bird, which he would have been using to fly alongside the truck. He was versatile, big, strong, and his breaker power multiplied his efforts over time. That multiplication played into how he flew, how he grew, and back before Gold Morning, a few occasions where he’d been able to slug away at a bank vault until he’d torn it open, or even drag a smaller vault away with him.

He turned his attention toward me, turning around and approaching me as the others backed away from the cloud of gas. My chin jerked toward my chest as Blindside stepped out to the side, back in my field of view.

I would’ve rather had just about anyone else step close enough for me to get my hands on them. It had to be the guy I couldn’t take out of the fight.

“Miss,” Lord of Loss said. “Are you injured?”

I couldn’t pretend to be unconscious- I’d just moved because of Blindside. I settled for an inarticulate, small moan.

Lord of Loss knelt beside me. “Can you walk?”

I shook my head, keeping the movement small.

“Is it because your back is hurt? Can you feel my hand, here?” he asked.

I felt his hand touch my knee.

I nodded, again, small. I screwed up my face, feigning more pain than I was in.

I didn’t like this. I didn’t like being so close to the guy, I didn’t like the scrutiny, the eyes on me, the attention. I didn’t like being treated like I was an invalid. I didn’t like suppressing my forcefield and aura.

I didn’t like being still.

It was easier to keep my composure if I was moving, doing.

“Blindside,” Lord of Loss said. “Watch her.”

“What?”

“You were always going to be the lookout, with Kingdom Come helping. We stick to the plan. We’re going in, we’ll get our target, you’ll be the lookout, and you’ll look out for this junior soldier while you’re at it.”

“Pain in the ass.”

“Plans change,” Lord of Loss said. “You’ll learn that sooner or later. Our clients hired us to capture an ex-villain who made a bystander lose her child. I don’t think they’d be pleased if we let another bystander get hurt while we carry out the task.”

“Yeah, no, I get it. Just go. Let’s get this over with.”

“Keep an eye out for the vehicle with the other soldiers. They drove in Kingdom’s direction. If they can’t get through or around, they might come back.”

“I get it. It’s fine. Go. I can handle my shit.”

My eyes had closed, because it kept my head from being jerked around as Blindside kept compelling me to move to avoid seeing them, but I could tell when Lord of Loss moved away, as the bulk of his body ceased blocking the light of the sun above us.

“Snag,” Lord of Loss said. “Any injury?”

I heard a cough. “No.”

“Then go with Nursery,” Lord of Loss said. He paused. “Kingdom Come?”

Another pause.

“It’s time. Move in,” Lord of Loss said. “I can’t go inside, so I’ll take the roof, I’ll watch the other sides of the building, and do what I can to help.”

I cracked my eyes open. Nursery and Snag were walking up to the door. Lord of Loss was breaking into pieces, his arms spreading out as the wispy smoke formed into the ‘feathers’ of his wings. He wasn’t fast at all as he started to flap, lifting off the ground.

That would be the downside of his breaker power. It let him hit harder every time he hit something, and that included the beats of wing against air, but it took time.

Still, it let him move in the direction of the roof. He paused, circling, as Snag raised one long arm and pushed at the door. White paint leaked around the doorframe.

Sealed shut.

“This would be why I’m here,” Nursery said, her voice soft. She began humming, and it was a lullaby sort of hum.

A music box sort of chiming joined the humming.

“Fuck that shit,” Blindside said. I was the closest person to them as they stood somewhere near me. I lay near the butt end of the eighteen wheeler, which had its nose in the wall of the building. Nursery and Snag were at the door. I wasn’t sure if Blindside was talking to me.

The humming seemed to be picked up elsewhere, and the music box noises intensified, with new notes and a higher tempo. The area near the door blurred. It was a window into another world, what had to be a pocket dimension, but for the most part it seemed unsure if it was our world or the pocket world.

An indoor setting, at a glance. Beds and walls that didn’t line up with things in our world.

I felt Blindside’s hand on my neck. They felt for my pulse.

“Asshole is invincible, and so he doesn’t even think to get your gun from you. You’re lying on it,” Blindside said. “If I roll you onto your back, will it kill you?”

It was a question I’d heard variants of before, in a tone I’d heard before. A tone from someone that didn’t really care about me.

We’re going to roll you over now and check for sores. Is that alright?

We’re going to wash you now. Can you try to move this arm?

Can I get you anything? Would you like water, or something to eat?

Condescending, caring more about themselves, feigning concern or consideration. They just wanted to get on with their day. Even the ones that did care lost patience sometimes. Stubborn, aggressive people like me made it easy to lose patience.

I made myself be calm. I exhaled slowly, and the exhalation came out as a shudder. It wasn’t because I was hurt, but because the memories were close to the surface.

Blindside eased me onto my back, then I felt them touch my gun.

My eyes snapped open. My arm lashed out, one swing, mindful that they were probably just a fragile human being.

I didn’t make contact. Muscles in my arm wrenched, seized, and cramped as the entire arm locked up, just in time to keep me from touching them.

“Aha,” Blindside said.

I felt them grip my gun hard. My initial fumble to grab the gun ran into the same problem. My hand hit an imaginary wall.

The gun had a buckle keeping it in the hip holster. They hadn’t undone the buckle, and they weren’t able to pull the gun free before I jumped up to my feet, backing a short distance away. The hand pulled free.

I still couldn’t see them. My head was turned to one side, I had a glare on my face, and I walked slowly, keeping track of them by keeping them at the very edge of my field of view.

I imagined I looked a little feral, pacing as I was, trying to track them with my other senses, being unable to make eye contact.

I moved my hand experimentally. I hit the wall.

I couldn’t point at them, then. I couldn’t hit them, based on my earlier issue.

“What do they feed you shits?” Blindside asked. “You get thrown from a bus mid-impact and you have it in you to pull this? I’m impressed.”

The dreamy blur was disappearing, the way in closing behind Nursery and Snag. The background humming and chiming was fading.

I hoped the others were retreating, finding a place in the building they could hunker down until help came.

“Listen,” Blindside said. “I don’t want trouble. I don’t want to hurt a civilian. I’m keeping to the rules. Lie down, put your hands on your head, let me take the gun. I’ll give it back when I’m done.”

“You’re going to kidnap Fume Hood. I can’t stand by and let that happen.”

“You can’t do anything about it,” Blindside said. “We’re going to borrow them, then we’ll be on our way.”

“Borrow? You’re giving her back after? Unharmed?”

“Yep. Mostly unharmed. The woman who lost her kid wants to have words with her. Shout at her, make her feel bad. She and some others paid a lot of money to make it happen. Then we drop her back off somewhere near here and drive off.”

“For that, you drive a truck into a building and traumatize a crowd?”

“Intel said we were good to hit the building there, use that as our entry point. Scaring her was part of the deal, so was fucking her over,” Blindside said. “Stirring up the crowd, it doesn’t affect us much. We live in one of the corners. For her, it keeps her from finding any success.”

“For the sake of the woman who lost her child?”

“Yeah.”

“And she’s personally going to shout at Fume Hood there?”

“Fume Hood, Bad Apple, Horse Apple, Apple Cider, whatever you want to call her. Yeah.”

I nodded slowly.

“Just lie down. Let it be. Give up the gun, stop fighting, we do our cape shit and you carry on with your day. Police are under our control, nearest capes are half an hour away. This is the way it is sometimes.”

“The files I got when I accepted this job said the woman in question died,” I said. “The pregnant lady who lost her child.”

“Really?”

I nodded, my eyes still fixed on the ground, as close to Blindside as I could get. If they moved into my field of vision, a forced movement of my eye and head would let me know.

“At Gold Morning. Her home address was one of the cities hit hard. No sign of her after the fact. Authorities investigated when the word about this attack first came up. Which leads me to think you’re lying through your teeth.”

“People visit family, go out of town for work, have stays in the hospital… I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to people who narrowly dodged being in the wrong place at that one critical time.”

“Stop,” I said. “I caught you in one lie, let’s leave it at that.”

Blindside fell silent.

I heard a scuff. My head turned-was allowed to turn- as Blindside moved around to my side. I backed away a few paces.

I heard Blindside stop moving.

“Change your stance,” Blindside said.

“My stance?”

“Your head is turned as far to the right as it can go. If I move to your right, the reflex is going to be to move your head further right. You could snap your neck. You’d probably close your eyes first, but I’d rather not risk it.”

I obliged, shifting where my shoulders were, so my left shoulder pointed at them. I was aware that it made it easier to circle behind me.

“And raise your chin a bit.”

“Why?” I asked.

I heard the sound of Blindside moving too late. I reached out to block or catch the incoming attack, and hit the wall where I couldn’t move my arm too far toward them.

Something swung at an angle that avoided my arm. I brought my forcefield up just in time for the thing to hit me on the chin. An uppercut with a blunt instrument that should have broken my jaw.

Before Blindside could recover or figure out what had happened, I went on the offense. I couldn’t hit them with my hand, I couldn’t point at them, but if I swung my hand at them, elbow jutting out-

I felt muscles seize, locking up. Blindside caught my arm, pushing me in the direction I’d already been going, and shoved me to the ground. Martial art.

The blunt instrument-I saw the tip of a metal bat- struck down toward my shin.

It rebounded off of the forcefield as the field came back. The metal sang.

“Ah fucking hah,” Blindside said. “Fuck me. You’re a cape.”

I lurched to my feet, putting some distance between myself and them.

Elbows didn’t work either.

The muscles in my arm and shoulder twitched with the lingering strain or sprain that had gone with the interruption.

I backed away until my forcefield came back up. I drew in a deep breath.

“You’re full of surprises,” Blindside said.

I undid a buckle and pulled my armored vest over my head in one smooth motion.

“That’s not very surprising though,” they said. “I can see where you’re going with this. I’ve been at this a few years. Some of the workarounds and tricks are getting old by now.”

I shifted my grip so I held the vest by the shoulder.

“The bus is back. Are they capes in disguise too?”

The bus was back? I couldn’t see without looking past Blindside, and I didn’t want to lose my bearings.

They were watching then?

Well, I imagined Blindside made it hard to watch.

I swung, using the vest as a bludgeon. My arm stopped, but the vest continued.

I felt hands against my back, gripping the back of my top. Another move, Judo or Aikido, stepping into arm’s reach, too close for the vest to hit me, trusting their power to keep my arm from hitting them, and throwing me to the ground.

I used my forcefield, and I used its strength to arrest the movement, stopping myself. A bit of my flight.

With Blindside directly behind me, I drew my gun, and I turned to the right this time, swinging out with gun in hand.

“Nope,” Blindside said. “That won’t-”

I dropped the vest, my hand going to my ear, and I fired the instant my arm stopped moving. I shot the stone wall of the community center eight times.

The volume of it was such that I only barely heard Blindside’s exclamation of pain. My ears rang- but the gun had to have been right next to the villain mercenary’s ear.

This was how I operated. Even if I was trying not to be too blatant with others watching. I was trying to consider more before I acted and took this route, moderating myself.

Shock. Shake them on a sensory level.

I stooped low to pick up the vest, then swung it as I had before. Blindside stumbled forward, much as they had before, into my reach, both forearms pressing against my back.

I’d had to moderate my aura, back at the hospital. My mood darkened even thinking about that time, much as it had darkened when I saw myself in the mirror and remembered what I had been.

It took all I had to not let that darkness affect how I handled the aura. I’d told myself, so many times, I wanted to be better. Regrets weren’t worth anything if I didn’t let them drive me to do it better in the future.

For two months my aura had been one of the only real communication tools that I had, that didn’t require rounds of blinking and interpretation, or fumbling at a special keyboard with hands that didn’t map to how my brain thought my body should move. I’d had some practice with the nuance of it.

Blindside was pressing against my back, and my aura was stronger the closer people were to me. I controlled the aura’s expression to keep it small and more concentrated.

Awe. Catch them on an emotional level.

Blindside stumbled back.

I spun around in the other direction, and bludgeoned them with the weight of my vest, using it like a flail. They bounced off of the logging truck and collapsed.

Destroy was my usual third step. I hoped I’d held back enough. I’d wanted to disable only, but it was hard to know my own strength.

“You conscious?” I asked the villain. My own voice sounded far away, distorted, hard to hear over the ringing.

I should have heard any response. I didn’t. Silence.

Blindside’s power didn’t let me check their condition, visually or otherwise.

I bent over them, fumbling, tracing their outline with the back of my hand, and finding walls even there, somehow. I found their head, medium length hair, and tried to press the back of my hand against their ear. My arm muscles seized.

I tried to use my knuckles to get into the ear, since I couldn’t use my fingertips without pointing or driving them toward Blindside, and I still hit the wall.

Blindside had been using something to communicate with others. If it was a walkie-talkie, phone, or earpiece, it wasn’t anywhere I could access it. Blindside’s power protected them.

The movement in the corner of my eye caught me off guard. The bus. The front corner was badly damaged, but it was chugging along somehow. I hadn’t heard it approaching. Where the paint had been black, it had broken away, revealing some of the bright yellow paint that it had once had, when it had been a school bus.

Jasper was waving his arm out the window, pointing. I could hear his shouts, but the words were muted.

Incoming.

The villains would have heard the shots.

I looked up, and I saw Lord of Loss at the roof’s edge. He’d turned himself into something resembling a tree. A static emplacement, less able to move, but with roots that would extend into the building and secure his position so he could leverage his full strength.

He was growing by the second, smoke billowing out and solidifying into branching points. He might just have the reach to hit us down on the street level, big as he was.

There were two entry points that weren’t windows. Two courses of action stood out to me. The first was to simply fly to a window, abandon Jasper. I’d lose my job, but I would have to trust they would leave and be safe while I did what I could to help Fume Hood.

But I had something I wanted to ask.

I motioned for them to come, to hurry.

There were two doors into the building that I knew about. The front door was no doubt seized by the mind-controlled army. The side door had been painted. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tear my way in and find out that the paint was a problem.

I didn’t want to charge in, only to find that they were securing their retreat. They’d be looking for trouble coming from either of the entrances after hearing the shots.

There might have been a third way in.

I ran toward the nose of the eighteen wheeled logging truck, and I climbed over the nose of it. It had collided with the wall, and it had done some damage.

Reaching up, I pulled at the damaged part overhead, and I leveraged the strength my forcefield provided to tear it away. I pushed at another part, widening the gap.

The bus parked so its nose was tucked into the corner between the nose of the logging truck and the wall. Jasper, Mar, and Landon climbed out of the bus.

“Are you okay?” Jasper asked.

I liked that it was the first thing he’d asked. Gilpatrick’s five pound of gun speech taken to heart. Less than five pounds of weaponry, more than fifteen pounds of protection, twenty five pounds of support and problem solving. Jasper’s first thoughts were on the latter. Those were supposed to be the priorities, the ratios.

“A bit of road rash,” I said, examining my arms. “Too much adrenaline to feel the pain.”

Shadows shifted. Lord of Loss had decided to detach from the roof, and was pulling himself together enough to start climbing down.

“Come on,” I said.

We ducked in through the gap, into a staff washroom. I couldn’t see the source of the water, but it pooled on the floor below. We passed through the door and into the hallway.

“So you’re a cape,” Mar said. He’d been the kid who’d sat behind me on the bus and made smug insinuations about my name and background.

I gave him a dark look. It looked like Landon was on his side.

“You’ve got blood on your upper lip,” Mar said. “It looks like you’ve got a mustache.”

“Fuck off, Mar,” Jasper said.

I rubbed at my upper lip with the side of my hand, looking back to make sure Lord of Loss hadn’t followed us.

I could hear the humming and the music box. Upstairs somewhere. I could hear people in the building.

“Jasper,” I said.

“What?”

“I have to ask. How much of this is setup?”

“Setup?” Mar asked, incredulous.

“I know I sound paranoid,” I said. “I know if there’s a scenario or something, it’s probably against the rules to ask or answer, but I need the honest truth here, no bullshit.”

“You sound really fucking paranoid,” Mar said. “Holy fuck, you capes are screwed up in the head.”

“Shut up, Mar,” Jasper said.

“Just answer, please,” I said, my eyes fixed on the end of the hallway, watching for the mind-controlled soldiers. “Gilpatrick set me up with a bunch of new soldiers I don’t know that he can somehow vouch for, he insisted on them, and he sent me into a situation that was liable to get messy. It doesn’t make sense unless I somehow imagine I’m being set up to fail.”

“Fuck me,” Mar said.

“It’s not really setup,” Jasper said. “Gilpatrick explained before I left.”

I nodded to myself.

“They wanted to make sure you could be trusted. They thought they’d stick you with some objective observers for three, four routine jobs, make sure you stuck to the rules, grade you, leave it at that.”

Objective. I looked at Mar.

Yeah. Right.

“And if I didn’t accept the job? If I’d told Gilpatrick I didn’t want to do this patrol?”

“He really thought you would,” Jasper said. “He told me that. He was a bit stuck, caught between superiors saying he had to make you or he couldn’t keep you on, and thinking you wouldn’t. Then you said yes.”

I frowned. One impulse. One spur-of-the-moment decision.

Cause and effect. Every time I acted on impulse, bad things happened. Some of the worst things had happened. People around me got hurt. I got hurt. Two years in the hospital.

It was so much of why I’d wanted to slow down.

“I’m pretty fucking glad you said yes,” Jasper said. “If it had been me in charge here I’m pretty sure most of us would be dead already.”

I exhaled. Deep breaths. I couldn’t fall into the mindset of dwelling on the past.

“You’re a good guy, Jasper.”

“I try,” he said.

I paused, thinking for a moment, listening to the noises elsewhere in the building.

I glanced at Landon and Mar.

“I’m a good guy too,” Mar said.

“Stay put,” I said, firm.

“You’re going alone?” Jasper asked.

“Yeah. Just find a corner of the building to hole up in. Hide, be safe.”

There was a balance to be struck. I wanted to think I’d reasoned this through, as much as I could with the time constraint, the enemy no doubt closing in on the capes. It was too risky to bring these guys with.

Going alone.

“Stay,” I said. “Be safe.”

I sprinted off, raising my forcefield for good measure.

I entered the kitchen by another door. Where I’d talked with Fume Hood.

Something exploded overhead.

I looked up.

Vapor, shards of crystal.

A moment later, there were two more small explosions, one after another, in a line.

Crystal clear, Crystalclear.

Not alone, then. I hurried in the direction indicated.

Daybreak – 1.5

I paused at one of the doors of the kitchen. I’d come in one door and there were two more. One led to a hallway with people standing stationary at the end. Another led to the main room, where everyone had been seated before this had begun.

Crystalclear hadn’t signaled me further, and I took that to mean I was supposed to pause or wait. People in the main room were moving around. I peered through a crack in the door to see if there was an opening, a break in the ranks I could use to slip through or get something done.

I saw the people Kingdom Come had controlled had settled in, most finding seats in the folding chairs that had been set up throughout the room. Some stood around the side or sat with their backs to the wall. Others stood at the windows, watching outside.

The majority of the crowd was at rest. The ones who weren’t had guns drawn. The police officers were among them.

The officer with the sad mustache was at the front of the room, face streaked with blood. He was talking, and I couldn’t see who he was talking to.

I listened to the conversation, two people talking against a faint background of a chorus of hums and music box sounds.

“You want me to negotiate with terrorists,” a woman said.

“We want you to do what is best for your community,” the police officer said, in a very different voice than he’d used earlier.

“By playing along?”

“This started with civilians, it involves cape on cape violence,” the officer said. “If you cooperate, we’ll pay for damage done, we’ll extend our protection over your community in a way that keeps capes out of sight and mostly out of mind.”

“A protection racket?”

“Not a racket. No money or expectations. We’ll take the woman and we’ll tell you what to do in order to smooth things over.”

“I don’t understand why. What does this serve? Fume Hood was upfront about her history. She wanted to serve her time in this way.”

“If we tell you why, will you cooperate?”

“I can’t promise that,” the woman said. I was assuming she was the District Rep. Why had she left the others?

“The City is like a pressure cooker. The pressure is mounting and has been for a while. Things inside are heating up and winter is fast approaching. A number of great thinkers seem to think we need to vent the-”

“Vent the pressure?” the District Rep asked.

“Yes,” the police officer said. “The-”

There was an explosion overhead. Another of Crystalclear’s shots. Two more, leading from one corner of the room and away.

I looked at the crowd, and I saw the person closest to me staring at me.

Kingdom Come knew, he’d seen.

“We’ll continue this conversation shortly. You’ve got a cape with a gun inside the building.”

I backed away. Crystalclear created more explosions close to the other door. The people who had been standing guard at the end of the hallway, probably.

I retreated, ducking behind a counter.

They entered the room simultaneously, doors banging against the wall.

I ducked down, staying behind cover.

“You’re the one who fought Blindside?” the one at the door asked. The police officer.

I remained silent.

“I don’t want to shed any blood that isn’t mine,” he said. He was moving deeper into the room. I heard the door squeak, peeked, and saw the corner of it. It had been opened and was being held open. Another person?

“Alright,” he said.

One of the issues of being a parahuman was that there wasn’t a history to build on or a peerage to draw from. We had powers, yes. Some of those powers were similar to the powers others had, but there were almost always tricks and caveats, strengths one person had that another didn’t. I couldn’t copy Alexandria’s old tactics and style because my invincibility worked differently. Timing was so much more important to me.

I could be shot, if my timing was wrong, or if their timing was especially right.

A person like Jasper could take classes in martial arts and get lessons on the range, and he could use tools and draw on the experience of millions of others who had bodies that worked like his did, a set of capabilities that were virtually identical to his own.

There was only one Victoria Dallon with Victoria Dallon’s powers. I had to lean heavily on my own experience. In exercising my abilities, there was a point beyond which I was the only person that could teach myself – nobody resembled me closely enough to be an instructor in how to fight, how to process, or how to or pass on their experience.

But my own experience was a drawback if I was caught in the moment, where I had to rely on instinct but that instinct pointed me right back to my old ways.

These people were innocent. The officer, the others at the door. Maybe some had been protesters. Kingdom Come had no issue in using them, but I couldn’t hurt his pawns.

He could have moved them as a group, but he didn’t. He moved like a chessmaster played chess. One person taking a new position, pausing, checking the area, then another person moving. The police officer in charge -chief or sheriff, I wasn’t sure- had stopped in the center of the room. Others were moving around the perimeter.

I caught a glimpse of one by the gun he was holding, and moved around the corner. They all moved the same way when they moved, pistols held up, gripped in two hands that were dotted in drops of drying blood, pointed at the ceiling. I saw the gun before I saw the rest of him.

The lullaby continued, faint and distant. It wasn’t enough to obscure any scuffle I made. I didn’t want to make noise, and whatever the movies showed, it was hard to crawl around while wearing boots and be sure to not make any sound.

I didn’t like flying. I wasn’t confident in it like I had been. Two years had passed in the hospital, and my sense of flight had been as disturbed as the movement of my arm or my attempts at vocalization. It was supposed to be back, but it was a muscle I hadn’t exercised.

I wanted to fly, but it was tainted.

I raised myself off the ground, still hunched over, staying low enough that the counters would block me from sight, and used flight as much as light pushes on the sides of the cabinet to propel myself away from the advancing gunman.

I had other training to draw on that wasn’t self-taught. There was what I’d learned and absorbed from time with family, but that whole experience was so full of pitfalls I barely wanted to touch on it.

The Wards. I hadn’t been with them for long. I’d absorbed some things from Dean, because I lived the cape stuff and Dean was willing to teach it. I’d studied up and I’d taken the tests. I knew the numbers and the labels. I knew the approach formations for squads. Simple, making conflict with parahumans as textbook as possible, black ink on white paper, sans serif.

In fighting that perpetual battle of trying to think things through and still act in time, the classifications were a nice shortcut. Apply the label, assume what worked against most people of one classification, and if it clearly didn’t, it was still a starting point.

He was edging closer.

Kingdom Come was a breaker and a master. He had a toggled state that changed the rules as they pertained to him. Shake, blow up, and he was now a horde of people controlled by the bodily fluids on them. Masters were second highest priority as targets, breakers were targets that required timing, often hitting them when they were in the state that they were weakest.

Kingdom Come made that complicated by not giving me a body to target.

They were closing in. They’d crossed the length of the room and if I had to guess, four of them were standing within fifteen feet of me, guns held high, where it would be that much harder for me to lunge for the weapon. He didn’t have perfect coordination of their movements, I had to assume, unless they were all doing the same thing, like when the crowd had turned their heads.

The old me would have dealt with this by blitzing them. Hit each hard, fast, before they had a chance to react. Some minor harm would have come to innocents, but the situation would be resolved.

The current me waited, staying silent, letting them get close. One to my left, one in the middle avenue of the kitchen, between the two rows of counter-islands, and one on the far right, furthest from me.

As I set my boot down on the floor, ready to move, Crystalclear volunteered his help. An explosion at the ceiling, a few feet behind the guy to my left.

He spun around, looking, and I took advantage, leaping over the counter, reaching for the gun he held aloft. I seized it and his hands, and pulled both to the ground, where the counters kept us out of sight of the other two.

They started to approach at a run, each around one end of the counter, so they’d catch me on both sides, and Crystalclear offered another blast between me and them. It took out the light fixture above, and cast the corner of the room into shadow, illuminated by periodic sparks.

It gave me a moment’s pause to think. I ignored the man I’d brought to the ground, as I held his hands and the gun. I didn’t even need my strength- only leverage and my body weight.

I couldn’t do anything to him that would put him down for good without risking hurting the real person. I couldn’t do anything to Kingdom Come, as much as the rule for dealing with masters said I should. He didn’t have a material body.

I used a burst of strength and tore the gun from the one man’s hands, sliding it along the floor so it went under one of the appliances. I’d gone high to go after the first one, so I went low as I went after the officer to my left, throwing myself around the counter, using a bit of flight to help keep up my speed as I went around the corner.

I tackled him to the ground, holding him as we went down to keep the impact from being too hard. I’d managed to get one hand around his wrist, and as he pulled his other hand away, gripping the gun, I seized that wrist too.

That left one in the middle of the room, one unarmed and on the ground and no doubt climbing to his feet, and one coming around the corner, gun ready.

I flew, sliding the police officer along the floor. I twisted to hit the cabinet with my shoulder as we reached the end of the row. That would bruise tomorrow. I flew again, to move another direction, keeping away from the rest.

As we stopped, the officer had enough in the way of bearings to drop the gun. He drew his knee toward his chest, and then kicked the gun so it would slide on the kitchen floor.

Someone stepped through the doorway, stooping low and catching the gun in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if they hadn’t had a greater awareness.

No, as much as he was a master in execution, he was also a breaker. I had to be sensible. It didn’t make sense to fight a breaker like this when he was in his breaker state.

I pushed the police chief away, and then, reorienting, I flew straight up, through the ceiling. I felt my forcefield go down, bracing myself in case I brushed up against any wiring.

Second floor. I checked my surroundings. None of Kingdom Come’s people. The lullaby music was louder. The drones would arrive soon. I moved, hurrying down the hall.

I found the stairwell. I stepped into it, glancing down. No sign of an approach.

I peeled some of the metal away from the railing, stepped back into the hallway, and leveraged my strength to twist the metal around the door handle, to seal it shut. I knew there could be other stairwells, but at least this way I’d hear them if they tried coming this way.

Covering my back.

Priorities. Blindside was as classic a stranger as I’d ever dealt with. Out of action or out of consideration for now.

Lord of Loss was a brute. Textbook answer when faced with a brute was to ignore them as much as they allowed you to. It would take too much effort and it would take too much time when dealing with someone who couldn’t be decisively dealt with.

I could remember studying the PRT paperwork with Dean, doing the quizzes. He’d said the rule for brutes had an unofficial second part. That as much as you might try to put them off, they had a way of making you deal with them.

What had I said in response to that? I was a brute on paper.

Had that been the study session we’d had in my room? Dean would have been leaning against a pile of pillows at the head of my bed, Lyo-Leo on his lap, while Dean pretended to have him read the answers. I’d been sitting at the foot of the bed, papers and books strewn between us. Real homework and superhero stuff.

The door had been left open, at my dad’s insistence. One foot tucked under me, I’d snuck my one foot across the bed until I could touch Dean’s knee, trace my toe along his leg. Seeing if I could break his focus enough to make him mess up while reading aloud.

No, wait, that had been a few days after Dean had reminded me of the brute rule. I’d been studying it with more interest because Dean was turning eighteen before long, and we were worried he’d get moved to another city, even with his family situation being what it was. I’d seriously been considering joining the Wards and then the Protectorate, so I could follow him.

But I’d told my stuffed lion that he needed to remind Dean that brutes like me had a way of making you deal with them. They could only be ignored for so long.

Normally clever Dean had been at a loss for words. He’d grabbed my toe and squeezed it. I’d wiggled it in his hand. We’d been familiar enough with each other that the silence that followed didn’t feel bad. Awkward in a good way, even.

He’d, after a long pause, found the clever thing to say, but he’d stumbled his way through it. It would be my pleasure. Pause. To deal with you.

It hadn’t been long after that that we’d had our first night together. It had taken two days of desperate attempts at coordinating schedules and patrols, for me to get out without family wanting to join me, for Dean to avoid the ‘sidekick’ situation and go out in costume without a Protectorate member joining him.

My heart hurt, thinking of Dean. My knight in shining armor.

Still, I smiled as I remembered some of the emails we’d exchanged, my hands resting on the metal I’d used to lock the door. Dean, ever the gentleman, had wanted to negotiate and check everything, from my comfort levels about X, Y, and Z to how my personal forcefield would factor into our time together.

I’d laughed at that, which had been the tip-off for Amy to realize something was up. She’d-

And I’d gone and done it. Let my guard down, tripped over the stumbling block, stepped on the emotional landmine. There was only the hurt, now, none of the mixed, warm feeling that came from thinking about Dean.

I pushed it all out of mind. It wasn’t the time for that anyway. I was prone to getting lost in thought, even though it sometimes felt like every path led to the same, regrettable destination.

Dry, deliberate classifications. Moving forward. Deep breaths, when my chest hurt enough that breathing was hard. Back to numbers and labels. Lord of Loss and Kingdom Come had to be ignored, but I could trust that Lord of Loss would come into the picture somewhere along the line. We still had to get out of here or deal with him.

Nursery was close enough for me to hear the hums and chimes. Shaker, clearly. Not dissimilar to Labyrinth from back in Brockton Bay. The rule for dealing with shakers was to avoid fighting them on their own turf.

Snag was changer or tinker, possibly striker. Those arms. He had something mover going on with how he’d gone after the bus Jasper was driving.

Still, there might be another in play.

I ventured down the hallway, still feeling that ache in my chest, feeling acutely aware of my own body, the way clothes constrained me, reaffirmed me, yet every reaffirmation was a reminder that I needed that small reminder in the first place, and why.

My hand brushed against the wall as I walked. The closer to the north end of the building I got, the more of the lullaby I could hear. Multiple sources formed the humming, soft around the edges, each slightly out of sync with the others in a way that suggested they all came from different places.

I felt the texture of the wall change. Smoother. I felt and saw the difference in texture and color, respectively. Gray and dusty rose shades, as if seen through a filter. The wall had become a painted surface that felt as if it had been painted over many times, some droplets having run down the wall and set in place, ridges elsewhere where similar bumps had been painted over and become a faint rise.

I could hear her now. Nursery. A human’s hum, joined by all the others. She was close.

Peering around the corner of the T-shaped junction, I didn’t see her, but I saw the change. Her turf, as it was. Dusty rose carpet, picture frames with simple things like animals and boats in grays, blacks, and pale pinks. A crib, white, covered with a quilt.

I stayed at the edges of it, going further down the hall rather than turning the corner and venturing into her realm. Only the wall to my right was affected. A baby carriage draped in a blanket was parked beside a small bookshelf that had been stacked with children’s books and building blocks. The cloth stuck as if it had been taped down or the sheer amount of time it had been there had nearly fused it to the fabric of the carriage, producing a tearing sound reminiscent of Velcro. The carriage was empty, except for a vague oblong stain on the seat’s back and the seat itself.

When I left it behind, though, I could tell that there was humming coming from that vicinity, one of the soft, vague hums in the grander chorus.

Fuck me.

Every five or ten feet, there were more. A car seat removed from the car, handle up, blanket over it. Another crib, a much-used blanket tangled in the mobile, a child’s wagon. Toys, clocks, wall decorations, cardboard boxes stuffed of baby clothes, marked for ages zero to three. A rocking horse and more.

I was forced to venture further into it to get closer to the true sound’s source.

I saw her. Nursery was a woman with an ankle-length dress, a shawl over her shoulders. She clutched the shawl and rocked from side to side, speaking the inarticulate sounds rather than humming.

Beside her was Snag. He was heavyset. Two hundred and fifty pounds, at least, possibly three hundred pounds, and he wasn’t quite six feet tall. That mass was made even bulkier by his coat, which was fastened closed, draping down to his ankles, where his boots were. The sleeves had been modified to be longer, fitting the arms, which reached to the floor.

It was my first chance at seeing his face, though. He had long black hair and a thick beard, both in the loose heavy-metal take. His mask looked like he’d taken handfuls of black clay and layered it over the skin his hair and beard didn’t cover. The mask created a kind of neanderthal brow with a permanent glare built into it; the circles under his eyes were so dark it was hard to tell exactly where the eyeholes of the black clay mask started. It might have been thick rubber, melted to be in the crude shape needed, the texture left unrefined.

Nursery barely flinched as the door opened. Fume Hood stuck her head and arm out, and she fired three projectiles. One hit the slash of white paint that separated Nursery’s realm from the door, exploding into a cloud of gas. Two hit near where Nursery and Snag were, going to pieces instead of exploding or producing gas.

The gas from the first shot expanded to fill the space between Nursery’s pocket world and the door at the end of the hall.

“Speed it up,” Snag said.

Nursery turned his way. She wore a cloth mask with holes cut out for the eyes. The cloth had a floral print and was bound close to her neck with a series of chokers. She continued to mumble and hum, but she’d stopped rocking in place.

“Come on now,” Snag growled. “We’re expecting trouble.”

The humming stopped. The music box chimes that seemed to be plucking and pealing from the light fixtures and behind the walls grew noticeably quieter.

“Every time I have to stop to respond to you, Snag, it slows us down. Be a good boy and be patient, trust us. We’re making progress, even if you can’t see it.”

“If we get caught between the new player and Bad Apple’s team-”

Nursery let go of her shawl to reach out, placing her hand flat on Snag’s face, covering eyes, nose and mouth. He pulled back, and I ducked back behind the corner, so he wouldn’t catch a glimpse of me.

“Hush,” she said. “We’re safe even if that happens. This is my sanctuary.”

“I will bite you if you touch my face again.”

“You’re not as scary as you pretend to be, Snag. I know scary. You’re just a man that’s dressing up,” Nursery said. She sounded gentle, calm even after being threatened.

“Try me.”

“Please, hush,” she said. “Let me do my work.”

“If you take any longer, I’m going to push for plan B.”

Nursery resumed humming.

No more feedback from Crystalclear. The group at the end of the hall weren’t doing much of anything.

More to the point, I was rather concerned that the area of the building I was in didn’t entirely map to the layout of the building that I’d seen from the outside. There was just a little too much room to either side of Nursery and Snag.

“Tell me the details,” Snag said, his voice growl-like even when he wasn’t threatening Nursery. He’d walked a distance away from her and toward me.

A pause, long. Snag picked up a child’s plush and threw it down the hall, bowling over a stack of thin hardcover books.

“Well, it’s taking plenty of time. So is Nursery,” he said. “What’s Kingdom’s status?”

Another pause.

“At this stage I’d settle for plan B,” he said. “I’d pay for the property damage.”

Pause.

“They’re trying to buy time and it’s working. Tell Blindside to hurry up.”

Blindside.

I stood with my back to the wall, listening in. Crystalclear hadn’t communicated, but I wasn’t sure he could. Fume Hood and Tempera weren’t doing much but holding the fort and delaying.

Nursery continued humming, but she piqued the last hum with an inquisitive note.

“Blindside faked being out. Should arrive soon. We’ve got some details on our mystery guest. Dressed like one of the troopers I stashed in the room back there. Untouchable but still wary of being hit. Emotion control.”

The humming stopped.

I expected Snag to complain. He didn’t.

I chanced a look around the corner.

Nursery had turned around. She faced me. Snag was gone.

I stepped out of cover, one hand on my gun, glancing around to see where Snag had disappeared to.

I wasn’t supposed to fight a shaker in her domain. But here she was, standing with her hands clasped in front of her, defenseless. She was also the only thing standing between me and the room where Fume Hood was.

“Let me through,” I said.

“No,” she said.

I pushed out my aura, as hard as I could manage.

She didn’t flinch. It didn’t reach her.

That was what this was. Her sanctuary was a protection from shaker effects. She overrode everything by transplanting this screwed up baby decor into the area.

I wondered if I could hit her. I looked around for Snag and didn’t see him.

“Wake up,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“Wake up, sweetie.”

The crib, a little red wagon with blankets heaped over it, and a carriage nearby jumped, rattling as if something had moved within.

I heard wet sounds. Throughout the hazy altered space, the meaty squelching started to overtake the background hums.

I stopped in my tracks.

Things moved beneath the blankets. She still hadn’t budged.

I turned around and ran.

Fuck this.

I got away as fast as my legs would take me. I hit the wall at the end of the hallway and stopped myself with my hands rather than slow down with my legs. I turned right and headed away, past more cribs, more strollers, baby seats and bouncy chairs, all draped in their blankets of varying types and quality. Some tipped over from the violence of the agitation.

Yeah, no, whatever it was she was doing, I wasn’t going to mess with it.

There had to be other ways.

I escaped the area of Nursery’s shaker effect, stepping back into ordinary community center hallway. I was in the opposite corner of the second floor from where I’d started.

Looking out the window, I could see the shadows cast by Lord of Loss’ branches. Was it worth chancing flying outside, then flying into the room where Fume Hood was, when Lord of Loss could try hitting me or grabbing me?

There was another stairwell at the end of the hall- one I hadn’t sealed.

The door opposite it had something hanging on it. A gauntlet with clawed fingertips, the ‘arm’ something electronic. The claw’s tips were embedded in the wood of doorframe and door both.

“Hello?” I called out. I glanced back to make sure Nursery and Snag hadn’t followed me.

“Don’t touch the door!” was the rushed response.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Patrol from the high school, community center staff,” the voice from the other side said. “Don’t touch the door. There’s a bomb!”

“I see it,” I said.

“They said they’d disable it when they left. You said to stay safe, so we cooperated and let them lock us in.”

“That’s- that’s good,” I said. My heart was still pounding from Nursery’s thing. I was pretty sure Blindside wasn’t around, because my senses weren’t being affected. “We’ll get this figured out.”

I wasn’t sure how. They had a shaker power to override Tempera and Fume Hood. Potentially Crystalclear and Longscratch as well, depending. They had Lord of Loss sequestering the outside and they had Nursery taking over the inside.

In the same moment I turned my thoughts to Snag and his disappearance, two mechanical arms stabbed out of the nearest wall as if the wall was paper. One hand caught me around the neck. The other across the face. I was slammed into the window, hard enough to shatter it and take out my forcefield. Glass tinkled onto my head, into my hair, and all around me.

Before I could get my bearings, he hauled me into the wall. My head cracked into the drywall and I felt it break with the impact. His hand gripped my mouth and the length of his long forearm caught me around the throat.

I put my hands on his arms, and I felt the whir as machinery kicked into life.

As someone with the ability to control emotions, I was supposed to be harder to read and affect. It was why I’d deflected Crystalclear earlier.

It was why Dean and I had gotten along. Even why we’d been possible.

Maybe that resistance came into play. Maybe it turned Snag’s power from an emotional uppercut to a mere slap. Negative emotions poured into me like liquid from a syringe.

But a slap on an open wound could be enough to bring someone to their knees. The walls came tumbling down, the memories flooding in, and my last coherent, present thought was that I hoped I wouldn’t maim or kill anyone in the meantime.

Daybreak – 1.6

Snag’s power hurt, and it hurt in a way that had nothing to do with shedding blood or breaking bones. Emotion. My body still reacted, my heart rate picking up, breathing choked, adrenaline churning, hormones shifting. My thoughts were scattered, thrusting me into a state where I could either only reel or I could grope for a position in familiar ground.

I didn’t want familiar.

Reeling meant trying not to think, letting it wash over me and through me, and not letting my thoughts go where the feelings pointed. It meant I still had a metal gauntlet on my face and a metal arm pulled against my throat, and I was handling the situation with instinct. Fight or flight.

Fight-

No. I only barely stopped myself. I’d kill him if I fought.

Fly then.

I pushed out with my aura, hard. The flip side of my observation moments ago was true. I was supposed to be resistant to hits to my emotions because I could deliver those hits myself. Snag would be resistant to my aura for similar reasons.

He still let go, arms slipping back through the wall. I had a moment where I thought about grabbing one of his wrists as it passed me, and I hesitated a moment too long.

I backed away, staggering until I bumped into the window next to the broken one. My chest hurt as if I’d had my heart ripped out, and thoughts of Dean flickered through my head. It was a continuation of my thoughts from earlier, one sample in a long, long series of thoughts I hadn’t let myself finish over the past few months and years that the surge of emotion was now filling in and pushing to the surface.

It was loss, if I had to put a name to it. Nothing to do with the man on the roof.

It was me in the hospital, with Auntie Sarah and Crystal, not knowing what to say because Uncle Neil and Eric had just died. Crystal had been hurt too, and the place had been so busy and crowded that we’d gathered in the small curtained enclosure where her hospital bed was. My mom had been gone, trying to get news on my dad’s situation, and my sister-

It was going from that, the horrible feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, to hearing the curtain move. I’d known it wasn’t my mom – she’d left only a minute ago. It was as if someone had taken a want, desire, even a need equal to what I’d experienced in my childhood and early teens, when I’d wanted to be a hero, when I’d written letters to Santa and wished it during every birthday candle extinguishing and for every shooting star I’d seen from when I was four to when I was fourteen, if someone had gathered all of that feeling and compressed it into a single, concentrated moment of wanting it to be Dean coming into the enclosure to give me a hug. And then not getting what I wanted.

The PRT staff member had come in to let me know Gallant had wanted to see me while there was still time. Dean had.

Heart ripped out of my chest, just like that, just like this feeling here. Losses, losses, fucking losses. That ambiguous fucking word they’d used when they’d delivered the mass report. Not deaths, not the ‘downs’ that were injured just enough they were out of the fight, just losses because they’d needed to be brief with the list of names so long. Dean’s name had been on that list.

Where? It had taken me three tries to get the word out. They’d told me where, but I hadn’t traveled a straight line to get there. I’d zig-zagged, from doctor to nurse to PRT staff. I’d asked people who had no cause or reason to know, tried describing her. Asking, asking. Pleading.

Where was she? Had they seen her? Where was the last place anyone saw her? I need-

Where? I shook my head, trying to rattle my brain and get centered in the present. Where was Snag? He’d disappeared into the next room. I stepped forward, feeling unwieldy, and thrust my hand at the door, taking it off of the hinges, damaging the door’s frame. Empty room. Nowhere to be found.

My hand shook from the emotion, extended out in front of me. I clenched it into a fist.

She’d been nowhere to be found too.

I’d arrived alone, no help to offer. Too late to say anything or hear anything from him. I’d choked on my words when it came to saying something to his parents. There’d been this feeling like I couldn’t react the way I’d wanted and needed to, because his parents were there and they were somehow maintaining their composure. Upset, yes, but they were wealthy and dignified enough they would do their crying in private. They had weathered their losses years before and it had been the same then, according to Dean. Now it was on Dean’s behalf.

What options did that leave me? Break down into hysterical sobbing and act like I was hurting more than his own family was? It might have been dismissed as the drama of a teenager and I hadn’t wanted that to be the final note on Dean and me, in their eyes, in the eyes of bystanders.

Like I imagined anyone in a relationship did, I’d wondered if we were in love, and then I’d known we were in love, and I’d grown close enough to him to wonder if he was a soulmate, dismissed the term just as easily as it had come up because it was silly and it didn’t matter either way, did it? I’d received my answer on the question as I’d felt a part of me die during those long minutes of me trying and failing to say something to his family.

From that to home. Southwest end of the city, our house mostly untouched by the attack. To dad being ‘impaired’, mom’s word, and mom being business as usual, emphasis on business, because that was how she dealt.

To… a family member acting like they’d been replaced by a fucking pod person from another planet, gradually realizing that replacement had been a long time ago, and it was only now in context and crisis that I’d seen the alien-ness clearly, in the then-present and in retrospect.

Painful, in its own way, to have nobody to turn to. The hurt had been there like a block of ice, melting too slowly when I hadn’t had any warmth to reach out for, not any less cold as the water pooled. Not any less for the time that passed. Just… more ambient.

This was like that. Snag’s emotional effect was temporary. The pain ebbed out, made my fingers feel numb and tingly, made it hard to breathe, and made me feel more physically weak and less coordinated than I should have been.

I stumbled a few steps, and reached out to touch the wall for support as I resumed moving, entering the room Snag had been in when he’d punched his arms through the wall. It was reminiscent of a hotel room, but rustic enough it could have been a bed and breakfast. Two small beds, a bedside table, a desk, and a flatscreen television sitting on a dresser.

He had a mover classification, I was pretty sure. He’d used a trick to jump after the bus. I made sure to look up, to avoid any ambush in case he jumped at me from the space between the top of the door and the ceiling.

The room was empty.

“Snag?” I asked.

No response.

My emotions were jumping around as I bucked the worst of the effect. I wanted to have him to talk to, to pull me out of the mire of past feelings and into the present. It made for a wild, disturbed kind of familiarity, almost a longing, as distorted emotions tried to find reconciliation with my head. It ended up parsing him as if he was an old friend I was trying to reconnect with. The same kind of weird emotional fixations that made Stockholm syndrome a thing. Cult leaders and abusers used it.

When you had nothing, you groped for anything, even if it was the person who’d brought you to that point.

I’d reached out back then, too. I’d turned to the Wards, because my mom had been the only person doing anything to keep New Wave in motion, the team had been falling apart, and I’d needed something. Because the tests and briefings made me feel closer to Dean, reminded me of the study sessions. Because the first time I saw her after the Endbringer attack, Vista had hugged me, because Dean, and it meant something to me that there was someone else properly upset for him.

“Guys,” I said, loud enough to be heard in the next room.

“Victoria? Are you okay?” the voice was muffled.

I opened my mouth to respond. My failure to form words reminded me of talking to Dean’s parents again.

I stopped myself, trying to focus and put myself in the present. I took a deep breath that shook a little on the way in and the way out.

“Step back from the wall,” I said.

“Don’t,” was the immediate response. “Don’t touch the bomb.”

“I’m not touching the bomb,” I said. “Get away from the door and the wall to the right of the door.”

Snag had felt secure enough to stick his arms through the wall and not jar the bomb too badly.

I’d take his cue.

I put my arm through the wall, felt my forcefield go down. I heard the exclamations. Once I was sure I was good to move, I dragged it to one side, tearing a hole, felt one of the studs, moved it to the other side, and felt another. About two feet of clearance between the studs.

I saw the faces on the other side. Worried. Angry.

The window shattered. Snag reached through, seizing me by the throat. He swung by one arm outside the building, dragging his other arm through the windows and slats, shattering them with explosive force, as he drove me toward the wall opposite the hole I’d just made.

I still had my forcefield up. He hadn’t grabbed me that hard. Flight and forcefield together helped to stop me in my tracks. Floorboards shattered under me, and a window beside me broke as the force was transferred out.

Seizing his arm, I swung it like a bat, hurling him into the room. I maintained my grip on him as I did it.

He touched the ground with one foot, then changed trajectory. Dust fell from the ceiling as he landed on it, upside-down, his arm still extended my way.

I felt the machinery hum with activity, and tore the hand away, pushing it away from my throat and face. The emotion effect grazed me, minor, but I hadn’t recovered from the last hit.

A small kind of loss, this. The hit didn’t do what the first had, rounding out a memory. It did buzz through other memories. Ones that were more minor, that I’d never put to rest.

Being in the bus stop with my mom. Weird, because it had once been a happy memory. She’d been stitching up a cut on my forehead while I suppressed my forcefield. The rain had been pouring, streaking the graffiti-covered walls of the bus stop. A moment for just my mom and me. She’d paused midway through the first aid to tell me that she was proud of me. We’d got the guy we were after. Then we had talked about how I’d have to change my hair for a short while to hide the stitches. One of my first times officially out in costume.

It was a memory I kept going back to. One I’d brought up several times in the hospital. Bittersweet somehow, and it had become more bitter and less sweet over time.

It bothered me, brought me down just a bit, because it was something unresolved that had weighed on me, because I was already down a ways.

“Stop,” I said. I didn’t sound like myself.

His hands freed, he reached back to his boot with one gauntlet.

He threw a trio of fat shurikens at me. My forcefield blocked them, saw them bounce off, one landing on the bed, two falling to the floor beside me.

I kicked the bed to bring the more solid bedframe to where I could grab it, and rammed the end of the bed at the corner where he was. The shurikens detonated behind me, and on the bed in front of me. Something that wasn’t fire or anything of the sort. Something jumped between them, like electricity but not. Where it touched me, my heart jumped, my mind stumbled, and feelings welled.

All of the doubts, fears, and hesitations inside me magnified, multiplied. It paralyzed me for the moment.

This, at least, was something I’d been trying to get a handle on. Here, my resistance applied.

He’d dropped down to the ground before the bed struck him, landing on both feet, arms spread out, hands planted on the ground. He sprung back using his mover power, landing with one hand and one boot near the ceiling and another hand and boot beneath and on the window as he clung to the wall.

With the damage I’d done to the bed already by using it as a weapon, the swipe I used to get it out of my way destroyed it, only the mattress surviving. I still had to pick my way past a slat.

He seemed surprised that I was already moving. After pausing momentarily in shock, he used the moment of me navigating the wreckage of the bed to spring off to the right, down the hallway.

I passed through the doorway, pursuing, and my head turned against my will. I heard glass break, saw Snag vault through the window he’d broken.

He was nimble, for a guy that big, but it seemed his mover power was responsible for most of it, his mechanical arms only helping with the legwork. He was strong in many respects for what I was gathering was a multi-trigger. Robust tinkerings, what felt like a full-fledged emotion affecting ability, a decent mover power.

My attention was more on the other two further down the hallway. Blindside, I assumed, and a hint of the pink and grey coloring to the carpet that might have been Nursery.

Blindside’s bat tinked against a solid surface as they loitered there.

“Damn it, Snag,” Blindside muttered. “Running off and leaving us with this?”

“He’s a character,” Nursery said.

“You’re a character,” Blindside said.

I could hear wet slurping sounds and I couldn’t see what was making them because Blindside was standing close to Nursery.

“Stop this,” I said. “It doesn’t end anyplace good.”

I didn’t hear the response, because Snag reached up through the floorboards, seized my leg, and hauled me halfway through the floor. I might have gone further, but I braced myself with flight and forcefield.

It left me kneeling with one leg, the other stuck straight out and down through the floor, my hands on the ground in front of me.

I heard Blindside’s running approach.

Bat in hand, probably. I pushed out with my aura, hoping to give them a reason to think twice, buy myself a second.

Lurching to my feet, I brought Snag’s arm up above the ground. I reached down to grab his hand, and then kicked nearer to the elbow.

The mechanical arm broke off. With a bat of my own, I shifted my grip to the wrist rather than the now-limp hand, and held my weapon out, waving the broken end of the arm in Blindside’s general direction.

No blood. I’d broken it off far enough down. That was good.

I was breathing hard, my heart was racing, and old wounds felt fresh again, but I was finding some equilibrium again. I-

The arm I was holding self-destructed, or the emotional battery within it did. It stayed in one piece and it dashed me to pieces.

Again, the ripped-out heart feeling. Again, the heavy sense of despair. Deeper-seated now, because I hadn’t recovered entirely from either of the other two hits, the big one and the graze.

I saw double, more than double.

Months and years of seeing double. One eye on the computer screen beside me, watching the time, looking for chat notifications. One eye on the television. One eye on the door.

Twenty past two. Fifteen minutes late. I counted the minutes. Twenty one past two.

Twenty two past two. The sound from the television was almost abrasive, made to be attention-getting.

I wanted to say something, protest, and I didn’t have a voice. The computer was in arm’s reach, but it was a herculean effort to get a message out.

The door opening and the wrong person being on the other side. Just like with Dean. It wasn’t the staff member who came on weekdays at two-oh-five when I had visitors. It was someone else, with a face I knew, a name I didn’t, and a gentle voice that was telling me that another patient was throwing a tantrum and the facility was on lockdown, they had contacted my visitors.

My visitors, my family, had decided that because they didn’t know how long the lockdown would be, they would come another day. It was a long trip.

I reached for the laptop, started to type out my message for the text-to-speech speaker, using keys that were oversized and spaced out, with screwholes in the middle of each key for knobs and joysticks to be screwed in for when other patients had their turn. It was supposed to double as physical therapy for me, coordinating myself, making the effort to reach and reposition.

The staff member had apologized, then turned to go notify other patients, closing the door behind her. I’d tried to vocalize and of course I’d failed. It was too long and byzantine a way from lung to mouth.

The message had been left unfinished on my screen, only a few words of what I’d wanted to say. Even completed, the statement wouldn’t have meant anything to the staff member, and they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. All I’d wanted to express was that my family had missed the last two visiting days as well.

My eye had found the clock on the laptop, noted the ‘F’. Friday.

One eye on the clock, watching the minutes. One eye on the television. One eye on the F, counting the days to Monday. One eye for the email icon on the computer screen, waiting for the apology email that would come. When it did, I would check the time, comparing it to other apology emails, to try and figure out if they were getting further apart, less. To see if they would stop entirely, a prelude to the visits ceasing altogether, because it was easier to forget me than to do otherwise.

Something inside of me had broken at that. I’d known it would cost me privileges. Maybe even visits. I’d known it would hamper or hurt other patients and staff across the hospital. Ones who didn’t deserve it.

But I had nothing else.

I’d pushed out with my aura, as hard as I could, as far as I could.

I pushed out with my aura, as hard as I could, as far as I could.

Things had been happening while I was elsewhere. The building shook. The villains were gone.

“Victoria!”

Jasper.

He was with others. I barely recognized them. The heroes in particular took me a second. The kid who looked a little bit flamboyant, hair gelled back, wearing what was almost a crop top, a beast’s upper face with fangs pointing down at his chest, the lower jaw and fangs on the belt, with diagonal slashes worked into either side of both parts of the icon, painted on his abs in a faint color that might have been missed in dimmer light. Tempera with more of the white paint on her, a bit of blood. Fume Hood was using one hand to press a bandage to her shoulder. Crystalclear was missing more than a few chunks from his head. One of his eyes was exposed now, peering from between one chunk that grew from the bridge of his nose and one that grew from his temple, very blue.

They looked frightened of me.

That was what my aura did, really. Another of those contextual emotional things, like the Stockholm syndrome. Awe and admiration if they liked me, fear if they didn’t.

Just fear, here.

“S-stop.”

Not my voice this time. Jasper’s.

I stopped.

I trembled as I made myself get back to my feet. I wiped my cheeks where they were wet. My hair was a mess from being thrown around. I used numb fingers to pry at it, undoing the tie.

“Christ,” Mar said.

For the first time, Jasper didn’t shut him up.

The building shook. Daylight reached parts of the indoors it wasn’t supposed to. This would be their plan B. Property damage indeed. Lord of Loss was tearing off the roof.

“We need to go,” Tempera said.

I nodded. I looked back for the hole I’d made. I saw the teenagers in uniform in the trashed room. They’d opened the hole the rest of the way and filed out. Now they stood as far away from me as the room’s boundaries allowed.

They would have seen me throw the bed.

“Yeah,” I said. My voice sounded hollow.

The partial uniform I wore, still without the vest that I’d left outside, dusty blood-spotted, it didn’t fit me anymore. I felt choked by it, because I knew I’d just lost my job.

I led the way down the stairs. I stumbled in one place where a trace of Nursery’s effect made the stair a different shape, carpeted when it shouldn’t have been. Flight helped keep me from sprawling.

“You’re Glory Girl,” Landon said.

I’m not, I thought.

“People said you died when the Slaughterhouse Nine attacked Brockton Bay back in twenty-eleven.”

“Landon,” Jasper said. One word.

The people who had been gathered inside were evacuating. Kingdom Come wasn’t making it easy, either. As they reached a safe distance, near where people had been protesting, they were gathering in offset rows, so we would have to move diagonally or zig-zag through their ranks to get past them. A fence.

It was hard to tell what the villains were doing when Blindside was part of the group and they were already distant, but I could turn my head and see a bit of them out of the corner of one eye. They were backing up, moving away without actually fleeing the scene. Nursery was creating her effect.

The kids I’d brought with me were backing away, putting themselves a distance away from us.

I looked up for the branches overhead and I didn’t see them.

“Watch out for Lord of Loss,” Tempera said, following my line of sight.

Where was he?

“He’s up there,” Crystalclear said. “He’s changing. Centaur?”

“That’s his combat form,” I said. I still didn’t sound like myself. “One of them. It’s mobile.”

“I’ll keep the others busy,” Longscratch said. He swiped one of the weapons he held, the buckler with the three swords mounted on the back, and three deep furrows appeared on the ground, stretching out beneath the feet of the crowd.

“Wait,” Tempera said.

Longscratch flickered, appearing momentarily at two of the points on the far side of the crowd where the furrows ended, before finalizing at the third.

“Help him,” she told Crystalclear, touching his shoulder, leaving white fingerprints. “Fume Hood, stay close. They’re still targeting you.”

Tempera moved her hand, and deposited what looked like fifty gallons of the white paint with black edges on the street. We spread out as it appeared. She moved her fingers, and it spread out.

“Tempe!” Crystalclear shouted. He extended one hand out to the side, pointing.

The paint moved, a tidal wave, leaving a streak where it went.

I chased it.

Lord of Loss leaped from the rooftop. Ten feet tall, a centaur in vague shape only. His lower body looked more rhino-like, though the legs were longer, and he was plated in those same straps that looked like twists of smoke frozen in place, or wispy bands of metal that peeled away from him at the end. He carried a heavy shield on one side, cut in a way that let its bottom left edge rest against the shoulder of his foreleg when he held it tilted forward, and he carried a heavy lance in the other hand.

His face was a helmet, the slits for the eyes and lower face were closed up, so the face was only a series of ridges where bands met and poked out, Y-shaped. His hair was a mane of bands left to flow like smoke.

He landed in the streak of Tempera’s paint, and he lost traction, falling to one side.

The paint rose up and over him, then solidified. He shattered it, lurched to his feet. The paint liquified and rose up and over his legs, and he shattered it again.

Was it more easily than he’d shattered it the first time?

Actions he repeated were supposed to be stronger.

To give Tempera a hand, I threw myself forward at Lord of Loss. Flight, forcefield up. He twisted around and raised the shield, blocking me. I still hit him hard enough to cost him footing. Paint covered him, hardened.

He broke the paint, swung his lance around, hitting me with the broad side.

Forcefield down, impact dampened but not entirely broken. I hit the ground and it hurt.

He broke through the paint yet again, found his feet, hit me again, this time while my feet were planted on the ground. My forcefield came back up just in time to be broken again.

Yeah, that hit had been harder.

Fume Hood shot him, hit him in the face. The paint crawled up to his upper body and joints, hardened there, trying to limit his movement, and he broke it again.

He laughed. Then he hit me again. I deflected the hit, swatting at his lance with one hand.

He was advancing, pressing closer to Fume Hood, and as much as I retreated, as much as I was sure Fume Hood was backing up, he had longer legs.

When he hit me yet again, pavement cracked beneath me, around my feet, the forcefield pushing the impact out and around me. I almost lost my step backing away, with the cracked ground.

Each hit stronger than the last by a significant margin.

This was the point I was supposed to throw my hands up and surrender, or get out of the way. If he decided to hit me more frequently, or if he lurched forward and kicked me with one of those feet of his after swatting me with his lance-

Crystalclear had turned around, was using his blasts on Lord of Loss now.

Loss, losses, losses, losses.

I threw myself forward, flying, seizing him by one leg, twisting, trying to knock him over.

I got him off balance, and then he hit me. Only a moment of me holding onto him kept me from getting smacked into the ground with no forcefield. I fell to the ground and scrambled out of the way of his legs.

I waited until my forcefield was back, then threw myself at him, bowling him over. I tore at strips, peeling away at him.

In the background, Kingdom Come had abandoned his control over the crowd. They woke as if from a deep sleep, and they seemed surprised by what was happening around them. They fled. Away from the brutes fighting, away from the chaos and the damaged building.

He elbowed me. It took him long enough to rise to his feet again that I was able to get in front of him again.

I could do this.

I needed to do this.

It-

It wasn’t my day to get what I wanted. I barely registered the sound. A crack, coinciding with the noise of the crowd. Lord of Loss went still.

My back had been turned, so I hadn’t been in a position to see it.

One bullet, from somewhere nearby. Fume Hood on the ground, Tempera beside her.

It wasn’t my day to get what I wanted.

I’d frozen. A lot of people had.

“Go to her,” Lord of Loss said. “Help. I’ll let you go if you let us go.”

Numb, I nodded.

“Let people know it wasn’t us. This wasn’t our plan,” he said, behind me.

I flew as much as I walked, and dropped to my knees at Fume Hood’s side. I put my forcefield up, tried to position myself where I could be a wall for her.

“Put your hands here,” Tempera told me.

I did, pressing down on the stomach wound. Blood pooled out, covering the backs of my hands.

The crowd had gone still. There was a murmuring, and people were drawing closer to watch and to see.

Reminiscent of Vikare.

In the background, Longscratch and Crystalclear had already apprehended the suspect. A protester that had been in a building nearby. Hunting rifle. The villains were leaving.

“Not-” Fume Hood grunted.

“Not?” I asked.

“Not a good day,” she muttered, through gasps.

“No,” I agreed. Very much agreed.

Landon had come closer, and was helping by getting the first aid kit out. Tempera took the components.

“Not a good day for any of us,” Tempera said, giving the crowd a glance.

Daybreak – 1.7

The sun was just starting to set when the police were wrapping up with us. They’d had to arrive first, of course, the ones who had been on the scene were compromised, victims as much as anything.

Nobody Kingdom Come had affected remembered much of anything. It was as though they’d fallen asleep – they remembered losing awareness, some reported briefly coming to in the middle of things as the building had shook or they had been knocked around, and they hadn’t really processed or understood much of those glimmers.

A few had reported me as a recurring image.

There was some concern that Kingdom Come might have absconded with someone or that not everyone that had been in the crowd was accounted for, but from what I could tell, it had been an all or nothing thing. People remembered coming to, many of them dangerously close to a superhero fight in progress, but the recollections were hazy.

I sat on the sidewalk near the front door of the community center, aware that it was very late in the day. The sky was orange-yellow now, with darkness on the eastern horizon. The thickest parts of the clouds overhead were cast in shadow, zig-zags of darkness through the amber.

The heat of the day was subsiding, helped by the cloud cover. Dust and sweat had left my arms mottled with grime and tracks where sweat had wiped it away. I’d washed my hands after helping Fume Hood, and I’d realized I hadn’t gotten all of Tempera’s paint and the blood on the backs of my hands. I was painfully conscious of the sweat, grime and blood, yet I couldn’t bring myself to go wash up because that would require attention to it.

Paradoxical, I was well aware.

I turned my attention back to the kids. Making sure they were okay. At some point where I had been lost in thought, Gilpatrick had showed up. I watched until he glanced my way. He raised a hand, and I raised mine. Then he turned his attention back to the teenagers. As it should be.

I’d figured I would be working late. I’d just thought it would be paperwork and talking to the students. I’d really liked that part. It was fascinating stuff when it wasn’t so close to home.

I could relax some, seeing Gilpatrick. Not because it meant great things, but because it meant I didn’t have to think about finding Gil after, getting the details, putting off hearing the news or delivering the essential details.

I put my hands behind me where I wouldn’t see the blood or the places where the paint had settled into the cracks, oil-black, and I leaned back, eyes closed, trying to focus on the voices and the sounds, on the breezy wind and the ambient warmth.

“I’m sorry,” Gilpatrick said. He’d approached me.

I kept my eyes closed. I said, “Are the students okay? The others?”

“They’re fine. Some have parents here, I’ve got a bus coming for the others. Psychologically, emotionally, I don’t know. It was scary and it was hard to know what was happening. The staff of the community center are obviously upset about the building, but that’s not on us.”

I opened my eyes.

Gilpatrick wasn’t wearing his vest. A sleeveless undershirt tucked into black pants, a sweatshirt slung over one shoulder. Bald, bushy eyebrows, hairy, hairy arms.

“Jasper filled me in on most of it,” he said. “He’s reliable when it counts, it seems.”

“He’s a good guy,” I agreed. “There’s a reason I wanted him with me.”

“I get it now, I think.”

“If you want this project to be a positive thing, at least at our school, you’ll want more Jaspers. You wanted a verdict on the kids you sent with me? I wouldn’t put them in leadership roles. Not if there are going to be capes on scene. What I heard and saw wasn’t very positive, and if there were any who disagreed, they didn’t feel confident enough to say it out loud.”

Gilpatrick ran his hand over the skin of his head, not giving me a response.

My arms were tired from propping myself up. I leaned forward instead.

“Alright. Thanks. Not good to hear, but I appreciate it,” he said. “I’ll take that under serious advisement.”

“They follow orders, at least.”

“I was really hoping to have more hands to help out,” he said. “Really unfortunate.”

Some parents were joining students who were talking to the police. I watched them. Parent and child side by side, parents concerned as they listened, getting the details at the same time the officers were.

“I am sorry this happened,” Gilpatrick said. “I meant it when I said it. I mean it now.”

“I gave my point-by-point retelling of events to the police,” I said. I stared at my hands. “Including the part where I was hit by a few emotion-affecting attacks. It’ll take some of the responsibility off your shoulders, if anyone asks.”

“It’s not that important,” he said. “Well, it’s important, obviously, thank you, but I don’t want to dwell on that. If people make an issue out of it, I’ll handle it. I knew what I was doing when I brought you on board. That’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

“I stuck around,” I said. “To be something like a guardian for the students who were acting as witnesses, making sure they weren’t pressed too hard or made uncomfortable. I stopped when I realized being there was making some things harder, because they didn’t like being around me, or that it looked like I was trying to protect myself by inserting myself into things and influencing their testimony.”

“Yeah,” Gilpatrick said.

“I backed off, Jasper and Landon took my cues, I think.”

“That’s good.”

I thought that’d be the time he followed the thread of the conversation and got around to saying what he needed to say. He didn’t.

There was a break in the convo. More cars were pulling into spaces along either side of the ‘square’ of grass, sidewalk, and fountain in front of the community center. Some more parents.

“Did they mention Fume Hood?” I asked.

“Only that she was taken to the hospital and all signs were good when she left. Tempera was staying close to her. Something to do with paint?”

No news then. “Tempera stopped the worst of the blood loss. She poured paint in the wound, shaped it, and solidified it. We might have lost Fume Hood in another way, though. We might not keep her as a hero after this.”

“Did she say that?”

“There was a brief twilight between when the pain meds kicked in and when the meds knocked her out,” I said. I moved my fingers, felt how unlike skin the backs of my hands felt, stiff with the stuff I hadn’t managed to wash off. I’d rushed, because I’d wanted to get back to keeping an eye on the students from the patrol group.

“Are you going to finish that thought?” Gilpatrick asked, his voice soft.

I closed my eyes. “Um. We chatted. She said she was staying with a family member already, so she’d have someone to look after her if she needed it.”

Thinking about family pulled my thoughts in a few different directions. I could have tried picking a safer one, but I wasn’t sure I was that on the ball, being as tired and discouraged as I was.

I went on, “Her brother cut ties with her when she went villain. She was living in that area where all the building foundations were screwed up because they were rushed, and everyone had to leave the homes they’d just settled in, reached out to her brother, and she’s been staying with him, reconnecting. It might give me some hope for her, having that positive influence, but she sounded pretty cynical about it all when we had the conversation right after meeting, before everything happened.”

“Cynicism is understandable, to a degree. That’s where she’s at. Where are you at, Victoria?”

“Similar to Fume Hood, really. I wasn’t evicted because of rushed apartment construction, but I’ve been staying with my dad because it means we each pay half the rent, and I want to keep my options open with things being what they are.”

“I wasn’t talking about living accommodations,” Gilpatrick said. “Your head, your heart. Are there any lingering effects from the emotion effect?”

“For the last two years,” I whispered.

“Sorry? I didn’t catch that,” he said.

“It’s gone. It really sucked while it was in effect, but it’s gone. Right now I’m in that heavyhearted, almost-blameless-but-guilty ‘morning after’ phase, where I’m reflecting on everything I did when I was under the influence,” I said.

“I know that well enough. I’ve been hit a few times by those, back when I was a squaddie and squad leader. And by you, once.”

“You asked me to,” I pointed out, looking up at Gilpatrick, “and this was a bad one. Snag? I read about a thing online, keeping tabs on who was out there. I’m pretty sure he’s part of a new multitrigger cluster. It might have been amplified by the tinkering, if it wasn’t, then something else was in play. That didn’t hit me like it was a minor or secondary power.”

“Sorry,” he said.

He wasn’t a bad guy. I wanted to be angry but I couldn’t justify it.

“I’m sorry it happened like this,” he said. “It wasn’t supposed to be anything like this. I thought it’d get a bit nasty with the civilian protesters but I didn’t think it’d be anything like this. Not the capes, not the gunshot at the end.”

I hadn’t either.

“Jasper said you guessed why I sent those students with you.”

“Yeah,” I said. I climbed to my feet.

“I’m especially sorry for that,” he said. “If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have ever tested you like that. It wasn’t wholly up to me.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Everyone,” he said. “No-one. It’s complicated. Wardens and the hero teams are being pressured to be mindful of who is out there, touching base, and they reached out to some of the other patrol groups with concerns. They wanted to coordinate, so teenagers wouldn’t be out interviewing or exposing themselves to anyone dangerous. School got to talking, and they got into CYA mode.”

“Cover your ass,” I said.

“They wanted to be able to say that they’d made a reasonable effort to check that the parahumans the students were exposed to were reasonable and safe, in case anything happened down the line. I could have kept quiet about you, but…”

He trailed off.

“I wouldn’t have asked you to,” I said.

“…I didn’t get the impression you wanted me to, either. You weren’t being secretive. I don’t want to operate that way, either.”

“No. I wouldn’t want you to,” I said.

“You know I can’t keep you on the staff,” he said.

I nodded.

There it was.

Fuck.

I hadn’t been super attached to the job, but… fuck.

“Using power on kids, the contention about possible conflict of interest, undue influence, danger. I think things will stay at that, I don’t think it’ll follow you.”

I nodded.

“There’s a dim chance of a student claiming emotional distress because of your aura and pursuing things in court, I’ve already talked to one officer to get them on board and we’ll get something in writing. I’ll vouch for you and for the events as Jasper described them, one hundred percent, if you end up needing someone to stand for you. None of this was you.”

“Courts are a million years behind as it stands, and getting further behind every day we don’t have an established system of government,” I said. “By the time things get that far it’ll be forgotten.”

“That is a factor,” Gilpatrick said.

I wasn’t worried about that side of things. I was hurt, but I wasn’t worried.

“Do you need a hand getting things cleared out of the office?” he asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t want to think about that.

“Can-” I started. I cleared my throat. “Can I get back to you on that? I’ve- I guess I’ve got a family thing I should go to.”

“For sure,” he said. “Anytime outside of usual school or work hours.”

I might have flinched in a way that he saw, hearing that. I knew why he’d said it, but it still sucked to hear.

I started to walk away.

“Victoria,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Any favor you need, reference letter, intel, if you need Jasper or some other trustworthy faces in uniform to lend a hand with something…”

“Thank you,” I said, my voice lighter and more cheerful than I felt. “I’ll be in touch.”

I took off.

⊙

There was something very human about the desire to gather around a fire. Power rationing meant every household had only a certain amount, more if there were more people in the house. Conversely, there was a lot of cheap firewood. Streetlights flickered on, and many house lights went off. In back yards there were three other families on the city block that were gathering around fire pits. Two of the families were playing different kinds of music, but it wasn’t too discordant. There were trees in each yard, front and back, and that helped to dampen the sound.

The entire street smelled like burning charcoal, and the light from the streetlights was just a little bit hazy with the ambient smoke.

It was a nice neighborhood, even if it had what I felt was the artificial quality. Houses with character, sufficiently different from one another in style and architecture, but still so new that they looked more like movie sets than lived-in places. Time and clutter would wear at those crisp edges. Paint and attention would turn fences of new wood with the occasional edge still frayed from the saw’s touch into something more personal.

This was the flip side to the hostility and the street-wide gap between protester and community center. Boyfriend and girlfriend sat on an outdoor love seat together, arms around each other, bathed in fire’s warmth. Friends sat and talked, beers in hand. Kids in another yard played with their dog.

With the path I’d taken, I reached the backyard first. The driveway was wider than it was long, crushed gravel, with room for multiple vehicles, and a fence stretched from the house at one corner to the garage at the other. My mom had invited neighbors, so it was a thing, even if things had reached a more relaxed point.

My dad sat on one of the lawn chairs, fire pit in front of him with the fire having burned down to just glowing coals. The barbecue was to his right, lid open, tiny bits of meat clinging to the grill.

He was forty-two but looked younger. The fact that he was as fit as he was played into it- only the white in his beard stubble really gave it away. His hair, too, was short. He was the only one who hadn’t put a sweatshirt or jacket on, owing to the proximity of the two heat sources- he was wearing a t-shirt that was form-fitting in a way that showed off his muscles. Pretty darn gross, given he was a dad, my dad, and he was supposed to dress his age. I would have insisted on clothes that hid any sign of muscle at all, really, had I been given a say.

He looked relaxed though. As relaxed as I’d seen him in a while, really, and I’d seen him passed out on the couch back at the apartment.

I was aware that my mom had seated herself so that two neighbors sat between her and my dad. Where my dad had dressed in a t-shirt and sports pants for the occasion, she had dressed up. Just a bit of lipstick, her hair short and styled, a ruffly sort of white blouse and pencil skirt. She’d kicked off her shoes earlier in the evening, leaving them beneath her chair.

I was aware of the distinction in how they’d dressed, too. In another time, before everything, there would have been more… connection, I supposed. Each influencing the other, until they matched more.

She was smiling. She folded one knee over the other, then a moment later was undoing the position, both feet on the porch again as she leaned forward, laughing at something someone had said.

I smiled.

The lights were on inside the house, too. The door was open, and people were scattered through the space between the stairs down to the porch, the back hallway, and the kitchen on the other side of the hallway. The room to the left of the hallway was dark. The neighbors kids, I presumed, teens to twenty-somethings. I saw a glimpse of Crystal stepping into the unlit room, tried to catch her eye with a raised hand as she looked toward the window, and failed.

I did get the attention of someone sitting next to my mom, though. She touched my mom’s arm and pointed.

I remained where I was, arms folded on the top of the wooden-slat fence, chin on my hands, while my mom approached.

“You’re hurt,” she said, touching my arm, where the road rash was.

“Scuffed up.”

“Did you get the other guy?” she asked. She reached out and touched my hair, fixing it by moving strands to one side.

“No,” I said. “But there were five of them.”

“Do you want to talk about it? I’m interested.”

“Not really,” I said. “Today-”

My breath caught.

“-Kind of not a good day,” I said.

I saw her expression change, even though the light source was behind her.

“What?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you didn’t save me the dessert you promised. Looking forward to that is pretty much the only thing keeping me going right now.”

She smiled, touching my cheek, before kissing me on the forehead. “I saved you dessert with extras to take home, in case you want pie or pastries for breakfast tomorrow.”

“You’ve done your duty then,” I said, with mock seriousness.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve failed a mission,” she said, in the same tone. She put her hand on the side of my head. “You missed Uncle Mike, I’m afraid.”

“Oh shoot,” I said. “I barely remember him. How is he?”

“He’s Uncle Mike. He brought his wife and your cousins, and I haven’t child-proofed at all. It was… something, in the brief time he was here. A whirlwind of chaos and emotion, and then he was gone.”

“Ah, too bad,” I said.

In the background, my dad was trying to get my attention. He’d sat up, and didn’t look relaxed anymore. He offered me a small smile. I acknowledged him by lifting one hand up from where it sat on my elbow, in a mini-wave.

“Thank you for coming,” my mom said. “I know the family stuff is hard, after everything, but it means so much to me. To everyone.”

“I’m here for the desserts,” I said. I amended it to, “…and a bit for family.”

My mom lightly rapped me on the side of the head before stepping away. “Come on in, then. Meet people, I’ll get your pie.”

As she stepped over to the gate by the garage to unlock it, Crystal stepped out into the backyard, joined by a few others in our age group. She glanced in my direction, saw me, and froze like a deer in the headlights.

Her arms folded, defensive, like something was wrong.

She mouthed words at me, and I couldn’t see her face well enough at a distance to know what the words were, but I could draw conclusions from context.

My dad’s posture, still sitting upright now, both feet planted on the ground.

My mom’s earlier change in expression. Even the wording-

I backed away from the fence a few steps. My mom froze, the gate only slightly open.

“You invited her,” I said. I wasn’t talking about Crystal.

In reaction to that, my mother didn’t look confused, she didn’t negate. She looked toward the house, to see what I’d seen that had clued me in.

Whirlwind of fucking chaos and emotion indeed.

“You invited her,” I said, again. More emotional this time. “She’s in the house?”

My mother rallied, composing herself. Now she looked confused. “I told you I invited everyone.”

“She’s actually in the house,” I said.

I backed away again, and my mother threw the gate open, taking several steps on the driveway, stepping on crushed gravel with bare feet.

I raised my hand, indicating for her to stop. She continued forward.

I threw my aura out, one push.

My mother stopped. Crystal stopped in her tracks, already at the fence. People rose from their seats.

“I thought you knew,” she said. “I very clearly said everyone. It was supposed to be a family reunion with everyone getting together again for the first time in… in a really long time.”

“You’re a lawyer,” I said. “You’re too clever with wording to be that fucking stupid.”

“Please,” she said, with a tone like she was the one who needed to exercise patience and restraint here. “Let’s keep things civil.”

I couldn’t even look at her. I trembled as my eyes dropped to the ground.

“I’ve made mistakes, as your sister has,” my mother said. “She’s been doing so well. I want to make up for past wrongs and be a mother to both of you, like I should have been from the beginning.”

I looked up, staring at her.

The lipstick, the composed outfit, the words, the everything about this all seemed so false now, so forced. I didn’t even recognize her.

“You’re kind of fucking it up,” I said, in the kind of whisper that was the only tone I could manage that wasn’t outright screaming at her. My hands were clenched at their sides.

“That’s not fair.”

“You’re kind of really fucking it up,” I said, in the same strangled whisper.

“Victoria-”

“You’re fucking it up, mother,” I said. “You’re fucking- you’re fucking- did dad play along with this?”

“I told him everyone was coming. You, your sister, Crystal, Uncle Mike. He was surprised, but… pleasantly surprised.”

Dad too, then. There was that heart-wrenched-out feeling again. I screwed my eyes shut, inadvertently squeezing out tears. I was aware her neighbors were seeing.

“Don’t- don’t get emotional, Victoria,” my mom said. “Please, I didn’t do this to hurt you. The furthest thing from it.”

“You fucked that up too,” I whispered.

“Stop saying that. Please,” my mother said. “It’s the age of second chances, she’s worked very hard to get to this point. I’ve talked to people who worked with her and she’s getting back into her routine in a good way. I want all of us to have a second shot at this, and do it right this time.”

I shook my head.

“Leaving things as unresolved as they are is doing more harm than good. To both you and to her.”

“So you thought you’d invite me to dinner and surprise me with her, and you thought there was nothing I could say or do because people are here?”

“You’re putting thoughts and conspiracy in my head,” she said. “I want you to be sisters again. I want us to be a family again.”

“That’s not for you to decide,” I said. “Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit.”

“Please, don’t wind yourself up. You’re getting out of breath. Let’s communicate. Please.”

I was getting out of breath. I gulped in a breath of air. “You’re aware I can’t set foot in that house again, right? I’ll see her looming in the shadows, potentially another surprise invite.”

“I want you to find reconciliation, so you wouldn’t feel upset even if she did appear by surprise.”

“I can’t accept any invites from you,” I said. My face started to contort, and I forced it back into something more normal before I lost the ability to see my mother or focus on her altogether. “I can’t grab dessert from you or do anything with you again because she might be there, surprise. I can’t trust you. How can I trust you again?”

“I’m sorry you feel that way. I did not realize that was where things stood. You’ve been doing so well, and she’s been doing well.”

“How-” I started. I gulped in another breath of air. My voice was a whisper again when I managed to speak again. “How do you not realize when you saw me at the hospital? How do you even think rec- how do you think this is ever possible? How does-”

I closed my eyes. More tears.

“How does Dad? How could you see me then, how could you- how- how-”

My chest hurt.

“Crystal-” I said, I looked toward the house.

Crystal was still on the porch. Standing guard by the back door, red shield up. She watched me talking with my mom over one shoulder.

“I told Crystal the same thing I told your father. She was skeptical but she agreed it was for the best.”

I didn’t trust my mom’s version of events on that. Crystal at least had my back in this moment.

I tried to find words, and I didn’t have the oxygen.

“Catch your breath. We can talk this out.”

I worked at it, swallowing air.

“I’ll wait,” she said.

The sound of her voice made it harder, not easier.

When I spoke, my voice was very small. It gained more strength as I went.

“How can you have not been there, missed visits, or come to the visit and spend more time talking to doctors than to me because it was hard to be around me? How can you have come to see me then, and have had to avert your eyes mid-conversation with me, and found that hard, and not realize that I had to live it for two years, and had that be a million times harder for me?”

“I know it was hard, honey. I get it, I really do. But you can’t dwell in the past. It’s not good for you. You can’t carry that.”

“You say that, when you still sleep with the lights on,” I said.

It was her turn to not have words.

“That’s different,” she said, finally. She didn’t say how it was different.

I stared at her.

“I want all of us to conquer our demons,” she said. “I think you want that too.”

I continued to stare.

Finally, I said, “I want that too.”

“We can talk this out. We can find things we all want,” she said. “We can make inroads on this.”

She looked nearly as upset as I felt, even as composed as she was.

But in the end, and I’d known this from very early on, seeing her with- with her, she wasn’t a whole and complete person. She tried, she put on a good face, but my mother had been broken long, long ago, and with the way she’d put herself together, she retained only sufficient compassion, understanding, and empathy for a very small number of people. For one daughter, at most.

Second chances. Second go-around, and I wasn’t that daughter, this time.

“In the interest of putting my demons to rest,” I said. “I’m going to keep my distance. Don’t call, because I can’t trust a thing you say. I’ll figure out what I’ll do about Dad later.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Nothing gets better if you close off communication.”

There were things I wanted to say to that.

It wasn’t worth it.

I turned to go.

I heard the gravel under her feet as she gave chase, and I pushed out with my aura, hard.

“Do not use your power on me, Victoria Dallon. That has never been okay, and it doesn’t work anyway.”

I drew in a deep breath. There were things I wanted to say to that, too.

I settled for, “Let me go. If you follow me, I’m liable to hit you with something harder than my aura. I’m pretty sure that would work.”

It might have been a good line, if I hadn’t been choking back emotion as I said it.

I walked away. I didn’t trust myself to fly when I couldn’t see straight. Having a panic attack in the air made for an embarrassing moment.

People stood in rows at the fences that bounded their yards, staring and watching. I wiped away my tears once, then resolved not to shed more, not where people could see. I set my jaw.

In the background, I could hear my father’s raised voice.

Breathe. Center yourself. Move forward. Plan.

I thought about what I’d need to do next. I couldn’t go back to the apartment I shared with my dad.

For the time being, I only walked, out in the general direction of the water. Streetlights lit up in advance of imminent cars and as I stepped onto the streets, turning off otherwise. Here and there they would turn on for wildlife, illuminating a lost deer or raccoon mid-scurry down the road. We’d set ourselves up so abruptly that the animals were still confused.

It was getting cooler. I wore my skirt, my clothes from earlier. My forcefield shielded against the wind, which kept it from lowering the temperature even further, but it didn’t do a lot to shield me from the ambient heat or lack thereof.

I tensed as I heard running footsteps behind me. I stopped in my tracks.

Not Crystal. She would have flown, and she would have set down well in front of me. She wouldn’t have chased, maybe.

Her, then.

I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to speak to her.

I pushed out with my aura, instead.

Another footstep, closer.

Our mother’s daughter.

I threw my arm back and to the side, a backhand swipe. I tore through lawn, through slabs of sidewalk, and the edge of the road. Dirt flew across the street alongside clumps of grass and chunks of sidewalk.

A long pause, and then I heard the footsteps again, running. This time the other way.

⊙

Gilpatrick jumped as I appeared in the doorway of his office, nearly knocking over a paper container of noodles in red sauce that rested on a stack of paper. Paperwork I would have been helping him with, had the day gone differently.

“Victoria? What’s wrong?” he asked.

So it was that obvious something was wrong.

“I need to call in a favor,” I said.

Okay, hearing my voice, I could get why he’d known. I sounded like another person entirely.

“If it’s okay,” I said.

“Of course it’s okay,” he said. “What’s wrong? Are you cold? The temperature dropped steeply tonight. What can I get you? Sit.”

He stood, circling around his desk. I backed away a little as he did, which was his cue to stop.

I wasn’t sure how to respond, how to ask.

“By the way,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no need to count. I consider you a friend, and I feel like a piece of shit for setting you up to fail like that.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “I just need a place to stay tonight. While I figure some things out. I’ll be gone before the students arrive first thing.”

I noted the hesitation before he responded.

“Sure,” he said.

“You paused.”

“Only because it’s not really a great place for staying overnight. You could come to my apartment, but that’s-”

“I kind of want space to think,” I said. “Offer’s appreciated.”

“There’s an issue with power rations and temperature is supposed to drop a few more degrees, and this place isn’t insulated well. It was a bitch last winter.”

“I remember,” I said.

“Of course,” Gilpatrick said.

He kept giving me very deeply concerned looks. Almost pity.

I really hated those. I’d had a lifetime’s fill and then some.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ve got a space heater right by my desk here. You’ll want to be careful if you’re leaving it running for a while, fire hazard.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said.

“There are blankets we stowed in the locker rooms that you can use if you want to sleep. You could get something serviceable if you gather a bunch. I laundered them not too long ago, too.”

“I know where to find them.”

“There are candles too, in case the power runs out. But again, fire hazard.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”

“Okay,” he said. “You sure you don’t want company? We can talk it out, if you haven’t eaten I can go grab something, or…”

I was already shaking my head.

“Sure,” he said. “I was needing an excuse to go home, this will do. Unless maybe I should stay around? You could settle in upstairs, and I’ll be all the way down here, you can have your space to think and you can still have me to talk to in case you decide you need it.”

“No,” I said. “Don’t let me keep you. Go home. You’ll have angry parents to talk to first thing tomorrow, once they’ve figured out what happened and had time to get angry.”

He frowned. “Yeah.”

“Please,” I said. “I know where everything is.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You sure you’re okay? You’re not going to…”

He trailed off.

“If I was going to do anything, I’d take someone out with me.”

He scrutinized me.

“I’m worried here, for the record,” he said.

“I’ll manage,” I said. “I’ve managed this far.”

“You have my number,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“You call if you need anything.”

“Yeah.”

“And you… be here in the morning when I show up. Which will be well before the kids do.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Okay,” he said.

He gathered up his paper container, a stack of his papers. He was trying to pick up the remainder when I approached, picking it up myself.

Silent, I walked him to his car, handing over the papers when it was time. I walked inside and locked the door behind me. The place was big and it was dark, with the open gymnasium space unlit.

I carted the space heater upstairs, and then I got the blankets. I got the candles and the matches, and then I found the file boxes, collapsed and gathered in piles.

I situated myself in my office, which wasn’t technically my office anymore, and I set to making the boxes, pulling my things off the shelves, and getting them stowed away.

The space heater hummed and the computer monitor clicked, as I periodically checked something or followed up on something I’d seen on a file.

I made a stack of the things I wanted to read, the files that intrigued or that I’d forgotten about, the magazines I liked. I was a third of the way through my shelves, twelve boxes filled, when I finally settled down in my chair, pulling blankets over me, and started to read.

I got about two pages read before deciding I didn’t have it in me to read more.

I didn’t have it in me to sit still, when my anxieties were churning.

I stood, dropping blankets on the floor, and walked over to the window. With the cold, the space heater, and the imperfect seal, moisture and fog had collected on it.

I reached out toward the window, a foot away from touching it. I turned on my forcefield.

A pause.

Then a handprint on the window, in the condensation. Then another.

A circular smudge that streaked, a naked breast pressed against the glass, moving.

Then the mark that couldn’t be anything but one half of a face, beneath the circular smudge.

They moved, and I wasn’t asking them to move. The window rattled a bit as it was pushed against. The prints smudged.

A fingernail dragged against the glass, and produced a high pitched squeal, almost ear-splitting.

I dropped the forcefield. I sank back into my seat, and it protested the landing.

Not a second trigger. I was well aware of that. When I’d first had my forcefield, it hadn’t protected my costume. I had two theories as to why.

The first theory was that I’d grown, and the boundaries that the forcefield used to define ‘me’ had changed. I’d breathe out, breathe in, gain a pound here, lose a pound there, and it would adjust for the maximum bounds. It didn’t explain how my skirt was often protected, but I’d mused on that too, that my legs moved, my hair had been long at one point, I’d been shorter…

I’d been that, the forcefield had adjusted, and that was the new upper bound of what I was, forever with me.

It felt thin, as theories went.

The second theory was that it was the Manton effect, that broad-as-bells term for the built in protections and limitations of the power. The theory was that the built-in protections of the power only protected what I saw as a part of me, and it had taken some time before the costume was that much a part of my identity.

That that was me, now, as much as the costume I wore.

I couldn’t be that. I couldn’t sit still and be crushed under the weight of that thing.

I needed to do something, and taking books off the shelves felt like it was moving backward, not forward.

I spun around in my seat, and I loaded up the webpage. Something to do. Methodically filling out details on the group I’d seen, researching, filling myself in, and letting others know what they were up against.

Something constructive to keep me occupied until the power ran out, or until I was so tired I had no choice but to sleep.

Daybreak – 1.8

Daylight streamed in at a low angle as I stepped back into my office. The light was blurred as it came through the condensation on the window, spotted with dots of darkness due to the melted frost that still clung to the window’s surface in lines and constellations of droplets. Ninety percent of my books were packed up, the boxes that were still here were stacked near the door and the bookshelf, labeled in thick marker, with shorthand notes on the most interesting and essential files within written on the boxes in pen. I’d left a few of the more interesting files available. I’d put them in a box on their own, in case I needed something to read.

My phone was plugged into the computer. I checked it, and made a small and sleepy pump of my fist as it lit up. Then I saw the red number on the digital-display dial, and let my hand drop. Missed messages: too many.

It wasn’t that I cared that much about the phone. It was that the phone being on meant there was power again. That the power was on again meant I could turn the space heater on. I flicked the switch, turned on my computer, then lit the candles for what little good heat they offered and wrapped a blanket around me before settling in my computer chair.

I was freshly showered, towel around my hair, and I’d gotten dressed in a slightly musty spare change of clothes. I had a blanket, candles, and a computer booting up. I watched as it started the struggle of fighting every other computer out there that was wanting a piece of the web.

There were worse ways to take things easy on myself.

I slid my to-do list across the desk until it was beside my keyboard. I’d need a car. Plenty of people were willing to offer the use of theirs in order to pay for fuel. Food, a place to stay.

Living accommodations might be tricky. Demand was high, and it was a pretty steep drop in quality from the central areas and the fringes. Many companies were putting up five or more houses a day or an apartment complex over the course of a week, slapping them together like there was a gun to their heads. When it came time to find renters, they were more interested in filling the spaces fast. They had no reason to answer questions or have a potential buyer investigating the nooks and crannies or checking the plumbing if they could turn that person away and have someone else on their doorstep within minutes.

It was a minefield. Word of mouth, cash, contacts, or luck were required to get a proper house that wouldn’t start falling apart after the fact. Fume Hood was one of the ones who’d been unlucky.

In more than one way.

My homepage was parahumans online, though. On top of the missed calls and messages on my phone, I had a slew on the site.

♦ Unread Private Messages from NW_Brandish (2)
♦ Unread Private Messages from Glitzglam (8)

I deleted the messages from my mother.

I opened the second link.

♦ Private Messages from Glitzglam:

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Staying the night at work. Don’t fuss about me. Tell the Dallon parental units if you think it’s necessary to keep them from going on warpath. I want to be left alone for now

Glitzglam *New Message*: i can field them
Glitzglam *New Message*: I’m *so* sorry that happened i want to explain
Glitzglam *New Message*: I arrived and then Amy did and my eyes must have bugged out of my skull but your mom said it was okay we were trying this and you knew it was a reunion and I was wtf
Glitzglam *New Message*: It didn’t sound like you but I thought ok if you thought you were down I could roll with and back you up
Glitzglam *New Message*: Then Uncle M came and oh man if a man could shit crocodiles and piss bears Uncle M would have been doing that he was so fucking pissed b/c HE wasn’t told and he knew the story from the funerals right?
Glitzglam *New Message*: and he brought his wife/kids there
Glitzglam *New Message*: I knew something was up and tried to call but no answer? & then you didn’t show so I let my guard down. I thought u knew and had cold feet and was relieved
Glitzglam *New Message*: I am so sorry. I had no part in this. I should have been smarter. I did not know really truly

I marked it as unread and minimized it. I didn’t want to think about it for the moment.

News. Inquiry into the circumstances of Lachlan Hund. Not a trial, but an inquiry, some questions by people with more official standing. He’d fallen in with some sketchy people, and there were thoughts about there being powers involved.

The inquiry was the story of the hour, it seemed. Heroes stood by to step in and take him away to get help if officials were suspicious he’d been manipulated, but it was sounding like he would go home with his new family. That sucked.

Other articles, further down the pages. Fume Hood was alive, and she was a contentious topic. The actions on the part of the shooter seemed to have split people into two factions, with the ones supporting Fume Hood slightly edging out the ones who condemned her. Strange to see.

I wanted more info on her situation, and unfortunately, that was all I got.

I added another note to my to-do list. I’d reach out to Fume Hood, check in. I’d satisfy my curiosity and nag her about the name choice, which I’d been meaning to do but hadn’t had the chance to.

My eye traveled up to the unread messages. Crystal’s responses.

It all felt like I was taking a massive backward step. Like I was back in the immediate aftermath of Gold Morning. Two legs, two arms, bewildered, emotional. I was bothered, upset. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I’d been angry at my parents then too. For various reasons. Angry at a lot of people and things.

I hadn’t and didn’t want that to define me.

I clicked on Crystal’s account name again.

Glitzglam *New Message*: I am so sorry. I had no part in this. I should have been smarter. I did not know really truly

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: S’okay.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I know how these things go.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I saw this sort of thing play out when it wasn’t aimed at me. I can read between the lines and speak Carol-ese and I picked up on what she was saying about you being skeptical about the situation
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I absolve you on the condition of one get together where we have some good eating, your treat, and you need to let me know if you hear of any good apartments or things because I am not good going back to my dads

I drummed my fingers on my desk, mused that my motivations might have to do with my being hungry.

More news articles. Some capes were taking on roles as icons and iconoclasts for the various movements in the civilian sectors. Four hero teams led the ‘icon’ groups. Advance Guard, Foresight, the Shepherds and the Attendant.

The first two were aimed at pushing forward. New approaches, doing things right this time. The opinions on what that way forward looked like it differed, feeding into the division between the two groups.

Things were changing. The Shepherds and Attendant had been groups divided along similar lines, but the Shepherds were self-combusting, and the remaining members were folding into the Attendant. There was some debate over what the name of the resulting team would be.

And then there were three, I thought.

I idly browsed, caught between liking the Shepherd’s aesthetic and icons better while liking the Attendant’s mindset of moving slowly, with caution. I was suspicious it might end up being the opposite. As it was, the Attendant’s approach tacked on a bit too much ‘remember what we lost’ for my liking, clinging to the past, being defined by it, but-

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” I said.

Gil opened the door. He had two coffees in a tray in one hand and a bag in the other, and he had to juggle them both as he opened the door.

I rose to my feet.

“Sit,” he said. He nearly dropped his drink as he saw the boxes. “Shit on me, you’re packed.”

“I’ll be done in time to be gone before the students turn up,” I said, sitting.

“I’m not so concerned about that right now,” he said. He put the bag and coffees on the desk. “How are you?”

I shrugged.

“You look better.”

I had a headache from not sleeping and not eating, and from the post-stress hangover, but I also felt lighter than air in a euphoric, fragile way. It was as if I’d just gotten over a bad round of the flu, and I was at the point where I was getting over the worst of it, but if I did the wrong thing or tested my body in the wrong way I’d be sick and hurting again.

Better.

I shrugged again. “Yeah. That word could apply.”

“Did you sleep at all?”

I snorted air out of my nose. “I’ll sleep when I’m so tired I have no other choice.”

“But you’re feeling better than you were?”

“Yeah. Better than I was. Thanks for letting me stay over,” I said.

He pulled a breakfast burger out of the paper bag, and my eyes must have lit up, because he smiled, passing it to me.

A double-decker English muffin, with bacon, two eggs, lettuce, tomato and very sharp mustard.

I wasn’t normally one to eat egg, but I didn’t let that stop me.

I’d taken too big of a bite. I swallowed hard.

It was good. Visceral. Like Snag’s power, the hit of emotion as I enjoyed it was like a bit of metal, closing an electrical connection. Rounding off a thought I hadn’t wanted to make.

Feeding tubes. The insertions, the removals. The tube being there, one eye watching the beige fluid moving through steadily. Really wanting something good. Going almost four months without, because they weren’t sure I could. Then having it be a chore. It had been better than the alternative, but a chore, to force myself to eat it right, to chew it thoroughly enough.

I swallowed hard again, not because I had another bite to swallow.

Gilpatrick was looking at my files and notes, his back to me, my English muffin sandwich in my hands.

He glanced at me, saw the blinking, and looked away. “If you want to talk, I’m all ears.”

“I don’t, thank you,” I said. “I had a bad day, the part you knew about, then it got worse. Now I’m trying to get centered.”

He nodded.

“This is really good,” I said.

“They are, I took a bite of mine in the car and then ate it before I got here,” he said. He bent over a box, looking at the notes. “Man, I wish I still had access to these files and books. I’d try bribing you if I could do it in good conscience.”

I swallowed again. “They’re mine and I’m too straightlaced to be bribed. You can call me if you want to ask about any of it.”

“Then I owe you more favors, am I right?”

“I thought we weren’t counting anymore,” I said.

He didn’t respond to that. He picked up a file, paging through it.

“Which one is that?”

“Ossuary. Why leave it out?”

“They’re back, or they will be soon,” I said. “Activist villains with a heavy focus on environment. They wouldn’t call themselves villains, I don’t think. Long list of really messy executions, longer list of leaders with very short tenures, who try to pull a very disparate group together, fail, and abdicate.”

“Were they the ones who used to call themselves Elephant Graveyard?”

“That’s the one. One of the early leaders pushed the name change along with a shift away from focusing on animals and animal welfare,” I said. “I liked Elephant Graveyard more, I think. Clunky, but clunky in a way that stands out, and it made for really good imagery, when they left a spray painted calling card.”

“I don’t want to pry,” Gilpatrick said.

“About Ossuary?”

“About you. I spent a while thinking about what to do. I’ve had some good bosses and bad bosses over the years. When you throw yourself into the fray like you do when you’re a PRT squaddie, you really need to know that the people above you are looking out for you. That your back is covered.”

“Yeah,” I said. Same applied to family, to parents.

“I don’t want to push boundaries or cross any lines, and I don’t want to ask the wrong thing. When you say you don’t want to talk, can I ask why? Any answer you gave could help me make sure I’m covering your back as you move on to better things.”

“Because I’d have to fill you in on years of background and that’s not stuff I want to relive,” I said.

“Ah.”

“Because it’s confidential, because it’s messy, because… as cool as a guy as you can be, you can’t make it better. You can’t give me the answers or guidance I need because there’s a whole ream of things that’s separate and aside from the years of my background that you’d need to get into or know and… I’m going overboard with this.”

“I do want to hear,” he said. “Anything else?”

“That’s mostly it,” I said.

He nodded. He rubbed his head for a second, thinking. “You want company?”

“Nah,” I said. “I’d just be packing the last few boxes. I wouldn’t mind a hand getting them out to the car, just to speed things up when the time comes.”

“You have a car?”

“I’ll get someone off of a listing or something. I’ve got to figure out what I’m doing, so there’s that too. I wouldn’t be good company, while I’m working through all of that.”

“You don’t have to be packed up and gone today,” he said.

“I kind of need to,” I said.

He nodded, rubbing his head again. “I’ll cover the car. I’ll pay the driver.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You know where to find me. Place is empty, so you can shout from the stairs and I’ll hear you.”

“Right,” I said.

“I’m going to head to my office. I’ve got something to do.”

I gave him a little salute.

Energized by food and coffee, still feeling lightweight, I worked on getting my boxes packed up. Along the way, I slotted my files and folders into the box I’d reserved for the most pertinent factors. The villains of the area, the heroes, and the villains turned hero. The hoods.

The day was warming up. The light from the sun was warm enough to counteract the lower temperature. By midday, if yesterday was any indication, it would be short-sleeves and shorts weather again.

A message popped up on my screen.

♦ Private Messages from Glitzglam:

Glitzglam: game plan. u situate yourself at my place until you have apartment ur happy with. u & I raid ur dads place while he at work, get ur stuff. standard attack formation, I play defense, make sure coast is clear, I support you, u take point and do what u need

I fired off my response. That worked. I had a couch to sleep on.

One thing off of my to-do list. I liked the progress. Progress was good. So long as I moved forward, I could stay aloft.

I cleared off the remainder of the bookshelves, stacking the boxes. I scribbled out my notes on the lid, checking the contents.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” I said.

Gilpatrick.

“Time for me to go?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said. “There’s a bit. I don’t want to force you out the door like that.”

“Okay,” I said. I raised an eyebrow.

“I was thinking, over the past twelve hours, if you were my student, I wouldn’t want to let you go with things like this. Normally I’d contact a guardian.”

My heart skipped a beat at that. No.

“But you said last night you had a family thing to do. I can connect dots.”

I nodded.

“I made some phone calls,” he said.

He stepped out of the doorway.

Mrs. Yamada. Shorter than me, hair tied back in a simple ponytail, wearing a skirt, white top, and jacket, with a simple, short string of pearls at her collarbone.

“Oh wow,” she said. “Look at you.”

I didn’t have words, so I just lifted my arms to either side and let them fall.

“Is this okay?” Gilpatrick asked.

“Yeah,” I said. I swallowed. “Yeah. Just about perfect.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” he said.

Jessica blinked a few times, before fanning herself. “I’m a little misty eyed. Sorry.”

I was a little misty eyed myself.

“Can I give you a hug?” she asked. When I nodded, she did so. I hugged her back.

“You put me down as your emergency contact?” she asked.

“Sorry,” I said. “I- I honestly forgot I did that. It was more than a year ago.”

I’d had to name someone, and I hadn’t named my parents because-

Because.

“It’s more than alright,” she said. “Your boss said he was worried about you.”

I opened my mouth to reply, and then the waterworks started instead.

⊙

Jessica slammed the back hatch of her car, most of the boxes settled inside.

“Do you want to walk?” she asked. “Around the block, maybe? Or we could step back inside.”

If I was going to start crying again.

Students were just now starting to appear, and I didn’t want to sit still.

“We can walk,” I said.

“It’s been amazing to hear your voice,” she said. “I know you were often frustrated, trying to communicate with the means you had available. I was frustrated too, but I wasn’t allowed to say that.”

“I could tell,” I said.

“You were a challenging patient, those first few months-”

I snorted.

“-but much like many teachers say they grow to care most about the class clowns and problem students, I came to hold you close to my heart. I wanted so badly to give you answers and to hear you out without having to rely on text to speech and letters you wrote between appointments. I wanted to dialogue, and it was so very hard to do that.”

“It was,” I said.

Why was it so much easier to talk about the things that I couldn’t normally even think about, like this?

“How did you find your way back from that?”

How did I become Victoria again, instead of the wretched thing in the hospital room, or in the home for invalids?

“My sister,” I said, my voice soft.

“Oh. That’s not an easy thing,” she said.

“No,” I said, my voice even softer.

I’d already filled her in on the details of yesterday and the past few months. She’d offered a listening ear. I’d spent all night working out my next few steps, I knew what the situation was, I didn’t really need more angles to view it from.

This, though… if I was going to make the most of the time I had with her here, then I wanted to at least get a handle on this.

“We were all brought to the battlefield during Gold Morning. There’s… that’s a hard topic to field.”

“There’s an unspoken agreement that the civilians don’t get to know,” she said.

“But you’re not really a civilian,” I said.

“No,” she said. “I’ve heard reports. Some from very close to the center of the action. I know what happened.”

“Body, mind, and heart, you know how that’s a thing?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I lost my body, two years before Gold Morning. My heart was… twisted into something unrecognizable.”

“Yes.”

“And… Gold Morning hit. And the-” I paused. There were people on the street, walking toward the school gate and the various block buildings as we walked away from it all. A tide we walked against. I had to shut up until people were mostly out of earshot. “And I was controlled in mind. I didn’t have much, but I could make my decisions. I could decide to use my power or not. She took that away from me, for a brief time.”

“I’ve talked to a number of people who had a very hard time with that.”

“You know who she was?”

“I do.”

I nodded to myself.

“Yeah,” I said. “My sister told me.”

Even if I was free to talk, the words still carried their ugly weight. The words and associated mental pictures still dragged my mood down.

“She knew me or knew of me, or she knew my sister. She decided in the end that she’d put my sister right next to me. She didn’t do that for many people at all, as far as I can tell.”

“And your sister healed you?”

“Gave me a body again. Um. She made me seventeen again. Walked back the clock, as if it… I don’t know. So she didn’t take two years of my life from me in body, like she did in everything else. I’m physically nineteen now, apparently.”

“You said body, mind and spirit. She fixed one of the three. Did she undo the effect on your emotions?”

I drew in a breath, sighed heavily. I nodded. “She actually- she turned off my emotions. Suppressed them. Then she asked me what I wanted.”

“What did you want?”

“I remember thinking, you know, it was really possible she wanted me to say that I wanted to go back to liking her. And if she did think that, then it was unconscionable. Divorced from all emotion, I thought it was unconscionable.”

“Okay.”

“And divorced from all emotion, I thought I’d be fair. That I’d give her the benefit of a doubt. That I’d assume that wasn’t what she meant or wanted. I told her I wanted to remember.”

“To remember?”

“Those two years,” I said, my voice hollow. I drew in another deep breath.

Further down the street, a nine or ten year old boy with straight black hair and brown skin looked at Jessica, his eyes widening, then he looked at me. He raised his hand, extending it toward Jessica as they passed one another.

She gave him a high five, then pushed his head, sending him on his way, toward the school.

“They weren’t good years.”

“Rationally? Divorced from emotion? I knew. I can’t forgive her. Ever. I can’t forget what she did, or she might do it again. To someone else. To me. I told her to fix my feelings and leave my brain alone otherwise.”

“It’s a heavy weight to carry,” she said.

“Those two years are really damn heavy,” I said. “Everything else is. But I’ve been holding on to that moment. I hate that I hold onto it, because she did it, but everything is tainted by her, so what can I do?”

“You hold onto it? How?”

“Being emotionless, putting those feelings away. My feelings and impulses got me into that whole mess in the first place. I hurt an awful lot of awful people, you know.”

“We’ve talked about that. You wrote letters outlining your thoughts and how you wanted to apologize to some of those affected.”

“My entire life leading up to that basketball game, I wanted so horribly badly to be a hero, you know? It felt like I thought about it every ten minutes. My parents were heroes, my cousin was, my aunt and uncle were, and everything revolved around it. I wanted it all so badly it hurt, and I didn’t have it for years. Then that basketball game, and I wanted to have something where I was the hero, where I got to stand out. Because sometimes it felt like my parents didn’t see me.”

“That’s been a recurring idea. You talked about their missed visits.”

“They came a lot,” I said. “I know that. My dad more than my mom. But every missed visit was a horrible thing, and the little things mattered so much when I had nothing else. Um. And this basketball game, I know I’ve talked about this before. But this one girl kicked my freaking ass. In my face, knocking me over, intercepting every pass, blocking every shot. She didn’t have any powers or anything, she was just… good. Better.”

“A lot of things came into focus in that moment.”

“Every time she or one of her teammates beat me, I could see the look of disappointment on my parent’s faces. In the other moments, they looked so bored. And it was boring, you know. No parent wants to go sit through amateurs doing badly at a high school sport.”

“Some do.”

“Anyway, she hit me hard, she said something about me being overrated, and it was the last straw. Realizing I stood so far from family, that I didn’t want to be there, but I had no other choice, my sternum was hurting where she’d driven her elbow into me. I got my powers.”

“Years of wanting, leading up to that.”

She’d caught the thread I’d wanted to lay out. It helped. “And then just under three years as Victoria-slash-Glory-Girl. And then… hospital.”

“Which was undeniably horrible.”

“It felt like my life had ended. No hope or help. All I had to cling to were those memories of the three years I was Glory Girl. I could look back, think about every fight, every encounter. The ones I was proud of. The ones I wasn’t. I had so much regret, replaying events out in my head. It started with me thinking about- that moment when it all went so wrong. When she messed with my emotions, then going backward.”

Emotions caught me. I made my expression a scowl, because I was worried what my face might do otherwise.

“I was such a stupid fucking kid,” I said.

“That’s allowed,” she said.

I shook my head. “Not when you’re as strong as I am.”

“And you want to be emotionless? I don’t know if that’s healthy.”

“Not emotionless. But… smarter about it. The idea I keep coming back to is I want to be a warrior monk.”

“A warrior monk?”

“Just- centered when it counts, I guess?”

“Why the warrior part? Do you envision yourself fighting?”

“I don’t honestly know. It never occurred to me.”

Jessica smiled.

“What’s next for Victoria Dallon?” she asked.

“You need to mock me, say Victoria Dallon, warrior monk,” I said. “I deserve it.”

“I wouldn’t,” she said. “If everyone in costume could remain centered while doing what they do, it would make a world of difference. I think it’s good. I’d think about that more as you take your next steps.”

“I know I want to move forward, because… I dunno. I feel like I’m a shark that drowns if it stops moving, or a bird that drops out of the air like a stone if I’m not flying forward. I know I need to get some of the basics of life squared away. I’m okay for money for a couple of months, but I can’t stay on Crystal’s couch.”

“In my brief interactions with Crystal, I did like her,” Jessica said.

“She’s great. But not great to live with long-term, I don’t think. You’d never know it to look at her, she’s beautiful, she’s fashionable, and very well put together, but if you looked at her apartment…”

I trailed off, using my expression to convey a bit of the horror to Jessica.

“Ah,” Jessica said. She smiled again.

“I don’t know what to do next.”

“Well, I’d think about how to apply the warrior monk role to your day to day life,” she said. She pulled off her jacket. The weather had warmed up enough. “What it means to you, why it’s the first thing or the recurring thing in your thought processes.”

“I just want to… do.”

“You said you regretted yesterday, but Jasper thanked you. Would you rather have not done it? Is it the ‘want’ in wanting to do things that’s problematic, or is it the ‘do’?”

I drew in a deep breath. “That’s… a very complicated question, I think.”

“You don’t have to answer it right now,” she said.

“I think I can, though. I think… I had to. And as much as it was hard and cost me my job, I preferred it to the alternative. I can’t not do things that help out. I just want to do it in a good, centered way.”

“Could it be a mundane job? Construction? Desk work? Would you want to do something like you were doing with the patrol?”

I thought about it.

I couldn’t see it. Not long-term.

“What’s the first thing that comes to mind?” she asked.

“I think… fuck me, I think even now, I can’t quite see myself being anything but a hero. There are good people I’ve gotten to know. People I want to protect and help. Like Gilpatrick, like Weld and Vista and my cousin and a couple of the teenagers I was working with in patrol block. You. I want good things for them.”

“Thank you,” she said. “That means a lot to me.”

“I’ve been trying to convince myself there’s some other way, but… I can’t not do anything.”

“There’s worse things. Especially if you can do it smart and centered.”

“I don’t want to be Glory Girl,” I said. “Someone remarked yesterday that they’d thought she died and… good. She can stay dead.”

“Sounds like you have an idea of what you’re doing next.”

“It’s the wrong climate for it,” I said. “I just watched a team of heroes get eaten alive by the public. One took a bullet.”

“Figure it out,” she said.

I frowned.

“Again, there’s no rush,” she said.

“I can’t sit still,” I said. “There’s a bit of a rush.”

“Touch base with me,” she said. “We’ll go out for coffee, catch up. I can offer unofficial, more-friend-than-therapist advice. I think you’ll figure it out, and I can give you a few nudges here and there.”

That gave me pause.

“You’re not a therapist anymore?” I asked.

“Just the opposite,” she said. “I’m very much a therapist. Ten hour days, six or seven days a week, and other peripheral obligations. I’m afraid I’m not in a position to take you on as a patient again, Victoria, as much as I would dearly like to.”

That hurt. I didn’t want to say it, but it did hurt.

“I just joined the Wardens as a staff psychologist for their junior members and some special cases, and I’m just not equipped, unfortunately. If you want it, I could try finding a colleague who you could talk to. Most are as busy as I am, so it might take a bit of time.”

I want you.

I want-

“Sorry to take up your time today, when you’re as busy as you are.”

“It’s more than alright, Victoria,” she said. She was looking straight ahead as she talked, one hand on her jacket as she walked. “With the hours I work, I lose objectivity. It becomes the work, and I lose sight of the patients. Sometimes it’s hard to see the wins. Like I said, you were a patient close to my own heart, and I thought you were one of the ones we lost. Seeing you, hearing you? It means the world to me. It gives me a measure of hope.”

I nodded.

She looked over at me. “I’ll reach out to a colleague. I’ll see what I can do, if that’s okay. Give you some reassurance there.”

“I-” I started.

“Yes?”

“It’s okay, but… if you wanted to reassure me-” I said.

It felt a little less like I could talk about certain topics with her, now.

“If it’s within my power, I’ll try anything,” she said.

“My sister,” I said, my voice soft. “Send someone her way.”

Mrs. Yamada raised one eyebrow.

I knew what she was thinking. She wondered if it was selflessness, or if I was a surprisingly good person. I wasn’t.

“She’s the scariest damn person in the world, Jessica,” I said. “And I don’t think that’s bias. There’s a chance she’s going to do something bad, and she’s so damn powerful, that when and if it happens, it’s going to be so much worse than what happened to me, and it’s going to affect an awful lot more people.”

Daybreak – Interlude 1

The truck stopped at the gate, producing the occasional sputter and knocking sound as it sat there. The driver extended a hand out the window, waving for the camera, and the gate opened by way of remotely operated pulley.

It was another minute to the top of the hill, where the truck rolled to a stop in the parking lot, an expanse of gravel without any defined parking spots. The three people within remained where they were, warily observing the restaurant from a distance.

It was a log cabin writ large, the cedars stripped of their bark and stained with something that made them almost glossy, a warm yellow under the sun. The third floor was half the size of the other two, allowing the other half of what would have been the third floor to be a rooftop patio instead. A series of tables was scattered around the building, some close together and others a considerable distance away, as if they were trying to escape into the woods. Beyond the building was a cliff, and a vast expanse of forests, hills, mountains, and a small lake.

“Nice view,” Moose said, from the backseat.

Linc was settled in the passenger seat, reclining a bit with his seat angled back and his legs folded under him. With Moose in the back, he’d had to slide his seat as far forward as it could go, and it didn’t leave him much legroom. “Just think, past that view there isn’t nothing at all. If you headed straight ahead and kept going, you might not find any habitation until you ended up on the backside of this settlement here.”

“If you headed straight ahead,” the driver said, pausing to take a swig of the bottle of water she’d wedged into her cup holder, making a face at how warm it was, “You’d put yourself into that lake down there. Or you’d end up in the ocean. You’d drown either way.”

Linc smirked.

“People would call you an idiot,” she said. “Why would you go straight ahead like that? Are you proving a point?”

“I don’t think that’s what Linc was getting at,” Moose said.

“Harper knows what I’m getting at,” Linc said, turning around in his seat to look at Moose as he said it.

Moose was a big guy, with tousled blond hair. He’d undone some of the straps of his mask and had the mask laying over one muscular shoulder. The mask was metal, crude, and Moose wore something cloth under it for padding, which he had on now. He wore a sleeveless undershirt, jeans, boots, and had two gauntlets sitting next to him on the car seat. Even with the truck being large and Moose lying down across the length of the seat, he barely fit. He didn’t seem to mind much.

Behind Moose and the truck was the gravel road that led up the hill, the gate checkpoint, and a ways below that, the simple settlement where most visitors would be made to feel unwelcome. One to two thousand people would be living there at most.

“They built this place and situated it on the very edge of civilization,” Linc said, to round off his earlier thought.

“You two always seemed like the kind of edge of civilization people to me,” Moose asked.

“We do okay,” Linc said. “Put us in the middle of a city, we do fine, eh babe?”

“Mm,” Harper made a vaguely affirmative sound. “This a trap, y’think?”

Linc turned his attention to the building at the top of the hill. “Nah. Why would you build a nice place like this and use it for a nefarious purpose.”

“Well, y’know, it’s gonna be nefarious. That’s why we’re here,” she said. “It’s a question of if it’s a murderous sort of nefarious.”

“That’s a good question, I admit,” Linc said.

“I knew a guy,” Moose said. “He had a mansion. Inherited or somethin’. Super nice.”

“The guy or the house?” Linc asked.

“Hm?”

“The guy was nice or the house was nice?”

“The house. That’s what I’m gettin’ at. The guy was as nefarious as they get. He renovated the insides. He wanted to make a whole business of holdin’ people that needed holdin’. For ransom. Said he’d deal with ’em and clean up the mess if ransoms weren’t paid. Wanted to be a contractor for disposin’ of people in horrible ways.”

“You’re supposed to just drop them off at the nice, conspicuous mansion, hand over cash?” Harper asked.

“That was it, I think. He’d make sure they died slow and horrible for you, clean them up, make sure they weren’t found.”

“Definitely not a nice guy then,” Linc said.

“I dare say he wasn’t,” Moose said.

“That’s a terrible idea for a business,” Harper said.

“It kind of is,” Linc said.

“Might’ve been,” Moose said. “He didn’t seem in it for the money, gotta say. I highly suspect he was more focused on the part where he would do horrible things to people. Guy has a nice place, he wants to do creatively bad things to people, and he wanted a bit of pocket money. Draw lines between each of those things and you end up with something shaped like his game plan there.”

“A triangle?” Linc asked, looking back at Moose. At Moose’s shrug, he elaborated, “If you draw straight lines between three things, you get a triangle.”

“Maybe the lines weren’t straight,” Moose said. “But if you’re wondering if this is a trap, I don’t think it being fancy is ruling anythin’ out.”

“It’s a log building, Moose. Nothing that fancy.”

“Fancy to me.”

Harper leaned forward against the steering wheel, to get closer to the windshield, squinting against the sun.

“What do you think, babe?” Linc asked. “Is it a murderous nefarious or a prosperous nefarious.”

“It’s something,” she said. “The people on the roof are in costume and some of them are looking at us. I think we better get ourselves inside or they’re going to start laughing at us.”

“They’re going to laugh whatever happens,” Linc said. “Your truck has seen better days-”

“Don’t go talking about my truck, Linc.”

“And we’ve got Moose with us, no offense Moose.”

“Some offense taken, thank you very much,” Moose said, indignant.

“You call yourself Moose. People are going to laugh. That’s when you show your merits and make them stop laughing, is the way it works.”

“People shouldn’t laugh in the first place,” Moose said. “The Moose is a terrifying and noble creature. If you wouldn’t fuck with a rhino, you shouldn’t fuck with a moose. It’s one of the only proper prehistoric, giant animal species to have the grit to last to today.”

Harper turned off the truck. The truck sputtered, coughed, and died abruptly, in a way that suggested it wouldn’t revive again.

“I know, bud,” Linc said, taking his eye off the truck’s much-abused, dust-caked dash. “I know that much, I’ve seen one up close. I’ve seen one run through snow that a normal person couldn’t walk in and hit a car hard enough to roll it. I have a healthy respect.”

“Damn right,” Moose said.

Harper gave Linc a look, pulling her full mask on and flipping up her hood.

“But they don’t all know it,” Linc said. “You gotta work with that. You picked a jokey name, you gotta put up with the jokes.”

“Hope was they’d be laughing with, not laughing at,” Moose said. “At least I’d hope you weren’t the ones poking fun at me. It’s unkind, Linc.”

Harper climbed out of the truck.

“I’m not laughing at, bud. I’m just saying they might be. That’s all,” Linc said. He pulled his mask on, fixed his hair and beard with few sweeps of his hand, and climbed out, then hit the lever to flip his seat forward and give Moose room to squeeze out.

Moose kept the cloth mask on over his upper face, leaving the metal mask on his shoulder. He stretched, his joints popping audibly, and pulled his fur-lined gauntlets on.

“You’re going to have to take those off again if we end up eating,” Linc said.

“It’s about presentation,” Moose said. “Besides, the name doesn’t make sense if I don’t got ’em.”

Harper was in costume, though the costume part was mostly a hooded, sleeveless top in her namesake velvet color, lopsided in how it trailed down over one leg in a robe-like aesthetic. She wore skintight shorts underneath. A black mask covered her upper face, and had truncated, forking horns that poked out through the top of the hood and kept the hood from falling back.

Linc wore a mask like Velvet’s, but his traced the area around his eye sockets and eyebrows, with the edges tracing back and into his hair, forking as they did. He wore a bodysuit for the upper body and pants. His costume had always been meant to be layered, but the heat had forced him to strip down to the base layer, with the pants only because he felt like a clown if he wore only the skintight stuff.

People leaning against and over the railing on the roof watched them as they approached the door.

“This place is a hell of a lot better than the last couple we visited,” Prancer remarked.

“More expensive too,” Velvet said. She was looking at the blackboard posted by the door, with prices. “Twenty dollars for a chicken sandwich?”

“Come on,” Prancer said, pushing the door open.

The inside was expansive, with the kitchen as an island in the middle, counters and surrounding it, booths around the edges of the room, and tables in the space in between. There were only eleven non-staff people within, but the ground floor could have seated a hundred or more.

Prancer approached the kitchen island. He spoke to a black, twenty-something woman in a tan polo shirt and apron, “Who do I talk to for the rules?”

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating an elderly black man who was wiping out a glass. The man was watching, squinting with one eye, as he carried out the routine motion of cleaning the glass.

“He’s in charge?” Prancer asked.

The employee gave Prancer a single nod.

“What can I do for you?” the man asked, as the three approached.

“We’ve been around the block a couple of times, I’m just looking for a primer on customs, and any special rules.”

“Payment up front for what you’re ordering, have the money ready when you order if it’s busy. Don’t cause trouble, don’t draw weapons, don’t be loud, give us a heads up and use the side door or the patio if your power is going to bother anyone. Upstairs is the bar, you don’t go upstairs unless you’re invited or you already know you qualify to go upstairs.”

“What kind of qualification?” Velvet asked.

“If you have to ask, you don’t have it,” the old man said. He put the glass down and picked up another. “Roof is for more private meetings than you’d have on the second floor. Don’t go taking yourself up there if you wouldn’t be allowed on the second floor.”

“Noted,” Prancer said. “Anyone to avoid, watch out for, anything like that?”

“That’s more for you to watch out for than for me to bother with. If they’re causing a problem or being a bother to others, they’ll get kicked out. If you help with the kicking out, I’ll give you something on the house.”

“Right,” Prancer said. “Got it.”

“Do you serve drinks down here?” Moose asked.

“We do. Anything fancier than beer or wine, we’ll have to send someone upstairs to fetch it.”

“Could I grab a mightyman?” Moose asked. He pulled off a gauntlet and retrieved a wallet from his pocket. He held out a twenty. “Long, hot drive.”

“Name?” the old man asked, gesturing at an employee. The employee set to getting the beer. The old man pulled a pad and pen out of his apron.

“Name? Uh, M.K.,” Moose said.

“No initials,” the man said.

“Just Moose then,” Moose said, sliding the twenty across the bar. “We can order food at the tables?”

“You can,” the old man said. He picked up the money, then pulled out a fiver from the pocket of his apron and passed it back to Moose. He looked at the others. “Names?”

“Prancer. She’s Velvet.”

“Do I need to worry about you?”

“Nah. We’re pretty tame. We’re here to make contacts and get our names out there for the small stuff.”

“If you do any business, be discreet enough I and my staff don’t see it. If you use powers, don’t bother the person next to you.”

“Got it. Can I grab a beer? What my buddy Moose is having,” Prancer handed over the bills.

“Me too,” Velvet said.

Prancer withdrew a larger bill from his wallet, and set it on the counter, sliding it toward the old man. “Gratuity?”

“No need,” the old man said. “Service fees and peace of mind are worked into the food prices. Order something, if you want to thank me.”

Beers in hand, they briefly considered sitting at the counter before Moose took a seat at one of the tables.

“Where you sit is important,” Prancer said. “Booth, you’re minding your own business, you’ve got walls around you. Sitting at the counter, you’re open to people approaching you and joining you, I think. Not entirely sure how it works here in particular.”

“I hear you,” Moose said, “But I was sittin’ funny the entire drive here, and if I sit on one of those stools then I’m going to have my back spasming the entire way back. I need a sturdy chair, here.”

“Sure, doesn’t matter that much,” Prancer said. He twisted around in his seat, one hand on his beer, taking a look at the others who were present. “Pretty laid back here.”

“Could be a quieter time of the day,” Velvet said.

“Out of the way place, too,” Prancer said. “You heard what he said about using powers? How many places have we been to, and how many allowed use of powers at all?”

“Ten. Ten places,” Velvet said, hunkering down over her beer. “This is the only one, I think. Might have been a rule in The Well, but that was more the kind of place where you don’t know the rules until someone’s punching your face in for violating them.”

Prancer watched as a faint speck of dust traveled across his vision, pink-tinted. He smiled.

Four teenagers in the corner booth. They wore dark clothes with symbols and designs spray painted on and bleached into the fabric. One with a bandanna on his head looked their way, and Prancer flashed the guy a smile.

Three in another booth, against a wall. Tinkers. There was a cloth strewn out over the table, and parts were laid out. They ranged from twists of metal to a glass tube housing something that looked like a large, chewed wad of gum. The wad was throwing itself against the sides of its glass cage.

He wondered how that worked with the ‘no business’ rule. Were they only talking shop? Where was the line drawn?

Sitting alone in one booth was a woman with a mask covering her lower face, long black hair, and a long red dress with a slit down one side, exposing a tantalizing bit of leg. She wore an intricate framework of metal at her arms and hands, a series of bands at the elbow, wrist, knuckles, and rings at the finger, with thin rods of steel extending between each, along the back of each finger, and stopping at each finger and thumbtip. Each tip was enveloped by an ornate claw.

Her heels were much the same, Prancer noted. Heels were unusual for someone in costume, and hers were more unusual still. She wore something similar to her gloves, with the same bands at her leg, ankle, and foot, with the thin metal bars extending between each. Her toes were covered with the same metal claws, there was a strap of metal below the balls of her feet, and at her heel, one large claw-point served as the ‘heel’ of her heel, stabbing straight down.

When she moved one leg to fold one knee over the other, the claw tips moved on their own, twitching, recalibrating, the heel shifting back to stay pointed at the ground, flick back and away, then flick down.

She undid one side of her mask so it swung toward Prancer, still blocking his view of her mouth, helped by the draping of long hair, and she leaned down, taking a bite of her wrap. She put one hand to the loose end of her mask while she chewed, and fastened the end as she swallowed.

She saw him looking, turning her head his way. He smiled at her.

She only stared.

“Someone’s coming,” Moose said.

One of the spray painted kids. The guy Prancer had smiled at.

“You’re new.”

“Prancer, Velvet, M.K.,” Prancer introduced the group.

“Where are you from?”

“Alaska, believe it or not.”

“Long way,” the teenager said.

“Especially when you’re driving it,” Prancer said. “Who are you guys?”

“The group’s Ripcord. I’m Gorgos. We raid stores and resell, mostly. We’re nobodies. It’s the B-listers and small fry down here. The people with name recognition go upstairs.”

“Meaning the people we want to do business with are upstairs,” Velvet said, still leaning heavily over her beer.

“It’s fine,” Prancer said. “We’ll work it out.”

“What do you guys do?”

“We wheel and deal,” Prancer said.

“Prancer likes to be clever, but he doesn’t get that sometimes you have to explain why it’s clever, otherwise you only confuse people,” Velvet said.

“It’s why I have you, babe.”

“The wheel part is getaway driving and transporting,” she explained.

The kid leaned forward. The decoration on his outfit looked like the sort done with a stencil and a spray bottle filled with bleach, strategically bleaching fabric. Snakes and a woman’s face as a recurring motif. He had a bandanna over the top of his head and one over his nose and mouth. “What do you deal?”

“Grass, mostly,” Prancer said.

“You actually have some?”

“Not here, but we have it. Brand new and in high demand, given the times,” Prancer said.

“Are you looking for resellers?”

“For the right price. Mostly we’re looking for new friends, and we’re trying to get the lay of the land before we do anything too enterprising.”

“Can I get back to you?” the guy asked.

“You’re welcome to,” Prancer said. “We wouldn’t mind company either, if you guys wanted to join us.”

“I’d have to get back to you on that too,” the guy said. “We’re trying to find our way these days. We agreed in the beginning we wouldn’t have one leader, and that was great then, but right now we’ve got two different leadership styles butting heads.”

Prancer looked over at the table, where those seated were having a very fierce, hushed discussion.

“If you want to just sit and trade stories, we’d be happy to have you,” Prancer said. “Get away from all that, maybe come away with some fresh perspective.”

“I might take you up on that. For now I’d better get back and make sure nobody reaches across the table to strangle someone.”

“Question before you go,” Moose said. “Is it always this quiet?”

“It’s about to get noisier,” Gorgos said. “Keep an eye on the guy at the end of the kitchen there. He communicates with people in town. He was talking to the boss about something and the boss put another cook on the stove. Wait ten minutes and I bet he’ll hit the button to open the gate. If he holds it down it’s a lot of people. My guess is the ferry from NYC hit the shore near the G-N portal twenty minutes ago.”

“Good to know, thanks,” Prancer said.

Gorgos jogged back to his team.

“You’re dwellin’ a lot on going upstairs,” Moose observed.

“Reminds me of being a kid and being told I had to stay downstairs with my cousins and their friends during the holidays. My cousins were assholes,” Velvet said. “One good thing about Gold Morning is it took them out of the picture.”

Moose whistled.

“She’s wearing the purple cloak, that’s a sign of royalty, don’t you know?” Prancer plucked at Velvet’s hood. Velvet batted his hand away. “And royalty doesn’t not go upstairs. Royalty doesn’t show mercy.”

“Y’know I went to prison because of you, Prance,” she said, quiet.

“Well, yeah. I will point out we survived Gold Morning because we weren’t home when Alaska got hit.”

“I went to prison for you,” she said, again. “That counts for a lot.”

“‘Course. How does that connect, though?”

“Just sayin’,” she said, her accent thicker as her voice became softer. “You said things would be different.”

“They will,” he said. He put a hand around her shoulders and pulled her closer, then kissed the top of her head. “We’ve got a decent crop, a lot of demand. We’ll do okay. We’ll make inroads.”

“I’m optimistic,” Moose said.

“I’m not unoptimistic,” Velvet said.

“You’re not enthused either, doesn’t sound like,” Moose said.

“Just sorta hoping for more, sooner,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. There wasn’t much more to say.

Velvet reached out, and the menu flew from the tabletop to her hand. It was tinted red and dusty, but much of their table and glasses were, now.

Prancer took stock of the other three capes in the room before the newest batch of arrivals reached the front door.

There was one, who might have been a bouncer, who had stepped out the side door momentarily and was now taking a seat by that same door. He wore a mask of metal bars that looked like they’d been welded to one another, all vertical, but he also wore a black apron.

That left only the couple at the bar. Matching costumes, white armor with jet black iconography, multiple circles and crescents in various patterns, with the armor sprayed black around each icon, so it looked like the darkness glowed. The man wore full armor, the woman wore only scattered pieces of armor, with white chainmail to cover the rest of her.

They drank white wine, in the middle of the afternoon.

Capes were strange people, Prancer mused.

“I want to be the kind of person who earns her way upstairs,” Velvet said. Her head still rested against his shoulder, where he’d pulled her close.

“That’s really stuck in you, huh?”

“It’s stuck,” she said. Without moving her head, she raised the beer to her lips and took a careful sip.

“You might have to lose the beater of a truck, babe, if you want to dress the part.”

“Don’t go talkin’ about my truck, Prance.”

“Every time you turn it off, it sounds like it’s off for good. I say a little prayer to myself that it will be, even knowing it’s a long, long walk back to home. Then I can take the money I’ve got saved up and buy you something nice. All the bells and whistles.”

“When I got out of prison, I only had two things, babe. That truck, and you. I wasn’t feeling especially fond of you at the time, either. It’s the only thing I’ve had for myself since I was old enough to have anything, that I’ve been able to keep.”

“Counts for somethin’, that,” Moose said.

“It does,” Velvet said, frowning down at her beer.

Prancer frowned at Moose, who only shrugged. Guy wasn’t making it any easier.

“What if we overhauled the outside, got someone to give the engine a real solid lookin’-at?” Prancer asked.

“So long as it stays my truck. I don’t want you ship-of-Theseusing it.”

Prancer resisted swearing under his breath. So that tactic wouldn’t work.

There was more of the pink dust in the air, now. He gave Velvet a kiss on top of the head, then shrugged slightly. She moved her head off of his shoulder, sitting upright.

“Things will be better,” he said.

She reached for his hand and squeezed it. “I’m going to go find the ladies’ room. Order food before things get hairy. I’ll have the chicken caesar sandwich and grab a few bottled waters while you’re at it. For the drive back.”

“You know the markup on those will be insane,” Prancer said.

“Just get me my water,” she said.

She walked away. Prancer watched her walk away, feeling wistful.

He signaled the waitress. He made sure to give Velvet’s order while he remembered it, and then gave his own. Moose put in enough of an order for two people.

When they were alone again, Moose commented, “Sorry, for interjectin’.”

“Interjecting?”

“When you were talking about the truck, and about prison.”

“Ah. Yep. Apology accepted.”

“Hard to be the third wheel sometimes. Especially when things get complicated, relationship-wise.”

“Can’t speak about the third-wheeling. That’s for you to figure out. But for the relationship part, it’s the simplest thing in the world, Moose,” Prancer said. “She’s my girlfriend, I’m her boyfriend. Sometimes you and she enjoy each other’s company, sometimes I enjoy someone else’s company, but that doesn’t change that it’s me and it’s her as the boyfriend and girlfriend.”

His voice had become progressively more stern as he’d talked. He paused, meeting Moose’s eyes.

“Makes sense,” Moose said. Prancer smiled.

“Doesn’t seem like you’ve had anyone but her keeping you company, gotta say,” Moose said.

Prancer looked at the woman with the mask on her lower face and the claw-heels. “Trying to be better.”

“Good for you,” Moose said, before taking a drink of his beer.

“I’m going to marry that Velvet sometime soon,” Prancer said. “I’ve just got to make amends for old wrongs first. Can’t ask her to marry me when the last momentous event in our lives was me being a screwup.”

“The prison thing?”

“Everything before, too. Trying to be better.”

“I don’t want to step on any toes or get into anythin’ too sensitive here,” Moose said. “But can I ask? Would be easier to not step on toes if I can ask.”

“It’s the whole thing. Get powers as a kid, sixteen years old, make friends with the right people, start dealing. It’s an elevation in status, y’know? I was the guy who the cool kids in high school went to for product. Had money, had girls throwing themselves at me, I was invited to all the parties, and I meet Velvet there. One of many girls in one of many cities. But she gets powers and comes back to me, wants in, wants out of her house, especially. I oblige, and she doesn’t make me regret it.”

Moose nodded.

“Years pass, we find our fit. She’s got more financial sense, I’ve got the salesmanship. Most capes, there’s going to be conflict. She’s got her thing, you know how her power works. She hangs around somewhere, and this dust collects, and she can telekinetically control stuff, more dust there is on it. It’s how she gets that fucking truck going again, when it refuses to move. She makes us sit there for five minutes and then gives it another try, and it works, and she’ll fiddle with it later and get it tuned up just enough it starts going.”

“She must care an awful lot about it,” Moose observed.

“She does. But that’s her whole psychology. She wants to settle in, wants to have a place she can call hers, whether it’s that truck cab or, I don’t know, going upstairs. I get restless. The mover thing. That causes friction. But we work despite it. We’re as soulmate as you can get when you’ve got… whatever these things are giving us our powers. Parasites. You had the visions when we were on the battlefield, that day.”

“Sure,” Moose said.

“As yin-yang soulmate as you can get with these things screwing up the fit,” Prancer said. “But we got comfortable. I graduate school, barely, she graduates a year after me, we keep up the routine. Some wheeling, mostly dealing. The parties every weekend, tooth and nail fights because we’re both the type to flirt with others, before we realized we were fine just not worrying about it. Couple more years pass, I’m twenty-one, she’s twenty, still in the routine.”

“A rut?” Moose asked.

“Just the way things were. Somewhere along the line, you know, I’m twenty-seven, she’s twenty-six, and I’m still boning boys and girls from high school. Still partying.”

Moose’s eyes had widened.

“Legal, mind you,” Prancer said. “But… sketchy, in retrospect.”

“More than a little, no offense,” Moose said.

“None taken. I deserve it. I didn’t realize until they came after us. Capes, police. You get into a groove and you don’t think about things and somehow a decade gets away from you. You’re not the cool guy people are excited to get to know. You’re the guy they’re into because they have to be if they want a discount, or if they want someone accessible that’s older. Sad. Pathetic. Slapped me in the face while people were talking to and about me in court. Forced me to take a long, hard look at who I was and who I wanted to be.”

“That’s good,” Moose said.

A young woman entered the restaurant. Prancer almost thought it was the first of the influx, but she was alone. She was an older teenager or twenty-something, with long white hair, wearing a black dress and black makeup, and she took a seat alone at the table. She rummaged in a bag to find a book.

The waitress approached her, kettle already in hand. The money was passed across the table, and the tea was poured. A regular.

Her mask was so simple it might as well have not been there. Curious, too, that she’d come this far to read a book. Maybe someone would be joining her.

Prancer watched the new arrival, but he kept talking, “She told me, over and over again, I needed to be better. That she wanted better. That we needed to be careful. I didn’t listen. We got out of prison, she took me back, and I owe her for that.”

“If your critical flaw was not listening, might be you’ve gotta listen when she’s saying she loves that vehicle out there.”

Prancer nodded slowly. Then he let his head loll back, and he groaned. “I’ve put up with that thing for so many damn years.”

Velvet’s glass of beer slid across the table, and Prancer caught it just before it could reach the edge of the table and tip into his lap.

“You’re talking about my truck?” Velvet asked, making her way back from the restroom.

“Moose is telling me to let it go,” Prancer said. “I’m trying to come to terms with the idea.”

“You’re a good boy, Moose,” Velvet said, taking her seat. The glass pulled out of Prancer’s hands, sliding across the table to slap into Velvet’s hand.

“Appreciate that, Velvet.”

“Did you order or did you forget?” she asked.

“Remembered,” Prancer said. “It’s coming soon.”

The front door opened.

A large collection of capes entered and immediately headed off to find their booths and tables. One of the new arrivals stepped inside and loitered by the door. She was a woman with a slender figure and a bag over her head, for lack of a better description. The bag was cloth, with a pink animal pattern on it. The rest of her form-fitting outfit matched, including the shawl she wore.

Prancer leaned in the direction of the door, putting his mouth near Velvet’s ear. “I see Nursery. I wonder if Blindside is around.”

“I hope the kid’s okay,” Velvet said. She looked at Moose. “Were you there when we talked to ’em?”

“I was.”

“They were up to something.”

“I remember.”

A man in armor was one of the last to arrive. The armor was white, and looked like it was fashioned of strips, woven and wound around him, the ends left frayed and sticking out to the sides and behind him. There was no face to it. Only a Y-shaped set of ridges. He stood between Nursery, a man in a black outfit and heavy hood, and a heavyset man with long hair, a dense beard, and a mechanical arm that extended to the ground.

At his arrival, people across the room started applauding, from Ripcord to the people at the counter, to the white haired girl and the woman with the mask. Even the kitchen staff. The man in armor laughed, the sound mingling with the general applause.

Moose joined in, and Velvet and Prancer offered their own light, confused applause.

“Thank you. Thank you. Is Marquis here?” the man in armor asked.

The old man at the kitchen pointed skyward. “Roof.”

The man in armor saluted, then ducked back through the door.

Velvet raised her hand to get Nursery’s attention. The woman’s group was already splitting up. The man in black joined the people in white armor. The bearded man with the mechanical arm walked over to the woman with the claws, sitting in her booth.

Nursery approached the table.

“Good to see you,” Prancer said.

“I didn’t think I would see you three all the way out here,” Nursery said.

“We’re trying to see who’s out there. The other places have been a little seedy.”

“They are. Seedy can be fun, though,” Nursery said. “Reminds me of the old days.”

“You keep updating your costume,” Velvet said.

“Silly thing, isn’t it? It’s easier to make a new one than to wash the blood and slime out. I feel ridiculous.”

“What was happening with the applause?” Prancer asked.

“Mission success,” Nursery said. “In a roundabout, unexpected way, but that’s often how these things go.”

“Congratulations,” Moose said.

“Thank you, Moose. It was a thing. We took a week to figure out what we were doing, we had to check with a few people, a number of thinkers, make sure we weren’t stepping on toes. The peace being what it is, we didn’t want to cause too much trouble.”

“Was it a big mission?” Prancer asked.

“Big,” Nursery said. “Plenty of room for things to go very wrong, with some bad repercussions that could be felt by everyone.”

Prancer’s eyebrows went up.

“But we were careful, we had the right people-”

“You included among those people,” Velvet said.

“Yes,” Nursery said, clasping her hands together.

“What was the job?” Prancer asked.

“To kidnap someone, and have her disappear for long enough that people would get upset about it.”

“Huh,” Prancer said.

“They’re anxious out there. They feel powerless. The idea was to pick someone controversial, and take them out of the picture. Make them the topic of debate. Is vigilante justice right or wrong? In this case, where the wrong isn’t so terribly wrong? Well, that was their idea. I do think she did something horrible. It’s why I agreed to the job.”

“What was that?”

“Hurt a woman and made her miscarry. They say it was a mistake.”

“I can see where that hits close to home.”

“Sorry to hear,” Moose said.

“Thank you. You’re kind. The plan was to provoke the debate and raise the issue before things reached a more critical point. Venting off the steam before things exploded. The debate seems to be trending that way.”

“Sounds like it needed a fine hand,” Velvet said. “That’s some good work.”

“I didn’t do it alone,” Nursery said.

“Your first time working with the others?”

“It was. Lord of Loss is sweet, good at what he does.”

“He went straight to the roof, I’m guessing that means he isn’t the type to work with B-listers like us.”

“No, I suppose not. He doesn’t like being indoors. You’re recruiting? That’s what you’re asking after?”

“Or looking for a spot of work,” Prancer said.

“Snag, sitting over there, is looking to hire people for a project down the road. He wants to do test runs first, make sure he succeeds on the first try. Those two hired the same information broker we worked with for that job.”

“You had an information broker?”

“She was ops too. Talked to us on the earpieces. A little shaky on some things, surprisingly quick on others. But I think you run into that with any thinker.”

Prancer nodded.

“Snag is a few months new, a rookie, with a rookie’s mindset, but he has good instincts. If I can say this in confidence…”

“Of course,” Velvet said.

“…I wouldn’t want to be on a team with him long-term,” Nursery said. “He’s mean. Unkind, impatient. Emotional. You get that with a lot of the new ones. Too close to whatever set them off.”

Prancer nodded slowly. “Old ones have their own problems. Ruts and routines.”

“They do. Um, I should hurry. Blindside has a mouth but I do like them. They do a decent job, if you can work around the limitations. They’re outside now, sitting on the patio by the side door. Can’t come inside without turning a few heads.”

Prancer smiled at the bad joke.

“Kingdom Come likes his bible verses, I earned some considerable brownie points by knowing the names and numbers to go with most of them. Benefit of bible school until I was eighteen. He’s a consummate professional. Very gentle, very efficient.”

“Expensive?” Velvet asked.

“Not too bad, I don’t think. I don’t know what he was paid, but if it’s close to my own wage, it shouldn’t be horrendous. He’s very selective about the jobs he’ll accept.”

“What about you?” Prancer asked.

“Me? I’m boring. I’m not even a parahuman, not really.”

“Wait, what?” Moose asked.

“I’m not,” Nursery said. She had a light tone of voice, like she was smiling from the other side of the cloth mask. “It’s why I feel so out of place in costume.”

Prancer watched as others came through the door. He recognized Biter but failed to get Biter’s attention with a wave.

“How does that work?” Moose asked.

“Show him the bump,” Velvet said, smiling.

“The bump?” Moose asked. “Oh.”

Prancer glanced over at Nursery, who was holding her cloth costume tighter against her stomach, showing her slightly protruding belly.

“They’re the parahuman,” Nursery said. “I’m the ride.”

“Oh,” Moose said. “Oh wow. Sorry.”

“No need to be sorry. It’s a bond unlike any other,” Nursery said. She gave Moose a pat on the cheek. “It’s hard sometimes, but I owe it to them. Making up for mistakes I’ve made.”

“Yeah,” Prancer said, staring at his beer. He looked from his glass to Nursery. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, hm?”

“I’ll try,” she said. “I should go. Take care and wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” Moose said. He still looked shell-shocked.

“What’s next?” Velvet asked, smiling.

“What we did yesterday is only one instance. They’ll have to do it again when the pressure builds. Sooner or later, however many thinkers they work with, however good the people they hire, there will be a mistake. Something will happen, it could be too much, too little, and then everything goes to hell in a handbasket.”

“Heavy,” Prancer said.

“But I’ve stayed too long. My baby and I earned ourselves an invite upstairs, because they might hire me again, and because we showed our stuff, I don’t want the offer to expire,” Nursery said, excited. “We can’t drink at the bar, but it’s still a chance to meet some of the people running the corner worlds, the major players. A huge opportunity.”

“That’s amazing,” Moose said, looking down at the bump. “Congratulations. Both of you.”

“You’re so sweet. I should go, excuse me,” Nursery said, leaving.

“We’ll talk again,” Prancer said.

Velvet raised a hand, her smile frozen on her face. Prancer reached over to squeeze her thigh.

“I think I hate her now,” Velvet said.

He gave her leg another squeeze.

His thoughts turned over as he watched the people enter. Some headed upstairs. Ones with nice costumes, scary ones. He recognized quite a few.

There were also the others. The B-listers, the dregs, the people who weren’t yet established, filling up the ground floor, ordering their food and drinks.

“Hey Moose,” he said.

Moose stared off into space, in the direction of the stairs.

“Moose,” Velvet said. “I’m pretty sure she’s a loon. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

“Moose,” Prancer tried again.

Moose frowned, glancing back at the stairs. “Yeah?”

“Look at the room. Tell me, who do you know here?”

“Some of the big guys. Biter, you and I had drinks with him. Etna, Crested, Beast of Burden, Bitter Pill, Nailbiter, Hookline, Kitchen Sink.”

“Do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Round ’em up. Anyone you get along with, who you think wouldn’t cause a fuss.”

“What are you doing?”

“Still figuring it out,” Prancer said. “You recognize anyone?”

“Few people. You want me to gather ’em?”

“Please. We might have to take it outside. Actually, let’s definitely take it outside. By the side door. So the owner doesn’t complain.”

“You’ve piqued my interest,” Velvet said.

Prancer nodded, still lost in thought. He watched as she walked away, pausing to feel a moment of fondness for her, and then resumed his thinking. He made his way to the side door.

“Hey,” Blindside said.

“Hey. Gathering some people. Thought we’d come to you, invite you to hear me out.”

“Thanks, Prancer. What’s this about?”

“Give me a second to think. I’m a salesman, and I’ve got to figure out exactly what I’m pitching.”

“Sure.”

Prancer stuck his fist out, stopped where Blindside’s power made it stop. He felt Blindside tap a fist against the side of his hand.

The others assembled. The people who had been invited, then the people who hadn’t, who were curious.

“I want to organize,” he started. “I’m not the person to lead it, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a power play. I’m not a power player. But I think, right now, while we’re still at peace, while there aren’t so many people who have beefs with one another, or the beefs have had two years to go quiet, this would be the chance to do it.”

“You wouldn’t be the first person to think about doing this,” Biter said.

“No?”

“No, some other groups, some small, some large. They’re banding together, a mutual peace. Forming a set of rules and expectations that aren’t unwritten, that we actually discuss and work out.”

“With the little guys?” Prancer asked. “B-listers? Those of us who aren’t being focused on while the big guys are laying out tracts of territory and settlements?”

“Some of them. Those groups are smaller than you’d be talking, if you’re talking about everyone here.”

Prancer nodded.

He glanced at Velvet, and he saw the way she was looking at him, and he felt like a proper man for the first time. She reached for his hand and squeezed it, hard.

Then, more alive and excited than he’d seen her in a long, long time, Velvet spoke, “You think they’d be open to talking?”

“I think they might,” Biter said.

Flare – 2.1

“The Wardens are cooperating with seven major cape teams and, last I checked, ten minor teams. We are not a monolithic entity. We are not an authority. We are not the bad guys, Julia.”

I rummaged through a cabinet. My life was in boxes, from my clothes to my hair and skin stuff to my files. If it were that alone, it would have been tolerable. I’d tried using logic and going to the most common sense places. Not in or among the dirty dishes, not in the various jars and vases of spoons and spatulas on the counter, not behind or under something. I’d checked the other rooms in the apartment.

“People are worried. You have Legend as a second in command, and memories aren’t so short that we don’t remember the Alexandria fiasco.”

I moved methodically through the kitchen, left to right, while the television played on a low volume.

“I can tell you this: all we want to do is help. We want to find the right capes for the major crises and we want to equip the teams out there with information and resources. “

“That’s admirable, but-“

“No, wait, hold on, Julia. You told me when you asked me to have a chat with you on camera that you wanted to have a conversation. Let me say this.”

I looked at the little TV in the corner of the kitchen.

“…that people are going to draw on what they know to fill the blanks, when they don’t have enough information. I understand that the closest parallel that many Americans draw to the Wardens is the PRT. Give us time to make our impression and show how we operate,” Chevalier said.

“Would you not say there are quite a few of those blanks when it comes to your organization?” the reporter asked.

“I accepted this interview because I want to fill some of those blanks.”

“Are you an open book, then?”

My eyebrows went up. That was dirty pool from reporter Julia. There was no way that question wouldn’t be followed by something that Chevalier couldn’t or wouldn’t want to answer, cornering him.

“Some of those blanks,” Chevalier said, stressing the ‘some’. “We’re still figuring things out, we’re still finding our footing and we’re negotiating a comfortable and healthy position with the public, the various teams under our umbrella, teams that aren’t under our umbrella, and the authorities. The lack of answers and the number of blanks isn’t me being evasive or underhanded. It’s that the Wardens and society as a whole have a lot of figuring out to do.”

He was good at what he did, and he did a lot. I wished I was in a position to study what he was saying and how he was fielding the questions, but I had more hunting to do.

I went back to the drawers I’d already checked, pulling out the cutlery drawer enough that I could check the back, behind the tray that held the forks and knives. I was too used to drawers having a mechanism that stopped them once they were pulled out to their limit, and I’d expected it to be longer, which led to me pulling the drawer straight out of its housing.

I only barely caught it, sticking my knee out under it and moving my hands to grab the sides. The cutlery rattled loudly, with a few miscellaneous cheese and holiday themed knives clattering to the floor.

“…would you say about the rumors circulating around Valkyrie, then?”

I put the drawer on the countertop, collected the fallen knives, and sorted through the contents, lifting up the tray to make sure nothing had fallen beneath. No luck.

I tried to put the drawer back, failed a few times before realizing that the construction wasn’t especially sturdy, and that the back end had pulled a bit loose. I fixed it, then resumed trying to put it back inside the hole it was meant for.

There was the saying: affordable, nice, or safe and sane. Pick one. It was a chronic problem with the speed they were trying to get buildings and houses up. Shoddy construction, rush jobs, cut corners, mistakes, and general ugliness were pretty normal. I was hopeful that in a little while we might be able to get to a point where it was ‘pick two’ instead of ‘pick one’, but we had a ways to go.

I tried to squeeze the end together where two pieces didn’t quite meet and simultaneously push it in with my stomach. It refused to slide in.

“What are you doing to my kitchen?”

Crystal was in the doorway, her hair a mess. She wore an oversized t-shirt and pyjama shorts, and she still looked half asleep.

“Did I wake you?” I asked.

“Uh huh,” she said, sleepy. “Don’t tell me you’re a morning person. That would be a problem.”

“I’m not. I’m a person who fell asleep early last night-”

“Almost right after eating. Yep. And now you’re up, showered, dressed, and you’re dismantling my kitchen. For reasons.”

“I woke up and thought I’d keep my normal work routine while I figure out what I’m doing.”

“Renovating my kitchen?”

“I’m trying to find scissors,” I said. “I’d settle for a sharp knife.”

Crystal smiled wide, her eyes still sleepy. She grabbed a glass from a cabinet, and she half-walked, half-floated across the kitchen.

“Don’t laugh,” I said.

“You’re such a cliche,” she said, as she passed me on her way to the sink. “Oh my god, Victoria. You’re that person with super strength that trashes everything she touches.”

“Just help me,” I said.

She reached over and helped me hold the drawer together. As it slid into the confines of the front of the counter, the framing held it together where the drawer’s own construction wouldn’t.

“I wasn’t using my super strength, for the record,” I said.

“Yeah. I’ve done that with the drawers before, I’m just making fun of you. It’s a funny image, to walk into the kitchen and see that.”

“Ah ha,” I said. “Then can I make fun of you for having two big jars of spatulas, whisks, spaghetti scoops, having two food processors-”

“One was a gift.”

“-And no scissors or shears anywhere I can find? I’d settle for a sharp knife. You have those steak knives, but they look nice and I don’t want to use them for the wrong thing and ruin them.”

She reached across the counter to get the package of bacon, holding it up. It was inside a hard plastic tupperware-like container with a small black and white label stuck to it. A mark stamped on it had it sourced from another world. Even without the mark, the pricetag might have given it away.

“Thought I’d treat you to breakfast,” I said. “Went for a walk to get some stuff.”

Still appearing half asleep, she moved one hand, creating a deep red forcefield behind the bacon, then she produced a thin laser from her fingertip, slicing off the end of the package.

She handed the bacon to me, open end up.

“You don’t have scissors?”

She shook her head, smiling.

I sighed, picking up the bowl where I’d already mixed the dry ingredients. “Fruit crepes, bacon on the side?”

“Sounds amazing,” she said, leaning against the counter, eyes mostly closed.

“You look beat,” I said.

“It was pretty unforgiving, being there. I timed everything so I could unwind starting with the barbecue, and unwinding didn’t happen.”

I nodded. “Sorry.”

“That’s not on you.”

“I’m still sorry it happened.”

“You slept okay though?”

“I slept a solid ten hours. I just… started sleeping at six thirty or something. Then I woke up, I started thinking, and I decided to be productive. I’m talking to some teams today.”

“If you want me to put a good word in with my guys, I’d be happy to.”

“I don’t want to do the quasi-military cape thing,” I said. “A little bit too intense.”

“Yeah,” Crystal said. “I’m so physically tired, two days out, that I’m not sure I would be standing if I couldn’t fly.”

I looked down at the ground. Her feet were barely touching the ground.

It wasn’t the physical intensity that worried me. It was the mental and emotional cost. It was the fact that when it came to the military and the military-like stuff, the trend was to beat the individual into shape. Organization, conformity.

I couldn’t take much more of the harsh lessons on identity or the forced redefining of the self.

“I’m just waking up, so forgive me if I got something wrong, but did you already find a place?”

I shook my head.

“You took the sheets off the couch.”

I looked over at the living room. There were boxes stacked around, and only half were mine.

“You said you might have friends over at some point, I thought it’d be weird if you had to navigate around my stuff, so I moved it out of the way.”

“Okay,” she said. She paused. “I’m tired, so I want to make sure I say this right.”

I went to the fridge to get the fruit stuff I’d already prepared.

“I don’t care,” she said. “First of all, I know I have a lot of stuff. You know I have a lot of stuff.”

I looked at the stuff around the kitchen and adjacent living room. It was a bit messy, to the point counter space and table space was occupied.

“Just- I really don’t care if you add your stuff to it. I like my places feeling lived in. Some of the stuff is a friend’s, and they’ll take it when they get set up. Some is mom and dad’s. Some is yours, and that’s fine. That leads me to my second point. I want you to be here. I want you to feel comfortable.”

“Thank you.”

“I know my couch isn’t much, but you need a place that you can kick your shoes off and leave them where they are.”

I might have mentioned that I wasn’t quite that personality type, but I held my tongue. I understood the sentiment, what she wanted.

“I want you to have a place that’s yours, Vic.”

⊙

“I’ll start by asking this: why not be independent?”

Foresight had a strong aesthetic running through their costumes. Primary among those things was a mask or helmet design where each of the members of the team lacked eyeholes. Helmets with opaque visors, masks without eyes. The aesthetic involved lots of paneled body armor and loose fabric elsewhere, with iconography worked into the panels. It made me think of ninjas from movies, with the mix of lightweight costumes and armor, but without the Eastern style.

Their team symbol was a stylized eye, sans pupil, with a wildly exaggerated ‘4’ struck out in bold lines that extended well past the curved lines of the eye.

I was wearing my best civilian clothes. I’d opted to leave the mask off. I sat in a chair. Two of them sat in chairs in the office, and another two stood at the side.

I gave my answer. “If I’m being entirely honest, independent doesn’t pay unless you’re really good. At the risk of sounding arrogant, in another time and place, I think I could scrape by because I do have that experience, I have the knowledge, and I can hold my own.”

“You don’t think you could do it now?” Countenance asked. He was the second in command and the highest ranking team member in the room. His outfit was heavier and draped more than the others, both in how the cloth hung loose and how the armor panels were connected so they dangled from the piece above. The Foresight icon was in the center of his mask, like a cyclopean eye.

“I know who Foresight is and how you operate,” I said. “I know you want to move forward, you’re interested in helping the little guys, tackling the right issues, and take decisive, needed action in a calculated, smart way.”

“You read our webpage.”

“I’ve been following Foresight since it started,” I said. “Whatever answer you give me today, I’ll be following you guys from here on out, because I think it’s important to know the lay of the land. Which goes back to what I was saying. Being calculated, being smart. I’ve been watching and researching you guys, and I’m sure you have the mentality where, from the time I reached out about an interview, you were looking me up and asking questions. Which means you heard about the incident at the Norfair community center.”

“Yes. We talked to your reference about it. I imagine he talked to you?”

“He didn’t, but he’s busy and this interview happened on short notice,” I said. “Everything that unfolded there and a lot of what I see elsewhere, it suggests that it would be really hard to make it as an independent. Too many want to blame parahumans for what happened, and both independents and fledgling teams are easily targeted. Established teams absorb and diffuse that impact. That aside, being part of a team, cooperating, having the information and sharing that information, it’s too crucial. That’s why I’m not going independent, given the chance. I want to help build something.”

Countenance nodded. He reached over to his friend, who handed over the paperwork he’d been reading. He looked down. “Your reference sang your praises.”

“He’s a great guy. I really respect what he’s trying to do with something as tricky as the patrol block.”

“Our problem, when it comes to assessing any candidate, is that each person we add to our teams is added strength, added power, but they’re also a possible set of complications. It forces us to strike a balance. We’re smaller than many of our peers because we’re selective. We want to make sure anyone we add will be a good fit, with minimal complications.”

“I reached out to Foresight first, to you, because I like how you do things. It’s what and who I want to be.”

“Then my next question to you would be what you think is going to happen next,” Countenance said.

“What I think is going to happen? I think trouble is incoming. We see hints of it, the out-of-control triggers, we hear about some scary monsters and then the big names go and try to handle it, then we have other circumstances where the big names are running off to go handle things that they don’t tell anyone about. I think those situations might be worse than the monsters. So far, Gimel is untouched by the worst of it. We’ve been on top of things. But sooner or later, something is going to hit us that we aren’t prepared for and can’t neatly handle.”

“What do you think happens then?”

“I think it depends a lot on us having the right information and tools.”

Beside Countenance, Anelace was nodding. Anelace was a young guy, his costume the opposite of Countenance’s in how it was tighter-fitting, his mask bearing a dark gray dagger illustration on the right side of the white surface in the same exaggerated style the ‘4’ was drawn on the emblem on his chest. The knotted area where hilt, blade, and the two prongs of the guard all met was located where one of his eyes would be.

“You said you know how we operate?”

“Support work with the megalopolis and police, patrols and events for the day to day. Several times a week you make calculated, strategic strikes on priority targets. It’s like what the Wardens are doing with the big, scary threats, but you’re more city-focused than whatever’s going on outside of Gimel. A lot of your members go on to work with them, which is why you have openings.”

“She does her research,” Anelace said.

“She does,” Countenance said. He said it in a way that suggested he was admitting it, almost reluctant.

My heart sank.

I looked over my shoulder. The two at the side of the room were Effervescent and Relay.

Effervescent was an emotion manipulator with an emphasis on stunning people. Relay was capable of some complex moves with teleportation I wasn’t sure I had a grasp on, most of which seemed to amount to them teleporting to where others were, shunting that person to a random position elsewhere, and he also had some ability to communicate without words, both sending and receiving.

“Can I ask?” I asked.

“Ask?” Countenance asked me.

I indicated the pair. “I get the impression they’re communicating something to you, and you sound like you’re winding up to tell me no. Both took some shifts at the portals, watching the refugees as they came in to make sure there was no trouble, which makes me think they’re thinkers, they read people, and they’re reading me.”

Countenance turned his head to fix the cyclopean, drawn eye on the pair.

“I can’t get a consistent read on you emotionally,” Effervescent said. “It’s repressed.”

“My long-time boyfriend was an emotion manipulator. He had a hard time getting a read on me too,” I said.

“I’m better than most when it comes to getting reads,” Effervescent said. “No offense, but it’s what isn’t as repressed that concerns me.”

“Enough you’d say no,” Countenance said.

Effervescent nodded.

“Relay?”

“My read was fine. Minimal secondary noise.”

“Sorry,” Countenance said. “For reading you without permission. It’d be a point in your favor that you caught on, but-”

“But you have to put stock in what the others say. No hard feelings,” I said. I made myself smile as I stood from my seat. Countenance stood too. He shook my hand. “I’ll see you around, I hope we can work together then.”

“I hope so too. Good luck,” Countenance said.

“Let me get the door for you,” Anelace said. He jumped to his feet and opened the door for me. His voice was quiet as he said. “Sorry to see you go.”

The thinkers would have noticed that.

I wondered what Effervescent and Relay would be reporting about my emotional state as I left.

⊙

“Mrs. Dallon?”

I stood from my seat in the waiting room.

The cape had a costume that looked like a suit, metallic silver fabric, with a black dress shirt underneath. His mask consisted of two panels that met and ran down the center of his face, creating an almost beak-like profile with how the two sides swept along the sides of his face and back. Not bird-like, but as if his entire head was the beak. The hair I could make out above the ‘v’ where the mask parted was longer and heavily styled.

It reminded me of the Ambassadors from Boston, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have worn suits as ostentatious as this, nor such a dramatic full-face mask.

“You didn’t come in costume?” he asked. He sounded surprised.

“I’m pre-identity adjustment,” I said, caught in trying to find my footing with my rehearsed explanation as I simultaneously crossed to where he was to shake his hand. “Moving on from the identity and methodology I had as a teenage heroine. I’m a blank slate, and there’s a lot of room to adjust my brand moving forward.”

“Are you ex-Protectorate?” he asked. “I might have missed that if it was in your application.”

“No. Ex-Ward, but only very briefly.”

“I only ask because you went straight to the term ‘brand’. I’m used to hearing it from people who were in the PRT and people from other corporate teams. I know I read your file and there was no mention of a corporate background. I’m Lark. You’ll meet Dido soon, all going well.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Lark.”

“My office is this way, if you’ll join me,” he said. He briefly touched the small of my back to guide me in the direction his other hand was indicating.

I was bothered by the contact. Unsolicited touching, the presumed closeness, and the fact it was a hot day, my back was damp from the walk and he would have felt that.

It was such an unnecessary thing and it made both of us uncomfortable.

“Brockton Bay,” he said.

“Yes. From birth to Endbringer and immediate aftermath.”

“A mom and pop small town team?”

“Aunt and uncle and cousins too,” I said. “Extended family. They passed the fifteen year mark with just donations and small events. I think that counts for something.”

“It’s better than what Dido and I have managed, but give us time. We have five parahumans on the team, and we’re already in the black when it comes to the business end of things.”

“I spent most of my childhood watching my mom balance the books, I did the events, the photoshoots, the merchandising as a PRT-acknowledged team. I have something of a sense of what you’re probably going for.”

“Ah, the merchandising. I think I have your PRT trading card from that time period in a binder in my office.”

I smiled. “Which one? I had one that was holographic, which you could swipe through the controller for the video game to have me as a polygon-rendered helper, and the higher quality one that had the bio on the back.”

“I think it was the second one. My office is through this door.”

I took a seat opposite the glass-top desk while he closed the door. He undid the button in his suit jacket before sitting down.

“Typically those of us at Auzure like to work with new parahumans,” he said. “They’re easier to brand. When we work with capes with a history, we like that history to be a strong one.”

“I think you get the best of both worlds with me,” I said. “Most people assumed I was dead when everything happened in Brockton Bay, and nobody corrected that misunderstanding. If you do dig up information about me, a lot of it is strong.”

“I think that’s where we run into problems,” he said. “A lot of your history and presence is tied into your family’s group identity. ‘Glory Girl’ isn’t famous beyond a certain range. Hometown heroine, yes, with some people in Boston and New York who might know of you, but not famous.”

“Then consider me new. Untainted by the past.”

“I would, but we use things we term perception turns, or just turns.”

“I know the term,” I said.

“I like that you do. Branding, turns. You do seem to know what you’re getting into here. When we’re tracking someone’s marketability, we map out the turns. You’re fine, nothing exceptional, for most of your career, with an upturn if you count your disappearance, after the Slaughterhouse Nine.”

I took a deep breath, then nodded.

“But if we include your family, there’s a lot of baggage.”

“You could say that,” I said.

“Downturn, death of Fleur. Downturn, times when New Wave was subsisting, but not in the eyes of the media.”

“Four adolescents and two couples, there were weeks where school or work took priority. That got better as my cousins and I got older.”

“Cousins… and your sister?” he asked.

I felt the shock like it was cold water.

He continued, “I think if it were up to the turns and the background alone, it would have to be a no. At the time you should have been drawing the most attention, given your age and potential, you… died, as you put it. You were gone for the two years before Gold Morning.”

“Yes,” I said.

“We’re offering cape services for the reconstruction, with Spell offering some massive assistance with the agriculture. It’s a big part of what’s driving us to the front pages, giving us some upturn in the most general sense, for public perception. What we really want is the human angle, something where we could have an attractive young lady like yourself in a photo op, or your sister-”

“No,” I said.

“Her and the right person in a photograph? If you two paired up, Auzure could make you big.”

I winced, and I stood from my seat.

“Victoria?”

They hadn’t accepted the interview to get me for me. I was just a stepping stone to the person they really wanted.

“Thank you for your time,” I said.

I managed to restrain myself from slamming the door on the way out.

⊙

“Thanks for meeting us out here,” Whorl said. He didn’t shake my hand, but instead reached out to clasp my wrist. I clasped his.

“Not a problem,” I said. I looked up at the structure that had been erected around the portal. It cast a shadow. “It’s nice to be in the shade, with a decent breeze.”

Whorl wore a blue mask with a white border around the eyes and outermost edge, and his costume was a ‘preppy’ bodysuit, complete with a folded collar, like a polo shirt, a narrow belt, and leggings. His icon was large on his chest, a circle with angled spokes at the edges. He had an armband with the gold morning symbol on it, but the colors were the blue and white of his costume.

He grinned, showing off white teeth. “You should have been here at noon. It was brutal.”

“The people weren’t too irritable, with the heat?”

All around us, people were coming through the portal, forming lines. There were buildings to the left and right of the street that people were heading into, to get the instructions and things necessary to start their lives in Gimel.

“I think they were happy for it,” Whorl said. “I’ve been going back and forth, and it’s miserable on the other side.”

“I just realized I got us started on a conversation about the weather,” I said.

“I’m kind of a weather manipulator, not really, but it’s fun to say. Talking about the weather happens more than you’d think, when it comes to me,” he said.

Again, that smile with those very white teeth.

“I read up on you online,” I said.

“Ah, did you? Should I be flattered or worried that I’ve been stalked?”

I was reminded of the segment on television, the reporter trying to corner Chevalier by getting him to claim a certain attitude.

“It’s not stalking,” I said. “I’m doing my homework, is all.”

I had to admit, the preppy look with the wide shoulders, narrow waist, clean cut and nicely taken care of, it appealed to me, and it had always. Not that I was even remotely thinking of actually moving forward with a relationship.

“I’m probably going to have to duck out and handle some minor crisis or another, but stick around and don’t disappear on me, we’ll find the time and figure out if we can place you with the Attendant.”

“That’d be great.”

“If I get caught up in something, find one of the others. Chat with them, they’ll tell you what they think of the team.”

There were a few other capes distributed across the crowd. It was interesting how people seemed so keen on them, even approaching them, happy to see them. The sentiment of blame hadn’t gripped the refugees here.

A teenager with a moon design on her mask and dress-like costume.

I saw a humanoid mech the size of a car, with a glass tank for the ‘body’, something large and fishlike within the tank. The mech sat on its ass, feet sticking out, and children were crowding around to tap the glass and climb on the feet. The tinker, as I took it, was the one sitting on the suit’s shoulder. Another cape was standing on the end of a rod, three stories above the ground, the end of the rod stuck into the side of the building. He looked stern as he looked down at the scene, his arms folded, until someone waved up at him and he waved back.

“Is that the whole team?”

“Not even close. With the teams merging, we’re taking on a lot of others. We’ll be breaking up into three sub-teams later, but all with the same name and brand.”

“I don’t know if I’m hurting my chances saying this, but I’m kind of crossing my fingers you guys are going with the Shepherd’s name and brand, but the Attendant’s approach.”

Whorl smiled again. “We might be.”

“I like the approach,” I said.

“How do you interpret it?”

“Giving people security. Moving slowly, with measured steps, informed by the lessons of the past. You guys seem pretty focused on taking and holding territories, improving neighborhoods. After what happened at the Norfair community center, I think giving people time to get used to capes again is key.”

“I think it might be,” Whorl said.

Above, the cape that was standing on the end of the horizontal pole whistled. As we looked up, he pointed.

“That’s my cue,” Whorl said. “No pun intended. I’ll be right back.”

Whorl headed toward the building that the people were filing out of, moving at a light jog, with a fog-like nimbus building at his shoulders and arms.

I looked at the various capes, debating my options. I worried that flying up to say hello to the one at the end of the pole would spook him and make him fall from his roost, and I wasn’t that keen on flying.

That left two options. The tinker or the teenage girl with the moon iconography.

I made my way toward the girl, because she had less people around her. The crowd was a bit of a tide I had to work against.

“Stuck?” I heard a voice.

I turned my head. It was a man with tattoos, a cleft chin and eyes that looked like he was perpetually squinting, even in the shade of the gate that housed the Bet-Gimel portal. He was talking to a couple.

“It’s a big decision. We’re not farmers.”

“It’s hard, getting started again,” the guy with the tattoos said. “The tent cities are rough, while you wait for an available apartment. You can work your ass off, earn fake ‘dollars’ that might not have value in a few weeks or months, you sweat, you hurt, and everyone around you is doing the same. Stinks, when everyone’s working that hard and getting only a few minutes to shower.”

“We’ve heard of things like that.”

“If you want another option, we’ve got a settlement at Canaan. Small city, even. Or a big town. We’ve got extra rooms, food, and dangerously strong alcohol. We’re still trying to figure that out.”

I heard the rustle of papers.

“Canaan?” I asked.

“Yes. Have you been?”

“I’ve heard stories,” I said. I turned to the couple, “I’m ninety percent sure the Canaan area is Fallen territory. Outskirts of the megalopolis.”

“We’re not really holding fast to all of that anymore,” the guy with the tattoos said. “We said the world would end, we tried to draw attention to it, the world ended, we were right. Now we make the best of things.”

“That seems like a pretty skewed take,” I said.

He rolled his eyes as he looked away from me. He turned back to the couple. “You have the directions. Easy to catch a bus to New Haven, catch another bus to the Hartford Stretch. Go to the address, we almost always have someone with a ride waiting there for the buses, to drive you into Canaan. The hard work has been done, it’s easier, it’s more fun, and there’s actual community. It’s one of the things that’s strangely missing from most parts in this city. You’ll notice that.”

“Maybe,” the guy from the couple said. “I’ll keep this.”

“McVeay, Crowley, or Mathers?” I asked.

The guy shot me an annoyed look. “What?”

“Which family branch were or are you?” I asked. I turned to the couple. “Three branches, each loosely themed after one of the Endbringers. There was a nascent fourth in twenty-thirteen that was based on one or all of the other three, but I missed the memo on that.”

“Crowley,” the guy said. “We were the jackasses.”

“McVeays were the ultra-religious, more violent ones, loosely themed after Behemoth,” I said. “Mathers were the ones themed after the Simurgh. They’re still around too, they did a lot of the kidnappings of kids and capes, with intent to force marriages. Then you have the Crowleys, who were a little bit more than jackasses. Stirring panic, scaring people, violence.”

“To draw attention to the imminent end of the world,” the guy with the tattoos said. “Do you want us to apologize for trying to get people’s attention and failing? Or should we not have tried? We were right.”

“Is there a problem?”

A woman’s voice. I thought it was the girl with the moons on her costume. It wasn’t. Another woman with tattoos, with friends. One of the tattoos was of a bat-winged schlong. Another was of a cartoon character I didn’t recognize getting spit-roasted, in the metal pole, open fire sense.

She had others, but I couldn’t see enough of them to tell what they were. I could guess they were similarly tasteful. Her top was tied at the sternum, exposing ribs and stomach.

“Just a bit of one,” I said. “You guys are openly recruiting from this crowd here?”

“Recruiting is an strange way to put it,” the guy with the tattoos said.

I looked at the couple. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Free rent, free food, drinks, company?”

“Cheap rent,” the woman with the tattoos said. “A lot of people stay just long enough to make some extra money while commuting to Hartford and paying rent to us.”

“All we ask is that people who decide to go make sure to tell people that hey, we aren’t assholes,” the tattooed guy said.

“We aren’t assholes!” the burly guys who were keeping the woman company cheered in near-unison.

“Which Crowley is in charge?” I asked.

“Hey, bitch,” the woman said. “Just move on. Fuck off.”

The cheering had drawn attention. The teenage girl with the moons on her costume approached, ducking beneath one of the burly guy’s arms. She spotted me, saw that last exchange, and drew close to me, putting one hand on my shoulder.

“You’re the one Whorl was talking to?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Take it from me, it’s not worth it. Come on.”

The guy with the tattoos smirked.

“You know they’re recruiting here, right?” I asked.

“We know,” she said. “We’ve drawn attention to it. We were told to keep out of it, so long as they behave.”

She put pressure on my shoulder, urging me to move. I took one step back.

I didn’t want to let this go. I would have more regrets if I walked away.

“Which Crowley?” I asked. “There were three brothers and one sister, last I heard.”

“Doesn’t matter,” the tattooed guy said.

“Eldest brother was a murderer, got ousted from the family for that, back in twenty-eleven, when the Fallen were still minor. But around the time their numbers swelled in twenty-twelve, early twenty-thirteen, he got accepted back, head of the Crowley branch. He killed two of his own family members after that. I think that matters a lot, since if he’s in charge, you can’t really call yourselves mere jackasses.”

“Not him.”

There were a few more faces appearing in the crowd. Unfriendly.

The girl with the moon design leaned in close, murmuring in my ear, “They have someone with powers in the crowd. They send people out to fish for recruits, and if there’s trouble, they have these reinforcements summoned into the middle of the crowd and they’ll shout you down.”

“Okay,” I said. “Middle brother and the sister were pretty skeevy too. They didn’t kidnap anyone directly, but they networked with the other families, gave shelter to some McVeays who needed to duck the attention of the law, and they traded a few of their family members for some of the kidnapped minors and capes the Mathers family had. I’d be concerned about going to that camp.”

“The little brother,” the guy with the tattoos said.

“The party animal,” I said.

“That’s what we’re about!” were the shouts. There was more of a raucous response from the other reinforcements. Cries and shouts of ‘party’. People throughout the crowd were looking.

“He’ll try to steal your girlfriend before he makes you welcome!” I had to raise my voice to be heard. The people who were pushing forward made it harder for me to see the couple. “It’s not worth it. You can look him up at a library. Jake Crowley! Four wives, all half his age!”

There were shouts and bellows of denial, a few swears directed my way. One ‘cunt’, from someone close enough to have punched me if he’d felt the desire.

“Throw away the paper,” I called out. “It’s not worth it!”

With the press of bodies, I didn’t see the paper get thrown away. But I saw the guy hugging his girlfriend closer, I saw the fractional nod.

That was all I got. The moon girl pushed me harder, and I allowed myself to be pushed this time.

I walked backward out of the crowd, looking at the group. They were still making a lot of noise.

Whorl was waiting for me as I made my exit from the thicker part of the crowd. The mech tinker was standing on the head of his suit, now, and the suit was standing too, which gave him a decent vantage point overlooking everything.

“It’s going to take an hour before they settle down,” Whorl said. “What was that about?”

“Fallen recruiters,” I said.

“I know that much.”

“I wanted to make sure the people they were talking to knew,” I said. “Told them who the family was, how they operated, who the leader was.”

“You think they listened?” Moon girl asked.

“They might have,” I said. “I didn’t get the impression I was going to start a riot, so I thought I’d be okay trying.”

“Nah,” Whorl said, “Your impression was fine. No riot. They know to keep their hands to themselves, and just to be loud. They stick to the rules so they can keep coming back. We were told to let them, which sucks, but we have to work with the authorities.”

“I told her that,” Moon girl said. “That we were supposed to leave it be.”

“Before or after she stirred them up?”

“Before,” I answered for her. “I knew, I went ahead anyway.”

Whorl frowned.

“I knew it would probably cost me my spot on the team,” I said.

Whorl nodded slowly.

“But if it stops one person from going over to that town of theirs… I guess it’s worth it.”

“It might have worked,” Whorl said, “But they’ve got the reinforcements, they’ll double down. They’ll try harder, make up for it.”

“You guys are all about learning from the mistakes of the past,” I said. “Paying respect to the casualties. You have to know they can’t be allowed to get a foothold. They’re too monstrous, and the people they’re going after are too vulnerable.”

“They have a foothold already,” he said. “We’re the guys who failed to stop the end of the world, and they’re the ones who were right about it. To some people that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter that they’re scumbags or that they’re dangerous. Not everyone, but even one out of every thirty is a lot.”

“We should go calm things down,” Moon girl said.

“Yeah,” Whorl said. “Distract the people from the tattooed hooligans.”

“Good luck with that,” I said.

“Take care, Victoria. Keep fighting the good fight, whatever you end up doing.”

I gave him a casual salute, two fingers of one hand touching my brow.

I braced myself, both in balance and emotionally, then took to the air, moving slowly. I raised myself up to the same level as the guy at the end of the pole, staying within his field of vision so I wouldn’t surprise him.

They were using the powers to teleport people in. I couldn’t see where the fade-in happened or where the teleportation destination was, but as the crowd shuffled, there were more of the people with tattoos, trashy people, and people that didn’t look like refugees.

The guy on the end of the pole pointed. I moved closer to him, and followed the line of his arm and finger to see.

A man with a daughter, sitting on a blanket at the base of a fence.

“The girl or the man?” I asked.

“The man. He’s the one bringing them in. Keeps the kid close as a shield, in case someone catches on. Different kids, some days.”

I nodded.

“I think every day of going over there and taking him out of the picture. Letting him know I know.”

“Wouldn’t be worth it,” I said.

The noises of the crowd of Fallen increased, a fresh chant. Heads were turning and people were smiling, because they didn’t know, and positivity and high energy meant a lot when they were as tired and despondent as they were. Some would have spent a long time waiting for their chance to come through.

A dangerous and vulnerable thing, to have no place to go.

Flare – 2.2

There was something to be said about the fact that the hospital was still in construction while it was running. There were patients in the waiting room, sitting in the chairs that had been bolted to the floor, and the unhappiness of needing a hospital visit was compounded by the fact that a third of the way across the room, behind a plastic sheet that had been taped to walls, ceiling and floor, a team was using power tools and calling out in loud voices as they built the rest of the room.

The hospital staff looked pretty miserable too, most of them sequestered on the other side of a counter, walled off from the patients by a plexiglass window. Security guards stood off to one side.

“Can I help you?” a secretary asked.

“I was wondering if it was possible for me to see a patient?”

“Visiting hours are open. Patient’s name?”

“Fume Hood. I don’t know her real name.”

The secretary stopped, then looked at the male secretary, who sat at the other end of the counter. She looked past him at the security guard.

Of course.

“I was one of the people giving her medical attention when the ambulance arrived,” I said. I knew it wouldn’t matter, that they would assume I’d been lying, but I hoped it would temper the reaction.

“She’s not accepting visitors,” the secretary said.

“One second,” I heard. A female voice.

Two overlapping sections of the plastic sheet peeled apart. Tempera ducked through, and put the tacky sides of the plastic back together. She was dusty from plaster and streaked with paint that wasn’t from her power. She wore overalls, a black t-shirt for a top, and had a different pattern to the paint she’d applied over her eyes with fingers, more like she had applied it to her fingers and pressed them to her eyes as a series of vertical bars, each bleeding into the one beside it.

“Hi, Victoria,” she said to me.

“Hi.”

She looked at the secretary, “We know her. Can I take her back to the room?”

“Let me get her information, and I’ll buzz you two through.”

I took the clipboard with the paperwork, and I filled out the information, checking my phone to remind myself of the specifics of Crystal’s address. She took the clipboard, read it over, and let us through.

We walked down the back halls of the hospital, past individual clinics and their signs and separate waiting areas, past patient rooms and nurse’s stations. Tempera indicated the turns. We didn’t rush it, an unspoken agreement that we’d take our time, have a chance to talk.

“There was one attempt on her life. We were worried there would be another,” Tempera said.

“Are you standing guard?” I asked.

“I am keeping an eye on things, but mostly by accident. I’ve been helping with the construction. I like getting my hands dirty,” Tempera said. She smiled as she held up one hand, which was covered in wet white ‘paint’ down to the elbow, the paint turning black before transitioning to her light brown skin. “Look at you, though. You look tidy.”

Tidy. It was an amusing choice of words, when Tempera looked anything but. I smiled. “Looking around to see if any teams are looking to fill positions.”

“And?”

“Only one was actually posting any openings, a corporate team, Auzure. Foresight and the Attendant were open to interviewing me. There are two other big teams; one gave me a hard no, and the other is folding into the Attendant and won’t exist soon, they didn’t give me a response yet, and with how the talk with the Attendant went, I don’t think it’d work out.”

“They’re pretty conservative. In a lot of respects. A lot of the religious capes went to the Shepherds and will be part of the Attendant. I’ve been paying close attention to that.”

“Yeah,” I said. “One or two of the sketchy people from Empire Eighty-Eight, too.”

“Empire Eighty-Eight? They sound familiar.”

“They had a presence for a while. A few years back they broke up into two other groups. The Pure and Fenrir’s Chosen.”

“Ah. I know the Chosen. They were linked to the Clans, I think?”

“Yes. The Clans spread out across multiple cities, and would funnel anyone who got powers over to the Empire Eighty-Eight core group, back before Leviathan broke the group’s back. They were a background element in my childhood and cape career.”

“Ahh. Was that a factor in your wanting to join?”

A very carefully neutral question, that. I wondered if she was prodding me, not declaring a stance while feeling me out. I was still an unknown, in a way.

“Violent racists on the team? Definitely a factor, big point against. Question is, are they ex-violent, ex-racists? Gets muddier. Even then, I might draw the line there, and not join. If they were contrite? I could roll with that, I think. Barring one or two especially scummy individuals. Interview didn’t get far enough for me to raise the subject.”

Tempera nodded, not saying anything.

“I think… maybe I’m being unsubtle, saying it, but I think there’s a big difference between who those guys were and who Fume Hood is.”

“I think so too.”

“How is she?”

“She’s hurt by what happened. It’s hard, to put yourself out there, face your shortcomings, try to be better, and get shot for it.”

“Partial facing of shortcomings, from what she and I talked about,” I said.

“It’s why I said face, instead of ‘admit’,” Tempera said. “But I don’t want to quibble. Change of subject. You said your meeting went badly. Can I ask what happened?”

“Fallen,” I said.

“Did you get in another fight?”

“No,” I said. I sighed. “No. They did what they often do, they caused a disruption, and that’s a playing field that suits them well. I’d call it a draw, but I’m pretty sure they’re still out there recruiting and I’m not out there counteracting that.”

“There will always be bad guys. They will always be out there. There will always be murders, there will be theft, there will be drugs.”

I nodded.

“Question is,” Tempera said, “Where do you want to be, in relation to that, as it happens?”

“That is a deceptively tricky question,” I said.

“You definitely put yourself out there, backing us up when things went sideways at the community center.”

“I really appreciate that you see it that way,” I said.

“You put yourself in front of Lord of Loss. I don’t know how your power works, but it’s obvious you can bleed. There was some danger there.”

I acknowledged that with a small nod.

“And now you’re interviewing for teams? So soon after? It sounds like you want to be out there, helping.”

“I do. I’m zero for three, though.”

“You don’t want to be independent? Hold on a second. We’re nearly at the room, but let’s finish talking before we go in.”

We stopped midway down the hallway. A nurse’s station was a short distance away.

“I-” I started. “I think, the way things are going, I might end up going that way. Teams are a complication of their own.”

“They are,” Tempera said. “I had a phone call earlier, offering a position. I can go right there and sign the paperwork if I want to.”

“With?”

“The Attendant, as it happens,” Tempera said.

I was momentarily lost for words. She’d been doing what I’d thought, inviting me to answer without declaring a position, but from a different angle.

“I want to wait and see how the merger with the Shepherds shakes up, how it feels after, they said not to wait too long. It’s decent money, decent exposure. A lot of decency.”

“Don’t let what I said change your mind on anything. I’m griping, it’s-”

“It’s fine,” she said. “I invited you to gripe, if we’re going to use your word. It’s interesting to hear that take on them. I didn’t know about the racist ex-villains joining. I’m curious about how they handled the Fallen there, too, in your situation.”

“I think, uh, don’t tell them I said this…”

“Of course.”

“…I think they or the people they’re taking guidance from are approaching that stance of there always being bad guys to deal with, and they’re deciding to conserve their energy. To not fight that fight. Maybe it’s right to.”

“You got a draw. That’s better than a win for the bad guys there.”

“It’s- yeah,” I said. “I tried to use reason, draw on the stuff I studied, old knowledge I had about the group. Who they were, how they operate, the families, the names. Put that information out there, so the potential recruits would know the key facts. I tried to get them to say who their leader was, pressed the issue, and of course it was the least bad one, so the argument I was gunning for didn’t have much clout, and I lost steam.”

“I picture the Fallen as a group that’s pretty comfortable defying reason.”

“Them, yes. The recruits, I think they were open to hearing it. I threw out some more information I remembered at the last second, but the Fallen were getting pretty loud, I didn’t want to start a riot, and that was more or less it.”

“And the Attendant?”

“Weren’t keen on me making a point of things when the word from on high was to let the Fallen be. I didn’t get my invite to the team.”

Tempera made a face.

“I don’t like ignoring the monsters. And I do think the Fallen are monstrous, as a collective force.”

“They’re a headache I was always glad I wouldn’t have to deal with,” Tempera said. She scratched her nose as she scrunched it up, the paint there highlighting the creases. The scratching deposited more paint on the bridge. “One I guess I’ll have to prepare myself for dealing with. Or possibly not dealing with, if I take the Attendant’s offer.”

“Possibly,” I said. “Don’t give my words too much weight.”

“I’ll try to be sensible about it. I might end up asking those questions you didn’t get a chance to, if that’s okay.”

I nodded.

“I think I’ll be okay, whatever happens. The Wardens facilitated Attendant’s contact with me, and from their tone, I think they’d push to get me on another team if I didn’t go with that one.”

“That’s great,” I said.

“I could put in a word for you.”

“I wouldn’t say no,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll get my hopes up, either.”

Tempera frowned.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound negative.”

“Are you finding your way, with these setbacks?”

I shrugged. “Complicated. Just wanted to check in on Fume Hood, while things are quiet. When the law or the system fail to outline a process, do what seems right. When it’s not clear what’s right, go with the law. When neither is clear, reach out.”

“For perspective?”

I shrugged. “That too. More eyes on a problem never hurts.”

“Another point for the team, instead of going independent,” Tempera said. She looked back down the hall, in the direction we’d been walking to. “Hold on a moment? I’ll check if she’s decent. I wouldn’t mind bringing Fume Hood into it, now that we’re past the semi-confidential stuff about other teams.”

I nodded.

She touched the wall by the door as she rounded the corner, stepping into the room, and she knocked on the door as she entered.

There was a brief pause. The handprint of paint on the wall dropped to the floor with a splat as Tempera said, “Come in.”

The blob of paint on the door fell to the ground as well. Both moved along the ground as I entered, spattering against the back of Tempera’s shoes and the back of her overalls.

Fume Hood had donned a mask, but she didn’t wear the hood. She lay down on the bed, which was angled so she could sit up at an angle. A blanket had been pulled up to her waist, covering her legs.

Crystalclear sat in the chair between her and the window, the crystal configuration on his head slightly different than before. He wore a t-shirt and shorts. There was something odd about a guy with crystals where his eyes and hair would be having very ordinary hairy legs.

“Heya,” Crystalclear said.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hey, patrol girl with a name I can’t remember,” Fume Hood said.

“Victoria,” Tempera volunteered.

“Victoria. Right. Thank you for helping to hold my blood in,” Fume Hood said.

“You’re very welcome,” I said. I noted the flowers and cards sitting beneath the window. “Sorry I didn’t bring anything. This is my awkward ‘I was in the neighborhood’ visit. I saw the hospital name and remembered you were brought out this way.”

“I’ve got too much as it is. Turns out that the key to popularity and acceptance is to get yourself shot.”

Her tone was light, almost amused. Tempera had said Fume Hood was hurt on an emotional level, but I didn’t see a sign of it. I could remember how Tempera had acted on my first meeting with her, how in tune with her team she had been. I was willing to put a lot of stock in her take on things.

“Victoria, what I was going to say, before deciding I’d rather say it here, was that we’re going our separate ways, yes-”

“Longscratch is already gone,” Crystalclear said. “But I don’t think he was ever going to stick around on a permanent basis.”

“Yes,” Tempera said. “Which is a shame. I do hope he finds what he’s looking for. My point is, I don’t want to lose touch. It’s helpful and nice that Crystalclear happened to be here to help illustrate that maintenance of contact.”

“Happy to take credit,” Crystalclear said.

“Victoria said- if you don’t mind me repeating?”

“No.”

“She said that it’s important to reach out, if I’m recalling that right. I’d like to stay friends with you,” Tempera said. “Crystalclear, Fume Hood. Victoria, you too.”

“Why?” Fume Hood asked.

“What do you mean?” Tempera asked.

“We’re very different people,” Fume Hood said. “I don’t get how that works. How do you stay in touch with people you have very little in common with?”

“Easy. Grab a bite sometime,” I said. “Sandwich, beer or soda, share stories, get different perspectives. I wouldn’t mind.”

“That’d be nice,” Crystalclear said.

“But-” Fume Hood started. She frowned. “Okay, whatever.”

“You should find the words for what you’re trying to say,” I said. “In case it festers or gets in the way.”

“I dunno. I don’t get why you’re here. I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong. You put pressure on my wound, Tempera gave me first aid and used her paint to keep me from dying. I probably owe you my lives. But that whole fiasco was my fault.”

“I blame the attacking villains, not you,” Tempera said.

“Yep,” Crystalclear said.

“Are you trying to be clever and get me to keep being a hero, then?” Fume Hood asked.

“I’m here because I was interested in how you were doing,” I said. “Obviously I’d prefer it if you stayed a hero, but that’s not the objective.”

“If you guys keep showing up with flowers or to make small talk, you make it awfully hard for me to fuck off and go back to being a villain.”

“That’s a plus,” Tempera said. “But like Victoria said, it’s not the main point.”

“On the topic of pluses,” I said, “I’m interested in who those guys were. So if you hear anything, I wouldn’t mind a heads up.”

“The guy who shot me did so of sound mind, no Kingdom Come in play. Independent, apparently. No money in his accounts, he didn’t have internet. He was just pissed off.”

“There were the villains, too,” I said.

“There were.”

“And we don’t know what they were after,” Crystalclear said.

“Multiple conflicting stories,” I said. “Blindside lied to me when I asked. It bothers me, and I worry it’ll happen again.”

“Give me your cell phone number,” Tempera said. “I’ll get in touch.”

There was a brief pause while we sorted things out, me getting the contact information from each of the others, and giving them mine. They already knew each other.

Reaching out, making and maintaining contact.

A part of me had hoped that Fume Hood was wrong, that the team wouldn’t have dissolved, that they’d be together, willing to give things another try. That it might have been a team I could join.

“The cards and flowers might have something to do with how you’re the topic of the moment,” I mused aloud.

“I heard something about that,” Fume Hood said, indicating Crystalclear.

“From me,” Crystalclear volunteered unnecessarily.

“If you guys were to try again, there could be more attention, more support,” I said.

“More gunshots?” Fume Hood asked. “I’m stepping down and going into hiding. I’ll recuperate, let the heat die down, and then figure out what I’m doing.”

“If it matters, I think more people are siding with you than not,” I said.

Fume Hood nodded a few times, taking that in. “Weird.”

“It’s good,” Tempera said. “I think Crystalclear already accepted the offer from Foresight, though.”

“It was a very promising offer.”

“And I’ve been contacted by Attendant. I don’t know what I’ll do with that. And Victoria-”

“Is not having much luck,” I said. “But I want to do something.”

“You were thinking you might go independent?”

“Which doesn’t pay,” I said. “Not in this environment.”

“How does that work?” Fume Hood asked. “If you’re a crook, it’s easy, you take jobs at the villain bar, or you rob some place, or any number of things. You just… go out on patrol?”

“There are a few other things to do,” I said. “One way is to essentially run a protection racket that isn’t a racket. It’s easy for that to go wrong. There’s a higher level effect, which is easier to pull off when, say, a city has a downtown area and the shop owners gather together to pay a wage to the hero that draws attention and has a positive influence on their area…”

“Things have to be stable before that happens,” Tempera said.

“We’re not there yet,” I said. “There’s training and support. Offering powers for helping with the rebuilding, which Auzure was doing a bit of. There’s merchandising, but that’s a dead market right now, I think.”

“We fished in that pond prior to getting underway and we didn’t get any bites,” Crystalclear said.

“I was selling my brain, I know a lot about capes and the community, having grown up with it. That job’s done, and I don’t know if there’s much more opportunity for that.”

“Tell you what,” Tempera said. “I’ll put out feelers. See what people say.”

I nodded. “Sure. Thank you.”

⊙

I was lost in thought enough that my retracing of my steps on the way out of the hospital turned me in circles. I approached the same nurse’s station for a second time, and I stopped at the desk, waiting for someone with a spare moment to give me directions.

I wanted to do something.

There weren’t any openings. I was pretty sure Advance Guard had turned me down because of my background, the two year gap prior to Gold Morning. Others had their reasons for rejecting me. As it was, the field was fairly cluttered. Villains were keeping their heads down. As much as there was always going to be the bad guys, like Tempera had said, we didn’t have the systems in place to identify them or address them.

No way to make money off of my powers, to pay the rent and get out of Crystal’s borderline uncomfortably cluttered place.

“Yes?” a nurse asked.

I blinked. I didn’t ask her for directions. My thoughts went in another direction, spurred to life by my thoughts of the unpaid cape work.

“If I said ‘crisis points’, would that mean anything to you?” I asked.

“It’s been a long time since I heard that. Yes, it means something. Do you work with capes?”

“I… kind of am a cape. Would you be open to me giving you a hand?”

“Let me look into it. I’m not sure what the usual methods are, and it’s not fresh in my mind.”

“You’d want to identify the key patients, check with any parents, if they’re under eighteen, and they often are. Then with me, you’d want to check with legal, you can call my references, which I do have on hand…”

⊙

The mask wasn’t the quality sort I was used to, more of a Halloween costume. The top I wore was a men’s small, a little too big in the shoulder, while it simultaneously squashed my chest.

From the ages of the patients in the pediatric wing, I wasn’t sure they would pay much mind to my chest, squashed or not. Most were twelve or younger. A few heads turned, people paying cursory attention.

I still wore the skirt I’d worn to the interviews, the belt.

Room 5, bed C.

I entered room five. There were four beds, one in each corner. One monitor was beeping, the other kids were lying down, looking bored.

Bed C was a little girl, with a face chock full of freckles, and sandy blonde hair. The curtains had been partially closed, blocking the views of the boy sitting to her left and the girl sitting across from her.

“Audrey?” I asked, peering in.

I saw only a glimpse of misery on her expression, while she stared off out the window. Then she raised her head and the expression was gone. She assessed me, head to toe.

“Great,” she said, after she was done.

“Great?”

“Ooh, yay, it’s Legend, except he’s a girl now,” she said, sarcastic.

The t-shirt I wore was styled after Legend’s costume. The mask was the same. Something the staff had kept on hand from the past Halloween.

“The nurses pointed me your way,” I said.

“Well, my day sucked, but now fake Lady Legend is here, so I’m all better. That’s great.”

“I can take the mask off if you want,” I said.

“Oh, no, you can’t do that, fake Lady Legend. Your secret identity might be compromised!”

The sarcasm ran strong through this one.

I pulled the curtain closed a bit more, then pulled off the mask, flying a bit as I said, “I never really had the secret identity.”

With that, at least, her eyebrows went up. No smart retort. She moved around her hospital bed, craning her head to see my feet, trying to spot the trick.

“I don’t know you,” she said.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “The nurses mentioned you’d had an especially bad day.”

Again, that momentary look of misery.

Yeah, I knew that.

“Back before everything turned sour, when I’d come to the hospital, with, um-” I stopped, drew in a breath, and sighed. “It’s something heroes would do. Check in on people who had really bad days. And when I came to the hospital, sometimes I’d do that.”

Crisis points. More a PRT thing than a New Wave thing, but we’d done a small share. Looking out for the recent triggers, putting our faces and names out there, staying in touch with the public.

“A nurse sat down with me for a while,” she said. “No offense, I appreciate it, but I’m kind of talked out.”

“Instead of talking, um,” I said. I showed her what was in my hand, letting the straps dangle. “What would you say about going flying?”

I saw her eyes go wide.

“The hospital called your dad’s work. He said it was okay.”

⊙

My feet left the hospital rooftop. Flying was unwieldy, especially with my burden. I was untrained. Having the benefit of my forcefield to protect me in the event of a crash would mean having my forcefield up, and that had other connotations, with my power as distorted as it was, the fact that I couldn’t necessarily control the movements or know what they would do. Not doable, when I held someone.

There was uncertainty too. The source of that flight, it had never let me down, but if push came to shove, in a crisis, would my maneuvering be sloppier? Would I decelerate or accelerate in a different way? I’d carelessly trusted my power, once, and now I wasn’t sure I could. I knew what the source of that power was, now, and what its goals were.

It was emotionally heavy, even as I felt almost weightless physically, to be reminded of what had changed so dramatically.

I could feel my charge’s intake of breath, as I held one arm across her lower ribs. I didn’t trust the harness we’d grabbed from the physio center. Not enough to hold someone for me. She was strapped with her back to my front.

The ground was a good ways below us now. I hadn’t even ascended that fast. I’d been a little lost in thought.

I felt her laugh, nervous and small, while I turned us around, giving her a view of the area. Norfair and its community center was off in the distance, one way. The farms were off in another direction. From here, it was easy to see the tall buildings of the city, the places that looked like a slice of the old world. To look to the fringes of those areas, where the tents and shoddily erected structures stretched off, so endless it seemed they reached to the horizon.

“I got you,” I said, in answer to the nervous giggles. Had I laughed like that, on my first real flight?

“Yeah,” was the response, a small, quiet voice. Then more giggles.

The giggle became laughter on her part, borderline hysterical.

“You okay?”

She nodded, fast and fierce, then drew in a deep breath.

“Wooooooooo!” she whooped, top of her lungs, loud enough to be heard on the ground.

“Hood up,” I said, reaching up to tug the hood of her hoodie over her head.

“What? Why?” she asked, panting from the cheer.

“Just in case it’s cold,” I said.

“Cold? Why-”

Before she could fully catch her breath, I dropped from our position, diving, fast, hard, and surprising enough that even I felt my stomach’s contents lurch.

She didn’t have the ability to cheer, as the drop stole what little breath she had, but her arms went up and out, to either side of my shoulders, fingers spreading to feel the wind, the sun-warmed air.

I smiled, letting the swoop dash all of the other thoughts and feelings from my mind, vicariously enjoying the experience of flying for the first time. Of flying at all.

⊙

“Juan?” I asked.

Juan was younger than the other kids had been. Eight, if I had to guess, but he wasn’t well, so that might have screwed up my estimation. He was thin at the arm and wrist, and puffy around the face.

“The first time I came to the hospital, one of the nurses wore that costume,” Juan said. “He was a guy though.”

“How does it look on me?” I asked.

“I think it looks really nice,” he said. “You’re very pretty.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That’s sweet.”

“Some of the others were saying a lady superhero was going around taking people flying.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s the plan. Your mom and dad said you might enjoy it, and you should be well enough.”

“They had to go to work,” Juan said.

“That’s what I heard.”

“They always have to go. Even when I have bad days. And there’s nothing on television. There’s only three channels and they’re real boring.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I really hate hospitals,” he said.

I took a deep breath. His words echoed my feelings, which only magnified the feelings.

Yeah. I really hated hospitals too.

“It’s getting dark,” I said, “But if you want to try flying, maybe that’d be a bit of a break from the boring stuff, and a break from the hospital.”

“Thank you,” Juan said. “But flying sounds like it’s very tiring.”

“It can be,” I said. “I can go slow if you like, or we can do something else. We could talk.”

He nodded at that last bit, then started looking around. I pulled up a nearby chair, and sat down next to his bed.

“I got a lot of books,” Juan said. He deposited a stack of kids’ books and comics on the edge of the bed, between me and him. “Uh, before. I said I didn’t want to be stuck here and be bored, my mom went and came back with books and comics, and then they both left.”

“That was nice of them,” I said. I picked up one of the books.

“My eyes are tired today,” he said. “The letters are blurry.”

“Do you want me to read some out loud?” I asked.

That got me a firm nod, and the first smile I’d seen out of him.

“Good Simon to start, then?” I asked. Another nod.

There were pictures, so he shuffled over to the edge of the bed, and I sat on the other side, my ass half on the bed’s railing, and I held the book between us, so we could both see it.

Two good Simon books, which were most likely aimed at someone just a bit younger than Juan was, but he didn’t seem to complain. I moved on to a comic involving the robot prison ship, peeking ahead so I could skip past the scenes which were aimed at someone much older than him, and then, to be safe, moved on to something aimed at a younger age again. Kids in animal masks getting into trouble.

There wasn’t much likelihood that Juan had powers, but he’d had a bad day, and this was okay.

I was halfway through that book when I saw someone look in at the door, peeking around. A boy. He stopped as he spotted me.

I finished the page, then paused, partially closing the book, and checking on Juan. Fast asleep. I checked his pulse, because I was paranoid, then fixed his blankets, and eased myself up off the bed with flight, to not disturb him.

I used a notepad by the side of the bed, and wrote a brief farewell:

Nice to meet you, Juan. The nurses have my number so if you want to go flying sometime, we might be able to arrange something. 🙂
-Victoria

I walked over to the door. It wasn’t one of the ones I’d taken a flight with. Older, thirteen or so, with what might have been his first pimples.

I saw the hesitation on his face.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go to the cafeteria. It’s late, I don’t think many people will be around.”

He nodded.

⊙

“Hello?”

“Tempera? Hi, it’s Victoria. I’m sorry to call you so late.”

“It’s fine. I don’t sleep much, and the call is more than welcome. Why the call?”

“I’m at the hospital, talking to someone-”

“You’re still at the hospital?”

“Yes. I’ve been talking to a teenager, he’s listening in on my half of the conversation right now. He’s got a friend with powers, but she’s not doing so hot. It’s new and it’s scary and neither he nor she know what to do.”

“We’ve been there.”

“We’ve been there. Yeah. I know you’re in touch with the Wardens. They’re decent, they have a lot of resources, they have some good people.”

“Absolutely.”

“He can describe particulars and you can let them know.”

“Not a problem. Just so you know, it might be hard to get someone on the phone this late, but if it’s a problem, I know some people I can round up and we can go talk to her as a big supportive group.”

“Great. I’m going to hand you off now.”

“Wait, one second. Victoria.”

“Yes?”

“Call me back when this is over, or call me first thing in the morning. I was sounding out some people, it’s not an invite to a team or anything, but with something this messy, we need all the hands we can get.”

“Messy?”

“I’ll explain later. For now, we help your buddy there.”

I handed the corded phone over. We stood at an empty nurse’s station in a hallway where the lights had been set dim. My hands were free, and I’d intentionally used their phone so my own would be free.

There were other calls I needed to make, including one to Crystal to let her know where I was. I put that one off. Crystal was easygoing.

I sent one to Mrs. Yamada.

Me:
I know your caseload is full, but found a kid with some power-related troubles. Contact is reaching out to Wardens soon. Maybe you can keep an eye out to make sure all goes smooth?

The boy was explaining in a hushed voice about his friend’s circumstance. An uncontrolled, messy power, and she had no place to go. He hadn’t given me many details, but I could tell he was scared, and I could infer from that that she must be terrified.

The reply came back.

Jessica:
Absolutely. I can’t promise I take them as a patient but I can help with initial moves.

I nodded to myself.

The boy was relaxing as he talked on the phone. A distant, authoritative, kind voice, and the promise of some answers or help.

My phone buzzed again.

Jessica:
A patient canceled for later this week. Do you want to meet for a late lunch? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.

Flare – 2.3

It was dark as the boy and I stepped outside. It was a flipping of perspectives, in a way, that the city lights were going out and the tent villages off in the distance were lighting up with lamps and fires. The city had only a small fraction of the light it might have had in the old world when power rationing wasn’t in effect, only a tenth the normal number of apartments were lit up. Only the major roads had light, and that meant far less people were driving, which meant less head and tail lights.

It was cool out, not as cold as it had been last night, thankfully.

It was five minutes before Tempera met us at the door. She looked a little worn out, but then again, she’d gone to the hospital, gone home, come back to the hospital, and she was juggling something with the messy situation she’d talked to me about.

“Hi Victoria. Hi Sam.”

“Hi,” Sam said.

“On a scale of one to ten, how serious is your friend’s situation?”

“Uh. Six? She’s depressed, she’s scared, she doesn’t know how to use her power, and I can’t get near her to help her. She’s afraid people are going to take her away.”

“How immediate is the situation? Does she need help in the next five minutes, next hour, today? Is she or anyone else in danger?”

“She’s alive, but I’d like to get her help soon. She’s freaking out and I don’t know what to do.”

“I’m only asking like this because it’s an emergency, and since our talk on the phone it’s escalating. I’m going to take you to the Wardens headquarters, okay? I’m going that way already, I can walk you through the security and introduce you to some people, and they’ll have ideas on what to do with your friend. Sound good?”

“Sounds alright.”

“What’s the emergency?” I asked.

“Citizen labor is going nuts. They’re massing, pulling in some outside help, a lot of other angry and frustrated citizens. I don’t have the full picture yet, but it’s all hands on deck. Wardens are coordinating Advance Guard, Foresight, Shepherds, the Attendant and others. They’re even bringing in the PRTCJ capes, which haven’t exactly been advertised to the public.”

Crystal’s group. The situation was bad enough to open the can of worms that was capes serving as a military-adjunct force? In this climate, no less.

Tempera went on, “I and some of the other prospective Wardens are being asked to go with the Wardens proper, to handle things where they’re getting out of control offworld.”

“Offworld?”

“I recommended you, said you’d help, they’ve given a tentative a-ok on that. Things are expected to blow up when the city wakes up tomorrow, so it’s up to you if you want to help tonight or first thing tomorrow. I sent you the address?”

“I got it,” I said.

“I should go. Sam, with me.”

“Good luck,” I said. “Sorry to pass the ball like this.”

“It’s fine. Good luck to you too, Victoria.”

I checked my phone, waiting painful minutes for sites to load.

She’d said I could help tonight or tomorrow. That things would get bad starting tomorrow.

The news sites already had multiple headlines with the word ‘war’ followed by a question mark. And things were expected to get worse tomorrow?

No, I’d go tonight.

I’d fly, even. I messaged Crystal.

⊙

I let myself into Crystal’s apartment through the balcony, using the key Crystal had given me on the sliding glass door.

“I’m here,” I called out.

I was about to step from the living room to the hallway when a red-tinted forcefield appeared across the path, blocking my way.

“One moment!” Crystal called out.

I turned my back to the forcefield and leaned against it, my arms folded. “Can I talk to you from here?”

“Yep!”

“The headlines are saying war,” I said. “And you’re being brought in.”

“Could go that way,” Crystal said. “It’s wonky. Two sides are butting heads and we’ve got another world that’s pretty upset.”

“I’ve only heard bits and pieces from some others and the news. Is it a strike?”

“Not a strike. I’m dressed now, you can come through,” Crystal said. The forcefield disappeared, and I used flight to keep from falling, turning myself around before walking down the hallway and around the bend to Crystal’s room.

Crystal had already been in costume and with her group when she’d been ordered to get ready and be at the location within half an hour. She was using the opportunity to help get me organized. She’d showered while waiting for me, she’d donned her costume, and she was combing wet hair now.

Her costume was white, with her usual symbol on it, the arrow pointing down and to the side, with a stream of lines flowing from the back of the arrow, over one shoulder. She wore a jacket with it, a near-black gray, given a faint magenta-red tint. ‘PRTCJ’ was printed on the back in big white letters. A lone stylized chevron was on the sleeve.

There were things to be said about it, about the militaristic tilt of the group, the way the PRT and the Protectorate had broken in such a way that the Wardens had sprung up from one large chunk of the image, presentation and ideals. Crystal’s parahuman miltary thing was crudely forged from another chunk of what the PRT had been: the PRT’s old laws, rules, and discipline. A military-esque force without a government to serve or a hard and fast system of law to back it up.

But it was Crystal’s call. Crystal’s thing. I held my tongue.

“My closet,” she said. “Black trash bags. Never throwing things away pays off. It’s one of the sample batches.”

The bags made the clothes easy to find, even in the jam-packed closet. The contents were hidden within the trash bags, the hooks of the hangers poking up and through. Crystal indicated the bed, and I laid them out, peeling the plastic back. White costumes without icons or decoration, a variety of cuts and styles.

It was a familiar range. Back in the day, companies had periodically reached out to New Wave, wanting to pitch their product and get us to use them for our costuming. Mom had handled those talks and periodically singled out a family member to send a bunch of proto-costumes to. Later she would nag us for feedback that she could send the companies.

I didn’t want to think about mom.

I focused on the costumes, with some attention paid to the situation at hand. The leotard cut was a ‘never ever’. The full-body suit was problematic because of how it resembled Scion’s, and I didn’t want to go there. Those were two I could eliminate right away. I pulled the black trash bags down over them and set them aside.

Crystal explained, “People have been noting how fast we got back on our feet, and how we have something reasonably stable in currency and economy. We kind of got our answer.”

“Yeah,” I said, before guessing, “powers?”

“I guess powers, probably,” she said.

I turned to look at Crystal. She was arranging her damp hair over her eye, a curved swoop that her hairband held in place. “Only probably?”

“This isn’t about powers,” she said. “But I wouldn’t rule them out. They helped and they may be part of this. The key thing is that a lot of the building materials and resources we used to get started came from other worlds.”

“As in our people working in other worlds or-” I paused as Crystal shook her head. “Or other, alternate civilizations. Shit. You don’t get anything of that scale for free. What did we have to give them in exchange?”

“I have no idea,” Crystal said. “I don’t think many people do. There are two major groups heading the reconstruction that might have an idea but they haven’t shared. One of those groups was the one who put out the trading dollar a few months after Gold Morning, now our de-facto regular dollar. Same group that’s now looking at moving up into the greater political arena.”

“And those two groups are the ones butting heads?” I asked.

“No, the two construction groups are banding together, kind of. The workers who have been doing the actual construction work seem to think they were promised a significant discount and first opportunity to buy the houses they’ve been building. They’ve been living in a tent village, working long weeks, miserable conditions.”

“And if they think they have dibs on the houses, the work must have been a labor of love. They’ll have a strong community too. If they didn’t kill each other working that hard in conditions that bad, they must be close.”

“Yes,” Crystal said. “One second, be right back.”

I glanced over the remaining outfits. Three more options. V-neck, long-sleeved, short skirt. Not bad, but very reminiscent of ‘Glory Girl’.

Round neck, low enough to have a touch of cleavage, short sleeves, and shorts that cut straight across the upper thigh. If any length were taken from them at all, they wouldn’t qualify as shorts anymore. Hard to pull off. I’d need to accessorize it and I wasn’t sure I could afford the time to dig for boots, belt, or other stuff I’d need, and still get filled in.

The last one had a high collar, a kind of truncated turtleneck, it was sleeveless, with leggings that ended in the mid-low calf. Not bad but not great, and again, I’d need accessories.

Urg.

“The two construction groups are collaborating, banding together, the areas rezoned, contracts reworked. They say workers signed and agreed, and there are no longer ‘dibs’, as you put it.”

“For something that matters as much as home and shelter, with that many employees, you’d think someone would have read the contract thoroughly enough to figure that out.”

“I have no idea,” Crystal said.

“Sounds like someone’s not being honest.”

“Again, Victoria, I don’t know,” Crystal said, sounding a little exasperated. “I’m- we’re, if you’re coming, we’re not going there or being invited there to arbitrate or negotiate. We’re not solving that particular problem. We’re there to stand between the two sides, keep the peace.”

I glanced at her jacket. “Just following orders.”

“Following orders, keeping things simple, letting others handle things,” Crystal said. “Yeah.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

I picked up the second costume, with the low neck, short sleeves, and short leggings, and held it up against my front.

“Go for it,” she said. “You definitely need to dress that up.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m going to go get changed and see if I can find footwear. If you have a minute, could you find any belts?”

“Utility or regular?”

“Either or. I like the idea of utility more, I think, for how I think I’ll be dressing up.”

I stepped out of Crystal’s room, pulled the curtain closed by the balcony door and quickly stripped out of my top and the skirt. I picked both up and put them with my other clothes.

I experienced a brief moment of displaced emotion, as if my head and body were in Crystal’s apartment, and my heart was somewhere in the past. In an exposed, open area that wasn’t mine, wasn’t comfortable, where someone could happen to step in and see me exposed at any moment.

The latent feeling of the hospital room. Of being in the care home.

Pulling the costume on helped. Deep breaths, the pull of the zipper as it closed at my back and pulled material tight against my chest and stomach. I fixed the legs, checked for bunching and wrinkles, and deemed it satisfactory. Not perfect in the way a costume made explicitly for me would be, but satisfactory.

I dug in boxes. I’d packed my things with shoes and boots at the bottom, clothes on top.

“Belts,” Crystal said. I heard the clatter as the things were tossed onto the couch. “Masks. Armband.”

The bag rustled as it bounced off the couch and landed on the floor. the armband landed on the couch near the belts. A black band with the Gold Morning symbol on it.

“Good throws,” I said. Crystal was standing with her back to me. She’d tossed them over her shoulder. “You can turn around.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Don’t spend too much time. It’s late, it’s dark, people won’t care too much.”

“I won’t. Where does the other Earth and the war fit into this?” I asked. I pulled out a pair of white boots. Shoes meant for a costume might have worked better, but I tended to prefer boots for the fact that they stayed on better with hard landings, kicks, and rough falls. Fourteen year old Glory Girl had learned that lesson: it was terminally embarrassing to have a petty criminal watch as you flew over to your lost shoe and put it back on.

“The workers called a stop to all work. They’re holding the houses, equipment, and building materials hostage, with some suggestion they’ll destroy it all before they give up what they’re owed,” Crystal said. “The last big convoy of materials and trucks were from another Earth, and they’re part of what’s being held hostage. The delivery folk from Earth-K aren’t budging because they aren’t abandoning their delivery, even though they’ve been told they can go. The government from United States of K is getting upset because their people aren’t home, That’s where the murmurings of war are coming from. Workers aren’t conceding anything else, and construction groups aren’t either.”

“And our job is to make sure the stalemate stays stale and mate until people find a resolution,” I said, pulling on the boots.

“Or mitigate the damage if it gets ugly,” Crystal said.

I did up the straps, reached for the belts, all arranged around a metal ring, and found one I was satisfied with almost right away. Utility-belt style with small pouches. I tore open the bag of masks.

The masks were ones that were meant to be stuck to the face. Remove protective tape, stick to face like cosmetic band-aids. Not my favorite, but I got why they did it when they sent out sample packs. The glue would wear out quickly, and the real custom masks for long-term wear would then be ordered. Quality was fine, though. All in white, again, some with lenses.

I found one that fit around my eyes and covered my eyebrows, with white lenses, and held it up to make sure the white lenses didn’t obscure vision any. A faint halo when I looked at sources of illumination, but nothing too bad.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think you look more like you than I’ve seen you in a long time,” she said.

“Maybe I’m meant to wear a costume,” I said.

“Maybe,” she said. “But what I meant, cuz, is that from the moment you stepped into my bedroom, well before you put anything on, you looked more focused and grounded in reality than you have in a while.”

I drew in a deep breath, and glanced at the curtains. Being told I looked better reminded me that I hadn’t looked well before, which reminded me of why I hadn’t looked well, which in turn made me feel less better.

It was easier if I didn’t focus on it. “Thanks, I guess.”

“Whatever you were doing, I think you should do more of it.”

“I plan to. But for now, in the interest of time, since your formation is expecting you to hurry back, I just need to know if the mask makes me look like a dork.”

“It’s good,” Crystal said. She picked up one article of clothing that I’d put aside while digging for my boots. A plain white sweatshirt. “To cover up the road rash?”

I looked at my arms. I still had the raised red marks where I’d tumbled to the road.

“Or maybe not. It wouldn’t work with your forcefield,” she said.

It would, but I wasn’t about to explain that whole situation.

“No, actually, it could work,” I said. “Dress up the upper body some.”

She smiled, enthusiastic that I was playing along. “Exactly! I was thinking we could stick a quick heat-transfer design on this.”

The sweatshirt as part of my costume? It would be playing into that trend of working normal clothes into costumes. Fume Hood’s group had been big on that. A few of the villains in Lord of Loss’ group had, too, but some of that might have been them trying to fly under the radar before launching their plan.

The most significant trends in fashion and style were often a symptom of external factors. It was hard to get good costumes with where things were at. There was a desire, too, to appear more down to earth, to connect to the people, when sentiment was where it was at.

“Sure,” I said. I smiled. “That could work.”

“Question is, do you trust me to do it?” she asked, raising one hand and producing a fan of lasers from her fingertips, shooting at a forcefield she’d created. “Or do you want to wait for the iron to get hot?”

⊙

The battle lines were drawn, so to speak. At least it was quiet here, the forces gathering in anticipation of the coming day. At the center of this particular battlefield was a single tall building, lit from bottom floor to top, even in the evening, with the power rationing being what it was.

The masses of construction workers had clustered in groups, the largest mass of them arranged around three sides of the building, kept on the far side of the street by the emergency services and the capes. Surrounding one of the construction company’s headquarters.

Lights on poles, the lighting of the news crews talking to some key individuals, and the lights the workers were carrying served to illuminate that crowd.

From the bird’s eye view, we could see some of the construction sites around the area, each roughly illuminated by the lights within, that light contained by the fencing that surrounded each building in progress. Construction vehicles, people, and collections of things cast long shadows with the lights set where they were. Most had lookouts posted, keeping an eye out for trouble. A couple of those lookouts turned lights our way as we flew.

Laserdream and I touched ground.

“I’ve missed flying with you,” she said.

I smiled. My emotions were complicated enough in the moment that I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t trust my tone of voice or the words I might choose.

Easier to stick to the shallow, surface response. It was nice to be around my cousin, nice that she was happy.

We walked down the length of the street, the building on one side, the crowd of workers on the other. Walking helped to get my blood pumping and my body warmed up, where flying felt like it had frozen my blood and chilled me. My hands were cold, and I kept them jammed in the pockets of my sweatshirt.

“Laserdream. You’re cutting it close in getting back in a timely manner. Who’s this?” a cape in a jacket asked. He was a heavy guy with a very clean face, a gently curved visor covering his eyes and nose.

“Family,” Laserdream said. “There was a call for more help, she was invited by someone named, uh…”

“Tempera,” I said.

“Tempera. Right. We’re paying for the extra hands on deck?”

“We are,” the man said. “It’s not a lot.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

He looked skeptical.

“I can second the recommendation if it matters,” Laserdream said.

“It helps,” the guy said. “If she causes trouble, you know it’s your ass in the fire.”

“Understood, sir,” she said. “I’ve been doing patrols with her since before I could drive. I’d trust her with my life. I’m optimistic my ass will remain room temperature.”

“Don’t get smart. I don’t want her with the formation. If she wants in, she needs to apply and train.”

“She doesn’t-” Laserdream said, at the same time I said, “I don’t-”

Laserdream ceded to me.

“No disrespect intended,” I said. “That isn’t for me. But I get the gist of the situation, I’ll help keep the peace, I’ll follow any orders.”

“You going to be alright if I send you out to help fill in the gaps at the flanks?”

“It’s why I’m here,” I said.

“South side of the building,” he said, pointing. “Stand on the dotted line, try not to stare down the crowd or antagonize them. Be gentle if they get rowdy.”

“Can do,” I said.

“Should be quiet tonight,” he said. He turned to Laserdream as he said it, but glanced at me. Including us both in the statement. “This is one of three locations. The big demonstrations are supposed to start tomorrow, at another location. Tonight they’re mainly interested in holding their ground and organizing themselves. Holding a vigil, giving cameras something to record. Would be nice if they got over it or got bored before things get started tomorrow, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

That would be why Tempera had said I could call in the morning. The workers wanted time and media attention to give their side some weight before they really took action.

“Get yourself in position. I’ll send someone your way with some cups of coffee in a short while.”

“Alright,” I said.

The parahumans along the road to the south of the building were spaced out along the painted divider in the center of the street. One parahuman every fifteen or so feet. There were no barricades, only the lights on tripods, connected to battery packs, helping to illuminate most of the road. The ambient light from nearby buildings contributed.

The crowd was noisy, but it was a low, constant noise. Talk, conversation, the occasional raised voice. There wasn’t a car to be seen on the street.

I could remember what had happened to Fume Hood. I closed my eyes for a moment, and I put my forcefield up, leaving it up. It made me uncomfortable, but a bullet would be even worse on that score.

The capes down the street to my left were all wearing Advance Guard icons on their sleeves and costumes. The stylized man bearing the ‘greater-than’ shaped shield, charging forward. The color of the icon changed, depending on the costume’s color scheme, but it was always such that it stood out, yellow on a red and orange costume, or purple on a blue-green one. The thick bold lines of the icon’s design tended to flow into the cape’s individual icon or the rest of the costume, the shield’s lines or the diamond-shaped frame of the icon joining the line running down the seam of the sleeve or the lines running across the chest.

“Who are you with?” the guy standing to my left asked. He had a face plate, with the thick bold lines and angular edges that Advance Guard tended to have, and the ‘ears’ of the plate swept back to cover his ears, giving them a pointed, elfin cast. His bodysuit was designed to accent his slim frame, a two -piece jacket and legging combo, with a very pronounced zig-zag at the waist where the upper body met the lower body. There was a slight curl at the toes.

“I’m independent,” I said. “For now.”

“We’re Advance Guard,” he said. “I’m Spright.”

“I’m between names,” I said. “And between costumes. Don’t judge me too harshly.”

“Can I see the emblem?”

“Just a design, not an emblem,” I said, turning my back to him to show him the rush job we’d managed with the heat-transferred image, my sweatshirt lightly singed in places. It was a circle with lines intersecting it, almost like a sun, but with the lines running into the circle. The image was offset, so the lines were shorter to the left and top of the image. Crystal’s idea and design, and I’d had no objection.

“Between teams, between names, between costumes?”

“More or less sums it up,” I said. “If you need to call me anything, you can call me Victoria.”

“I’m honored, Victoria,” Spright said, bowing slightly. “I’m glad for the company. We might be here for a while.”

“We probably will,” I said.

“I see you’ve got the armband. You’ve been around for at least a few years. Do you have any war stories you can share?”

“Yes, a good few,” I said. And a lot I wouldn’t share.

“You’re experienced, huh?”

“A few years under my belt. A few years of semi-retirement.”

“I can tell you I’m very experienced,” he said, with a bit of humor in his voice.

I looked at him, one eyebrow arched.

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he said.

“Is that how we’re doing this?”

“Could be,” he said. “What I’m offering is long and thoroughly satisfying. Are you game?”

“Wow,” I said. I smiled despite myself, looking over the crowd instead of at Spright. “When they said Advance Guard rushes into things, they weren’t lying.”

“Once you get me going, I go all night. I might as well get started early.”

“With an audience, though?”

“I’ve got nothing to hide. I’d say they could join in, but I think that would get a little hectic.”

“It might just,” I said. “Would be nice to steer clear of hectic for a while.”

“I very much agree, Victoria Between-things,” Spright said. “You have to find a good fit, strike the right rhythm, the right pace. Once you’re comfortable, you might be able to vary it up some.”

The woman standing to the left of Spright said something that sounded an awful lot like, “Oh my god, Spright.”

I checked, but it didn’t look like the people on the sidewalk heard us. The buzz of conversation seemed to drown out our voices.

“Is he always like this?” I asked, raising my voice a bit.

“Yes,” Spright said.

“No,” she said. “I dare say you’ve inspired him. Unfortunately.”

Spright sounded almost energized by his teammate’s exasperation. “I’m intrigued more than inspired. I’d love to indulge in your, ahem, stories, Victoria with the stylish icon.”

“It’s not that great an icon,” I said. “Nice try, though. I appreciate it.”

“I wanted to work in the flattery somehow. There’s no shortage of things I could say, by the way, and I’m not messing around when I say that. I chose the icon because I do like it, and because when you say something nice about something like a girl’s hair or something else about their appearance, you tend to get that kneejerk resistance.”

“You do,” I said. For me, it’s for reasons other than the usual. It was a shame, but his moment of frankness had brought things home again. My tone of voice was audibly different even to myself as I said, “I’m flattered, Spright, really.”

“Aw darn. But?”

“But while I’d be happy to share a few stories, I’m not up for the other stuff you’re driving for. It’s just not where I’m at. Wouldn’t be fair to you. I’ve gotta figure myself out some, first.”

“I can respect that,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate the wit. You were pretty snappy with some of that.”

“Thanks for letting me try, I-” Spright stopped as the woman standing to his left made a sound effect with her mouth. I didn’t hear the preceding sound, but I heard her make a sound like a small crash with her mouth. Spright switched tacks to say, “I’ll throw things at you, Tandem.”

The woman laughed.

A moment later, another person joined us. A ripple in the road, and he appeared almost instantly out of the gloom. The cape I’d met early in the day the community center had been attacked, with the blades jutting from his costume.

He looked at me, sizing me up.

“Hi,” I said.

“Mmh,” he made a sound, not really a response. “Hey, Spright, swap places with me for a bit.”

The ‘mmh’ bugged me. “I’m enjoying his company.”

“She’s enjoying my company, Shortcut,” Spright said. “It’s a good night.”

“It’s going to be a long night,” Shortcut said. “I think I know her from the other day.”

He paused, glancing back at me.

“Yeah,” I said.

Shortcut turned back to talk to Spright, then paused, glancing back at me. “What’s that sound?”

I listened, and I heard it. Scratching.

Without trying to look too much like I was looking down, I looked down. My forcefield, invisible to everyone present, was scratching at the road.

I took flight, lifting myself up enough that the arms couldn’t reach the ground. About eight feet up. From the angle, as I saw the light hit the road at a different angle, I could see the shallow gouges.

The good humor from earlier was spoiled a little at that.

“Everything okay?” Spright asked.

“Yeah, just restless, bit of power quirkery,” I said. I realized the crowd had noticed me take flight, and the conversation had quieted a bit.

It was mildly surprising that, Spright’s flirting aside, nobody in a large collection of construction employees had called out to me.

I tested my luck, and used the opportunity to call out, “You guys doing okay!?”

“Bit cool out!” someone called back.

“Yeah!” I called back. “Better than the alternative, isn’t it?”

That got me a fairly mixed response.

“Shoulder to shoulder in the heat, stinking of sweat? You don’t want that!”

“We’re used to the smell of sweat, hon!” a woman called out. There were murmurs of agreement.

“Take care of yourselves, okay?”

There were a few murmured and unintelligible responses, but a more emotional cry of, “Give us our homes and we’ll be just fucking fine!” stood out. Some heads turned in that direction.

“It’s not up to us,” I said. “Save that energy for tomorrow, alright? We’re here to keep you safe and keep them safe.”

There were a few mumbled replies.

“Doesn’t help,” Shortcut said.

“I dunno,” I said. “Letting them know we’re not against them, we care about their well being? Reaching out and talking can’t hurt, can it?”

“I guess that’s why I’m here,” Shortcut said.

I looked his way.

“Reaching out and talking,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure there’s no hard feelings.”

“About you not getting into Advance Guard.”

I’d emailed, they’d sent a reply a couple of hours later saying no.

“I didn’t devote a lot of thought to it,” I said. “Sucks, but you guys have to do what you have to do. And so does everyone else, apparently. I’ll figure something out.”

“They didn’t tell you it was me?”

“No,” I said. I frowned.

“I told them to tell you no and to tell you it was me, and why.”

“Alright,” I said. “They just told me no.”

“Well fuck that. I thought you needed to know, what you did back there, it was shitty.”

“Beg pardon?”

“I realized after your face came up on some of the events about the Norfair community center incident. You went up against Lord of Loss?”

“I don’t see what the issue is,” I said.

“You happen to beat me to the scene, and then you use your secret identity, condescension and anti-parahuman shit to take me down a notch? And then you want a place on Advance Guard?”

“I happened to be there. I’m sorry, it was not my intention to come across that way.” I tried to help you out some.

“Yeah,” he said. “Right. I can guess what your intentions were.”

I was pretty darn confident my handling of the situation had been alright. I was inclined to chalk this one up to the guy having a screw loose or a few bundled up issues. It still bothered me, and it bothered me more that a nice conversation had been interrupted, and now this guy was apparently intent on keeping me company for the night, telling me how I was responsible for his problems and issues.

I pursed my lips, doing my best to filter what he was saying, tuning out what I could and responding where necessary, so he wouldn’t add me ignoring him to his list of grievances. He was talking about the community center now.

Voices were raised, a few shouts, both from capes at one of the other streets, and by people in the crowd. Phones were out.

It was almost a welcome interruption, in that solitary moment between the initial commotion and when I realized that it meant people were hurt.

I rotated myself in the air, looking, trying to figure out what had happened. I saw Crystal coming, and flew to meet her.

“Come!” she shouted, barely pausing as she flew. I joined her, wavering as air ripped past my forcefield, lopsided in a way I couldn’t quite detect, moving.

I disabled the forcefield, and in the doing, I could fly straighter, but I flew against cold wind, unprotected.

Crystal didn’t explain. It was left for me to see.

Our site had been quiet. At least one of the other places workers were congregating wasn’t. People were more spread out, and I suspected from their arrangement that some had crossed the street, approaching the building. There were more emergency vehicles, more capes, and there was a large clearing in the center of the crowd.

Eight people were gathered toward the center of that clearing, with more scattered across the more open area. Among them, several had eyes that glowed, or glows emanating from their mouths. Shapes I couldn’t quite make out moved around them. A power at work, like the outline of something that glowed slightly in the dark, too abstract to make out.

I watched as two people broke from the edge of the clearing and ran toward the center group. A man and a woman, holding hands.

It hit me like a blow to the head. An image in my mind’s eye, a feeling, a sense of something greater. Forgotten in the same instant it occurred. I dropped out of the air, and I caught myself a moment later. Crystal did much the same.

“Get back!” someone hollered.

A megaphone blared, “Get away from the center!”

The eight people were sixteen now, including the two that had run toward the center and some of the people that hadn’t retreated to the clearing’s edge. Eyes glowed, powers wreathed a few hands. A spike of power-generated material was stabbing skyward in front of a woman. A man had fallen to his knees, arms spread, and the ground was rippling around them.

People didn’t get away from the center. Realizing what was happening, or thinking they knew what was happening, others dashed toward the group, joining it.

“Get back,” Crystal said. “If we get knocked out-”

I retreated, looking for where the defending capes were. Lit by flashing, noiseless sirens, the capes were clustered not far from the building. They were getting organized.

“It’s a broken trigger,” I said.

“Is it?” Crystal asked.

I flew straight for the heroes on scene. I didn’t get the chance to hear two words out of the leader’s mouth before we were hit again. Every one of us winced and reacted as it hit us. Too brief to be a trigger vision, incomplete, fractured, it still made itself felt.

The sixteen had become thirty-two.

Flare – 2.4

“Evacuate!”

One word from the parahuman in charge was all we needed. The clock was too short for anything more.

Capes fanned out, most of them on foot. I could leave the parts of the crowd closest to us to them. I flew, avoiding the sky directly over the group of affected people, circling around the periphery instead. The wind was cold against my face and legs.

The massed crowd of citizen workers was to my right, the people with powers to my left. Half of the light sources in and around the clearing had broken, and the only other illumination came from the effects of powers. A common thread ran through all of it. Energy spilled out and created matter where it splattered on the road, materials sprouted from nothing, streaked with thin streams of liquid that glowed like fire, and more abstract growths formed suspended in air, their images sticking to the backs of my eyes like the persistent afterimages of sparklers waved in the dark.

People were shouting. Some were screaming. I couldn’t make much of it out.

I flew to the far side of the clearing, which also happened to have some of the thickest gatherings of people. They had been citizen laborers, gathering to make their displeasure known to the construction groups. They’d been facing the building until the incident, they’d backed up, and there were places where the presence of buildings and parked vehicles made it so they had no place to retreat, leaving them now packed together, shoulder to shoulder, front to back, jostling.

I’d helped to evacuate before. I had attended the Leviathan attack on my hometown. I had been around for the majority of the Slaughterhouse Nine crisis. I’d participated in other, minor incidents, helping with fires and storms, though those had mostly involved helping the elderly and standing around.

The truism was that in a disaster, people were their own worst enemies.

Never this bad.

I’d never seen or imagined a situation where people would do the opposite of evacuating, throwing themselves headlong into the hazard. They thought the people in the center of the clearing were getting powers, and people were breaking away from the crowd at the clearing’s edge to run toward the affected individuals.

Crystal created a wall to block off a street as she passed it. She wouldn’t be able to keep it up as she got further away, but it bought time for others to get there.

She raked a laser across the road, a bright and noticeable distraction, to give people pause.

I dropped to the street, using a pulse of my aura to get people’s attention. Some stopped to look, while others ducked low, as if instinct drove them to shy away from the perceived threat.

“Run!” I shouted, using my aura to play up my words. “Other way!”

I saw eyes widen, and turned to look. A man had opened his mouth, and had something that looked almost as tall and thick as a telephone pole spearing skyward from his mouth. Blood streamed from the sides of his mouth, his jaw clearly dislocated, and more fluids painted the length of the pole as it continued to rise. It reached its maximum height, and then forked, the upper half splitting out into two equally thick portions, a giant ‘Y’ shape. Each branch then forked into two, and forked into two again.

“Go,” I said, sparing only a momentary glance for the people I’d been stopping. I saw them start to run away.

The man reached up, his fingers dragging along the blood-slick shaft of the trunk of the fractal tree he had vomited up. Each movement of his hands was slower and weaker than the last.

I flew toward him, to do what I could to help, even though I wasn’t sure what that could possibly be.

The ‘tree’ toppled, and it was only because I was already on my way toward him that I was able to intervene. I reached out for the falling tree, and my power was quicker to touch it. Phantom fingers bit into the surface, fracturing the chalky material. With flight, my bare hands, my power, and my aura pushed out to give people a little more incentive to get out of the way, I controlled the tree’s fall. It broke into chunks on contact with the ground. One of the people with new powers was pinned beneath branches, but it didn’t look like he was hurt by the contact.

I flew to the man who’d grown the tree. Even before I reached his side, I could see the damage that had been done. Jaw, throat, chest, and stomach had been torn away. Traces of the same material that had formed the tree had collected in his insides and pelvis, breaking into jagged pieces at some point before or during the tree’s fall.

He had no throat to feel for a pulse. I wasn’t about to rule anything out, even as I saw the remains of his heart in his splayed-out chest cavity. I pried one of his eyes open, and I saw no response.

I went from a crouch to airborne in a second.

That particular disaster had been dramatic and visible for a significant portion of the people nearby. Most were thinking twice about running toward the epicenter.

When was the next wave coming? The number of people to trigger all at once had seemed to double the last time. They didn’t look like multi-triggers either. One power each, some self-destructive. I could hear the screams and shouts of a lot of unhappy people and I couldn’t see one person who looked particularly happy about their new ability.

I flew to a new location, looking to see where I could get the most people away. The tree had done my work for me in one spot, Laserdream was standing at the intersection of two streets and walling them off with red-tinted, translucent fields.

I saw another group- people were pulling away from the crowd, which was actively trying to grab them and hold them back. Young people – older teenagers and twenty-somethings, that might have been a group of friends. Seven of them.

I shouted, but my voice was drowned out by the dentist-drill scream of a power somewhere nearby, by the hollers, the warnings, a dull explosion.

I used my aura again. Several people in the group stumbled, so caught up in reacting to my aura that they lost track of where they were going or how to put one foot in front of the other. Several others paused, helping their friends that had tripped, stopped, or fallen. The people at the edge of the crowd reacted too, pulling back away from me.

I’d hoped more of them would stop shouting and screaming. The affected people and the people at the edge of the clearing were making so much noise that it nearly drowned me out as I shouted, “Get back!”

A number of people listened. The crowd in particular was inclined to take my order, getting away from the scene. Two of the seven who’d lagged behind the others turned to go too.

Five, however, looked at me and then continued to run toward the scene.

I clenched my fist.

Rationally, I knew that they likely saw this as the simplest thing in the world. The people over there had powers; all they had to do to get powers was to head over there. Some might well have no idea what triggers were, or they might have bought into one of the various other theories out there, some intentionally obscuring the truth. They didn’t know better.

Well, the screaming should have given them pause, but that might have been balanced out by the fact that they felt especially powerless at this time in particular. Because we were only two years after the most catastrophic and traumatic loss of human life in history. Because as much as we were recovering, we were far from being where we’d been. We weren’t okay. The dispute between the citizen workers and the construction administrations only brought that home.

Rationally, I knew that.

Less rationally, I had a weak point that extended well before the Gold Morning, well before the hospital stay, well before the Slaughterhouse Nine, before the bad days against Empire Eighty-Eight, before my trigger, even. I’d spent a fair portion of my time post-trigger and especially in the hospital, thinking about it.

I couldn’t fucking stand being ignored.

I flew to intercept.

I hadn’t practiced with this power enough. Even using it was a hard reminder, with a mental and emotional cost. I knew I needed to come to terms with it, and my time at the hospital had been an early foray into that.

That had been flight, and my flight was more or less untouched.

I flew low, approaching a car. As with the tree, all of my powers were up and active as I reached out in the car’s direction. Phantom hands dug into the metal of the car’s body, invisible fingers stabbing through. A mass of something pressed down on the hood, caving it in.

If I had any control over those limbs, it wasn’t something that lent itself to fine touches. It didn’t work well with the careful, methodical, warrior monk approach. In this, in the instinct and the moment of frustration, I could only hope that what I wanted and what my power wanted were mostly in agreement.

I glanced up to make sure Laserdream wasn’t watching. I was close enough for my fingertips to brush the car’s paint as I swept my arm to one side, the holes and dents in the car twisting or opening wider as the phantom grip adjusted. The- the other Victoria, the phantom Victoria that had never left the hospital, the wretch, threw the car.

I canceled my power momentarily, to force it to release its hold, so it wouldn’t fling the car into the people I was trying to stop. I let it reactivate a half-second later, flying forward in the car’s direction. My defenses were up and sufficient to let me adjust the car’s trajectory with a sharp kick to the side. Just to be safe.

It crashed into a parked car, upside down, its roof and windows shearing into the top of the other. A loud impact, metal scraping metal, a dozen windows on the two vehicles breaking. It was raucous, chaotic, sudden and surprising, in a stark contrast to the massive, enduring weight that seemed to settle in me.

Harder than flying. I could tell myself I was helping people, keeping them clear of danger, and it helped much as it had with the flying, but it was still hard.

The fact that a car had flown into another car twenty feet in front of them was enough to stop them in their tracks. I had their full attention now.

“Get away! It’s dangerous!”

Some backed away, then ran. Two backed off but didn’t run. The last of them was a man about my age, who stepped closer to the cars, intent on climbing over them.

“Get away!”

I was prepared to grab him as he climbed onto the underside of the car I’d thrown. He continued to ignore me, finding his balance, stepping forward-

The fragment of a trigger vision hit me. The latest wave.

I saw only a flash of faces, and in seeing those faces, I saw the phantom self that clung to me. The impression lingered for only a moment before I realized the faces didn’t resemble mine.

The man had been springing forward from the car to the ground when the event had hit. I saw his legs swing forward, while his head remained in place. He dangled, suspended in the air.

I picked myself up off the ground, flying to him.

Gone already. No pulse, no light behind the eyes. He made a faint gurgling sound, but it was some biological process or symptom of what had happened, not a sign of life. He was pissing himself and shitting himself in death.

He dropped out of the air, and I caught him. It hardly mattered, he was gone, but it didn’t feel right to just let him fall. I eased him to the ground.

“Please help!” I heard a guy shout, amid renewed and nearby whimpers and sobs.

I flew. The two who had drawn back but hadn’t run- a boy and a girl. The boy was holding the girl, while she strove to stay on her tiptoes. Her face was turned skyward.

I flew to them, and I caught her, helping to hold her.

“Hold her steady!” the guy shouted.

I held her as steady as I could.

Another suspension?

“My neck!” the victim shrieked the words. A single glowing vein stood out on each arm, and glows on her legs suggested more of the same, but she barely seemed to care about it. Clear fluid was streaming from her nose, thinner than snot, with needle-thin streams of blood joining it.

“We got you,” I said. “We’re here, we’ll support you. Stay calm.”

“I can’t move my head!” she cried out. “Every time- my neck!”

“Don’t try,” I said. The guy was looking to me for help, and I wasn’t sure what to say or do.

“My head hurts,” she said, sounding very far away. Her words dissolved into a stream of whimpers and cries of ‘ow’.

I was supporting her weight, but it wasn’t easy to do it from a strength perspective with my feet on the ground, and it wasn’t easy to stay steady while flying.

“Laserdream!” I shouted the words, top of my lungs.

“Headache,” the victim said, her eyes wide. “My brain.”

The guy looked at me again. This time I didn’t try to hide my expression. I knew I looked grim.

Her brain. The Corona Pollentia, the means by which powers were operated by the parahuman. Hers had been established, but not as a fluid, functional thing. It was a nail, taking her brain and fixing it to a specific position in reality.

Laserdream appeared beside me.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Give her something to stand on,” I said. “She’s stuck.”

The forcefield appeared below. The girl no longer had to stand on her tiptoes.

“People are evacuating more now,” Laserdream said. “We need to handle the people toward the center. The waves are random.”

I turned, looking at the guy. “Do you know her?”

“Not really.”

“Can you run? Go tell people to get away, as fast as they can. This is bad.”

“You don’t want to get caught in it,” Laserdream said.

The guy nodded.

“Bye Anne,” he said. He let go of the girl, transitioning the grip entirely to me, then turned to run.

Anne.

She was making small sounds, guttural. One hand came up to touch the side of my face and my hair, clumsy, as if she didn’t have full use of her fingers.

One pat.

“I’m sorry Anne,” I said.

She made another of the gurgling sounds. She was vomiting, I realized, and with her face fixed in a skyward position, there wasn’t anything I could do. Anything I did to move her would add to the damage to her brain.

I hugged her, hard. After a moment, I felt her hug me back, clumsy but fierce.

It was only a moment later that she started to convulse, whole-body. I moved to try to seize her head and keep it from moving- a second too late. One wrenching, forced movement of her head and upper body, and the nail ripped through a good share of the material in its vicinity.

I caught her as she fell, and laid her out on the ground, placing her on her side.

“We need to help others, Victoria.”

“Yeah.”

Spooky, to take to the air again. I’d seen the numbers of people affected double, roughly, and this was another doubling, to look at it. More artificial sources of light had broken, as space folded in areas, as things grew to obscure them, or as tendrils of energy lashed out like living things, distorting geography with each impact.

Matter creation, matter manipulation, matter distortion.

Over fifty people, if I had to guess. It could well have been sixty-four. They were too spread out for me to effectively ballpark. Many might well have died from their power expression or the ‘nailing down’ of the brain.

There was no being polite, now. One person hesitating at what could have been the edge of the affected area. I didn’t even pause as I grabbed him by the wrist, picking him up off the ground, dragging him with me, me barely six feet above the ground, him with toes and shoes scraping the road’s surface. I didn’t want the fall to be too rough if I was knocked out of the air again.

I half-deposited, half-threw him toward the crowd that still lingered. I pointed at the largest guy present. “You. Make sure these people get away! Keep an eye on this one!”

He looked spooked, and I wasn’t even using my aura. He gave me a singular nod.

Another two, two men together. One of them fought me as I held him, trying to pry my hand free.

“Assholes!” he screamed, twisting my fingers, trying to get leverage to bend one backward. “Keeping powers to yourselves!”

I didn’t reply. I tightened my grip to keep him from getting any one of my fingers, and I saved my breath and my focus.

If this was turning out as badly as it looked like it was, the aftermath would be answer enough.

The guy who’d fought me was deposited beside the first vehicle with flashing lights that was waiting at the edges. A fire truck.

“Don’t let him go back! And try to get further away, in case it expands!”

I was already leaving before they could answer me. I heard the shouts, though. The answers.

Crystal wasn’t using lasers or forcefields much anymore. Only flight, only manhandling.

I delivered two more armfuls of cargo, getting people clear of the danger. On my return trip, I saw the geography transforming. A culmination of everything up to this point. From matter generation, matter distortion, and matter transformation to… something that made the entire area look as though it was being smudged and smeared around, streets widening, buildings pulling back from the street.

Except- no. No, this was a familiar smudging and smearing. One that worked with us.

You made it, little V, I thought. I felt emotionally numb from the series of events, the deaths I’d seen, my momentary use of my power and how the feelings I’d tapped in that moment weren’t easy to bring back into order.

There was only what needed to be done, the mission that stood front and center. It was difficult to execute effectively, but simple in how Glory Girl, Victoria, the phantom wretch and the capes I was working with could all agree it should be done.

Get people clear. Get them safe.

A woman screamed words that barely strung together, the heel of one hand pressed to her forehead. The other was pointed forward. She shot something that was only visible by the way light refracted at its edges. The projectile hit the ground, carrying forward like a cartoon mole and the elongated, humped trail of dirt it left in its wake. Unlike the mole, the hump was jagged, folded earth. Road folded up like complex origami. She was pinning people down, keeping them from exiting a building.

In the words I could make out, she wanted them to come help her, and in her actions she drove them away.

“Stop!” I shouted to her.

She shot one projectile at me. Barely visible, it cut through the air, wind shrieking.

I didn’t want to kill her, and if her hand at her head was any clue that she was in similar straits to Anne and the other man, a light push could do horrendous damage.

I drew closer to the ground, defenses up.

Work with me, I told my power. My agent. My flight wobbled as I experienced the lopsided drag of a hand reaching down at one side, clawing at the ground as I passed it.

It didn’t create nearly enough debris.

I changed angles. I flew for the hump of origami road, two feet across, two feet tall, jagged and menacing.

I passed within a few feet of it, and let my forcefield hit it.

The hump of ground shattered explosively, blades of road cutting at my legs. But it did create a cloud of dust and debris.

She shot at me, and I reversed direction, passing the hump again, striking it.

The two passes created enough of a mess to block the view. I flew to the people the origami road woman had pinned down. “Go, go, go!”

I stood by with my defenses up, positioned to intercept any incoming projectiles. They took the chance to run for it.

This whole thing was a clusterfuck. How many people were caught? How many were acting irrational? What options did we have? What the hell was I supposed to do?

The origami woman didn’t send any attacks through the cloud of shattered road that I’d created. The moment the group was out of sight and away, I was moving again.

A complete and total clusterfuck. I flew high, and I looked down, wishing we had more light on the scene.

I could see where the distortions were being utilized. The space between the people at the edges and the center of the effect was being extended, making the clearing larger. It made it harder for people to approach, carried fleeing people away. It meant the effect had to reach further if it wanted to catch anyone.

In the tension and the emotions that gripped me, I felt an isolated point of peace and calm I could grab onto.

Vista was here, Vista had made it through Gold Morning. She was one of the people I liked. A reason I was doing what I did. She was one of the good ones, she was doing good work here, and I wanted to help her on multiple levels.

In that line of thinking, I found both the focus to think beyond mere instinct, and to realize what I could do. I knew how Vista worked.

“It’s Vista,” Laserdream said. She’d appeared beside me again. She had a flying cape with her.

“Come on,” I said. I flew for where the expansion of space seemed weakest, even pinched.

They weren’t on the streets. It was people in buildings.

I tore through a door, flew through a house. Nothing. I bumped into Laserdream and her PRTCJ friend on the way out. “Search the buildings. Vista’s power is weakest when it has people in its area. There are people near here.”

We spread out. One building each, searching neighboring houses. I was midway through my search when I heard a whistle.

I flew to the sound. Vagrants, or just refugees from Gimel who had decided they’d be more comfortable squatting in unoccupied, recently built houses than they were in the tent cities.

The three of us carried them clear. We were delivering them to safety when the next pulse hit. We weren’t hit, but I could see a glowing figure in the sky flicker and drop briefly before they caught themselves.

We took to the sky again, looking for pinched areas where things hadn’t distorted enough. There were two spots, and both were already being addressed.

The area was clear. We found our way to where the Warden-affiliated capes had collected. They had gathered at the edge of the effect.

“I think we’re clear, Rocketround, sir,” Laserdream reported.

“We should be shortly,” the leader said, glancing at a Foresight cape who stood nearby.

“Yes sir,” the cape said. A girl with a hood and blindfold.

“How many?” Rocketround asked.

“Ninety two, if you include the ones in houses,” she said.

Rocketround paused, staring down the length of the road toward the center of the vastly extended clearing. He spat. When he spoke, he managed a tone that pretty perfectly encapsulated what I and probably most of us were feeling, “Fuck me.”

Ninety two. Ninety two, many like Anne. Many wanting help. I wanted to fly in, to do something.

“I want everyone clear of the area. We wait, we see what happens,” he said. “We see if it expands in reach with further pulses, but I don’t want to give it anything. Not even any bounceback from reaching out and finding some of us. Let me know when the next pulse happens.”

“Yes sir,” the blindfolded girl said.

Something in the distance crashed to ground. Another fixture like the fractal tree?

Laserdream approached me, and she put an arm around me. I did the same for her.

There was small talk, people remarking on what they’d seen. Horrible things. People buried alive by their own powers. A few cases like what I’d observed.

“Is Vista around?” I asked. “That was her, right?”

I hadn’t expected Rocketround to be the one to answer, but he was the one who spoke up, saying, “She is. Upstairs, top floor. She said she needed a view and no interruptions.”

No interruptions. I was disappointed.

“Who’s she with?” I asked.

“Wardens,” he said.

“Good for her,” I said.

“Who are you and who are you with?” he asked.

“Victoria Dallon. Nobody, yet. I’ve been interviewing for teams.”

“She did pretty good work,” blindfold girl said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“When you three got the homeless out of the house, Vista said something under her breath. I think it was ‘thank you’. They were getting in her way somehow.”

I nodded. “I’m from her town. I was briefly her teammate.”

It was so mundane it was chilling and disconcerting, after the chaos we’d just weathered. A few moments of horrible, of stupidity and damage and madness, and now we waited to see what happened next, waiting to see what the aftermath would be. We talked about dumb things.

“What do you think?” Rocketround asked. “Not just asking you, Victoria. Anyone.”

It was in that question that I saw the first real hint that he was shaken. He was doubting his own capacity in this.

“This is going to hurt,” another cape said. “People were already feeling pretty beaten down, and… ninety people? We lost ninety?”

“We don’t know if all of them are in trouble,” Laserdream said.

“I think they might be,” blindfold girl said.

Laserdream didn’t have a response for that. She only hugged me tighter with the one arm.

“I think-” I started. “Just speculation.”

“Any clues or guesses about what’s going on would be good,” Rocketround said. He was gripping his upper arm as he stood with arms folded. He’d emphasized ‘any’, which only served to emphasize how little a clue he and we had.

“The broken triggers are pretty out there. Not a lot of consistent points or facts… except that they’re big,” I said.

“Big?” a nearby cape asked.

“They tend to cover a lot of ground. Shaker stuff.”

“Yeah,” Rocketround said. “That’s come up in briefings.”

“Location, environment, and position matters a lot,” I said. “The capes closest to the perimeter were least mobile. I think the further they got from the center, the less flex there was. Until their agents wouldn’t let them move at all.”

“Typhlosis pointed that out,” Rocketround said, indicating the girl with the blindfold.

“We might want to make them stay put,” I said.

“Yeah,” Rocketround said. “We’ll do that.”

Someone else spoke up. A remark about common thread through the powers they’d seen. Others chimed in.

I only half-listened. A lot of images stayed with me. The faces I’d seen midway through the one fragmented trigger, the indents in the car as the phantom limbs had reached out for it, Anne. The lingering sensation of Anne clinging to me, hard, the touch on my face. I didn’t know what she had wanted to communicate. A last kind gesture?

“There we go,” the blindfolded girl said. “Pulse. Nobody else affected.”

“I’m going to approach,” Rocketround said. “Roadblock? I’d appreciate it if you came.”

“Of course,” a cape by the side said. A guy in heavy armor.

“Protect me if we run into any trouble.”

“Only four left,” Typhlosis said.

“Four?” Rocketround sounded surprised.

Laserdream’s head snapped around. Looking at me, looking at Typhlosis.

Typhlosis continued, “Only four alive, still. The rest went down. Eaten by their powers, or they tried to move when they couldn’t, and their brains caved in.”

I squeezed Laserdream’s hand.

I might have been less surprised than her because I’d read up more on how these things tended to go.

“Let’s go,” Rocketround said. “Anyone comfortable joining me, come.”

They speed-marched toward the center of the effect. One hand on another cape’s arm for support and guidance, Typhlosis directed us toward the nearest surviving cape.

“Three,” she said, as we got close enough to see him.

He was a man, mid-twenties. His legs and stomach were buried in a writhing mass of something very similar to the origami road I’d seen earlier, materials made thin, folded many times over, until they didn’t quite seem to be three dimensions anymore. Some of those materials were the pieces of the twenty or so people in his immediate vicinity.

A lone figure, standing on a hill of the fallen citizen workers, caught up in the broken trigger’s effect.

“Don’t move!” Rocketround shouted. “Alright!?”

“Not moving,” was the response, quiet.

“No using powers. Stay put, stay calm. We’re going to find out a way to help you.”

“I don’t think I can be helped,” the man said. His head was bowed, and he couldn’t seem to move it. His hair was long, tied back into a low ponytail, and it covered much of his face.

“We can figure something out,” Rocketround said.

“Two,” Typhlosis said, quiet.

Two parahumans left.

The effect had caught over ninety over what couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes. Now there were two.

“I’m worried,” the man in the clearing’s center said. “I can feel all the others.”

He moved his hand.

Every body in the vicinity moved. A matching movement of hands, limp arms rolling off of sides or fingers digging into powdered sidewalk.

“Don’t move!” Rocketround called out.

“I’m on a brink, and I can’t see it, but I can feel it,” the man said.

“Try not to think about it,” Rocketround said. “Okay?”

“I can feel it,” the man said. He wasn’t paying much attention to Rocketround. “All the way down to this vast well, partially filled with potential energy. Like I’m on the lip of a volcano and it’s an impossibly long fall with only magma at the bottom. I don’t know if I’m better off throwing myself down into that or leaving it alone.”

“Leave it alone,” I said, my voice joining more than one other person’s.

“What if my thoughts and brain get made into a part of that? One piece in that thing’s construction. What if it makes me immortal, forever a part of this thing? A recording of me in there, how I think, how I do things.”

“We’ve studied parahumans, powers and power sources a lot,” Roadblock said. “We’re pretty sure that’s not a thing.”

“Yeah,” the guy in the clearing’s center said. “But…”

He trailed off.

“It’s not a thing,” Rocketround’s voice joined Roadblock’s.

“But I’m standing closer to it than you are,” the man said. “And from where I stand, I feel like it might be.”

Nobody had a ready response to that.

“One,” Typhlosis murmured.

“I’m the last one standing on the brink now,” the man said. “I don’t think I can do this much longer. Do I embrace it or turn away? I wish I could see you, to-”

He reached up, to move his hair out of his eyes.

“Don’t!” I called out. My voice wasn’t the only voice of protest, but it might have been the first. Perhaps because I was most mindful of arms that weren’t mine, in my immediate vicinity.

The arms of people all around him operated as extensions of him. A matching, reaching movement, up and out. Some disintegrated as they moved, but one lying next to him reached up, out, and into the finely spun construction of road that cocooned the man’s legs.

As I’d done to the altered road, the reaching arm broke the construction like it was sugar crystal or a snow globe. There was a spray of blood, and the man dropped, jerking as his Corona Pollentia remained in place, briefly suspending him. He was dead in that instant, well before he sprawled to the ground, shattered from the waist down.

My hand held Laserdream’s tight.

I was thankful that Typhlosis didn’t give us an updated count.

⊙

Crystal had backed me up for a good while. She’d been a friend, a support.

She had performed during the event. She’d been focused, she’d done what she needed to do. It had been after that she faltered. Hearing that the people who’d been touched by the broken trigger weren’t doing well, then hearing that only four remained. Hearing and seeing those four drop away.

It had been that way for Leviathan, too.

It had probably been that way after I went to the hospital.

Fine during, not so fine after.

It had been ten days, now. Ten days after the broken trigger with the citizen workers. One of the worst we’d seen for citizen casualties and damage.

I landed on the balcony, letting myself in. I took the carton out of the plastic bag and popped it into the microwave, lid ajar. Eighteen seconds.

“Vic?” Crystal called out.

“I’m here. One second.”

“That had better not be what I think it is.”

“It is.”

Crystal groaned audibly.

I pulled the carton free, grabbed some spoons, and walked over to the living room. Crystal was sitting in the armchair, watching TV, a blanket on her lap.

She glared at me, but it was a mock glare, and it softened considerably as she saw the carton.

“Slightly melted brownie caramel ice cream,” I said. I collapsed onto the couch, reaching high overhead to hold the carton and a spoon out to her. “I’ll share it with you.”

“Well, if you’re sharing it…”

“I’ll exercise with you too, to work it off. For now, though, it’s comfort food, staying cozy, and keeping each other company.”

“Okay. You’re mostly forgiven.”

“And a stupid-in-a-good-way movie to watch,” I said, pulling the movie case out of the pocket I’d wedged it into. “Because it turns out TV sucks after the world ends, and I can’t watch you subject yourself to it.”

“Okay,” she said. “You’re forgiven.”

I popped the movie in, then settled on the couch, pulling a blanket over my legs, arranging a cushion to sit up against. I fetched my phone and checked my messages. A second cancellation from Jessica.

After a disaster like that, too many people needed looking after.

I twisted my head around to look at Crystal, as she ate a spoonful of icecream from the carton. She passed it to me and I took a bite for myself, from the side she hadn’t dug into. I passed it back, watching as the movie started.

My turn to look after Crystal.

⊙

The lights were off in the coffee shop, though it wasn’t dark with the light coming in through the windows. The majority of the customers were sitting on the outside patio, and the interior was quiet, empty, and cool.

It was eerie, to go from the disaster to the more or less quiet period after. To be back on this street, where the car had hit the pillar, and where I’d seen so much grief from one person, and to try and reconcile that with the broken trigger, the ninety dead, the fact that so many were dealing by ignoring it. Moving on a matter of two weeks after the fact.

“Victoria?” the barista asked me.

My first thought was that she’d recognized me. “Yes?”

“Your friend stepped into the back. She said she’d be right out, but she asked us to keep an eye out for you so you didn’t think she was late.”

“Got it. Thank you.”

“Can I get you anything?”

I looked outside. Sunny, warm. The summer and its heat lingered in the daytime. “I can’t bring myself to drink anything hot when the weather’s like this. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Ice coffee? Iced tea? Pop?”

“Iced tea, please,” I said, noting the use of ‘pop’. A lot of people from a lot of regions had gathered in the megalopolis.

I didn’t have to sit down and wait for her to bring it to me. It was in my hands within a matter of seconds, and I took it to the seat furthest from the door, where Jessica and I would have some privacy.

She was out of the washroom before I’d fully settled in. Her blouse had buttons at the front and a collar, but was sleeveless, tucked into shorts. I wondered if she looked less at ease in casual clothing because she was a professional at heart, or if it was personal bias and years of knowing her as the therapist in the office that colored my perceptions. Her hair was damp, and she had what might’ve been a folded paper towel, soaked with water, resting on the back of her neck. She collected a drink she must have ordered and paid for earlier.

“Doing alright?” I asked.

Jessica smiled. “I was cooling down. I’ll be glad when the weather is more comfortably cool.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not that I mind the heat. It’s that I worry about how it affects people. I get antsy when the weather is like this.”

Jessica nodded. She glanced out the window. “It doesn’t help.”

“Brockton Bay was always nice, weather-wise. It didn’t have a lot going for it, but it did have mild weather. Once upon a time.”

Jessica smiled. “It’s good to remember the good things. At the risk of slipping into habit, I’ll ask: how are you doing? You’re okay, after the broken trigger incident?”

“I’m okay. My cousin wasn’t, but she’s bounced back. I think it was a wake-up call.”

“How so?”

“She might be reconsidering if she wants to be with the PRTCJ. She might aim for something lower-key. Her mom did, after things went bad in Brockton Bay.”

“I hope she’s happy and comfortable, wherever she ends up. I did like her, when she and I crossed paths.”

At the hospital. That fragment went unspoken.

“How’s the girl I found?” I asked.

“She’s managing. We’re getting her stabilized and figuring out her power. She wants to meet you at some point, to thank you.”

“She’s good, though?”

“Far better than she was.”

I nodded.

“The broken trigger aside, how have you managed since we last talked? You talked about joining a team.”

I gave her a one-shoulder shrug. “Pitched myself to a few. It didn’t take. I lost my job, the volunteer stuff feels empty. I’ll survive in the meantime.”

“I find it very interesting that you asked about Hunter, and you wanted to clarify that she wasn’t just managing, she was good. Then I ask you, and your response is that you’re surviving. You’re managing.”

“You’re going therapist mode on me,” I remarked, smiling.

She smiled back.

“How are you?” I asked, before she could ask me the same.

“I’m settling into my new role, trying to wrap things up and make sure there are no loose ends as I transition. Are you-”

“You said-” I said, inadvertently interrupting her.

“Go ahead.”

“You said you were busy. Is busy a good thing, in Jessica-Yamada-land?”

It took her a second to answer. Not our usual one-sided dialogue, this, her talking, me waiting for a chance to communicate, already plotting how I could say what I wanted to say as efficiently as possible. I smiled at the observation, and I was left pretty sure she caught it, because she smiled again.

She replied, “I’m looking forward to when I have more time. Right now, it’s balancing out. Any exhaustion on my part is easier to deal with because the things I’m doing are new, exciting, a little terrifying, but positive overall.”

“Terrifying? Because of the people you’re dealing with, or…?”

“When working with patients, the first and last meetings are the hardest, with the stakes greatest, and I’m having an awful lot of first and last meetings these days. Maintaining course after the initial connections have been made is easier. I know who I’m talking to and what I’m doing, there will be peaks, plateaus and valleys, but I can generally feel like there’s progress being made. The first meetings and the goodbyes? They’re critically important.”

“You want to make sure you’re laying good groundwork.”

“It’s not just that. The wrong kind of connection or break can do a lot of damage. Failing to realize you’re hurting a patient when you say something or take an approach, failing to be strong enough from the outset with patients who need a hard line, being too hard on patients who need a soft touch…”

I nodded. I started to think about which I’d been, back then, but thinking back was hard and unpleasant.

“I…” She’d started to say something, and then stopped.

“You?”

She sighed, leaning back in her seat.

“I’ve put myself in an awkward position here,” she said. “Actually a few, including you and me sitting here having this conversation. I want to get right to it so you’re not talking to me under the wrong pretenses, but I’m not sure how to navigate this, either.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“That’s just it,” she said. She frowned. “I wanted to have a conversation with you for another reason.”

That stung, in a way. That we weren’t meeting up for the sake of meeting up.

“Okay,” I said.

“I might have made a mistake,” she said. “And I was thinking you might be able to help.”

Flare – 2.5

“A mistake?”

“I worry it’s the case. Time will tell, but I can make educated guesses and I have concerns.”

“I have to admit, I’m not sure how to respond to that,” I said. “I’d say you’re only human or you’re only mortal, but doesn’t that sound condescending, coming from a parahuman?”

“We’re all mortal, Victoria. Even Scion was.”

I nodded.

It was strange to hear that name spoken out loud. Nine out of ten times, people would avoid saying it out loud. As if they couldn’t reconcile the first hero with the thing that had ended the world.

“I’d like to help,” I said. “A couple of things are off the table, obviously, but you know what they are, I think. I wouldn’t be okay if you wanted me to reach out to my sister, or that kind of thing.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to do that, no. This isn’t anything of that scale, but…” she frowned. “Given our relationship, with you having been my patient, there’s a power imbalance. I want to do what I can to ensure I don’t abuse it. I want to be fair to you.”

“Okay,” I said. After a pause, I added, “I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Even if this turns out to be minor, it is hard to do without risking a breach of trust and damage to our friendship.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I want to ensure we’re on the same page, when it comes to expectations. I definitely don’t want you to feel obligated, whether it’s because you feel you owe me something, or because you feel you should. I know there’s a tendency among heroes to want to step forward and help. I’ve counseled many a junior hero that they needed to learn to pick their battles.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” I said. “I pick my battles. Except for the broken trigger last week, the community center, and, oh, everything else.”

“It is a concern,” she said. She matched my smile with a small one of her own, but it was fleeting, more an acknowledgement of the joke than anything. “You’re quick to say you want to help, before you even know what I’m going to ask.”

I nodded. “I don’t think you’d ask if you hadn’t thought over it. I trust you.”

“I’d still be concerned, grateful as I am for your trust in me.”

I swished the ice in my iced tea.

“I am sorry,” she said.

“Sorry?”

“If I’ve upset you, approaching this like I have.”

“Did I give you that impression? That I was upset?” I was pretty sure my face hadn’t betrayed anything. I was reasonably sure my power wasn’t leaking, either.

“You did. And if I’m right about that, please don’t misunderstand me, I am sorry, and I wouldn’t fault you for being upset. I would like to have meetings like the one I think you were anticipating today. You and me, staying in touch to a degree, talking over iced tea and ice coffee. I’d hoped to have one of those meetings before getting around to this topic.”

So it wasn’t too urgent, then.

“Okay,” I said. I took another careful sip of my iced tea.

She drew in a deep breath, reached back to where the damp, folded paper towel was laying against her neck, and set it within the lid of her iced coffee, which she’d put to one side. She stared down at it for a moment.

I waited. I had some ideas about what she was getting around to. I also had things I might have said, but I was worried that, depending on what she was going to say next, they could be things I’d regret. If her reasons were good, if they were personal…

I was so fucking done with regrets. I didn’t want to add more, especially any tied to Jessica.

“I don’t want to compound my mistakes elsewhere with one here. With that in mind, I want to make it absolutely clear that this isn’t an obligation. I’d like a bit of help, if you heard me out and were comfortable giving it. I’d explain the situation as best as I could, but the confidentiality of other patients makes things difficult.”

“What do you need?”

“Before we get into that, touching back on what I said before about wanting to be fair to you, I’ve contacted a colleague. He’ll be your therapist if you still want one. He’s waiting for your call and he’ll make an appointment with you.”

“You didn’t have to do that. I wouldn’t want to burden you guys more. What’s going on, that you’re going to all this?”

“Maybe it’s necessary, maybe not, but it’s my apology and my thanks to you for having this conversation with me, and for any compromise of the relationship. It doesn’t mean you have to hear me out, and it absolutely doesn’t mean you have to say yes. Alright?”

“Alright, but it doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’ll hear you out.”

“It matters to me,” she said, firm.

“Okay,” I said, a little exasperated. It was clear Jessica was stubborn when she was bothered by something. “Fine. You made a mistake, you want my help. I’ll phone your colleague and possibly go see him. I’ll weigh what you’re asking and I’ll try to make an objective decision. Which may be no.”

“Thank you.”

“What do you need?” I asked, again, holding my iced tea in both hands.

⊙

Mrs. Yamada wasn’t ‘Jessica’ anymore, not any more than capes went by their civilian names in costume. She was in her professional attire, a suit jacket over a blouse, a business skirt, minimal jewelry, minimal and tasteful makeup. Papers rustled as she paged through files and as the wind blew into the room.

She had told me to dress in a way that was comfortable for me. It was still hot out and I’d had to travel forty miles to get to a place where Mrs. Yamada could pick me up to drive me the rest of the way. Even though the heat persisted, the weather had broken, the humidity giving way to a light thunderstorm. I wore a white dress with a black hood built into it, the Brockton Bay skyline printed in what looked like black and grey watercolors across the breast, the city’s name below and to the side. There was a scribbling of more watercolor and lettering at the hem. The white fabric was a thin sweatshirt-like material, so the hood hadn’t been much use against the rain.

The windows were open and the blinds closed, periodically clacking against the windowsills. The wind wasn’t blowing in a direction that sent the rain into the room, but droplets still beaded the blinds closer to the bottom. The lights felt artificially bright, in contrast to how dark the clouds and sky were outside. The room was set up like a high school classroom, minus the ‘class’, no students, no mess, no bulletin board with scraps on it or whiteboard with weeks-old marks that hadn’t been wiped away. Eight chairs were arranged in a ring at the center, instead of five columns of six desks.

There was a teacher’s desk at the front, and Mrs. Yamada was there, looking over some files. I’d caught some glimpses of the pictures on the fronts, purely by accident. I could have pried more, maybe caught a name or a heading by reading upside-down, and I’d decided not to. She wouldn’t have wanted me to.

“Do I have a file?” I asked. She startled a little, as if she’d forgotten I was there.

She’d been in the zone, I realized. She might have needed to be. She didn’t wear it on her face or in her body language, but there was a reason she was so immersed in what she was reading.

I could relate to that, in a way. During my hospital stay, I’d delved deep into my studies, struggled with the keyboard as I read everything I could find, while furthering my studies with long-distance education.

“Sorry to interrupt,” I said.

“It’s fine. You did have a file. You don’t now, I’m afraid. Unless it’s somewhere in the rubble.”

I nodded.

She glanced at the clock. “One of the group’s members tends to arrive early. She should be here momentarily.”

I looked up at the clock. One fifty in the afternoon. From how dark it was outside, I might have thought it was five hours later in the day. “Good to know.”

“It will be interesting to see how you two get on.”

“Huh.”

I heard the footsteps and glanced at the clock again. Not even a minute had elapsed. Was this person that punctual?

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. She wasn’t yet a teenager, or if she was then she was a late bloomer, but she wasn’t wholly a ‘child’ either. ‘Tween’. My first thought was that she was as cute as a button, and not in the pink princess way.

She was black, her arms and legs long and skinny, her eyes large in proportion to her face. She was studying me with just as much or more intensity than I studied her, as we sized each other up.

She was dressed or had been dressed with an eye for modern fashion, fitting to her age. She wore a blue corduroy pinafore dress with metal studs forming a star shape at the leg. Her top was a t-shirt, with an image on it in sequins, the kind that had two different images, depending on the direction the sequins were swept. The image depicted a blue heart if brushed one way, a yellow star if swept the other; I knew because it was a jumbled mix of both.

The reason I thought that she might have been dressed by someone else was that she was so very precise about how she’d put her outfit together. It was freshly ironed or fresh off the rack, and it was color matched from her shoes to the pins and ties in her hair. The star theme too. Kinky black hair had been fixed into place at the side of her head with a star pin, and carefully arranged into two small, tight buns at the back. Glossy and taken care of, not a strand out of place. It would have taken me twenty or thirty minutes to do the same, and my straight hair would have been easier to manage, even being as long as it was.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I responded.

“Gosh, you’re pretty,” she said.

I was momentarily lost for words. Very direct.

“Thank you,” I said, glancing back at Mrs. Yamada, hoping for a cue. She was focusing on her notes. She briefly met my eye, but communicated nothing.

“I can tell you were a hero. You have that air about you,” the girl said.

“Thank you,” I said, a little caught off guard. “It’s nice to meet you.”

She smiled, her enthusiasm renewed, “It’s amazing to meet you. I’m really interested to hear what you have to say. I really want to be a hero, so I’m trying to learn all I can.”

“That could be good. It’s better than the alternative, at least.”

“Isn’t it? You were probably a good one, weren’t you? You give me that impression. You’re stylish, I really like your dress, and you have that posture, back straight, unyielding. Only the best and the true up-and-comers have that.”

“Kenzie,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“Yes?”

“There’s no pressure.”

Kenzie only smiled in response.

“It’s okay,” I said. I was glad to have a window to speak. “I like your outfit too, Kenzie. Good clothes are so hard to get these days, aren’t they?”

“This outfit was part of a birthday present, but I think it was expensive, yeah. I wanted to look nicer since we had someone new today.”

“There’s no need to go to extra trouble. Not for me.”

“No trouble, no trouble,” she said, very cavalier. She looked at Mrs. Yamada, “How are you today, Mrs. Yamada?”

“I’m doing very well today, Kenzie. How are you this morning?”

“Can’t complain,” Kenzie said. “Does it matter where I sit?”

“Nothing’s changed from the prior sessions. Sit wherever you’re comfortable, it doesn’t matter.”

Kenzie smiled. “I think it matters. It means something. Can I sit here?”

“Sure,” I said.

She seated herself in the chair next to the one I was standing beside.

I snuck a glance at Mrs. Yamada, and I saw concern. Because of the others who were due to arrive?

“You probably caught my name, I’m Kenzie.”

She was extending a hand for me to shake. I shook it, then turned the chair a bit as I sat down. “Victoria. Some call me Vicky, but I’m using that less these days. You can use it if it’s easier.”

“And you’re a heroine?”

“I used to be. I’m on hiatus.”

“That’s the coolest thing,” Kenzie said. “Costumes, fighting bad guys.”

“It had its ups and downs,” I said. I glanced at Mrs. Yamada. Her focus was on her notes.

She noticed me looking and asked, “You used to be her patient?”

“I did.”

“She’s the best,” Kenzie said, leaning over and speaking with a voice quiet enough that Mrs. Yamada wouldn’t necessarily hear.

“Yeah,” I said. Except for her apparent mistake here, which I wasn’t equipped to make a judgment call on. Not quite yet.

“It’s good here; I always look forward to coming. Everyone’s pretty neat. That might not mean a lot coming from me, though.”

“How come?”

“I think everyone’s pretty neat,” she said.

“I see. That’s admirable.”

The papers rustled. Mrs. Yamada put the files in a filing cabinet beside the desk at the end of the room, locking them away. She spoke aloud, “Can I get you two anything? Water?”

“I’m fine, but thank you,” Kenzie said.

“No thank you,” I said.

“The others may be a bit late, with the weather being what it is.”

“I think we’ll survive the wait,” Kenzie said. “Right, Victoria?”

“We’ll survive. Past years have taught me patience, if nothing else,” I said.

“From being a Ward? Were you a Ward?” Kenzie asked.

That wasn’t where or why, I thought, but I said, “Very briefly. My family had a team. Still does, kind of.”

Very kind of.

“Oh, wow, neat.”

I tried to find a diplomatic way to respond to that.

“Or not so neat?” Kenzie said.

“Ups and downs,” I said.

“I was with the PRT, but I wasn’t a Ward exactly,” she said. “They had trouble sticking me anywhere, and then I went into training, and got to do a lot of really neat camps and exercises and travel, because they had to wait until I was old enough before they could put me where they really wanted to put me.”

“Which was?”

“Watchdog, grrr,” she said. She’d made a pretty sad attempt at a growl, mischief in her eyes. “That other branch that worked under the PRT that you almost never hear about. Oversight and investigation, powers, money, and politics.”

“I know of Watchdog.”

“Cubicle superheroes.”

“They’re actually pretty badass from what I heard, and they do- did a lot of fieldwork and investigations, raiding offices, interrogations, talking to politicians, uncovering conspiracies.”

“That’s true.”

“There’s something about getting organized and going after that thinker or that tinker who’s been working behind the scenes, the guy that’s been subverting society for their own gain, when they’ve probably spent months or years making contingency plans and anticipating the day their world and their plans come crashing down around them. I think that dynamic is pretty damn cool, the approach and the complexity of it.”

“Hmm, that is cool,” she said. “Except there aren’t any awesome costumes or monster fighting.”

“Less monster fighting, I’m sure. I’m not sure about the costumes. There are probably masks, I guess?”

“And there’s some cublical- bleh. Cubicle jockeying.”

She spoke so fast she had tripped over the word.

I replied, “Probably a lot, yeah. But from my short stint in the Wards, there was a lot of paperwork there too.”

“That’s so true. I was kind of a Ward, so I had to do some. I think I was good at the paperwork.”

I was starting to feel like she’d been the one who had fussed with her appearance, rather than any parental figure. Someone so fussy would’ve somehow been mentioned in the life story to this point. It was very believable, too, to draw a connection between the fastidious appearance and her pride in the paperwork.

“I think I was too.”

She nodded, the conversation momentarily, almost mercifully pausing, then she found her place, enthusiasm returning. “So yeah. I was bouncing all over the place. The Youth Guard stepped in, I’m not sure if you’ve had to deal with them.”

The Youth Guard or the Y.G. were the group that acted like the union that protected minors in Hollywood. That had protected minors in Hollywood. They were the group that made sure that Wards’ education and options didn’t suffer as a consequence for them being superheroes, that they didn’t dress provocatively, that they were safe and sane, that nobody took advantage, and other stuff. They’d reached out to my parents at one point, because they weren’t limited to the PRT. They were a guillotine that had hung over the heads of any team with under-eighteen heroes or heroines.

“I’ve heard the horror stories,” I said.

“They weren’t a horror story for me. They said I was being moved around too much and I needed to go somewhere to stay. Not going to the fun camps and training sucked, but I went back to Baltimore, and I got to set up my workshop, fi-nuh-ly.”

“Workshop, huh?”

“Kenzie,” Mrs. Yamada spoke up. She still sat at the desk. “You might want to be mindful of what you reveal. I’ll get into that more when things get started, but take a moment and think before revealing things that might tie into your cape identity, or identifying parts of your background.”

“Yes, Mrs. Yamada,” Kenzie said. Then she leaned close to me, whispering, “I took a moment to think and I think I’m safe telling you I’m a tinker.”

“Gotcha,” I said, mimicking her volume and whisper.

“Yep,” she said. She pitched her voice lower, “The Youth Guard was good to me. I liked the people who I worked with there, even if the people in charge of me didn’t. Some of my favorite people next to Mrs. Yamada worked for them. Not that that lasted for long. That was only the spring of twenty-thirteen-”

As she talked, I glanced at Mrs. Yamada. It was clear she heard.

“-and then, well…”

“Yeah,” I said.

Gold Morning.

I was a little caught off guard by Kenzie, on a few fronts. This wasn’t what I’d expected. I glanced at the other chairs.

⊙

I got into a more comfortable position in the little booth, leaning against the window and taking a moment to digest what Mrs. Yamada had shared. Someone else walked into the dark little shop, going straight to the counter, their eyes on the desserts behind the display.

“Group therapy?” I asked.

“With the full-time position I’m taking with the Wardens, I have the chance to help a lot of critical individuals. The people I’ll be helping will be people who can help a lot of people in turn. An incredible number, in some cases. As attached as I am to my current patient caseload, and as much as I would like to take you on as a patient, it made the most sense to go this route.”

“Okay,” I said.

She frowned a little.

“But?” I asked.

“The role I held between Gold Morning and now was always going to be a transient one. My patients and everyone else involved knew I was only seeing the patients I’m seeing now in a temporary way. I’m one of several therapists who are rotating through a patient caseload, and only half were my patients and mine alone. In making a transition, it is and was still my responsibility to look after those exclusive patients.”

“Okay.” I connected that thought to how she’d found a therapist for me. When it was a chore to get therapists to take new patients, it amounted to a pretty meaningful gesture.

“I’m referring the ones I can to other therapists. I’m in touch with twelve people who work with parahumans and a few who are breaking into that field. Not a single one of us is working less than seventy hours a week. Some of my patients didn’t need counseling anymore, and I was only helping them to find their equilibrium after Gold Morning. Others are on their way to a new facility in this world’s Europe, which they’ve been anticipating for over a year now. If you were still in the same condition as you were when I first met you, I would be recommending you go there.”

I nodded. I didn’t like thinking about it.

“I couldn’t find places for everyone, and I’d turn down the job before I abandoned patients in need. With the remainder, I saw common ground among them. Not all of them, but enough of them that it seemed like things could be workable. Some supplied, needed, or were looking into the same kinds of assistance, which is what prompted the line of thinking. I was going to introduce them regardless, I could see them talking, and I thought it would be best to have the initial and deeper talks in a supervised setting.”

“And from there, it was a short jump to thinking about group therapy.”

“Yes. Group therapy, interpersonal group therapy, seemed appropriate for what I wanted them to address with each of them. It meant that in the time before I took on my full-time role with the Wardens, I could devote more time to more of them. In an ideal world, if there were some who still needed attention by the time I was done, I could call in favors or find places for them.”

“Okay,” I said. “Was it group therapy like I was a part of?”

“The therapy you were a part of was encounter-driven. Different. More involved, more simulations, acting and role-playing, confrontation, learning assertiveness as opposed to, say, aggressive behavior, or overly passive behavior. Engaging with peers.”

“I didn’t really do anything except sit there.”

“But you wrote the scripts. You listened to the others, and you visualized ways you wanted the conversations to go. I got the impression it was pretty intense, even when you were a step removed in your participation.”

“Sure,” I said. A large part of what I’d contributed to those sessions had played into my last interaction with my mom.

Not that that interaction had gone well, but I could imagine that if I’d found myself in that same situation without the grounding of knowledge from those sessions, I might not have had the words to articulate as much of what I’d wanted to. It was even possible that, without the conflict resolution skills, I might have hurt someone.

The recollections of the therapy and of my mom were heavy, pressing down on me and my chest. I took a long sip of my iced tea. It was cold and sensory, pulling me away from that rabbit hole of dark thoughts.

“This group was intended to be slower-paced, less intense,” she said.

“Even with the time constraint?”

“Yes, even with. Part of it is that, as I said, it was the most appropriate for what I wanted to address.”

“Part?”

“The other part ties back to what I said about introductions, how the first meetings are the trickiest. It was a delicate balancing act to begin with, compared to your group, where we added someone new once every few weeks or months, while the rest of the group remained fairly stable. With this group, having them all meet at once, I thought it would be best to keep things calmer.”

“Makes sense,” I said.

“My colleagues like to say there is a truism with groups of parahumans. That the larger the group in question, the greater the chance of a schism or disaster. I’m not sure I like exactly how the idea is presented a lot of the time it comes up, but…”

I thought of my sister.

“Groups of capes get pretty volatile,” I finished the sentence for her. “Each person you add is another chance for things to go wrong.”

⊙

Three more members joined the group. An unknown boy and two people I knew, male and female.

When I realized who I was looking at, though, my jaw dropped. I stood from my chair.

She, for her part, was on a similar page. She stared at me, confused at first. Then reality dawned for her as well.

She was pale in a way that skin didn’t tend to be, and she had a mane of black hair. A small black tattoo marked her cheekbone, partially obscured by skin-tone makeup that had streaked in the rain. For all that she was almost monochrome from the neck up, she was a riot of color from the neck down. Sveta.

Her hands went to her mouth.

She closed the distance between us with a half-stagger, half-run kind of movement. I caught a glimpse of her tearing up before she threw her arms around me, colliding with me. I caught my bearings and hugged her back.

“You’re okay,” she mumbled into my shoulder.

“I’m-” I started, lost for words. I looked at Weld, who stood in the doorway, smiling as wide as I’d ever seen him smile.

My arms still around her, I reached out with one hand, groping in Weld’s general direction, as if I could get the words that way.

“Fantastic,” Weld said. “This is perfect.”

He looked a little less neat than he’d been when I’d known him in Brockton Bay, but not as wild or ‘monstrous’ as I’d seen in the pictures online, back when he’d been a member of the Irregulars. His skin was dark iron, his eyes silver, veins of more silver tracing from the corners of the eyes. His hair was wire, made to look more free and unruly. He was wearing a henley shirt, khaki shorts and sandals that looked like they were made of metal and what might’ve been tire rubber. I couldn’t imagine any other material that would hold up when bearing the weight of someone that was heavy metal from head to toe.

Beside him was a guy, brown-skinned, with the sides and back of his hair cut short. The hair on top had to have been painted rather than dyed, because it was magenta, and I couldn’t imagine getting black hair dyed magenta without bleaching it to the point of destroying it, and the rolling curls retained their shape despite the droplets of rain that clung to it. He was smiling, but more because he looked like the type that very much enjoyed others being happy. The magenta-haired guy’s shirt was form-fitting to his upper body, showing off lean muscle, and looked like a surfer’s rash guard. He wore black shorts and sandals.

I turned my attention to the girl of the trio. I couldn’t believe it was Sveta.

Who was practically sobbing now, apparently.

Emotion was welling in my own chest. I put my hand on the back of her head, and I felt the hair stir, the tissues beneath the wig moving.

“Well, I think this has made my everything,” Weld said.

“Your everything?” the magenta-haired guy asked.

“Saying it made my day, my week, or even my month wouldn’t be enough,” Weld said, still smiling. “You’re okay, Victoria?”

“Two arms, two legs,” I said.

“That’s great,” he said. “Sveta was so attached to you, she hated leaving you behind.”

Sveta nodded, head rubbing against my shoulder.

“And we’d thought you’d died,” Weld said. “When G.M. happened. Hearing you were alive was amazing on its own, but you’re… you’re back. Fantastic.”

Sveta made a sound, emotions pouring over, before hiccuping with a sob.

I stroked the back of her head, trusting that someone would tell me not to if it was dangerous.

Then again, I didn’t have my forcefield up.

I could have mentioned it. I didn’t.

“You have a body,” I whispered. I could feel it. It was hard, unyielding. She creaked in places, and the way she’d moved- the colors and textures I’d seen-

None of that mattered. She had a body.

“It took some doing,” Weld said. “It took a lot of doing. It’s been a whole adventure to get even this far. It’s not even tinkertech. Regular prosthetics and some inventiveness from some really stellar people. Arms, legs, body, some stuff to keep it upright, some machine learning systems that adapt to meet her partway, and a lot of practice on her part, to operate everything internal.”

Sveta pulled away. She looked me in the eye, reaching up to wipe at her tears. The hands didn’t seem cooperative enough, almost like someone holding a baseball bat by one end was trying to wipe away tears with the other.

I hesitated, before indicating her face. “Do you want a hand?”

She nodded, and I wiped the tears away with my fingers. She smiled, even as more welled up.

“You’re such a sneak, Jessica,” Weld said. “Not telling us?”

“I did tell you Victoria was recovered.”

“I thought you meant she was mobile enough to get to the meeting place on her own. I didn’t think you meant a complete and total recovery,” Weld said.

I wanted to turn to see Mrs. Yamada’s expression, but it was hard to move with Sveta hugging me. She was silent, though.

Behind Weld, someone else was ducking into the room. He looked like he was of a height with Kenzie, but given how boys developed slower, he might’ve been a touch older. He had a mess of tousled brown hair that would have been over his eyes if he wasn’t wearing large headphones as a kind of hairband. He had a very flat expression as he walked around the perimeter of the room. His t-shirt was black with a logo I didn’t recognize, his cargo shorts had stuff packed into the pockets, but he mostly looked like a very average kid. Only his old fashioned braces really stood out to me- the kind that made it hard for him to put his lips together.

Sveta twisted around, one hand reaching out to me to steady herself. She looked over at Kenzie, then at the magenta-haired fellow, and then at the new kid. She failed on her first attempt at speaking, then managed. “She was my first friend ever, that I can remember.”

“I didn’t know that,” I murmured.

“I didn’t have anyone, and- there was a time where I was cooped up in a sealed room in the hospital and stuff was going on outside, with the PRT and the other case fifty-threes. They introduced me to people who were harder for me to hurt. Victoria was one of them. I liked her, and she knew Weld, and she put up with me for some reason, so we kept talking and meeting.”

I leaned closer, whispering in her ear. “For some reason? You helped keep me sane. You were my friend.”

“Stop it, dummy. You’re going to make me cry more,” she whispered back. “And I can’t believe I’m finally hearing your voice for real.”

And with that last statement she was tearing up more.

“Since when are you this much of a crier?” I asked.

“I’m all emotionally open and shit now,” she whispered. “Blame Weld. And blame yourself, being all normal and stuff.”

“I’m pretty sure I just caught you saying my name just now,” Weld said. “Maybe that’s my cue to duck out before you start badmouthing me.”

“I’d never ever badmouth you,” Sveta said, at normal volume. She’d turned to face him, and I held her arm to steady her as she swayed a bit. “What would I even say?”

“I hear people coming anyway,” Weld said. He stopped, looking at Sveta and me, then smiled wide. “This is fantastic.”

Sveta hugged my arm.

“You’ve said that a lot,” the Magenta-haired boy said.

“I can’t even begin to tell you,” Weld said. “In more than one way. I’ll leave it for Victoria to share.”

“Maybe we can chat another time,” the boy said. “We could hang out.”

“If Sveta, Victoria, and Jessica okay it,” Weld said, clapping a hand on the guy’s shoulder. “I don’t want to throw any wrenches into the therapy or make anything awkward by blurring lines.”

“Send me an email if you want to discuss it. It’s always good to see you, Weld,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“I’ll do that, and it’s good to see you too, Jessica. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to make the time to sit in.”

“Totally understandable. Good luck. We may run into each other if you stick with the Wardens.”

“Excellent,” Weld said. He glanced at us, delivering a wink probably more meant for Sveta than for me. “Fantastic. I’ll text you when I have an idea of what’s happening with my afternoon, Sveta.”

“Good luck,” Sveta said.

With a parting salute, he was gone.

I took my seat, giving my hand to Sveta, as she collapsed into the chair on the other side of me. Now that she wasn’t bear-hugging me, I could see that a lot of the color on her was that the prosthetic body she wore had been painted. Bumps and collisions had chipped some of the paint, but from the neck down, everything that wasn’t covered in clothing was painted in rolling waves, in sea serpents, birds and reptiles. The colors were bright and bold, like graffiti, the living things hot orange, the background cool blues and greens. Her clothes were relatively plain, a black top and brown pants, and looked to be relatively thick and durable, but the plain-ness was marred by the small streaks and smudges of paint that she’d gotten on it, most of it in long, thin slashes.

The seating arrangement put me between her and Kenzie. Kenzie, for the time being, was leaning over to the new addition to the group, the boy with braces. She seemed to be filling him in on what he’d missed.

“Tristan,” the magenta-haired boy said, approaching. He extended a hand. I shook it.

“Victoria.”

“Will your brother be joining us today?” Mrs. Yamada asked.

“I asked, he didn’t reply,” Tristan said.

“Brother?” I asked.

“Twin,” Tristan said. He pointed at his hair. “Part of the reason I make myself so easily identifiable. He’s Byron, he used to have blue-green hair to match me, but he quit doing that.”

“Good to know,” I said.

Blue hair.

I thought of my youngest cousin. Where Crystal had always had the red-magenta look, Eric had gone with the blue, dying his hair. It was a sad, wistful thought. With so many losses in recent memory, so much tumult, it felt very distant. That distance didn’t make it it feel any less painful. If I’d been burned on an hourly, daily or weekly basis for the last four years, the death of Eric and Uncle Neil would have been the very first time my hand was shoved down and held to the oven ring.

Alarming and hard to process in how devastating and raw it had been, important, but still a very long time ago.

I changed up my focus, “You all came in together. Are you friends?”

“No. Or kind of?” Tristan asked.

“Kind of,” Sveta said.

Tristan explained, “I ran into Weld and Sveta on the way into the first session. He dropped her off at the front door because he had a place to be, and I offered my arm. Sveta and I geeked out together over Weld.”

“He’s geek-out worthy,” I said.

Tristan smiled. “Does the impromptu Weld fan club have another member?”

“Nah,” I said. “No, I’m just a fan in a very mundane way. I think he’s a good guy.”

Sveta nodded emphatically.

“At our first meeting, Tristan kept saying he was Weld’s number one fan,” Kenzie joined in.

“Oh, that. Don’t remind me,” Tristan said.

“I won’t, then,” Kenzie said, deflating a little.

Tristan sighed, glancing at the rest of the room. “Nah, it’s no good to leave our guest in the lurch, and I’m supposed to be holding myself accountable. You might as well share, I’ll take my licks.”

“Alright,” Kenzie said, perking up considerably at the same time Tristan withered. “So Tristan kept saying it, casually mentioning the posters he had before, and he had merchandise.”

“Weld figurine, from his stint in the Boston Wards. One where he was wearing his first costume, too,” Tristan said. “I miss that thing.”

“I want one,” Sveta said. “Would it be weird if I had one?”

Kenzie continued, “So he kept saying all that, because he was so psyched he got to meet Weld. Then Sveta finally speaks up, and she was very quiet when she said it, but she said ‘I probably have you beat.’”

“I’m competitive,” Tristan said. “So I was pretty adamant that no, no she didn’t.”

Sveta looked like she was on top of the world, smiling to herself. She wiped at her face with one prosthetic hand- she still had tracks of tears on her face. I leaned closer, whispering. “Want a tissue?”

She nodded. I stood from my seat while the conversation continued.

“…And she says she’s his girlfriend,” Kenzie said.

Tristan sighed. “Yep.”

“She’s living with him, and they sleep in the same bed, and they make each other breakfast,” Kenzie said.

I liked the mental image. I liked that Sveta was smiling as much as she was.

“It’s hard to beat that,” Tristan said.

I collected a tissue from Mrs. Yamada’s desk, glancing at her. She seemed pretty unbothered by this, so far.

“I don’t think it’s about winning,” Sveta said.

I handed the tissue to Sveta as I retook my seat, and she set about patting her cheeks dry. A little bit more of the cover-up makeup came away from the tattoo.

“Yeahhhh,” Tristan drew out the word. He added, “Easy to say when you’re the clear winner.”

“That’s fair,” Sveta said.

“That’s a joke, by the way. I’m not being serious here.”

“Yeah,” Sveta said. “I was wondering there.”

Another person had entered the room. A boy, Caucasian, with shoulder-length brown-blond hair. He had a cut under one eye and another cut on the bridge of his nose. His jeans were ripped at the knee and his shirt was baggy, a size too big for him. The sleeves were long, red where the torso was white, and they had been rolled up to the elbow. His sneakers had seen a lot of abuse, by the looks of it. The white parts were brown and grey in a way that made me suspicious that even a thorough cleaning wouldn’t get them purely white again. He looked sixteen or seventeen.

“But yeah, damn, I don’t look good enough in a dress, so I have to concede. Hey Rain,” Tristan said.

“Heya,” the boy who was apparently called ‘Rain’ said. He took the empty seat next to Tristan. “Why are you wearing a dress?”

“Just joking around.”

There were still two empty seats. One would be Jessica’s. There’d be one more, then.

“You made it here okay?” Tristan asked.

“Yeah. I got a ride.”

“How are things?” Kenzie asked Rain. She gestured at her head in a way I didn’t see, with her head blocking my view of the hand on the other side.

Rain seemed to take a second to ponder it. He frowned a little. “Not great.”

“Better or worse than last week?” Kenzie asked.

“Let’s save the therapy-relevant stuff for the session,” Mrs. Yamada interrupted. “Small talk and catching up for now, please. We don’t want to get started before everyone’s here, and I want to go over ground rules and expectations before we ask anything too personal.”

Kenzie smiled and shrugged, settling back into her seat, hands in her lap.

“Alright,” Rain said. He turned his attention to me. “This is the heroine?”

“Ex-, kind of,” I said. “But yeah. Victoria.”

“Hi. I’m Rain. Spelled like the water that falls from the sky.”

“Cape or civilian name?” I asked.

“I hate that you have to ask. Civilian. And before you comment on it, yeah, I know. It’s unusual, I’ve heard the jokes.”

He’d said it as if his patience on the subject had run short a long time ago. I threw up my hands in mock surrender, my mouth firmly shut.

He said, “You said ex, but you didn’t sound sure. Are you taking a break? Or…?”

“Trying to get back into it after a break, but ended up taking another short break to focus on some background stuff. Getting a handle on things.”

“Yeah,” he said, as if I’d said something very heavy, and he’d felt part of that weight. “I feel like I’ve been trying to get a handle on things since I got my powers.”

“For a while now, then? If I can ask?”

“Just under a year ago,” he said. “I think, along with Chris, I’m the rookie here.”

Post-Gold Morning. That helped put things in context.

Chris, too. By process of elimination, he’d be the boy roughly Kenzie’s age.

“Family thing. You said that once,” Kenzie said. Rain acknowledged that with a nod.

“Second gen?” I asked. I wondered if I had any kindred on that front.

“There are a lot of questions you can ask about the parahuman stuff,” he said. “When it comes to me, the answer to most of them is ‘it’s complicated’.”

“That’s fair,” I said. “For a while now I’ve thought that parahumans should get a membership card, materializing in our hands when we trigger, or arriving in the mail at the first opportunity. A warning on one side, ‘handle with care’, and then on the other side, ‘shit is complicated, don’t ask’. Something that we can flash now and again, like a get out of jail free card.”

“Mine would be worn out, both sides,” Rain said.

“I could get good mileage out of the ‘shit is complicated’ side,” Tristan said.

“Now I feel left out,” Kenzie said. “I’d like to think mine would be nice and neat, stored away as a just-in-case.”

“Really?” Tristan asked. “Really?”

“Ruh-heally,” Kenzie said, with exaggerated emphasis and a roll of the eyes. Tristan mirrored her pose some.

“I do like the idea,” Rain said. “The card.”

Rain wasn’t a smiler, by the looks of it, but he’d seemed to relax more as I talked to him.

“By the way, I should have asked, am I allowed to swear?” I asked, twisting around to face Mrs. Yamada.

“Swearing is fine In moderation,” Mrs. Yamada said. “Being here wouldn’t be nearly as positive if you couldn’t say what you wanted to say. There’s a point where swearing takes away from the communication and expression I’m hoping to see, where you hide behind the swearing, or where it’s disruptive. I think you six have a good sense of where that point is. I may referee if we get close to it.”

“Alright,” I said.

“I remember the group therapy session we had back at the hospital,” Sveta said.

“Yeah,” I said. Sveta had only been there for the initial sessions. She’d left, I’d stayed. “Plenty of swearing. But it was different, and we didn’t have any kids in the group.”

“Well, not young kids,” Sveta said.

I looked over at Kenzie and Chris. “Will I be overstepping or bothering you if I call you kids? I’m not sure where the comfort zones are.”

Kenzie snorted. “It’s fine.”

“Nah,” Chris said, “Hospital? You were at the Asylum?”

He’d barely hesitated a second. He’d been so quiet up until now, and then the moment I’d given him an avenue to join the conversation, he went straight from negation to asking questions.

Not pleasant questions either.

“Oh. Sorry,” Sveta said, to me. “I should have thought you might not want to broadcast it. I’m sorry. I kind of brought it up earlier, too.”

On its own, it was something I could handle most of the time, but it might have been a return to the group therapy session, the presence of Sveta and Mrs. Yamada, even, and possibly the fact that I’d had a few reminders and it was harder and harder to surface, while it almost felt like Chris was pressing down.

Dark, uncomfortable memories stirred. Being paralyzed, silent, the interminable restlessness. The way the things on the television and radio had been almost unbearable to see and listen to, not because of the subject matter, but because of my inability to change the channel or shut it off, even though I’d asked for it to be put on in the first place.

I had to take a second to swallow and remember normal breathing and cadence again, after thinking about it.

“Let’s not put too much pressure on Victoria, please,” Mrs. Yamada said. “I understand that you might feel the need to vet her or figure out if you can trust her, and that makes sense, given the degree of what’s shared here, but let’s be fair. Let’s keep the small talk small, I’ll outline things as we start, and you can decide if you’re uncomfortable. If you are, then we’ll figure out a way to move forward.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“If you’re sure.”

“It’s fine,” I said, glad I was able to find and use a normal tone of voice without any giveaway. I turned back to Chris, “Yeah. I was there. Arrived midway through twenty-eleven, year and a half, and then the Asylum-supported housing after.”

“Right,” Chris said. “Brockton Bay before that?”

“Yeah,” I said. I wondered for a second at his jumping to the conclusion, before I remembered I had the city and its name on my dress.

“There was a lot of Brockton Bay in the news, before,” he observed.

“Yeah,” I said. “Not a lot of it good.”

I wasn’t sure how to approach the conversation with Chris. He was hard to read, in fashion, in expression- I’d glance at his mouth to see if he was smiling or frowning and I’d only see the braces. He’d been quiet up until now, too, which meant I didn’t have a lot to go on.

Something about him bothered me. It wasn’t just the slant of his questions or the way it felt like they were pressing at me, but his demeanor, and little things about his appearance I couldn’t put my finger on. The messiness of his hair was one of those things. It looked like he had three cowlicks – two at either corner of his hairline and one by his temple. With his hair pushed back by the headphones he hadn’t taken off, they looked a little like small bald patches with the way the hair splayed out from those points. He held his hands with his fingers curled in. It was offputting in a mild way that lined up with how he came hitting me with those uncomfortable, prying questions and comments.

I wondered if he was one of the ones Mrs. Yamada had been worried about, as part of this group. One of the additions that catalyzed something volatile.

That might have been unfair.

“Weld was there for a lot of it,” Sveta said, backing me up. “I’ve heard some of what happened. Things got scary.”

In all fairness, as fond as I was of her, I did find something amusing in how it was Sveta saying that last bit. “Scary’s a good way to put it.”

“But you’re still wearing the shirt,” Rain observed. “You’re attached to the city.”

“Sure. It’s my city. I grew up there.”

“But you admit it was scary?” Rain asked.

“The city isn’t defined by what happened to it. Just like we aren’t the bad experiences that happen to us,” I said.

“Aren’t we?” Chris asked, leaning forward in his seat, elbows on his knees. “We’re the sum of the things that have happened to us, good or bad.”

“We aren’t,” I said, firmly. Then, on a moment’s reflection, I added, “We can’t be. There’s a lot of other things going into it.”

“You’re making me think back to science class,” Rain said. “I sucked at science. What was it? Nature or nurture?”

“Nature versus nurture, yeah,” Chris said.

“That’s it,” Rain said. “I should have remembered that. Are you all about the nature, then?”

I thought of my family. I’m not sure that’s much better.

Amy had agonized over that one.

“We’re getting into territory that’s close to being therapy again,” Mrs. Yamada said, rescuing me from the line of thinking. “So I’m going to interrupt. But it’s a good point to keep in mind for our discussions later today. I’m keeping an eye on the clock, and we’re ready to start.”

Sounds good, I thought. I glanced at the empty chairs.

She walked around the perimeter of the room, stopping when she stood behind one of the empty chairs. “Let me recap for our visitor and remind the rest of the group what I said at the start of the first session. This particular type of group therapy focuses on self-reflection, effective socializing, supporting each other, helping to problem solve, and examining the patterns we fall into, both the constructive and the problematic. Each of you has spent some time with me working on these things, and this is the platform where we put a lot of that into practice.”

“My role in this, Victoria, is to be the referee and the coach. I’ll try to ensure everyone gets their turn and has a voice. I’ll try to head off or steer the discussion if it gets into less constructive territory, and to keep things moving if needed. I’ll be chiming in periodically to ensure that confidentiality is stressed. I’ve had Victoria review the same materials I gave the rest of you.”

I nodded.

“While I can promise you confidentiality on my part, and while I’ll encourage you all to maintain it, I can’t guarantee it. If any of you were to pursue villainous activities, the other members of the group could be compelled to testify against you. ”

The final member of the group entered the room. She was somewhere between eighteen and twenty, but her height might have been deceiving. Her white hair was long enough to reach the small of her back, her irises especially pale or similarly white, and she wore a black dress with a dozen straps overlapping in an intricate way at the shoulders and back. The hem of the dress was damaged at one end. Threads frayed, polyester melted, with a noticeable hole in it.

“Hi, boss,” Kenzie said, a twinkle of mischief in her eye as Mrs. Yamada gave her a stern look.

“I’m glad you could make it, Ashley,” Mrs. Yamada said. “I’ve spent the last minute or two going over the basics, reminding others about the aims of the group and how confidentiality works in a group session.”

“To fill in our guest?” ‘Ashley’ asked. She went straight to the table at the side of the room where a pitcher of water and paper cups were arranged, pouring herself a glass.

“Yes. Her name is Victoria. If you’ll take a seat, I’ll bring you anything else you need, but I’d like for everyone to be seated so I can continue.”

Ashley walked around behind me and circled the perimeter of the group to reach one of the empty seats. She swept her hand behind her to brush her dress to one side, so it wouldn’t bunch up awkwardly beneath her as she took a seat on one of the two chairs between Rain and Chris.

She stared at me. Maybe it would have been better to say she stared me down.

I, meanwhile, was left to digest the mistake of Mrs. Yamada’s that I was here to help address. I was ninety-five percent sure I knew who ‘Ashley’ was when she was in costume, and I was left to take that knowledge and see how it fit together with the issue at hand.

Mrs. Yamada continued, “Use your own discretion when deciding what to share. You’ve all agreed to participate, knowing the risks and difficulties inherent. I’m hopeful this will be a positive set of exercises. I think that more or less sums it up. I suspect Victoria’s presence and the fact you’ve all had a week to think about what we talked about last session means you’ll have some questions.”

“It’s pretty late to be bringing her in,” Ashley said. “Is she joining the group?”

“We hadn’t planned on her joining, per se,” Mrs. Yamada said. “I invited her because she’s exceptionally well equipped to address the topics that came up last session. We’ll build on it and you can decide what you’re willing to share here. During our next and final session, depending on your comfort levels and how much you want to carry on today’s discussion, she may or may not be in attendance, or not for the full duration.”

“Is it really an ‘issue’?” Tristan asked, making air quotes.

“I think it could be. Victoria can expand on why, shortly.”

“Are we supposed to know who she is?” Ashley asked.

I glanced at Mrs. Yamada. She was taking her seat between Ashley and Chris. From the gesture in my direction, and the fact that she wasn’t stepping in, the ‘referee’ was leaving the ball in my court.

“I’m Victoria Dallon. If you study Parahumans, my family comes up, because it’s a literal textbook case of powers running in families. I… believe you’ve run into my family, Ashley.”

“Have I? I’ve met so many capes it’s hard to keep track.”

“Do you know New Wave?” I asked. “White bodysuits, symbols in colors?”

“I know a few people like that. I didn’t always pay attention to names.”

“Would’ve been in Boston. The slang term in the ‘scene’ was the Boston Games.”

Ashley smiled for the first time.

For the rest of the room, I explained, keeping half of an eye on Mrs. Yamada, to make sure I wasn’t overstepping. “A series of arrests in Boston saw a shift in the power balance of local gangs. That’s a pretty common thing, but the Protectorate team followed up on it hard, toppling just about every major and most minor gangs and villains in the city, leaving a void that was bigger than usual. Villains of every power level and stripe flocked to the city, villains in neighboring cities had a vested interest in having a foothold there as a place to retreat to or a place to expand, and it became an entangled nightmare of villain politics and power plays.”

“Time of my life,” Ashley said.

“Heroes, like the PRT, and like my family’s team, followed, to try and keep the peace until things settled. My family’s team was Lady Photon, Manpower, Flashbang, Brandish, Lightstar and Fleur.”

“The heroes without masks,” Ashley said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I remember them. I was one of the villains who flocked,” Ashley said.

That confirmed that she was Damsel of Distress then. B-list villain, chronic headache for the PRT of yesteryear, unpredictable, dangerous, unstable, and fortunately, she’d been more of a problem for herself than for others. She had been recruited by the Slaughterhouse Nine, to pad their numbers, and had died shortly after.

Her history was one of self-sabotage punctuated by events every two or three years where she was cause for alarm. She had thrived during the Boston Games, in a sense, enough to get her name out there to capes in Northeastern America as a just in case.

She’d later found a place in the Nine. She was of a particular brand or species of cape, who somehow rose up when everything else was sinking. It almost made a degree of sense, then, that in following with that pattern, she’d risen up from the grave at the same time the entire world was plunged into chaos.

Kenzie was saying something, and I was having trouble tuning in.

Slaughterhouse Nine meant Bonesaw. Crawler. That in turn led me to think about my last coherent, me moments, the blank in my memories, the aftermath. It made me think about actual monsters, and the very real possibility that Ashley was one.

“Were you there?”

It took me a second to connect with Ashley’s question.

“If you’re uncomfortable getting into it, we could change the subject,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“Could I just get some water, actually? Sorry, you meant Boston, Ashley?”

“Yes. During the Boston Games,” Ashley said, as Mrs. Yamada stood and went to get the water.

“I was a little too young. I followed along back at home, where we made the dining room into a kind of headquarters, putting up a few bulletin boards. I colored in the maps and moved pins as the territories changed hands while doing homework and stuff. Is it a problem?”

“No,” Ashley said.

“What are your thoughts on the subject, Victoria?” Mrs. Yamada asked, handing me the water.

I drank before answering.

“It’s fine. Boston was mostly fine,” I said. “My family didn’t get hurt. To me, she was just a pin on the map of Boston we had in the living room-”

I saw Damsel’s expression shift. A slight narrowing of the eyes.

“-And a few interesting and impressive stories my aunt, uncle, and dad brought home.”

That amended the narrowing. Lesson learned.

“Good,” Mrs. Yamada said. “I’m glad to hear that. Questions, thoughts, observations? Anyone?”

Ashley wasn’t done with the questions and comments. The words she spoke next were an accusation, and she was very good at sounding accusatory. “You brought her here to change our minds.”

⊙

Our conversation stalled as a waitress wiped down a table behind Jessica. I swished the ice around my now mostly empty glass.

“I never liked the codenames,” Jessica said.

“We might be very different people in that. There’s something fun about them. They’re revealing.”

“They are, but they often reveal just how badly the patient wants to escape, to leave their humanity behind and dive into something well beyond humanity. Some don’t surface completely. Some hurt others on the way down. Some drown in that vast, incomprehensible sea.”

I drew in a deep breath, then sighed. “Feeling poetic?”

“My own kind of escapism, maybe. I think sometimes about a world where all of my patients can go by their real names.”

“I’m not following the train of thought, I’m afraid.”

“I arranged the group therapy. I thought for a long time about whether any of my patients were a significant danger to the others, or if they’d set the therapy of their peers back. I took precautions, I pored over the notes, trying to visualize how things might go, or the topics that I could safely broach or go back to. Like I said, the first meetings are hard.”

“Yeah. I can imagine that.”

“And while I don’t like the way the idea is often interpreted or the conclusions it’s taken to, there’s the notion of volatility, and the exponentially increasing chance of trouble as the groups of capes grow larger. With parahumans, things are often exaggerated, both in weak points or the hot button issues they have, or their inclination to push certain buttons. The more you put in one place, the higher the chance of the wrong button being pushed. That was another concern of mine.”

I nodded. “How long has the group been running?”

“Two months and a week, with one or two sessions a week, as situations allow. We’re not quite at the end, but it’s close. This was supposed to be the easy middle stretch.”

“Supposed to be? You let your guard down?”

“In a way. Maybe from the beginning,” Jessica said.

She looked genuinely bothered. I held my tongue.

She went on, “I spent so much time anticipating and planning for disaster, that I failed to see the other side of that coin. I didn’t want to think of them as capes. I sought out the things that would help them connect and find reasons to listen to one another.”

I realized what had happened.

Jessica was nodding to herself. “That was my mistake. We were approaching the end stretch, and I reminded them of the date we would wrap up and finish. The conversation took a turn, and I was caught flat-footed. They expressed interest in staying together. They want to found a team.”

“A team of?”

“Heroes, it sounds like.”

“Is that so bad?” I asked.

“Without going into any particular detail, Victoria, several are troubled, vulnerable, or both. No, I don’t think it’s good.”

Flare – 2.6

“It’s not my intent to change your minds,” I said. I could see some skeptical looks on some faces as I looked around the circle. “I’m here to give another perspective, and maybe to equip you guys with knowledge. If you change your minds because of that- and I think Mrs. Yamada might be hoping for that, then that’s fine. If not, then I’d hope you were all going into this with your eyes more open about what you’re doing.”

“I’ve addressed my feelings with the group,” Mrs. Yamada said. “At the end of the session where the topic first came up, and for a portion of the last session. We had other things demanding our attention, so we weren’t able to cover it in any depth.”

“That would be me,” Rain said, raising a hand.

Jessica continued, “To abbreviate what I said then, and to reinforce it in the here and now: if you each carried on as you have been until the final group sessions concluded, then moved on from there with the skills and perspective you’ve gained, I think most of you would do fine. Most of you have reached the points in your journeys where you could continue on your own, without needing the one-on-one therapy or the group sessions. You could pursue more conventional therapy, I think anyone could, and you would have my number in case of emergencies or backsliding, but most of you would do fine.”

“Ready to be let loose into the urban wilds,” Chris said.

“Not all of us though,” Kenzie said. “You said most, a few times.”

“Most,” Mrs. Yamada said. “I also had private discussions with several members of the group. I won’t say what was discussed, or with whom, but no, I don’t think everyone is ready.”

The group was silent. I assumed nobody wanted to speak up because they felt like doing so would out them as one of the people who’d had one of those private conversations.

Mrs. Yamada went on, “More to the point, beyond any and all of that, I don’t think the group would necessarily be healthy, taken outside of this setting and function.”

“You gathered us together so we could support each other,” Sveta said. “I feel like we do a good job of that. We bring out the good sides of one another.”

“In this setting, yes, I have seen that,” Jessica said. “I’m gratified it’s been so positive for most of you. But that’s in a controlled setting, with a mediator to keep things on course and help recognize the sensitive subjects and steer away from them.”

“May I?” I asked.

“Please,” Mrs. Yamada said. “Feel free.”

“To build on what you said, I think the things I’ve noticed on the those fronts are that, well, it’s a big leap from the controlled setting of a place like this to the wild, uncontrolled setting of superheroics. Things will get bad at some point, and when they do, there’s a tendency for the bad to snowball.”

“You lived in Brockton Bay,” Tristan said. “Is it possible your sense of normal is skewed?”

“That’s- that’s honestly hard to respond to,” I said. I didn’t miss the flicker of a smile on Tristan’s face at hearing that. “Because there’s an answer that springs to mind that I could give you, but I don’t know where people’s limits are, I don’t want to step on toes or upset anyone by giving an example.”

“I don’t know about the others, but I can’t think of what you’d say that would potentially upset us,” Tristan said.

“I can,” Rain said.

I raised an eyebrow.

Rain leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I’m making a pretty big leap here, but it’s the response that jumped to mind for me, too. I’ve been here from the start, I think I know where everyone’s at. I think it’s okay to say it, but do you mean Gold Morning? I could see where it would be sensitive, considering just about everyone lost someone, but I don’t think that’s going to push anyone in particular over the edge, here.”

“Yeah. That was it, thank you,” I said. I looked past Sveta to Tristan. “What happened in Brockton Bay wasn’t a break from the pattern. It was just the pattern playing out at an accelerated rate. What I’m talking about, the snowballing, the bad things happening and then compounding each other… they still happened. A whole lot of individual factors played into the events of that day, and into the engagements and infighting that followed.”

“When they happen more slowly, there’s time to rest,” Sveta said.

“When they happen slowly, there’s time to get used to the bad, to normalize it. You or people you thought you knew change in reaction to those external factors without anyone realizing it and… things still compound. The bad days come, and the unresolved stuff from the last bad days catches up or demands resolution.”

“Like Gold Morning, again,” Rain said. “A lot of things caught up with us around then. Or a lot of things converged to bring it about, maybe. I wasn’t there so I don’t know.”

“I was only there for the later parts,” I said. “But I think you’re right.”

“Things are better this time,” Sveta said. “We’ve learned from mistakes. It’s a fresh start. The Endbringers are dormant, we’re finally building things without them being torn down all the time.”

“I agree with Sveta,” Tristan said. “I really think there is a lot of work to be done before we get to a good normal, but that’s where I want to be out there doing some of that work in the best way I know how, with people I’ve come to know, like, and respect.”

“I don’t like being on the opposite side of an argument from you, Victoria,” Sveta said. “It doesn’t feel good.”

I reached out for her hand. She met me halfway, putting the prosthetic hand in mine. I squeezed it, realized she might not be able to feel the squeeze, and gave it a waggle. She smiled.

“No hard feelings, okay?” I said. “I get it. You want this. Believe me when I say I want to get out and do some heroic stuff too.”

“I have a boyfriend I feel like I don’t deserve, and please don’t use that as a launchpad to get into another topic, Mrs. Yamada.”

“I’m keeping my mouth shut for the time being,” Mrs. Yamada said.

Sveta nodded. She looked back at me. “I missed out on most of my teenage years, I don’t remember my childhood, and I feel so behind.”

“I know. Believe me, I get it, not to the same degree, but I share some of those same feelings,” I said.

“I know you do,” she said. She gave me a waggle back.

“I think more than a few of us get it,” Tristan said. “Losing years or losing time because we have to deal with shit other people don’t, and falling behind because of it.”

Sveta nodded. “My boyfriend is out and around and he’s doing great work. He’s been doing it for a while. He tried to build something with the Irregulars and it went bad. But now he’s out there again and he’s with the team, the top team I know about, he’s doing amazing stuff. I don’t know if I can ever catch up, but I don’t want to not try. I don’t want to let the gap widen.”

“It can’t be just about him, you know,” I said. “I think that would be more poison than help for a relationship.”

“It’s not. Well, I mean, it is, but it’s not about him in a him-and-me romantic sense, it’s about me and him- sorry, I’m not making sense.”

“I’m following okay,” I said.

Mrs. Yamada said, “Just take your time, find the words.”

“Back long before I even knew him, he was my reference point for figuring out where we are. We being the C-fifty-threes. If he was popular then we all had a shot at getting more popularity. That was something I could hope I could have one day. And I didn’t have a lot of hope, so it was important.”

I reached over, and gave her arm a solid pat. I was still holding her hand.

“And we spent part of the summer touring other worlds. We were looking for our places of birth, but mostly we were looking for mine. I’m one of the only ones who remembers mine.”

She moved one hand over to tap a finger against her forearm. In dark green, almost invisible as a series of dark green images between dark blue sky and dark blue waves, framed by leaping fish in neon orange, were a series of huts.

“I was waiting for some updates on my body and so we just had me in my hamster ball, and Weld is so great, so patient… but I don’t like being that dependent. I want to be self-sufficient and I want to do it by being a hero.”

“I think that’s kind of the opposite of the toxic path,” Tristan said. “You’ve talked about it before, Sveta, how you’re worried about how your world revolves around him.”

Sveta nodded. “When you’re disabled, and I see myself as disabled, then your world gets smaller. Things get harder. It’s easy to become dependent or let down your guard. Everything’s hard and it’s really easy to stop trying altogether, to rely on people who want to help, to do what Victoria said and normalize that behavior and let the toxicity seep into things, only to have it come to a head during an already bad day.”

“I’m just going to cut in here,” I said. “I one hundred percent think what you’re saying is cool and good. It’s a good mindset. I did catch one thing you said and it made me think. You said ‘self-sufficient’ and one of the things I was thinking about mentioning was, you know, heroing is hard, and it’s kind of hard in part because it doesn’t pay. That can lead to self-insufficiency instead.”

“It can pay,” Tristan said.

“It can,” I said. “But it paid in part because people wanted to put money toward it. Because the governments backed it and put money into the PRT, which paid the heroes a decent wage with opportunities for more. I spent my entire life seeing my mom stressing out in front of the computer or in front of the paperwork, from the time I could walk to the time I went to the hospital.”

“It can absolutely pay, though,” Tristan said. He glanced at Mrs. Yamada and then said, “I was a member of a corporate team, I saw and participated in the fundraising and merchandising, and we did well. We made a good bit of money.”

“Which team?” I asked.

“Reach.”

“Oh, kudos. I know Reach,” I said. “I’m not sure I could list off the roster as of Gold Morning but I’m more than passingly familiar. Good team.”

“Thank you,” Tristan said. “I mean, I’m not so worried about the money. That’s the easy part.”

“I don’t think it’s easy at all,” I said. “There’s a saying, um, seventy percent of couples break up because of financial issues. The same number of cape teams break up because of the same.”

“What’s so hard about it?” Sveta asked.

“You’re providing a service, and the fruits of that service aren’t immediately tangible. If you do everything right, get crime rates down, clean up the neighborhood, then people look at the clean streets and low crime rate and they wonder why they’re paying you. If the crime rate stays high and things are a mess, then they wonder why they’re paying you.”

“How do you get around that?” Chris asked.

“You show your work,” I said. “And you show it in a way that makes people believe you’re doing a good job. Bringing in bad guys, getting on the front page, that’s a big one, but you have to factor in the work of maintaining a relationship with the media, marketing, on top of the work you’re already doing. You can also get into fights the public is aware of, while not putting that public in danger, because putting people in danger means getting sued.”

“Which detracts from the finances,” Chris said.

“In a big way,” I said.

“Like prison rep,” Ashley said. “Having to show you’re not to be messed with, without making such a mess that you add to your sentence.”

“Yes,” I said. “Not an analogy I would have jumped to, but it’s a good one.”

“I wasn’t aware you went to prison,” Sveta said.

“I didn’t,” Ashley said, fixing Sveta with a level stare. “I watch tv and read books.”

I was going to reply to that, but Tristan was already talking. He said, “I’m not worried about the money side of things. P.R., rep, image, media, I had advice and lessons from masters in the field, when it came to that.”

“From what I remember of Reach, I believe you,” I said. “I do think that there’s a ton of difference between launching a new team and capitalizing on an established brand like Reach had, and between being the man in front of the cameras and the person in the background paying the bills.”

“I have to ask,” Ashley said. She waited for me to look at her before speaking. “What are your qualifications exactly? You were on a struggling team?”

“I don’t want to bully Victoria, please,” Sveta said.

I was feeling the numbers disadvantage, with many things I was saying having two people responding, a number of changes in direction, and the periodic challenging questions. Mrs. Yamada hadn’t spoken up recently.

“I’m a cape geek,” I said.

“We’re all cape geeks,” Tristan said. “It comes with the territory of being a cape.”

“Then I’m a cape geek of a tier higher,” I said. “Listen, my mom and dad were capes and they were talking shop around me since I was born. My aunt, uncle, cousins- my entire immediate and pretty much my whole extended family, they were all capes. I was giving interviews about what it was like to grow up with hero parents when I was ten.”

Tristan cut in, “Okay, but that doesn’t-”

“Hold on,” I said. “I was asked, I’m answering. I triggered at fourteen, I was patrolling within six months. I had three years of time as Glory Girl, one Endbringer fight, and-”

I paused.

Sveta squeezed my hand.

“-And one run-in with the Slaughterhouse Nine, followed by almost two years in the hospital.”

I glanced at Ashley. She hadn’t flinched at the mention of the Nine.

I went on, “I’ve seen some of the worst. I had the best boyfriend in the world-”

“You had the second best,” Sveta said. “I’ll fight you on this.”

“I’ll take you up on that another time,” I said. I smiled. “Some of my family members were some of the most amazing people, one of those family members is still with me, and I count myself lucky in that. I was a local celebrity, and I got letters from kids saying they were inspired or I’d improved their lives by reaching out to them, spending a bit of time with them, or helping them off a bad path through nothing more than me existing. With all of that, I think I can say I’ve experienced some of the best that being a hero has to offer, too.”

“What happened to the others?” Kenzie asked. “The other family members?”

“Kenzie,” Mrs. Yamada said. “It’s best to leave that be.”

“Okay,” Kenzie said. “I didn’t mean to pry. I’m really sorry, Victoria, for your losses. I asked because I’ve lost people too. I know it hurts, and I think you’re cool and you don’t deserve that hurt.”

“Thank you, Kenzie. I’ll share, because I think it’s important for context. We’ve all lost people and that’s a big part of our shared experience here on Earth Gimel.”

I saw people throughout the room nodding, or acknowledging that. Interesting, to see the lone wolf villainess Ashley nod, too. Chris, Tristan, Sveta. Mrs. Yamada.

Rain was hard to read, but he looked introspective.

“My uncle, my cousin, and that awesome boyfriend, Leviathan, twenty-eleven. My- another family member, you could say she got herself. Or you could say the team dynamics, all that stuff I was talking about before, they played a role. I wasn’t paying enough attention, I let things pass by without remark when I should have pressed, pressed when I should have held back. And now she’s- she’s not family. My mom, recently, just…”

I sighed.

“I’m not here to be a downer,” I said. “I’m really not. I do want to emphasize this isn’t a game. There’s a chance at greatness and there’s a chance, maybe a higher chance, of disaster. I experienced both.”

“Not to belittle that, but each and every one of us has gone through shit,” Tristan said. “If it’s supposed to be one part of good stuff for every ten parts bad, then I think most of us are owed some good stuff.”

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be that way,” I said. “Ashley asked who I am. I’m a cape, born, raised, and learned. I’m a student of capes, I obsessed over them well before I had powers and I stepped up my game in a professional capacity after I got powers. I had date nights with my cape boyfriend where I studied and read his Wards handbook, because that’s how into it I was. I’ve followed the trajectories of two hundred cape careers and I’ve been part of a team trying to get off the ground. I looked seriously into what it would take to start a team back when my boyfriend was getting close to leaving the Wards, because I was worried he’d get moved to another city.”

I looked Ashley in the eyes. “This is me. I know cape stuff. I know what goes into it and I know what comes from it.”

I looked at Tristan. “The last thing it is, is fair. You’re not owed anything. If you roll the dice nine times and get bad results every time, you don’t have a better shot on the tenth roll because of that.”

“But,” Tristan said, and he said it with a bit of theatrical emphasis and a light in his eyes that made me really believe he had that experience in being in front of cameras and showing off for crowds. He was more into things as he continued, “You have a better shot at getting an optimal result if you roll the dice a lot, than you would if you rolled it a couple of times, get bad results, and quit. You have to get back up after you get knocked down. You have to.”

“Or stand up in the first place,” Sveta said.

“Or stand up in the first place, yeah,” Tristan said. He glanced at Mrs. Yamada, then back to me. “What you were talking about earlier, with Sveta and it being toxic to not stretch yourself out enough, it applies here.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Mrs. Yamada said. “Tristan, can I ask why you keep looking to me? It’s not a usual habit.”

“Oh,” Tristan said. “I barely noticed. I think I’m pretty used to you jumping in to tell me to back down or not get so into an argument.”

“I see,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“I guess the fact that I’m checking means I’m already aware I’m doing it again, and I should self-moderate. Back down on my own instead of being told to.”

“Look at that, Pavlov’s dog can ring his own bell now,” Chris said.

“I’m all about the goats, thank you very much,” Tristan said. He touched a more pronounced lock of his magenta hair. “See, like the curling horns of a ram, right?”

Chris rolled his eyes.

Team Reach and goats? “You’re Capricorn?” I asked.

“I am,” Tristan said. “Bonus point for you.”

Kenzie, though, piped up with,”I like the hair-horns thing, Tristan. I never got it before now but I think it’s neat.”

“Thank you, Kenzie,” Tristan said. “This is part of why you’re awesome.”

Kenzie’s expression didn’t change much, but she had one leg crossed over the other, and the free-dangling foot bounced. Like a dog wagging its tail.

Chris said, “Getting an ‘I like it’ from Kenzie is like getting a participation medal from a school event. Everyone gets one.”

“That doesn’t make it worthless,” Kenzie said. She flashed a smile at Chris. “I never lie, I’m always honest when I say I like something. What makes me different is that I say it instead of keeping it to myself, because I think the world needs more positivity.”

“I like it,” Rain said. “I could never do it, because it takes a weird sort of social courage, but I like it.”

“Thank you,” Kenzie said.

“I think you lose this round, Chris,” Tristan said.

“How do I lose? I wasn’t playing.”

“And,” Tristan said. Again, that one word, almost a pronouncement, volume and emphasis shifted just a bit to get attention. “On the topic of rounds and games, I feel like Mrs. Yamada is up to something, so I’m going to play this on a meta level and I’m going to shut myself up. I recognize I’ve been trying to win this conversation with Victoria and I’ve been monopolizing things by jumping in every time there’s an opportunity. I’m supposed to be listening more and trying to ‘win’ social interactions less, so I’m going to shut myself up. The others should chime in, I trust them to say what needs to be said.”

“I’m proud of you, Tristan,” Mrs. Yamada said.

Tristan nodded.

Rain said, “I’m less proud and more amazed by the fact that your thought process went from ‘I need to try to win social interactions less’ to ‘this is a meta-scenario I can win’ in, what, twenty words?”

“What, did I?”

“And the fact he used so many words to say he was going to shut up,” Chris said.

Tristan frowned at Chris. “You guys are harsh.”

“It’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?” Sveta asked. “We moderate each other. Hopefully while not being too harsh on each other.”

“It’s part of it,” Mrs. Yamada said. “I think the ‘participation award’ comment was a little much, Chris. You have a tendency, which has been remarked on by others in the past, to think a clever put-down is a good thing because it’s clever, when most people will take away the fact it was a put-down.”

“Alright,” Chris said. “I didn’t think it was a good or bad thing. Sorry Kenzie.”

He didn’t sound very sorry, but Kenzie’s dangling foot wiggled, and she nodded, wiggling slightly in her seat a bit between the motions.

Mrs. Yamada said, “The reason I’ve been somewhat quiet, despite my referee role, is more or less what Tristan intuited. I’ve done this in the past – taking more of a backseat, giving you all more of an opportunity to respond to one another and push back against one another rather than relying on me to keep things under control. In the early stages, I had to step in rather quickly. I’m glad that with minimal prompting, Tristan stopped himself before reaching the point where I had to tell him to stop.”

“We’re being toyed with,” Ashley said.

“Not that,” Mrs. Yamada said. “The end goal is to get you all ready for the real world. Early on, the rudder needed a firm hand; as time goes on, I’m periodically hands off, seeing how you interact, until I see that you’re faring reasonably well on your own. It’s a gradual process that requires I give you more and more trust. Okay?”

Ashley nodded.

“It might be worth pausing to take stock in this moment. Snapshot the feelings and thoughts you’re experiencing. Some of you haven’t spoken up much at all. Depending on how you view the conversation, your participation or nonparticipation, some of you might be feeling frustrated, offended, worried, or even guilty.”

“Is that last one aimed at me?” Tristan asked. “Oh, wait, sorry, I’m supposed to have shut up.”

“It’s not aimed at you, Tristan,” Mrs. Yamada said. “I want each of you to think about where you stand right now. What are your feelings and where is your focus? Have you felt like you’ve had a voice or that you’ve taken things in a positive direction? Outside of the classroom, in a stressful situation with high stakes, these feelings could be magnified manifold. As Victoria suggested when she was talking about the slow progression of background negativity, the bad feelings aren’t always resolved or solved, and it would be very easy for a sliver of frustration to carry forward, nettling at you or being joined by other, similar feelings, until you felt compelled to do or say something you regret.”

“Handing that irritation off to someone else,” I said.

“Yes,” Mrs. Yamada said. “And, as a final comment on the topic from me, I brought Victoria here for several reasons. One of them is that I do believe she knows what she’s talking about. Another is that, from my position as a person with a measure of trust and power, with a strong feeling about what you’re committed to doing, it’s very difficult for me to both argue the points and also manage the discussion at the same time. If I tell Tristan to give others a chance to speak, it could be seen as me trying to shut down his side of the argument.”

“I’m here as a bit of a surrogate,” I said. “I’m here saying what you can’t.”

“In part. I think we do disagree on some things.”

“Like the value and importance we place in cape names, to quote a recent example,” I said. “I like them, you don’t.”

“Yes. I did, for the record, let Victoria know I would be sitting back more than usual.”

“You did. I didn’t expect to be ganged up on, though.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“It was mild,” I said.

“I don’t want to gang up on Victoria. I’ve done a lot of talking too,” Sveta said. “But I think that’s because I know Victoria, even if this is our first time really talking properly. There’s a bit of trust.”

I nodded. “Yep.”

“For what it’s worth,” Sveta said, “that trust means that much like Mrs. Yamada I do believe Victoria when she says she’s worried or she thinks this could go badly. I know she knows stuff. But I do want this. I want to stand on my own two feet. Sorry. I think the ones who’ve been quiet up until now should say stuff. Ashley, Chris, Kenzie, Rain. Or, you know, maybe Victoria has more to say.”

“Thank you for coming, by the way, Victoria,” Kenzie said.

“You’re welcome,” I said. “I do want this to be a chance to share what I know and for you guys to gain, if that’s possible. Maybe there are places where you might realize there are gaps in your knowledge that you could then take time to brush up on. There isn’t a rush.”

“There is, kind of,” Rain said.

Heads turned.

“I talked about this last session. There’s currently some people after me. I want to be part of a team because it’s backup. Having a squad of people with me when I’m out and about would throw a wrench into their plans. It could give me a fighting chance when I wouldn’t have one otherwise.”

“People are after you?” I asked.

Rain held up his fingers in a way that made a rectangle. “It’s complicated.”

The rectangle was supposed to represent the card.

I smiled despite myself. “And these guys are okay with taking the risk involved there?”

“I’m not scared,” Ashley said.

“I’m breaking my vow of silence again,” Tristan said, “But I think I’m doing it for the right reasons here. I like, respect, and/or trust each of these guys who would be my teammates. But in particular, I consider Rain a friend. I’m already willing to throw my helmet into the ring and do what it takes to help save his life. We’ve got some similar garbage going on with… people we can’t get away from, and he’s had my back in the past when it came to my issue.”

“Yes,” Rain said. He gestured vaguely toward his head.

“People?” I asked.

“Speaking for myself, I’m part of a multitrigger cluster,” Rain said.

“Oh,” I said. I paused, taking stock of that. “I can see where that warrants playing the ‘complicated’ card.”

Kenzie spoke up, “Before you got in, Ashley, Victoria was saying we should all get a card saying ‘it’s complicated’ on the one side, and ‘handle with care’ on the other. I wanted to make sure you got what they were talking about.”

“I like that,” Ashley said. “It could use rewording. ‘Do not fuck with’, instead of handling with care.”

“Reminds me of the old wiki entries,” Capricorn said, “The red warning boxes for the scary capes.”

“Did I have one?” Ashley asked.

“You did,” I said.

Ashley nodded. “Good.”

Was it? I decided to leave it alone.

“You were motioning toward your head before,” I said, to Rain. “Are you referring to bleed-over, kiss and kill? That sort of thing?”

“Huh,” Rain said. “You weren’t lying when you were saying you’d studied up.”

I’d pulled my hand away from Sveta’s at one point, and I only realized it because she reached out and took my hand again, placing her hand over mine and giving it a congratulatory squeeze.

“Is it part of it?” I asked.

“I don’t know, honest to God,” Rain said. “When I’m vague and I’m saying it’s complicated, it’s really because I can’t give a one hundred percent clear answer. I’m still figuring out the rules this works by. I’ve wondered about the bleeding through. My personality changed after, but I don’t know how much of that is them and how much is how a trigger event is a wake-up call.”

“We like to give things hard labels, but sometimes they’re blurry around the edges,” I said.

Rain nodded.

“If your own cluster is coming after you, I’d say you could chalk it up to kiss and kill. Again, blurry, might as well throw it in that bucket.”

“I won’t object,” Rain said.

“And while I’m on that subject, I’d feel compelled to stress that the term uses the word ‘kill’ for a reason.”

“Yeah,” Rain said.

“People die. Friends of people die. I’m still figuring out what you guys are doing, but… you want to bring kids into that?” I asked. I looked over to my right, at Kenzie and Chris.

“Definitely not,” Rain said. “Tristan is saying he’d help, Ashley is offering a hand, and Sveta might do what she can? That’s a hell of a lot better, compared to the same circumstance with me alone.”

“There’s more peace of mind in talking to legitimate authorities,” I said.

“There is,” Rain said. “If things get bad, I’ll go to them. I’ve tested the waters and asked questions. It doesn’t seem like they’ll offer help against a nebulous threat with an unclear window of time where it might occur, and villains I don’t know the names, locations or details of. It’s more like they want me to call them when I’ve got a claw at my throat.”

“Everyone’s busy,” Tristan said.

“Claw?” I asked. “Tinker claw?”

That got the room’s attention.

“You’re thinking of the man with the tinker arms you ran into at the community center, Victoria?” Mrs. Yamada asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

She explained, “Victoria mentioned that she took him for a multi-trigger, given the powers he displayed and the common links to a woman with claws she’d read about. I was going to bring it up at the end of the session, to avoid the lengthy digression like we had last session, and I hoped to extend it to a discussion in another venue, possibly with less people.”

“I derailed us early, it seems,” I said.

“You ran into a member of my cluster?” Rain asked.

“Big guy, beard, heavy coat.”

“Long hair, hood, rough voice,” Rain said, “And a glare, like if looks could kill.”

“No hood, glare… I don’t know. He wore a mask with a built in glare, but he seemed like the scowly type. Definitely on the voice.”

“Of course,” Rain said. “When did you fight him?”

“When?” I asked. “Um. Thirteen days ago. First Monday of September. High school had just started.”

Rain held up one hand, counting on his fingers, his lips moving.

“Why?” I asked.

“Timing matters.” It was Tristan who had replied, while Rain was busy counting.

“He was strong then,” Rain said, finishing his counting and dropping his hands.

“He was a bit of a bastard, if I’m being honest,” I said. “Not fun to go up against. He’s one of the ones who was after you?”

Rain nodded.

“Why the counting?”

“It’s complicated,” Rain said. He must have seen the look on my face, because he added, “The powers wax, wane, and shuffle around. I try to keep track. He was loaded to bear on that day, if I’m remembering right. The only power he didn’t have a lot of was mine, and maybe a little bit less of his own.”

“Right,” I said. “Which is yours?”

“Uh. Mine is a blaster power,” Rain said. “It’s pretty mediocre. I shoot things or people and they’re vulnerable to being broken for a short while after. To put it simply.”

“Mediocre is sort of the name of the game when it comes to clusters,” I said.

“I’ve got a tinker power, I make extra arms and hands. They’re not very good. Barely above what I’d be able to make on my own, fragile enough that if you grab something wrong they can break, no strength, ugly. The prosthetic focus is part of why I was introduced to the group, I think.”

“It was,” Mrs. Yamada said. “We thought there was a chance of insights across designs.”

Sveta would be one, obviously. Ashley raised a hand, slender, with black-painted nails.

I couldn’t tell that her hand was prosthetic.

“I wasn’t much help, because I’m a really bad tinker,” Rain said. “I can also catch my balance or secure my footing more easily, that’s my version of the big guy’s mover power. It’s handy in a way, lets me turn on a dime or keep from falling over.”

“Wait, his power was the mover power? The arms and emotion power were his secondaries?” I asked.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Rain said. “I think he had a bit less of his own power that day, with the way it was sorted. My last power is an emotion power. Guilt and doubt, over an area. It’s pretty tepid.”

“He hit me with it a few times,” Tristan said. “Tepid is a good word for it. You can actually not notice you’re being hit by it.”

“And it waxes and wanes, you said?” I asked.

“My blaster power can get a bump some days. My others, no. They stay at about that power level. The others change it up more, they’ll act on days they’re strong.”

“We may be getting distracted,” Mrs. Yamada said. “I might suggest you carry on this discussion later. Victoria can fill you in on…”

“Snag,” I said. “Sorry. This is actually really interesting though. I’d be happy to talk it over another time.”

“It’s good to have a name for him,” Rain said. “Uh, okay. Getting back on topic, I know I’m a little selfish in why I’m doing this. Wanting people to have my back.”

“We all need people to have our backs,” Kenzie said.

“Yeah,” Rain said. “It’s still selfish. It’s messy and I’m not sure I can pull my own weight with all of this. I do want to help people though. I’ve been selfish for a long time. I’m trying to be better. I know I’m contradicting myself in what I’m doing here, but it makes sense to me, and so few things do.”

“You said-” Kenzie started. “Oh, are you done, Rain?”

“I’m done. Pretty much where I’m at. I’ll buy you a coffee or whatever you drink, Victoria, if you’ll tell me about Snag.”

“Sure.”

“You said you had info about hero teams, Victoria,” Kenzie said. “And I’m interested in that because I do want to try to be a hero first.”

“First?” I asked.

“I’m saying I’ll try, maybe a few times, and if it doesn’t work out I’ll try other things but if it doesn’t work out then I might try being a mercenary, or a villain.”

“You would be terrifying as shit if you were a villain,” Chris said.

“Would I? Is that a compliment?” Kenzie asked.

“Yes,” Ashley said.

“No,” Chris said. “It’s a neutral fact, and I don’t use the word terrifying lightly.”

“Be fair, Chris,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“I’m being fair. This is an objective fact,” Chris said.

“And be gentle, too. If you must levy a criticism-”

“Fact.”

“-there are nicer ways to say it.”

“Got it,” Chris said.

Kenzie stuck out her tongue at him.

“Terrifying is good,” Ashley said. “Terrifying slows the other guy down. It makes them make mistakes.”

“You’re not wrong,” I said. “I’ve used that to my advantage-”

“And it’s fun,” Ashley said.

“Ah… I used to think that,” I said. “I’ve come to reconsider that sentiment. I regret how I employed it, a little, and I regret enjoying it a lot.”

Ashley sighed a little.

“We’ve talked about this at some length,” Mrs. Yamada said. “Here in the group. The approaches that work. Fear comes at a cost.”

“It does,” I said. “Not necessarily in the ways you’d expect, pushing people away or any of that. It makes a mess. It makes people unpredictable. I have an awe-fear aura so I’ve seen this at work.”

“I almost envy you,” Ashley said. “To have something you can so casually employ.”

“It’s not casual,” I said. “Because like I said, it’s complicated in terms of the mess it makes of things. I’ve been trying to be more deliberate about how I use it.”

“See, this excites me,” Kenzie said. “I want to learn from Ashley because I saw the camcorder footage from the Boston Games- I showed you that one right, Ashley?”

“You did,” Ashley said.

“I’ll get you a copy because you liked it so much. There’s also a video I don’t think I’ve shown you but it’s mostly you walking through a club with someone and everyone gets out of your way. That was interesting.”

“Do you want people to get out of your way, Kenzie?” Sveta asked. “I don’t think it’s good or fun.”

“Definitely no. It’s still interesting. But, um, I also want to learn from Victoria because I do want to be on a team, I want to be on this team of course, but whatever happens I want to be on some team. Then I want to be useful so I stay there. The more I know the more useful I can be.”

“I am interested in hearing it too,” Sveta said. “About teams, making heroics work.”

“I looked over my schoolwork and some old projects before I came today,” I said. “I typed up some bullet points and thought hard about what I wanted to say, and… being here, I’m not sure it’s valid.”

“It’s valid. I want to hear it,” Kenzie said.

“I would too,” Ashley said. “It’s why I’m here.”

I was caught a little off guard by that.

I could remember Ashley’s comments when the topic of the cards had come up. She’d liked the ‘handle with care’ aspect of it, which was illuminating in its own way. More specifically, she’d liked it while interpreting it as a ‘do not fuck with’ license.

The way it had been framed and what I knew of Ashley and Damsel of Distress made me imagine it as a ‘warning: volatile’ label on her breast, worn much like a nametag.

She’d reacted to me belittling her even in a small way, earlier, when I’d reduced her to a pin on a map.

“It might be worth saying why you think it isn’t valid,” Mrs. Yamada suggested.

I tried to find the words to articulate what I wanted to say without getting on anyone’s bad side, my fingers twirling a lock of hair while I looked down at the floor. I looked up and looked her in the eyes, then looked at everyone else as I said, “I can come here and I can say, alright, finances. Being a hero team is tough financially. I touched on this before. How do you get funding, one source, many, or is it institutional? What’s your budget, what can you expect to pay, where are the hidden costs, like medical or needing a headquarters, and what are the potential costs or risks if you decide to save money by trimming the budget somewhere? And maybe that angle works for some of you.”

“It feels abstract,” Sveta said. “I have a stipend, I pay rent, I have to budget, but when you talk about things in the big picture like that, I find it hard to imagine.”

“Budgets and money make more sense when you root them in tangible things that are relevant to you. If you had questions about one area, I might have more to say about it, or I could expand on the idea, if that was a thing that worked for you guys, as a way to wrap your head around what you’re trying to do. I could do the same for objectives and goals, information gathering, costumes and presentation, allegiances and direction, liaisons, territories, methodology… one or two others I’m not remembering off the top of my head. But as far as I can tell, you’re approaching this from several different directions, with very different priorities.”

“We definitely are,” Rain said.

“I don’t get the impression Ashley is prioritizing developing herself as a person, becoming independent, or catching up in life, like Sveta is. I don’t get the impression its about becoming less selfish or wanting or needing backup, like Rain. I’m not sure what someone of your pedigree would be doing here, Ashley.”

“Pedigree?” Ashley asked.

“It means aristocratic background when used to describe humans,” Chris said. “She’s not calling you a bred animal. I’m pretty sure.”

“I’m not bothered. I like the word choice,” Ashley said. She had half of a smile on her face.

“It was picked to be liked,” I said.

“I’m here to learn, Victoria,” Ashley said. Her gaze with the narrow pupils and lack of irises was intense.

“That’s positive,” I said.

“No it’s not,” Chris said.

“I’m here to learn how heroes operate, so I can be more effective against them when I return to being a villain,” Ashley said.

I looked at Sveta and Tristan, then at Mrs. Yamada.

“She’s not lying,” Tristan said.

“It’s positive, really,” Sveta said. “She’s agreed to stick with us until we crash and burn.”

“Until you fail,” Ashley said.

“Until we crash and burn,” Sveta said. “We went over this. If you leave at the first sign of failure then you’ll be gone in the first week and you won’t have learned anything, and everyone loses.”

“Irritating,” Ashley said.

“Reality is irritating,” Rain said.

“We’re low-key confident we can get her to stick around on the side of the good guys, with sufficient friendship, ass-kicking of our opponents, and time to convince her of the upsides,” Tristan said, to me.

“You vastly underestimate how much I enjoy being a villain, Tristan.”

“You enjoy being a villain but you don’t like the life that comes with it,” Rain said.

“It had its merits,” Ashley said.

“Sure,” Rain said. “And a lot of other misery besides that.”

Ashley sighed. “I’ve already agreed. I’ll join you. I’ll defend you from your cluster. In exchange I learn about heroes, I get information about the cape scene, and I may get training. If it fails, I’ll go back to what I know and enjoy. You’ll have your chance to convince me that being a hero is great. I doubt you’ll succeed. Most heroes I’ve met have been imbeciles and nuisances.”

“Okay,” I said. I put a hand to my forehead, closing my eyes. Capes were so damn weird sometimes.

“You said it was better than the alternative, before everyone arrived,” Kenzie said. “Being a hero.”

“I did,” I said. I might be regretting saying that now. The fact that Kenzie paid attention to what I’d said and was quick enough to bring out the salient points was good, objectively, but it was kind of a pain here. I could see where some of Mrs. Yamada’s worries were rooted, here. “You have a strong drive to learn, then, Ashley?”

“What I want hasn’t changed. I want to be on top. I want to destroy my enemies and give potential enemies a reason to fear me. I’m going to do it right this time.”

This time. There were four different things I wanted to reply to there, and I settled on the easy one. “Reports were that you died.”

“I did,” she said. “Now I’m back. My power isn’t holding me back anymore.”

“You get sparky sometimes,” Kenzie said.

“So long as my hands are maintained, I’m fine. I have contacts. I’m eating well, I’m sleeping, I’m studying and I’m training. I’ll do it right this time. I won’t die this time.”

“Alright,” I said. “That pretty much sums up what I’m trying to say here. You guys have your reasons. I can’t show you a spreadsheet or make a list that meets your needs because your needs are diverse. It’s not about hard stats like dollars and viewership.”

“It’s about dollars for me,” Tristan said.

“Right. I’ll note you do have a very different idea than I do about how much money there may be,” I said.

“Kind of,” Tristan said. “I don’t know if it’s that different.”

The thing I wanted to say that I couldn’t without offending people was that a lot of them were coming at things from an irrational or emotional perspective, from their self, and not from logic. To challenge Sveta’s approach on this was to challenge the woman she wanted to be. Challenging Rain meant putting his mortality at risk. Damsel was too volatile to push too hard, she had her motivations, and I couldn’t imagine scaring her off would do any good to anyone. The team would go forward without her, dejected and possibly upset with me or with Mrs. Yamada for inviting me.

My impression was that Tristan was looking at the money from an abstract, emotional perspective as well.

“I barely have a high school education, it’s not like there’s a lot out there for me, and money is tight everywhere,” Tristan said. “I like the hero stuff. I like the notoriety, and I like being out there. We need a fix, and the two ways I see of us getting one would be if we get the money together to pay the right cape, or we chance into meeting the right cape.”

“Fix?” I asked. “Sorry, I missed something.”

“With how quick you were about cape terms and names, and how you knew Reach, I thought you might have realized.”

“I figured out you’re Capricorn.”

“More to it than that. You know how two brothers can get in a pissy fight over who gets to have the remote and decide what to watch on TV? We’re stuck doing that, except it’s way more fucking intense.”

Two brothers and one power? Or-

Oh, I was an idiot.

“That we are,” Tristan said.

We. “You’re a case seventy?”

“I can’t tell you how bummed I am that it isn’t case sixty-nine instead, but no, that number went to a bigfoot sighting or something stupid. A stupid bit of immature humor would’ve been the one good thing in this mess of a thing.”

“Case seventies in North America included Knot, Tandem, Zigzag was one, I think, there was House of Three in Quebec. And… you, it seems.”

“One or two of them might not be seventies, but they get called seventies because they’re close enough. Blurred lines, like you said. When twins trigger, the powers are identical or nearly identical. When twins trigger and they’re touching one another, like you said to Rain, things get blurry, the agent is too stupid or careless to tell where one starts and the other ends, or it wants to fuck with us, and it jams everything in together. Two minds, two similar powers, and one body to be shared.”

“Is he asleep?” I asked.

“No. He’s in here, he’s watching and listening. He sleeps when I sleep, or I sleep when he sleeps, if he’s in the driver’s seat. We trade out for two hour shifts.”

“Can he communicate?” I asked. “Talk to you while it’s your turn?”

“That would be too easy,” Tristan said. His good humor was gone now. He just looked sad. “No.”

No.

Two brothers, and only one of them could be interacting with the world at a time. For the other, it was- picturing it made me think of being in the hospital again. Being stuck, immobile, locked in while the world went on around them.

Oppressive, that kind of thinking. Just as oppressive to be living it.

“I like Byron,” Kenzie said. “I really wish he would stay for the therapy sessions.”

“I like him too,” Rain said. He leaned back in his chair, hands at his hair, pushing it away from his face as he stretched. “I don’t like talking about you like you’re not here, Byron. We’ll hang out later, okay? Unwind.”

“It’s been a long and rocky road,” Tristan said, to me. “He’s not interested in the hero thing either. He’s on Mrs. Yamada’s side here. On yours, kind of, Victoria.”

On my side? I was trying to frame my argument, but it was an uphill battle for logic to win against the heart, and it did seem like their hearts were in this, to varying degrees.

I decided to say as much.

“I might not be winning any points with Mrs. Yamada in this,” I said. “And I don’t know enough about your individual situations, but you have personal, thought out reasons for wanting to do this. At this stage, I’m not telling you guys you shouldn’t do this. I’m definitely, definitely not saying you should. I think there are a few things to work out. I’m honestly really concerned about Ashley.”

“As anyone should be,” Ashley said.

“That would be why I’m concerned. I don’t know if you guys want to sit down as a group at a cafe or something, hammer out some basic plans. You’d probably want something like an outline or playbook that you can take with you when you’re talking to the Wardens or whoever’s managing the territory closest to you. I think the hero teams are covering different sections of the city, and you wouldn’t want to step on jurisdictional toes. If you want to do this.”

“That could be great,” Sveta said.

Kenzie nodded, very enthusiastically, as in most things.

“Chris and Kenzie,” Mrs. Yamada said. “You’ve been quiet.”

“I’ve talked about wanting to pick Victoria’s brain and she listed some topics,” Kenzie said. “I like this whole conversation as a recap, seeing where everyone’s at, instead of trying to think back to previous sessions and think about what people’s reasons are. I’m glad we’re talking like this and I want to have that meeting and figure things out.”

“Chris?” Mrs. Yamada prodded.

“Can I just say I don’t want to share with the guest here?”

“You can,” Mrs. Yamada said. “Is it the truth?”

Chris looked annoyed as he looked at her. “I don’t like talking about stuff. Digging into my thoughts for answers stresses me out and throws me more out of whack than it helps.”

“You can’t exist purely on the surface level,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“I can. It might or might not be good for me, but something that could be good or could be bad is a lot better than no-win after no-win.”

“No win?” I asked.

“I could say it’s none of your business,” Chris said.

“You could,” I said. “It’s your right.”

“I don’t see why you’re as defensive as you are,” Sveta said.

“I’m playing defense because paranoia is the only way to survive,” Chris said. He reached up to adjust his headphones, wincing mid-adjustment. “How many sessions did it take before I gave you all the basics?”

“Four or five,” Kenzie said.

“Well, this is session one with the new person,” Chris said. “If you want to drop me from the team because I’m not okay with that, fine. I’ll figure something else out.”

“Nobody is saying that,” Sveta said. “You’ve come this far with us, don’t get shy now.”

“I’m not shy, I’m suspicious. That won’t change,” Chris said. He sounded irritated, in a way his expression didn’t convey effectively.

“Okay,” Mrs. Yamada said. “I don’t think pressuring Chris will help anything. Again, however, I would really urge everyone present to periodically take stock. Pay attention to what you’re feeling, imagine this dialogue extrapolated out to a greater, higher-stakes situation. How will you handle your feelings, and will you feel have both a voice and the ability to affect the changes you need?”

“You’re worried we’ll get railroaded,” Rain said.

“I’m worried about a number of things, Rain. I wish you would be willing to put things off for six months or a year, maintain contact, see how you get along as simple friends and acquaintances, let the ties solidify or break as they will, and then move forward if it is what you still want.”

“There are a lot of issues to hammer out,” I said. “You’re coming at this from so many different directions… how do you even get started in terms of the kind of team you end up being? In other things? I’d join my voice to Mrs. Yamada’s and urge you to take your time.”

“Like I said, I’m feeling the pressure,” Rain said. “My cluster is homing in on me.”

“I can talk to people, if you want. If you need another cape to back you up, I might be able to help.”

“I mean, that sounds nice,” Rain said. “But I can’t help but lie in bed some mornings, wondering if this is the day. If, in the next twenty-four hours, the other three members of my cluster come after me in an organized way, with a lot of money and a lot of resources poured into things. When I see it playing out in my head, I know they’re organized, and I worry we’re not. If we’re part of a team, if we’re training, coordinating, then maybe we can work together in an organized way too.”

“There’s a lot that goes into making a team. You can stay together and watch Rain’s back, meet, talk, and plan.”

“Without getting the practice in?” Tristan asked. “Sorry to butt in again, but it takes time to learn how to work with teammates. Some more than others.”

“What you’re wanting to do on the heroism front is hard enough without added complications. It’s a bad, bad climate for heroes to try to get started. That could end up being more distraction than the training is a boon.”

“Imagine how bad the climate would be if nobody new got started,” Tristan said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I won’t deny that. I just- I have serious reservations, but I also recognize I probably won’t be changing any minds. Instead of trying to get you to reverse course or stop, I’m saying maybe change trajectories a bit. Go slow, focus on what needs to be focused on, instead of getting distracted with the many, many side things that go into getting a proper team started.”

“Focusing on keeping Rain safe, as the priority thing?” Sveta asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I can meet you guys at a coffee shop or somewhere, we can make it a regular thing. I can back you up, I might be able to introduce you to people, and we do what Mrs. Yamada suggested, and take months or a year to get a really good game plan put together.”

“You’re committing to a lot, Victoria,” Mrs. Yamada said. “It won’t conflict with your other plans?”

“I like doing this sort of thing. I’ll find a way to work it in. It gives me an opportunity to stay in touch with Sveta, too.”

I was elbowed, hard, from my left.

“If you think I’m letting you drift away or lose touch now then you need a reality check,” Sveta said.

“Wasn’t planning on it, don’t worry,” I said.

“I don’t like it,” Kenzie said.

It was an abrupt statement, cutting into the dialogue, the serious tone different from the easy back-and-forth.

“We wouldn’t be leaving you out,” Sveta said. “You said you were interested in what Victoria knew about heroes, and you’d be part of the team when we got started.”

“No I wouldn’t,” Kenzie said. “Because you all would be doing what you have to do to help Rain, and I’d be on the sidelines. You said you don’t want to have a kid there in a dangerous situation, so I wouldn’t actually be there when things went down. And if you thought there would be an attack soon you wouldn’t want me hanging around in case I got caught up in it, so you’d all meet and I’d stay home then, too.”

“It could be over in a couple of weeks,” Rain said.

“It could not be over, too,” Kenzie said. She smiled. “Come on. I’ve done this before. Again and again. I did it during the leadership camps and the exercises in San Diego. I did it during the branding in LA and I kind of did it with the Baltimore Wards.”

“Did what?” I asked.

“Got left behind. Or sidelined and ignored. The reasons were good, or maybe I’m a stupid, gullible idiot and the reasons are bad, and I believed them anyway.”

“I liked your contributions to the group, I’d want you to stick around,” I said.

“I know you mean well, Victoria, but this is the way it always goes,” Kenzie said. She shrugged. “The compliments, the softening of the blow. I think you’re nice and you’re trying to do the right thing. But again and again, because I’m a kid, or because I’m small and weak, or because I’m a girl, or because I’m black, or because I have school, or because I’m vulnerable, or I’m annoying, or because they want to be careful around me because I have problems, or because I’ve said the wrong things because I’m an idiot a lot of the time, or because- because whatever the reason, good or bad, hateful or kind…”

She trailed off there. She was staring down at the ground, head down where I couldn’t see it. She huffed out out a small laugh.

Her hands were on either side of her hips, gripping the sides of the plastic chair.

“Articulate what you want, Kenzie,” Mrs. Yamada said. “Assertive. Not passive, not passive-aggressive.”

“I don’t want to be left behind,” Kenzie said. She was speaking more slowly, deliberately. A dramatic change of pace from her usual output. “I’m experienced in this, so when I say I think I see things going this way, it would be nice if people believed me.”

“More assertive, Kenzie,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“Trust me,” Kenzie said, with emphasis. She looked up, flashed a smile at me, then shrugged. “You say you’re experienced in cape stuff and I think it shows and that’s amazing. I’m experienced in this and I’m really tired of this song and dance.”

“I understand,” I said. “I’m sorry to have touched on something that sensitive. I should have been more considerate.”

“It’s not you,” she said. “It’s me. It’s a regular thing. I don’t blame you. It’s the way I am, it makes people act this way around me. And-”

She drew in a deep breath.

“-And I would like to be included from the beginning, in a way where I’m useful and participating and I’m not watching from the sidelines. I would like to do the team thing from the beginning. I don’t mind if it’s small or slow but I want to do something with progress. Or if not that, then tell me upfront so I can have my feelings hurt now right away instead of over a long time.”

“This is really important to you,” I said.

“There have only ever been three times in my life where people acted like they wanted me around. Not counting the adults who get paid to look after me, sorry Mrs. Yamada. The first one, it led to my trigger, so you can imagine how well that went. The second one was the couple of months I spent with the Baltimore Wards, and they don’t want anything to do with me anymore. The third is here. These guys.”

“Well gee whiz, Kenzie,” Tristan said.

She smiled, “Sorry.”

“I like to win my arguments, but you can’t bring that kind of weaponry to bear. It’s just not fair on those guys.”

Kenzie smiled again.

“I’m glad you like us,” Sveta said. “I do want to include you, and I hope this thing works out the way you want it to.”

“We’ll figure something out,” I said.

“We?” Ashley asked.

“I was going to say,” Chris said.

“I’m not trying to step on your toes or insinuate myself into things,” I said. “But if you’ll have me, maybe I could take on a role as coach or something. If you really want to do this-”

I could see the looks on their faces. Yeah, they wanted to do this.

“-Then maybe we avoid having you guys go from a mediated discussion in a controlled environment like this to… something more loosely supervised and managed, for the mediation part of things, and we look for a shallower pool to dive into instead, where you can get started in some capacity sooner, we ensure everyone has something to do, but we keep it manageable and small.”

“You’re volunteering?” Tristan asked.

“If Mrs. Yamada is okay with this idea. I don’t see you guys changing your minds, so…”

“It would bring me some peace of mind,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“Mediated,” Rain said. “You’d be babysitting us?”

“Coaching, giving direction if it’s lacking, give you someone to turn to if you need someone to help resolve a dispute. I can’t promise you full time hours, it’d be a secondary or minor thing for me, but… I’m trying to think of a good way to tackle this and this is the best idea I’ve got.”

“Yes,” Kenzie said. “I want to hear more about the heroing stuff.”

“I wouldn’t object,” Ashley said.

“And the shallow end?” Tristan asked.

“We’ll figure something out,” I said. “I’m thinking of a couple of possible places, we could put feelers out in one that’s close enough for everyone here to get to. A few of these places have small populations of B-listers, and I think it would be a good, easy place to learn the ropes.”

Flare – 2.7

“I felt energized after,” I said.

“Can you elaborate on that?” Mrs. Yamada asked.

“My cousin remarked I looked better, more in touch with the world. Normally, I get these intrusive… non-thoughts.”

“Non-thoughts?” Rain asked.

“Like, not intrusive thoughts, not ideas that I can’t get out of my head, but my mind has these places it tries to go, and I reflexively shut them out. Like, one thing, I spent two years in the hospital and in the care home, obsessing,” I said.

“I know what you’re talking about,” Sveta said.

“Yeah. And I feel like I’ve devoted enough thought to that. Two years of time, more than a lifetime’s worth. So I lock up, mentally, or trip over the subject. I get that a lot as my mood gets worse. I have it for things I do, like using my powers. I had it a lot less after the day at the hospital.”

“Some people have physiological signs, feeling ill, headaches, breathing, when they’re trying to find an outlet for things they can’t otherwise express,” Mrs. Yamada said. “Others have habits, things or people they go back to, they could have needs or cravings.”

“What if the thing you turn to is also the thing that causes stress?” Kenzie asked.

“That is absolutely a thing that happens, Kenzie. It’s at the root of downward spirals like addiction or overeating. On a more subtle level, something like a panic disorder can self-reinforce because the panic provides relief, even as it makes the actual situations worse. I like that Victoria identified something that arrests or controls the downward spiral.”

“It’s the sort of thing I plan to do again,” I said. “Putting all the other stuff aside, distilling things down to the most basic route of helping people, in a way that’s good and healthy for me, too. Or-”

Mrs. Yamada had started speaking at the same time I added the ‘or’. We both stopped.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“Or where there’s bad, the good is enough to outweigh that bad and leave me better off,” I said. I shrugged.

“Here in the group, we often discuss the issues we’re facing, how we relate to what others bring up, and we talk about solutions. I’ll periodically try to turn things to more positive topics, but with six people here, it’s common for people to come to the session with something they want to delve into.

“I like that you’re dwelling on the good things, Victoria, and that you’re giving me an excuse to turn things toward a better note as we wrap up. Does anyone else have something to share?”

Tristan raised one hand a little, and Mrs. Yamada nodded, giving him permission to say.

“It’s not positive,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s alright.”

“It’s fine. Go ahead.”

“What Victoria was saying, how she was saying she was happy, seeing the kids happy, and how she felt energized after. I don’t have that. I don’t have a way to recharge when I’m not at one hundred percent.”

“You definitely have things you’re passionate about,” Rain said.

“I like people, parties, noise, really letting the walls drop away and having fun. There are things I’d want to go out and do which I can’t. Things I’m not comfortable talking about with Kenzie present.”

Kenzie smiled at him. “Rude stuff. I’m not that young.”

“I know you probably know, I’m still not comfortable talking about it like this,” Tristan said.

“You say Kenzie but you don’t even mention me,” Chris said. “I’m perversely pleased by that. You mean fucking, right?”

“Please, Chris,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“I mean stuff,” Tristan said, “Stuff I can’t do because of my situation. I did some of it back before the trigger. More like sophomore high schoolers stealing their parents booze and having way too many people in a house while the parents are away, but that was the time of my life. It was when I was the most excited to be on this- on that planet. Now I can’t do stuff like that, the pressure release valve is screwed up for the same reasons I’m screwed up.”

“The case seventy stuff,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Now me passing out drunk might mean I screw up the time window for passing back control, however many alarms I set, and I can’t do that to Byron. I can’t go have a one night stand because the way things are mean I’d be involving him in it as a bystander or voyeur.”

“Can you find new outlets?” Sveta asked. “One thing I’ve learned over the past little while is that I still had a lot of growing to do. It’s easy when you’re in a bad place to think ‘this is it, this is me,’ but there’s always more out there.”

“I’m trying,” Tristan said. “But it sucks to know that the stuff I want to do and the people I want to do are out there and I can’t do that. I know it’s the same for Byron. It’s different for him, though, because he’s a quiet guy, he wants to take it easy, but you get the weird conflict where you want to chill out but you can’t because you also want to maximize your use of time, when you only get to live half your life.”

“I’d like to talk about that at a later point, when we’re not a minute away from wrapping up,” Mrs. Yamada said. “I’d also like to have a word with Byron and you after the session, make sure everything’s okay.”

“Sure,” Tristan said.

“On a positive note, if nobody minds,” Sveta said, sitting up with the faintest of metal-on-metal sounds. “I got to recharge too, but it was a big one.”

“Your trip?” Kenzie asked.

“I know we talked about it last week, but we mostly talked about Rain staying safe and the hero team thing. It wasn’t a little pick me up. It was big, and I really want to find the chances to go and do stuff like that again.”

“Traveling?” I asked. Her smile was contagious.

“Traveling. We had a boat, and when we weren’t around people, I got out of my hamster ball. We stayed pretty close to the coasts, Weld sailing or driving the boat and me swimming. It was really, really nice.”

“I can tell you got a lot of sun,” Tristan said.

Sveta smiled. Her face was so pale that her complexion was borderline impossible for a human. “I like swimming. I want to find a way to get out and do it more. It’s the first time I can remember moving and having there be resistance. Everything else is too hard or too reflex.”

“Anyone else?” Mrs. Yamada asked. “Final words? Thoughts?”

“I’m glad you had a good time,” Kenzie said.

“I really did,” Sveta said.

There was a pause. No responses, the only sound was a clack as the wind blew the blinds away from the window and they swung back into position. I wondered how bad the rain was.

Mrs. Yamada looked up at the clock, then said, “Then we should wrap up. Tristan, a word. Everyone else, have a good week. There won’t be a Friday meeting this week, so I will see you next Tuesday.”

“I’d like to exchange people’s contact information, if it’s okay,” I said. “If you’re wanting to do this.”

“You keep saying that like you’re hoping we won’t,” Ashley said.

“It might make things simpler,” I said.

“The others have my number,” she said. “I don’t keep track of it.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Do you guys mind giving Victoria my number while you’re at it?” Tristan asked.

“Can do,” Rain said.

People were standing, now. Tristan gave Sveta a hand in getting to her feet.

The group, Tristan excepted, filed out into the hallway. A few people had coats draped or hooked on the the stacked plastic chairs along the hallway’s length. I’d left my bag on the ground. I pulled my phone out before I slung it over one shoulder.

A message from Crystal, asking if I was coming home for dinner.

“Pass me your number?” Rain asked. His phone was as battered as he was, with a crack running down the case.

I thumbed through the concentric rings, put my thumb on my phone number and profile information, and then flicked it in Rain’s direction.

“Got it,” he said.

His info appeared on my phone, at the top edge. It was soon joined by Tristan’s, then Kenzie’s and Ashley’s, near simultaneously. Kenzie’s name was framed with colorful symbols. Chris’s and Sveta’s were the last to appear.

Rain had handled sending me Sveta’s, Ashley’s and Tristan’s, it seemed. Ashley was pulling on a raincoat, and Sveta’s hands were clasped in front of her.

Sveta might have sent me hers without using her hands, now that I thought about it. It was possible she had a phone in her suit.

I glanced back into the room, to see if Mrs. Yamada had anything she wanted to convey with a look or gesture. Instead, I saw her talking to someone who wasn’t Tristan.

Byron had black hair, shorter than Tristan’s, slicked back with something that shone in the room’s lights. He wore a jacket, a black v-neck shirt, and jeans. The contrast between him and Tristan in everything but facial features were striking- Tristan had been bright haired, his top and shorts all about contrasts with light and dark, color and lack thereof. He’d brimmed with confidence.

Byron didn’t. He looked distinctly uncomfortable, his hands in his jacket pockets, shoulders forward, a look of concern on his face. The muted gray-blue of his jacket, the black v-neck shirt, the jeans, there weren’t any of the intentional contrasts I’d seen in Tristan.

“Are we going to wait for Tristan and try to have a quick chat about things?” Rain asked.

“I have dinner,” Kenzie said. She looked at me. “I try to have dinner with my parents every night. We’re trying to reinforce that normalcy.”

“Is that going alright?” Sveta asked.

“It’s going,” Kenzie said. She smiled. “Which is better than the alternative.”

“I’m all people’d out,” Chris said. “Most of you guys are better than some, but I’m done for now.”

“That’s a good enough reason to put it off, then,” Rain said. He gripped the doorframe, leaning into the room a little. I heard Mrs. Yamada’s voice stop.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Wanted to let Tristan and Byron know we’re heading out. We’re not meeting today.”

“Okay,” Byron said. “He’ll have heard you.”

He sounded different, even. Quieter, in the way people talked if they were sure they’d be heard regardless, if they didn’t care, or, on the other side of things if they knew they wouldn’t be listened to.

“We’ll hang out,” Rain said. “You and me, we’ll do something soon.”

“Okay. How’s Erin?”

“She’s good,” Rain said. “I could invite her to come with.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Rain said.

Rain was still smiling when he stepped away from the door.

“Let’s go,” Rain said.

I had to pause as Kenzie and Chris got out of my way and turned to head down the hallway, while Rain and Ashley led the way. I didn’t catch Ashley and Rain’s brief exchange of words.

I glanced back at the room, and saw Byron was looking at me while he was saying something to Mrs. Yamada. The up-down look, followed by the quick glance away when he realized I’d seen him.

You’re too young for me and you’re not my type, based on what little I’ve seen and heard, I thought.

Sveta took my arm, squeezing it. My reminder to focus on the others.

“You’re okay,” Sveta said, squeezing harder for a moment. “You can talk.”

“You seem to be doing okay yourself,” I said.

“I’m great,” she said. “Today was a good day.”

We walked to catch up, and I could feel Sveta periodically leaning harder on me as she worked to maintain her stride. For all that she was in there, no doubt pulling on multiple components and relying on intricate machinery, she managed pretty darn well.

A little less so on the stairs to the ground floor, but I gave her my arm and plenty of support, and she did okay.

She hugged me with enthusiasm as we walked the five feet from the stairs to the side door, where the others were waiting under the rectangle of roof that jutted out from the side of the boxy building.

“I’m going,” Chris said. “Bye.”

“Bye,” Sveta said, amid a few other scattered responses. I raised one hand in a token wave.

Chris removed his headphones as he walked away, stowing them in one pocket of his cargo shorts. He didn’t use an umbrella or wear a raincoat. He seemed content to get rained on.

Kenzie had a blue raincoat with duffle coat toggles on the front, and was standing a bit in the rain, head bent over her phone. Ashley stood on the sidewalk, her hood up. Rain had settled for an umbrella, but hadn’t opened it yet.

“I’m walking to the bus station in Webster,” Rain said. “Normally Tristan, Sveta, and I walk that way.”

“I can head that way,” I said. “I’ll walk with you guys for a bit.”

“I’ll come,” Kenzie said, not looking up from her phone. “There’s still time before dinner.”

“You sure?” Sveta asked.

“Yep,” Kenzie looked up from her phone.

“And Ashley?” I asked.

She didn’t reply, turning away to look down the length of the road. She turned around, looking the other way. In that moment, a car appeared.

“I’ve got a ride,” she said.

“Spending time with the the ol’ guardians?” Sveta asked.

I didn’t miss the word choice. The forced cavalier attitude. Awkward.

“I try to get as many of my appointments into the same day as I can,” Ashley said. “It’s nuisance enough to have my day disrupted with this inanity, I don’t want it taking over my weeks.”

“We’re inanity, are we?” Rain asked.

“You can be,” Ashley said. “Checkups and tests, therapy, group therapy, being supervised without it being official supervision, interviews, prosthetics tune-ups, work. It becomes inane.”

“It’s all for good reasons,” Sveta said.

“I’d do better without all of the distractions,” Ashley said. She looked at me, and she did the up-down assessment too. It was something different from what Byron had done. “I look forward to learning what you have to teach.”

“It was nice to meet you,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was lying, but it seemed like the thing to say.

She walked down the little dirt path that extended through the grass from the building’s side door to the road. A black sedan. She opened the back door, climbed in, and closed the door with more force than was probably necessary.

“I have so many questions,” I said.

“Weld’s kind-of dad figure was the Director in charge of the Boston PRT,” Sveta said. “He was also kind of in charge of looking after Ashley, because her town was close to Boston.”

“Making sure she didn’t do too much damage?” I asked.

“Yes. And gradually trying to get her used to the idea of cooperating with the good guys, making sure she was staying reasonably healthy. They reached out regularly, letting her know there were better options. Except that Ashley was a different Ashley.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s going to be on your team?”

“Yeah,” Sveta said.

I didn’t have a response for that.

She squeezed my arm. “I spent a lot of time with a lot of people who never got a chance, Victoria. I feel like it’s my duty to give her one.”

I drew in a deep breath, then sighed. “I don’t disagree.”

“But you don’t wholly agree, either?” Rain asked.

“I… believe in second chances. Not necessarily in every circumstance, though, which seems to be the direction a lot of people are going.”

“We should walk,” Rain said. “The sooner we get where we split off in different directions, the earlier Kenzie can head back to her parents’ and make it on time for dinner.”

“Yes, please,” Kenzie said, still looking down at her phone.

Sveta had an umbrella. I held it so Sveta could walk while leaning on me, the two of us sharing it.

There weren’t many cars on the road, and even with the overcast sky making it rather dark out for the late afternoon, there weren’t many lights on either. The route we were walking put us on a long stretch of road with small businesses and restaurants on either side. Most of the illumination came from store signs in bright colors that were reflected in the puddles.

“I didn’t get a great read on Chris,” I said. “He’s the other big set of question marks.”

“I like Chris,” Kenzie said, without looking up. “He’s crazy smart about some things and adorkably stupid about others. He’s hard to figure out but when he lets you in it makes you feel special.”

She said something like that with no compunctions, no reservations. I almost envied her.

Sveta reached out and placed a hand on top of Kenzie’s hood. “It would be unfair to share Chris’ story when he didn’t want to share it himself, Victoria. I only said what I said about Ashley because she’s open about it.”

“In fairness, I wasn’t asking or prying,” I said. “I was remarking.”

“Remarking with a question mark at the end?” Rain asked.

“Inviting an answer, but not pressing for one,” I said. “I can drop it.”

“Okay,” Kenzie said. She put her phone away. “All caught up. Stir fry for dinner, I’m going to pick up broccoli, and my workshop is warming up for later.”

“You’ve got a workshop, like a proper tinker,” I said.

“Absolutely,” Kenzie said, dead serious.

“Are you hiding a jetpack inside that raincoat, or are those rocket boots?” I asked.

“I wish,” Kenzie said. “I can’t do that stuff. I make cameras and inconveniently big boxes. My best stuff is inconveniently big, box-shaped cameras.”

“Big boxes?” I asked.

“The term in my file is emplacements. Terminals, tech, and computers big enough they’re hard to move around. Like turrets, but I can’t really make good weapons or defensive things.”

“I see. I can see why Watchdog wanted you.”

“Grr, arf.”

And I might be able to see why your supervisors wanted to keep you away from the front lines.

“Out of curiosity,” I said. “Where are people? I’m trying to figure out where you guys are situated and what locations might work.”

“I’m from Norwalk Station,” Kenzie said.

Norwalk Station would be off to the west end of Norfair, where we had the community center incident. The ‘Nor’ part of Norfair. It was a nice-ish area. I’d passed through it a few times. “And you’re in school? Are you in the morning or afternoon block?”

“Morning. I joined the study block for afternoons, I keep good grades so they let me, and I have paperwork from before that says they’re not supposed to give me too much homework, so I don’t have too much to do in the afternoons.”

“They might expect you to check in,” I said.

“They might.”

“Weld and I are in Stratford, so is Ashley,” Sveta said. “Chris lives somewhere around here. Tristan is close to here.”

Here being Fairfield.

“Bridgeport span, here,” I said. “I’m closer to you guys in Stratford than not.”

“Of course I’m the furthest out,” Kenzie said.

“Almost,” Rain said.

“Almost,” Kenzie echoed him.

“Where are you situated?” I asked Rain.

“It’s complicated,” he said.

“Uh huh. That’s starting to sound like a catchphrase.”

“I hate saying it as much as people hate hearing it. Locationwise, I’ve always liked saying I’m from everywhere that isn’t anywhere.”

I gave him a look.

“Stop being vague and teasing Victoria,” Sveta said.

“I’m not teasing. I’m in the middle of nowhere, it’s hard to pin down. North of Greenwich. It’s a trip to get here.”

That put Tristan, Byron and Chris close to center, Kenzie out west, Rain out to the far northwest, me a bit to the east, and Sveta and Ashley a bit further to the east. With the trains I was figuring it might take about four or five hours for Kenzie to get to where Sveta and Ashley were situated. It would take Rain another couple of hours, depending on how far north he was.

“That’s a pretty significant logistics problem,” I said. “Even in the best case scenario, if we found a place close to here, that’s a two hour or more trip for people to get here?”

“I could build something,” Kenzie said. “I can’t make promises.”

“How confident are you?” I asked.

“Kind of confident,” she said, sounding anything but. “I haven’t done teleportation or breaking movement devices before, but if I made it a series of emplacements and built them big, then if I traveled once a week or so to visit the send-receives and make sure they don’t break down, it might work.”

“Tinker stuff breaks,” I said.

“It does,” Kenzie said.

“It would also be liable to break or break down when you needed it to work the most. During disasters, or times when there aren’t a lot of downtime.”

“That’s very true,” Kenzie said.

“I’m wondering if there’s even a good way to go about this. I’m not trying to screw you guys up, I’m genuinely wondering.”

“It might not be as complicated as it seems,” Sveta said. “I can move quickly if I have to, Ashley doesn’t have much occupying her days, when she doesn’t have her appointments, and I don’t think she minds much. She’s happy to wake up early and read on the train, she even goes to the New York hub a lot, and that’s a full day trip. As for you, you can fly again-”

She squeezed my arm as she said it, rocking a bit side to side as she did it. I rocked a bit with her.

“-and the way you were talking about things, this wouldn’t be a full-time thing for you,” Sveta finished. Her enthusiasm had risen as she talked, and only dropped with that last part.

“Maybe,” I said. “It seems you’d want a location that was closer to Kenzie and Chris then. Closer to Rain.”

“Yeah,” Rain said. He was looking around a fair bit. “I don’t mind the trips, either.”

“You okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah. Forgot for a short while that I have an attempt out on my life. I really should dwell on it more, to be safe, especially with Kenzie in tow.”

“I can hold my own,” Kenzie said.

“It’s an attempt on my life,” Rain said. “Lives could be lost. I don’t want yours to be one of them. I would feel insanely shitty if you jumped in to help and you got hurt or killed.”

“Insanely?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to call my ride, I think. See if she can catch me en route instead of me going to her,” Rain said.

“She? Erin the lady friend?” Kenzie asked.

“Erin the friendship I’m not going to mess with,” Rain said. He pulled out the phone and stepped a bit away, walking at the road’s edge instead of on the sidewalk.

We reached an intersection, and Rain stepped away, one hand to his ear while he held the phone to the other. His eyes roved, looking at nearby rooftops and the dark spaces between buildings.

The building at the corner of the intersection was a bar, and a group of ten or so people were standing outside, smoking. The place and the people smelled like the cheap alcohol that was barely a step above moonshine, that was being sold on the cheap in a lot of places. Made to fill a need, now a surplus, with cheap, shitty beer available to fill the need instead.

Their attention was on Sveta.

“Hey,” one called out.

She glanced at them, then set to ignoring them. I took her cue.

“Hey,” the guy called out again, drawing out the word. “Hey, you with the paint.”

“Whatever you’re going to say, I’ve heard it before,” Sveta said.

“What the fuck’s going on with you, huh? What’s wrong with you?” he called out.

I turned my head to look at him. Sveta squeezed my arm, then shook her head a little.

“Hey, you’re weird,” he called out. “You’re freaky.”

The light changed. We crossed, Rain trailing a bit behind, still on the phone, periodically responding. He shot the guys a dark look.

“I don’t like it when people are mean to you,” Kenzie said.

“Thank you for that,” Sveta said. “And thank you, Victoria. I know you probably wanted to say something. I’m glad we didn’t make it into a thing.”

“Does it happen a lot?” I asked.

“Some. It beats people running away and screaming, and the running and screaming part beat people dying because of me,” Sveta said. “This is an improvement. Things will improve more in the future. I believe that.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

“Me too,” Kenzie said.

Sveta put a hand on Kenzie’s hooded head, squeezed my arm.

“My ride’s here,” Rain said, catching up with us, waving at a distant vehicle with its headlights on. I got a better view of it as it pulled up beside us. It wasn’t a pretty vehicle – a van with rust around the right headlight. “We’ve got a good long drive back. Was good seeing you guys, good to meet you, Victoria.”

“Good to meet you, Rain,” I said.

The driver stuck her hand out, waving. We moved around to where we could see her through the passenger-side window.

Erin, Rain’s friendship he wasn’t intending to mess with, was not the kind of person I imagined driving a van like that, or spending time with someone of Rain’s somewhat grungy, not-inclined-to-smile presentation. There were women where someone’s first thought might be ‘they could be a model’ and there were women where the first thought was ‘they have to be a model, it’s not fair if they aren’t’. She was the latter. Short black hair with a long swoop at the front, dangly jewelry, more piercings in one ear, and one of the memorial shirts, much like how the dress I was wearing served as a way for me to represent and remember Brockton Bay. She was from New York, it seemed, or she wanted to represent it.

“Erin, you’ve seen Kenzie and Sveta before.”

“Hi again,” Erin said.

“And this is Victoria. We were talking about having her be our coach.”

“Hi,” Erin said, leaning toward Rain to get a better view of me, extending her hand in another wave. Rain looked momentarily like a deer in the headlights with Erin’s face close, with Erin doing a very good job at not noticing or not looking like she’d noticed. “You look a lot like Glory Girl.”

“I am,” I said. “I was.”

“Huh,” Erin said. “That’s really cool. Maybe I’ll see you around?”

“It’s likely,” I said.

“You guys have a good night.”

“You too,” Kenzie said. She held up her phone, like she was trying to get a signal. “Drive safe.”

“We good to go?” Erin asked.

“Yep,” Rain said. “You want a ride somewhere convenient, Kenz?”

“Sure!”

Kenzie climbed in behind Rain, giving us a wave before the door was closed.

Just Sveta and me left.

We watched as the van pulled away.

“I have a lot of sympathy for Rain,” Sveta said.

“Are you talking about the attempt on his life or the long car trip with the girl he very clearly likes?”

“Oh, yeah, the dangerous thing too,” Sveta said. “Mostly the long trip.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“But that’s all negative. We’re going in the same direction, right? We can catch up?”

“We can definitely catch up. I want to hear more about that vacation.”

“And you can come over for dinner, right? Sometime? You’re not far. I can’t promise a good dinner, because I’m still trying to find food that Weld can really taste that won’t make the neighbors evacuate their apartments, but there’s takeout! Or delivery. I’m sure there’s something we can do.”

“You couldn’t keep me away,” I said.

⊙

Sleep eluded me. I stood on the balcony, I stared out at a city without nearly enough lights or light in it, a jagged and incomplete skyline, and I tried to shake a persistent melancholy I couldn’t put my finger on.

The day had been a good one. My friendship with Sveta rekindled, with Sveta doing as well as I could hope for, possibilities for the future, interesting puzzles to work out, and I’d been able to do favors for people I cared about.

A part of it was the therapy. It was strange, to be in a place mentally and emotionally where therapy had a cost to it, in a way. The voice of Mrs. Yamada and the tone of the conversations reminded me of the darkest period in my life. Those reminders were probably responsible for the nightmares that had torn me from sleep.

Maybe it would be good if I called the new therapist, a new voice.

It wasn’t the nightmares that kept me from getting back to sleep, but a restless nagging feeling. I liked problems I could decisively solve, things I could tell myself I had an answer for, something I could handle in the dawn, and then I could go back to sleep. The feeling that had settled with me wasn’t that sort of answerable question.

It was the restless nagging that had me carefully and slowly open the sliding door of the balcony, step into the living room, and gather some things. A bag with my wallet and things, fresher clothes, the mask I’d worn for the broken trigger incident.

I went flying, and my destination wasn’t one that would answer the nagging feeling, but one that could answer other, more concrete questions. With luck, I’d be able to distract myself.

There were cities and areas I’d considered for the therapy group’s expedition. Ones in need, ones I knew didn’t fall neatly in one jurisdiction or another. I used the highways and major roadways as my waypoints, so I wouldn’t pass them or find myself flying too far north or south.

The sun was rising by the time I reached the first. Sherwood span. Too low a population, I could tell right away. Too many farms, the houses too spread out.

It took me twenty minutes to reach the next. The area was slow to wake up, which was a surprise, given the amount of construction sites I could see from above. Usually the work started first thing.

It was a nice slice of city, with a view of the water, tall buildings, shiny, modern, with nice, large houses, but it was only halfway erected. There were cars in driveways, but there wasn’t much life.

I flew low, stopping at one of the gates to a construction site for a taller building.

Laminated sheets had been put up on the gates.

Construction suspended until we’re given what we’re owed.

The same was on display in other places, with laminated sheets of paper and graffiti. Some of it was angrier.

I was reading a very bold, large bit of text about how certain people should be choking on cocks, when I saw I had company, standing in the corner of my field of view. A cape.

I turned to face them.

Not anyone I recognized. A man in armor with spikes on it. Plate mail, and plate armor was hard to get done right, especially in this modern day. He carried no weapon I could see. Spiky plate armor wasn’t exactly original or new, either.

He didn’t say anything or do anything, but he was holding a piece of paper.

I approached him, my forcefield up. He didn’t budge.

When I was in arm’s reach, he put his gauntlet toward me, paper in hand. I dropped my forcefield to take it.

“What’s this?”

He wasn’t someone who sounded more intimidating from the inside of a helmet. His voice was very normal as he said, “We saw you fly in, we discussed, we called some people, this is our message to you.”

“Got it,” I said. I looked around. “Quiet town.”

When my head was turned, he reached for my throat.

I put my forcefield up, and I knocked his hand aside, forcefully enough I almost put him on his ass. The sound rang in my ears.

“Our town,” he said.

That said, he trudged off.

I watched him go, and then I walked in the opposite direction. People were watching from doorsteps with coffee in hand, or standing by cars, now.

I didn’t want to back down or look weak, not if this was possibly a place I might be visiting with any regularity, so I walked slowly, like I wasn’t bothered.

With all that in mind, I still stopped in my tracks when I read the note.

Turn around and fly home, Glory Hole
-TT

They’d asked around, huh?

I folded the paper up, and I held the folded square as I walked, thinking, observing. A slice of city, paralyzed, a clear villain presence.

The guy with the spikes might have been Cleat. A low-tier cape with some background in fighting rings and mercenary work. Unlike most in fighting rings, he’d never found enough success to get traction in other circles. Ironically.

I’d left Brockton Bay in the middle of a situation, or I’d been taken from the city during. I’d put in the hours and put heart and soul into trying to combat the badness that was taking over the city, and at the end of the day, I hadn’t ever enjoyed a resolution to that situation. I’d never felt like I’d made enough of a difference in the end result.

It was tempting, the idea of coming here to a place like this and somehow completing that journey or using a success here to convince myself I could have made a proper difference if I’d been given a chance.

But this wasn’t about me. It was about those teenagers and kids in Yamada’s group.

A sign was erected by one construction site. It was covered in graffiti. ‘Cedar Point Apartments’ was written at the top, but ‘Cedar’ had been covered over in paint, and ‘Hollow’ had been written in its place.

Cute, and from some cursory investigation, the rebranding had been performed elsewhere, throughout the district. Graffiti and other signs of anger were clear as day, much of it vile and senseless.

Did I really want to pit those kids against this? They might give it a shot, and if it was insurmountable, Mrs. Yamada might be happy, and if it was surmountable, everyone would be happy.

I wasn’t sure.

I looked at the graffiti, getting a sense of the atmosphere here. Vulgarity, vulgarity, obscenity, drawing of vulgarity, hate, anger, vulgarity, possible gang tag, ‘hollow point’ appearing again.

I stopped in front of another piece of graffiti. It wasn’t crowded in with anything else, so it stood out, almost a piece of art in how it was spelled out on a ruined wall, half-toppled.

THIS IS HOW THINGS ARE NOW

I had the paper in my hand, I had my doubts, but the nagging feeling ceased being nagging and became acutely clear as I looked at the statement.

“Fuck that,” I said.

Flare – Interlude 2

“Long coat, long hair, just got through the door, has a gun,” Crystalclear said, thumb on the button of his walkie-talkie.

The reply from the officers was almost impossible to make out.

The status quo in quiet periods was for there to be two thinkers on duty at all times. They were meant to be in communication and watching each other’s backs, and they were meant to be cooperating with the officers stationed at the portal.

During the quieter times, it would have been less than perfect for his partner to be in the midst of the crowd, where it took effort for Crystalclear to keep track of him and watch the man’s back.

Relay, one of his new teammates.

It wasn’t a quiet period, as one of the day’s bigger trains had just arrived. There were supposed to be four people on duty, one shift nearly over, another just beginning, for twice the number of eyes and powers on the scene.

Yes, it could have been an accident that the other two had yet to arrive. But accidents and coincidences could just as easily be contrivances at the hands of masterminds. The radios acting up didn’t help matters.

“-ot the gun, good ca-” the voice on the other side of the walkie talkie reported, the static cutting off the very beginning and the ending.

Sure enough, the officers had the woman in the coat. One of the officers had the gun, now.

Red jacket, jeans, pointed boots, group of three, Relay communicated. Words and ideas conveyed without being spoken. Not telepathy, not sound, but impressions.

Crystalclear’s vision didn’t give him color that wasn’t the blurring around the white outlines that defined everything. Red jacket meant nothing to him. But he could see the crowd, seeing everyone at once, and he could check the shoes. It took some focus to narrow things down, to look for the pointed shoes, to observe for another few moments to see who was grouped up.

Three people, all about the same age, all men. Their heads radiated with distortions. Their focus- not on anything in particular. He saw what they were dwelling on as a series of fractures, distorted angles, and breaks that surrounded them. These things suggested things about what was going on in their heads that were more limited to the moment, covering stresses in every sense of the word.

Stress as in emotional upset, stressing the importance of something, stress as in tension and wear.

He was glad he could use the landline for this. The little room was separated from the portal and train platforms by two walls, one with a one-way pane of glass set in it. The third wall was open, so he was free to step outside and be in the thick of things within seconds, without having to worry about doors or counters. Beside him was a phone and a computer he hadn’t bothered to fiddle with – he couldn’t see the contents of the screen without pulling a crystal from his face.

He hit the button for channel one on the phone, then picked up.

“Relay reports there’s three people incoming. He got a low-level bad feeling about them. They seem stressed to me. Not an imminent danger. You might want to pull them out of line and have a chat. One in the lead has a red jacket, pointed shoes. I’ll give you more information on their positions once they’re settled in line.”

“Got it. Thank you, Crystalclear.”

“Let us know if you need anyone to sit in,” he said.

“Will do.”

He was aware as heads throughout the crowd turned, their focus shifting to Relay, to the train, to the officers. For most, the light around them refracted into kaleidoscopic structures, cone or beak shaped, pointed this way and that. At the ends farthest from the points of focus, the open ends of the cones splayed out into nimbuses, auras, fractures.

He had been one of them, a year ago, a refugee stepping off the train to enter Earth Gimel, finding his luggage, walking up the short set of stairs to the desks, where people clustered in families and groups of friends, rather than in single file. They would be interviewed, they would be given temporary identification, and they would get their packages with information and resources.

Unlike many of them, he had waited nearly six months for access, because he’d been open about the fact he had powers. A mistake, because they had wanted to be careful, it had meant he had needed weeks and months of screens, of interviews and background checks, while other people passed through.

It wasn’t the first time something like that had happened, where he had taken too long to put the pieces together. All thinkers had their weaknesses and catches – all powers, probably, but thinkers were what he was most familiar with, and thinkers almost always had their issues with the mind. The problems of the mind were difficult to identify and fix, because they were so invisible, and the tools for diagnosis were often what part of what was broken or altered.

He had taken a considerable length of time to figure out the nuances of his power, too. The most obvious aspect was that he could see through walls, but he lost the ability to see and understand people, to see their faces or easily grasp the clothes they wore.

There was so much more to it, and he was learning more of it every week and month. The colors meant things, and he had only worked out the blues and the reds. Other colors separated from the white at times. There were a lot of greens in the crowd and along the station, pulling away from the outlines. He had ideas about what they meant, but he couldn’t say anything with confidence.

The fractures and formations in distortions around people were another part of it. There were elements to the way things broke up and distorted that had deeper meaning, things he didn’t understand in a way he could explain, but which made it easy for him to relate one personality and personality type to another, familiar one.

The portal took up much of the station in front of him. His multifaceted senses covered the tract of Gimel surrounding the portal, and the areas of Bet on the far side. His view encompassed the surroundings on the other side, the people, the terrain, and the different colors that bled out from the sharper white outlines.

You’re in the weeds, Relay communicated.

Crystalclear lifted his walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Weeds?”

Not entirely with us. Lost, or in a bit of a daze.

Crystalclear looked out beyond the portal. At the people amassed around it, human-shaped outlines with the outlines of clothes, blurs smearing around the white lines, their heads replaced with fractured, kaleidoscopic messes. A large group were in eerie unison. Singing together, possibly, or chanting.

“Yeah,” he replied, one more word for what others would perceive as a one-sided conversation.

It was his perpetual reality. To be mundane, or to be lost. The knowledge out of his reach, there if he could find out how to reach for it or connect it.

He focused more on the crowd.

His difficulty wasn’t in tracking everyone, so much as it was finding the right angles. He didn’t have eyes with his power deployed like this, and he wasn’t limited to one point of view. He set about making sure he could investigate everyone and their carry-on baggage without anyone being hidden with their outline closely matching someone they were standing in front of or behind.

He didn’t move his head as he looked back, up the stairs and out at the loosely organized lines of people. The trio had joined the line.

He used the phone, “The three people Relay wanted you guys to keep an eye out for just joined the line. They’re behind a shorter, elderly couple. One of them’s agitated.”

“Thank you, Crystalclear,” the voice on the phone replied.

While more of his focus was dwelling in that direction and area, making sure he was seeing everything from the necessary angles, he became aware of two people who others were paying a great deal of attention to.

One of them was tall, somewhat muscular, but what stood out was the storm of fractures around his head, overlapping without connecting to one another. A crown of thorns, fashioned from something that looked like especially precise breaks in glass or deep-etched frost.

The other was smaller, hunched over. She was almost the opposite, the breaks vague, cracking out to reach like a whip, aimed at nothing in particular.

He used the walkie-talkie, “I think our relief just turned up.”

Making my way to you.

Relay and the two individuals reached Crystalclear’s booth at the same time. Crystalclear stepped out, aware of the number of people who were turning to look. He tried to keep an eye on the crowd.

Relay made the introductions. “Crystalclear, this is Big Picture, and this is Ratcatcher.”

“Hello,” Big Picture said. More tight loops of breakage encircled his head rapidfire as he turned it to look at Crystalclear, and the loops bled like purple watercolor paint.

“Hello,” Crystalclear said.

“Hello. We’re the reinforthmenth,” Ratcatcher said, with a heavy lisp.

“You’re new to Foresight?” Big Picture asked.

“I am,” Crystalclear said. “Only positives so far.”

“I thought about joining,” Big Picture said. “I decided it was better to wait until things settled down. For now, I get paid for this, I keep it simple.”

“Yeth. Thimple ith good,” Ratcatcher said.

“I like the costume,” Big Picture said.

Crystalclear touched the tunic portion of his outfit.

It wasn’t anything like he’d worn with the Norfair Neighborhood Heroes. A single shoulderpad, a piece of cloth forming a kind of shawl or mantle as it extended from one corner of the shoulderpad near his heart, over his shoulder, and around to the back corner of the shoulderpad near his shoulderblade. The shoulderpad, the armor at his wrists and the armor around his legs had chunks of crystal, closely matched to the crystal that he naturally produced. Lightweight as armor went, limited to a few pieces that were as decorative as functional, but it was still armor. A band of metal ran along his chin’s edge, and that took some particular getting used to.

“Appreciated,” Crystalclear said. It was odd to reply when he was only aware of the outlines of the outfit. He had seen it in the mirror when he had been getting ready, but that memory felt faint, and he had yet to see how put together he looked with the crystals at the upper half of his face.

“I’m going to go get back to work,” Relay said. “I’ll be in communication.”

Crystalclear returned to his seat. Big Picture stood out in the open, his arms folded.

Ratcatcher joined Crystalclear in the booth, sitting on the counter by the phone.

“What do you do, Crythtalclear?” Ratcatcher asked.

“I see through walls. I can see contraband.”

“I can too,” Ratcatcher said. “I thee thmall thingth, wherever they are.”

“We might be redundant then.”

“Redundancy can help,” Big Picture said.

“Can you share your power, Big Picture?”

Big picture turned his head. Crystalclear wished he could see the big guy’s face. Knowing if the guy was frowning or smiling would help a great deal.

“It’s redundancy,” Big Picture said. He made a sound, almost a laugh. “Everything I want to focus on, I clone my brain and my mind. I can give each and every detail every bit of my attention, and I can slow down my perceptions if I want to study it more. There are a few other nuances, other things I can do with the parallel takes, sharing, but you don’t need all of the details.”

“You can spend the equivalent of a few minutes studying every possible clue?” Crystalclear asked.

“Weeks. Months, if I want.”

“Sounds as if it could have its drawbacks.”

“Don’t we all?” Big Picture asked.

Crystalclear was aware that Ratcatcher wasn’t alone. He turned his head a little, then pointed at the pocket of Ratcatcher’s top. It was a sleeveless top, tight-fitting in the way a costume was supposed to be, but it had a hoodie-like pouch in the front. There was a small life form in there, the thing’s perspective fuzzy in a way that suggested it was asleep, in whole or in part.

Ratcatcher made a pleased sound, then reached into the pouch. The disturbance woke the creature, but she didn’t act like it was upset as she held it in her two hands.

Crystalclear could guess what the thing was from its dimensions and Ratcatcher’s name. “Does it have a name?”

“Raththputin,” Ratcatcher said. She picked up a walkie-talkie, “The attractive older gentleman in the peacoat, hairy earth and eyelatheth to die for. Thomething thown into the coat. Naughty.”

“…I can see Ratcatcher has joined us…” the walkie talkie buzzed in response. The buzzing turned into crackling. “…nimize colorful commenta…”

“Radio’th garbage today,” Ratcatcher observed.

“It is.”

“I’m sorry we’re late,” Big Picture said. “Feels like we took a step backward, citywide. There’s word of a potential transportation strike. Our usual bus driver didn’t show, we had to wait for the next. Construction sites between NYC and Boston are locked down, they aren’t doing anything except getting in the way.”

“Feels like we should be out there, not here,” Crystalclear said.

“I know that feeling. It’s often a trap.”

Crystalclear turned toward Big Picture.

“I joined the military, before I got powers. I was thinking something similar when I did. That things at home were shit, but I was needed out there. We didn’t fix anything out there, and we came home to find things were worse.”

Crystalclear was going to reply, but he was interrupted by the lisping young woman.

“Buckthom lady thtepping off the train,” Ratcatcher said. “Bra that doethn’t fit, run in her thtocking. Cavity thearch, if you pleathe.”

“This isn’t you being funny again, Rat?” Big Picture asked.

“I’m being good, thank you very mush.”

Crystalclear looked. There was something suspended in the middle of the blur that was the woman. He held up his walkie-talkie. “Seconding Ratcatcher on this one. She’s got something stowed.”

I see her, Relay communicated. Noise surrounding her is similar to a few others we spotted earlier.

“I remember,” Crystalclear said, through the walkie talkie. He’d noticed but he hadn’t been sure how common it was or how much of a thread ran through it all until he’d had it point out. That weakness of his again. “There have been one or two of these small-time smugglers on every train, all day.”

Big Picture said, “It might be worth checking what’s going on in Bet. Could be a gang, strong-arming people into going through, or offering a head start in Gimel if they’ll smuggle something through.”

“It might not go that well,” Crystalclear said. “Too easy to get sucked in right from the start, not being allowed to leave once you’ve made that delivery.”

“The ugly kid with the runny nothe hath clutter in hith bag. Thyringeth.”

“…heckin…” the radio crackled.

Big Picture picked up his walkie talkie, “The woman with him isn’t his mother, either. Better to have them get picked out of line and taken away for an interview.”

The radio crackled with the affirmative.

Slowly, the train and the platform emptied. They kept an eye out for the drugs, for the violence, for the people who were especially angry or scared.

One of the train cars remained filled. Crystalclear looked through, and saw the people within sitting, calm, not reaching for their things.

“What’s the status of car five?” he asked. “There are a few guns in there.”

Ratcatcher pulled the keyboard closer to her, she typed and then responded, “Thpecial cathe. VIP.”

“They’ve got a case fifty-three in there.”

“Weld, according to the computer. Ethcorting.”

“Weld,” Crystalclear said. He was familiar with the name. “Good to know.”

Crowd is thinning out, Relay communicated. I’ll go say hi.

Crystalclear watched as people sorted out. The platform emptied, and the officers on the scene did what they could to get others moving along, helping with bags and pointing people in the right direction.

“You’re bleeding,” Ratcatcher observed.

“Me?” Crystalclear asked.

“At the corner of your eye,” she said.

He checked, touching the spot in question and finding the bead of blood with his sense of touch. Sure enough, she was right. “It’s a thing that happens. Doesn’t mean anything. Excuse me.”

“Eckthuthed,” she said.

He touched one of the crystals that was sticking up and out of that eye socket, gripped it, and hauled it free. He could feel the glass edge slide against the inside of his eyelid, the root of it hauling free of the floor of his eye socket, and he could feel the fluids inside his eye stir.

“You jutht made it worth,” she said.

“I’m fine. I never bleed for long. I try to be careful, so I don’t scare people, but it doesn’t bother me much.”

“Good to know,” she said. “I know all about that.”

He pulled it free, a foot-long block of crystal, and laid it carefully down on the counter. He blinked a few times with his one eye, noticed that Ratcatcher had taken off her mask, gray furred and full-face, and decided to keep his gaze averted, for privacy’s sake, and because looking at her would let her see his face.

He concentrated, and he produced another chunk of glass, feeling it stab from the underside of his eye and out, sliding through everything in the way without doing real damage. He was careful to shape it in his mind so there wouldn’t be any sharp edges resting against his eyelid or brow.

He turned his face Ratcatcher’s way. “How do I look? Symmetrical?”

“Yeth.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, with emphasis on the ‘you’.

“Why?”

“Not many people look me in the fathe when my mathk is off and keep from flinching,” she said.

Crystalclear’s response was cut short.

Weld wants us, Relay said. Diplomatic thing.

“Weld is asking for me,” Crystalclear said. “Good luck, guys.”

“We’ll get to know each other, I’m sure,” Big Picture said.

“Good luck,” Ratcatcher said.

Relay was already coordinating the officers. The path that led from platform to the intake center was being closed off, a metal shuttered door sliding closed. Another set of doors were being unlocked and opened.

VIPs indeed, it seemed, and from what Crystalclear could see, they were only human.

Crystalclear approached the train car, standing beside Relay. Weld and Narwhal were standing nearby.

Narwhal looked rather spectacular to Crystalclear’s vision, given the emphasis on outlines, and her having dressed up in very small, outlined objects.

“Look after them,” she said. “I’ll see the way is clear.”

“Got it,” Weld said. “You would be Crystalclear?”

“Yes.”

“Good to meet you. I didn’t think you were one of us.”

“Oh, I’m not. I can go from this to… not this,” Crystalclear said. He was suddenly aware he wasn’t sure what terminology was okay or not okay with the C-53s.

“That’s good to hear. Closer to Narwhal than anything, then. I’ve heard good things, Crystalclear. Foresight is lucky to have you.”

“Thank you. Likewise, with you and the Wardens.”

“Were you around for that broken trigger incident a week and a half ago?”

“I was,” Crystalclear said. “I wasn’t in a position to do much.”

“This situation here follows from that. We’ve got visitors, and we want to keep things calm and safe. Foresight said we should make use of you and Relay to help keep an eye on things.”

“Ah,” Crystalclear said. “Alright.”

There was a pause. “Are you okay to do this?”

“Yeah,” Crystalclear said. He realized he didn’t sound confident, and tried again. “Yeah.”

He wasn’t sure it was alright. He’d been volunteered for something and he hadn’t explicitly been told. It was a level of disconnection from the authority that felt uncomfortably familiar and disconcerting.

It made him think of his aunt. It also made him think of Big Picture’s statements about it being better to wait.

“We’re bodyguards and protection for the Gimel side of things. The other guys brought their own protection.”

The other guys? Crystalclear thought.

All thinkers had their weaknesses. Most hated not knowing things. Most, by way of how their powers gave them an edge in one respect, had a way of missing other things. Crystalclear’s vision gave him a lot, but it made some obvious things impossible to grasp.

Crystalclear’s focus broadened as he tried to take in everything necessary to keep an eye on things. He looked at the crowd, noted who was reacting to the shutters being closed, and tried to keep tabs on them. He watched the other heroes, tracked the officers, and tried to wrap his head around the fractured messes that were their heads and the ever-shifting contents of those heads.

“Ratcatcher seemed to take to you,” Relay commented.

“Did she?” Crystalclear asked.

“That’s the impression I got. You didn’t seem too bothered, either.”

“She seemed like a nice kid. Weird but good.”

Relay made a small sound. “Don’t, uh, say that around her. She’s older than you. Heh.”

Crystalclear smiled, but he felt just a little anxious. There were things he had liked about the NNH group with Tempera, Longscratch and Fume Hood. Big Picture had talked about the merits of simplicity.

Thinker issues. He hated being out of the loop. It constantly felt like he was. Even when it was with things that pertained to himself.

“Sorry,” Relay said. He’d apparently picked something up.

“It’s okay,” Crystalclear said.

The group was departing the train, now.

“We’ll be using the emergency stairwell,” Relay said. “We go upstairs, we’ll find a vantage point, they’ll have their meeting with the people who are already waiting there, then a few of them are going to go tour Gimel. Things are out of our hands once they do, they’ve been warned about that. The newcomers want to see the city they’ve been helping to build.”

“I heard about some of this,” Crystalclear said. “These are people from an alternate Earth?”

He didn’t get his answer, as the people approached.

Three men, with their entourage, men with guns. Their heads were interesting. Leader and soldier, they were very in sync, much like the group that was still gathered outside the Bet portal were of similar minds as they chanted or sang together. They felt like an odd fit. Foreign worlders?

Leaders of Earth Cheit. Abrahamic theocrats. They’re our guests, here about the people of theirs who died in the broken trigger incident.

A serious subject. Crystalclear was aware of a few other things that had come up in regard to the group, until the broken trigger had consumed everyone’s attention. The discussions in the late-night media had been derailed by the deaths of the ninety-two individuals caught by the broken trigger.

“If you’ll follow us,” Weld said.

They walked up the stairs, with Weld in front, and Relay and Crystalclear toward the rear. The armed guard trailed even further behind, with one waiting at the base of the stairwell.

They had a bit of a distance to walk to reach the room at the top. It looked like a ball room, with fancy curtains, a lacquered floor, and lots of empty space. A table was set to one side, and there were curtains closed that didn’t stop the light from passing through. Sheers, possibly, to obscure the view of the world outside, or perhaps more importantly, to obscure those on the outside from seeing those within.

People were seated at the table already, paperwork around them.

The one closest to the door was a serious looking woman, slender, in a blouse and a skirt that highlighted how narrow she was. The belt of her skirt cinched in at the waist, emphasizing her figure. She had a lot of the anxiety that the refugees departing the train had had, but she didn’t show it in how she sat or how she moved as she stood to greet the men.

Sierra Kiley, Relay communicated. Board member of Rock Bay Reconstruction Group. That’s one of the biggest construction firms, with its roots in Brockton Bay. She’s a candidate for mayor of the Megalopolis, but she’s not expected to win. Foresight thinks she has her hat in the ring for other reasons. Access, possibly. We know she has ties to organized crime, if you couldn’t guess from her background in Brockton Bay. She doesn’t necessarily know we know.

Next were a couple, male and female. She wore a nice suit-dress. He wore a dress shirt, slacks, and carried the paperwork. Their focus was sharp, they clearly worked well together from how well they coordinated. As with Big Picture, there was something else going on with the man’s perceptions. He wasn’t a cone- his perceptions were covering a lot of ground, and his fractures were very different from the norm. They were closer to being etches.

Jeanne Wynn and her assistant. CEO of Mortari, second of the large construction groups. Jeanne might be too. She’s a more serious candidate for mayor, she’s running, she and a lot of others think she’ll win.

Crystalclear was bothered that he was getting filled in on things he already had some knowledge of, but felt disconnected in other things. He’d known about Jeanne. She had recently put up her proposals online, for how she wanted and expected to run things if she won.

The person who won mayorship of Gimel, if they weren’t killed in an uprising, would likely go on to be leader of Gimel as a whole.

We suspect the assistant is a parahuman.

He was, Crystalclear knew. He resolved to communicate that when he could.

Others were named and identified by Relay. Mr. Nieves, another prospective mayor, though he didn’t have the footing the others did, his chances were better than Ms. Kiley’s. Mr. Buckner was at the forefront of the burgeoning media enterprise in Gimel, bringing television to the masses.

Stay put and stay silent.

The voice wasn’t Relay’s, but it was easy to imagine as Relay’s, with it being so vivid.

Crystalclear had a confused and fractured memory of his early childhood. The woman he remembered growing up with was not the woman he’d spent his late childhood and adolescence with. His aunt had explained the situation for him, saying his mother hadn’t been well, he’d been taken away from her for his safety.

She had said a lot of things over the years. He had believed most, and because other things had occupied his attention, he hadn’t given the remainder enough focus.

Normally, trigger events emphasizing isolation, loss, cut ties, and betrayal tended to lead to master powers. Or, rather, master powers tended to go to people who were going to deal with those situations.

Any attachment he had felt to his aunt had faded over the years, long before he had triggered. She hadn’t cared. So long as he behaved and didn’t cause a fuss, she had been happy to not have to devote much attention to him. There was nothing lost, so that aspect of things hadn’t factored in.

So, naturally, he had avoided causing a fuss.

It had only been later that their fragile reality had come crashing down around them. The police were closing in on him, he was no longer young, and where a young, clean cut white boy had flown under the radar, a teenaged white boy with pimples hadn’t. It had turned out that his aunt wasn’t his aunt at all. Her only relation to him was that she had stolen him from his real mother.

The questions had come, hours of interrogation, his lawyer guiding him. Hadn’t he put the pieces together? Hadn’t he seen? Why hadn’t he asked more questions? He hadn’t looked at what he was delivering to homes even once in the past few years?

No, he’d said. No, he’d never looked. He had never really considered. He had only wanted to exist.

The police had been upset, angry, hostile. His lawyer had been frustrated, because anything, anything at all could have led to a plea deal or him getting off free. His ‘aunt’ and her boyfriend were upset, because they blamed him for their being arrested, and they had used a proxy to threaten him.

He had been sufficiently scared and lost to trigger.

Now he stood guard. He was trying to exist, to do what good he could, and he wanted to pay a little more attention than he once had, even as his power made that very easy on the surface and very difficult when it came to the deeper analysis.

The initial introductions were wrapping up. The theocrats of Cheit were saying a brief prayer, heads bowed.

People settled into their seats, empty seats between groups, serving as a kind of separation.

“War.”

One word. It had been said by the lead theocrat, no preamble, and it was enough to be followed by silence.

“I say it not because I believe in it or want it,” he went on, “But because the people at home wanted me to convey it.”

“We’ve had a strong working relationship thus far,” Jeanne said.

“We have,” the theocrat said.

“Forgive me,” Nieves said. “I’m lost. It came up before, but things got in the way. What exactly is the working relationship?”

Jeanne explained, “Cheit has graciously provided Earth Gimel with supplies for reconstruction. They supplied us with food and other things that enabled us to weather the first winter. A hard season.”

“I remember,” Nieves said. “I know this much. But what exactly did Cheit get in the bargain?”

“Goodwill,” the theocrat said.

“Goodwill?” Nieves asked.

“We have an awful lot of very awful people at our disposal, to put things lightly,” Kiley said. “We don’t really think anyone wants actual war, do we?”

“As I was instructed, I brought it up,” the theocrat said. “It is officially on the table.”

Crystalclear was still, listening. He didn’t miss the glance that Weld and Narwhal shared. Neither of them budged an inch.

“Goodwill is a matter of faith,” Jeanne said. “The understanding was that they would share their excess, out of the goodness of their hearts. We, in turn, would manage our own.”

“Six of Earth Cheit’s citizens are dead. Five godly men and a woman, all with their families. By all accounts, they died in a terrible, protracted way.”

“Because of a broken trigger,” Jeanne said. “Outside of our control. Surely you understand.”

“These ‘triggers’, as we understand it, are the result of strife and upset. Your people were upset because of how Mortari and RBR have handled your subordinates.”

Crystalclear watched carefully, his eyes on all of the people present, on the nearby rooftops, and on the area below, to make sure nobody was attempting entry.

Jeanne and the theocrat seemed to be the ones in control over this conversation. Jeanne had a parahuman with her, and the parahuman was studying the room, but nothing suggested he was communicating with his superior. Nothing about the way things refracted and moved around his head, nothing about the colors. Purple here and there, but spotty, brief.

If she was a superior at all, that was. It was very possible the ‘assistant’ was the one truly in charge.

“What would you have us do?” Kiley asked.

The theocrat answered, “We want you to be in control. Control your people, organize, avoid similar situations. We are happy to be generous to our less fortunate neighbors, but we cannot have your troubles become our troubles.”

“We’re working on that,” Kiley said.

“Are you married, Ms. Kiley?” the theocrat asked.

“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“That would be a no, then. I prefer to work with married individuals, like Mrs. Wynn here. They understand the difficulties of a long term relationship, the compromises and deeper knowledge it takes to make things work.”

“I wouldn’t be where I am if I wasn’t competent. Trust me, Mr. Aguirre, I’ve earned my place.”

“So I’ve heard,” the theocrat answered. His tone was such that it was as cutting a response as an outright denial or dismissal. “Mrs. Wynn, you’re prepared to organize and control things?”

“We’ve already taken steps. You’ll see measurable change in coming weeks.”

“Good. Ms. Kiley, you’re welcome to prove me wrong in my judgment about you. A lot depends on this. We are happy to keep supplying you with everything you could need, we believe in generosity, but it’s contingent on your successes. We know which pies each of you have your fingers in. If one of you succeed, we’ll gladly back you. If both succeed, we’ll back you both. If others step up and prove themselves, we’ll back them.”

“Provided we do well enough at making the most of what you provide.”

“Please don’t disappoint,” the theocrat said. He placed his hand on the paperwork in front of him. “You know what’s on the table.”

Ms. Kiley said, “I don’t think I’m in your good books, Mr. Aguirre, I think I don’t lower myself any further in your eyes by saying this-”

“What you say or don’t say has little to do with what I feel about you, Ms. Kiley. I believe in deeds.”

“-You do not want a war with Gimel. We have so very little to lose, and I can tell you, I know this very well. We have some very awful people at our disposal. You can threaten bombs and armies. We can threaten nightmares come to life and life turned to nightmares.”

“I believe you,” Aguirre said. “I know the kinds of people you interact with, Ms. Kiley. Part of the reason I’m here is that I’ve worked directly with some individuals and situations of that breed, who appeared in Cheit. I wish I could say with confidence that I could make the people I report to believe the same. They would need to see it with their own eyes, and by then it would be too late.”

“That’s possible,” Kiley said.

“I’ve laid out what the people in charge believe. I can report your feelings on this and come back another day, but I don’t think this is liable to change. They want security, you want supply.”

“Succinctly put,” Jeanne said.

“Tell me what you would need, if we were to extend good faith and renew supply for your construction.”

“Construction is stalled. Transportation is stalling. Crime is surging,” Nieves said.

“Which are things we’ll get a handle on,” Jeanne said, tersely. “Yes, please, let’s talk supply. Concrete, lumber, and food, to start with.”

“Let me see, paperwork, papers, thank you, Charles.”

The discussion continued.

Crystalclear held his tongue, but he could see the way the constructions around the other parahumans’ heads were operating, the cracks that were forming and gathering, and the bleeding of the colors. Blue-green tints, for many.

⊙

“They’ve been giving us supply for nothing?” Nieves asked, raising his voice. “You idiots. You’ve profited off of their so-called generosity, but you’ve been selling us out.”

“They were going to look for a foothold, whatever we did,” Jeanne said. “They wanted security, and that wouldn’t change whatever we did. Allowing them to help provided some of that security.”

“It provided them leverage and the impression they have a say in how Gimel is run!”

“They do have a say. They’re our neighbors, and they outnumber us,” Kiley said. She sounded tired.

The theocrats had departed. The people had changed seats, to sit closer together. Jackets had been removed and hung on the backs of chairs, waters and coffees obtained. The discussion continued, on a different front. A scattered, small group of people trying to find a way forward against a very large, united group.

The argument continued, heated, terse. Standing around the edges of the room, the parahumans exchanged looks, then walked over to where the coffee and water was being supplied.

“What do you think?” Weld asked. Narwhal stood beside him.

“Jeanne has been in contact with Cheit for a long time,” Relay said. “Since Gold Morning?”

“Her assistant is a parahuman,” Crystalclear said. “Something about the way his head is put together. Thinker. They may have been communicating, maybe not.”

“Kiley was communicating with people throughout. Earpiece,” Relay said. “You didn’t see?”

“Heads and surrounding objects get murky,” Crystalclear said, his voice quiet.

“We asked you two here for a reason,” Narwhal said. “You have strong backgrounds, and people see you as trustworthy.”

“Foresight is taking on a role as Wardens adjunct,” Weld said. “A… discreet role.”

“You want us to be your watchdogs,” Crystalclear said.

“They’re keeping too close an eye on the Wardens themselves. We could use observers and more covert operatives.”

“Watching them?” Crystalclear asked, tilting his head toward the window. He tilted his head toward the table. “Or watching them?”

“That you asked proves we were right to ask,” Weld said.

Crystalclear bit his tongue. His instinct was to say Weld was wrong. That he was the wrong person. He missed critical things, by consequence of his power being what it was.

He’d joined the NNH to change things, to be a real piece in something greater, rather than a cog in the machine, and that had fallen to pieces.

But by saying all of that that, he would be relegating himself to Big Picture’s small-picture view of the world. Subsisting, looking after refugees, doing small things, instead of what he’d hoped for with the NNH. He would be saying he didn’t have what it took.

“I’m in,” Relay said. “But you already guessed that.”

“Yes,” Narwhal said. “Crystalclear?”

Crystalclear nodded. “I will. One question, though.”

“Ask.”

“If you have us doing this, what do you have Advance Guard and the Attendant doing?”

Glare – 3.1

Cities, like people, got their second chances. Few cities had needed one so badly as this. I was left hoping the other cities were doing better with their second opportunities, because nothing I was seeing was very promising, here.

The four teams under the Wardens’ umbrella, now condensed down to three, were divided into those who wanted to return to the way things had been and those who wanted to forge a new way forward, learning from the mistakes of the past. The appeal of returning to a semblance of what we’d had was clear- we missed the foods, the places, the familiar businesses and media, the familiar faces.

We wanted normal and even now every meal, every soap we used, every piece of clothing, it was a reminder of how far from normal we were. It was different and often less because we had less, and we had less of a footing. I wasn’t the only person who felt their stomach sink when we saw the news two weeks after the broken trigger had decimated the reconstruction workers’ protest, saying that the transportation strike was imminent, and that factory workers were contemplating joining in, an across-the-board attempt to demand stability and structure.

It was important, a line had to be drawn and the endless talks about what our government would look like needed to end, but I still saw the reports and I knew the foods, clothes, and routine I wanted were going to have to wait that much longer.

That was one of the prevailing arguments for normal, for going back. This section of the city, this settlement, was the counterpoint.

Brockton Bay had been a port, growing as the industry did. A lot of what made it work as a fledgling port city made New Brockton work as one of our first footholds in Earth Gimel. Lumber, quarrying, some surface level minerals, and geography protected from the harshest sweeps of cold weather from the north.

The industry had become a prominent part of the city, and then the greater industry had outgrown it. Things had reached the point where it was easier to take one big ship and go to Boston and transport goods from there than to take two smaller ships and go to Brockton Bay, even if Brockton Bay was closer to the goods’ destination. The factories and goods went where the ships went, because it wasn’t sensible to ship raw materials from Boston to Brockton Bay to do manufacturing when Boston could handle it.

New Brockton felt like it sat on that brink between relevance and ruin. As a settlement, it was defined by tall buildings and the edifices of heavy industry. There were ships finding their way past each other on the water and big brick buildings with black plumes of smoke rising from their chimneys. Already back to the ways of an era that predated me, cutting corners to produce more at a cost to tomorrow. It was crowded and bursting at the seams, and it had been for a while now, trying to grow despite the constraints of water and mountain around it.

It didn’t escape me that the settlement continued to chug along while the gears and belts of the greater megalopolis were grinding to a stop under strikes and shutdowns.

I walked, rather than fly, because the directions I’d been given mandated it. I suspected it was intentional. I knew there were eyes on me, I knew who some of those eyes belonged to, and I had strong suspicions about others.

The racist graffiti no longer dominated downtown, though I did see some, with half of it partially painted over or altered. Many of the people who had lived and thrived in Brockton Bay had made their way here, after all. An attempt had been made to use wall space, to give the tenements-and-factories color when mirrored windows on skycrapers didn’t steal it from the sky or water. Murals now decorated many of the walls and building fronts, no doubt an attempt to leave less open wall space for the gang tags and symbols. Animals and symbols of humanity like clasped hands covered residential areas. Green trees, branches, and lush mountains painted almost ironically on the sides of factories and power plants.

There were places that mirrored home, in layout and the buildings that had been placed. The area that had been the Towers at the southwest corner of the city was still the Towers. Downtown was still where Downtown had been. A Lord Street stabbed north-to-south through the settlement. Despite the attempts, it wasn’t home. It came from something different.

Such was the counterpoint: in attempting to paint a picture of home, we might distort or create a caricature of that picture. If we rushed it or forced it, we risked making some of the same fundamental mistakes we’d made before, building on cracked foundations.

Seeing the murals, the directions I’d received started to make sense. The path was byzantine. Go the way the wolf and his cubs are looking. A wolf and three cubs that looked like they were made of white smoke were painted on a concrete wall. They stood facing one way, but their heads were looking back.

Walk beneath the leaping rabbit. A rabbit decorated an arch at the edge of a children’s park. The park felt small and lonely amid larger, taller buildings, partially fenced in, with room for two swings, a slide, a sandbox and one basketball half-court that would have to be vacated if a car came through to use the parking garage or if the dump truck came for the dumpster at the back of a building.

Follow the snake.

If I hadn’t known it was a snake, I might not have realized what it was. It was sectioned off, the skeleton of a winding serpent with each vertebrae several feet from the other. Three white pieces along one wall, a white-painted drain cover, then more segments on the wall opposite.

The painted lines of a crosswalk took me across the street. I followed more segments of the snake to reach one of the larger apartment complexes, four identical L-shaped buildings framing a plaza. The bottom floors of the buildings and the lowest floors along the inside of each ‘L’ had some basic stores.

Two years ago, this would have been one of the nicer areas in Earth Gimel, if a little basic. No-name grocery store, clothing store, and home-goods store. It was dated already, and I could already imagine two years from now, when various murals might be faded or defaced, when the metal chairs and tables would be rusted, the stores closed or forgotten. The snake cut through the plaza, which could have seated two hundred people, but currently had six. Any earlier and there would have been people having a late lunch. Any later and it would be time for an early dinner or an after-work bite to eat.

A tunnel led through the body of one of the apartment buildings, leading from plaza to parking lot. The mural of a cat with its back twisting and arching was painted on the walls and roof. Its paws stuck out and across the footpath firmly pressed down on the snake’s neck.

‘Wait’ was the last instruction.

I checked my phone. One message:

K:
K.

I flicked my thumb, spun up the music player and then fished my earbuds out of the pocket of my jacket. I put only one in, so I could keep one ear out for trouble.

I waited long enough for five songs to start and stop. A pair of people arrived at the plaza, got their food, ate, and left, before anything happened. I wondered more than once if I’d been baited to come here as a way of making me waste time.

“You get fifteen minutes.”

I turned my head in the direction of the parking lot, turning off my music and pulling the ear-bud free. I moved my hand in a circle to catch most of the length of cord in a loop.

Tattletale had reversed her costume colors from black on lavender to a more royal purple on black. The same pattern of lines slashing across her costume remained- horizontal line across the upper chest, vertical line slashing down from that, to form a stylized ‘T’. Another horizontal line jutted out from halfway down, followed by another vertical line piercing that line, a smaller ‘t’ nestled under the right arm of its big brother. She wasn’t the type to get photographed or caught clearly on video, and it was painted in such broad strokes that I suspected many people missed it.

It kind of smacked of narcissism, I felt, to wear one’s initials. The more black costume, at least, looked more distinguished. Her hair needed a bit of combing, like it had been tousled by the wind and it hadn’t been fixed.

She was followed by a flurry of small birds that settled on the street by the exit of the alley, and by one bodyguard. The cape was burly, wearing a skintight suit that showed off his muscles, and wore a heavy cloth hood with eyeholes cut out, a series of ‘x’ stitches forming a frowny-face. The lines around his eyes were cut deep. Very weary. He stood with his hands clasped behind him.

On the other side of the tunnel, one of the men that had been eating in the plaza had approached. He now stood with his back ramrod straight, his hands clasped behind him. Very clean cut, hair short and styled, recently shaved, t-shirt, black slacks, and shiny black shoes.

I knew Tattletale knew how my forcefield worked. If the man had a gun, he was potentially a danger to me.

“I like the cat,” I said, pointing. “Subtle.”

“Fifteen minutes, Vicky,” Tattletale said. “It’s going to be a lot less if you want to make small talk. If this becomes you wagging your finger at me and acting all holier-than-thou, I’m walking. I’m busy these days. The only reason I’m giving you time out of my day is hometown respect.”

I fished in my pocket. I pulled out the paper. “This isn’t because you wanted to talk to me?”

“When you’re positioned like I am, you can’t ever do one thing. That message was intended to do a few things at once.”

“I couldn’t help but notice your use of ‘Glory Hole’. Seemed unnecessarily antagonistic.”

She leaned against the wall by the cat’s head and smiled at me. “One, I’m unnecessarily antagonistic. Two, it serves to let you know who the letter is from, it pushes you off balance if you’re in a position to be easily put off balance, which I would want to know about, and finally, three, if the messenger is the type to ignore my instructions, read the letter and try using that phrasing against you, then they’re liable to get hurt. That makes it clear I’m to be listened to. Cleat isn’t the brightest, and he could stand to learn that lesson.”

“And you wanting to talk to me wasn’t one of your reasons?”

“That’s something else entirely. I offered Hollow Point three asks at a significant discount. Three times they can reach out to me and get info, now that they’ve paid. I did this to get them into my debt, to see if they were intelligent enough to ask good questions, and to get them used to paying me money for intel. If that tide somehow rises, I want my fortunes to rise with it. You turned up, and they wanted to know, were you the first of a larger group of heroes who were going to make a move? Who were you, and what role did you play?”

“And your response was this?”

“Multiple purposes, Vicky. Keep up. If you don’t care enough you decide it’s not worth it and leave. Unlikely. You could get a little upset, and in the doing you reveal what you’re up to. Or you’re invested on some level, and you reach out, and the dialogue is opened. If the dialogue is opened, I’m better equipped to deal with you and to deal with Hollow Point. How the dialogue is opened tells me a lot, too. You could have come charging after me. You didn’t. You asked around for how to contact me, used a liaison, and you respected my direction and my rules in my part of the city.”

My part of the city, I thought. Yeah. Impressions verified – New Brockton had retained many of the problems of its predecessor.

“Cedar Point isn’t yours?” I asked.

She shrugged. “We’ll see what it ends up being. For now, you’ve got people of Cleat’s caliber there.”

“I asked around a bit before leaving.”

“I know.”

“The construction work dried up, people are moving elsewhere. Nothing was drawing people in. Then, in the span of a few days, a large number of people buy apartments, homes, and other properties. Never mind the fact that there isn’t a lot going on there. Now a lot of supervillains are making themselves comfortable, figuring out who’ll work with them and who won’t. Some places and people might be open to them doing business, others are already feeling the pressure to leave, scary people hanging around and intimidating them. People of Cleat’s caliber, maybe, but an awful lot of them.”

“It’s not the only place. It’s the biggest of them,” Tattletale said. “All the itinerant and teamless villains needed to settle somewhere eventually. Hollow Point is just loose enough they won’t necessarily kill each other, but self preservation keeps them together and following some basic rules. Some charisma here and there steers them.”

“New Brockton doesn’t count?” I asked.

“Different thing. Hollow Point is the largest place without a major player heading things. So far. New Brockton obviously has its major players securely in place.”

“And even though that neighborhood isn’t yours and isn’t even close to yours, you want me gone?”

“No,” she said. “You want you gone, if you know what’s good for you. You don’t want to get involved with that. You might make headway, but it won’t last. You’re outnumbered, they’ve got better resources, and if you ever succeed to any measurable degree, they can do things like call in the second of the asks they bought from me. Then they get an answer, and you have a bad day.”

“Alright,” I said. I glanced back. The man standing at the edge of the plaza hadn’t budged. The brute with the bag over his head hadn’t either.

“If it’s not me they ask, then it’s someone else, and you potentially have an even worse day. I know you hate my guts, but the reality is I’m one of the nice ones.”

There were a lot of responses I could give to that. I bit my tongue.

I released my tongue and said, “Hypothetically, if you don’t mind hypotheticals…”

“I’m a great fan of the hypothetical.”

“…If I asked you where you suggested going, if Cedar Point isn’t workable or if it’s untouchable because someone like you is going to step in before any heroes make headway… what places would you suggest? Outside of the established jurisdictions for teams.”

“I wouldn’t suggest anything. It’s a wild west out there and there’s no place for you out there. Not anymore.”

I folded my arms. I’d expected an answer like this.

“The people who win are the people with clout. While you were teaching school kids which direction a gun should point or hauling water out to the refugees still back on Bet, the rest of us were working. I and people like me were getting our hooks in and laying groundwork to build something behind the scenes. Taking over corner worlds, finding footholds in this world, starting up businesses, establishing reputations. The big hero teams have some influence because they’ve been recruiting and they staked out their territory. Hero and villain, we’re the major players, but we operate the same fundamental way. We’re scary. The thinkers, the masters, the masterminds, and the people with the biggest guns.”

“And Cedar Point?”

“Cedar Point, if you want to call it that, and its sister locations are late to the game. They have some clout because they have numbers and a bit of organization, and because they can all scrape together enough money to call in a big gun if they really truly need it. They probably won’t last. Someone nasty will step in and take over what they’re trying to build and it’s probably going to be ugly. The only reason they’ve lasted this long is that the rest of us have bigger fish to fry. They’re still a few rungs up the totem pole above you, mind you.”

“It’s too hard so it’s not worth trying?”

“Go home, Vicky,” she said, almost sighing the words. “Go back, figure out your family thing, keep trying to sign on to one of the big hero teams, you’re bound to find a position somewhere eventually. Some cape will die in battle, and a seat will open up for you and you’ll do fine. Or retire. After what your sister did to you, nobody would blame you.”

I closed my eyes.

“Do what any self-respecting twenty-one year old would do after failing to get into university, get a job waitressing or making hero sandwiches. Talk to your kids about the old Glory days.”

I opened my eyes. “And what happens to Cedar Point, in this hypothetical?”

“I’m talking reality, Vicky. It’s going to be the same thing that was going to happen before the villains turned up, and it’s the same thing that’s going to happen when and if you try and summarily fail to change things there. The area struggles, it withers, it becomes irrelevant. This isn’t your fight, and it’s not what you’re equipped to do. You hit things. You can take a bullet, unless you’re doing something peculiar like keeping your forcefield down while standing between a man with a gun and Snuff here.”

“Heya,” Snuff said, raising a hand.

I didn’t move a muscle, didn’t react. Tattletale smiled.

“I know what you’re doing with your forcefield, Vicky. Just like I did back then. I know why you’re doing it, too. I know you don’t belong in Cedar Point, and I know you’re just going to cause headaches for me and the actual heroes if you try anything. It’s not your skillset, it’s not your powerset.”

I still had the paper in my hand. I tapped it against my upper arm, my arms still folded. “Four years, and you haven’t changed a bit since you raided that bank.”

“When we robbed that bank, I was doing multiple things all at once, laying groundwork for moves I wouldn’t make for weeks and months. If I haven’t changed from that, I think I’m doing okay,” she said.

“Are you, though?” I asked. “Your hair is messy, and you look tired.”

“I’m going to pretend you’re actually asking out of a concern for my well being, because if I didn’t pretend, I’d walk away, and I might even give some free-of-charge advice to those Hollow Point ruffians, telling them how to beat you if they run into you.”

“Entirely out of concern for your well being,” I said, with as little warmth and concern in my voice as I could muster. “Hometown respect, you know.”

“I’m one of the major players now. The other major players call me for a hint when they’re stuck on something. I’m wealthy, well-positioned, and safe. I’m now sharing the love and bringing some of that security, stability, and safety to others, in my very, very roundabout way. It’s part of why I’m having this conversation with you.”

“Sure,” I said. I paused. “Speaking of you showing up, I’m surprised the rest of your old team didn’t turn up too, for old time or camaraderie’s sake.”

She turned. With the way the light came through the tunnel, I could see the eye symbol on her chest in a slightly different shade of purple, hidden where the vertical bar met the horizontal, and the shadows meant I could no longer see her eyes or expression. Maintaining the same tone, she said, “No, you’re not surprised. You know full well they’re well positioned too. They’re doing their own things. They’re still a resource I can and will tap.”

“Gotcha,” I said.

“But I think you were trying to get a jab in, and that’s a good sign this conversation has run its course. I’ll wish you good luck in your endeavors, whether you join a big team or end up making those sandwiches. So long as you stay out of my way.”

“Out of curiosity,” I said. I saw her pause, just as she was about to turn to walk away. I continued, “Do you regret your part in what happened with my sister?”

“Do you?” she asked, without missing a beat.

“Absolutely,” I said, without any more hesitation than she’d shown.

“Be sure to call before you set foot in my neighborhood again. You and your friend have a nice flight home.”

Friend? My first thought was that she meant my autonomous forcefield, that she was personifying it.

Then I realized who she really meant. Just as surprising that she would be aware, but not as alarming.

She hadn’t answered my question, but I hadn’t expected an answer. She and Snuff walked to the parking lot, turning the corner there. Behind me, the gunman was walking back to his table.

My impression was that I was better off heading the way I’d come than I was leaving.

The moment I didn’t have the roof of the tunnel over my head, I took to the air.

I was high enough that I could see the entirety of Tattletale’s realm, and where the city was bleeding into and through the mountains and forest to connect to other areas and the remainder of the megalopolis. I could see the boats on the water, like ants on an anthill, the black smoke, and the patches that gleamed with a forced luster.

It wasn’t home. The worst of the fucking racists were gone, I had to hope, but the rest of the bad stuff seemed to be firmly entrenched in there.

I drew my phone from my pocket. I put the one earbud in, some music to drown out my thoughts while I steadied myself.

Me:
Did you record all of that?

A dark shape flew within a foot of me. For an instant, I thought it might have been one of the small birds that had arrived with Tattletale.

It was a sphere, consisting of several layers like an onion, alternating blue and red. The lens was a white circle, and as it roved, the layers moved to accommodate it looking around. Several fins extended out from the two most external layers, moving independently of one another to correct its position and hold eerily steady in the wind.

“Recorded it all,” the camera said, Kenzie’s voice with some synthesizer mixing things up.

“You got the sound, too?”

“Of course,” she said. “Can I listen to it?”

“No,” I said. “Not yet. Not when Tattletale operates the way she does. I’ve got a long flight back. Any way you can replay the conversation for me so I can listen to it on the way back, and figure out if anything needs redacting?”

“Without listening in?”

“I’d prefer if you listened in with the rest of the group. I’m concerned Tattletale can say something to me that affects one of you. She touched on some personal subjects, and I need to think about how much I’m comfortable sharing.”

“Not a problem. Give me a minute.”

I started my flight home, the camera flying alongside me.

I expected the camera to speak, when Kenzie was ready. I was a little surprised when it came through my ear-bud instead.

⊙

“…you’re bound to find a position somewhere eventually. Some cape will die in battle, and a seat will open up for you and you’ll do fine. Or retire. After what your sister did to you, nobody would blame you.”

I was still, listening to this. The others, Rain excepted, were gathered around the table. The library had picnic tables and benches strewn around, and some patio chairs for reading outdoors when the weather was good. They had arranged themselves on a mixture of seats, with Ashley standing. Kenzie’s laptop was sitting on a patio table, with Rain watching in through a halting, low-res webcam.

I’d been periodically pausing the conversation, to fill in gaps with basic knowledge and context, but I left things alone for this one.

“Do what any self-respecting twenty-one year old would do after failing to get into university, get a job waitressing or making hero sandwiches. Talk to your kids about the old Glory days.”

“Pause,” I said.

The recording paused.

“It took her a little while to get around to it, but it’s worth stressing that this is who she is. I thought about redacting these parts, but I think it’s important you know. The PRT thought she had the ability to sense weak points, primarily psychological ones. I agree with that assessment.”

“Your sister is Panacea, right?” Chris asked.

I tensed a bit.

“Chris,” Sveta said. “I think Victoria would prefer it if we glossed over that part.”

“It’s for context. Like she just said, it stresses who Tattletale is.”

“She was a healer,” I said. “Tattletale’s words caught her in a bad way at a bad time. Two months later, she had a mental breakdown. In part because of what Tattletale said. She put me in the hospital. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Resume recording,” Kenzie said.

“And what happens to Cedar Point, in this hypothetical?”

“Pause,” I said. “She likes to act like she knows what’s going to happen, but it’s worth saying she can be surprised. She was surprised at the bank. She and her team pulled it off regardless, but… she was surprised by my arrival, and by my sister being there.”

“Worth keeping in mind,” Tristan said. “If we wind up fighting her.”

“I’m giving you all the info I can, so you can make an informed decision,” I said. “Resume.”

“-The area struggles, it withers, it becomes irrelevant. This isn’t your fight, and it’s not what you’re equipped to do. You hit things. You-”

Kenzie’s voice chimed in with a cheerful, synthesized, “Redacted!”

“Pause. Redacted because it’s a weak point,” I said. “Power-related.”

“I think I know,” Sveta said. “If this makes you doubt Victoria at all, I hope me vouching for her helps.”

“It helps,” Kenzie said. “Not that I was doubting her.”

“Resume,” I said.

“-I know you don’t belong in Cedar Point, and I know you’re just going to cause headaches for me and the actual heroes if you try anything. It’s not your skillset, it’s not your powerset.”

There was a small chime as a message appeared in the corner of the laptop. The recording paused in response to the message appearing.

Rain: Is it ours?

“That’s a conversation I want to have shortly,” I said. “Powers.”

“I’m looking forward to this,” Chris said.

Behind him, pacing a little, Ashley smiled.

Right.

“Resume,” I said.

“Redacted, redacted,” Kenzie’s synthesized voice played. Then Tattletale’s voice came up again. “I’m one of the major players now. The other major players call me for a hint when they’re stuck on something. I’m wealthy, well-positioned, and safe. I’m now sharing the love and bringing some of that security, stability, and safety to others, in my very, very roundabout way. It’s part of why I’m having this conversation with you.”

“Stop,” I said. The recording paused, and Kenzie hit a keyboard shortcut to close the window. “Everything that followed was small talk, some threats from her, and stuff about my sister I don’t want to get into. That’s Tattletale. That’s how she sees the world. I do believe her when she says there’s no good way to break into this scene. There are a lot of people who want to hold their positions and the power they’ve taken for themselves, and when you’ve cornered them, they’re going to call people like Tattletale for backup.”

“Or worse,” Ashley said. That was apparently what she’d fixated on, during the earlier part of the conversation.

“Or worse. People who are good at the roles they’ve taken on, well-proven by years of experience, people who can and will casually destroy you.”

“No matter what we do,” Sveta said, “We’re going to run into trouble. So we do nothing or we plan for it.”

“We plan for it,” Tristan said. “Ashley and I were talking about this. Something that might fit our niche, and gives key members of our team what they’re looking for.”

He looked at Kenzie as he said the last bit, and Kenzie visibly perked up.

“You have a game plan?” I asked.

“The start of one,” Tristan said. “Maybe.”

I thought about that for a moment. The others exchanged a few words, and a chime signaled Rain’s comment for the convo – he and Tristan had apparently exchanged some messages about the plan.

“Did you guys bring costume stuff?” I asked, when there was an opening. “Those of you that have it?”

That got me confirmation from about half of the group.

“I have spare, basic masks for those that need them,” I said. “I also have the start of my team outline written up on my laptop. What do you guys say we move to an area with some elbow room, you can show me enough of your powers that I know what to put in the document, and we talk about what you’ve got in mind?”

It might as well have been a rhetorical question. None of them were about to say no to that.

Glare – 3.2

“Hey, Victoria, you’re strong right?” Kenzie asked.

“Kind of,” I said. “I’d be worried about breaking whatever it is I’m handling.”

“It’s pretty durable.”

I thought about my forcefield. “I totaled the last car I lifted.”

“I brought things, and I thought maybe Chris could lift some or Tristan could, but Tristan doesn’t think he’s strong enough and Chris doesn’t want to.”

She turned stick out her tongue at Chris.

“Limited duration,” Chris said.

“I can take a look, where is this?” I asked Kenzie.

“At the street. Black van. I’ll show you.”

“Yeah, that’d help. I’ll probably have questions.”

I turned to the others, pointing at the treeline. “If you guys want to head over that way, stop at the rocky outcropping on the hill. We’ll meet you there.”

Kenzie walked with me. She was wearing black overalls and a pink tank top, a red apple clip in her hair, and red sneakers. Her hair was in much the same style as before, but the buns were set higher.

I paid more attention to her fashion choice because so much about it seemed deliberate, from color scheme to running theme. During the last meeting it had been a star on her dress, partially on her shirt, and in her hair.

“My dad gave me a ride today, because he needs to buy a suit and more work clothes,” Kenzie said. “Please don’t judge me too harshly if he acts really lame.”

“I won’t,” I said. “You said Tristan and Chris could have helped. Tristan has increased strength?”

“Just a little. Very very little.”

“I guess we’ll find out soon.”

“Sveta could have helped too, we think, she’s really strong if she uses her real body, but it would have meant dragging it and that would have hurt the grass.”

“How big is this thing?”

“I’ll show you,” she said. She sprinted the last little way to the sleek van that was parked on the street in front of the library, hopping up to the passenger side window, clinging to the bottom edge of the open window so she could stick her head in. The back door of the van popped open, and Kenzie’s father stepped out, walking around the van to the sidewalk.

He was almost as meticulous in appearance as Kenzie. He was very lean, with pronounced cheekbones and a long face that was made to look longer by the goatee that extended an inch from his chin. He wore a short-sleeved work shirt with a pinstripe pattern on it, and slim jeans that looked like they had cost a pretty penny. Shoes, belt, and watch, all expensive-looking.

The beard and his longer hair weren’t as tidy as Kenzie was, but I was hardly about to judge, given how it was probably a day off for him and he was sitting in the sun.

“Dad, this is Victoria. She’s the coach I was talking about. Victoria, this is my dad.”

“Hi, Mr…” I extended a hand.

“Julien Martin,” he said. He shook my hand. Both handshake and his tone were stiff, but it was a different kind of stiffness than I was used to seeing in Dean’s family. I was well aware of how easily I’d slotted him onto that same mental shelf.

“You can call him Julien,” Kenzie said.

“Nice to meet you. What do you do?”

“Realty.”

“Dad only got into realty a year and a half ago, but he’s really good at both the buying and selling sides of things. I don’t really get it all, but his boss seemed pretty happy with him. You got a promotion, right?”

“I did.”

“He’s doing it ethically, too, which is so important, with so many shady people out there.”

“I’m trying,” he said.

“I can respect that,” I said. “Thanks for bringing Kenzie out this far, and for bringing her stuff.”

Kenzie rolled her eyes. “We should go take a look so we don’t keep the others waiting.”

Julien followed us around to the back of the van, standing back while we opened the doors. A black box that was a bit larger than a washing machine was sitting in there, strapped down ten ways from Sunday, to keep it from sliding around when the vehicle moved. More boxes were sitting at either side of the van, with straps to keep them flush against the wall, but they weren’t any larger than a backpack or suitcase.

“We got the van because some of my stuff is hard to move,” Kenzie said.

“Okay,” I said. The box had a metal frame around the edges, with a crossbar running diagonally along each face. “What do I need to know?”

“Pick it up and move it.”

“It’s tinkertech, right?”

“It is.”

“Is there a chance of a misfire if it’s moved in the wrong way, if something’s crushed or broken?”

“No.”

“Will I hurt anything if it’s turned on its side?”

“No,” Kenzie said. “Hm. It’s best if you don’t turn it upside down.”

“Where should I grab it, to best carry it?”

“Geeez,” Kenzie said. “It’s not going to blow up or anything. Or if it did, it wouldn’t be a big enough explosion to hurt anyone. Not unless very specific conditions were met.”

“Right,” I said. I had an issue with my power, where I wasn’t sure I trusted the forcefield to simply hold the box and not crush or dig into it. It was only about a minute of flying to get to where I wanted to go, but even if everything went according to plan, I was worried that handling the box for more than a couple of seconds would leave handprints or gouges in it.

While I investigated, Kenzie climbed in beside me, peering at the box and watching me.

“Give me some space?” I asked.

Kenzie grabbed some smaller things on her way out.

It took a few minutes, but I unclipped the straps that were securing the box in place, and laid them across the ground. I lifted the box, and set it down on the straps. I connected them, wrapping them around the box, then slid it around so I could reach the ones at the back. There was a ramp built into the truck, and I could see where the box could slide along the tracks, but it seemed like more of a hassle to use the ramp and unload that way.

“How dangerous is this team business going to be?” Julien asked, behind me.

“Dad,” Kenzie protested. “Don’t embarrass me.”

“If I thought it was going to be a serious danger, I wouldn’t be helping,” I said, still working on the straps. “But I can’t guarantee anything.”

I fastened the straps, then hauled the entire thing out, forcefield up, gripping the box. It thudded against the street. Dense.

“Is it a problem?” I asked Julien.

“It’s not a problem,” Kenzie said, firm. “I can handle myself. I’ve trained more than a lot of heroes, because I did a year going to all the practice events and stuff.”

“I’m more interested in what your dad has to say. I don’t want to step on toes, and your parents get the last word.”

“It’s fine,” Julien said. “If it wasn’t this, she would be doing something else. I prefer this team idea.”

“You should,” Kenzie huffed.

“Do you need to be picked up?”

“Yes, please. In…?” Kenzie looked at me.

“Two hours?” I asked. “Is that okay?”

“It’s fine,” her dad said. He still had that tone, which came across curt, inflexible. I had a hard time imagining him as a salesman. Accountant, maybe.

“Before you do anything, can you go to the train station? Rain had to take the train and he’s running late. Bring him here?” Kenzie asked.

Her dad frowned.

“Please,” Kenzie said.

“Where am I going?” he asked.

“Give me your phone, I’ll put it in there.”

While they fussed, I checked and fixed the remainder of the straps.

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

The straps served to let me hold the box without actually holding it. I flew, holding the length of straps that I’d wound together and attached at the tail end. The box made for unwieldy flying, swinging below me.

Could the forcefield potentially claw through them? Yes. I hoped I’d be able to see it before it managed to succeed.

I flew in the direction I’d sent the others, leaving Kenzie behind.

My phantom self gripped the length of straps, scratched, squeezed, and twisted it, periodically making the ten foot length of cords bend in unusual shapes.

I hadn’t interacted with it much. I hadn’t seen the limits of its intelligence or lack thereof. This one minute of flying might have even been the longest period I’d properly used my strength in two years.

I sighted the others, sitting on the rocks and talking. I dropped low, and I set the box down on the ground. Even with the care I was taking, it made a noise on landing.

“Wow,” Tristan said. “How heavy is that thing?”

“No idea,” I said. “If I had to guess, maybe three hundred and fifty pounds?”

“I can see why she has a hard time moving those things around.”

“She described them as being bigger,” Chris said. “Others, I think. I think they start at that size and get larger.”

“Did her dad leave?” Sveta asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “They’re figuring out logistics. He’s going to go pick up Rain at the station. Be right back.”

I flew over to where Kenzie and her dad were. Kenzie’s dad was in the driver’s seat, and Kenzie was closing the rear doors. A series of bags and boxes were unloaded, all packed together.

As I landed, her dad pulled away. Kenzie raised a hand in a wave.

I was aware of the lack of a wave in response. From the way she lowered her hand and glanced at me, Kenzie was too.

“Want to fly over?” I asked.

Her eyes lit up with excitement as she nodded.

There were very few people in the world who didn’t like flying.

It was, in a way, almost as much of a pain to bring Kenzie, two cases and two boxes without my strength active, as it had been to move the one cube. I ended up lifting her by the straps at the back of her overalls, my hand also wrapped around the strap of one bag, while Kenzie held other things.

We arrived at the hill with the rocks. There was light overgrowth, a fairly loose distribution of trees for the fact that it was untamed wilderness, and thick grass. A surveying team had passed through at one point, and they had disturbed earth here and there, felled a few trees, and spray painted the face of one of the larger rocks before leaving.

A bit of a shame, but I could understand the need for a quick and easy label. No minerals or stone of any particular value here.

Chris, wearing his headphones again, was wearing what looked like the same shorts as he had worn at the meeting, and a different t-shirt. He was examining the box, while keeping at least two feet away from it at all times. He had a bag with him, a travelers’ backpack that was packed full, but he’d put it down.

“You don’t have to keep your distance,” Kenzie said. “It’s not dangerous.”

“It’s tinkertech. It’s science that gets at least some of its functionality from interdimensional fuckery, built by cooperation between you and the unfathomable, menacing thing that chose you as its host.”

“It’s a camera, Chris. It records and projects.”

“It’s a camera built with collaboration between you and a unknowable, violence-driven multiversal horror.”

“My multiversal horror is pretty tame, I think. She just likes to build things and gather information,” Kenzie pressed buttons on the side of the box. A triangle between reinforcing bars lit up.

A hologram appeared a number of feet away. A potbellied rat with a crooked nose.

“…And you’re using it to make cartoons,” Chris said.

“Plump Rat King,” Sveta said. “Some of the kids at the hospital liked that one.”

“It’s okay,” Kenzie said. “Only the first season was really any good.”

“What’s it good for?” Ashley asked. She was taking things a step further than Chris’ wearing of the same shorts. She wore the same dress she had worn at the meeting, the damage at the corner mended imperfectly. One of the straps, I realized, had been damaged and patched, but her hair masked much of it. She had a black mask in her hand, but she hadn’t put it on.

“Stuff. Loads of stuff. I’ll show you some later,” Kenzie said. She started opening boxes.

Tristan, much like Kenzie, was unpacking a bag. His costume was armor. It struck a balance between function and appearance, but it looked like it was a pretty good quality. Each segment was framed with goat’s heads and horns, spirals and ridges. Where it wasn’t brushed metal, things were painted or tinted red or light red. He saw me looking and smiled.

“Byron is the fish theme, then?” I asked.

“Water as much as fish. Yeah,” Tristan said.

“You have some kind of superstrength, right?”

“A very small amount. Helps when you’re wearing armor as heavy as this, or when you’re using a power that can make heavy things.”

“Seems like a good place to get us started,” I said.

Tristan turned around, seating himself firmly on the sloped ground, his armor partially unpacked and arranged beside him. Some bits were already fastened into place on his arms and legs, over a bodysuit that seemed designed to go between him and his armor.

He held up his hand, and produced three motes of orange-red light. As each one moved through the air, it left a trail behind it, like the afterimage of a sparkler waved through the darkness. They traced a circle and as the moving points of light connected to the end of each trail, a shape came to life. A discus, with a slight peak on one side.

I extended a hand, and he passed it to me.

Dense, heavy, very solid. Matter creation.

“You can throw it,” he said.

I threw it. It wasn’t as aerodynamic as a frisbee, but it did catch the air. It wobbled mid-flight and veered off course, crashing into a tree before disappearing into a patch of grass.

Tristan was already making something else. Twelve or more motes of light traced the shape. “Requires a bit of concentration, I can rush it or force it to come into being early, but you get weirdness like… this.”

It materialized. A hammer or a mace, long-handled. The weirdness was in how the shape finalized its form, drawing pretty creative curves and hooks. Spikes, horns, thorns, and other slightly curved growths stood out. It looked unbalanced.

“Are they permanent?” I asked.

“They can be. Depends if I keep the sparks alive or not. I can create a lot of sparks, but it requires more time, more concentration.”

“What’s the difference between keeping it alive or not?” I asked.

“Ah,” he said. He pushed himself to his feet, shifting his footing to make sure he wouldn’t slide down the hill. He held out the mace, and started to form the motes for another. He rushed this one even more than he had the last. The shape was more unwieldy, less balanced. “Byron, you want to help with demonstrations today, or do you want to be left alone?”

Tristan blurred, features distorting, his eyes flaring with the same light as the sparks had. The light turned blue, and then he was Byron, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans.

One of the two maces exploded into a spray of water. Sveta made a noise of surprise, and Chris, still mostly fixated on examining Kenzie’s cube, jumped back from the cube in surprise.

Byron turned his head so the backspray hit him in the side of the face, rather than right in the center of it. He dropped the still-intact mace he held with his other hand.

“Hi Byron,” Kenzie said.

“Hi,” I added my greeting to Kenzie’s. “We haven’t formally met.”

“We haven’t. I got the basics,” he said.

“So I gathered.”

“This is a terrible idea,” he said. “Tristan being involved, this team concept, the potential for disaster, and this thing with Tattletale?”

“I don’t see anyone changing their mind. Mrs. Yamada couldn’t convince them, I don’t think I can. If they’re going to do this or something like this, isn’t it better that they do it smart and informed?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But if you’re enabling them, you should know you own a share of what happens.”

“I don’t think that’s fair,” Sveta said.

“It might be fair,” I said.

“My voice doesn’t matter either. I tried, nobody listens. Maybe I own a bit of what happens for not trying harder to stop Tristan from going forward with this.”

“You sound pretty certain something bad is going to happen.”

“I was there for all the therapy sessions, even if I didn’t participate,” he said. He looked at the others. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to say anything. But I am going to say, again, this is a trainwreck waiting to happen.”

“We got it,” Chris said. “Saying it over and over doesn’t change anything.”

“Be kind, Chris,” Sveta said. “There’s a lot playing into Byron’s concerns.”

Byron shook his head. He glanced at me.

“You need anything, while we’re talking?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. Um. You seem alright, so… be safe. Be wary. And for the record, since you’re going to ask…”

He showed me his power. Motes of light, like Tristan’s, blue. He drew them in the air, two expanding, abstract shapes, not closed like Tristan’s had been. He positioned them so there was one on either side of him, then clenched his fist. The lines that were drawn became water, buckets worth, spraying out in the direction the lines had been drawn. He had drawn them out as expanding spirals, and the resulting water flew out in circular sprays.

“You can use me if you need to clean up, Tristan,” Byron said. “I’ll do the quick swaps if you need them.”

The water was still spraying when Byron blurred, features distorting and smearing together, the two lighted eyes peering through the shadows between folds and smears, going from blue to orange-red.

One of the sprays of water lost all of its oomph, the remaining water striking the ground to flow through grass and between rocks. The other diagram became a solid object, a wheel spikier and cruder than what Tristan had made. It hit the ground and stuck there.

The water that Byron’s power had produced rained down on us for several seconds.

“It’s not going to hurt the box?” Chris asked.

“Nope,” Kenzie said. “Waterproofed just in case Byron visited. It was good to see you, Byron, by the way. I hope to prove you wrong.”

“Yeah,” Sveta said. “That’s a good way of putting it, Kenzie.”

Tristan’s face was at an angle that saw him looking down at the ground. At first I thought he was trying to keep the water out of his face. Then, as he changed the angle of his head a little, I saw his face.

“For the record,” Tristan said, “If it’s my two hours and I ask you a question and then pass the baton, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t take up extra time and use it to try and sabotage me.”

“I did say hi to him,” I said.

Tristan shrugged. “He didn’t have to say all that. He’s quick to say there’s a problem but he doesn’t suggest alternatives. He whines about the circumstances but he won’t attend the therapy and he doesn’t want to work on figuring out better courses of action. It pisses me off sometimes, especially when he elbows into my time to make what I’m trying to accomplish harder.”

His tone was hard. Pissed off seemed like an apt description. I’d seen Tristan, casual and smiling some before he’d changed, and now this felt like a complete, sudden shift.

It was easy to forget that he was in there while Byron was out here, feeling things, thinking, his mood changing during that short conversation.

I could see the expressions of others. The sympathy on Sveta’s face, the tilt of Chris’ head.

Ashley looked especially focused and attentive, her pacing around the hill having come to a stop. One of her hands was at her hair, pushing it back out of her face, the water helping it stay there.

“It seems like hard feelings are inevitable,” I said.

“Yeah,” Tristan said. He looked away. “I can keep my shapes ‘alive’. If they’re still alive when I change, they become water. If they aren’t, they’re there to stay. Same for Byron’s water. It’s effective if he makes water, sloshes it over someone, and then changes, to make it solid. We’ve tagged a good dozen villains that way.”

“A dozen is a really good number for a teenage hero.”

“Yeah,” Tristan said.

“You’re pretty lucky, getting a name that fitting for a power like that.”

“Constellations forming rock and water?” Tristan asked. He snorted air through his nostrils. “Want to know the hilarious thing?”

“I do,” I said. I wasn’t sure whatever he was going to say was ‘hilarious’, given his tone, but I’d hoped today would be a lighter endeavor, and any humor would help.

“We weren’t even rock and water, originally. Reach bought the name from the last Capricorn. She got wounded in battle and she retired. Win-win. We got settled into the role, got our name, our armor, our brand, and… power changed to match.”

“That’s really interesting,” I said. “There’s a lot of potential there.”

“There is. Absolutely. And not all of it’s good,” Tristan said.

“But some of it is,” Sveta said.

“Some of it is, yeah,” Tristan said. He offered her a small smile.

I could see the concerted effort he was making to pull out of the funk. A few words from his brother and he was upset enough that it showed in his tone and the direction of what he was talking about.

Tricky, that kind of negativity sitting just under the surface.

“Sveta,” I said. Change of topic. “I’m guessing you’ve worked on control enough that you feel okay letting loose in limited ways?”

“Kind of,” she said. “I don’t want to go all-out in a combat situation. I don’t want to do anything that would risk people getting hurt.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I figured I would mostly stay in the suit. I can do this…”

She didn’t touch or move anything external, but the joints of her elbow shifted, and the forearm and hand dropped. Ten or so tendrils extended between elbow and forearm, like a muscle with gaps between strands.

She moved it, tendrils bending, flinging her hand and the attached segment of arm out fifty feet. She tried to grab a branch, missed it, grabbed another, and seized it, before pulling her body to follow. I saw her turn her head away as she pulled herself through the intervening twigs and leaves.

She twisted around, pointed a hand, and used tendrils to push her fist out.

She seized the wheel that Byron had left embedded in the earth, and pulled herself to it.

There was a bit of gracelessness to the landing, her pants leg and the side of her body rubbing against the grass, a few clumps of earth flying, but it served to put her in our midst again. She wobbled as she stood and Tristan and I caught her between us.

She made a small ‘phew’ sound.

“You’re made of grappling hooks, basically,” Chris said. Kenzie, sitting on her box, stuck out her toe to jab Chris in the shoulder.

“I can get things for my body. Weld and I were talking about getting a second body for cape things. If I had hooks I could unfold I could more reliably grab things. And I’ll get better with practice,” Sveta said. “And I really want extra shielding for my joints because they’re the easiest part to break, and I don’t want to have to send it out to be repaired and be unable to walk or do things in the meantime.”

“What happens if the suit gets broken?” I asked. “As in broken enough that it doesn’t keep you contained?”

“Um. I have a collapsed hamster ball in here. I can spit it out, unfold it, shove myself in there and bring the lid behind me. It’s a bit cramped, it’s not the biggest, and it might not always work, but I’ve also been working hard at keeping myself under control.”

I suppressed a wince. Sveta had worked hard for as long as I’d known her, and I knew that the anxiety was tied into the lack of control in a feedback loop, and that her being so much more confident and happy would mean she had more control, but all it took was one bad incident.

“Workable,” I said. “We’d have to be really, really careful.”

“Absolutely,” she said, with dead seriousness. “The way I see it, my body is pretty hardy. To break containment, it would take something that would maim an ordinary person.”

“Yeah,” I said. But if they think you’re durable, they might not hold back.

We’d address that when it came to it.

“Alright,” I said. “So, my line of thinking was that instead of explaining, we’d do a little bit of a team exercise.”

I heard a faint groan from Chris.

“It should be fun, and it should be relatively low-key,” I said. “We split everyone into teams of three, and we play a small game of capture the flag, here.”

“See, that’s playing dirty,” Tristan said. “You’re playing into my love for competition, here.”

“It’s fun,” Kenzie said. “I really like this.”

It seemed Kenzie could be counted on to be positive. I said, “I’m hoping it’s fun. Does anyone else need to explain their powers or cover anything before we get into it? I know what Ashley can do, unless something’s changed.”

Ashley shook her head.

“We’ll see you in action when we have our competition, then. That leaves Chris and Kenzie, kind of.”

“I’ve got some things,” Kenzie said. She opened a case. “Two of these things I had as just-in-case things when I was a Ward. I got them fixed up recently, and I even made an improvement. Eye hook-”

She pulled out a coil of metal. She stuck it on the corner of her cube, then held her phone in one hand, moving her thumb around. The coil unfurled, prehensile, and its tip unfolded from its teardrop shape. Three claws, extending from around a circular lens with a pupil. Kenzie moved her head and body in time with the movements of the thing.

The thing moved closer to me, until it was two feet from my face, the three claw-blades opening and closing a little. It blinked at me, shutter closing momentarily.

“It was made to look through vents, to start with. it’s delicate enough it can turn screws and drill holes, and I can swap out the lens for others. And I’ve got this flash gun too.”

She held up something that looked like a child’s toy, squat, blunt, with a lens on the front.

“It’s for when I had to get closer to the scene when I was with the Baltimore Wards. They wanted me to be able to protect myself and they wanted nonlethal.”

“What does it do?” I asked.

“Makes light,” she said. She aimed it off to the side and pulled the trigger.

It looked and sounded like a camera flash going off.

“And the other stuff?”

“Mask with a few settings,” Kenzie said. She pulled out a high-tech mask, metal around the edges to give a general circular shape to the clear pane for her face, but she didn’t put it on. She held up a disc, then clipped it to the front of her overalls, so it was directly over the pocket at her chest. “This is kind of a costume thing I haven’t finalized.”

“Good,” I said. “Great.”

“I transform,” Chris said. “Changer.”

I made a motion for him to continue.

He sounded aggrieved, like it was my fault he had to explain at all, “I don’t know what else you want. I have a few different forms. They’re inspired by my moods and mental states.”

“You give them names based on what mood or state they’re from,” Kenzie said. “Like Creeping Anxiety and Wistful Distraction.”

“Yeah,” Chris said. “Look, the rest of you know. Explain. I’m going to go change.”

He grabbed his bag and hefted it over one shoulder, then began trudging uphill.

“These forms reflect the feelings?” I asked.

“Very much so,” Sveta said.

“It sounds like he has more than a few forms,” I said.

“Eight or more, as far as I’ve counted,” Kenzie said. “He said a few, but I think he loses track. There’s wiggle room in each form, too. It depends on a lot of factors. Diet, time since he last used a form, if he pushes for something in the middle.”

“He’s strong,” Ashley said.

“He might be,” Tristan said.

Kenzie continued to volunteer information. “The forms tend to come with pretty heavy weakness. Anxiety is quick but fragile. That sort of thing.”

“I think I get it,” I said. “Can I ask why he’s in the group?”

“The drawbacks,” Tristan said.

“The fragility isn’t a drawback?” I asked.

“It’s one. He doesn’t change all the way back.”

“What?” I asked.

Tristan explained, “He changes to one, he gets a little taller, a little stronger, a little more sluggish. He changes to another, gets better eyes, ears…”

“Thus the headphones,” Kenzie said.

“…and less responsive in hand-eye coordination to go with it. He tries to balance, but lately it’s been getting worse.”

“What happens if he doesn’t change?”

“The body stays the same,” Sveta said. “He doesn’t change physically.”

“Which is good.”

“But he doesn’t change mentally either. He says he can’t tap those emotions he’s not using, he can’t think as clearly, his thoughts go in circles.”

“Lose-lose,” I said.

“Something like that,” Ashley said.

I could hear Chris’ approach, now. The sound of branches breaking underfoot, the rustling of under- and over-growth.

He’d grown. He’d shucked off his clothes and he’d donned what looked like an oversized pair of shorts in a coarse cloth. They had to have taken up most of the bag’s space. He was twelve feet tall, with skewed proportions. Large legs, large around the middle, large hands, all with coarse hair. His shoulders seemed somewhat narrow, his neck long, his head only a little larger than normal, with faintly pronounced tusks. His hair, wild before, was just a bit longer than it had been.

“He chose one of the more pleasant looking forms,” Kenzie said, cheerful. She grabbed her stuff.

How in the fuck was I supposed to make someone like Chris marketable? How was I supposed to wrangle Ashley or handle Tristan’s issue?

“Twenty minutes,” Tristan said. “Then he changes back. We should hurry.”

Capture the flag. Right. A part of me wished I hadn’t brought it up. I could have left things at this, with powers explained and demonstrated in brief, and then I could have taken a few days to think.

I needed a few days to think, so feelings wouldn’t be hurt, damage wouldn’t be done.

I didn’t have it. I’d lose too much stock with these guys if I changed my mind. Chris and Ashley especially.

“Who wants to be team leaders?” I asked.

Tristan raised one hand. Ashley raised another.

“Ashley, you want to pick first?” I asked.

“Kenzie.”

“Woo!” Kenzie cheered.

“Sveta,” Tristan said. “You’d be my second pick, after Rain. Weld fan club.”

“Chris,” Ashley said. She pulled on her mask. It was v-shaped, covering the nose, ears, and eyes, leaving just a hint of her eyebrows visible above.

“You guys set up over there, opposite side of the hill, then,” I said. Ashley and the two youngest members of the team.

“You’re filling in for Rain?” Tristan asked me.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m mostly interested in seeing how you guys operate, so I’ll mostly stick to playing defense and keeping an eye on things.”

“Alright. I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” he said.

I wasn’t so sure. I could see the way he set his jaw, before he pulled his horned helmet on. I had an idea of his disposition already. I could see the look of Ashley’s eyes behind her mask, too. She wanted to be leader, by the looks of things, and that meant she had something to prove. I saw Chris as the giant, properly smiling for the first time since I’d met him, as he looked back over one shoulder, lumbering away. It made me more concerned, rather than less.

Sveta took my hand, squeezing it. Off to the side, Tristan was drawing something out of motes of light, ten feet tall and twenty feet wide. A wall.

I’d wanted to test them, to see how they functioned as discrete units, and possibly to highlight difficulties.

The more I saw, the less sure I was that these guys were equipped to handle even a friendly contest. There were so many messy parts to this. Above all else, the ones with the power seemed least suited to wield it.

“Believe in us,” Sveta said, her voice soft.

I wanted to. I really did.

“I think,” I said, and I said it to Tristan, “You should take this opportunity to explain your game plan.”

Glare – 3.3

“You want a game plan?” Tristan said. “Do you mean for here or for the big picture?”

I was thinking big picture, I thought, I have doubts right now and a plan would help.

Without voicing that, I said, “Here, but I’m open to hearing about either. If you have something in mind.”

“I want to wait on the big picture stuff so we can include Rain into the discussion. He and I chat regularly, and he’s heard some, but Ashley and I were talking while we waited for you and there’s bits to discuss. Comfort levels.”

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll focus on this for now.”

“I’m in charge, then?” Tristan asked.

“If Sveta is okay with it, you can give it a shot.”

“I’m okay with it,” Sveta said.

He made a small amused sound, his face obscured by his helmet, his hands busy adjusting the fit of his armor as he paced. “There was a time I thought I might end up being in charge of Reach. Things fell through before then. I don’t know if my current mindset works for it, but let’s give this a try.”

I had my own bag, which I’d brought with me. My computer, masks, and the flags, one red and one blue. I fished out the flags, holding both in one hand, and put on one of the masks.

“Victoria, you and I are on defense, then,” he said. “Ashley is going to go hard offense, that’s who she is, and I don’t see Chris holding back. Sveta, you’re going on the attack. You loop around, go the long way if you have to. You might have to dodge Kenzie, but I think you can manage that okay. It’s only her hook thing and flash gun.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Sveta said.

“Alright,” I said.

“I think the benefit here is that we all have some experience,” he said.

“Kind of,” Sveta said.

“They’re young. Ashley too, in a weird way. They’re led by Ashley and we know how she thinks. I can put my confidence in you, Sveta, if you’re going for their flag.”

“I hope I deserve it.”

“I’m confident in myself and my ability to hold up against a two-person rush, assuming that’s what they do, and I know you’ve got a background, Victoria.”

“Yeah. Confidence goes before the fall, though. I think one of the things I regret most in the past is my overconfidence.”

“This is just an exercise. If I’m wrong on this, I’ll own it. Let me plant our flag and get my stuff to adjust my armor, I’ll be right with you.”

As he said it, another wall materialized behind us. A fort with ten foot walls was slowly forming. Tristan wasn’t even focusing that much on the construction, attention-wise. He took the flag before walking off.

I had intentionally chosen a less level area. We were on a hill, playing on a bit of a slope, roughly a ten degree decline with taller grass, weeds, and some pebbly dirt covering the area. Some trees and rocks dotted the space between where their group would set up and where we would.

I had a few reasons for choosing the area. Part of it played off something I had experienced with New Wave. The team had always been split between the fliers and the people on the ground. Me, Aunt Sarah, Crystal and Eric had all been airborne, while my Uncle Neil, Mom, and Dad had all been landbound. It created a dilemma in logistics, and this slightly sloped ground and uneven terrain emphasized that logistics in a way that having to go through and around buildings might in the city.

Sveta functionally had a mover ability, I wasn’t sure about Chris’ capabilities, and Damsel and Rain both had some capabilities in that realm. Supposedly. I wanted to see how the more mobile members of the group worked in coordination with the others.

It was interesting that Tristan had picked both Sveta and me. We were both mobile and Tristan wasn’t. Ashley’s team had three people on foot.

Another reason for this particular location was Rain’s power. It helped him keep his balance, and that was supposedly the extent of it. When he arrived, I wanted to see if it factored in here.

Finally, there was the fact that it put us out of the way. No bystanders, no property to damage.

Kenzie had her head down, her attention on her phone. Ashley and Chris were both smiling. All three were talking. I waited a short bit for them to finish.

“I’m so unbelievably nervous,” Sveta said.

I glanced at her, and confirmed that Tristan had stepped away, rummaging in his bag. He was out of earshot.

“I definitely hear you on that,” I said.

“I really want this exercise to work somehow, like Tristan said, but for different reasons. The way you were brought in, you might have come in looking for the bad, and it’s… it’s not all bad. Really. I always wanted a team and the idea of finding one and fitting myself to that team with all of my problems, it seemed impossible or far away.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You talked about it in the hospital. That you’d talked to Mrs. Yamada and other people about how, putting aside all your issues, you wanted to be a hero.”

“And I wanted a boyfriend, and I wanted to be functional again, and I wanted friends,” she said, staring off at the other three. “And I have almost all of it, but I feel like it could slip out of my grasp if things go wrong. If this goes wrong. I don’t know what I can do if that happens. I’m worried this is going to be a disaster, and that’s making me so anxious.”

“What can I do?” I asked. “I don’t want you to be unhappy.”

“Like I said before, I really want you to believe in us here. I want you to give us a chance. Even if this is bad to start.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And- I’m sorry if this is pushing a line or if you have reasons, but don’t be so stiff?”

She sounded so uncertain as she said it. I drew in a deep breath and smiled at her.

“I’m the one with a prosthetic body. We’re friends, right?” She smiled, uncertain, and I smiled at her. “So I don’t want you tense around me.”

“I’m nervous in my own way, and I think that’s how it shows,” I said. “It’s not you. Can I give you a bit of a hug, here, emotional support?”

“Please.”

I put one arm around her shoulders and squeezed. Sveta moved her head in my direction, I moved mine in her direction, knocking heads with her a bit.

Off in the distance, even though she was more than a hundred feet away, I could hear Kenzie cooing and ‘aww’ing over the hug, as she looked at us.

“What did I miss?” Tristan asked.

“I’m anxious,” Sveta said.

“Me too,” Tristan said. “Your control gets bad when you’re nervous, right? You have more reflexive movements?”

“It gets so fucking shitty,” Sveta said. “I’m sorry. I’m worried I’ll be terrible because I’m all over the place inside here. I don’t know if you can hear it, but I keep fumbling because I’ll reflexively reach out to grab something off in the distance and hit the wall of the suit instead, and then I have to reach for the right control ring again.”

“Do the best you can,” Tristan said.

“This isn’t about grading you as an individual,” I said.

“It’s about the team,” Sveta said. “I don’t want to let the team down. Can we start? I’ll get more nervous if we wait.”

“Sure,” I said.

The other three weren’t wrapped up in their discussion anymore. I called out, “You guys want your flag?”

“Here,” Sveta said. She held out her hand. I passed her the blue flag.

She passed it to the others, hand and forearm gripping the flag, tendrils pushing the hand and forearm. She stopped short, relying on only the momentum so it only punched Chris lightly in the man-boob. He caught her hand and arm in one large hand, plucking the flag free before releasing her hand. He smiled as he held it up, then he reached low to hand it to Kenzie. The two of them went to plant it, with Chris picking up a fallen tree on the way.

It seemed Chris and Kenzie got along better like this.

Ashley didn’t join them. Instead, she started walking toward us, picking her way through weeds and grass. She still had a partial smile on her face from before.

I flew to meet her partway.

“Ground rules?” she asked, when I was closer.

“Place your flag. You grab ours and bring it to yours, or vice-versa. Whoever has both flags at their starting point wins. Try to avoid hurting the trees. No personal injuries that aren’t going to heal in a day. Bruises and scrapes are inevitable, but let’s avoid them if we can.”

“Understood.” She turned to walk away, one hand raised to give me an over-the-shoulder salute as she did.

Tristan began altering the battlefield behind her, drawing out fifty little sparks to move along the surface of our side of the hill.

The other team was just on the other side of a trio of trees. The nervousness we all felt was apparent as Kenzie’s cube lit up, making a deep beep sound.

All three faces of the cube that I could see had lit up. Numbers were apparent. ’10’… ‘9’… ‘8’…

“It’s worth remembering that she can remotely control the cube,” Tristan said. “Hm.”

“Just the flashlight gun and the eyehook, right?” Sveta asked, giving Tristan a look.

Tristan moved his hand, and finalized his alteration to the slope between our fort and the halfway point of the battlefield. Uneven ground, raised segments and lowered ones. Most of it was flat, the spikes sticking out of the sides or toward the ground at an angle. The material was solid, white with orange-red in the crevices, running through it like ore in rock.

The timer continued. ‘3’… ‘2’… ‘1’… ‘Go’.

They came out of the trees. As Tristan had suggested, Ashley’s plan was to go on the attack.

All three of them. Kenzie had changed, overalls gone, replaced with a skintight suit that mirrored her outfit in color and where it changed from black to pink to red. Chris had his head turned, and he was using one hand to cram the last few feet of the dead tree into his mouth.

Ashley was on foot. White eyes were wide open behind her mask, the pupils not visible from this distance.

“This is fine. Same plan,” Tristan said, not sounding bothered in the least.

Two versus three, while Sveta grabs their flag.

Sveta reached for a tree and found her grip, hauling herself away.

Tristan began creating barricades and obstructions, aimed at being knee-height, to slow them down.

Ashley hurdled the first two. Chris trampled his way through the three that had been put in his way.

Kenzie turned, aimed, and fired her flash gun in Sveta’s direction. She missed, aimed again, and fired. The second shot caught Sveta in its area.

“You take Chris and Kenzie, I’ll work on Ashley,” Tristan said. He sounded confident. “Keep an eye on Kenzie, make sure she doesn’t fall.”

I flew to intercept. Chris had one hand full with the tree, mouth distended with a fat tongue sticking out, apparently to keep the tree from rubbing against his lower row of teeth; his hand served to protect the other teeth.

I was put in mind of the man I’d seen during the broken trigger, who’d had a tree come out the other direction.

Chris laughed, deep and booming, tree digested. He lowered his chin, mouth closed, hands and arms up to protect his face and guard Kenzie.

I could deal with big and strong. I flew closer- saw Kenzie turn, aiming her gun at me, and changed course, covering my face and head, my forcefield up.

Even turned partially away, my arms up, the momentary flash of light blinded me. A full second passed, and my sight didn’t return. I could hear Chris’ laugh, Kenzie’s amusement. My forcefield hadn’t helped.

I felt the forcefield meet resistance, and I forced it to shut off before Chris’ hand could close around me. I pushed out with my aura to try to throw him off balance and buy myself a second, and changed course. I felt his fingers graze my back, dragging against cloth and not finding enough slack to get a grip.

Blindness was disorienting. Blindness when flying made it hard to tell which way was up and which way was down, and I knew it would get worse before it got better.

I flew away and at the ground, forcefield up, and landed hard. I felt Tristan’s creation shatter under and around me as my power absorbed the hit, fragments bouncing off of me, dust collecting on me.

“Are you okay!?” I heard Kenzie call out.

“I’m fine!” I replied.

“Don’t give away your position if you’ve blinded them!” I heard Ashley.

I heard a noise, and at first I thought it was Chris dismantling the fort. It sounded like someone was tearing the world’s largest sheet of paper, nails on a blackboard, an alien’s scream from a science fiction movie that echoed far more than it should, a sharp explosion, and any number of other things, all overlapping and working against one another.

I opened my eyes and tried to make out the surroundings despite the spots of light that were exploding against the backs of my eyeballs.

Chris was large enough for me to make out his general shape. I could make out Ashley and Tristan’s positions, but the only reason I could distinguish the two was because Ashley dressed in black and Tristan had more color to his costume.

Right. I had a few tricks up my sleeve I’d been considering. This was an opportunity to try one.

I took off, and I activated my forcefield momentarily as I did it, pushing out at the cracked chunks of stonelike ground, sending pieces rolling and sliding in the wake of my takeoff. I needed their attention. I saw Chris slow momentarily, mid-stride as he walked toward the fort.

I didn’t fly straight for them, but around, circling closer to the fort. I paused, giving them time to see me, and then flew straight for Chris’ face, full speed.

I stopped only a few feet short, hitting him with my aura instead of my fist. Full-strength, point-blank, a hit to the emotional rather than the physical.

The reaction was much the same as if I’d punched him. Forward movement stopped, reversed, an off-balance stumble backward.

“Holy fuck,” I could hear Tristan.

I heard Damsel’s response, but I had other focuses than making out the words. It might have been ‘pay attention to your opponent’ or ‘pay attention to who you’re fighting’.

I was busy flying around Chris, one hand extended so it maintained contact with him, let me gently push him, all while helping me to navigate while still partially blind. Before he fully had his balance, I caught him by the shoulders and pulled him back and down toward the ground.

He walked backward rather than topple, helped by the fact that his head was small, his shoulders and neck narrow relative to his lower body. It was part of why his center of balance was low to the ground, with his weight gathered around gut, butt, and legs.

Kenzie’s pincer-claw grabbed for my arm, then pulled my arm away from Chris. I let it, grabbing the prehensile length of it between Kenzie and me. Not a huge factor. One hand still on Chris’ shoulder, I activated my forcefield, using the added strength to pull at Chris. He continued his backward walk until he stumbled into one of Tristan’s sections of raised ground.

He toppled, and I shifted my position to guide his fall for the first half of the way. The focus on the latter half of the way was letting my forcefield down and catching Kenzie.

Chris fell flat on his back. Kenzie wriggled momentarily, and I deposited her on Chris’ chest, to make getting to his feet just a little bit harder. The claw slipped free of my arm.

My vision was clearing enough for me to see vague expressions, without precise detail. Chris was grinning, shaking with a laugh or chuckle.

“Come on, get up, get up!” Kenzie goaded him.

“Get off me then!” Chris boomed.

Orange motes were starting to surround them.

“Victoria!” Tristan called out. “Switch with me!”

The words were barely out of his mouth when Ashley used her power again. It was noisy to the point I worried my ears would be ringing an hour after this exercise. I could see it as a visible blur of shadow aimed behind her and toward the ground. She used the recoil to launch herself off to one side, to help her get around and past Tristan. More orange motes appeared in the direction she was going.

She used her power again, changing course to fly straight for Tristan. She planted one foot on his shoulder, stepped down so her back grazed against his, her long hair draping over his head and shoulders, aimed forward with both hands, and used her power a third time just as she touched ground, her back to his.

A power-augmented body-check. The recoil of her power pushed her in the opposite direction she fired, but because she was in contact with Tristan, she pushed him too. She stumbled, but he sprawled to the ground, his armor striking the hard platform he’d created on the slope, metal screeching and clashing against stone.

The orange motes that had started to appear around Chris and Kenzie came to life around them, an especially spiky, irregular outcropping with a thin ridge extending out to the growth he’d been making in front of Ashley’s original course, which became its own vaguely pineapple-shaped formation.

He’d wanted me to deal with Ashley. Okay. She was rolling her shoulders, rubbing at one, while she stalked toward the fort.

I could see better, so I could possibly pull this technique off better. I flew at her, and she barely seemed to pay me any mind.

My feet touched ground, helping to stop me as I reversed my direction of flight to cancel out my forward movement. I’d wanted to avoid all physical contact, but I did bump my shoulder into hers as I went from flying at near-top speed to a full stop, my face a couple of inches from hers, well inside her personal space.

As with Chris, I used my emotion aura.

As had been the case with Chris, the effect was immediate and profound. She stumbled back much as if I’d flown into her and given her a strong shove, her eyes wide.

I’d barely found my own footing when she found hers. Another blast, jarring for my ears. My vision was already suffering, and it was made worse by the plume of dust and debris around and to one side of her. She used the blast and a push of her legs to throw herself at the wall.

The moment she made contact with it, she used her power again, flinging herself out into empty space, hair and dress fluttering.

My first instinct was that she was going to have a rough landing, that I might need to catch her. Before I’d even figured out how I might do it, she used her power once more. She was aiming up at an angle, so that meant she was pushed down by the recoil.

It wasn’t a mere drop-kick or a fall, but a spearing plunge. I did much as she’d done, pushing out with my legs in conjunction with a use of my power, my flight, to get out of her way.

With the speed and general profile of a pickaxe head driven into the ground, she landed on hard ground, in the same spot I’d been standing. There was a second where she stood there, hair draping down, hands out at her sides with fingers splayed, and then one of her legs wobbled and she dropped to one knee.

“Are you-” I started. I thought I saw her move and paused. “Are you okay? That landing looks like it hurt.”

She raised her face and looked up at me. White eyes behind a black mask, behind white hair.

She used her power again. Cords, columns, and shaped explosions of lensing, bending, and darkening within the roughly cone-shaped area, over the one or two seconds that she was creating each blast. She didn’t even rise from her kneeling position. She threw herself at me, and this time she caught me entirely off guard. Her knees hit my shoulders, at least one of her arms caught me around the head, the fabric of her dress pulling against my face as she tried to fold herself around my head.

Holy shit, was my first thought. She was not letting up. Every time she acted, it was with the energy of a sprinter taking off from their starting position, except her power gave her more of a push, and the jarring noises only magnified the surprise of it.

My second thought was that she had seized my head. She wanted to take me down to the ground, much as I’d toppled Chris. There were two ways I could go. To roll with the movement and use it, or to fight against it.

My instinct was to fight against it. I used my flight, going up when she wanted to take me down. I used my aura, which was more effective when people were close, and she was wrapped around my head. I used my forcefield, only for one moment, while reaching up, putting my forearm against her ribs, and pried her off of me.

She used her power in the same instant she was pried off- fast enough that I was left with the feeling she had expected to use it while still holding onto me. Her landing looked like a rough one, sprawling, one shin, one foot, one hand bracing against the ground as she skidded.

I saw her slowly clench and unclench her hands, rolling one shoulder. She didn’t stand.

“Hoo,” I said. My heart was pounding, and I fanned myself a bit with my hand. “You do remember this is a training exercise, right?”

“You do realize my team is going to win this?” she retorted. Her hands shifted position slightly.

Her face gave away nothing, I realized. It didn’t help that with the dust, her hair across her face, and the last remaining spots of light in my vision, I couldn’t make out her pupils. Her hands and where they were pointing were one of her tells. Her shoulders another. She was thin, but especially as she crouched there, hands slightly behind her and at her sides, shoulders pointing forward, I could see the muscles underneath the skin around her shoulder and shoulder blade.

Was there power or Manton protection there, keeping her from dislocating her shoulders when she used the recoil to move around like that? Was it just strength and practice?

I’d relied on instinct to respond to her, and I didn’t love that I’d relied on that instinct. I wanted to be careful and thoughtful about the moves I made and Ashley’s approach allowed absolutely none of that. I was left to digest that I’d reacted to her by fighting, going the opposite direction instead of the Judo-like approach of using the enemy’s strength against them.

Was I okay with that? If I had to rationalize my choice, I’d fought her because I could only use the enemy’s momentum against them if I knew which way they were going, and Ashley was hard to predict.

Well, just a bit less difficult now, as I stopped looking for more obvious tells. She had stopped rolling her shoulder. I saw the muscles tense.

“Victoria!”

The shout interrupted both of us, as she planned her next move and I readied my response. It was Tristan calling. Ashley and I both looked.

“Come and help!” he called out.

I flew back and away, out of Ashley’s reach, looking.

Chris, legs embedded in spiky rock, was using both hands to haul what looked like a long, thin rod out of his throat. He’d swallowed the length of the dead tree like a sword-swallower swallowed a blade, and now he was drawing it back out, changed.

Narrower, thinner, smoother, and slick with fluids.

Chris, it seemed, wasn’t just the kind of changer who could adapt his form. He was the kind of changer who gained new sorts of powers while in an alternate form.

He hauled the last of the tree free of his mouth. Fifteen feet long, thicker at the end he had just removed than at the end he held, now that he was turning it around to get it in a position he could wield it. Too long to be a proper club, not quite a rod either.

Kenzie had her flash gun out. Tristan had thrown up a short wall, just tall and wide enough that he could hide behind it. Kenzie’s eyehook extended from her belt, through one of her hands, and out to Tristan, with a grip on his leg. She was simultaneously trying to circle around to get at an angle where she could shoot and blind Tristan and she was using the claw at the end of the prehensile arm to try and drag him out of the cover, helped by tugs with her hand.

Kenzie’s efforts left Chris entirely unmolested as he brought his weapon down, shattering Tristan’s created ground, freeing his legs.

“Leave her!” Tristan ordered. “We’ll let her get the flag, deal with these two, and catch her on her return trip!”

I flew a little further away.

Sveta- I looked off in the direction of the enemy’s camp.

Little blue flags decorated the landscape on their side of the playing field. They were situated on every rock, in every crevice, on every flat expanse of ground, on every tree branch. Sveta was perched on a rock in the midst of it all.

I looked at Kenzie’s cube. One face of it was glowing. The projector.

That would be why they had been smiling, then.

I started my flight toward toward Tristan.

“You’ll regret ignoring me,” Ashley said, behind me.

Pride, respect, they were key factors here. I could remember the meeting, the narrowing of the eyes. I knew Tristan was in a tough spot, but I paused, turning around in the air. I had to raise my voice to be heard with the distance between Ashley and me, as I said, “We’re not ignoring you. We’re dealing with you two against one.”

I left her to limp toward the wall while I flew to Tristan’s side. I landed beside Kenzie, hard, pushing out with my aura.

She twisted around, gun in hand, and I caught the gun, snatching it out of her hand.

“Hey,” she said. She reached out with her hand, and I pulled the gun away. She let go of Tristan and reached out for the gun with the eye-hook. I grabbed the eye-hook, and then wrapped the length of the prehensile arm around her upper body, tying her up with it.

“Hey!” she said, again. She laughed. “Chris help!”

I didn’t need to ask, and I liked that I didn’t need to ask. Orange motes began to surround Kenzie.

“No, no, no, no!” Kenzie said. “Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris!”

The head of the long club was poked out between Kenzie and me, separating us. Kenzie started to back away, and the orange motes became solid rock, encapsulating her legs. Tristan lunged forward to catch her before her upper body came down and her head cracked down against his rocky terrain.

I flew up a little ways, putting myself between them and Chris. Chris drew the fat end of the club back, and then smacked it against his palm. He laughed, deep and low, and pointed at Kenzie.

“Stop laughing at me and help, you doofus!”

I had Kenzie’s gun in hand, I could have shot Chris, but I had my deep reservations about using a tinker’s stuff, even a nonlethal gun that temporarily blinded.

Ashley used her power. I could hear the sound of it, and I saw the wall break.

“By the way,” Tristan said, looking in that direction. “We’re not catching her on the return trip.”

He blurred, and with that blurring, the rock blurred too. White with orange-red veins became clear water, reflecting the blue of the sky and the green of the trees above and grass below. The front wall of the fort that Ashley had just penetrated and the platform that Kenzie and Chris were standing on became frothing water.

With the slope, that water flowed downhill, carrying Ashley and Kenzie down to the base of the hill, amid branches, mud, and sticks. Ashley used her power at the start and toward the end, to little effect.

Chris brought his rod down, stabbing it deep into the ground, and held onto it for leverage. It had to be sturdier than the dead tree had been, because it didn’t bend and it didn’t break. Condensed down, maybe, shaped to be hard.

He reared back, and he blew. He’d broken down and processed more of the dead tree than what he’d used to condense it into a giant club-staff. He exhaled a cloud of wet sawdust.

I didn’t want to put up my forcefield if it would catch the sawdust, so I endured it, flew closer, and used my forcefield for only as long as it took to kick the stick he was holding onto with all of my strength.

It broke, and with it breaking, Chris fell down the hill, rolling over wet grass and weeds, until he came to a stop against a cluster of two trees that had grown next to one another.

He began to pick himself up, working his way up the hill, stabbing down to pierce the ground with his half-stick and plant it there like an ice-climber might use a piton. The slope was just a little steeper at the base of the hill, and the water had become rock again, smooth and with the spikes all pointed downward, not good grips.

He swallowed hard, giving me a suspicion about what he was about to do. He spat out a ball of wood pulp and phlegm, and I flew to one side, letting it sail past me.

I was put in mind of Crawler – the changer power, the spitting, the joyful monster. Crawler had laughed too.

Crawler had critically injured me with his acid spit, and that had let Amy get her hands on me the second time.

It was a dark, unpleasant thought.

Tristan was focused on a point off to the side. I turned to look, and I saw that he was creating orange motes around the projector box.

The motes solidified, and the box was encased in a thorny encasement of rock.

I turned to look, keeping one eye on Chris, and I saw the flags were still there.

“Nope! That’s not going to work! Good luck finding our flag!” Kenzie called out. She loosed an over the top, mocking laugh.

Tristan turned the encasement to water.

“I said it was waterproofed before! That’s not going to do anything!” Kenzie called out, before doing her level best to laugh harder, even though she had already been laughing at her limit.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tristan said, loud enough for them to hear.

Sveta made her way back in three moves, from the other team’s camp to a rock, rock to tree, tree to our camp.

She hauled herself up to the top of one of Tristan’s walls and she held up the two flags.

Ashley and Chris, who were making their way up the hill, stopped climbing.

“Yes! Yes! That was so great, that was fun, we have to do this again!”

From what Kenzie was saying, she didn’t seem to mind losing much. She practically bounced with excitement.

Tristan created stairs on the slope.

Sveta joined Tristan and me as the others climbed the stairs. Tristan put out one gauntlet, and she tapped her prosthetic hand against it. I offered my own fist to her, and she tapped her fist against it, before wrapping her arms around me in a brief hug.

A stoic Ashley had Kenzie clinging to her as she reached the top.

“-were so cool, it was like how you were in the videos-”

“Ease up, Kenzie,” Tristan said.

Kenzie let go of Ashley, bouncing on the spot before reaching up to her lens-mask and pulling it off. With the mask’s removal, her costume flickered in places, like an image that had been badly compressed, with heavy artifacting.

“This was everything I wanted it to be and more,” Kenzie said. “I can’t believe you found the flag.”

“I-” Sveta started.

“Waitwaitwaitwait,” Kenzie said. “Wait. Um. Okay. I have this covered.”

“Okay,” Sveta said.

Kenzie pulled out her smartphone.

The projector made a sound, and then images streaked the hill, before correcting. Ghostly images of all of us, life-size. The images included the constructions Tristan had made.

It looked like where we had all been standing earlier in the match, when I had been facing down Ashley.

The images zipped around as Kenzie changed the time, blurring and streaking before correcting into their proper shapes.

“I saved everything, so we can look back and watch how things played out or compare notes,” Kenzie said. “So we can do stuff like this…”

The images blurred and moved, then shifted, so the scenes that were projected no longer lined up on the battlefield.

It was Sveta, perched on a branch, flag in hand. Another blur, moving the clock back.

Sveta removed one of her prosthetic hands. Fifty or more tendrils snapped out.

“You grabbed every flag,” Tristan said.

“I grabbed at every flag,” Sveta said. “I had to reposition a few times, so I probably grabbed at some fake ones several times. It didn’t help that I couldn’t see that well after being shot.”

Kenzie cackled. Chris smothered her cackling with a large hand. Kenzie fought back, trying to get out from under Chris’ hand, and she did a pretty poor job of it.

It was weird and good to see her finally acting like an actual kid. Too much excitement in her system, but that wasn’t a bad thing.

Once Kenzie had settled down more, we walked through the entire fight, focusing on each person. Sveta was first, easy enough.

Tristan was next, and he made mention of the platform, and how he’d wanted to make sure nobody had footing when the rock turned to water, so he’d raised the ground some. He had obviously plotted the trap from early on.

“Kenzie? Do you want to report what you were doing?” Tristan asked, once he was done explaining what he’d done to Sveta.

“Wait,” Kenzie said. “Rain’s here. I’ll point the way.”

It took a couple of minutes before Rain and Kenzie’s camera-drone arrived at the base of the hill.

Chris was half the size he had been, and his proportions were returning to normal. As he shrank, he rearranged the voluminous shorts he’d been wearing, ensuring his modesty was protected. His old outfit was contained within a pocket on the inside of the shorts, and he gathered it together, folded up, the clothes piled on his lap, along with what looked like a pencil case.

Even though he was returning to the person he’d been, physically, his smile lingered.

“Rainnn!” Kenzie called out, while Rain was still making his way to us. “Did you bring tinker stuff!?”

“Yeah!” Rain responded.

“Yusss,” Kenzie said. “This is the best day.”

“You could have waited twenty seconds for Rain to show up and asked him in a normal volume,” Chris said.

“I wanted to know now.”

Chris groaned at her, putting his face closer to hers.

Kenzie groaned louder, exaggerated, putting her face closer to his.

Chris groaned even louder, guttural, using some of the residual transformation to play up the sound. His forehead pressed against hers, hard enough she had to push back to avoid being pushed over.

Rather than try to top it, Kenzie sat back down. “I like you when you’re like this.”

“Naked?” Chris asked.

“No!” Kenzie said. “Geez.”

“Why does it feel like every time I enter a conversation, it’s a weird topic?” Rain asked, joining us where we sat on Tristan-created seats and benches.

“I like you when you’re happy,” Kenzie said. She fussed with her hair, looking down. “I like you a lot like this.”

I was put in mind of her comments about Chris before she’d gotten in Erin’s car, after leaving the group meeting. Like she didn’t have the worldly experience to know people didn’t say stuff like that in such an unguarded, dead obvious way.

“I still think you’re annoying as shit,” Chris said.

Sveta kicked him.

Kenzie snorted, smiling as she looked up at him. “I know.”

“Nah. I’m joking. You’re fine. I think we did pretty good.”

“I think we did too. It would have worked except Tristan and Byron are strong and Victoria is oof and Sveta was the best counter to what we were doing. We should fill Rain in.”

“That would be nice,” Rain said. “It was you two and…”

He turned to look around the group, saw Ashley, and didn’t finish the sentence.

“And me,” Ashley said.

“Here, I can show you the replay,” Kenzie said. “But I want to see your tinker arms too, before we run out of time.”

“There’s plenty of time,” Tristan said.

“Wait, here, you take the remote, and Rain, you can hand me the arm, I won’t break anything, I promise.”

Rain rummaged in his backpack, “I wouldn’t blame you if you did, it’s fragile and shitty. You think it would help your eyehook?”

“It might! But I’m really interested in the interface. You like to have multiple arms, you said?”

“Yeah. For what little it’s worth.”

“And you control it with your brain, once it’s plugged in?” Kenzie asked. When Rain nodded, she asked, “How does the brain know how to control it?”

“I map the brain patterns for input and output and the panel here, between the attachment and the actual arm, it acts like an extension of the brain.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Sveta said.

Tristan was fiddling with the remote, and seemed to be having trouble with the progression of time, with images jumping all over the place. Sveta, Kenzie, and Rain were all focused on the arm, with Ashley periodically joining in when prodded.

Chris was sitting on the bench, cloth around him as he shrunk down to a more ordinary size. He was smiling more than before as he rummaged for his headphones and a chocolate bar.

“Your mood seems better,” I said to him.

The smile dropped away. He looked at me and shrugged. “It’s different. I feel more human, mentally and emotionally.”

The change hadn’t seemed to make any difference in how he looked, either. Were the changes subtle?

“I’m not sure I grasped it all,” I told him. “Once you change, it’s…?”

I trailed off.

“It’s like a hit of a drug,” he said. “Focus, surprise, sadness, appreciation, disgust, fear, anger, and then this one.”

“Joy?”

“I call this particular flavor of it Wan Indulgence,” he said. He bit down on the chocolate bar, then closed his eyes, clearly enjoying it. He talked with his mouth full, “Can be enjoyment. I’ll feel it more normally for a few days now that I’ve changed.”

“Oh my god,” Kenzie said. “Tristan, give that back, you suck at it.”

Tristan was still fiddling with Kenzie’s remote for the projector box.

“It doesn’t make any sense. Why isn’t it easier to move forward and back in time?”

“Because the box doesn’t perceive time, you dummy. It perceives images.”

“Why not have it perceive things like time, so you can go backward and forward in time without doing… whatever arcane thing you’re doing right now?”

“Because if it perceived time,” Kenzie said, patiently, her focus on the smartphone remote, “Then it wouldn’t perceive images. And that would be a dumb thing for a projector box that works with images. Dummy.”

“You can stop calling me a dummy now.”

“I will if you stop being dumb. This stuff is obvious.”

“It’s really not,” Chris said.

Kenzie sighed, very dramatically. “Who are we following next?”

“It’d be nice to show Rain the entire thing,” Tristan said.

“It works best with a point of view,” Kenzie said. She looked at Tristan and rolled her eyes a little.

“If you keep that up, you’re going to see orange lights swirling over your head. Then a rock is going to fall on you or, more likely, I’ll swap out and you’ll get a spray of cold water.”

Kenzie stuck out her tongue at Tristan.

I was aware that Ashley hadn’t participated enthusiastically in the conversation. I suspected why. I hesitated, then ventured, “I’d really like to see how Ashley approached things.”

“Why?” Ashley asked.

My suspicions were stronger. I went on, “Frankly, I hope this isn’t taken the wrong way, but you’re really intimidating to go up against.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “It’s the intention.”

“A big part of the reason I swapped out with Victoria is that I had no idea what to do,” Tristan said. “I couldn’t catch you with my power, and you’re faster than me on foot.”

Kenzie was changing the perspective. She created a projection of the hillside and shrank things down, then created more projections, showing an image off to one side of our gathering, showing a zoomed in portion of what the little diorama-sized projection was showing as a whole. The focus started with the three emerging from the trees, trampling through and hurdling the barriers Tristan created.

She jumped to Tristan trying to deal with Ashley.

“Those blasts are as scary as shit,” Tristan said. “Every time you used one, even if you were five feet away and you weren’t aiming at me, I was flinching. I saw what it was doing to my powerstuff, and I did not want that to happen to my bodystuff.”

He’d realized what I was doing, and why, I realized. Ashley was dejected at losing and we could give her a bit of a morale boost. She seemed to like being scary.

I wasn’t wholly sure it was good to feed her ego on that front, but I wasn’t sure I liked the alternative, either.

“I have better control than that. I’m not an idiot,” Ashley said.

“I’m not saying you are,” Tristan said.

“It’s obvious you have control,” I said. “Kenzie, can you show the walljump?”

“There are two.”

“The one with me,” I said.

Kenzie jumped to the scene. Ashley leaping off of the wall with one foot, her power just starting to explode out from her hands. The power looked more solid in projection than it did in reality.

“For the record,” Kenzie said. “If I was moving through this recording in time and not space, then I’d have to fast forward and rewind and skip around to find this, but I don’t, so I hope people are realizing why this is better.”

“I’m fully in support of dumping water on Kenzie’s head,” Chris said.

“The walljump,” I said. “The sequences of blasts to maneuver and the whole-body coordination it must take. That, to me, says control.”

“All for nothing,” she said.

“It was not for nothing,” I said. “I got to see and experience what you do, I respect the spatial awareness. The instinct-”

“I fell for a trap,” she said. “I knew there would be water and I thought I could avoid it if I used my power in time, I didn’t expect there to be so much.”

“We’ve never seen each other’s powers in action,” Tristan said. “Surprises are inevitable. You surprised the shit out of me, many times, and I got one good surprise off. When we do it again, we’ll know each other’s powers better. It’s part of why we’re doing the exercises in the first place.”

“I failed,” Ashley said. She stood up, and she rubbed one shoulder. “I was tested and I failed.”

“Right from the start,” Sveta said, jumping into the conversation “When we were standing around figuring out what we’d do, Victoria told me that this wasn’t a test of us as individuals. It’s a test of our coordination as a team.”

“I can find that on the recording,” Kenzie said. “It’ll be hard to find, though.”

“Hah,” Chris said. Kenzie pushed his shoulder.

“My team failed,” Ashley said, oblivious to the pair. “No. My team was set up to fail.”

“Wait, woah,” Tristan said.

Ashley clenched one hand into a fist. “You realize if I hadn’t been holding back, I could have annihilated each and every one of you?”

“Woah,” Tristan said, with emphasis. “Ashley-”

She whirled on him, pointing, and he flinched, going silent. I stood from my seat.

“Ashley,” I said, because I wanted her attention off of Tristan.

“I’m not Ashley,” she said, her voice hard. “Nobody has called me that in a long, long time. I’m only Ashley because the therapists insisted and the others needed an actual name to put on the paperwork. I’m Damsel of Distress!”

“Okay,” I said. “Can we-”

I was spoken over. “I was a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine. They selected me. They had me kill and maim people. I didn’t mind doing it then, and I could do it here without blinking.”

“I don’t believe you,” Sveta said.

“I’ve died and I came back with only the vicious parts of me intact! All of the warmth, the good memories, the family, they’re just a fuzzy, indistinct dream. Those memories have no hold on me. The killing? Taking people’s arms and legs and watching them bleed out? That’s clear as anything. I could do the same to any of you.”

I wanted the younger and more vulnerable members of the team to back away, to get clear of trouble, but I worried that if I tried to indicate that, it might provoke her. Everyone was still, and nobody, myself included, was really breathing.

“This was an idiotic game, and I. Don’t. Play. Games.”

“Count down from ten,” Rain said.

Ashley whirled on him. I left the ground, flying closer, stopping when things didn’t escalate further.

“Count down from ten,” Rain said. “That’s what Mrs. Yamada says, isn’t it? When you’re wound up.”

“It’s fine when she says it.”

“It should be fine when any of us say it,” Rain said. “Count.”

Ashley tensed. I could see it in her shoulders and the way the tendons stood out in her hands.

Everyone was silent.

I waited. Ten seconds passed. Then the fifteenth, then the twentieth.

“Feel better?” Sveta ventured.

Ashley turned, staring Sveta down. “No.”

“Count down from a hundred,” Rain said.

“I’m not going to-”

“Count,” Rain said, his voice soft. “Please. You’ve said before, when you get like this, there’s a part of you that’s saying you don’t want to act this way, and you can’t listen to it. So listen to the numbers first, then listen to that part of you.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“It’s-”

“It’s not that easy,” she said. “And I’m going to walk away. You do your thing. Let me do mine.”

“Okay,” Rain said.

She limped away, hands in fists at her side. We were silent as we watched her go.

She walked up the hill, found a rock, and leaned against it, her back to us, and I let my feet touch ground.

“We knew it was coming sooner or later,” Chris said.

“Spooky,” Sveta said.”I expected a small outburst to start with. That was-”

“Medium-small,” Tristan said.

Kenzie stood up, gathering her things.

“Stay, Kenzie,” Sveta said.

“It’s fine.”

“She wants to be left alone.”

“This thing?” Kenzie asked. “It’s not you guys being the adults and me as the kid, listening to what adults say. We’re all equal members of this team. And this is what I’m going to do, and if I get hurt that’s fine, but this is right for me. You can tell me what to do with some other stuff but not this stuff.”

“It’s dangerous,” I said. “Leave her be.”

“No,” Kenzie said, voice firm. She put her hand on her flash gun. She looked at all of us, then said, softer, “No.”

“Okay, Kenzie,” Sveta said. “Go. Be careful.”

“You’re sure?” Tristan asked Sveta.

But Kenzie was already jogging off in Ashley’s direction.

When Kenzie was out of earshot, but before she had reached Ashley, Sveta raised one hand and said, voice quiet, “If there’s a problem, I’ll haul her back.”

“That takes a second or two,” I said. “Sparring with Ashley, I gotta say she moves faster than that.”

“And your grip isn’t a hundred percent,” Tristan said.

Sveta set her jaw, hand pointed at Kenzie.

Kenzie reached Ashley, and with Ashley’s movement, we all tensed, preparing to act.

Ashley turned back to look out at the distance, and Kenzie climbed up on the rock Ashley was leaning against.

A moment later, Kenzie had her headphones out of a pocket. She plugged it into her phone, reached down, and put an earbud in Ashley’s ear, then put another in her ear, before lying down on the rock.

Slowly, Sveta lowered her hand.

“Why?” I asked.

“I gave my reasons before, so did Rain, so did Kenzie,” Sveta said. “We’ve had this discussion. This isn’t news.”

“It’s one thing to know it and see it in therapy, it’s another to experience it in the wild,” Rain said.

“Why?” I asked, again. “You can’t- I understand reaching out to people, but can you really reach out to people who aren’t reaching back? Can you give forgiveness and understanding to someone who isn’t looking for it?”

“I think she is,” Sveta said.

Tristan said, “I don’t know what you guys talked about, but I discussed this with the others, and I have an idea what they probably said. Do you know how many appointments and meetings she goes to?”

“It came up,” Rain said.

“Okay, good. But did you talk about why?”

“Because she needs careful handling?” I asked.

“Because,” Tristan said, “She’s a special case. She’s not the original Ashley, I’m not sure if you picked up on that.”

“I got the gist of it.”

“Like she said, her memories aren’t hers. She was cloned, they took her and they made up composite memories, but they had no reason to give her those fuzzy memories of other, nonconfrontational stuff. That wasn’t Bonesaw’s work. It’s the agent.”

I drew in a breath and I sighed.

“The world ended, and it ended because of them. We can’t have a sit-down talk with Scion because we killed him. We have a shitton of questions and the only kinds of people who can answer them are the people who got really close to the agents, like Bonesaw, who made Ashley-”

I felt a chill.

“-and the people like this. Who are very little of the human, shadows of the human, and a lot of the agent. All of us have problems, and a big part of those problems are the agents, handling their side of things. I know I’ve talked to Rain about this, I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but when I’m talking to her I’m also talking to the agent that’s very close to the surface. I feel like if I can get along with that agent, I can get along with mine.”

“Yeah,” Rain said.

“I want to get along with the human,” Sveta said. “I don’t want to define her as the monstrous half.”

“That’s fair too,” Tristan said.

I folded my arms. I looked down at Chris, and I saw that he was half-asleep.

He saw me looking, and he said, “The world was invaded by aliens. People don’t know it, we don’t like to think about it, but they’re here, they’re a part of things. Getting along with the most accessible of them makes sense.”

I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t sure how to articulate it. My own agent had a hand in my life. It was the wretch, the sapience behind the forcefield. I had seen what Amy’s had done to her.

Thinking too hard about it stirred up countless ugly feelings, and those feelings choked out and clouded the words I wanted to articulate.

“Let’s leave them be,” Rain said. “Let’s assume we’re not going to have our second exercise, and walk me through how things went.”

“Alright,” Tristan said.

As the discussion continued, I didn’t take my eyes off the pair in the distance.

Glare – 3.4

Kenzie sprinted toward the wall, and took a flying kick at it. The wall broke, split at a diagonal, the upper half sliding down the split until the corner stabbed the ground. Kenzie backed up swiftly before the section of wall toppled and fell to the ground.

“I’m clearly the strongest member of the team,” she said.

“You’re the lamest,” Chris said.

“Can I try it again?” Kenzie asked, ignoring Chris. “Rain?”

“Be careful,” Sveta said.

“I will. I want to test stuff. Can I try it again?”

Rain stood from the rock he was sitting on, and held one hand out to the side. The silver-white blade he created had a slight crescent shape to it. He swung his arm and threw it, for lack of a better word. It traced an arc, more a boomerang in flight than an arrow or thrown weapon, and cut deep into the wall that Tristan had left as a permanent fixture. A silver-white line was left along the length of the wall.

Kenzie raised her flash gun, and she shot the wall. Nothing happened.

She approached the wall, and she had her eyehook snake out from where it was attached to her belt, pincers open, slapping against the wall. She pushed with the eyehook.

“Hurry,” Rain said.

Kenzie continued using the eyehook to push, to no avail. She moved the hook around to the wall’s edge, grabbed the length of the eyehook, and pulled, adding her strength to the mechanical arm’s.

Stone slid easily against stone, and the wall was pulled down, cleanly cut where the silver line had been drawn.

“I could do this all day,” Kenzie said.

“It’s not a bad power,” I said.

“I never said it was bad,” Rain said. He sat back down. “It’s mediocre. On certain days, it’s a little better.”

“Better how? Size, speed, effectiveness, number you can throw?”

“All of the above, except maybe effectiveness. And duration, I’d say. Ten, twenty percent increase, if I had to guess.”

“Duration?”

“How long after I shoot stuff the line lasts.”

I turned to my laptop and I started typing that up.

“Not effectiveness?” Kenzie asked, as she rejoined us. She had her phone out and walked without looking where she was going.

Sveta and Tristan were having a conversation off to one side, Ashley had gone back to the library to use the washroom, which had freed Kenzie to rejoin us, and Chris was getting dressed again while under the cover of the giant-size shorts.

“It’s kind of one thing or the other,” Rain said. “Either it breaks or it doesn’t.”

“I’m looking at the data from my eyehook,” Kenzie said. “It didn’t work with your power until after I started helping it. Twenty point two pounds of force total, that’s nine point one six kilograms, and then the break happened. What if it’s easier to break things when your power is better?”

“It could be,” Rain said.

“It’s good thinking,” I said.

Kenzie nodded, eyes still on her phone, and said, “Can you throw another?”

“More tests?” Rain asked.

“No. Breaking stuff like this is a ton of fun,” Kenzie said.

Rain stood, looked around, and then created another blade of silver-white light. He threw it at the half-stick Chris had left impaled in the hillside. The blade passed through the dead-tree stick, leaving a white line in it a good few feet above the ground, and continued forward as two separate segments flying in parallel, with a narrow gap in the middle. One hit a tree, and the other hit the ground.

Kenzie ran off, handing her phone to her eyehook.

“What happens if you hit a person?” I asked.

“I tried on livestock, a goat. Silver line.”

“And?”

“The goat ran off, jumped up onto a tractor tire, then jumped down. The impact as she jumped down was what did it. Clean cut.”

“Possibly over twenty pounds of force in that impact?”

“I guess,” Rain said.

Kenzie had reached the rod and found the silver line was higher than she could reach. She began rolling a nearby rock closer, to give herself a leg up.

Chris, barefoot, wearing his t-shirt and shorts, broke into a sprint. As Kenzie climbed up onto the rock, Chris threw himself at the rod, hard, body-checking it. It broke in two at the silver line, the top half toppling.

Kenzie made the kind of high-pitched noise only a prepubescent girl could, and drew her flash gun. She began shooting Chris repeatedly, while he rolled in the grass, laughing, arms around his face.

“What happens when you hit the ground?” I asked.

“Not much, most of the time. I guess you get a fissure, but it doesn’t really do much, because the line is so clean.”

“Kenzie!” I called out.

She stopped shooting Chris and turned to look.

“Stomp on the line on the ground? I’m curious!”

She ran off, leaving Chris where he was.

“Can you explain the schedule, then? The powers wax and wane?”

Rain sighed.

“Sorry, if I’m grilling you a little too much. I’m trying to get my head around this.”

“I see them in my dreams. I never get a good night’s sleep, never dream normally. Just… them. And they see me. We take turns, and when my turn comes up, I get a bit of a power up.”

“That’s how you knew Snag’s description, before you knew his name.”

Rain nodded.

Off in the distance, Kenzie stomped on the silver line in the grass. There was a bit of dust, and some grass stalks fell, but I didn’t see anything else. She looked at us and shrugged.

“Every five days, I get my turn, and I’m a little bit stronger. There are other times I’m stronger, but it’s complicated.”

“Every five? There’s four others?”

“Three others,” Rain said.

“What’s…?”

“The day in the rotation after me, it’s a blank space. My running theory is that there was a fifth member of the cluster, but they died before the powers set in. Free power-up, goes to someone random. Doesn’t always line up with our power, so on those days, I can sometimes have more tinker power, or more mover power, more emotion power. A taste of what I could be.”

“Once every twenty days, on average.”

“Never lining up with my days,” he said. He sighed. “Through the dreams I’ve seen them unmasked and they’ve seen me. They hate me and I’m not overly fond of them. They’re always there, every night, and it’s pretty obvious how much they despise me. It’s where Tristan and I have that shared experience, kind of.”

“People you can’t get away from,” I said.

“You’re talking about your cluster?” Tristan asked, joining the conversation. Sveta was behind him.

“Yeah.”

Tristan sat down on the rock beside Rain. I scooted over so Sveta could sit beside me.

“These people want you dead? How likely is it they go forward with this hit?”

“Ninety-nine point eight percent likely,” Rain said.

“What’s the point two?” Sveta asked.

“They all die or get arrested before they get around to it,” Rain said.

“You seem pretty cavalier about traveling into the city,” I said. “You caught a train today?”

“Yeah,” Rain said. “Again, it’s the dreams, I can pick up a little, and I can throw them off a little. The thing about being outnumbered in this situation is that I have a lot of opportunities to pick up details. One clue from any of them can help a lot.”

“Details like?”

“The woman is injured, and Snag wants to repair the arm you trashed. That buys me a few days. So, uh, thank you.”

“The third one won’t come after you alone?”

“He’s a guy, a little older than me. Glasses. He’s the person with the tinker power. I haven’t picked up much about him, but he doesn’t interact with people much. Less than Snag or the woman, and Snag is an asshole and the woman is mute, so that should tell you something.”

“There’s an advantage in that,” Tristan said. “If they aren’t socially adroit and you are-”

“I’m not,” Rain said.

“You’re better off than they are and that counts for something,” Tristan said.

“They have money and resources, and that more than makes up for it,” Rain said. He looked at me. “We’re suspicious they hired Tattletale to track me down.”

“Ah,” I said. I thought about that. “I honestly can’t think of someone worse to have on your trail.”

“She’s good enough to take over a city and get away with it,” Rain said.

“That’s not even it,” I said. “She destroys people.”

“Are we talking about group members behind their backs?” Kenzie asked, as she joined us.

“No,” Tristan said. “We’re talking Tattletale.”

Over near the staff that had been made with the dead tree, Chris was lying in the grass, arms and legs spread, staring up at the sky.

“He’s okay?” I asked.

“He’s fine,” Kenzie said.

As if responding, Chris chuckled to himself, lying in the grass near the base of the hill.

“The Undersiders took over Brockton Bay, and they did it with Tattletale on point for most of it. I’m not a hundred percent sure on any of this, but you can look at the events in the city starting with her taking power. Bank robbery, Undersiders succeed, they run into the Wards, me, and my sister. Tattletale insinuates knowledge of my sister’s deepest secrets, and mine. My sister goes off the deep end. ABB are provoked following an arrest of their leader and an interaction with the Undersiders, with Tattletale. They’re toppled with a concerted effort on the part of the villains, with intel passed to the heroes by the villains.”

“By Tattletale,” Tristan said.

“In large part. Empire Eighty-Eight get outed, secret identities revealed. Undersiders are the focus of the blame, and a number of people die in the ensuing rampage. Weeks and months of violence and chaos in Brockton Bay feed into the Endbringer attack on the city. Half of my family died because of that.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sveta said.

I reached out for her hand and gave it a waggle. “It should be noted that in the hospital after the attack, Tattletale talked to the leaders of various hero teams about Leviathan’s strengths and weaknesses. Info that was then used to beat down Behemoth enough to let Scion finish him off.”

“That could be a coincidence,” Rain said.

He didn’t say it in a dismissive way. He said it like he was a little scared, and he wanted something to cling to.

I wanted to drive reality home, though. Better to scare him and have him alive than the alternative.

“Possibly. But I’m more inclined to see her as a force multiplier or a kind of thinker version of what you do with your power, creating weak points for others to capitalize on. We see a lot of these coincidences. After the Endbringer, the Slaughterhouse Nine visit and do a hell of a lot of damage, but they also lose several key members. The weaknesses of several key members are revealed and the members are removed.”

“You might want to go easy on talking about those guys when Ashley gets back,” Kenzie said.

“Okay,” I said. “It’s just one data point in a series. The last remaining mastermind of the city falls, Coil. The PRT directors die. Twice, in quick succession. Weaknesses are targeted and capitalized on. Alexandria dies in Brockton Bay, at the hands of a girl who had apparently wanted to be a hero, but who was converted to the villains’ side. Flechette, a hero, a minor friend of mine? Apparently converted. Accord edges into the Undersiders’ turf. He dies when the Behemoth fight happens. What do you think happens with his resources and power? Because I’m betting it’s the same as what happened with Coil’s.”

“And now she runs one of the major settlement points,” Rain said. He still sounded spooked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t have all of the information, but she got to that point by being one of the masterminds and playing the game well. She was aggressive when the city was vulnerable and she was passive when it wasn’t. The moment Gold Morning came around, I get the impression she mobilized hard, she was ready to expand and capitalize on the situation with more of that aggression. Again, I’m not 100% on all of that. But I can say with reasonable confidence that she’s one of the most dangerous, capable people on Gimel.”

“What am I supposed to do, then?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Sveta elbowed me. “You have to give him more than that. You can’t scare him and not give him something.”

“Please,” Rain said.

I thought for a few seconds.

“She bleeds,” I said. “She gets tired, and she looked really fucking tired when I saw her. She has a lot on her plate, and I don’t think you’re a primary focus. Which is good. You don’t want to be her primary focus, because people who are tend to end up in pieces, one way or another.”

“Alright,” Rain said, sounding anything but.

“She…” I started. I bit my tongue.

“What?” Tristan asked.

“I don’t want to jump to conclusions. I don’t want to give you the wrong impressions, either.”

“Any impressions help,” Tristan said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But what she said when I talked to her, the way she wanted to make herself out to be one of the good guys, bringing good things to others…”

“Oh,” Kenzie said. She fiddled with her phone.

“It doesn’t necessarily jibe with her working with people who are out for blood and murder. She seems to want to be a very low-key villain or even a Robin-Hood type desperado while simultaneously leaving a trail of bodies in her wake, or she wants to portray herself as such,” I said.

“I’m now sharing the love and bringing some of that security, stability, and safety to others, in my very, very roundabout way,” Kenzie’s phone said, in Tattletale’s voice.

“Yeah, that’s it, thank you,” I said. Kenzie gave me a thumbs up. I felt a bit of the heebie-jeebies at having heard Tattletale’s voice without being braced for it. It took me a moment to gather my thoughts before I added, “It makes me wonder what she would say if she were told that Snag and the other two were out for your head.”

“She could be full of shit,” Sveta said.

“She could be,” I admitted. “Trouble of dealing with masterminds is you can’t ever know.”

“Makes me think,” Tristan said. “We really should have that talk about our group’s game plan.”

“We can’t have that talk without Ashley,” Kenzie said.

“Or Chris,” Sveta said.

Kenzie turned to look at Chris, before giving us a very unenthused, “Yeah.”

“Pretty quick turnaround on your opinion of Chris,” I said.

“It’s not turned around. It’s a love-hate relationship,” Kenzie said. “Sometimes I really like him and sometimes I really don’t. Right now is one of those times I really don’t. I was having fun.”

“There will be other times you can fool around with my power, and with others,” Rain said.

“Yeah,” Kenzie said. She looked at Rain and smiled. “We’re gonna help you with your thing.”

A bit of a non-sequitur, but I wasn’t going to draw attention to it. “Do you want to call Ashley or see what’s holding her up? If she’s not up to having this conversation, that’s okay too.”

“I’ll call her,” Kenzie said, hopping up from her seat. She wandered off, her eyehook holding her phone to her ear.

“I’ll get Chris,” Sveta said.

As Sveta vacated the space on the bench to my left, I turned to the laptop to my right. I typed up a few things about Rain’s power, then paged up and down some to look at the entries for the individual powers. There was a lot more to write up before I had an actual outline I could pitch to the Wardens. If they were even interested in working with the overarching cape community on that level.

I hoped they were. The villains had a lot of advantages, from the fact they often had the initiative to the fact that their work often made money, and the fact that the chaos and damage they wrought often created more opportunities, henchmen, and money for them. Heroes who did well, conversely, often put themselves out of work.

One of the few advantages our side had was that the heroes tended to work together. If we did it right, we walked away with allies. I had people like Gilpatrick, Crystal, and Mrs. Yamada.

“How’s Erin?” Tristan asked.

“She’s good. She’s applying for jobs today. We’re in an awkward spot for it, though, not many locations, a lot of people around our age want those jobs, and it’s a long drive in to get to work. I think those places open at six. It might mean waking up at four to get to work on time.”

Sveta dragged Chris to the collection of rocks, benches, and seats. Chris climbed up to his seat, sitting on the rock Kenzie had been using. I was pretty clear he was still blind, from the way he stared off into space.

“There are times I don’t get to sleep until four,” Chris said, talking to the open air.

“That’s not good,” Sveta said. “Don’t do that.”

“It’s a chance to be independent,” Tristan said. “If she can get the job. She gives off a good impression, so I can imagine it happening.”

“Yeah,” Rain said.

“Who is she?” I asked. “Can I ask?”

“Just a friend,” Rain said. “I’ve always grown up in the middle of nowhere, so when my family was getting settled after Gold Morning, we saw all the incentives they were offering to people willing to get a headstart on agriculture and it seemed natural, you know?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Erin’s parents were kind of the opposite. City people through and through, something in them broke after Gold Morning. They couldn’t bring themselves to join the rat race again, I think. They were given the option for the simple life and they took it. Erin got dragged with.”

“And you connected.”

“She was having a hard time, because y’know, she stands out when a lot of people are hurt and angry and looking to lash out. She went looking for a hiding place and she stumbled on my workshop. She’s been a real help, from before I even had the therapy, helping me get figured out, listening to me, helping me research. I… don’t really know what she gets out of the deal, from me.”

“I can think of a few things she gets from you,” Tristan said.

“I appreciate you saying that, I’m not sure I see it though,” Rain said.

I saw Kenzie react to Ashley’s appearance before I saw Ashley. She made her way up the less sloped side of the hill, holding a pair of water bottles.

“Having a friend with powers is pretty neat,” I said to Rain.

“Yeah. For sure,” he said.

“And while I don’t know you that well, you seem very thoughtful.”

“And there’s the brooding, mysterious part of it,” Kenzie said. “Girls like that. You and Chris are similar like that.”

“I see,” Rain said. He frowned a bit.

“I’m picturing the expression on your face,” Chris said, before laughing.

“How long’s he going to be blind?” I asked.

“Could be ten minutes, could be an hour or two,” Kenzie said, as she skip-walked over to sit down at Ashley’s side as Ashley took her seat.

An hour or two?

“You got anywhere to be, Chris?” I asked.

“No family, nobody that cares that much,” he said. “I’m one of the lost boys, living in the institution.”

“I know what that’s like,” Kenzie said. “The institution. It’s not fun.”

“Personally? I don’t give a shit, and they don’t give a shit about me, I could disappear tomorrow and nobody would blink.”

“We’d blink,” Kenzie said.

“You would,” Chris said. “But you’re lame like that.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your situation,” I said.

“It’s fine,” Chris said, with emphasis, still staring off into space. Blindly, he rummaged in one pocket, pulling out a plastic kit. “It’s- it’s freeing. All I care about is that I eat three square meals, since nourishment matters for my power, and having a place to sleep. Strip away everything else, and it’s all any of us want.”

“Some of us want people to keep close to us,” Kenzie said.

“Not me,” Chris said. He opened the kit and drew out a pair of pliers.

“Your opinions may change as you hit puberty,” Tristan said.

“I’m already started on that, I’m not going to go into any details, and I really don’t think my feelings are going to change,” Chris replied. He seemed to reconsider, then said, “I really hope they don’t.”

I glanced at Ashley. She’d been quiet since sitting down. The last time I’d reached out hadn’t ended well. Was I supposed to ignore her now, leave her alone while she wound herself down?

“How about we talk about your idea, Tristan?” I asked.

“It’s getting later in the afternoon,” Sveta said. “And Kenzie has dinner with her parents. It would be good to get it out of the way.”

“I can skip it if I have to,” Kenzie said.

“You shouldn’t,” I said.

Tristan shifted position, metal sliding against smooth stone. “The plan. We’ve only got the broad strokes worked out, so if you want to help hammer it out, Victoria, it would really help.”

“Okay.”

“Protecting Rain in the coming weeks is essential. My starting point for thinking about this plan was thinking how we might cover all the bases we want to cover. We need to keep the older members of the group free enough to help Rain with whatever he needs help with. Kenzie wants to do something integral to the group, and while she can help keep an eye out, it’s easy for her to take too much of a backseat role.”

“Am I taking a frontseat role then?”

“I’m- not exactly. There’s a lot about this that’s counterintuitive. My first instinct is to think, hey, I want to make money, I want to be out there doing things. But that leaves us open to interference and distraction. So… what if we go covert?”

“Covert?” I asked.

“Nobody knows Ashley is on the side of the good guys for the time being. She’s really good at the villainous persona and atmosphere.”

“Thank you,” Ashley said.

“And then there’s Chris, who can be monstrous, appear, disappear, then show up again as someone or something else.”

I glanced at Chris. Chris had two sets of pliers in his mouth. He was readjusting his braces.

“The masterminds and the organizations are masterminding and getting organized. Hollow Point is one example of that, and Tattletale’s degree of involvement, that’s another example. I didn’t get the impression Tattletale was really aware that we were a team, so I think this works.”

“Take all things mastermind with a grain of salt,” I said.

“Of course,” Tristan said, quickly enough that I wondered if he’d bothered with that grain of salt. “Okay, so what if we do like- actually, it’s like Victoria was saying a few minutes ago, about creating and capitalizing on weak points-”

“She was telling us more about Tattletale,” Kenzie told Ashley.

“Yeah,” Tristan said. “Look, no rush, we do this slow and careful. We put you guys out there, Ashley and Chris can plant cameras, Kenzie handles backend, we gather all the data we can, and we find out what the masterminds are doing and where the organizations are most vulnerable.”

“Then we hit them,” Ashley said.

“Maybe,” Tristan said. “Maybe. We assess the situation, we maybe even spread disinformation, and then we have discussions, involving other cape teams, maybe. If it seems doable, we hit them. We have a lot going for us if we want to blitz the enemy or ruin a plan in progress. When it’s time to make our play, we can do big, we can hit hard, and we can move fast. If it doesn’t seem doable, we sell the info to another cape team.”

“I like that you’re thinking about the money,” I said. “How do you sustain things if you’re going ahead and handling the mission on your own?”

“I’m thinking we don’t,” Tristan said. “I’m not wanting to set up a headquarters, we wouldn’t necessarily have employees or staff, we can figure something out for costume.”

“It’s a long, hard road to gather that kind of intel and then act on it at just the right time. It’s a test of patience,” I said. “That patience gets tested further when your pockets are empty.”

“I hear you,” Tristan said. “It helps some that we have a lot of people here who are subsidized or not entirely out on their own. Kenzie gets money from her parents, Chris has his meals and shelter through the institution.

“I think we have an advantage there,” Sveta said, quiet. “Because the thing that defines us, and I don’t think it defined the Irregulars like this, and it didn’t define the Wards, like Weld described them… we all need to be out there. We need this. That makes us stick it out.”

There were nods around the group. Even Chris. The heads that weren’t nodding were smiling, like Ashley’s, or looking very serious in a way that made me sure they were in agreement, like Rain was.

I allowed myself to nod as well.

“Okay,” I said. “I might be able to make some recommendations about funding, so you won’t be too starved. If you think you can gather intel that others might be interested in, I can talk to other teams on your behalf, or I can point you in the right direction if you want to handle that yourselves. You’d tell them you have the capacity to get intel. You may or may not want first dibs on these villains, but whatever happens, if they’ll pay a token amount, you’ll give up the info. It serves a double purpose if you set it up as a dead man’s switch. Worst comes to worst, the authorities get an email letting them know what you were up to and who you were up against.”

“They’d pay for that, you think?” Rain asked. “Even if it’s us saying we’re taking first dibs, but we’ll give the info anyway?”

“I think it could be sold to them,” I said. “Information comes at a premium, and every single team out there is wanting as clear a picture of where things stand as possible.”

“I do my thing, Chris does his thing, Kenzie does her thing,” Ashley said. “Sveta, Tristan and I help Rain in the meantime. When we have the intel, we hit them. Take out key players, interfere with a key part of their business, and we leave them ruined.”

“We maybe hit them,” Tristan said, with emphasis on ‘maybe’.

“If we spend the time to get that far, you’ll be itching to see it the rest of the way through,” Ashley said.

“And then what?” I asked, before they could get in an argument.

“Hm?”

“Let’s assume it’s a success, or you hand off the intel. What follows?”

“Depends on a lot of factors,” Tristan said. “We could take another piece of data collected on the way and jump off from there, or we don’t just take money, and we go to another team and we trade intel for intel. They tell us if they’ve got more tough nuts or tricky areas to tackle, and we use that as our next starting point.”

I nodded.

“What are you thinking?” Tristan asked.

“I… admit this makes a lot of sense. It may be harder than you’re picturing. Masterminds cover their asses, organizations have a lot of tools at their disposal.”

“If we get six pieces of a twenty-piece puzzle and we realize we can’t take things any further, we can still sell that intel,” Tristan said.

“Absolutely,’ I said. “I’m trying to think about how that plays out in the long-term.”

“I don’t know,” Tristan said. “There’s the stuff I just said, but I was mostly thinking about the next few steps. I’d rather make calls based on the now and adapt later, depending on what comes up.”

“That’s fair,” I said. “I’m trying to be mindful of consequences, these days. You’d be making enemies, once people realized what you were doing and the role you’d played. If you’re not careful, Ashley and Chris as background observers are cards you can only play a few times, in a limited fashion.”

“You can play me eight times,” Chris said, pulling the pliers out of his mouth, “After that they’ll probably catch on.”

“If you don’t change your head that much, then they’ll catch on sooner than that,” Tristan said.

“On that topic, I’m not sure I like Chris being out in the field like that,” Sveta said.

“I’m fine,” Chris said. “I can handle that much.”

“I’m thinking Chris gets involved as a distraction. A few minutes at a time, a monster shows up, overturns the status quo. The kind of thing we do once every two weeks or once a month.”

“Yeah. I’m good with that,” Chris said.

“I like it,” Rain said. “I hate that I’m a burden at this stage.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Kenzie said. She reached out to give Rain a pat on the knee with her eyehook. “We’re all burdens in our own screwed up ways.”

My expression might have betrayed something, because Tristan looked my way.

“Yea or nay?” he asked.

“It reminds me of the Las Vegas capes,” I said. “And a bit of Watchdog.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Tristan asked.

Las Vegas had been damned effective, as had Watchdog. But where Las Vegas had been a subtle, careful player with a few questionable, mysterious individuals in their ranks making the most of their backgrounds and skills, much like this team in disposition and direction, they’d also been a team that had turned villain at a critical time. Watchdog had been careful and scrupulous, making measured moves with the best intel and agents they had at their disposal, and Watchdog hadn’t survived Gold Morning as an organization.

Those were the only two data points I had, for teams like this. Corruption and annihilation.

I couldn’t say for sure that it was a bad thing, but I couldn’t say it was a good thing either.

“It’s a thing,” I said.

Glare – 3.5

The van bobbed with the added weight as I set Kenzie’s projector-recorder box down. As I moved back, I nearly tripped over Kenzie, who had climbed into the van right behind me.

“I’ve got the straps, I’ll tie it down,” she said. “Thank you for doing the heavy lifting. It really helps.”

“Sure,” I said. I squeezed past her and climbed down from the back of the van. “For the future, if I’m using my strength, you probably want to keep more of a distance. I wouldn’t want to bump into you with my power up.”

“Oh, okay.”

With Tristan having laid out his plan, the meeting was done, Tristan’s creations had been dismantled, the rocky walls and barriers broken down and placed with other rocks, and I had my laptop with my gathered notes in my bag.

Kenzie’s dad was standing by the door to the van. The others were gathered on the sidewalk in front of the library.

“Are you going to be okay going home alone?” Tristan asked Rain.

“If you’d asked me earlier, I’d have said yes. I’m less sure now,” Rain said.

“Sorry,” I said.

“No need to be.”

“I want you to know what you’re up against. I didn’t do it to scare you, exactly.”

“Knowing what I’m up against and being scared go hand-in-hand,” Rain said. “Right now I’m telling myself we don’t think Tattletale is free enough to be tracking me down right now, and the others are injured or preoccupied. I’m probably safe to get home like this, right?”

“I’d think so,” Sveta said. “I’d offer to come with you, but it’s a bit of a long trip.”

“Yeah,” Rain said. “I wouldn’t want you to go to that trouble, either way.”

“Have you given any thought to moving?” Tristan asked.

Rain shrugged. “Every day. Being where I am is tolerable for now, I think. The commute to the city is a pain, but if I imagine they’re hiring a dozen mercenaries and a few others, then it could be a bigger pain for them.”

“Hey Flays-Alive-Man, for this job, we’re going to need you and your ten superpowered friends to catch a train and spend three and a half hours traveling to the middle of nowhere, and then you have to find our target,” Chris said.

“God,” Rain said. “Don’t fire up my imagination with names like that.”

“I do want to focus more on your situation,” I said. “We’ve talked about the team and what the group is doing, but your situation is pressing. We can’t keep assuming they’re preoccupied.”

“I know,” Rain said.

“We should figure something out, cover any surprises in the short-term while plotting out something workable in the long-term,” I said.

“I agree. You can send them the wrong signals, but they could try tripping you up too,” Tristan said.

“I know, really,” Rain said. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, like he was about to say something, then said, “Yeah.”

“I could come with and fly back, or fly over the train and keep an eye out for trouble,” I said.

I could see Rain’s reaction, the kneejerk resistance.

“Oh! I have cameras,” Kenzie said, “And you could use them to communicate. They’re not too obvious.”

“I could carry a camera,” Rain said. “Just so long as I could turn it off when I need to.”

“Why would you need to turn it off?” Kenzie asked.

“Because I have to go to the bathroom sometimes.”

“Why would anyone use a camera to watch someone go to the bathroom?” Kenzie asked. “No, wait, I don’t want to know. I’ve learned my lesson about those sorts of questions. But you can trust me, that’s not what I’m about.”

“I’m glad. I still want an off switch.”

Kenzie rummaged in the back of the van and pulled out a bag. She handed over something looked like a smoke detector in brushed black metal, with a lens in the center. “Here. A camera. You can press down on the lens in the middle and it will alert me. I’ll set it up so it lets the others know too, but I can pick up sound and visuals and pass it on to the others if you need it. This is the battery pack. You can pull it out and the camera won’t work.”

“Seems simple enough.”

“Whatever you do,” Kenzie said, reaching out to touch Rain’s forearm. “Do not put the battery pack in backward, when you re-insert it.”

Rain looked down at the camera he held with a little bit of trepidation.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because then it won’t work,” Kenzie said.

“You said it in an ominous voice,” Chris said.

“It’ll help Rain to remember not to put it in backward. Duh.”

“It’s not going to misfire or blow up?” I asked.

“Why do you keep asking that? No. It’s a camera. There is a very small chance of it blowing up, and if it does then it’s going to be a very small explosion. Unless you’re very unlucky and a lot of the things that could make it blow up all happen at once.”

“I guess I trust your tech more than I trust the people who are after me to leave me alone,” Rain said. He held up the camera. “I’ll hold onto this, then. Thanks.”

“Cool,” Kenzie said. “You’re welcome.”

“You’re not going to be looking through it and checking in on me at random, right?”

“Not if you don’t want me to,” Kenzie said.

“I don’t want you to,” Rain said. “No offense. It’s just that the less you know, the less likely it is that one of the people after me decides to come after one of you to try to get info.”

“Okay,” Kenzie said. “Not a problem.”

It’s a bit of a problem, I thought. But not like you’re imagining.

Kenzie looked back toward her dad. “And I should go. You know how to get in contact if you have questions. Do you want a ride? Does anyone?”

“No thanks,” Rain said.

Kenzie double and triple checked with the rest of us, then looked over at her dad, who was waiting with barely any change in expression. “I’m going to head out then. Bye guys.”

“Bye,” Sveta said.

“Talk to you again soon,” I said.

Kenzie climbed into the passenger seat. Her dad glanced over the group, briefly making eye contact with me, before taking a seat behind the wheel. She stuck her hand out the window to give us a bit of a wave as her dad pulled away.

“Most uncomfortable car ride,” Rain said, watching them go.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Julien Martin, giving me a ride earlier. Kenzie sent me a text letting me know he was on his way to pick me up. I would have said no if she’d asked beforehand. He turned up, let me into the car, then the entire way here, didn’t say a single word. I didn’t say a thing either.”

“Am I missing context?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Rain said.

“It’s context for Kenzie to share,” Sveta said, her voice firm.

“Yeah,” Rain said, again.

“Fair,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure it was. Not a hundred percent. There was a point where I couldn’t do everything I needed to do if people were keeping secrets. I didn’t want to press any buttons or tread on anything sensitive, and there were a lot of buttons and a lot of sensitive points.

“We’ll get you up to speed soon,” Sveta said. “But we have to be fair.”

“Out of curiosity, Sveta, how much wear and tear did your body take out there? Or is it bad of me to ask?” Tristan asked.

“It’s not bad at all,” Sveta said.

The conversation turned to armor and costumes. I listened with one ear, but my thoughts were on Sveta’s defense of Kenzie’s background, and how careful Tristan was in asking about Sveta’s body.

There was something I’d noticed with the group, and it was something I’d fallen prey to myself. When the group was talking, it was almost always in a guarded way. Even Chris did it to a small degree. Ashley too. Conversations were meted out with care, not necessarily so each person was protecting themselves, but so they protected each other. We often slipped back into talking like we were in therapy.

There were cases where individuals protected themselves and cases where individuals were also protected by others. Kenzie had a role as the baby of the team, in a way. There were things she didn’t disclose and things she was intentionally or unintentionally coy about, despite her overly open personality. That was compounded by how others were ready to step up for her and defend her. That was the security they’d given her.

I glanced over my shoulder at Ashley, who was hanging back, finishing the second of the bottles of water she’d brought back with her after going to the library. Ashley was very similar to Kenzie in that department. Unguarded in terms of how open she was about many things, but she had things she didn’t talk about, and she benefited heavily from the group’s defense of her.

It was the contract between them, the language they used and their habits, it carried over from the group. It was going to change over time, I was sure, especially if their therapy with Mrs. Yamada ran its course. I wasn’t sure if that meant the dialogue would become natural, if the contract would be betrayed in small ways, or both.

I was, as much as they’d asked for my help, the interloper. They protected each other from me, even if it meant Sveta was protecting someone as troubled as Ashley from someone she saw as a friend. I suspected it ran deeper than her wanting to see Ashley’s humanity win out over the monster.

Getting the information on powers and on the most important things like Ashley’s situation was easily doable, because it was need-to-know. Where I ran into a stumbling block was that their view on need-to-know and my view differed.

I worried they had too light a view of things. The ones who didn’t were among the more guarded, and they were being guarded too.

It all knotted together. Was I supposed to be patient and wait for the information to come out? Would it come out only as each crisis reared its head? Or did I push and risk doing damage?

I could push lightly. I waited for Tristan to stop talking about his armor, and the tools he used to fix the scuffs.

I wasn’t the only one waiting for a break in the conversation. “I should probably go or I’m going to miss my train.”

“My offer stands,” I said. “An eye in the sky, if you think you’ll need it.”

“No,” Rain said. “I’d rather-”

He stopped at that.

“What?” Tristan asked.

Rain went on, “It’s my experience that when you’re in trouble, people are usually pretty good about offering help and support. People are good like that. I’ve seen it with family members that had babies, and people who lost loved ones. Everyone turns up and offers their support, they bring food, they say they’ll be there. And they are, at first.”

“You think we’ll get bored of this and not help you later?” Tristan asked.

“Not bored,” Rain said. “Shit happens. Everyone has their issues, things come up, and then they lose sight of the promises made to new parents, the bereaved, or whoever else.”

“I think that’s pretty unfair,” Tristan said.

“It’s reality,” Rain said. He looked at me, “It’s nice of you to offer, Victoria, but I’d rather have you come and keep an eye on things when I feel like I’m actually in danger, instead of coming now, realizing what a huge pain in the ass it is to fly that far out of your way, and then feeling reluctant when it counts.”

I thought about reassuring him, pointing out that I’d traveled from the Bridgeport span to the portal in New Haven to Brockton Bay, several times a week, to get notes, check on the wreckage of the house and visit Crystal’s family. I didn’t.

“Gotcha,” I said. I’d pushed, I wasn’t going to push harder now that the boundary had been raised.

“You’re still blind, Chris?” Sveta asked.

“Yep. It’s starting to come back, though. Thirty minutes to an hour, I think.”

“Do you want someone to stay with you?” Sveta asked.

“No. Hell no. Then I’d feel obligated to make conversation and shit,” Chris said. “It’s a sunny day, there’s a breeze, the weather is perfect. I’m going to sit outside and wait and then I’ll make my way back to the institution.”

“They won’t be bothered if you’re late for dinner?” I asked.

“So long as I’m there by lights out, they don’t care. They’ve got twenty staff and over a thousand kids in the building with dead or missing parents. I eat or I feed myself, I mostly do the chores I’m assigned, I’m there when I’m supposed to be. There’s lots of others who demand more attention than I do.”

“It sounds like the children at your institution are pretty vulnerable,” Sveta said. “Nobody paying attention to what they’re doing with their days. Any of you could be pressed into work or preyed on or you could end up disappearing, and nobody would know.”

“Not me,” Chris said. “They’d regret it if they tried with me. With triggers being a thing, they might regret it whoever they try it with.”

I was put in mind of my mom. “It doesn’t mean the damage isn’t done before powers come into the picture.”

“Yeah, well, I dunno,” Chris said. “I’m going to relax and wait until my vision comes back. If it takes too long or if I run into trouble, I’ve got another change I was wanting to make today. Keen Vigilance. Perception focused. It’ll give me a fresh set of eyes.”

“Okay,” I said.

The others got themselves sorted out. Rain, Sveta, and Tristan started their walk to the train station. Chris retreated toward the library.

Ashley remained by the sidewalk, drinking her water. She’d been dead quiet.

“You good?” I asked her.

“I was dead for years. I’ve been operated on, feeling every last movement of the scalpel, several times. This is nothing, so yeah, I’m good.”

She put a curious inflection on the word.

It was eerie to think of Bonesaw’s involvement in things. Her handling of Ashley here, how the Slaughterhouse Nine had got Blasto which had led to Fume Hood’s downward spiral. It made me think of Crawler, and it made me think of what had happened to my home town.

To my home, my living room shattered with monsters left lying in places where childhood memories were supposed to be. Monsters that had once been people, a few of them genuinely good and decent.

Heroes, even.

To my family. To the person who had once been closest to me.

“Right. Good to hear,” I said.

“We’re similar, I think,” she said.

I paused. I’d been taking a second to think about how I would gracefully exit. Now I was left to process what she’d said, and figure out how to gracefully answer that.

“Should I take that as a compliment?” I asked.

“Take it however you like. Them? They’ve experienced hurt. They’ve known horror. Maybe not so much for Kenzie, but she experienced enough hurt that it balances out.”

“I probably shouldn’t be hearing this,” I said.

“They haven’t seen the worst of it. They haven’t seen rock bottom and then had someone or something reach up from below and drag them deeper. The Slaughterhouse Nine were that for me. I got the impression from how you talked about Tattletale that she was that for you.”

No, I thought. Only in small part.

“My first take on you was that you knew enough to be useful. Then you talked about Tattletale, and your reaction to someone who has the information, who’s careful, and who has resources? You’re afraid.”

“I’m concerned,” I said.

“I respect it, that fear.”

“Concern,” I said. “If it was just fear for myself, that would be one thing. But I’m concerned about the others here.”

“It’s a very concerning world, isn’t it?” she asked. “There’s a lot to be concerned about. You and I, we have our eyes open about that, even if we’re taking it in very different directions.”

“Are we?” I asked. “Aren’t you giving this hero thing an honest shot?”

“I am. It’s not going to work out, but I’ll be here until the end.”

“You sound pretty sure about the fact that it’s going to go south.”

She tipped back her water bottle, finishing it off, and without even lowering the bottle from her mouth, used her power. Shorter than her prior uses, abrupt. It made its usual cacophony of noise, my ears ringing faintly in its wake, and it pushed her hair up and back, so it took a second to fall back into place.

She caught her balance, taking a second before she stood straight again. Then she looked at me with eyes that had no pupils, no irises, only the white, and only the dark makeup to draw out the eyelashes. Slowly, her pupils faded back in.

All to dispose of a water bottle, apparently, or to make a point.

“I’m not even the most fucked up person on this team, Victoria,” she said. “I might not even be in the top two. Our therapist knows, and that’s why she was concerned enough to reach out to you. They, the really fucked up ones, they probably know. But I know it too, which makes me pretty certain.”

“Yet you’re still here,” I said.

“So are you.”

“I’m cursed with an impulse to help people,” I said.

“It’s an epidemic,” she said.

“Guess so,” I said. I used my flight, my feet rising an inch or two off the ground. “I think I’m going to take off.”

She gave me a small salute, her expression dispassionate.

I didn’t want to give the impression I was running, so I asked, “See you in a couple of days, then?”

“Yeah.”

I flew skyward, at the speed and angle that made even my stomach do that overly light flip-flop at the distance between myself and solid earth. I came to a stop when I couldn’t see the library anymore.

I didn’t fly home. I had too many thoughts in my head, and after seeing the others, seeing personalities and outbursts from Tristan’s comments for Byron to Ashley’s more dire threats, the powers, the secrets that were being kept or barely suppressed…

I remained in the air, the ground a blur beneath me, the clouds not all that far above me. The city was painted in its golds, its concrete and pavement with yellow paint, its grassy patches, its fields of wheat and corn.

Just me up here, the wind in my ears.

I believed Ashley. It wasn’t that she was honest, she wasn’t. She bluffed and she bluffed often. I suspected the bluffs were because she’d been telling me the truth when she’d remarked on the common thread between us: we’d seen some of the worst the world had to offer and we had reason to be afraid.

I believed her when she said there were people on the team who she saw as more ‘messed up’ than herself. I had my suspicions about who.

Something was up with Chris. Mentally and emotionally he was compromised. Physically, compromised. Socially, in terms of where he fit into the world, again, he was compromised. He’d almost revealed the least of himself of anyone present.

Rain was another issue.

The team supported and insulated its members, they protected one another from the interlopers and the outside stresses. There were times and places that could be good, but I could just as easily see things go in a direction where outsiders weren’t sufficiently protected from the group, while the group carried on like this.

My job, in a way.

I’d keep an eye on all of them, of course. Kenzie could be a danger, and I could see even Sveta going to a bad place, however much I liked her. Tristan was strong, and he spent half of his life locked away in a lightless, motionless prison, only a window that looked out through his brother’s eyes and listened through his brother’s ears. It would be so easy for him to go off the deep end. Ashley was unpredictable and dangerous, pure and simple.

Chris I could only keep an eye on. Rain-

I didn’t fly back to Crystal’s.

I flew to the train station, and I held a position where I couldn’t make out the people, but I could make out the train.

I was paranoid, and too many things today had prodded at my paranoia. There were many I was helpless to do much about, but I could act on these suspicions.

A train came, traveling west-to-east. I knew Sveta and Tristan would be boarding it. Had I been on foot, it was the one I would have caught.

When the other train came, traveling the opposite direction, I followed it. I had a pit in my stomach, doing it, but I had a gut feeling that this was part of why Jessica had reached out to me, and why she had been relieved that I was keeping an eye on things.

Yes, they knew things about each other. But they kept secrets. There were evasions, walls that were thrown up.

I just didn’t understand what Rain was doing. To have a hit out on his head and reject an escort, holding firm to that rejection even after having the danger driven home?

“What’s going on, Rain?” I asked. Where I was, suspended in the sky, wind rushing past me, there was nobody to hear.

I was prepared to follow him to Greenwich. It was a lengthy trip, and it left me to think about grabbing dinner, possibly on the trip back. I tempted myself with thoughts of a burger or a good souvlaki roll. Something warm, as I thought on it. This high up, there was no heat radiating up off the ground or nearby surfaces, less sunlight bouncing around with light energy dissipating and becoming heat, and the steady wind flowed past me to swipe the warmth that my body put out. As stakeouts went, this was liable to be cold, and I’d have to figure out something for bathroom breaks.

As self-imposed missions went, it wasn’t just hard for me to justify doing this, it was a pretty rough experience. The mind-numbing dullness of a sit-and-watch stakeout combined with the hypnotic nature of a long-distance drive. Drivers, at least, had to watch the road and be mindful of other drivers. I had nothing to help keep my thoughts centered.

From Stratford to Bridgeport. I had my binoculars out, and I watched for trouble, studying the people boarding the train.

Nothing obvious.

The train carried on its way, traveling from the Bridgeport neighborhood to Fairfield span, past the community center that had been attacked at Norfair, and then onward to Norwalk station. Kenzie’s neighborhood.

There were stops where only a pair of people left, stops where only a few got on, and Norwalk, unfortunately, was one of the major stations. I couldn’t track everyone that boarded.

My thoughts were preoccupied, thinking about what I was doing, my doubts, my frustration that I couldn’t effectively watch out for trouble while doing this the way I was doing it. It was too easy for someone with powers to board the train and go after Rain while uncostumed. Was it likely? No. But I wanted to justify what I was doing.

There was a chance, though, that when Rain got off the train, he would be followed by fellow passengers until he was in a place where he could be attacked. I could watch out for that.

I could watch out for any unexpected stops, and I could keep an eye out for the old staples of railway robberies and ambushes – trains moved slowest when they went around corners, so I could keep an eye out for ambushes and unexpected boardings that took place in those locations.

With my thoughts caught up in things as they were, I nearly missed it.

The train was old-fashioned in look, cars linked by couplings, and passengers could move between cars, with the space between each car being open to the air. Periodically passengers would step out to smoke or get fresh air. Most were parents with kids.

At the caboose, a figure had stepped out onto the back. Rain.

He climbed over the railing and jumped, while the train was going well over a hundred miles an hour.

Hands out to his side, his bag in one hand, other empty, his feet touched the slope, and he stopped. No momentum, nothing to suggest he’d been on a speeding train a matter of seconds ago. The fact he stood on a slope didn’t seem to matter, as he didn’t slide, slip, or fall.

He looked around, but he didn’t look up, and I wasn’t sure he would have seen me if he had. He jogged down the slope, and walked across a field. Past the field was mostly wilderness and dirt road.

Rain walked for ten minutes to get where he was going. Erin had parked under a modest little bridge in a town with one gas station.

I didn’t feel good, watching them interact. I felt guilty for spying, even though his actions proved he was being dishonest. I watched Rain make conversation with his friend. Minutes, where he did most of the talking, pacing some, while Erin leaned against the side of the vehicle.

He must have asked something, because Erin shifted position, reaching through the window. A second later, she drew her hand out. She had a handgun.

It didn’t mean anything. This was justifiable, given his situation. Lying about where he lived and where he was going was justifiable. Even his friend carrying a gun made sense, when he was being hunted.

His story about how they met and where she came from… I wasn’t sure. It didn’t feel like I knew the whole of it.

If they’d traveled again, I might have watched to see where they went. If they’d gone to one of the smaller equivalents of Hollow Point, it might have told me something. If they met certain people, it might have proven out my suspicion.

They went to get ice cream in the dinky one gas-station town, and I couldn’t conscience staying to watch.

I flew home.

⊙

I let myself into Crystal’s apartment through the sliding balcony door.

“…ave site?” a male voice.

“Whenever I’m traveling in that direction,” Crystal said.

“That’s good to hear. I keep meaning to travel out that way, but…”

“It’s a universe away. I can go with you sometime, if you want.”

“That might be nice.”

I shut the balcony door. I could have closed it silently, but I didn’t.

Crystal, standing at one corner of the living room, had the door open, but she stood in between the door and doorframe in such a way that her body filled the gap. She twisted around to look at me, and I saw a forcefield start to be painted out.

“It’s okay,” I said.

The forcefield winked out.

“You sure?” she asked.

I nodded.

She opened the door wider. My dad was in the hallway, wearing a sleeveless top with a hood, in a very light fabric, and yoga pants of similar light weight. A gym bag sat on the floor by his feet.

“You’ve been flying,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“That’s good,” he said. “That’s really positive.”

“I guess,” I said. “How are you?”

“I’m noticing how empty my apartment feels, a lot. That’s not me trying to guilt you. It’s me realizing where I’ve wound up and wondering how I got myself here.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Do you want to invite him in?” Crystal asked. “I can fuck off if you need me to. Or you can take over door duty?”

“I wouldn’t ask you to fuck off in your own place. Are you getting tired of standing guard?” I asked.

“A bit.”

“We can invite him in.”

My dad entered the apartment. “Sorry to drop in.”

“Is that what this is?”

“I worry, when you drop all communication. I thought I would at least ask Crystal if you were okay.”

“I see,” I said. I walked around behind the couch, putting it between myself and him, and leaned forward on the back of it.

He took a seat on the armrest of the armchair, one foot on the ground. “I want you to know that what happened at your mom’s house, I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t right.”

“I appreciate that. I… I wish I could tell you that I was sorry for how I reacted there. But I don’t know if I can.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” he said. “I think any and all of us should be understanding when it comes to old wounds.”

Old wounds, I thought.

Were they that old? Didn’t ‘old’ presume they’d healed over or that things had been addressed or mended somehow?

“I guess,” I said. “What mom did, I was pretty vocal about why I was upset about it. Did Crystal explain why I was bothered by what you did?”

“She deflected my question when I asked.”

“If you noticed it was a deflection,” Crystal said, “I need to work on my patter more.”

“Just a bit more,” my dad said, smiling slightly.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said.

“It’s okay,” I said. I paused. “You realize, dad, the reason I felt betrayed wasn’t that I thought you were in on it or anything, right? I felt betrayed because you let yourself believe mom’s words more than you believed everything you saw in years of living with me, after visiting me in the asylum, after seeing how I function and how I don’t function.”

“I’m not going to try to defend myself,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. I let myself be stupid. I have a way of doing that when I’m around your mom.”

“I just don’t understand how you wouldn’t just stop and realize it doesn’t make sense. When you know about the nightmares and the fact I hadn’t flown in months, and the fact I don’t even want to talk about her, you’ll believe I’d be willing to meet her face to face and have a meal?”

“It’s not that clear cut. Your mother is a clever woman, to the point she can outsmart herself. She has good instincts when it comes to getting people on her side, too. I’ve been missing home, the past few years, and seeing the woman I still love being warm for the first time in…”

He trailed off.

“Since twenty-eleven,” I said.

“Yeah,” my dad said. “With food I’ve been aching for for just as long already cooking, the kitchen and barbecue rich with that smell. Things, like I said, that make me stupid.”

“What food was it?” I asked.

“Laser seared kebabs,” Crystal said.

I bit my lip. Family recipe. With my lip still between my teeth, I said, “Okay.”

“I’m not making excuses,” my dad said. “I should have clued in. When Amy turned up and I knew you were coming, it wasn’t framed like a reconciliation. It was framed as you knowing everyone was coming and you would have things to get off your chest. Carol said she would referee and I knew it would go poorly if it was just her, so I offered to help. While I was offering I wasn’t stopping to think.”

“Was a part of it you just wanting things to be normal again? The four person nuclear family back together?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m not about to lie here. I- yeah. Yes.”

It hurt, hearing that. Knowing my dad and where he wanted to be were that far away from where I was and where I wanted to be.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I let my guard down when I should have had it up to protect you. I wanted you to hear that apology, and I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“Crystal and I are looking after each other,” I said.

“Absolutely,” Crystal said.

“That’s great,” my dad said.

I rubbed my arm, wrist to shoulder. “I’m giving some limited direction to a team of heroes right now. It’s messy.”

“Any team is bound to be. It’s good that you’re doing that.”

“Messier than most,” I said. I paused. “Top one percent of messy.”

“Ah, I see,” my dad said. He rubbed his chin. It was late enough in the day that the stubble he usually had on his chin was more of a shadow. “The Dallon-Pelham family never does anything the easy way, does it?”

“No we don’t,” I said.

“Can I help?” he asked. “Advice, support? I don’t have a lot of money, but…”

“I’ve got the team outlined on my laptop. Six people, either under eighteen or in the vicinity of eighteen. One complicated case, age-wise. Um, this doesn’t leave this room, right?”

Nods from both Crystal and my dad.

“They’ll probably go covert. Gather and sell info. I think I can pitch that to the big teams and get the initial funding. I might be able to get costumes through them as well.”

“They have the infrastructure set up for costumes,” my dad said. “They’ve got most current members outfitted, and I’ve heard rumor of them branching out to supply other teams and heroes. I would be very surprised if they said it wasn’t doable.”

“Perfect,” I said. That helped if and when it came to negotiating. I held up my hand. “Funding, costumes, target… target is hard to pin down. A lot of low-level threats out there, banding together.”

“If you’re keeping an eye out for the criminal populations that aren’t joining larger groups, the places you want to keep an eye on are the Cabin, the Tea-Shop, the Pitstop, the Rail, and the Greens. Those last three places are pretty seedy and traditional villain bars. The others are villain bars without the bar part.”

“What about the ones who are hooked into bigger groups?” I asked.

“That gets more complicated, and it’s less about the places to watch and more about the names to keep an ear out for,” my dad said. “Marquis, Goddess, Lord of Loss, Mama Mathers, the Crowley brothers, Deader and Goner, Barrow.”

I knew the names and I knew where they were situated. No big surprises there. I nodded to myself. Marquis. So casually mentioned.

“How messy is it?” my dad asked, his voice softer.

“They’re young, some of them are kids, and I’m not positive they’re all going to survive the next two weeks,” I said. “And that’s not even- there’s enough other mess I could almost forget about that danger hanging over their heads.”

“You’ve taken them under your wing?”

“Yep. I’m going to at least point them in the right direction, I hope. I might be the wrong person for the job, but someone has to do it, right?”

“Wow,” my dad said, barely audible.

“What?”

He shook his head. “It’s hard to articulate.”

“I’m trying to play this slow, keep it calm. I know a lot and I’ve been down some of these roads. I’m hopeful I can at least keep things from getting out of control.”

“That may be a tall order,” Crystal said.

“Maybe,” I said. “If they absolutely insist on getting out there and mixing things up, I’ll point them in the direction of the asshole villains who are ramping up their activity and taking things over. The nascent Tattletales and Marquises. Kneecap them or their plans before they can get too big.”

“You really are your mother’s daughter,” my dad said.

My eyebrows went about as high up as they could as I turned my full attention toward him.

“What you said before, and what you said just now. Those words could have come from her mouth in a different time and place.”

“This isn’t winning points with me,” I said.

“I’m not here to win points,” he said. “I want to make sure you’re safe, sane, and healthy.”

I noticed the implication of what he was saying. That taking this course might not be one of those three things.

“What should I be doing different?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think any of it is wrong, but I haven’t always been the best judge in the moment. I’d say CYA.”

“On what front?” I asked.

“Do you have counsel on call?”

“I wasn’t aware we even had a legal system yet.”

“We don’t, but it’s coming soon.”

Counsel on call. It was common for new teams of heroes to have a lawyer available, who they could call and outline the situation to before they took action. Covering their asses, making sure the arrests could stick, that there was a voice with the authority and knowledge to talk to the police and courts if and when the heroes’ actions were questioned in more depth.

It wasn’t a bad idea. It hobbled things, slowed them down, it was a bit of a headache… but having a lawyer as a hoop to jump through could restrain some of the more impulsive parts of the team. I’d have to run it by them, but it made sense.

“I could ask around,” my dad offered. “But if you really wanted a good perspective on who you could talk to, there are better people to ask.”

“You mean mom,” I said.

My dad nodded.

“Yeah,” I said. I clenched my fist and relaxed it. “I’ll talk to her.”

“You really want this.”

I thought of the team when it had been operating together, playing off one another, being good at what they did. I thought of Tattletale and her version of my hometown and how much I really wanted her and people like her to lose every reason they had to be smug and confident.

I wanted to bring those two ideas together into a concrete reality, and I wanted it badly enough I was willing to go have a conversation with my mom when I was really fucking pissed at her.

If it meant wrangling this team that was going to do what they were doing whether I was involved or not, I’d do that.

“I feel like whatever I say, you’re going to say I’m just like mom again, and then I’m going to be mad at you,” I said.

“Can’t have that,” my dad said.

“Putting all of that stuff aside,” I said. “If I walked away, if I left it alone, I’m scared of what would happen to people who didn’t deserve it. I can’t do that. I don’t know if that’s the Carol in me talking, but it’s the truth.”

My dad nodded to himself. “That’s not your mom talking, I’m pretty sure. Similar, but… not your mom.”

He didn’t even need to say it. The moment I’d seen the look on his face as he’d opened his mouth, I’d realized who I’d been echoing.

Glare – 3.6

Group Text (@ Ashley Stillons, Chris Elman, Kenzie Martin, Rain Frazier, Sveta Karelia, Tristan Vera)

Me: Morning, everyone. I’m planning to swing by the Wardens HQ today. Some Qs for people, going to talk to a family member about what you guys might need to do legally.
Me: In interest of not taking over your thing, anyone want to come with? You can make calls & be involved

Ashley S: I have appointments

Sveta K: I can come. I know my way around.

Kenzie M: I’ll come! are you going in the morning or afternoon?
Kenzie M: I can have my parents call in to school and get me out for the day if I have to

Sveta K: I don’t want your schoolwork to suffer

Me: Afternoon

Kenzie M: I’m an A+ student I can miss a day

Sveta K: No you can’t.

Me: It’s best to stick to the rules of the old days. Try to keep grades where they were before you joined a team. If you can miss your study group for this that’s ok. We meet at 2

Kenzie M: coo

Rain F: Can’t make it

Tristan V: count me in

Me: Sveta, Tristan, Kenzie, & me then. Chris is welcome if he wants. 2pm at the front doors. Take extra time to travel, P.transportation strike may futz things up

⊙

I’d had to take the train to get to the Wardens’ HQ. It was a fortress of a building, indomitable, and it was situated near the largest cluster of portals in Gimel, very possibly the largest cluster of portals in all the known worlds.

I looked up at a knight in plate armor with his bowed head, both hands on the pommel of a sword, with the tip resting on the ground. A cloth wrap partially covered the legs, like a flag worn around the waist, long enough to reach the knees in front, and to drape near the ankles at the back. Two shields stood behind the figure, hanging in the air at a height and position reminiscent of folded wings.

It was typically simplified when shrunk down for website images and badges, the position of arms, hands and shields suggesting the lines of a ‘W’ for the first letter of ‘Wardens’. Here, it was four stories of statue, built into the front face of the building.

It put me in mind of Gilpatrick’s speech. Five pounds of gun, fifteen pounds of armor? No. Here, at this scale, it was fifty tons of sword, a hundred and fifty tons of armor and shield. Every inch and pound of its composition was symbolism.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” Tristan asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s something.”

I turned to look at him. He’d just walked up to stand beside me. He’d tidied his hair some. I had the impression he’d started to dress up for the occasion and his other impulses stylewise had taken over. His shirt was a button-up, red silk, with buttons in twos at the regular intervals. He wore it very casually, with the sleeves rolled up and the buttons undone at the collarbone. He’d paired it with a nice pair of black jeans, and he’d painted his hair a red that more closely matched his shirt.

“Reminds me of that video that circulated online for a bit. Chevalier and the last fight against Behemoth,” Tristan said.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Probably intentional. It’s a good mental image to have, the hard fight and the great improvements that follow.”

“And the disaster that followed that?” Tristan asked.

I frowned at him.

“It’s reality,” he said.

“It’s a little pessimistic,” I said. I glanced back. I spotted Sveta making her way up the steps from the sidewalk to the raised bit of ground in front of the building. “Hey!”

She wore a black dress that gathered together as a halter neck, with tights covering the legs. She’d redone some of the paint on her arms and shoulders, the paint around the ball joint and along the shell that encased each arm fresh and glossy.

“You guys dressed up a bit,” I said.

“We exchanged some texts,” Tristan said. “I think we psyched each other up some.”

“I was redoing my paint after all the running around and tree climbing yesterday,” Sveta said. “I started overthinking things.”

“You look good,” I said.

“Thank you. You too.” I was wearing a very similar outfit to when I’d been job hunting.

Kenzie was last to catch up to us, running up the stairs. Knee-high socks, a skirt with overlapping stripes, and a blue sweater in a light material, worn over a shirt with the collar poking up through the neckhole. The pin in her hair looked like a bow, but it was two-dimensional and metal.

“Did you go home to change?” Tristan asked.

“No,” Kenzie said.

“You actually wore that to school?” he asked.

“It looks nice, thank you very much,” she said.

“I agree,” I said. “I might have worn something similar when I was around Kenzie’s age.”

“I can understand you not getting bullied,” Tristan told me. “Your parents are superheroes.”

“I don’t get bullied either,” Kenzie said. “I wouldn’t mind if I did. It would at least mean my classmates would pay attention to me.”

“They don’t?” Sveta asked.

“Feels like everyone’s busy with their own thing,” Kenzie said. She looked up at the statue that stood in relief from the front of the Wardens’ headquarters. “Still hurting from recent losses.”

“We’ll see what we can do to keep future losses from happening,” I said.

“Absolutely,” Kenzie said.

Inside the building, statues of key members stood off to either side of the lobby. Chevalier, Narwhal, Valkyrie, Legend, Cinereal, Stonewall, Topflight and Miss Militia. The building was set up so the people on the second, third, and fourth floors could stand at the glass railings and look down at the lobby, and vice versa. People in business clothes were walking every which way, upstairs, and people on the ground floor were free to peruse the gift shop or wait for tours.

There were larger display boards set up around the edges of the lobby, much like the maps that were stationed around malls, but these showed off the icons for each of the teams under the Wardens’ umbrella. They might have been touchscreens. There were screens for Advance Guard, Foresight, the Attendant, the Shepherds, and smaller teams like the Kings of the Hill, the Wayfinders, and the Navigators. The screen for the Attendant was still up, but it was dark, only the faint outline of the Attendants’ icon on the screen. The Shepherd’s screen had been moved forward and to a position of more prominence.

It was darker than the PRT offices had been. The aesthetic of the PRT of yesteryear had always been predominantly white, with black stenciled letters and icons, the periodic bit of chrome or mirror when tech was required. Here, it was dark stone, lined in gold or brass, and the lighting made me think of a cinema with lights set on high ceilings and tuned to be unobtrusive. It was transparent and open in layout and the suggestion of there being very few barriers, like with the glass railings, or the way that it really looked like anyone on the ground floor could go anywhere without checkpoints or security.

“Where are we going?” Sveta asked.

“I should check on my mom first, see if she’s free for a short conversation.”

“Where is she?”

“Legal or Liaison. I’ve been here twice before, but the first time they were still getting everything put together, and I don’t remember much from the second.”

Sveta turned around slowly, then pointed.

“Good,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Are you on good terms with your parents these days?” Sveta asked.

“I’m…” I started. “No.”

“Is she going to help?” Tristan asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not that kind of bad terms, where she’d say no, I don’t think.”

“Is it the kind of bad terms where you invite someone to come with you so you don’t have to worry about the ‘rents being super embarrassing and lame?” Kenzie asked.

“If I had any idea on what she might say or do then this would be easier,” I said. “I think it’ll be fine.”

The stairs led from either side of the front desk to the second floor, going around the statue-in-relief that mirrored the one on the front of the building. The security checkpoint was on the second floor, more or less hidden behind the statue and the slab it stood out from. Glass walls separated the walkway from the offices and departments around the building exterior.

“Names?” the man at the desk asked.

“Victoria Dallon, Sveta Karelia, Kenzie Martin, Tristan Vera,” I said.

“Intentions?”

“We have an appointment with Foresight on the fifth floor. I was also hoping to stop in and see my mom at her workplace. I’m not sure if she’s at Legal or Liaison right now.”

“Her name?”

“Carol Dallon.”

“One second.”

The person made a phone call. I waited, a little nervous, emotions stirred up. Anger, frustration, disappointment, worry.

Kenzie had her chin at the top of the railing, as she looked down at the lobby. Sveta stood next to her, with Tristan off to one side.

“Is Weld getting a statue?” Tristan asked.

“Not for a while,” Sveta said. “That’s more for people who’ve put in the years, and he only just got in. He’s got a preliminary thing in the gift shop.”

“No shit? Awesome. We should stop in at the gift shop before we leave.”

“You’re such a kid,” Kenzie said, sticking out her tongue at Tristan. He reached out to muss up her hair and she ducked back out of the way.

“Victoria, was it?” the person at the desk asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Your mother says you can go up. She’s at Legal on the third floor. She’ll take her break when you arrive, so you’ll have about fifteen minutes.”

I resisted the urge to wince. Fifteen minutes was too much. Still, saying that would cause problems. “Great.”

“Give me five seconds, and I’ll give you your guest ID cards. Can your friends come to the desk?”

We lined up in front of the desk. The printer didn’t take long, spitting out four cards in four seconds.

“Check your names are accurate, please, and- there seems to be a problem with miss… Kenzie?”

He turned the card around. A slash of distortion masked Kenzie’s face, tracing from her cheekbone to one corner of her forehead. It looked like the heavy compression artifacting that came with any image that had been compressed too many times, but it was dense to the point that her eyes, nose, and cheekbone were almost completely covered.

“Do you want to try again?” Kenzie asked. She had her phone in her hand as she clasped her hands behind her back. I saw the screen momentarily light up.

The man tapped at the keyboard for a few seconds, then turned around to grab the card as the machine spat it out. He gave a singular nod and passed the card with its attached lanyard to Kenzie. Picture normal.

We headed for the stairs up to the third floor.

“I didn’t know they were going to take our photos,” Kenzie said.

“What are you even doing, obscuring your face like that?” Tristan asked.

“It’s not on purpose, obviously, it’s a byproduct of tech I’m wearing.”

Once we reached the third floor, there was less in the way of civilian-facing offices, and there were more people in suits and business clothes. The glass wall had letters applied to it. Just ‘303 – LEGAL’.

My mom had had a study back at our house, with the hundred or so legal tomes with all of the case history, precedent, and whatever else, on top of the books we’d fashioned ourselves, binding in a variety of ways, saving team stuff, parahuman case files we’d printed off the net, and more.

This was that, it was the same kind of heavy oak desks that my mom had had in her study, the shelves, the desk lamps and the scattered paperwork that had yet to be gathered together and bound. It was files and filing cabinets, a storm of legality as if a giant had sneezed in a legal office.

My mom might have been one of the older people around. A lot of the lawyers looked young, and at two in the afternoon, jackets were off and slung on the backs of chairs, sleeves were rolled up and perfect hairstyles were just a little bit messed up. She was doing a lot of the talking, taking charge and getting people organized.

A young lady approached us at the doorway. “If you’re wanting to lay charges against the Wardens, or if you have witness testimony to give, you’ll want to go to Casework on the second floor. I know it’s confusing.”

“My mom is Carol Dallon, I’m just stopping in to ask a question. The people at check-in said it was okay.”

“Oh wow, yeah, look at you. I definitely see the resemblance. Your mom is awesome, you know.”

“I know,” I said, my eyebrows going up momentarily.

The lady stepped away to fetch my mom.

The feeling of trepidation got worse as I watched my mom walk toward me. It was hard to divorce this scene and image with my memory of being on the street outside my mom’s house, the hurt and the feelings there.

My mom smiled, acknowledging the other three. “Victoria. This is a pleasant surprise.”

“I had a conversation with dad last night. He suggested that you might be the person to ask for this thing these guys are doing.”

“Ah,” my mom said. She barely seemed fazed by that. “Just business?”

“More or less,” I said.

Man, I was still so pissed at her. I was more pissed somehow that she was being nice and casual.

“I’m happy to help however you need it,” she said. “The only issue is I can’t step away right this minute. We’re waiting on a phone call from some people in the would-be government, and my coworker is away on a late lunch.”

“I don’t need you to step away,” I said. “These guys are starting up a team. Dad suggested they’d do best if they had someone legal to call up before any big moves. Make sure charges stick.”

My mom looked over at the three. Kenzie put her hand up in a small wave.

“Is that Sveta?”

“Hi, Mrs. Dallon.”

“I didn’t recognize you at first. I can’t believe it,” my mom said. She approached Sveta, taking Sveta’s hands and lifting them up. “What beautiful work.”

“I’m pleased with it,” Sveta said, ducking her head a bit.

“And the art- is this yours? It reminds me of what I saw you working on during one of my visits.”

“It’s mine.”

“It’s stellar,” my mom said.

“I don’t suppose you’d know someone you could put us in touch with?” I asked, more tense than I’d wanted to sound.

“I can ask around. Are you paying them?”

“I think we’d have to,” I said.

“We’re pretty overloaded right now. I can’t make promises.”

“I don’t think the team has any major moves planned for early in their career,” I said. “Having someone available a month from now or two months from now might be good.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re still moving at this clip two months from now.”

“What do you do?” Tristan asked.

“We’re lobbying on behalf of the Wardens. The government is figuring out the law as we speak, and we’re trying to figure out the most effective approach to handle law and parahumans and how they interact in the new world. A lot of precedent, citing past history, pulling from the law of Earth Bet.”

“It sounds heavy,” Tristan said.

“We’re deciding the legal fabric of the new world. It is,” my mom said.

“Can you sound some people out?” I asked. “Having someone we could trust to be discreet would be ideal. It wouldn’t be heavy.”

“I’ll ask around. I know we’ve got a few ex-law students who are in limbo,” my mom said. She gave me a look. “They could use the extra funds, and they should have enough knowledge of the system as it stands. They’re even on the ground floor for the legal system we may end up with, if we’re successful here.”

“Thank you,” I said. “We’ll discuss and I’ll look at the books, and we’ll see if we can pay them something fair.”

Keep it business.

“Would you come to dinner tonight?” she asked. “We can talk. If I have a better idea of what you’re doing, I can find you a better fit.”

“I’d really rather not,” I said.

“Communication is key. We should talk.”

“Another time,” I said. Weeks or months from now.

“Okay,” she said. “I’d like to invite your sister to a sit-down.”

My dignity and grace were dashed away, just like that. A startling, painful jar from reality to somewhere else. The lights of the brightly lit legal office seemed too bright and the dark shadows and the dimly lit building interior of the Wardens HQ and its lobby seemed too dark.

It was very, very hard, in the moment, to separate my recollection of being outside the house with her inside that house, from this, and to convince myself that she wasn’t here, somewhere nearby.

“Nah,” I said. My voice too soft.

“Victoria-”

“Mom,” I said, my voice sharp. “Do you want this conversation to go in the same direction as the one at the barbecue?”

“That’s up to you,” she said.

I thought about saying something regrettable.

“Bye mom. Good luck with your thing.”

She looked like she might say something, but she smiled instead, and said, “Good luck with yours.”

I turned to go, and the others followed.

We walked a little way around the circumference of the floor, between the offices to our right and the railing to our left, until we were a distance away from the legal department. I leaned on the railing, and wrapped one of my hands around the other, squeezing it.

Sveta put an arm around me, and then Kenzie walked up to the other side of me and put a hand on my back.

“I’m okay,” I said.

There wasn’t an immediate response.

“She was never my favorite person,” Sveta said.

“You seemed to get along with her before.”

Sveta shook her head, hair flying out a little ways. “You were always really down when she was due to visit, and you were down when she missed visits. And you were down after she came.”

“I was down all the time.”

“It was different kinds.”

“Family’s hard,” Tristan said. “It really sucks sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Kenzie said. “Family can be the best and it can be the worst.”

Sveta let her arm slide off my shoulder. It settled on Kenzie’s head with a faint clack.

“Ow,” Kenzie said.

Sveta’s fingers lifted up, then came down, in a pat.

I stood straighter, and Sveta moved a bit away, her arm reeling in, giving me freedom to stand back. “Hopefully this gets you guys one step closer to being a team with everything you need. We should go talk to Foresight and see if we can get you the rest of the way.”

“What’re we talking about with Foresight?”

“Jurisdiction,” I said. “There might be a few other pieces of ground to cover, finances, selling info.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “You up to talking about the kind of info you can gather, Kenz?”

“I think so.”

The fifth floor wasn’t built around a hole in the floor like the bottom four were. There wasn’t a view of the lobby, a railing, or anything of the sort. Another security checkpoint was set up at the base of the stairs. With our lanyards and guest IDs, we were clear to go. Our arrival was preceded by a shift in lights visible from the stairwell.

Masks on.

The floor plan was closer to a proper office building, with hallways studded with posters and pictures of team members and leaders, teams, and framed news articles. The hallway to the right of us had ‘SHEPHERDS’ and a shepherd’s crook running down the length of it, a burgundy stripe of paint lit up by lights on the underside of the crook. Red-brown colors to the wall, and the articles and pictures were all for the Shepherds.

In the hallway to our left, Foresight, blue and black paint and lights, Foresight members and victories on the wall opposite.

A door opened and a few Shepherds stepped out into the hall.

“Holy shit,” one said.

“Fuck,” Tristan said, under his breath.

It was the moon girl, from my job interview with Attendant. She was the one who had urged me away from the Fallen. I was hardly enthused to see her either.

“Tristan,” she said. “Tell me you’re not interviewing for a team.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’ve got the team already.”

She pursed her lips together.

“History, Moonsong?” someone asked.

“Yeah,” Moonsong said. “Tribute knows.”

“Yeah,” the guy who was apparently ‘Tribute’ said. He wore what looked like a hypermodernized version of the suit of armor with the cape over one shoulder. It wasn’t old fashioned armor, though. It was panels on a bodysuit, and the cape was cut to cling close to his body, angular for flowing cloth, with glowing lines where the sharp angles were. “History is putting it lightly.”

“We’re late for an appointment,” Tristan said.

“You’re the guys who are talking to Foresight,” someone else said. “They mentioned something like that.”

“Yeah,” I said. Then, aware of the opening in the conversation, I elaborated with, “Hello again, Moonsong.”

“Hello,” she said. “What was your name again?”

“Victoria.”

“You seemed cool, Victoria. What are you doing with this bastard?”

“Wow,” Tristan said.

“Just helping out,” I said.

“He doesn’t need it, and he doesn’t deserve it.”

“Whatever’s in the past, he gets his second chance, like anyone. He wants to help people, and I’m going to help him do that.”

“He’s one of the monsters you help save people from,” Moonsong said. “You get that, right?”

“That’s not fair,” Kenzie said.

She stopped as Tristan put one hand out in front of her, keeping her from jumping forward in his defense.

“Tribute and I arrested him,” Moonsong said. “You know that, right?”

I could see the lines in Tristan’s jaw standing out. He said, “I know. I remember.”

“I want to see Byron,” Moonsong said.

“Not your call. His turn isn’t until later.”

There was a shudder, and then my hair started to move. The light further down the hallway seemed to grow darker, and my stomach lurched in a sensation that I connected to a lot of aerial acrobatics.

“You want to pick a fight here?” Tristan asked.

Tribute shifted his footing, stepping forward a little, and clasped his hands in front of his groin. With his head bowed slightly, he was faintly reminiscent of the Wardens’ emblem.

I stepped forward, ready to put myself between them, and I felt the stomach-lurching sensation again. My leg buckled, and I nearly fell.

My hair was floating now, and my legs were straining, almost locked in position with the stress of keeping me upright.

Gravity manipulation, but somehow a mix of zero-grav and enhanced gravity.

I flew instead of walking, and it was hard to keep my position. I stopped when I was between Tristan and the other two. “This isn’t helpful.”

“Victoria,” Moonsong said. “I’m going to tell you how this goes.”

I felt the gravity shift again, an attempt to put me down against the floor, and threw up my forcefield to avoid twisting my ankle or hitting the ground too hard. I was glad my skirt wasn’t the kind that could flip up, as it hugged my thighs, but my midriff was exposed now.

“Tristan joins the team, and he charms the pants off of everyone he meets. He’s good at the stuff he does in front of the camera, he’s good at the hero stuff, he’s strong. He gets decent grades, he makes friends, he finds allies and he works on them. Because that’s what sociopaths do. He doesn’t actually care about them.”

“Sociopath?” Tristan asked. “You’re as deluded as ever.”

“He jokes and acts all cute about how he’s competitive, he likes to win, and he tends to win so you don’t really see how sore of a loser he is when things go bad. He sets his sights on something he wants, he gets it. Sets his sights on something else, he gets it. Until he doesn’t get what he wants. Like being team leader or getting a key role in an event that’s coming up. That’s when he starts using the people he’s been working on. They’re usually desperate people. Vulnerable ones.”

I thought of Rain, who Tristan had called a friend. Or did the whole team count?

“It’s called leaning on people when you’re struggling.”

“It’s called manipulation. And you’re good at it,” Tribute said.

“Fuck off,” Tristan said. “Drop the power use and let us go. We’ve got things to do.”

“Moonsong,” Sveta said. “I don’t think you know Tristan as well as you think.”

“Same,” Moonsong said. “I feel really sorry for you if he’s already got into your good graces. Because that bastard is the kind of guy who hires someone who kills people by looking at them to cover his ass, and uses them against teammates. He likes to win and he wins at any cost.”

“We know the story,” Sveta said.

“I doubt you know the entirety of it. Have you split the discussion fifty-fifty between listening to him and Byron?” Moonsong asked. She didn’t even wait for a response before deciding, “No. Because it doesn’t work that way.”

“I gave Byron the opportunity,” Tristan said.

“Yeah,” Moonsong said. “I know how that goes. Like with Team Reach’s therapist, right? You get your turn, Byron gets his, you go in for extra advice, you take over, and somehow the team’s therapist gets weird ideas in his head about Byron. You suggest things and then when Byron gets his turn he’s having to play defense, get rid of these preconceived ideas. He gets no time of his own with the therapist, because he’s stuck trying to undo the damage Tristan did during his time.”

“All I did,” Tristan said, lines standing out as his neck, “Was try to figure shit out. There’s a lot to figure out with the situation being what it is, and somehow I end up doing the legwork.”

“It’s a lot of work to manipulate everyone around you, isn’t it?” Moonsong asked.

“Stop,” I said. “Stop this. Now.”

I pushed out with a faint hit of aura.

“Please,” Sveta said, adding her voice to mine.

“I want to hear that Byron is okay, from Byron’s mouth. I don’t give a shit about Tristan’s time.”

“Fuck this,” Tristan said. “Fine.”

He blurred, his eyes becoming crimson points, then transitioning to become teal.

Byron, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans.

The gravity effect dropped away.

“Hi Byron,” Kenzie said, her voice small.

“Hi Kenzie.”

“You okay?” Moonsong asked.

“I’ve had better weeks, but things with my brother are as tolerable as they get,” Byron said. He slouched, sticking his hands in the pocket of the sweatshirt. “You kind of went overboard.”

“I had to check.”

“I know,” Byron said.

There was a noise behind us, and I turned to look.

Foresight. Anelace and someone I hadn’t met.

“Why don’t you come on in? Step into the office,” Anelace asked. “Moonsong? Can I have a word?”

Foresight’s administrative office wasn’t the same office I’d been in when I’d interviewed with them. Their headquarters was situated elsewhere, and this was something else, a space set up for meetings, for paperwork, interactions with other teams and more. Much like the hallways had, it looked like an office.

Right away, Moonsong, Tribute, and the member of Foresight stepped into an office, closing the doors. The blinds were at an angle where I could see where they stood, but not their expressions or what they might be saying.

Anelace stepped into the back, then came back to the sitting area. He looked at us, then at the other members of Moonsong’s group. “Come on. Let’s keep everyone separate until things are settled.”

Our group walked into a back room, a single table and some nice chairs in a room with a coffee maker and microwave.

“I was looking forward to seeing you again, Victoria,” Anelace said. “Sorry it’s not under better circumstances.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’m going to go talk to the others. There won’t be a problem if I leave you guys here?”

“Not at all,” I said.

Anelace left us in the room. Kenzie flopped forward, forehead hitting the table, arms extended all the way in front of her.

Byron changed back to Tristan.

“No,” Tristan said, quiet. “So long as I’m here, Moonsong is going to be frothing at the mouth. I’m trading out until she’s good and gone.”

They swapped back. Byron slouched into his seat.

“I didn’t know that about the therapy, Byron,” Sveta said.

Byron shrugged.

“It’s why you don’t want to sit in for Mrs. Yamada’s?”

“It’s part of it,” he said. “Look, I don’t want to demonize Tristan or anything, like Moon is so good at doing. He has his good side, but a lot of the time, I’ve got to conserve my strength for dealing with the rougher patches. Minor, basic stuff.”

“Do you think he’s a sociopath?” I asked.

“No,” Byron said. “But I think… he’s got to be the worst possible person to end up sharing a body with.”

“Is there anything I or we can do to make it easier?” I asked.

“I’m working on a camera that looks inside Tristan to find Byron, or vice-versa,” Kenzie said, without raising her head. “It’s not going so well but I’m going to figure it out.”

“Thanks Kenz. No, nothing makes it easier. You can… tackle the broad strokes, you can be careful not to talk past my face to say something to Tristan and never do the opposite when Tristan’s the one in front. It doesn’t make a difference with the stuff that really matters. That’s my stuff to deal with.”

“What stuff?” I asked.

“He’s… stubborn, destructively stubborn, he holds this idea of what should happen in his head, and if that doesn’t work for you then you’re probably going to be pretty unhappy, because you aren’t going to change anything about it.”

“Reminds me a bit of my mom when you describe it that way,” I said.

“Yeah, but you can walk away from your mom, can’t you?” Byron asked.

“Yeah,” I said. I sighed.

“I really appreciate that sigh. Maybe you get it,” he said, leaning his head back until it rested against the wall, his face turned skyward. “He thrives on competition, you know. He’ll be a terrific hero, probably. Put a challenge in front of him, and he’ll give his all to kick its ass.”

“But?” I asked.

“That’s him. That’s who he is, intrinsically. I don’t know if there’s a but. It’s reality, and it’s reality that I’m the challenge and he’s energized when it comes to the tug of war over this one body we share. He thrives on it in a way, and I’m… drained, beaten down.”

“We have your back,” Sveta said. “Not just Tristan’s. We’re backing Capricorn, and we’re invested in finding answers for both of you.”

“I appreciate that. But I don’t like this. At best, it’s… more draining. More of me being beaten down and left more exhausted. At worst… Moonsong might be right.”

“At best,” I said, “It’s Tristan doing what he’s good at doing. What happens if he doesn’t have that outlet?”

I didn’t get a response.

There was a knock on the door. Anelace, the dagger-themed member of Foresight.

“Can you join us?” he asked.

We migrated from the team’s lunch room to the office where the team leader, Moonsong and Tribute were seated.

The leader stood by his desk, one foot on his chair. He looked larger of frame, and had Foresight’s symbol on an eye patch. A bit of a corsair look, with a jacket and lots of belts, and long black hair tied back into a sailor’s ponytail. Veins of gold decorated his costume.

“Sorry for the hassle,” Tribute said. “History. Things never really resolved so much as we all walked away with the situation left halfway through a disaster.”

“It’s alright,” I said.

“We’ve been having a conversation with the Shepherds,” the leader of Foresight said. “They’ve explained some of the history. It muddies the waters.”

“We understand,” Sveta said. “Sorry about this.”

“They had the suggestion that we make sure both of the Capricorn twins are on board with this plan of yours.”

“Why’d you have to drag me into this, Moonsong? This doesn’t help. I don’t want to own any part of this, whatever they do.”

“I will always fight to give you your voice.”

“I don’t want to speak,” Byron said. “I want to ignore this side of my reality and conserve my strength for the fights that need it.”

“Is that a no, then?” the leader of Foresight asked.

“No,” Byron said. He seemed to flounder for a moment. He looked at me. “Fuck.”

He didn’t break that eye contact with me as he said it. My eyebrow went up.

“Don’t let me get in the way of you giving these guys their chance,” Byron said.

“You’re vouching for them?” the Foresight leader asked.

“Yeah.”

Byron punctuated the sentence by changing into Tristan.

“I’m good with this,” Tristan said, shifting his posture to avoid looking at Moonsong.

“Good,” the Foresight leader said. “Thank you for your time, Shepherds.”

Tribute and Moonsong left the office. Just Anlace, the leader, Kenzie, Byron, Sveta and I, now.

I looked around the office and saw an article. The leader was on the cover, with the name ‘Brio’.

“You really want to do this?” Brio asked.

“They’re suited for it,” I said. “They have the ability to gather the information and figure out how to crack the toughest nuts. Tinker devices and people on the ground who won’t get a second look hanging around Hollow Point. They get the info, they sell it to you guys, and if you want it, they work with you on the actual cracking of the nut. Joint operation, or it can be solo, one way or the other.”

“Are you participating?” he asked.

“If I’m wanted, I’ll add my strength to theirs for the big plays.”

“To be honest, there’s a lot about this that could work,” Brio said. “When the Wardens gathered us all together, they assigned territories by lottery. We’ve got other things we’re focusing on, and Hollow Point is in a bad way.”

“If you’ll pay a modest fee, enough to cover their lawyer, buy the info, keep them supplied, they’ll bring you in for the actual arrests. It’s a win for you guys, while these guys do the leg work.”

“If it works,” Brio said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“We’re hard workers,” Kenzie said. “We’re really good at what we do.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Brio said. His voice had a tone shift that suggested he was used to talking to kids in a certain context. “You have a lot of hurdles.”

“We’ve been doing our initial research,” Anelace said. “Figuring out how we might fix Hollow Point. They’re tied into some bigger-picture stuff.”

“Tattletale,” I said.

“Her on one end,” Anelace said. “But she’s more the kind of person you have to deal with further down the road. Once you scare them, they’ll call her. They already called her once about us, and she reached out to try to convince us to leave the area alone.”

“And?” I asked.

“And we’re leaving it alone, or we were, until you sent your proposal,” Brio said.

I nodded. Not good to hear, but understandable. I wondered what played into that decision.

“On the front end, you’ve got some others to deal with. You’ll have to get past them before you can even start on the project.”

“Who?”

“Speedrunners,” Anelace said. He turned around, reached for a file, and put it on the desk, pushing it in our direction.

“I know them,” I said. I left the file for Sveta, Tristan and Kenzie to look at.

“A couple of times a day, they use their time powers. Sweep the area, search every nook and cranny. You won’t be able to set up shop.”

“That’d be Secondhand,” I said.

“They use Final Hour to cover other business. Even if you avoid being caught in the sweeps, you won’t be able to look or listen in if they’re conducting meetings in banked timestreams.”

“And Last Minute is still with the group?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Fucking time manipulators. “Something to work out in advance then.”

“They’ve got two thinkers, Braindead and Birdbrain, working as a team. You won’t be able to have undercover agents if they’re checking things. You will be tracked and your agents will be thoroughly investigated.”

More folders hit the table.

“Powers complicate things, and they’ve got a lot of powers there,” Anelace said.

“Bitter Pill, tinker,” Brio said. “A lot of the people in Hollow Point are expected to partake, and that means truth serums, just to start with.”

I looked at the other members of the group.

“You really think you’re up for this?” Brio asked.

“Just speaking for myself, I’m more excited to do this than I was before you started talking about what we’re up against,” Tristan said.

“I already have some ideas,” Kenzie said. “Not about the time guys, but I have ideas.”

“We knock the time guys down first,” Tristan said. “Without a question. We’ll have to. We can do this.”

I looked at Sveta, who had been quiet.

“I want to do this,” she said, meeting Brio’s eyes.

“Then we’ll give you our files as starting points. You guys own this if it ends up being a disaster, you keep us informed, and-”

“In exchange,” I interrupted, “You guys give us access to your costume sourcing.”

“I can do costumes,” Kenzie said.

“Without battery lives?” I asked.

“Oh.”

“Give us access to your costume manufacturing. I know you have it and I know you’re branching out to share it.”

Anelace and Brio exchanged a look. Brio nodded. “Okay.”

“And you give us your blessing to operate in this territory,” I said.

“I don’t know if I like what I saw earlier,” Brio said. “Blessing might be a strong word.”

“All parahumans have their issues,” I said.

Brio seemed to consider for a moment.

He extended his hand to shake.

We shook it, each of us in turn.

No name yet, costumes to be decided, codenames to be determined.

But we were a team with a mission. We were doing this.

Glare – Interlude 3

Dot moved slowly and carefully through the store. She placed a hand on the floor for the added balance and weight distribution, then slid the hand left to right and back again, pushing it through a layer of dust that gathered and tumbled onto the back of her hand.

She was glad for the fingerless glove she wore, because it let her feel the finer details while keeping it clean and warm. The floor was cool and moist. The exterior wall of the store was letting the rain in, and the rain traced a path through one portion of the store, cutting thin rivers through the dust. Wet in places, dry in places, but persistently clammy and dirty. Perpetually colorless.

It was the lack of color that got to her the most.

It was one of the big stores, where everything was gathered together into tall stacks and piles beneath and on metal racks. The lights were fluorescent, and they flickered. The buzzing sounds the lights made were more constant than the light.

A menacing sound. Menacing, glaring lights.

It was safer to climb on the stacks of cardboard boxes than it was to walk on the floor or to make contact with the wood and metal of the shelves.

She paused as she climbed to a higher shelf, figuring out how best to ascend while minimizing dangerous contact. Finally, she decided to take a risk by grabbing a metal cross-bar, hauling herself up, and setting her feet on a series of plastic bottles in cardboard trays, stacked higher than a man was tall.

She couldn’t read well, but she could recognize the labels. Pills. Vitamins, probably. If these were here, then there might be better offerings close by. She searched the nearby piles until she found cardboard boxes with cartoon characters on the front. Pictures of cartoon character heads were beside not-cartoon images in shiny monocolor shapes.

Dot opened a box, careful not to make noise, and fished inside. A plastic bottle within, and inside the plastic bottle… a colorful assortment of gummy vitamins.

She fished out the contents and pushed them into her mouth until she could barely close her jaw. The artificial taste overpowered her nose and mouth. Her eyes rolled back into her head with the effort of chewing.

A loud noise made her freeze.

The doors had been opened. She heard loud footsteps.

She climbed deeper into the stacks of vitamins, listening and watching.

“Hellooooo!” the call was drawn out. Dot tensed, listening as the greeting bounced around the building interior.

Dot waited.

“Anyone here!?”

She waited, silent, peering through the gaps between the cardboard boxes and plastic bottles.

Another voice could be heard saying, “Lights are on and nobody’s home?”

“They could be out, or a group of refugees might have stopped in on their way to the portal. They could have set up power and scavenged before leaving things behind for others.”

Dot winced with every tromp of boot on tiled floor. She could hear people rummaging, pulling down boxes and tearing into the contents. Things fell to the ground.

She changed locations, putting some distance between herself and them. It didn’t help; their explorations meant they drew nearer to her as she lurked on a high shelf.

“…names you can’t pronounce, grab that first.”

“Why? Preservatives?”

“Preservatives, yep. Keep a close eye out for the products with the wrong names.”

“Wrong names?”

“If it’s not called soap, but a ‘cleansing bar’ that means it’s so loaded with crud that they weren’t legally allowed to call it soap. That shit is gold to us, because the chemicals in it mean it lasts. If it lasts, it can be resold back home.”

“Soap goes bad?”

“It can. I’d rather take the misnamed shit that lasts than take something more legit home and find out it went bad.”

“Good point.”

“We’ll teach you all the tricks. It’s a good gig, believe me.”

“Yeah. Hey, are those fridges?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Power was probably out for months to a year before someone got this building back on line.”

“You think they have ice cream? Or those push-freezes?”

“You don’t want ice cream, remember? You want-”

“Frozen dairy-like desserts or something.”

“Now you get it.”

Dot watched as the younger man jogged across the floor to what was almost certainly his imminent demise. He opened the glass door to the fridge display and began picking his way through cardboard boxes.

She could see the green lights appearing in the background of the display, flicking on one by one, apparently at random.

The older man noticed, stopping in his tracks.

“Jackson!” he screamed the word.

The machine rammed through the wall. Six feet tall, six feet wide, with two legs, it slammed past metal racks, past food in cardboard boxes, through the glass doors, through the metal that the doors were attached to, and into Jackson.

Both legs broken. From the way he hit the ground, his arm might have been broken too.

One mechanical leg thrust out, then dragged Jackson back into the hole in the wall. Another reached out and began depositing a thin white fluid on the bloodstain.

Jackson’s mentor was running and the machine was just starting to clean up the blood when two more belatedly thrust their way out through the walls. They paused where they were, seemed to decide what they were doing, and then used wheels on their underbellies to roll along the floor, the two forelimbs out and ready.

Gaps appeared in the face of each machine as they drew closer. Jackson’s mentor shouted to friends elsewhere in the building as he rounded a corner in the shelves and stacks.

He made the mistake of grabbing onto a metal strut at the edge of one set of shelves. The face of the strut moved, changing in angle, and jerked upward. A machine had taken a blade and camouflaged it to look like the red-painted metal surface, and it managed to carve deep into Jackson’s mentor’s hand. The machine that controlled the blade moved. It wore a cardboard box.

Dot made a mental note of that as she remained frozen, watching.

The people were running, gathering together. They narrowly evaded the machines, using corners and their small size to stay clear as the machines from the fridge wall careened down the wide aisles.

It didn’t matter. They were already dead.

She could hear the gasps and shrieks. Here and there, weapons were deployed. Sprays of darts, more blades from innocuous surfaces, wire.

The gasps became more numerous, the sounds strained, and the activity of the scavengers slowed. The ones who realized what was happening didn’t have the words to report it to the others.

Gas. Invisible, odorless. They gasped and used everything they had to try to draw air into their lungs, but the machines were putting something heavier than oxygen on the ground floor of the store. Now they drowned.

Dot had lost family to this very same thing. She had seen how painful it was, and she had known how painful it was to watch someone she cared about die that way.

She took her time picking through the boxes of vitamins, putting them in her bag. It was nice that the gummy vitamins didn’t rattle. She picked up other things as she navigated the shelves, including bandages and some random bottles.

An explosion drew her attention.

Someone in a costume.

Another explosion, followed by two more, and one of the big machines from the fridge wall collapsed.

Apparently alerted by one of the dying, the woman in costume climbed up onto the shelving units, to get to higher ground where there was air. She threw a blue light out of her hand, and it detonated on impact with the next machine.

Back at the fridges, some of the fridges and surrounding wall had already been reconstructed. Two more of the large cube-shaped machines squeezed through the gaps in the wall that were still there, before getting their wheels under them and hurrying in the direction of the woman in costume.

Dot moved closer to the ground to get a look. It was important to know just how far gone this building was.

The entire area behind the fridges was gone. Green flashing lights, wires, computers and metal twisted into shapes that helped it to provide a framework. Machines were working slowly and steadily to refine and develop things.

In the opposite corner of the building, the hero climbed behind a stack of cans. A spray of flechettes punctured the paper with no resistance- there was no tin to the cans, only the labels and the haphazardly perched tops. The machines had already collected everything and then put things back so it looked like it hadn’t been touched.

The heroine fell and hit the floor. She had been darted, punctured across the face and shoulder.

You die too, Dot observed.

Against all odds, though, the heroine had managed to hold her breath. She got to her feet and she ran.

Dot climbed carefully, avoiding suspicious surfaces as she navigated the piles. She kept one eye out for things she could use and one eye on the heroine.

A box cutter, left on the surface by a past employee. Useful. Dot grabbed it.

One of the machines shifted position. Two legs on the ground in front of it, backside resting on the ground. Its face opened wide, and a salvo of missiles fired forth. Ten, twelve, metal canisters with streams of vapor painting the air in their wake as they flew in lazy arcs or even tumbled through the air before getting their bearings.

However haphazard they looked, they didn’t hit anything they weren’t supposed to. They traced courses between stacks of pasta and boxes of cereal, through the struts of metal shelves, and through the two-inch gaps between shelf and the floor below.

The heroine shot at shelves, bringing down the contents in showers that might block the missiles. Some missiles detonated. Others navigated the falling debris, and the heroine shot at those next.

Some missiles didn’t detonate, but they weren’t missiles in actuality. They were tricks.

The heroine backed up, then saw the two new arrivals, two more of the big ‘soldier’ machines. She ran for the door.

But the machines had had her since she had let them know she existed.

The heroine made it to the door, and then a metal skewer harpooned her hand.

Blow it up. Lose the hand, Dot thought. She realized she was rooting for the heroine despite herself.

The heroine fought, and she’d had to stop running to fight. More skewers impaled her forearm, then her other hand.

She used her power, she shot at shelves, but she lacked the angle. The machines reeled in, using the wires attached to the skewers, and the heroine was hauled into the air, arms out to either side, legs dangling.

Dot sat, and she waited. She ate more gummy multivitamins and she observed the machines. She watched as the mess was slowly cleaned up, boxes pulled back into position, products lined up, and sections of floor that had been shattered by missiles were fit together like jigsaw pieces.

Here and there, deep in the craters and crevices, the ‘trick’ missiles had delivered payloads that weren’t explosive. They looked like veins of metal in rock. In weeks and months, they would ‘hatch’, revealing the machinery that had built itself within. For now, they were paved over. Smaller machines filled in cracks with something white that would harden, with daubs of black for the speckles in the tile. A blade scraped away the excess, and a small nozzle provided a covering of dust to match surrounding floor.

A close eye would notice where the floor was different, but it would have to be close and careful.

The machines weren’t too challenging to destroy. Dot’s groups had sometimes destroyed them. The trick was that they set in roots wherever they went. Each time they reached a new place, they would keep emerging from that place, from walls and floor and rock and tree. It took care and attention to get the machine out of each of those things, and while that care was being taken, machines elsewhere would emerge, march, and make inroads along the flanks.

Green lights here and there went dark, the machines hibernating. Dot deemed herself safe to move.

She stuck to the high ground, while the still-active machines continued their work below. She eased herself closer to the heroine, and paused, observing. Here and there, the woman kicked or struggled, and the machines didn’t respond. Blood streamed down and dripped from her toes to her floor. Each time blood accumulated enough to drip and make a small splash on the floor, a machine zoomed out to spray at it and then wiped it away before returning to its hiding place beneath a shelf.

Dot leaped. She landed on the woman’s shoulder, and the woman’s face twisted, contorting into a wordless scream at the sudden, added weight on her injured arms and hands.

Then the woman looked at Dot, and her expression changed again. Fear, alarm.

Dot was small, only about as large as the woman’s head, and she was colorful. Her clothes had been stolen from dolls and pieced together with diligent care. Her tail with its fur tuft on the end swished with the box-cutter it held..

“Help me.”

Dot shook her head.

“I have people who are counting on me. I have a sick sibling, they need me to bring in the money from this work.”

“I have people too,” Dot whispered. She stuck her tongue up to pick her nose, then drew it back into her mouth. “Some sick too.”

The heroine made a small sound, bowing her head. “I’ll help you, I’ll- I’ll convince people to give you medical care. We can trade.”

Dot reached out with one hand, and she pushed the tab that extended the blade from the box-cutter.

“I’ll do anything,” the heroine said.

Dot paused.

“Anything,” the heroine said, seizing on the pause.

“My king,” Dot said. “Where?”

“Your king?”

“Yes.”

“I can take you.”

“No you can’t,” Dot said. She hugged the box cutter against her chest with two spotted arms, red spots on yellow-white flesh. “You die here. I’m not big or strong. Machines are. If I go for help then you dead before I’m back.”

“Please.”

“Tell me where my king is and I’ll be fast. Merciful.”

“I don’t- this isn’t about me. Can you- can you let them know the Machine Army is this far north? They shouldn’t be on this side of the Raleigh chasm.”

“They kill me on sight.”

“Find a way? Please? I’ll tell you where your king is, I help you, but you need to tell them. We need the Wardens to stop them before they get their roots in.”

Too late, Dot thought to herself.

The woman seemed to take it as assent, when it wasn’t. “The Wardens’ headquarters, probably. It’s- it’s on Gimel, where a lot of the trains go. The train nearest here goes there. You’ll want to look for a building with a statue of a knight with a sword at the front.”

Dot took a two-handed grip on her box cutter.

“Tell the Wardens. Let them know, so they can take measures. Tell them Burnish said it. It might save your King’s life.”

Dot paused.

“Yes,” she said.

Then she cut into the woman’s throat, until blood sprayed from the artery. She opened her mouth wide, until the teeth on the upper half of her mouth pointed in the same direction as the teeth on the lower jaw, and bit in deep, locking her mouth in place. She swallowed the blood, gorging herself.

Vitamins, protein, nourishment. She would fill herself here, then visit her brothers and sisters. Then she would set out on her quest.

A distance below them, machines washed away the blood. After the heroine had been kept up and out of the way long enough to ensure her power wouldn’t be a problem, she would be cleaned up too.

Dot felt energized, her focus as sharp as the box-cutter. She knew where their king was.

King Rinke. Nilbog.

⊙

She clung to the underside of the train. The ground was a blur beneath her, periodically studded with rocks and branches.

Those of her kind who ventured into the human’s civilization didn’t tend to return. She knew it was a risk. She knew she had a one percent chance when it came to this. She’d said her goodbyes accordingly.

Blackspot would be left in charge. He’d been unwell lately, and he might be too unwell to lead their group. He was thirteen and that made him old, and after their discussion, her communicating in broken English and gesture and him communicating in chirp, he’d agreed. She suspected he’d made the decision because he hoped she would bring their king back somehow. It was Blackspot’s only chance at being recycled and made into new life.

Lump would be second in command. Lump had been injured a year ago, after running into humans. He barely moved now. When he died, the group would be more free to move, but they wouldn’t leave him behind until then.

Lump was one of the only big ones that were left.

Dot used her tail to fish out a gummy vitamin from inside her tunic where it sat close to her belly. It stuck to her skin and had to be peeled away. She chewed it slowly and carefully.

She was thirsty. She hadn’t anticipated how dehydrated she would get. The chewing got her saliva flowing, though some unfortunately flowed out through the corners of her wide mouth.

There was a hole that smelled like shit, leading into the train interior, but she didn’t want to climb up into there. Shit didn’t bother her, but the smell would hurt her ability to stay undetected.

She was a scout and a spy, a messenger to a king in captivity.

She would endure. She clung to the bolts and bars, arching her back when she saw a branch or rock that might scrape at her, and she chewed.

The train slowed. She shifted her position, ears reorienting to catch more sound. Every detail she could pick up would matter, now. She was in hostile territory.

The train rolled to a stop. Doors hissed as they opened, and the crowd began to make their way out. Dot peered between the wheels and up, to see the refugees and the scavengers, as well as the men and women and boys and girls in uniforms who came and went.

She dropped to the tracks, and she moved to the dark corner, crawling through the dust and grime to help cover up the color of her spots and outfit.

Too many for her to slip across the platform. Would she have an opening? She crept along, looking for vents, for cracks, or anything where she could slip through.

Too new a building, too maintained. This was nothing like the kingdom or the ruins she had known during her five years of existence.

The only time she had seen this many humans was when their kingdom had been invaded. She had been aware as each set of humans boarded at different stops, but for all of them to get off here, for there to be no more tracks? This had to be the end. Their destination and hers.

She trembled with anticipation as the stream of people from the train slowed.

Boots were more serious than shoes. Matching boots were most serious. She associated matching boots with the men with guns that worked with the people in costume. When men with matching boots and people in costume got together, it was often to kill her kind.

She would save her king.

She crept along the underside of the ledge, where the platform jutted toward the train. When the train left, would she be exposed?

She would do anything for her king.

Her weapon was ready. The box cutter. It still smelled like the blood of the heroine. Of Burnish.

Thinking of the blood made her think again about how thirsty she was.

“Christ,” one of the boots said. “Incoming.”

Someone else groaned.

“Good afternoon,” a woman said.

“Afternoon,” was the curt response.

“You’ve got a thtowaway.”

Dot froze.

“A thtowaway?” was the response. There was a sound of an impact, light.

“Thomething thmall.”

“Is this like when you had us stop the train, put the entire city on hold, made us get the bomb disposal bot under the train with a camera, all to show us some squirrel roadkill caught in the machinery?”

“I’m here for a reathon. Thith ith what I do.”

“Every time you jerk our chains you lose trust, and you’ve jerked our chains a lot. You haven’t done much to regain that lost trust.”

“I wouldn’t jerk your chain, Adam,” the woman said. “I thpecialithe in noticing thmall thingth, and I know how thmall and thort your chain is.”

There was laughter.

Dot wondered if she had any options. There hadn’t been anything she could use to disguise herself as roadkill. What would she do if the train started moving?

“Can you actually see short, uh, chains?” another woman asked.

“No comment.”

“I think we have a camera we can drop to the track. It should be up at the station proper. We can do a quick search. You want to grab it, Adam?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I’ll make a call, ask them to keep the train put while we search. Stay close, Rat?”

“The name’th Ratcatcher. I’ll thtay clothe.”

Dot made her way along the car, until she found one of the holes near the shit-hole. This hole didn’t lead up into the car, there was a grate barring her way, catching hair and other gunk, but it was just wide enough for her to squeeze most of the way into.

She waited, listening, until she heard the clatter.

Her role in the community had been a scout, to start with. She had ended up a leader after a while, but she was still a scout at heart. Exploring new places, figuring out ways to deal with traps, with the enemies that lurked out there.

She had dealt with the Machine Army. This little toy wouldn’t stop her.

With clawed toes and the opposable toe on her foot, she clawed some of the hair out of the drain.

Patience. Care. Machines were predictable, once they had revealed their tricks. The challenge was to find the tricks without being discovered or caught.

She watched as the machine passed under her. Dropping from her hiding place, almost noiseless, she landed right behind it. She used all of her strength to tip it over, then wrapped the hair around the wheel and reached up, tying it to a bit of metal at the base of the hole, where a passing rock or branch had made the metal rougher.

Snagged, caught, but in a believable way.

She darted away, as voices commented on the situation, trying to riddle out what had happened. A human dropped down between the platform and the train itself, ducking low to peer between wheels, looking for the little camera drone.

The platforms were mostly empty, and most of the watchful eyes were focused on the little drone and the issue.

She stuck her head up, ears low and close to her body, tail swishing beneath her, and then made a break for a vent.

A human moved, making a run for her. Shoes slid on the smooth floor of the station platform as the human put herself between Dot and the vent.

“Not so fatht,” the woman said, as Dot skidded on the floor, stopping.

The woman was small, as humans went, and she wore a costume that covered most of her body. Her mask was roughly cone-shaped, but the paper or wire that kept the mask pointy had been dented or damaged at one point, and the nose drooped a bit. Rodent-like, with ears sticking out and back at the side, flat against the side of her head. The eyes behind the eye-holes were large, dark, and moist. If Dot unfocused her eyes a bit, it looked like there was nothing behind the eyeholes. Dark hair draped around in front of the ears and down the back of the woman’s head. As pointy as the mask was, she wore a hood or a hat with a point going the opposite direction.

She wore a jacket, denim, with a threadbare collar, a striped shirt beneath, and a thin chain belt with mousetraps dangling from it. Her socks were striped as well, extending high enough that they just barely met her denim cut-off shorts.

Dot was willing to admit that if she was going to die, at least it was at the hands of someone with a good aesthetic.

“You thall not path,” Ratcatcher said.

Dot remained where she was, frozen.

“Can you talk?” Ratcatcher asked.

“Yes,” Dot said.

“I like your colorth.”

Dot stretched out her hands in front of her, looking at her arms.

“I bet you’re beautiful when clean,” Ratcatcher said.

“Yes,” Dot said. She was. She wasn’t interesting looking, but she could talk and she could use her hands, feet, and tail, well, and she had some pretty patterns: her namesake spots.

“I want you to go home,” Ratcatcher said. “If we fight, I’ll win. I thpecialize in dealing with your type.”

“I’m here to deliver message,” Dot said. “That all.”

“What methage?”

“Burnish. She went to a store. Machine Army was there. She wanted me to tell. North of the Raleigh chasm. They were surprised.”

“We thought it was your people,” Ratcatcher said.

“No,” Dot said. “I watched.”

“You didn’t help?”

“Too small, too weak.”

“That’th no ekthuthe. Burnith was a good one. Nice to me. I’ll mith her.”

Dot remained where she was. She looked back. No sign that the men who were investigating under the train even realized she wasn’t there anymore.

“Thank you for your methage.”

“I’ll go now,” Dot said. “But can I have water? I’m so thirsty.”

“Come. Vending machine. Have you theen thethe?”

Dot had, but she shook her head.

Ratcatcher held out a hand. Dot was wary, but she ventured closer.

“Thay hello to Raththputin,” Ratcatcher said. “Thtay in my pocket for now.”

In another time, another world, Dot might have stayed.

But she had a king to rescue. A king adored by his people. A truly great man.

As Ratcatcher reached into a pocket, change jingling, Dot saw opportunity. She leaped for the ground, went under the vending machine, and then ran along the wall, darting for the vent.

Big people were often slow. Ratcatcher wasn’t. Fast reflexes. Fast in general.

But Dot was faster. Had the vent not already had a corner peeled away, Dot wouldn’t have been able to make it inside. As it was, she ducked inside, and Ratcatcher’s gloved fingers only managed to seize the ends of the hairs at the end of Dot’s tail. Dot hauled herself free.

Ratcatcher moved her mask aside, fingers going to her mouth, and then whistled. “Trouble!”

But Dot was already in her element.

She ran through dusty vents, navigating the guts of the building. Flashlights periodically shone into the vents, illuminating areas. She avoided most of those beams of lights, going this way and that, until she found another convenient point, where two pieces of metal weren’t flush together. She squeezed through and pulled her bag after her.

It was another minute until she realized two things.

Ratcatcher had friends.

The convenient openings in the vents and leading from vent to the inside of the walls of the station were there because of those friends.

Dot had dealt with rats before, but these rats were the sort that were very ugly and very large. In the right light, they might have been mistaken for very ugly, small dogs. Dot had always liked that story when the King read it from the scary children’s book. The children got the dog and the dog turned out to be a Mexican sewer rat.

These rats were that sort, apparently, and they smelled like Ratcatcher’s pocket had.

She drew her box-cutter, extending the blade, and sized up her opponents.

Three rats against her and her boxcutter.

It might have been an even fight, but she had her devotion to her king on her side.

She would rescue her king.

⊙

The building that held her king was fitting for the stories. The statue lacked color, but it had the right atmosphere. She was bleeding but she told herself that this was how things were in those stories. The heroine at the foot of the castle of the evil empire, the king in captivity. She hurt from the battles already fought and faced the greatest challenge yet.

Getting inside wasn’t hard, but getting up was. The vents were barred and had cameras, and people were already on guard when she arrived, keeping a close eye on those same vents.

She could only wait.

Patience was essential to a scout. The fact that every inch of her hurt from her fight with the sewer rats made the patience a little different. She had been hurt before, and she had been hurt in a way that made each breath an effort.

Breathe in, breathe out. If she did that once, she was one step closer to being better and being okay. She knew it was a long journey, but surviving was important.

Surviving was especially important now.

He was close.

She would free him, and he would usher in a new age of greatness for her and her people. She might even have a place at his side, where she could be close to him at all times.

She wasn’t even sure what that would be like. She had been ecstatic when she had seen mere glimpses of him, back in the old Kingdom.

Breathe in, hurt, breathe out, hurt again, feel the scratches and the bites when she shifted position. Breathe in, breathe out, double check she wasn’t anywhere she might be found.

She licked at her wounds, and she licked at the dust and grit, so her colors would be bolder. She licked her hands and ran wet hands over her hair, smoothing it.

She had arrived early in the morning, on the train, and now she waited until the sun was high in the sky. Each breath was a step closer to wellness and moving again.

She dug in her small pack for the bandages. They were the small kind, with sticky sides. She had brought the colorful ones with cartoons on them for luck, and now she placed them over her wounds, along with little bits of cotton and fabric to soak up the blood.

It seemed like there were more people who came and went than there were stars in the sky, but her senses might have been playing tricks on her.

The trickle of people slowed. When some made early returns, they smelled like food. Midday meals, then. She waited until everyone was back and working, sluggish from the food in their bellies, and then she made her move.

Up the underside of the stairs to the second floor. Into a crack between a booth and the wall. Up to the third floor, in a similar way.

There was security guarding the way from the fourth floor to the fifth. A commotion gave her a chance to slip through. It helped that she was small and it helped more that she was experienced.

Now she explored. The fifth floor didn’t seem much like a prison. The sixth was closer, with more security, more computers, more monitors.

She heard a voice, and she caught a familiar name.

“…Rinke.”

“I don’t see the point. He’s a broken man.”

Dot clutched at her chest, just over her heart.

“He’s a great man. Him being broken or not broken doesn’t change that.”

“I don’t see the point, Riley. I don’t think I’d gain anything, and I don’t think the people I care the most about would be very happy about me hanging around with him.”

“You hang around with me.”

“Someone has to check your work.”

“Whatever. I’m going to go talk to him. I think you should join us. You can check my work after, we’ll make it fast.”

The pair started to walk away. Dot checked the coast was clear, then followed.

Up to the seventh floor, then higher. Her body ached, every one of her movements harder than they had been before she had started climbing up to the top of this monstrous building, but she knew she was close.

A dining hall, with lots of tables, and a kitchen off to one side. It smelled like a hundred different foods.

The two girls didn’t talk much as they walked. The younger one was on the cusp of adulthood, but she smelled like blood and sickness. She was blonde, wearing a dress.

The older one had crossed the threshold to adulthood. Her arms were striped or marked somehow, almost completely covered with freckles, and her brown hair was tied back into a ponytail. She wore jeans and a top with spaghetti straps, and had a jacket folded over her arms, which she held close to her body.

“You don’t find it sad? Spending time around him like this?”

“Sad?” Riley asked. “No. It’s… reassuring.”

“How?”

“It’s a crazy, fucked up, upside-down, inside-out world. I think he understands that. He lives in that world. Not in a fantasy version of it.”

“It seems to me like he lives entirely in the fantasy.”

Riley chuckled.

There was another security checkpoint. The two passed through, and Dot was forced to hang back, watching them go through. She couldn’t pass herself. It was sealed off like the old kingdom had been. What was the word?

Quarantined.

She found vents, and she climbed through the vents. The vents, too, were quarantine-sealed.

She hated that she was so close. Her king was in arm’s reach, and she couldn’t touch him. He was talking, right this moment, and she couldn’t hear him.

Patience, she told herself.

Patience. A scout had to know patience. She was here to free him, to give him power again, even if it meant him taking her apart and turning her into another kind of life that he could use. Achieving that goal had always been something that would take time.

She searched vents, and she found one that had a gap she could use. She worked at it, wedging her box-cutter into the gap and wiggling it until she could get fingers in the gap. She used strength to widen it further, felt air escape through the rubber seal she’d peeled away, and knew she’d broken through the quarantine protection.

With more work, she was able to get an entire arm through. Screws scraped against metal as she worked them through.

She found her way into the walls, and from the walls, she found her way to a double-layered window with wire mesh between layers. She could see glimpses of the scene from an angle, distorted, by peering through the side of the thick glass pane.

The girl and the woman sitting at a table, separated from King Rinke by another thick glass wall.

Almost frantic, Dot searched the interior of the walls, looking for gaps, anything she could use. Everything was sealed, everything secured.

The answer ended up being the power outlet. She worked at the outlet, clawed at the seal that cemented it to the wall, and moved it enough that sound could get through. Later, when it was quiet, she could get through too.

“…a Red Queen and an Alice, then.”

“Or you could call me by my name.”

“I’m quite fond of Alice. She was a chaotic force in the worlds she visited, you know. She questioned, she challenged. A revolutionary in absurd worlds held captive by their own conventions and riddles.”

“This supposed Red Queen and I are friends, you know,” Alice Riley said.

“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” the Red Queen said.

“They were friends and enemies both in the story,” King Rinke said.

“You know, Jamie, I told the Queen here that you were one of the people who really got it. I drew comparisons to our friend Valkyrie. The Queen and Valkyrie know each other, you know.”

“I’m flattered by the comparison, my Alice. I’m not surprised they know each other. Queens are well-connected.”

“I’m getting sort of sick of being called a Queen.”

“My dear, you have all the power in the world. You can move in any direction you choose.”

“Less than you’d think.”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

“I’m… I think if I’m here, it’s because I’ve been checkmated by her. She implied she’d waste my time if I didn’t go along with this.”

“It’s very, very easy for even a Queen to be checkmated, if she doesn’t act like a Queen.”

“I’m starting to think I’m not smart enough to keep up with this conversation.”

Riley the Alice laughed.

“You should visit again, Red Queen. Have tea. Keep an old man company.”

“You’re more than an old man,” the Alice said.

“A king without a kingdom,” King Rinke said.

“A fallen king is still a king,” the Alice said.

King Rinke tittered. Dot, hiding in the wall, smiled at the expression of joy.

“Yes, I do remember that,” King Rinke said.

“We should go soon,” the Alice said. “We’ve finished our tea, and we’ve got work to do. The Red Queen needs to check over the, ah, vial I’ve created that says ‘drink me’, and make sure it’s safe.”

“Please don’t make anything like that,” the Queen said. “I’d hate to see it go wrong.”

“My work doesn’t go wrong. Thank you very much. It was wonderful to see you, Goblin King. I’m sorry the visit was short. I mostly wanted to introduce you two.”

“It’s been an experience,” the Queen said.

“What’s next for you, Red Queen? What will you do, once you’ve seen what our Alice has been up to?”

“I’ll… I guess I’ll be at my father’s side while talking to some of the most powerful people in all the known worlds, and I’ll see my parents, trying to say goodbye and yet unable to pull away, or making my greetings and being pushed away, and I’ll continue to feel like I’m in the wrong places every step of the way.”

“You’re a queen. You have such power. You can go anywhere you want, if you’re willing to wield that power. Your struggles are because you’re trying to be something you aren’t. Take that as advice from a king who has lost his kingdom to a Queen who has yet to claim hers.”

“I don’t like what happens when I try to use power to claim anything.”

“Then use position. The fact that you’re a queen affords you power by default. If you stand in the right places, things will change as a result. Use that. Recognize it. Things may start going the way you hope they might.”

There was a pause.

“I’ve said similar things,” the Alice said.

“Yeah,” the Queen said. “I worry because the only people willing to talk to me say similar things, but I’m not sure they’re people I should listen to.”

“A king without a kingdom,” King Rinke said.

“Let’s go with that,” the Alice said. “That’s probably it.”

There was a slight commotion, chairs moving, dishes clacking against surfaces, as the girl and the woman gathered themselves together and stood from their seats.

“Come again, Red Queen.”

“I can’t make promises, but I’ll be in the building a lot, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility.”

There were more noises, and then doors shut.

Knees pulled to her chest, tail wrapped around her, Dot felt warm and happy, her king’s words wrapped around her, filling her up.

She barely dared to move the outlet, to force her way past it, to break the spell and to try to have more.

But she had to save her king.

The King had a bodyguard, a strong soldier of a man, taller than the King, muscular, and clearly dumb. The bodyguard noticed her before the King did, and reached out to touch the King’s arm.

“Ah,” King Rinke said. He had a sad expression on his face. “They’ve been watching me closer for the better part of the morning. I suppose you’re why.”

Dot wasn’t sure what to say or do.

“Come. Can you talk?” he asked. He seated himself, his bodyguard reaching for the chair to steady it as the King sat. The King stuck one leg straight out in Dot’s direction.

“Yes,” she said. She leaped forward in the same way and lurching way her heart leaped into her chest. She ran up and along his leg, up him, to him. Clawed fingers and feet clutched for the fabric of his shirt. His gray-touched beard tickled her head and back.

She could smell him and he smelled like home, like family and love. She felt his hand on her back, and she felt it pet her.

She could have cried, if she weren’t so dehydrated, if so much of her body’s energies and fluids hadn’t gone into bleeding and healing. Every ache and pain, from hours of clinging to a shuddering train to fighting rats and scaling a building interior, prying her way past sealed building fixtures, it became a dull, throbbing reassurance that she’d done right.

“You worked hard to get here.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“You’re the third to get this far. One of only two that could talk.”

Third? She wanted to ask, but she was worried about the response.

“I didn’t make you, did I? You were birthed. You look like Polka’s get.”

She nodded, hard, head rubbing against his shirt as she clutched tighter. He knew her. He didn’t know her but he knew where she was from and so he knew her.

“Polka the third?”

“Fourth,” she said. “But thank you for thinking I’m like the third. She was the most beautiful and clever.”

“The fourth was clever too,” he said. He stroked her.

“I come to save you,” she said. “You can use me for material.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “Not for one as beautiful and noble and brave as you. No.”

She felt the tears well up. Noble. Highest of praise.

“No,” he said again. He gave her a stroke, from head and ears to tail, and then he reached down, hands on her arms and shoulders, and he moved her back and away.

“No,” he said, a third time.

With that, she understood what he was saying no to.

“We need you.”

“No.”

“The others get sick and die. They want to be recycled.”

“No,” he said. “No, daughter of Polka. I’m too old, and I’m watched too closely. They’re watching and listening even now. We had our chance, and as our Kingdom stood on the brink of war, your king chose the wrong allies. The Alice that just visited me was one.”

Tears flowed now, but they weren’t tears of joy.

“We lost. I’m firmly in check.”

“But-”

“No,” he said. He stroked her, then held her firm with one hand around her shoulders, while he reached for his tea. Gently, carefully, he tipped it to her mouth. “Drink. You’re thirsty. You look exhausted. The caffeine will help.”

Dutifully, she drank.

“And then you should go. Go back. Find the others. Take care of them. Be gentle with humans you meet. So few of them understand power, and so many of them have so much, now.”

He moved the cup again, and she drank again.

She shifted her feet, placing them under her, and then stood, one foot on each of his legs.

She embraced him, arms in his beard, clutching at his shirt. His hand pressed against her back, and her tail wrapped around his wrist.

As quiet as she could manage, she whispered, “You say this because they’re listening. You must want to be free.”

She felt the hand at her back move, pulling her back and away again. She leaned against it, moving back so she could see his face.

She understood now, why the Alice had used the word ‘broken’.

“There are things I’ve talked to my Alice and the Valkyrie about, but reclaiming my kingdom or starting another anew isn’t in any of the many realms of possibility or fancy.”

“But-”

“No,” he said, one last time, and the look of pain in his eyes was proof to the word.

As she’d jumped to him as her heart had leaped with joy, she jumped away at the pain, both his and hers.

“Your name, child?” he asked.

“Dot.”

He smiled. “Fitting, for the daughter of Polka.”

She nodded, but she didn’t feel like smiling.

“Go home, noble dot. Do us all proud. Tell the others whatever they need to hear.”

Her hand clutched at her chest, over her heart, and then she turned to go. Into the wall. Back the way she came. Every ache and cut and scrape felt magnified as hurt radiated through her.

Going down was as hard as going up had been, but this time she didn’t have anything to go to.

Back to Blackspot, with his sickness and his hope of being reborn? Back to Lump, who got weaker every day?

To tell them what?

More rats waiting for her, probably. Other things. More pain. More machines, inching into their territory.

As much as she hated to admit it, the others were dead. She was one of the strongest who were left, that she knew about. There were other tribes and groups, there were armies, but they fought for a kingdom that hadn’t had a king for a very long time.

Hurt and pain turned black and angry inside her.

She thought of the machines and she thought of Burnish’s words. The fact that warning people of the machines might save her king.

By the time she’d reached the sixth floor, moving slowly, the idea had found its root in her head, much like the the machines found root in rocks and metal, seeds of machinery that spun out and made it so a rock could crack like an egg, revealing gears and a thousand moving pieces. Machines that made machines, all hiding and deceiving and inching forward with endless patience.

Small things were capable. She had power of her own.

She needed purpose to drive her forward, and her purpose, the goal in her mind, was to go back to that store, to find a piece of machine, and then to put it on the train.

The machines would hatch in the heart of all the known worlds and the humans would lose their kingdom too.

It was that hate and thirst for vengeance that pushed her forward, now that she didn’t have her king to serve that role. Those feelings boiled up, leaving wet streaks on her cheeks as she crept forward, from hiding place to hiding place, shadow to shadow.

The stairs were tricky. From the sixth floor to the fifth floor, it was open area, trick to navigate. Someone sat on the stairs.

The Red Queen.

Dot settled in, finding a place to sit and wait. She watched the one the King had called a Queen, and she licked her wounds, both real and metaphorical. She wished she was interesting enough in design to lick her own heart.

Something, a huff of pain, a wheezing breath, a scuffle, it made the Queen look.

The pair locked eyes.

“We got a warning about you,” the Red Queen said. “You’re not getting up to trouble, are you?”

Dot shook her head.

“You’re hurt. Come here.”

Dot hesitated. Then she crept closer. She flinched as the Queen moved her hand.

“It’s okay. Move your hair aside. I’ll touch the side of your neck.”

Dot pawed at her hair, moving it. She felt the touch at her neck.

The pain around the cuts and the bites faded. The aches and sore joints sang with euphoria as they became normal and the endorphins that had flooded her body to help remained.

She reached out, with arms and tail, and wrapped herself around the Red Queen’s arm. She stared at the tattoos, black and red, tracing one hand along the ray of a sun. Not colorful enough, but… not bad. She had spots, too, but of a very different sort.

“Why are you sad?” the Red Queen whispered.

“My king doesn’t want me,” Dot said.

“Can I?” the Red Queen asked, moving her hand, and Dot saw. Dot nodded, and closed her eyes as the Red Queen stroked her. A different, lighter touch.

“I’m stuck too,” the Red Queen said. “I’ve finished my work for the day, but someone I’m supposed to stay away from is just downstairs. I think I know how it feels.”

“If I could have one thing only, I would have him close.”

“Yeah.”

“As a friend or a master or a King or anything.”

“Yeah.”

“But I can’t.”

“And that anger of yours? What are we going to do about that?”

Dot might have been surprised, but King Rinke had called this woman a Queen and Queens were supposed to be capable of great things.

She kept her mouth shut. Amazed as she was, she wasn’t dumb.

“How about… in exchange for that healing I just gave you, you keep me company for a little while?”

Carefully, slowly, Dot crawled into the Red Queen’s lap.

The Red Queen stroked her, and each stroke was like the inhalation, the exhalation, the single step toward feeling a little bit better.

Even when the hand stopped moving, and rested on Dot’s shoulder, when Dot stared at the missing fingertips, she felt a little more okay.

They sat there, long after the coast was clear for the Red Queen. It was only when people came up the stairs that they were forced to move. The Red Queen moved Dot closer, putting on her jacket, and closed up the jacket so Dot was held close, and it was good, Dot’s ear pressed down to the Red Queen’s heart.

The Red Queen started down the stairs, one arm helping to keep Dot in position within her jacket.

“I’ll help you with your anger if you help me with mine.”

Shade – 4.1

Ashley took her time exploring Hollow Point. Much of her attention was on the stores and the people within them. A store with supplies for those living on the fringes and in the tent cities, a used bookstore that was selling books taken from homes in the old world, ten dollars for a cardboard box full, a closed children’s clothing store.

The people that noticed Ashley were quick to avert their eyes or mind their own business.

She paused at a manicurist’s, looking within. There were rows of comfortable looking chairs with small tables beside them and foot baths below each seat. Ads in the window showed a variety of nail art.

Ashley held out her hand in front of her, her black nail polish contrasted with the colorful ‘Chevalier’ pattern, mimicking the delicate gold flourishes on a silver background. She moved her hand to compare to the ‘Alexandria’ image.

She stepped away and walked a little ways down the street. She peered into more closed buildings, passed a bar where the man at the counter pretended not to see her, and then walked by a clothing resale store. She paused at a clothing store, and then entered.

She looked through a series of black dresses and skirts, taking some off the rack and draping them over one arm.

“Ma’am?” the store employee asked. The young woman looked terrified. “Can I help you with anything?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“Please do. I’ll be at the counter.”

Ashley continued browsing, picking out an assortment of dresses, until she had eight gathered. She approached the change room and paused, looking at the sign that said only three articles of clothing could be brought into the changing area.

She entered the area, but didn’t step into any of the booths. Instead, she stood before the mirrors, holding dresses against her front. She paused as the front door opened, the bell jingling. A male voice asked a question, and the cashier said something in response.

She left six of the dresses where they were, and took two with her as she returned to the woman’s side of the store.

“Damsel of Distress,” the man said. He wore a mask with antlers at the corner, forking and extending into the wild locks of hair. He’d used face paint to blend his face into the mask, but the paint mixed multiple colors, with a golden sheen to the paint above his eyes and black on his lower eyelids and lower eye socket. He wore a jacket that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Robin Hood, with a stag’s head and a singular antler in gold, running from the collarbone, along the collar, and over one shoulder. “What brings you to Cedar Point?”

“Is it Cedar Point or Hollow point?”

“That depends on who you ask. Some of the more colorful locals prefer the latter.”

“The capes.”

“The capes. Yes. I’m guessing you’re here for them more than you’re here for the shopping.”

“I’m here to see what’s here,” she said. She turned away from him to pick through some clothes. She lifted the sleeve of a dress that was still on the rack, the dress was opaque, but the sleeve was sheer with a lace pattern worked into it.

“And?”

“And I’m not impressed so far.”

“What did you expect to find that you’re not seeing?”

“Organization. A timely response to my arrival. I’ve been walking around for nearly half an hour and you’re the first person to show their face.”

“We prefer discretion.”

“It feels toothless. A sanctuary for villains, and you let people walk in here without stopping them?”

“We’ve been keeping a close eye on you.”

“Eyes aren’t teeth.”

“Some are, when you add powers to the mix. Shall we take this discussion outside?”

Ashley looked at the two dresses in her hand. She put one back where it belonged, and then approached the counter.

“Um,” the salesgirl said. “You can have it. It’s on the house.”

“Is it?” Ashley asked.

“Store policy. The owner hopes that you’ll have a positive view of the store, in case of future trouble. Would you like a bag?”

Ashley looked at the dress, then shook her head, slinging the dress over one shoulder. She looked at the villain with the antlers. “We can talk outside.”

“I’ll be right with you.”

She walked out of the store, glancing over one shoulder to see him discreetly passing some bills to the salesgirl, who ducked her head in acknowledgement.

The streets were mostly empty, without many cars, parked or otherwise. Some of the stores had tunnels or alleys that led to parking lots, but even those didn’t have many vehicles. Employee parking, when many stores had only one employee on average.

“I’m Prancer, by the by,” Prancer said, as he exited the store.

“The messenger.”

“I’m- no. Not a messenger,” he said. “If Cedar Point is anyone’s, it’s mine.”

“I was there when you first raised the idea of a gathering place.”

“Then you know what we’re doing.”

“I walked away halfway through your speech.”

“Ah,” Prancer said.

A car pulled out of the alley, turned a corner, and then drove through the neighborhood, not slowing as it passed the pair.

“Normally when one villain visits another’s territory, there’s a token show of respect.”

“Normally,” Ashley said, “the person holding the territory does something to earn the respect. Normally, when someone brings up respect, they’re prepared to back up their words. Are you going to back up your words and give me some evidence that you deserve even a token show of respect?”

Prancer didn’t immediately reply. The two stared each other down.

“You’re going to be one of the difficult ones, it seems,” Prancer said.

“If you’re relying on convention and expectation then yes, I am. If you show me you deserve my time and respect, I’ll give you it. If you think I’ll give it to you because you run this territory, you’ll be sadly disappointed. I might even supplant you.”

“That’s a dangerous game, Damsel of Distress. Making threats, forcing people to play their hands. You don’t know what cards someone has up their sleeves.”

“I have ideas. You appeared alone, no bodyguard, no backup. You appeared late. You can’t back up your reputation.”

“You might have the wrong ideas about the kind of territory this is.”

“Enlighten me,” Ashley said. It almost sounded like a threat.

“Come. Walk with me,” he said.

They started walking down the sidewalk, in a neighborhood where a third of the businesses were closed.

Prancer did the talking for the first leg of their walk. “Any community of capes will have its rules. Standards and things it does that benefit everyone in it. I’m not a warlord. I manage a very diverse group. If someone causes a problem, if someone tests us, I can and will give that diverse group direction or adjust the rules. I can and will point one of the many, many powers we have at our disposal here at that someone. Some are dangerous, some are devious, and some aren’t even parahuman kinds of powers.”

“Political.”

“Economic. Social,” Prancer said. “I might not be a warlord, I might not even be a warrior, but I have reach. A few words from me, and you might find it very hard to find work with a parahuman group. You might find that people won’t recruit you or do business with you.”

“Am I supposed to be concerned? I’m not looking to join any team, Prancer. I’m not looking to buy or sell petty drugs or prostitutes. When I decide to act, I’ll be leading a team, not joining one, and people will flock to me regardless of what you say. They’ll do business with me because there’s no other choice. I’m ready to call that bluff of yours.”

“And be the first I make an example of? No. I’m something of a schemer, a bit of a politician, and I’m a very good businessman. But if you’re going to deal with me, you should know that above any and all of that, I’m a salesman. If we’re talking about bluffs, I know bluffs when I see them, Damsel of Distress. I know you came here because you want something.”

“I did. I finished some shopping and I have your measure, and I have the measure of your neighborhood.”

“Something drew you away from your cozy apartment in an unassuming neighborhood, away from your regular appointments with therapists and the Wardens. Your years of history before Gold Morning are a pattern of laying low, being quiet, committing crimes to get food and clothes, and then getting restless and bored. That’s when you traditionally start stirring up trouble. Are you restless?”

“You read my files. If you’re expecting that level of access to intimidate me, you’ll be disappointed.”

“I think you’re bored. I know you’ve been hanging around the Cabin, or the Lodge if you want to call it that. I know you like spending time at the tea shop. I know that when you get restless you often look for people to spend time with. The Jewel of Boston, the Slaughterhouse Nine. We know how those stories ended.”

“I’m alive and many of them are dead.”

“That’s not how I would have put it, but alright,” Prancer said. “If you want something here, you should ask.”

“I thought I might want to find a place around here, but if you’re slow to respond to my arrival, you might be slow to stop heroes from getting in my way.”

“You want a place in the community?”

“And security, assurance I won’t be harassed. You know about the appointments. They’re why I’m left free when other ex-members of the Slaughterhouse Nine are still under lock and key. They study me then, I let them, and I want to leave it at that, for those days and those times only. I don’t want to be surveilled or scrutinized when I don’t have to be.”

“We have a variety of security measures in place. If you chose to move here, if we allowed you to, I think you’d be satisfied.”

“Empty assurances.”

“More robust assurances would come only when we knew we could trust you to some degree. Obviously, we’re not about to share particulars with a stranger. You could turn around and join a rival group and share that information with them.”

“And if I became less of a stranger, it would require an investment of time and trust. At that point it would be hard to escape. Sunken cost.”

“Then it seems we’re at an impasse.”

“So it seems.”

“And I can expect you to leave promptly, then.”

“I’ll leave when I’m ready,” Ashley said. She turned to walk in another direction, heading for another clothing store.

⊙

“Switch to the overhead camera. I want to see what Prancer says and does.”

“I’ll project onto the other wall,” Kenzie said. “I want to keep the main camera on Ashley.”

She struck a few keys. One face of the projector box behind her desk lit up, projecting onto the wall. The image was blurry and badly affected by the light around the room at first, as any projector screen could be, but it swiftly clarified, crystallizing into an image as sharp as any flatscreen television. It was an overhead of the street.

The overhead image split, until that screen showed two camera views of Prancer at the same time, one directly overhead, and another that gave something of a view of his face.

The main camera, on the wall in front of and above Kenzie’s desk, showed Ashley’s point of view. The view bobbed with every step Ashley took, and was periodically obscured when Ashley blinked.

Tristan was bringing things into the room. The team’s temporary accommodation. Rain was in the corner, where a table had been set up, laying out parts of mechanical arms while Chris watched.

In the center of the room, Sveta, Natalie the law student and I watched things on the cameras.

Natalie had her arms folded. Her hair was shorter than most boys wore theirs, with a curl at the forehead, her glasses seemed oversized for her face, and her forehead was wrinkled in worry or concentration. She dressed in clothes that made me think she’d picked clothes out of a magazine without reading the rationale behind those clothes. She wore a blouse that fit her body closely, made of a faintly reflective material, with a black ribbon tied where it drew the collar together. She wore a straight-cut skirt that started at the waist and ended at the knee, and dark hose, with tidy, heel-less business shoes. It was the kind of thing that made a model in a magazine look stunning, but Natalie was five-foot two, she didn’t really have a waist, and the outfit made both of those things very obvious.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think it would be very hard to explain to a judge why your agent took the free clothes from the store,” Natalie said. “I think you could explain it, but it feels like an implicit protection racket and that’s something that would be thrown in your faces.”

“Hey Tristan. Can I grab one of those whiteboards?” I asked.

“Sure.”

The whiteboard didn’t have the legs or rollers attached yet, so Sveta held it upright for me. I wrote down the bit about taking the dress ‘on the house’.

“I don’t like the threatening tone, either. Entrapment has a pretty high bar, but if your agent threatens the targets, implicitly or explicitly, to insinuate herself into that environment, it casts a lot of it into jeopardy. They’ll turn around and say they had to do these things because a woman in black who can kill people by pointing at them was telling them to.”

I wrote it down. “We’ll tell her to tone it down. How long until we can communicate with her, Kenzie?”

Kenzie spun around in her computer chair, pulling her legs close to her chest to keep them out of the way of the desk’s edge. She stuck out a foot, kicking one of the boxes to the right of the desk. A bar appeared diagonally across it. “Sixty percent. Ummmm. Fifteen minutes until we can be totally sure they’re not tapped into cell towers or internet.”

“I actually have a lot of concerns about her as an undercover agent.”

“She’s not an undercover agent,” Tristan said. “She’s just there. Keeping an eye on things, keeping an ear out.”

“That’s an undercover agent,” Natalie said.

“She isn’t joining any team or participating in anything,” Tristan said.

“No espionage, no immediate risk,” Chris added his voice.

“I have concerns,” Natalie said. “I’ll just say that.”

Ashley was investigating a bookstore now, on the main screen. Our testing of the waters.

On the other screen, Prancer was meeting a trio of others.

Kenzie glanced at it and hit a key. Windows popped up, with three-dimensional models of each face, mask included. A young woman with a purple hood with nascent antlers sticking up through it, a skinny woman with rusty nails instead of teeth, and a woman in a white jacket with a doctor’s face mask.

I named them. “Velvet and Nailbiter. That might be Bitter Pill, but she hasn’t shown her face or been photographed any for the files. Is there sound?”

Kenzie hit a key on her keyboard. “It’s going to kill the flying camera’s battery. We get a minute or two and then I need to bring it home. Or we get three minutes and I bring it halfway home, and someone has to go over to pick it up wherever I land it.”

“Alright.”

“…up to?” Velvet asked, her voice playing from a speaker.

“Looking around. She was thinking of moving in, but she didn’t like how long it took us to turn up,” Prancer said.

“She’s aware we were watching her, isn’t she?”

“No. And she doesn’t give a shit, either. I outright told her and she was more concerned about the fact we hadn’t shown ourselves sooner. She’ll be a problem if she sticks around.”

“What kind of problem?”

Tristan, Rain, and Chris had stopped what they were doing and drew close, to listen and watch.

“She was quick to talk about supplanting the local leadership. We operate with a soft hand and she seems like the sort that respects only firm ones. There’s more to it, ties into something we’ve heard from… key voices. I’d rather have that conversation somewhere more private than this.”

“Do you want me to deal with her?” Nailbiter asked, her words whistling through her teeth.

“No,” Prancer said.

“Why am I here then?”

“Because I think you and her are similar. You respect strength, you know how power works. You’ve dealt with scary customers. If we end up interacting with her more, and especially if she moves into the neighborhood, I think we want you to be on point, interacting with her more.”

“I can do that. She was Slaughterhouse?”

“Briefly, and you were Birdcage. I think a lot of the same principles apply.”

Nailbiter chuckled, a wheezy, whistling sound. “I never thought of that. Probably.”

“If this visitor of ours winds up being a problem, I don’t want you stepping into the fray against her.”

“Why not?” Nailbiter asked.

“Because I don’t know how it would turn out. I’d rather make moves where I know the result in advance.”

“Whatever,” Nailbiter said.

Velvet made a sound, then drew closer to Prancer, putting her arm around him. He put his arm around her. “Not whatever. I like that kind of thinking.”

“Thank you,” Prancer said.

“I’m curious what that thing is that you don’t want to talk about in the open,” Velvet said. “Can we go inside?”

“We can. You’re free to carry on with your day, Nailbiter. Thanks for coming. Pill, I want to ask you about some import-export work. Can you come?”

There was no sound from Bitter Pill, only a nod that the camera caught.

The group split up, Nailbiter walked away. The trio headed into an alleyway. The airborne camera moved, trying to get a view of the alley interior, and only saw a door close.

The image changed, as Kenzie typed. It showed an overhead map of the area. Kenzie marked the building they’d entered with a red highlight and a little flag icon, then began typing out a note.

“Can you get sound of building interiors?” I asked.

“Kind of not really,” Kenzie said.

“That’s real clear,” Chris said.

“I’ve got one camera with good aerial camouflage that I really don’t want to get damaged because it took a whole weekend and a lot of stuff to put it together. I have two more that don’t have special camouflage, they’re just painted to match the sky, and I can only use them if the sky is the right color, or if I don’t mind them being spotted. They could get destroyed and I wouldn’t mind them breaking that much. It would take me something like two days to get more advanced sound built into any of them, and then I’m putting a lot of eggs in one basket or I’m making a disposable camera not so disposable.”

“But you can do it?” I asked.

“I’m better with visuals, but yeah, I can do it.”

“Even if we decided it was worth building, it would take a while before you had that kind of microphone online,” Rain said.

“It’s a sound camera, not a microphone,” Kenzie said. “But yeah. And I’m trying to figure out the teleporters and the longer ranged cameras and I’ve got to fix up some old stuff so it’s ready if we need it, and that’s all stuff I really should do, and if I’m doing that I’m not doing any of the fun stuff.”

Ashley, on her screen, paused to write something down.

LEAVING SOON

She used a small burst of her power to destroy the paper shortly after writing it down.

Kenzie snapshotted the note, then typed it up, adding it to a log in the sidebar, where it joined two other brief notes that Ashley had written on her way into Cedar Point.

“One thing I’ll say about Ashley?” Tristan said. “She’s provocative. From what I saw of that conversation, she impugned Prancer’s leadership right off, forced him to prove himself, gave us a sense of the power structure. She almost had him talking about anti-surveillance measures, but he’s being smart about keeping that mostly under wraps.”

“He probably has some we haven’t heard or talked about,” I said.

“She didn’t make any friends while she was doing all of that,” Rain said.

“We don’t need her to make friends,” Tristan said. “She’s not going undercover. Not explicitly. She’s just… there. Keeping an eye on things.”

I said, “My instinct is that if she keeps pushing on the level she was, people will get antsy or suspicious. It might be good to have her hang back, wait a bit before making contact or visiting again.”

“I could swing through,” Chris said.

“We should wait until we’re more settled,” Tristan said.

“There are actually a few obstacles to figure out,” I said. “Sorry to take over the one whiteboard here.”

“We got a lot of the whiteboards because we thought we’d have one for each member of the team, and one for you, Victoria,” Rain said. “Two for Kenzie and two for me because we’re tinkers and you can never give tinkers too many surfaces to write stuff down on.”

“Yus,” Kenzie said. Her legs were kicking a mile a minute as she focused on her computers, a box to her right and the projector box on the far side of her desk, the camera images playing on the wall. One of the split-screen images showing the overhead of the building Prancer had entered turned red, blacked out, and then disappeared, shrinking down to leave the other image, which was tracking Nailbiter.

“Can you project the faces you had onto one of the whiteboards?” Sveta asked.

Kenzie brought up images, then moved the projected image until it overlapped one side of the whiteboard. She had to look over one shoulder as she moved the mouse to make sure the image was in place.

Sveta dropped her hand, and used a tendril-wrapped marker to slowly trace out major facial features, hair, and the outlines of the masks for Prancer.

I looked at Natalie.

Natalie’s forehead, perpetually wrinkled, wrinkled further as she raised her eyebrows, looking from whiteboard to whiteboard, screen to screen. “I recommend moving slowly at first. I’ll give you some general, not-a-lawyer advice on things for free. It’s interesting and it’s relevant to what I want to do in the long run.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s great. I’m not sure how slow the initial moves are going to be, though. The team needs to get some things out of the way before they have more freedom.”

Sveta turned her head. “The stuff Foresight said?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We’re situated on the very outskirts of Cedar Point, here, and you can’t move into the area until a few hurdles are crossed. You can’t really have Ashley or Chris spend any extended time in the area until the Speedrunners, Birdbrain and Braindead are dealt with, and we can’t move this headquarters into enemy territory if they’re going to find it and trash the place. In an ideal world, you’ll want to do something about Tattletale’s involvement too.”

“I’ve been thinking of Tattletale as an inevitable thing we’ll have to deal with,” Rain said.

“There are things you can do,” I said. “We can discuss those things when Natalie is gone.”

“Actually,” Natalie said. “I should probably go. I have a class tomorrow morning and then work at the Wardens’ building tomorrow afternoon.”

A class. I felt a tiny bit of resentment over the fact that she had that.

“Alright. Thank you for coming and saying hi,” I said.

“It’s interesting,” she said, forehead wrinkling in that worried way. “I really recommend you be careful.”

“As careful as is possible,” Sveta said.

Natalie nodded. “It was nice to meet you all. You have my number if you need it.”

There was a chorus of farewells. I walked Natalie to the side door of the building, where the fire escape was. The way down was steep, and she kept one hand on her little messenger bag and the other on the railing as she made her way down, bringing one foot down to a step, then bringing the other foot down to the same step.

Her entire demeanor made me feel faintly anxious. I didn’t have a great read on her yet, she’d spent ten minutes at the temporary headquarters here, and most of it had been spent observing.

It was something of a relief to have her available if we needed her, and it was a different kind of relief to have her gone. The others, too, seemed to relax a bit.

“Natalie seemed nice enough,” Sveta said.

“She did,” I said.

I took a moment to get Natalie’s number off my phone and put it on one corner of the whiteboard I’d been using, the whiteboard leaning against the wall. I then wrote down Gilpatrick’s, with a note beneath it. For emergencies only.

The Patrol was a resource, Gilpatrick was one too. I didn’t want to overuse that card, though. Gilpatrick had already been too kind with being a reference for me while I hunted for work.

With those numbers in the top corner, joined by my own, I wrote down ‘Hurdles’.

We’d already covered the basics of the major players on the scene. Speedrunners, Birdbrain, Braindead, Bitter Pill. There were others that we’d learn about, I was sure. Prancer was the closest thing we had to a kingpin that needed toppling.

In a hypothetical world where everything went perfectly, I wouldn’t have minded getting Tattletale as a part of things. I wasn’t sure my hopes were that high.

I put them down as the people the group needed to knock down before they could fully set up.

I wrote down ‘Team: Needs name & brand.’

“Ooh,” Kenzie said.

She was watching me write stuff down, her attention no longer on her computers.

“Here,” Tristan said, approaching my whiteboard. He held it up, and then created the orange sparks. They solidified, becoming the legs that raised the whiteboard up to a convenient level.

“There’s no rush to name ourselves,” Sveta said.

“No rush,” I said. “But it needs doing. It’ll be easier to interact with other heroes once you have something. Are you taking a cape name?”

“Probably,” she said. “I’m not sure I want to go the doll route. A little too similar to Mannequin. A lot of the reaching, grabbing names are already taken.”

“Brainstorm, think about it, see what feels comfortable,” I said. “Kenzie and Tristan, you guys too. You probably can’t use your old cape names.”

“I was Optics,” Kenzie said. “I can’t use my old name, I don’t think. PRT owned it.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“I think I can use Capricorn,” Tristan said. “When we reached out to the first Capricorn for permission, they signed over the rights to Byron and me, not to Reach.”

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“Ninety-nine percent sure.”

“That simplifies things,” I said.

“Observer, Pupil, Scrutinizer,” Kenzie said.

“Those are terrible,” Chris said.

“Um. Watcher. Eyewitness, Gape?”

“Oh yeah,” Chris said. “Gape. That doesn’t have connotations at all.”

“Beholder?” Kenzie asked, her eye on her computer screen. “Spectator. Specs. Voyeur?”

“Voyeur. Perfect,” Chris said, filling his voice with sarcasm. “Little Kenzie watching through the window while you change. We could make that a thing.”

“What kind of thing?” Rain asked.

“You could be Groper,” Chris said. “Sveta could be Hentai or Tentacle Love or something.”

“Ew,” Sveta said. “And lame to go there.”

Chris smiled, seemingly not bothered that he’d bothered Sveta. “I could be…”

“Short and curly?” Rain asked.

There were a few chuckles.

“And Victoria, she needs a name and she’s sort of a member of the team,” Chris said.

“I’m shocked, just shocked, at how Chris finally starts participating more when the rude stuff comes up,” Sveta said.

“I’m not,” Kenzie said. “That seems like it’s one hundred percent Chris.”

I smiled. Chris had given me an in, and if I was going to get along with these guys, I needed to put something out there. “If you want to give me a vaguely rude name, tie it to my attention-grabbing aura, me being hard to crack when my defenses are up?”

“You have an idea?” Chris asked.

“Pearl,” I said.

“That’s… really subtle,” he said. “Kind of wimpy.”

I shrugged.

“I don’t get it,” Kenzie said.

“I like it because Kenzie doesn’t get it, so I don’t feel weird saying it around her,” I said.

“That’s a good line of thinking,” Sveta said. “I approve.”

She’d stuck out her fist, and I stuck out mine to meet it. “Thank you.”

“I actually agree with Chris,” Kenzie said. She’d turned around and was looking something up online. “Pearl is pretty lame as innuendo goes.”

“But it works,” I said. “It fits. That has to count for something.”

There was a throat-clearing noise, interrupting the back-and-forth. All heads turned toward Tristan.

“I think I have all of you beat,” Tristan said.

“Of course you do,” Rain said.

“Even if you didn’t have us beat, you’d say you had us beat,” Chris said. “And then you’d ruin the joke by insisting you win even when yours is lame.”

“I’m one hundred percent positive I win,” Tristan said. “I have the best rude name. Guarantee you.”

“One hundred percent is pretty confident,” Sveta said.

“I’m one hundred and ten percent confident, even,” Tristan said.

“Out with it, then,” Chris said.

Tristan straightened, fixed his armor at the front, and cleared his throat, drawing it out.

“You’re setting us up for disappointment,” Rain said.

Tristan cleared his throat again, exaggerated, until everyone from Sveta to Chris was rolling their eyes.

“Wet and Horny Teens,” Tristan said.

It said something that nobody wanted to give him a laugh at that. It was Chris who cracked first, falling out of his seat before the impact let the initial guffaw loose. I chuckled, half at Tristan, and half at how much Chris seemed to be enjoying this.

“That’s atrocious,” Sveta said, but she was smiling.

“Tristan is pretty atrocious, so it makes a lot of sense coming from him,” Rain said. “It says a lot that that’s his idea of subtle.”

“It’s subtle like a brick through a window,” Sveta said.

“Come on,” Tristan said. “You guys give me so much shit, you don’t give me any credit. I deserve a win for this one. It’s great.”

Chris was on the floor still, pounding one fist on the floorboards while holding in his laughs.

I looked over at Kenzie, who had her back to the group, her face in her hands as she held in her laughs.

Immature, stupid, but so valuable to have the little bonding moment. I had a smile on my face as I returned to the whiteboard.

My eye returned to the people the group needed to take down, the ones who were in the way, or who were set up in such a way as to make the covert information gathering fail from the get-go.

I wrote down ‘Rain’s situation’.

He needed protection. I added the three members of his cluster, and then drew an arrow, looping back to Tattletale.

The smile dropped away from my face as I stared at her name. It kept going back to her. She was a massive obstacle.

Sveta came to stand next to me, looking at my whiteboard. “Distract me from these perverts.”

I stuck out my marker, putting a dot beside Tattletale’s name.

“You’ve got a bit of a grudge,” Sveta said.

“I’ve got a lot of a grudge,” I said. “A lot of things would be simpler if we could do something about her. I’m thinking…”

“You have an idea?” Sveta asked.

“Yeah,” I said. I turned around. “I have an idea. I don’t suppose you have any contacts or favors you can pull in? With capes, specifically?”

“Maybe,” Sveta said. “Weld, and Weld’s friends. I’m kind of reluctant to go there though.”

I nodded. It made sense that she was reluctant. Sveta wanted to stand on her own. Going that route would be the opposite of what she wanted.

“What’s this?” Rain asked.

“Friends, contacts,” Sveta said. “Capes we could reach out to. Victoria has an idea.”

“I do,” Kenzie said, perking up some as she caught wind of our conversation. “Or I might. I can try. What’s this for?”

“Making a first move, in a way that won’t give the lawyer headaches,” I said. “It’s not going to make us any friends though.”

“Seems to be an emerging pattern, that,” Rain said.

If we aren’t in a position to behead the snake, maybe we can de-fang it.

Shade – 4.2

“Classify the following angles as obtuse, acute, or right,” Kenzie said. She sighed.

“You know this?” I asked.

She looked up from her homework and rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know this. I didn’t have the words to describe what I knew before taking the class but I get this.”

“Make it interesting,” I said. “Challenge yourself, try to answer as fast as you can, and try to get past where you’re having to think about it and get to where the knowledge is automatic.”

“Acute, acute, obtuse, right, acute, obtuse, acute, right, right,” she said. “I’m really tempted to sit down and make up my own questions to leave on the worksheet for the teacher, except I’d have to look things up to make sure some mathematician didn’t already give it a name. What’s it called when it’s a full circle? Three hundred and sixty degrees of angle?”

I frowned. “You’re asking me to think back about seven years right now. Complete, I think?”

“Full, complete, or perigon,” Chris said.

All heads craned around to look at him. He was sitting in a corner, a table to his left, with so many things piled up that the bag, costume, snacks and notebooks loomed well over the top of his head. He sat on a chair with his feet up on the seat, a comic and phone on his lap. He had his headphones on, but only one was covering an ear.

He realized people were looking and frowned. “What?”

“You actually have a brain?” Tristan asked.

“I studied it a few weeks ago,” Chris said, shrugging, turning his attention back to his comic.

“I’m pretty sure I don’t remember studying that when I was your age,” Tristan said.

“I self-study. There aren’t enough seats in schools so they gave us the option of doing these workbooks and handing them in. I’ve lost track of how far ahead I got,” Chris said. “It’s why I don’t have homework. My regular schoolwork is the homework and I get that done earlier in the day.”

“Perigon,” Kenzie said to herself, hunched over her worksheet and books, a pen in hand. “That one sounds best. Let’s call this one a… hyper-perigon angle.”

“More complete an angle than a circle?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “If you want to get into multidimensional space then you have to get there somehow. So you make a circle that’s more closed than a regular circle and that gives you an in, right? It can be theoretical if you want but obviously this is one of a hundred ways I can start pushing the boundaries.”

“Uh huh.”

She drew on the paper with her pen, drawing out a perfect circle and then scribbling out extra lines and numbers.

“You’re aware you can’t hand that in now, right?” I said.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Kenzie said. “Once you’re there you can start thinking about lenses positioned to use the excess space you’ve given yourself and play that out. I heard somewhere that images that hit the back of your eye get flipped upside-down, and the brain turns it back upright. So we write something down that lets us toy with that concept…”

Her pen moved as she wrote out a mathematical formula.

“…And from there we get the reflected extra space on the other side of the lens constant. In brief, we start talking about hyper-hyper-perigon angles.”

“Hyper is right,” Chris muttered.

“Shh, leave her alone,” Sveta said.

Kenzie looked up at me, “This is where I have to leave you behind, Victoria, because I get stuff that’s hyper-hyper but I can’t help you get it.”

“Frankly, you left me behind a minute ago,” I said. “What are the hearts, stars, and apples you’re writing down?”

“It’s algebra, duh. You don’t have to use X and Y or A and B. You can use anything to represent the variable. I like hearts and stars and apples.”

“I feel like if you autopsied Kenzie, she’d have a bowl of breakfast cereal instead of gray matter.”

Kenzie spun around, sticking out a hand to grab the desk so she didn’t keep spinning. She stared at Chris, “I feel like if we autopsied you, Chris, we’d find you have one of those tumors with teeth, eyes and hair in it instead of a brain.”

“There’s a good chance you actually would,” Chris said. “That’d be cool.”

“Yes it would,” Kenzie said, very seriously. She spun herself around, grabbing the desk, now facing her defaced homework.

Sveta walked over from the whiteboard, where she’d finished tracing the faces that had once been projected onto it. An artist’s sketch of the players we’d seen and been involved with. Another part of the whiteboard had some name ideas.

“You can’t hand that in,” Sveta said.

“I said that already,” I said.

Kenzie looked up at me. “People often ask how the tinkering stuff works. It’s real easy. All it takes is closing a circle extra closed and having the right lens to use the wrinkles and bulges that result.”

“Easy,” I said, smiling a little.

She continued drawing out math and lines. She had a steady hand when it came to drawing out the geometry. I idly wondered if her tinker power played into that. She began drawing out a gun, similar to her flash pistol.

The drawing of a woman’s face was comparatively, almost ludicrously crude compared to the gun she’d drawn out. Kenzie scribbled out the eyes, then wrote out ‘I gave boring angle homework and now I’m blind foreverrrr’.

She wrote out a few more ‘r’s and then paused, scribbling out ‘boring’ and writing ‘obtuse’ above the scribble.

“Kenzie,” Sveta said, with a truly impressive amount of disappointment in the one word.

Kenzie turned her head slightly, looking up at Sveta with one eye that twinkled with mischief. She looked back at her work, writing down an extra ‘oh no’ by the teacher’s head.

I cocked my head, listening as Kenzie worked with renewed energy.

“You’re getting carried away,” Sveta said.

I looked at the boxes near Kenzie, saw the projector box to Kenzie’s right had a face lit up. It was pointed at the whiteboard Sveta had been working on, but no longer projected the camera images of the faces.

Reaching down, I plucked the pen from Kenzie’s hand.

She didn’t protest or stop me, only leaning back as I picked up the paper.

I walked a few paces away, holding up the sheet, glanced back at the projector box, and then walked another two paces.

The projected image of the scribblings, tinker notes and doodles disappeared. I turned it around to show Sveta.

She took the sheet, then experimented with moving it inside and beyond the boundaries of the projector box. Kenzie perched on the edge of her seat, watching, her tongue sticking out between her teeth, where she lightly bit it.

“Well played,” I said.

“I said it was fine,” she said.

“You did.”

“She filled in some of the right answers with real pen marks while scribbling,” Sveta observed. She turned the sheet around, moving it through the air.

The scratched out word with ‘obtuse’ over it had been cover for putting ‘obtuse’ into one of the blanks.

“Very well played,” I said.

Sveta handed the sheet back. Kenzie put it down and moved her hand. The projector moved the image of the scribblings on her whiteboard, leaving the sheet normal. She flipped it over and sighed, head lolling back. Without looking at the sheet, she said, “Acute, right, obtuse, acute, acute, obtuse.”

Sveta approached, putting a hand on Kenzie’s head. “How about instead of doing the math homework you could do in your sleep, you take advantage of having us here to help you with stuff you aren’t as strong with? What do you struggle with?”

“I get As in everything and A pluses in some stuff. But I work on English for the longest and I’m a little less good at gym. Mostly when I get bad marks it’s because I lost marks because my teachers are fed up with me.”

“Fed up?” I asked.

“Mrs. Beyer docked my grade because I wanted to stay inside at recess to talk with her about a project and she said I couldn’t and she needed a break from me. She said no ifs ands or buts and I said but, so she penalized my grade. Then when I tried to argue she took off a mark for every word I said. Five marks for five words, and one for the but- don’t even say it, Chris.”

Chris was talking with Tristan and Rain. “You’re so self-important you think I’m listening to you?”

Kenzie smiled, rolling her eyes a bit.

“English, then?” Sveta asked.

“It takes me the longest,” Kenzie said.

Sveta looked at me. “How were you in English?”

“B minus or thereabouts,” I said. “I did better with the courses I took at the hospital than I did in high school.”

“How come?”

“I write good papers and I’m good with themes and symbolism, but the classes I took in high school spent so long on each thing I felt like my brain was turning inside out with boredom. I’d start resenting the books and I sabotaged myself by not doing the related work or reading it myself. Don’t do that, Kenzie.”

“I do well in English, even with the parts we sit on forever,” Sveta said. “I’ll take point in helping Kenzie, you help?”

“Sure,” I said.

My role ended up being even more backseat than that. Sveta had read the book, and I hadn’t. I stood back, watching, glanced back at the others, where the three boys were talking video games, which they had been doing since before Kenzie had started on her homework, and I rolled my eyes.

Rain stepped away from the conversation. Grabbing a marker from the packet, he wrote ‘Rain’ at the top corner of his whiteboard.

Below that, he wrote, ‘names’, followed by ‘Bracer’, ‘Clasp’, and ‘Pinch’.

I approached, looking.

“No homework?” I asked.

“I like to do it late. My family mostly leaves me alone while I’m doing it, and I get to tire out my brain and distract myself from what sleeping actually involves. I can go straight from that to bed.”

I nodded. “Sounds like you have a system then. If you ever need help with studying, I’m happy to help.”

“I’m a pretty crummy student, but I get by. I think I’ll be okay.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I can’t see myself doing anything that leans too heavily on the school thing anyway.”

“You’d be surprised at how it comes into play,” I said.

“Maybe. But… I dunno if I see myself being alive and well a few years from now. That might be some of it.”

“Because of your cluster?”

“Because capes don’t tend to live that long. Because things were going south well before Gold Morning and it doesn’t feel like anything’s over or stopped. Every day, I think about the fact that there are still Endbringers out there. Broken triggers. Dangerous people with too much power.”

“There’s heroes. People stopping those things. Maybe you’ll be one of them. People die- it sucks but not all of them die. Not all of us.”

“I guess,” he said. “It might sound like I’m trying to ask for a pep talk, but I’m really not. Right now, I’m focused on things I gotta do. Like a name.”

That was my signal to back off. Fine.

“Clasp is a fairly decent name. Could work with the right costume. I’m not sure it feels right with the blaster power.”

“I was thinking of seizing something, as a prelude to something, or unclasping as… it sounded better in my head. Don’t laugh at my terrible names or reasoning, please,” he said. “Making a name that captures all of your powers when you have four is a pain in the ass. I’m just brainstorming.”

“I’m not going to make fun,” I said. “I have no idea what I’m going to call myself when I get back to the costumed heroics.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I was trying to think of names that might sound like they refer to the hands and the set-up, knock-down part of the power. Kind of. I don’t know.”

“Bracer’s taken, by the way,” I said. “I’m not sure of the others.”

He reached down to the pile of stuff at the foot of his board and picked up one of his tinker arms. It was just a bit thinner than his regular arm, just a bit shorter. Kenzie’s picture of a gun had looked more ‘tinker’ than this. It was wires with sheet metal bent into a crude, hand-like shape around it. He brought the textured plastic pad up to his shoulder and bound the straps around his shoulder, armpit, and upper arm before tapping it twice. He winced, showing his teeth momentarily.

“Hurts?” I asked.

“Nervous connection, and a bit of excess energy with the switch-on. I could fine tune it so it doesn’t shock me, but I might break something in the process. Ashley’s hands are made by someone who doesn’t even focus on prosthetics and they’re better than what I make.”

“You might be better than you think.”

“Mrs. Yamada thinks I have self esteem problems, but I do suck, so it’s more like I’m too aware of my reality. My blaster power is okay, because it’s mine, but it’s kind of all or nothing, leaning just a bit toward nothing, especially if I’m avoiding trying to kill, which I am.”

“Okay,” I said. I thought of him jumping off the train. I wondered how honest he was about it. “The mover power, it lets you…”

“Stop.”

He stepped back, then jogged a few steps, stopping mid-run, as if he’d frozen in time. He hadn’t, though. While suspended at an angle someone else would have tipped over, he twisted around and put a foot out to one side. He moved in another direction, back to his board.

“Any limitations? If I used my full strength and threw you, would you only slow down?”

“No. I’d stop. If I timed it right, I could fall from a plane, hit terminal velocity and then stop myself just before hitting the ground. It’s- it’d be useful then, it’s useful if I want to not fall over or if I want to maneuver a bit. But it’s not that amazing as powers go.”

He wasn’t lying, then. Not about that. There were uses, but it did sound somewhat limited for even a secondary power.

He seemed to read something in my expression, because he had further protests, “It’s really not that amazing. I have to wait between each use of it, and it’s not something I can build a name or identity around. The emotion power has no impact or visual side to it, so it’s out too.”

“A few of the multi-triggers I’m aware of tend to have more… I’m not sure what the word is. Esoteric or abstract names. The one villain in my town was Circus. The solution to a disparate set of powers is to just create something more out there that has its own identity, and then fit your powers to match, instead of trying to fit your identity to a random set of powers.”

“Identity like what?”

“Like… if you’re standing back and using your blaster power, maybe something like a warlock aesthetic. You could have a robe, multiple arms, you’ve got your ‘magic’, both with the blaster power and the emotion one.”

“No,” he said, quieter than before. He stared at the board. “Not like that. That’s not me and I don’t want to go there.”

“Okay,” I said. I folded my arms, looking at the names he’d put down. “If you like video games… is there an aesthetic or character or kind of game you could tap into?”

“I’d be worried about choosing something I get tired of a month from now.”

“Just…” I started, trying to think of a good argument. “Just as a starting point, to get you thinking.”

“The space opera game I got from Chris, one of the things he gave me to keep me sane when I’m out in the middle of nowhere and I don’t want to bother Erin. Chris, what’s the Void class I played, the worker one?”

“There are three. Miner, welder, and rigger. You played either of the last two.”

Rain nodded to himself, then looked at the board.

He started to write something down. He got as far as Rig when I said, “Rigger and Rig are taken.”

Rain threw down the marker and he clenched both his tinker and regular hands into fists. “Son of a…”

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” I said.

“What does it matter?” Tristan asked. He was still hanging with Chris at the one end of the room. “Names are taken, so what? It’s not like there’s a system out there enforcing that stuff. Kenzie could call herself Optics, it’s not like there’s a PRT.”

“I don’t want to though,” Kenzie said. “It gets complicated.”

“Okay, but for the sake of argument,” Tristan said. “Why couldn’t she if she wanted to?”

“Rigger or Rig could still be alive,” I said. “And we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future with people picking up where the PRT left off. Finding a good name and identity you’re comfortable with is hard, and capes tend to be protective of their names as a result. Mix-ups and headaches used to be common and we don’t want to go there. People travel to your town to literally fight you over a name.”

“I’m still not sold on the PRT issue,” Tristan said. “They’re gone. They aren’t coming back.”

“The remnants of them are. Organizations using their files and methods. A military-esque group following the rules and regulations of the PRT’s code of justice. There are headaches involved.”

There was a knock at the door. Sveta started toward it, but Kenzie leaped out of her chair and beat her to it, opening the door.

Kenzie saluted as Ashley entered. Ashley had a plastic bag with books and her dress in it. She moved those things out of the way, holding them while Kenzie fished the two camera drones out of the bottom of the bag.

“Good work,” Tristan said. “Lawyer-person left some tips, but I liked a lot about how you handled that.”

“It was very natural,” I said. “You’ll probably like the headaches you gave them, putting them on the spot like you did. Kenzie got some of their conversation after.”

Ashley smiled.

“How was the train ride?” Sveta asked. “You might have to go back and forth a bit, I hope it isn’t too boring.”

“It was fine. I read a book. A baby cried after looking at me and I was amused.”

“A baby cried?” Tristan asked.

“I look intimidating, apparently.”

“Or it cried because it’s a baby,” Chris said. “Babies cry about everything. They’re stupid like that.”

“It cried because of me,” Ashley said. “I’ve made enough people cry to know when it’s because of me.”

Chris shrugged. “I’ll defer to the expert.”

“It could be because you’re different,” Kenzie said. “The first house I was in growing up, there were mostly only black people in my neighborhood, and I remember my aunt had a baby and the baby cried whenever he saw a white person. It might be like that. Except you’ve got the cool eyes and hair.”

“On that topic,” Ashley said. “Eye. Mine’s bothering me.”

“Oh, sure, I’ll get it,” Kenzie said. She ran to her desk, then ran back to Ashley, who bent down, one hand on Kenzie’s shoulder.

Sticking a pair of tweezers into Ashley’s eye, Kenzie grabbed and withdrew the camera. It had a flat head like a nail, but the camera’s body more closely resembled a pin in how thin and long it was, with wires encircling its length in a double-helix.

I winced a little, watching it come out. Ashley didn’t seem to mind.

“I can’t stand that,” Sveta said. “Maybe it’s because eyes are one of the only things I have, but eeesh.”

She rattled a bit as she shuddered or mimed a shudder.

“It’s phased out, you wimps,” Kenzie said. “It’s not actually stabbing anything. It treats the eye as a portal and a model and unfolds in non-space using that framework.”

“I felt it moving around,” Ashley said.

“It’s mostly not actually stabbing anything,” Kenzie corrected her statement. “One to three percent in reality at most, stabbing at things. Sorry. I’ll fine tune the phase. It might be responding to your power.”

“I have regular appointments with someone who can give me a replacement if you destroy my eye,” Ashley said. “I’m not worried. I trust you.”

“Awesome,” Kenzie said, wiping the camera-pin with a tissue.

I wasn’t sure it was ‘awesome’. I knew who that person was. Bonesaw.

“We watched what we could before you left and the flying cameras ran out of battery,” I said. “Then we talked about plans and did some homework.”

“Thinking about names,” Rain said.

“Rude jokes about names too,” Chris said. “Tristan had a good one.”

“Glad I missed that,” Ashley said.

“You have a board, just so you know,” Kenzie said. “You can make notes.”

“I’m fine,” Ashley said. “What plans were you talking about?”

“We wanted to wait until you were here to do anything,” I said. “Tattletale’s a persistent issue. She’s lurking in the background, and she’s hard to shake. Instead of having her looming, it might be nice to rattle her a bit. It might be possible to do it in a way that doesn’t tip her off about who you guys are or how you’re operating.”

“How?” Ashley asked.

I explained, “Kenzie can call her old teammates. We’ll offer an exchange. A favor for a favor. We know that the people in Cedar Point are easily spooked. This is new, untested ground, and thanks to you, we know that Prancer is the closest thing they have to a boss and he’s inexperienced. We can put them on the back foot.”

“I’ll give you the transcript and a recording so you can check it out on your own time,” Kenzie told Ashley.

“Back foot?” Ashley asked.

“They’re easily spooked and Tattletale gave them free questions they can ask. They’ve used some already, and they might have used them all,” I said. “So… we leverage hero groups and some secondary people. They do a one-loop patrol or light investigation, show their faces.”

“Pressure,” Tristan said. “Part of why you patrol in the first place, but we’re using other people.”

“We can apply pressure on our own,” Ashley said. “We have me, and we have Chris.”

“The law student said you should back off a bit,” Sveta said. “You did a good job of being intimidating and believable. It would be better if we stirred the pot some, let them focus on other things, heat dies down. There’s less of a chance they’ll investigate you if they’re focused on heroes.”

I jumped in, “Seeing how you were in Prancer’s face, I think it might be better to have you keep doing that, than to have you inexplicably be nicer or calmer. We just drop you back into Cedar Point when they’ve already got their hands full, you get to make them miserable and blindside them. They might even turn to you for help.”

“And that gives us power,” Ashley said.

“And we have a trump card,” Tristan said. “The recording of the conversation with Tattletale. That’s endgame stuff, but if it turns out she’s digging and she’s on our trail anyway, we can use it to mess with her. We can give them the impression she wanted us to pressure them so they’d use questions and keep buying her services.”

Ashley smiled.

Hm. Maybe not the best thing if Ashley was that pleased with my idea.

I decided I had her on board and I had her playing nice. Time to sell her on the more cautious, moderated part of things. “We play this slow, but we can maintain power, we can put them on the back foot, and we have a way of screwing up one of the major players on the bad guy’s side. That last one is the kind of thing we’ll want to consult outside parties for. Tip off the Wardens or one of the big teams that we’re messing with Tattletale, in case they want that to coincide with something else they’ve got going on.”

“More people involved is more chances a spy gives up the wrong info,” Chris said.

“Very true,” I said. “That’s where it’s good to make it so we’re only calling people we know and trust. Former teammates. I think we can reasonably assume the likes of Chevalier are fairly legit. Others, we control the information we give them. We do this smart.”

“I like it,” Ashley said.

“I can call my old teammates,” Kenzie said, collapsing back into her computer chair. She put the eyeball-pin camera into a jewelry box. “I don’t know if they’ll say yes, but I can try.”

“If everything else falls through, I can call Weld and ask if he knows people,” Sveta said.

“There are options,” I said. “I met some people at the community center. They might help me out.”

“I know people too,” Ashley said. “From my appointments. I can try asking when I next run into them.”

“You’re sure? You actually have hero friends?” Tristan asked.

“No. But they’re heroes other people trust to work with someone like me, we talk, and I can exchange favors with them.”

“That’s awesome,” Sveta said.

“I’ll call mine, first?” Kenzie asked.

The others agreed. Chris was still in the corner with his phone and comic, and Tristan walked over to grab him, wheeling him to the center of the room so he’d participate. Chris did crack a smile at that.

“Still feeling that hit of joy from the other day?” Rain asked.

“Indulgence, not joy. I’m indulging myself or other people if I smile.”

“Shhhh!” Kenzie shushed people. “I’m on the phone.”

There was a pause.

“Hi, Houndstooth,” she said.

Pause.

“I found it online.”

Pause. Sveta used the break in Kenzie speaking to shoot me a worried look.

“It’s technically online. It didn’t take much to figure it out.”

Pause.

“No, I don’t want to bother you. I’m part of a different team now and we’re doing our thing. Yeah. We’re calling people we know and trust and exchanging favors for favors, and I thought I’d ask you, since you seemed like you might be interested based on how the last conversation went.”

Pause.

“I thought it went okay,” Kenzie said, smiling and rolling her eyes.

Pause.

“It’s fine. Really. I’m not-”

Pause.

“Okay,” she said. She pulled the phone away from her ear. “Houndstooth wants to talk to the person in charge of the group.”

I saw Ashley and Tristan exchange looks.

“I hate phones,” Ashley said.

Tristan reached for the phone.

“Houndstooth. I’m Capricorn. Yeah. Team Reach. Group of six with a coach that’s a partial member, kind of.”

He glanced at me as he said it, and I shrugged.

“Everyone’s here. We’ve got a thing going on, we were thinking of cooperating with other groups. Can I put you on speaker?”

There was a pause.

Kenzie turned around, and hit a key on her keyboard.

An image appeared in the center of our group, and most of us backed away.

A still image of a person. He had a sleek, Anubis-like helmet or mask that encapsulated his head. His actual outfit was sleek as well, but Western. Nothing of an actual houndstooth pattern, ironically.

“You’re on speaker, I think,” Tristan said.

“Hi guys,” Houndstooth said. He sounded more adult than ‘kid’. “I’ve got to admit, I’m wary.”

“Understandable. I get that this comes out of nowhere,” Tristan said. “Listen, this is a take-it-or-leave-it thing, we’re fine if you decide it’s too much of a question mark and pass. Offer is a favor for a favor. There’s an area we’re interested in, and we’re hoping to get some other people showing up there, patrols. Maximizing pressure and seeing what we can shake up.”

“What area?”

“Can’t say until you agree, but it’s not too dangerous.”

“I can think of a few places it could be, especially if you’re a new team operating in open jurisdictions. New Brockton, or one of the Fallen camps, big or small.”

Kenzie wrote something down. She held up the paper.

he’s smart

“Less dangerous than that, even,” Tristan said.

“We show up, we… patrol, make our presences known. What’s the fallout?”

“Twenty percent chance they pick a fight?” Tristan asked. He looked around at the group.

“Ten at most, and only if you stick around. I visited and they took half an hour before showing their faces,” Ashley said. “They won’t go for the jugular, either. Worst case is they bruise your pride.”

“I’m feeling more like this is one of those places the B-listers are moving to, now.”

“No comment,” Tristan said.

“Yeah,” Houndstooth said. “And we can call in a favor in exchange? What sort? You patrol somewhere or help us pull off a complicated arrest?”

Kenzie pointed to herself.

“We’ve got Optics, who’s not calling herself Optics anymore, for one thing,” Sveta spoke up.

“You’re lucky,” Houndstooth said. Kenzie sat up straighter.

“…but I’m thinking in other directions.” Houndstooth finished. Kenzie slouched in her seat.

“What kind of directions?” Tristan asked.

“I’m thinking. Capricorn, can I hold onto this favor without naming it?”

Tristan looked around. There were a few nods. Tristan said, “Sure. That was my original take on how this would go. The others seem cool with that. I’ll give you my phone number.”

Tristan gave his number. There was a break while Houndstooth took it down.

“If you’re game, I think we can let you know where we’re thinking of,” I said. The others nodded, so I added, “Cedar Point. Hollow Point in villain vernacular.”

“You know,” Houndstooth said. “It bothered me that it wasn’t being looked after.”

“That was my feeling too,” I said.

“Who’s speaking, can I ask?”

“Victoria Dallon. I used to be Glory Girl, and I’m the coach, so to speak.”

“I know the name. Hi. You’re wanting to rattle these guys?”

“That’s the basic idea,” I said.

“Basic idea? Even before you said that, I had the impression there was a less basic part to the idea. Am I right about there being more to this?”

“Some. Nothing that impacts you negatively,” I said.

Tristan spoke up, “We’re hoping to tap some others, maintain pressure, and hold off on getting personally involved until we know how much reach these guys really have.”

“They’re bit players. This thing happens now and again. It tends to self-combust.”

Tristan looked at me.

Passing the ball to me? I said, “We know how much reach they probably have, and there’s some.”

“Interesting.”

I went on, “Personally speaking, I don’t want this to combust. Some skirmishes are probably inevitable, but these guys aren’t, as was said earlier, going to go for the jugular. I want to keep it limited to that.”

“I don’t want to see any places combusting either. If you think it’s safe and if you want to help save Cedar Point, I think I can sell my team on a patrol or two.”

“That’d be great,” Tristan said.

“If something happens and we get in over our heads, you back us up or call the bigger names?”

“Of course,” Tristan said. “Probably the latter. We’ve got kids and stuff, and we’ve been urged on multiple fronts to keep on the down-low.”

Ashley looked annoyed at that.

“Alright,” Houndstooth said. “Hm. I know another team that might be okay doing something similar, if you’re wanting to get others on board. I can put you in touch with them, but I’d want a minor favor. One I already have in mind.”

“If they’re trustworthy and won’t spill our role in things or why people are showing interest in Cedar Point. What’s the favor?”

“They are trustworthy. Before I commit my team, I want to meet you guys face to face. Grab a coffee or something. Glory Girl and Capricorn and whoever else is in a leadership position.”

Kenzie sunk further in her seat, so low her head couldn’t roll backward off the back of the chair. Instead, she slid to one side, her head closer to the armrest. She indicated herself, pointing, eyes rolling back so the whites showed.

“I think that should be fine,” Tristan said. He looked at Kenzie, and she nodded, exaggerated. “Yeah. That’s good.”

“Great. The team I’m thinking of is Auzure. Corporate.”

“I know them,” I said. “I’m not sure they’re my top choice.”

“I don’t recommend them lightly,” Houndstooth said. “They’re by-the-book, serious, they’re strong for a small team, they stick to their word, and they’re looking for opportunities to get out there.”

“That last bit is what concerns me,” I said. “They’re looking for exposure and this team wants more subtlety. We want the villains in Cedar Point wondering why heroes are there and tapping their resources.”

“And you get to see what resources they have.”

“Basically,” I said.

“You keep using that word and I keep realizing you’ve really got a plan. Okay. I think I like this. Auzure is out, then? That’s your gut feeling?”

“Can I put you on mute while I confer?” I asked. “I’m just the coach, I don’t want to make decisions.”

“Yep.”

Kenzie sat up and hit a key on her keyboard. A red ‘x’ appeared over the mouth and ears of the hologram image of Houndstooth.

Really weird that she had that, I noted.

“What’s up?” Tristan asked.

“I interviewed for Auzure. They were just a bit sleazy. Greedy. Their reason for interviewing me was to get at my family, just as one example of a red flag that came up. My feeling is if you guys bring them in, they’ll try to do something flashy or get more involved than you want them.”

“If that’s the case, I’d rather avoid them,” Sveta said.

“They sound like the bad kind of corporate team,” Tristan said. “But I might be biased. Okay. Any thoughts? Objections?”

“We could use them in a limited capacity,” I said. “Have them make a phone call, instead of actually showing up.”

“Phone call?” Rain asked.

“Yeah. Can I just see what Houndstooth says to this?”

“Sure,” Tristan said. “Unmute.”

“Houndstooth,” I said.

“I’m here.”

“In the interest of keeping Auzure involved in only a limited capacity, what if we had them call someone and ask about renting space? No commitment, just see if the person reports it to the villains in town. The villains would probably stress over the notion.”

“Stress you want. Yeah. Could work.”

“Ideally, we’d ask Auzure to call when Auzure is busy.”

“You don’t want them in your jurisdiction?”

“…Yeah.” I said. I almost said ‘basically’.

“I hear you. Yeah. I think they’ve got something going on right now. Rumors of war on the horizon. Earth C. If you used them in the next week, I don’t think they’d pick up on hints.”

“We’d need to figure out who we want Auzure to call, so that the person called might tip off the villains. It might be tight to get that information in a week, but yeah.”

“You’ve got Kenzie. I think you’ll do just fine on that front.”

I looked at Kenzie, expecting her to perk up. She smiled, but she didn’t really show much more enthusiasm at the praise.

“We’ll have that face to face meeting,” Tristan said. “We can hammer out particulars then.”

“Yes. I’ll call you after I’ve raised the idea with my team, and we’ll figure out a time to meet. I’ll keep quiet on it being Cedar Point until they’re on board.”

“Great,” Tristan said. “I’ll let you go now.”

“Alright. Another day, Capricorn.”

The phone call ended.

“I like him,” I said. I looked at Kenzie. “Good recommendation.”

“Yup,” she said. “He’s going to want to dish out all the super embarrassing dirt on me from two years ago. Uggh.”

“We know the dirt,” Rain said. “Most of us.”

“Uugh,” Kenzie groaned. “It’s like having friends over and your parents bringing out the photo album. Except way, way worse, because I wasn’t a baby when I messed up with Houndstooth around, and it’s so much worse than being in the tub or having food on my face.”

“We know your history, we know you’ve made great strides,” Sveta said. “I can’t speak for the others, but to me, you’re about those strides and those successes. You’re not defined by your worst days.”

“Uuuuuuggh,” Kenzie said.

“Right?” Sveta pressed.

“Yeah,” Kenzie said.

“It didn’t sound like that call was easy to make. If Houndstooth is on the up-and-up, then it was a really, really good recommendation,” I said.

“He is. He’s one of the best true-blue heroes I know,” Kenzie said, smiling a little.

“Two teams we can use to apply some pressure and get Cedar Point to reach out to Tattletale,” Tristan said.

“Even if they catch on, they’ll be left wondering. Heroes on your turf aren’t something you can ignore. Ignoring that makes you look weak,” Ashley said.

I nodded.

And one way or another, we would strain the relationship with this group and Tattletale, and make them less likely or able to call on her when we made our play.

This worked.

Kenzie stood from her seat, walking over to her board. She began copying down a redacted version of the scribbled-down tinker notes from before.

She was bothered, that much was clear. Now she was stepping away to dwell on the tinker stuff. That didn’t seem like the worst thing in the world.

On one wall, the one operating camera drone was showing a view of Cedar Point. Sunny, largely abandoned, and a little rough around the edges, covered in graffiti with broken things here and there from a riot or protest that hadn’t been cleaned up after.

The group was talking amongst themselves, about what needed to be done and arranged.

“Rain’s thing needs some attention,” Tristan said.

“We can talk some about that tonight, and talk more tomorrow. Offer for an escort stands, Rain.”

“Nah,” he said. “I don’t want to play that card yet.”

“Kenzie said she could do some of the surveillance from home, but we’ll probably want to meet here if we meet,” Tristan said. “Kenzie will be a regular. I can come once in a blue moon.”

“I’ll be here when I’m not there,” Ashley said. “If I’m holding off, then I’ll be here for the next bit.”

“Cool,” Kenzie said, turning. She’d added something to the board. ‘Name? Look-see / Looksee’.’

“I’ll be here too,” Chris said. He’d stood from his chair and was walking around Kenzie’s desk, peering at the tinker stuff. “Or around here. Sometimes I just sit around outside or find a place to read comics or watch stuff on my phone.”

I saw Kenzie nod to herself, glancing back over one shoulder at Chris.

‘Cool’, she’d said. I wasn’t sure it was. I hadn’t quite anticipated this, but with people being where they were, with the older members helping Rain, Ashley being available for surveillance, it meant Kenzie and Chris and Ashley would be spending more extended periods of time together.

Or, put another way, the ex-Slaughterhouse Nine member and the two ‘kids’ of the team.

“I’ll stop in regularly,” I said. “Keep an eye on things.”

“Yep,” Sveta said. “Rotate or something? With overlap, because you and I need to hang out.”

“Naturally,” I said, smiling. She’d picked up on the same concerns I had.

“A few of us here at any given time,” Tristan said.

There was a bit more conversation, hashing out particulars of schedule, as well as who was available on what days.

“I could stop in at Cedar Point. They know I was poking my head in before, but there’s no reason to let them think I’m gone and dealt with,” I said.

“You’ve got the hero itch,” Sveta said.

“It’s not the hero itch,” I said. “It’s that Tattletale told me to go away and it means something if I don’t.”

“It’s the-”

“Chris!” Kenzie raised her voice.

Chris froze. He was leaning close to her projector box. Stuff was piled on top.

“Do not touch my bag!” she said, way louder and more intense than was necessary.

“Not touching a thing,” he said. “Relax.”

“I’m not going to relax! Back off!”

“What, is it going to blow up or something?” he asked, with a chuckle.

Kenzie strode forward, through the group, “Step back and leave my stuff alone!”

“I didn’t touch anything. Really.”

“Kenzie,” Sveta said. “He didn’t touch anything.”

“And stop saying my stuff is going to blow up!” Kenzie said, volume still raised. She shot Chris a look and smiled. “Pretty please? It’s really not funny.”

“That was my fault,” I said. “I brought it up first. I’ve dealt with tinkers and hyperdimensional tech makes me nervous.”

“You’re fine,” Kenzie said. “You’ve been cool. I like you. I have more mixed feelings about Chris. And I have very strong feelings about things like my bag being messed with.”

Chris threw his hands up, retreated to the chair that Tristan had initially brought to the edge of where everyone was standing, and kicked at the ground, wheeling himself back to his corner.

I met Sveta’s eyes. We communicated more or less telepathically: more supervision would be needed.

Kenzie was now rummaging, gathering her stuff and getting it organized. She had what looked like a gym bag, white with pink piping as trim, and big plastic zipper tabs. She put stuff in it and then picked it up.

“Want to have a chat, Kenz?” I asked.

She drew in a deep breath and sighed heavily, bag held close. “Fine.”

“It’s not obligatory,” I said.

“It’s fine. Yes. Chat. You’re cool. Some people aren’t.”

“Referring to yourself?” Chris asked.

“Not helping, Chris,” Tristan called out.

I led Kenzie out the side door, to the fire escape that was the access to the mostly unfurnished apartment. The air outside was far warmer than the air inside. It was late in the afternoon.

“Sorry,” Kenzie said. She put her bag down on one corner of the fire escape, then leaned against the railing, looking down as she wound her foot around the strap.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“I’m really glad you’re here,” she said. “And I kind of like that you don’t know all the bad stuff.”

“You’re worried about what Houndstooth is going to say?”

“I don’t like being embarrassed,” she said. “And it’s really, really embarrassing.”

I didn’t like standing over her, so I walked over to where the stairs met the little platform of rusty slats and sat down sideways with my back to the exterior wall of the building. Not facing her directly, but I could comfortably look her way.

“I hear you,” I said. “I said it before, but I’m grateful you were willing to get closer to that territory to help everyone out. I have things I don’t like thinking about or getting into and I know what it takes to go there.”

“I didn’t even really think about it so it’s not all that,” Kenzie said.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Talking is good,” Kenzie said, eyes on where the strap was wound around her ankle and foot. “You ever- have you ever been so humiliated that you wished the earth would open up and swallow you up?”

“I think everyone has. It’s part of being young, that you fumble your way through things.”

“Urgh,” she said. “I… I once embarrassed myself really, really badly.”

“Yeah.”

“And it wasn’t just one earth that split open but a multiverse of them. I was so humiliated an alien actually noticed and reached between those earths and into my head. And now I- everything’s messy and hard.”

“Sveta and the others seem to think you’re doing better.”

“I am. I’m mostly good. I backslide now and again, but I get a handle on things and I have people who help when I do.”

“That’s good,” I said. “That’s an achievement, especially when you’ve got an alien tied to you. You’re swimming with an anchor around your waist, and you’ve reached the shallow water. That’s incredible.”

Kenzie nodded. She didn’t smile.

“He saw me not long after everything went wrong. And then he saw me a while later when I joined his team and I wasn’t exactly great then either. Even if he saw me at my best now I don’t know if he’d be able to look past all the bad he’s seen before.”

“You might not be giving him enough credit,” I said.

“Maybe,” Kenzie said. “But I might be giving him just enough credit, and I might be really worried that this cool heroine who’s helping us out might see or hear about the bad and then she not be able to see past it, either.”

“The others have heard some of it, haven’t they?”

“From my mouth. That’s different.”

“They’ve heard it and they want you on their team. They respect you. Whatever happens, I don’t think Houndstooth can say anything that’s going to have more weight than what Sveta says, because Sveta’s awesome and I respect her a ton.”

“She’s great,” Kenzie said, staring down at her feet. “She’s the best.”

“And,” I said, pausing. “Whatever he says, I don’t think it should have more weight than what you say, either. Not when people like Sveta trust and respect you and I trust and respect her. Okay?”

Kenzie sniffed. A slightly runny nose, now. She wasn’t crying that I could see, but she might’ve been close.

“Can I give you a hug?” I asked.

“No,” She said. She stooped down and picked up her bag. She craned her head around, and looked through the window.

The window was opaque, the surface blurred. Kenzie’s tech, I realized.

“Come,” Kenzie said. Bag in her arms, she hauled the door open, and held it for me as I followed.

The others were watching. Sveta was on her way to the door, no doubt to let us know what was going on.

Two people were in the center of the camera’s focus, walking down the streets of Cedar Point.

I recognized one as Snag, and I could guess the other was the woman of Rain’s cluster.

Rain turned his head, looking at me.

I had an idea of what he was going to ask. He couldn’t leave this opportunity to get information alone. He couldn’t afford to.

Shade – 4.3

It was Sveta who said it, not Rain. “If they go inside, we’re going to lose track of what they’re saying.”

“Have they said anything yet?” I asked.

“No,” Rain said. “The woman doesn’t talk so it would be a one-sided conversation. If they’re here, they’re here for something. I want to know what.”

“Anything you guys do risks blowing your surveillance,” I said. “You might gain more information if you leave it alone. Just saying.”

“I might miss something vital,” Rain said.

“You might,” I said. “It’s really up to you guys. If you need help, I’ll back you up.”

Tristan walked forward, and half-sat on the desk, head turned so he could keep one eye on the image. “Hypothetically, if we did act on this, what would we be doing? Picking a fight?”

“We could,” Ashley said. “Rain said they were injured and needed maintenance. It would be timely, it would keep them injured and out of the picture.”

“On their turf?” Tristan asked. “With who knows how many villains in the immediate area?”

“And it would blow our surveillance, like Victoria said,” Sveta said.

“You’ve been quiet on why they’re after you, Rain,” Chris said. “You never talked about your trigger event.”

“As a rule, it’s not good to ask people about their trigger events,” Sveta said.

“As a rule,” Chris said, “It’s vital information about who we’re fighting and why they’re doing what they’re doing.”

“Chris,” Sveta said.

“Sveta,” Chris said. “Detach from your emotions, focus more on their emotions. Are they passionate? Driven? Is it personal? If any or all of the above are true, it changes the rules of how they act. They might act even if they are injured or needing to do some maintenance.”

“People don’t act by rules,” Tristan said.

“Some people do,” Chris said. “Byron does, or did, based on what you said. They might. But we need more of what Rain knows about who and what they are and where they come from to know that.”

Kenzie turned around in her seat. “I was just telling Victoria I didn’t like the idea of her prying into my past or where I come from. It would feel pretty gross and unfair if we pushed Rain to do it now, when he obviously doesn’t want to.”

“Hypocritical might be the word you’re looking for,” I said.

“I’m learning so many words today,” Kenzie said.

“Putting all that aside, is there any way to listen in, if they went inside?” Rain asked. “They’re a block away from where Prancer went before. If they go there, what can we do?”

“I could rig something,” Kenzie said. “But it would be fragile and iffy.”

“I can’t help but notice we’re changing the subject,” Chris said.

“Look. Just- I need this,” Rain said. “I’ve told Tristan everything and I’ve told Sveta some of it. If Tristan thinks it needs to be said, he can say it. He’s more objective. But I really want to know what they might say, I want to start making preparations now.”

“I’ve been keeping my mouth shut,” Tristan said. “I’m in a weird place, knowing what I do, not wanting to betray a friend. I feel like if I said anything at all, even if the reasons were good, it would still be betraying Rain.”

“I can take apart things,” Kenzie said. “Kludge it together for an emergency thing. It won’t take long but we’d need Sveta to hurry over there to plant it and that’ll take a few minutes. If that’s what we’re doing. I don’t want to break my things down if we’re not doing this, though. ”

“I’m probably going to regret saying this, but I’ll stand up for Kenzie,” Chris said. “It’s going to be shitty if she starts taking apart good work so she can get it done in time, and then Rain doesn’t hold up his end any. That’s not fair and it’s going to lead to resentment.”

“I don’t care about fair,” Kenzie said. “But thank you, Chris.”

“Don’t thank me.”

“I’m going to anyway. It means a lot.”

“No it doesn’t. I just don’t want the headaches,” Chris said. “And Rain is being the biggest headache on the team. Maybe except for me, but I don’t have anyone trying to kill me and I’m not really asking for anything, so I think I can get away with it.”

Rain ran his fingers through his hair, turned and took a step to one side, like he was going to walk away or pace, and then stopped, because he couldn’t take his attention off the screen.

Tristan was in a hard place, knowing what he did but having a friendship on the line, Sveta maybe wasn’t as much of a friend to Rain but she was also more sensitive and kind, and she didn’t know as much. Rain didn’t really have other allies in the group he could turn to. Certainly not Ashley. Not Chris. Kenzie just wanted to know if she should get started building her thing.

Somehow, he ended up looking at me. He looked spooked.

“If Kenzie builds the thing, I can fly over and plant it,” I said. “I don’t mind showing my face there, it fits with the plan, there’s a lower risk of the surveillance operation getting discovered, it works.”

Rain nodded, tense.

“But I do think Chris may be right. If the group is extending a hand to you and you’re not extending trust back, that may not be fair. You should share something.”

“Okay,” Rain said.

Kenzie spun around. She grabbed one of her flying eyes and pried open the side, pulling out a black rectangle. She swapped it with a spare.

“It’s personal,” Rain said. “It’s emotional. Not helped by the dreams, by the possible personality bleed across the cluster. Some things I’ve caught lately made me think there might be some.”

I listened, my expression still, arms folded, mostly watching what Kenzie did while Rain talked. I was going to have to deploy this thing.

Kenzie popped open the jewelry case with the camera she’d put in Ashley’s eye, then tore off the section under the lens. She flicked at parts with her fingers to get them spinning and then held onto others, unscrewing them in the process.

“They blame me, for the events around the trigger. I’ve told Sveta all of this. The dreams are biased, selective, cherry picking from my perceptions. They make me out to be more of a bad guy than I am.”

“I don’t think you’re a bad guy at all,” Tristan said.

“I’m not a good guy either. And maybe that’s because of the bleed coming the other way. I feel like a completely different person than I was then. And I know – I think Snag is too. I’ve seen his perspective and his dreams, and he’s willing to murder now? Maybe the agent took half of my anger from back then and divided it among them, aiming it back at me.”

“What happened?” Ashley asked.

“I fucked up. I had a chance to save them and I didn’t,” Rain said.

I looked away from where Kenzie was spinning things to screw in the eye-camera beneath the major lens of the flying eye, looked at Rain, and saw how miserable he was.

“How does Erin fit in?” Sveta asked.

“She doesn’t. She knows the story but she hasn’t seen the dreams. I think if she saw the dreams like the three members of the cluster did, she’d hate me too. But she doesn’t.”

“And ‘of 5?'” Chris asked.

I turned my head.

“My username, online,” Rain explained. “I don’t know what happened to the fifth. It’s complicated. I can think of a few people it might be. People that didn’t make it.”

Kenzie turned around. The camera looked worse for wear. I realized it was the nice one, with the adaptive camouflage or whatever it was. Panels were missing and wires exposed. She beckoned me to approach. I did.

“Put the lens side against the wall or the roof. There’s a plunger on the side here, you see?”

In a groove along the side, normally meant to aid in aerodynamics or something, the metal rod ran flush with the body.

“I see,” I said. I looked at the screen. They’d walked past the place where Prancer had gone inside.

“Put it up against the surface, then slowly, super slowly push that in. There’s no resistance built in, so you could push it in in half a second if you weren’t careful.”

“What would happen?”

“We’d lose it. That’s four days worth of work and the eye camera is six days worth of work, and some of those parts were hard to get. Please don’t push it in fast.”

“How slow do I depress it?”

“Um. Take, like, a minute, to get it from here to here, if you can. Be ready to stop if I tell you to.”

“How are we communicating?”

“Phone?” Kenzie asked.

“Phone,” I said. “Got it.”

I checked I had my phone with me, that it had battery, and then got my earbuds, plugging them into the phone and then putting one into my ear. I collected the football-sized camera.

“Give me something to eat?” I asked. “Granola bar or something?”

Chris walked over to his bag, fished for something, and then tossed me a bag of chips. I caught it, then caught the paper-wrapped meal he threw my way. I put everything into a bag. My mask, computer and notebook were in the bag already, which was good.

“It’s not kiss-kill,” Rain said. “Or, like Victoria said a few days ago, it’s kiss-kill with good cover. I’m weaker than them, and the dreams give them a reason to hate me.”

“I’m good to go?” I asked.

“I think so. Thanks for doing this,” Sveta said.

I gave her a pat on the shoulder as I passed.

“Thank you,” Rain said, with sincerity.

I was at the door when Tristan said, “Might not need the camera after all.”

I looked back.

They hadn’t gone indoors. They were in a parking lot. A group of people was standing around a van. They had masks on.

“I’m still going to go,” I said. “We don’t know where they’ll go or what they’ll do. Patch me in somehow?”

“I’ll video call you,” Kenzie said. “We’ll talk to you and you can look at your phone to see what’s happening.”

“Okay,” I said. “That works. That’s going to do a number on my monthly limit. I might have to get an unlimited plan.”

“They don’t have any of those anymore, not after the end of the world,” Kenzie said. “I checked. And they get peeved at me when I borrow anything, so I have to be really careful with my cameras and junk.”

I could have responded, but I didn’t want to get stuck in a conversation. I let myself outside, then flew from the top of the fire escape.

Might have to have a conversation with the big hero teams to see if they have any options, I thought. It would be nice to have the fancy earbuds that the Wards used to have, or just a special phone plan that let us handle higher-bandwidth operations.

My phone rang in my ear, startling me even though I’d expected it. I thumbed at my phone to answer it. Rather than any of the others, it was the audio from Kenzie’s camera, observing the interaction between Snag and the group in the parking lot.

“…Snag. This is Love Lost,” Snag said. Recognizable enough. His voice was a deep growl. That was his ordinary voice, it seemed.

“Love Lost? Shouldn’t it be No Love Lost?”

There was a brief pause.

“She doesn’t talk,” Snag said.

“That might make negotiations hard.”

“We’ll be fine,” Snag said. “I’ll cover things.”

“Your friend isn’t coming? Cradle?”

Cradle was the potential third, then.

“He isn’t. Just me, just her.”

“I’m Secondhand, this is Last Minute, Final Hour, and End of Days.”

Still flying, I pulled my phone from my pocket, being careful not to drop it. I hated using my phone while airborne. It was so easy to let my guard down.

“Your name doesn’t match,” Snag said.

“I don’t mind,” Secondhand said.

I could see the image on my phone. I made the reel gesture to zoom in on the one I wasn’t familiar with. Tall, with an elongated face and head, bald, with an elaborate waxed mustache, and round sunglasses. He wore suspenders over a shirt that was rolled up to the elbows. The arms crossed over his chest were muscled. A bit of a steampunk vibe, even though his clothes weren’t that old fashioned.

The time manipulators had another teammate, then.

“You wanted to meet. Here we are,” Secondhand said.

“We’re similar in how we approach things,” Snag said. “Maybe we can trade, teach each other something.”

“Maybe,” Secondhand said. “Sounds good.”

“Maybe the deal’s lopsided in your favor, but you give us a hand when we need it.”

“Ah, I thought that was coming. We heard you were recruiting.”

“Mm hmm,” Snag made the sound, and it came off more like growl than agreement.

“The more the merrier?” another member of the Speedrunner’s group asked. It might have been End of Days.

“The more the merrier,” Snag repeated, sounding the furthest thing from merry.

“Why don’t you take a look and tell us what this means to you?” Secondhand asked.

There was a pause. I looked at my phone. The back door of the van opened. Snag approached, with the woman -Love Lost?- hanging a bit back. She had curved claws at her fingertips and thumb, with a thin framework of rods and bands at the back of her hands to keep those claws in place. She had more glittering around her feet and ankle. A mask covered her lower face.

“Victoria?” Sveta asked, through the phone.

“What’s up?” I asked, holding the phone to my ear, so I could use the mouthpiece there.

“Kenzie’s handling the camera and things. I’m hanging back, Tristan’s close. We’ll be your people, mostly. Can you tell us anything about the Speedrunners?”

I was glad I’d checked my books and notes.

“Seattle. B-list villains, but that’s partially because Seattle was setting a really high bar around the time they were active,” I said. “Partially. They’re time manipulators, but complicated by the fact that they have at least one tinker in the group. It could be that they’re all tinkers. A family thing like how forcefields run in my family.”

“They don’t look like family,” I heard a voice. It might have been Chris, or Rain speaking with a funny tone. Probably Chris.

“That’s what they’re talking about sharing, then,” I heard Tristan. “Tinker know-how.”

“Probably. Um. Each of them has a power, but they augment that by having tinker stuff they wear. Secondhand can cover a lot of ground really fast, but can’t affect anyone or do much while he’s doing it. Can’t hurt you, can’t move stuff, can’t set traps. But we already talked briefly about him earlier. He’s the one doing regular sweeps of the area, looking for trouble. The tinker stuff he wears reduces the strain on his body and lets him operate like that for longer. And it means that when he pops out of that mode, he does it with a boom. It gives him some offensive ability.”

“That doesn’t feel B-list,” Tristan said.

“I’ll get to that momentarily. I’m doing these guys out of order. Final Hour, he has a targeted slow. One target at a time, if he’s aware of them, he can slow them, as an ongoing thing. He can swap it with a moment’s notice. Tinker gear applies other effects to slowed targets. Makes it so being slow also crushes you and makes it hard to breathe, or chills you. Makes it so he can target a friend and make it so they fall slow, and reduce the impact of their landings. He had a thing which screwed with-”

“This works,” Snag’s growl interrupted me. “I could do something with this, if I had time to study it. I could use the engines you’ve got here to make emotion effects I channel through my tech last longer, or prolong battery life.”

“Good,” Secondhand said.

A pause. A metal on metal sound.

“What’s she saying?” Secondhand asked.

“Love Lost likes that. She thinks she could do something with it. Right? Yeah.”

“Alright. Doesn’t tell me much,” Secondhand said. “How about you show us something?”

“It’s damaged, but you should get the picture,” Snag said.

I checked the phone. He was using one of his overlong, mechanical arms to pull off his other arm, holding it out by gripping it at the midpoint, the shoulder near End of Days and the hand near Secondhand.

It was my first clean look at the whole group of Speedrunners, as Kenzie zoomed in the camera.

Secondhand was fairly normal in build, with goggles and a flat-top cap. He managed to not look old-fashioned.

Last Minute was shorter, stout, with a lot of muscle and fat both. His gadgets hung from a high-tech belt.

Final Hour was more muscular, with tech wrapped around one of his arms, ending in a blunt design that resembled a brass hairdryer, with red smoke pouring from the fans and vents along its length. Aside from the brass helmet he wore, which covered his entire head the armor covered only half of his body.

End of Days, well, I’d already gotten a look at him. He wore a mask that wrapped around his head in a broad band, from eyebrow to cheekbone, with the black sunglasses on top of that, but it was hard to imagine how he’d be less recognizable when his facial shape, lack of hair, and mustache were all so apparent.

“Keep going,” Tristan said.

Where had I been? Final Hour, right. “He could attach an EMP thing to his slow that slightly hampered powers, made machinery grind to a halt. All through this oversized thing he wore that covered his arm and hand.”

“He’s wearing it now,” Sveta said.

“Okay, right, can’t see while I’ve got the phone to my ear. Foresight said they were using Final Hour to mask their business dealings. He was their heavy hitter and he might still be. I was thinking he might be using the EMP thing or something like it to keep people from looking in.”

“I hope they don’t use it,” Kenzie said.

“Probably wouldn’t work outdoors,” I said. “Last Minute moves things backward in time. Emphasis on things. Not people. Carries an assortment of tinker boomerangs, bombs, weapons. If Secondhand didn’t have the tinker-ish name, and if there wasn’t a chance they were all lesser tinkers, I’d say Last Minute was a contender for the team’s tinker, with his arsenal.”

“What’s the catch, or what’s the tinker component?” Tristan asked.

“From what little I remember, his gadgets don’t act the same when moving in reverse, or it has added functionality while being reversed.”

“Fuck me,” someone said. I thought I heard someone else groan, too.

“Yeah. Boomerangs fly a different path, or split apart so one version carries forward and one retraces its path,” I said. “That sort of thing.”

I’d slowed while flying, and now I stopped. I didn’t want to enter the territory and draw attention when it wasn’t quite time. I had a sense of what Birdbrain and Braindead did, and there was a risk Secondhand would do a patrol when the meeting concluded, to see what their potential business partners were doing.

I settled on a roof, walking as I landed, then stopping to stand on the corner of the roof. Cedar Point was on the other side of the water, on a peninsula across from me.

“End of Days?” Tristan asked.

“I don’t have a clue,” I said. “Nothing about name or appearance stands out to me.”

“Fuck,” I heard a voice. Rain, I was guessing.

“Why are they B-list?” Tristan asked. Not the first time he’d touched on that.

“Because the tinker stuff is limited. The batteries take time to charge,” I said. “When they were active in Seattle, they had something like twenty days between the jobs they pulled, and they had weaknesses. The batteries ran out if engagements were prolonged and once that happens they lose a lot of their muscle.”

“They might have recruited End of Days to cover that weakness,” Tristan said.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not out of the question.”

The Speedrunners took longer to examine Snag’s arm than Snag had taken to examine whatever they’d shown him. I watched through my phone, grieved a bit for my monthly limits, and waited.

On the screen, Love Lost stepped away from the meeting, walking down the length of the parking lot. She stood with her back to the group, hands at her sides, fingers and claws spread.

“I like her,” Ashley said. “Good style. It’s going to be a shame to smash her face in.”

“If we engage her,” Sveta said. “If we even go that far.”

“Of course,” Ashley said.

“What’s she doing?” I asked, more to myself than to the group.

It took a few more seconds, but someone walked down the street. A woman with a purple hood and antlers.

Prancer’s partner.

“Love Lost saw her coming,” Tristan said.

“Sensed,” I corrected.

“The woman- Love Lost, she has the emotion aspect of the power,” Rain said. “Maybe it includes some emotion sense. Detecting people.”

“If so, I’m glad I didn’t just drop in nearby,” I said.

Velvet said something. The camera didn’t catch it.

“Sorry!” Kenzie said. “Sorry! I didn’t have the sound camera turned that way. It’s finnicky.”

“Don’t turn it toward those two, stay focused on Snag’s group,” Tristan said. “Velvet’s already walking away.”

“It was brief,” Rain said. “I think she’s just checking on things, making sure it’s all peaceful.”

Love Lost rejoined the group.

“What did the queen of Hollow Point want?” Secondhand asked.

Love Lost was silent.

“Right.”

“Are you done with my arm?” Snag asked.

“Oh, yes. Go ahead.”

“Mm.”

“I have a question, and it’s one I’d regret not asking,” Secondhand said. “Who are you with?”

“With?” Snag asked. “Ourselves.”

“I’ll elaborate. We’ve got a few cliques forming already. Bitter Pill in charge of the brains, watching, listening, planning the longer-term plays. Not necessarily here, mind you. Could be jobs elsewhere.”

“Mm hmm.”

“Beast of Burden in charge of the hostiles, the ex-cons, ex-birdcage, ex-covert military, ex-cage fighters. The ones who are good or even eager when it comes to hurting people.”

Snag commented, “We’ve had conversations with a few of them already. Beast of Burden included. We’re looking for people who are good or even eager to deliver the hurt.”

“Great. We’ll keep that in mind. Final clique worth talking about, you’ve got Prancer in charge of the organization side of things. The diplomacy, recruitment, and a lot of the lower-key, ongoing business.”

“And?”

“And I don’t think we’re going to divide up into factions and end up fighting each other. I say clique because like attracts like and sooner or later, you’ll get pulled into one of the major groups. Each serving a role.”

“We’re our own group,” Snag said. “We don’t care what clique you belong to. You want access to our stuff to study and see what you can learn?”

“We’d have to talk about it among ourselves, but I think we’re leaning that way.”

I looked at the phone, as the Speedrunners exchanged looks.

“Yeah,” Secondhand said, after assessing the others. “Let’s assume we’re good to go forward with this, but we won’t set anything in stone until my friends and I have had a conversation.

“Preliminary offer: we pay you fifteen thousand dollars, and we give you access to our tech for study,” Snag said. “You give us access to your tech, and you lend us a hand when the time comes.”

“For this job you’re planning?”

“If you want to discuss it, I can invite others who’ve pledged to help. We’ll discuss in one of Prancer’s venues.”

“Maybe. We’d have to talk it over. What timeline?”

“Soon,” Snag said. “Anything more should wait for the discussion.”

“How difficult?”

“Hard to say. I don’t want to tell you something and have it reach the wrong ears, and there are a lot of wrong ears.”

“Give us some idea.”

“Eight or nine young people with powers, is our best guess. Mostly teenagers. We don’t know who else, or what the exact number of adult capes, allies, or other resources they might have. Teenagers are easiest to track, because they move more.”

Someone spoke, and I had to view my phone to check who it was. Last Minute. “Hard to say? That sounds easy to say. A minimum of eight or nine people with powers is difficult.”

“With the recruitment we’re planning, we’ll outnumber them three to one,” Snag said, in his characteristic growl.

“You’re talking people with powers? Not mooks, not henchmen?”

“People with powers. All going well, we’ll have them outnumbered three to one even if they call in help.”

“Pulled from Cedar Point?”

“Pulled from many places. We have a thinker contact and that contact is calling in friends. This contact and their friends are capes with names you’ve heard of, that everyone has heard of. We have Lord of Loss committed to the job. We have one or two others of similar caliber who may or may not participate, but who will contribute meaningful resources if they don’t show up personally.”

“You don’t do things by half measures,” Secondhand said.

“We don’t believe in half measures,” Snag said. “In the bigger job, or in our deal with you. Tech for tech, fifteen thousand for the job, but I’d like the two things bundled together. We establish a working relationship and even a mutual dependency before the job starts.”

“Mutual dependency?”

“A reason for people to second guess themselves before wondering if they can drop away at the last minute and they won’t be missed because the crowd is big enough. It was known to happen at events like Endbringer fights, before Gold Morning.”

“Speaking for myself, not having consulted the group…”

“Of course.”

“I don’t mind that approach. We’d have to discuss the money. Spread across a four person team, it doesn’t amount to that much.”

“When I did the community center job…” Snag started. He paused, letting the statement hang.

“You did it with stipulations and expectations. Stipulations handled, expectations met,” Secondhand said. “We’re aware.”

“That counts for something,” Last Minute said. “It needed doing, and it was done well.”

“Trust that we intend to do this well,” Snag said. “The three of us have spent a year steadily working toward this. If you want more money, we could discuss it. We’d want references to justify it, a guarantee you’ll earn your keep.”

“I think we could manage that. Instead of money, though…”

“Hmm?”

“Cradle. He’s your best tinker?”

“He can be.”

“Maybe you sweeten the pot. Include his work.”

“That can be arranged. You give us your references and recommendations in exchange.”

“Alright. I like the sound of that. We’ll talk.”

“Good,” Snag said.

Secondhand put out a hand. Snag reached out with his giant mechanical hand, enclosing it around Secondhand’s hand and forearm.

They all shook hands. Snag’s giant mechanical hand made for a peculiar image as it met Final Hour’s hair-dryer stub of a limb and the two shook.

When steampunk-ish End of Days gingerly took Love Lost’s clawed hand in his bare hand, he bent down, kissing the back of it. With her back to the camera, it was impossible to see her reaction.

The Speedrunners split up into two groups, two getting into an older car, and two getting into the van with the tech in the back.

Snag and Love Lost walked back the way they came. Love Lost turned her head to watch as the cars pulled out of the parking lot and then drove past the pair of them. The camera that was perched on the edge of the building slowly turned to follow the pair.

As the camera zoomed in, the sound clarifying, the metal noises of Snag’s hands periodically touching the road and Love Lost’s claws clicking were very audible.

Kenzie must have changed something, because the sound faded into the background.

“Good?” Snag asked.

Love Lost gave him a singular nod.

“They’re good to have. Versatile, and it’s good to have that tech. I can think of ten things I could do with that.”

Another nod.

“You’re good for the meeting at the pub?”

A final nod.

“Pub,” I heard Tristan say. “Kenzie? Do we deploy Victoria?”

“I have an address. Only pub in Cedar Point, I think. Across the street from where Prancer went inside.”

I brought the phone up to my face. “Love Lost might be able to sense people, and there’s Birdbrain and Braindead to account for.”

“It’s up to you, Victoria,” Tristan said. “But it would really, really help if we could get more of this kind of exchange.”

I stepped off the roof, realized that someone was standing on the sidewalk on the far side of the street, staring at me, and saw the alarm on their faces. I gave them my best heroic salute as I started flying instead of falling from the roof of the two-story building.

“Ashley and Rain are kind of quiet,” I said, to the phone.

“I don’t like phones, where I can’t see faces or reactions,” Ashley said. “I’m fine. This is good.”

“I’m not so fine,” Rain said.

Understandable.

Right. I’d maybe talk to him after, or encourage him to reach out to Yamada. Even better, he could get around to making that call to the hero teams.

But for now, going into enemy territory, I needed to look after myself and the mission. I now needed to make prompt decisions for things that I’d hoped I’d have a few days or weeks to think about.

“Radio silence unless it’s an emergency, or you need to tell me to stop deploying the camera, Kenzie,” I said.

I heard a faint ‘boop’.

No assistance, now. Just me and my intel. I put the white mask on.

Primary concerns: Braindead and Birdbrain. Clairvoyants both.

Braindead was a tactical thinker, who could designate a set area in three dimensions, setting out a rectangular prism where he sensed everything in the area. He could cover a small town with his power and have a general awareness of everything that happened in that town, but if he designated a smaller area, he got more clarity, more attention of simultaneous things at once, and he was aware of stats. Non-numerical values for abstract things like physical wellness, martial combat capacity, and run speed, for everyone in the area. Smaller area, more and more accurate stats.

The drawback was that he was a twenty-something guy that spent an awful lot of time sitting in a chair with a diaper on, drooling, mumbling, and feeling acutely uncomfortable. When his power was active, and for a time after, he was unable to act on his knowledge himself, or even to effectively defend himself. He had been on the side of the good guys, once, which was why his power information was such common knowledge. Something had changed or snapped.

I flew just over the rooftops. It wasn’t me flying at a height where I could pull my phone out, because there was a very real chance I could fly into something like a power line or chimney.

Braindead’s power operated in three dimensions. X, Y, Z. A set area of north, south, east, west, up, and down. If he wanted all of the stats and information, and if he wanted to minimize the other drawbacks of his power, like the recovery time, up and down were often the variable he could sacrifice. He could cover an area three city blocks wide along the west-east axis and three city blocks long along the north-south axis, while only covering six to ten feet of up and down.

Against Braindead alone, flying high and sticking to rooftops was a really safe bet, to stay out of his realm of awareness.

Against Birdbrain, that was a weakness. Birdbrain was a tactical clairvoyant of a complementary stripe to Braindead. Top-down clairvoyant awareness, much like if Kenzie operated solely through tinker eyes-in-the-sky pointed straight down. She also had thinker powers of another sort, worked into the main clairvoyant power, but she wasn’t an ex-hero, and the information wasn’t in files.

She was really good with a gun, highly mobile, and thus she was very good at defending Braindead while he was incapacitated.

If I stuck to rooftops, Birdbrain would detect me quickly. If I went to the ground, I’d be in Braindead’s realm.

I flew under things when I could, just to try to throw Birdbrain for a loop. It took me a second to orient myself and find the buildings I was looking for, even when I knew they were part of the downtown strip.

No sign of Snag or Love Lost. They were already inside, I hoped. With luck, I would be able to get the camera online shortly.

I set down on the roof, my forcefield down, and put my bag down in the corner of the roof, against the raised lip.

Fully aware that it was very likely that an eye in the sky was watching my every move, I used my body to block the view of the bag’s contents, and pulled the camera out, placing it against the corner, where the bag would shield it. I got my notebook out, opened it to an empty page, and put it across the corner of the roof, before pulling out the chips and what turned out to be curry in a pita wrap.

Curry in a pita was not a mix I’d run into before, but I wasn’t going to complain. I put the wrap on my notebook, weighing it down, and the chips by my bag, against the ledge of the roof.

My backpack shielded most of the camera from view, the notebook’s placement shielded any view of it from above.

I had to take it slow. I sat on the roof, leaning against the ledge, opened the bag, and adjusted the plunger. I reached into the bag, and discovered they weren’t chips, but a salted pork rind thing.

Urg.

I ate a few, penned down some general observations of the neighborhood, and then adjusted the plunger slightly downward, as part of the process of reaching down to fish for another mouthful of overly-salted pork things.

It took maybe a minute and a half to two minutes, because of the regular pauses here and there. I heard the ‘boop’ through my phone, took that as my signal, and pulled my phone out to cancel the call, being sure to keep it at an angle where someone watching from above me couldn’t see the phone’s face or display.

I was nervous, remaining where I was. Every moment I was here, I was guarding the camera, the camera was presumably filming, and we were getting information.

Every moment I was here, I was being watched. My forcefield was down, because having it up risked it damaging the roof, building, or the camera. The locals were getting time to figure out what to do with me.

We wanted to stir the hornet’s nest, to keep it stirred to exhaust resources and keep them from being particularly effective villains. Those same hornets could sting.

I ate some of Chris’ curry in a pita, just to look like I was on a typical stakeout or patrol, and I wished I’d brought a drink. I took notes, with an eye to graffiti and symbols, to names and sayings. Things I could look up later, to see if I could divine any other names or personalities that had settled in Cedar Point.

It was maybe five minutes in total before they decided they were uncomfortable with me being where I was. Across the street, a big guy in costume emerged. Blond haired, a metal mask with fur on it, and a combination of metal and what looked like horn or natural armor plates on a brown costume. His gauntlets looked menacing, with fur, metal, and studs.

He looked pretty B-list, all in all.

He beckoned for me to come. I wondered if I should gather my bag.

I decided to take a risk, leaving it where it was. I flew down to the street below.

“I’m Moose,” he said. “You’re unwelcome.”

“The last time I came, you guys called Tattletale. She told me to get lost.”

“Yup,” Moose said.

“To me, hearing that, I’m inclined to think I should show up more,” I said.

“Ahh, nope,” he said. “No, I think you’ve got the wrong inclination there, Glory Girl.”

I shrugged. “What can you do, Moose?”

“What I’m going to do, Glory Girl, is I’m going to tell you how this is going to go down.”

“Do tell,” I said.

“Two brutes, like you and me, heavy hitters, we’re liable to have a brawl. I’ll avoid breaking anything breakable because I have an investment in Hollow Point here. You’ll avoid breaking stuff because you’re one of the good guys. You don’t want that bad PR.”

“Makes sense,” I said.

“We’ll have a really polite knock-down brawl, as such things go, and you’ll trounce me.”

“I’ll trounce you?”

“I said I’d tell you how this was going to go, and I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s going to go.”

“Thinker power?” I asked.

“Only thinker power I got is decently good common sense,” Moose said.

I nodded.

“So you’ll trounce me. Thoroughly. You’ll embarrass me, even. Not because you’re a girl and I’m a guy, but because you’re strong and you have more experience, and because fighting someone who flies is a massive bother.”

“You could surrender.”

“Can’t. Invested in this place. But there’s more to it, Glory Girl.”

“Not my name anymore, by the way.”

“Oh, really? Sorry about that.”

“I don’t have another to give you, not yet, but I thought I’d let you know.”

“If you’re going to stay, I gotta fight you and I gotta get trounced.”

“That’s a shame,” I said.

“But there’s more to it. I’m pulling from that common sense, now. You’ll trounce me, I’ll be embarrassed, and in the time it takes for that to happen, others are going to show up. They won’t interfere, but they’ll stand around and they’ll be ready to fight you if you’re insistent on staying. You’ll be outnumbered and they won’t be inclined to play fair, except that they’ll let you leave if you’re willing to leave.”

“Which I will.”

“Good to hear. Except… can we just skip straight to the part where you leave? I don’t want to be embarrassed and you don’t want to run scared from a group of menacing looking capes.”

“I’m supposed to run scared from you instead, Moose?”

“You can knock me around as you make your exit, if you’d like.”

“Really?” I asked, a little incredulous.

He shrugged.

“This isn’t a trap?”

“Nope.”

I used my flight, and rose up off the ground. He didn’t react.

I flew at him, forcefield up, fist out.

He met my fist with his, moving faster than I’d expected. The shockwave from the impact knocked me back and up into the air. I righted myself and hovered on the spot, ten or so feet off the ground.

The shockwave was weird. Intense, and focused. There was more to that Brute power.

“I can’t embarrass myself too badly,” he said. “There’s an audience.”

I looked.

In the window of the pub, Snag had risen to his feet. Love Lost was sitting, still, watching through the window. There were a handful of others.

I met Snag’s eyes momentarily, and tried to look a little surprised.

Then I flew at Moose again. I pushed out with my aura.

His reaction to the fear and awe was to strike out, a solid punch, not a reckless one like most would throw reactively. I didn’t follow the awe with an attack, and I was glad I hadn’t, because the chances were good that I would’ve been hit.

Instead, I used his momentary bewilderment to fly over his head, because it was easy to do, it required him to turn around. Better yet, it involved a lot of readjustment of footing and balance, at the same time he was recovering from the emotional hit.

Watching, waiting, feeling more like the warrior monk as I used this approach, I tried to identify the time his footing was still off, his awareness of me imperfect, and I dove, striking him with one foot in the collarbone.

In the process, the wretch decided to strike out too. It hit him across the face, knocking the mask off. I saw blood, and the tracks of fingernails.

He fell, and he sat there, his head turned away from me, one gauntlet-covered hand moving to his face.

“You okay?” I asked, flying up and looking away. I didn’t want to be accused of peering beneath the mask.

“I’ll mend,” he said.

I didn’t wait, and I didn’t look back. Back to my notebook, to my bag and book and Chris’ meal. I packed it up, collecting the camera.

When I’d crossed the water and reached the edge of the neighborhood where the hideout was, I called the others.

“Thanks for that, Victoria,” Sveta said.

“How’d we do?”

“We didn’t get the very start and we didn’t get what would’ve been the end, but we got some, and I think everyone’s happy with that,” she said. “You okay?”

“I’m alright.”

“Come back. We’ll talk, and you can see what we got.”

I flew back. I didn’t fly in a straight line, being mindful of any possible pursuers, and I flew lower to the ground as I drew closer to the building where the place we were renting was. I landed at the edge of the lot and walked to the fire escape.

Ashley, Sveta, Kenzie and Chris were all present. They were watching a distorted and monochrome image of the inside of the pub, projected on the wall.

I noted the absence of Tristan and Rain.

“He ran,” Ashley said, her voice low.

“Rain?”

“He got spooked,” she said. “Tristan went after him.”

“To reassure,” Sveta said.

Chris reached past Kenzie to hit keys on the keyboard. The image on the projector screen changed.

“You suck at that,” Kenzie said, elbowing him. “Here.”

The image was distorted, as if viewing something underwater, with a film of grime on the lens. The sound, however, was only slightly muted.

“You really want this kid to suffer.”

“We want him to face a fate worse than death,” Snag said. “But we can’t have that and have him dead at the same time, and we need him dead. If he suffers as much as possible along the way to that conclusion, we’ll be satisfied.”

“If you’re paying, we can satisf-”

The message cut off as Kenzie hit a key. She looked back at me, shooting me what might’ve been an attempt at a reassuring smile. Not so reassuring.

“We’ll figure something out,” I said, to myself as much as them.

Shade – Interlude 4a

It’s his turn tonight.

They ran, they pushed forward. A crush of people.

Smoke billowed, and it smelled like burning rubber. For all the chaos, the noises seemed muted, dulled in how the individual elements mixed, the bodies absorbing the sound. Shouts here and there cut through the cries, the noise of people, the sound of something falling down, but people further ahead in the crowd were actively grabbing others and shoving them to the side, dragging them out of the way.

Even with the high ceiling, the haze of smoke made the exit sign above the door hard to see. The point of view blurred, blacked out for an instant as the person blinked.

“Lancaster fire-” the point of view said, more to himself. His voice soon rose to a bellow. “Don’t- don’t stampede! Don’t shove! We’ll get crammed at the exit!”

The smoke got to him, and he coughed, hard.

He tried to slow, as if he could influence the crowd. The force of people behind him pushed him forward, as heavy as he was. He was a big guy. Big around the middle, more. Only a bit taller than average. It was enough that he could almost see over the heads of the crowd.

He saw a young girl fall, and very nearly tripped over her. To do so might have killed them both. He fell to his knees beside her, grabbing at the edge of a sign on the wall to brace himself, one arm around the girl. He became a barrier, battered by those behind him. Feet scraped at his back, trying to climb over him.

He watched as the people pushed further down. He knew what was happening as it happened. That the press of bodies was keeping people from being able to get the door open, that by the time people realized there was no way forward, the people behind them would keep them from retreating. There would only be the inexorable, forward pressure.

Straining, every movement made harder by people leaning against him or pushing past him, nearly being knocked over to crush the girl in front of him on three occasions, he rose to his feet. For what seemed like a minute, it was all he could do to hold his position.

He looked back, and there was only smoke, people pushing toward the exit. He looked toward the exit sign, and there was only the press, people crammed together until they were chest-to-back, shoulder-to-shoulder.

He looked around, at the trash cans, at the signs that were built into the wall, frames sticking an inch or two out, locked plexiglass doors protecting the contents from vandalism. He looked up, and he saw the windows and the glass ceiling above the corridor that led out of the mall. There were high windows that let the light in, and there were latches on those windows.

He reached down, and the young girl shied away.

“Up!” he said. He seized her arm, and as he leaned down, someone bumped into him. He nearly fell on her. Only his grip on the side of one of the sign-frames kept him from falling.

He drove an elbow back, striking at the person who had pushed him. With more energy, desperation, he reached down to seize the girl’s arm, lifted her bodily into the air, and shifted his grip, grabbing her body to lift her.

“Grab on and climb!” he called out. “Get to the window!”

She tried. Sneakers slid against the plexiglass. Fingers gripped the ledge, and even with him boosting her, she couldn’t get up. She wasn’t even looking at what she was doing, as she turned her face down and away from the thicker smoke.

Further down the hallway, a group of people fell like dominoes. For those who wanted to get away, get to the exit, people who couldn’t necessarily see past the smoke or the people immediately in front of them, it was an opening, a way to get forward. The mob moved forward. A woman screamed, a multi-note sound.

Seizing the opportunity, only seeing the gap, people pushed past him, bumped into him. He was holding the girl as he stumbled, and he dropped her. He doubled over, coughing, trying to keep from getting dragged forward. He was a big guy and the movement of the crowd was such that his feet left the ground at points, when people pressed closer.

The girl, too, coughed. She looked at him, wide-eyed, until the smoke forced her to close her eyes, and then she ran for the exit, slipping from his reaching fingers, dodging into a gap of bodies, toward the press, where people were barely able to move. People were panicking in places, voices reaching high pitches.

“No!” he bellowed at the girl. His voice was lost in the chaos.

She nearly fell to the ground amid trampling feet as someone stumbled into her. Then she was gone.

He looked up at the sign, and he reached, digging fingers in where the sign and the wall were. He stepped on someone, tried to climb toward the window, eye on the latch, darting over to look at the smoke behind him, then up to where the smoke was thick near the ceiling. The plexiglass front of the sign was a hinge, so it could be opened, and he dug his finger into that gap for the leverage it could afford.

The climb would have been hard on its own, but he was jostled. His hand slipped, and both his fingernail and the tip of his finger tore off as his hand came away from the hinge. A thin streak of blood was drawn on the plexiglass.

Someone slid between him and the wall, and he was no longer able to hold himself up. He landed on the ground, and people walked over him. His efforts to stand were defeated by the feet trampling him. He couldn’t stop coughing, and his vision distorted from the effort.

Behind them, the fire and smoke were getting worse.

He looked up, vision warped to the point that up and down and left and right were no longer clear, he looked at the walls that stretched skyward, the glass ceiling high above, the bodies pressed around him and over him. The view blurred with the tears in his eyes, growing dark as the people closed in above him.

The image distorted, going black, and he saw stars, flying past him, as if he was being buoyed elsewhere.

⊙

A scene faded, unremembered. Points of light became light. Darkness became shadows in a large, dark room.

There was no skylight, no corridor, no crowd or mall. In the center of the room was a spike of twisted metal and glass topped by what looked like a sundial without a marker. Light shone through the glass as if it was coming through the other side, but no source could be seen. The different tints of the red-blue-purple light divided the room into four sections, with a fifth left dark. Each section was littered with debris of different sorts.

Without even needing to look to check the position, Rain reached down for the chair. Always in the same place, the same position. The floor in his section was dilapidated. Uneven floorboards with spaces between them. There were scattered books, tools that looked like they hadn’t been touched in a while, and some assorted branches and dry pine needles, as if it was a space that had been exposed to the elements. He put the chair down on the ground.

“I don’t suppose you guys are willing to talk?” he asked. Again, he didn’t even need to look or check the position of the others. He knew where they would be.

There was no reply.

The memory had been Snag’s, and Snag was the first to really move. Snag wasn’t as big as he had once been. Still tall, but he had lost a lot of weight. The beard he’d had before was longer now, shaggier. So was his hair. There were streaks of paler hair at the corners of his mouth. The hood of a sweatshirt and the lack of clear lighting masked much of the man’s face, so only the beard was visible. Snag’s area was a store without things. Empty display cabinets, cracked glass, metal shelves, a lacquered floor, and more diffuse light than the other spaces.

Snag reached the table, and slammed one hand down on the surface. He gripped the edges, hunched over.

Someone else spoke, quiet enough he was almost inaudible. It was how he usually talked. “You two should know I’m looking into our situation here. I’ll be experimenting soon, so you should know things might get weird.”

A young man. Nondescript. Boring. Blond hair, average weight, clothes without labels, a bit older than Rain at eighteen or so. The slabs of concrete and tile made his space look like a hall of mirrors after an earthquake, if the glass was opaque concrete instead. Shattered, dark, claustrophobic, devoid of the human touch. The only thing about him that stood out was that his glasses were scratched up, to the point where it wasn’t possible to see his eyes. He held his head at funny angles to see through the less scratched part, chin high, looking down, or head bent, looking up and out.

Rain had taken to thinking of him as the recluse. The guy had talked before about not spending much time around people. He was quiet, weird, and his dreams weirder still.

He hadn’t been including Rain in the ‘you two’.

“What experiment?” Snag asked, his voice hoarse enough to be a growl.

“I’m reaching out to someone. They do interesting things with people and sleep. I have no clue what’s going to happen, but it’s possible I won’t show up, or I’ll have a guest. Tomorrow.”

The woman approached, standing from a sitting position in a squat, small armchair. She stepped over stuffed animals and broken toys.

She was elegant, wearing an ankle-length dress with a slit up one side. Her hair was styled into waves and curls. She wore earrings and a necklace, heels, and her nails were painted. None of her tinker gear was present.

Her lower face was covered in the mask that could have been described as a muzzle, it clung so tightly to her face, covering nose and mouth. It was black leather, and it had real teeth set into it. Fangs.

Her eyes were more vicious than the snarling maw. She stared Rain down until she’d reached the plate of crystal at the center of the room, and turned around to sit with her back to the thing. To Rain. Her head turned toward the recluse, and she tapped one long fingernail to one of the teeth of her mask, her muzzle, before pointing it down, knuckle resting against the mask.

“Yeah, actually,” the recluse said. “You know ‘em?”

The woman offered one, singular nod.

“Any advice?”

“Why ask? She doesn’t talk,” Rain said.

The recluse ignored him.

The woman turned, reaching down to the dias. Rain drew closer to watch as she picked her way through the assorted debris on the table. The wood was burned and as delicate as charcoal, breaking apart at a touch, crumbling into dust as it fell to the five-sided plate. Almost everything on the table was similarly fragile. The glass, the rusty scraps of metal.

She picked out three human teeth, and slid two of them in the recluse’s direction.

“She’s dangerous?” The recluse asked.

Another nod from the muzzled woman. She tapped a finger on the one remaining tooth on her part of the table.

“I really appreciate that,” the recluse said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I have a suggestion,” Snag said. Growled. He was pacing a little, hand brushing against his edge of the plate as he walked beside it. One of his fingers was still damaged from the event a year ago.

“Sure.”

“Don’t do it tomorrow night,” Snag said, stopping.

“Why not?”

Snag turned his head, staring at the darkness that separated his section from Rain’s. He was almost but not quite looking at Rain, shadows heavy around his eyes as he glared. “Tomorrow is your night. The night after is hers.”

The recluse turned to look at the muzzled woman.

Snag said, “Let’s do it the night after hers. In case something goes wrong.”

“Makes sense,” the recluse said.

On my night, Rain thought.

Rain approached the table. He kept a wary eye on the others as he picked up the debris, destroying it in his hands. Almost everything was so old, burned, water damaged or rusty that it disintegrated with firm contact. He cast it aside, letting it litter the floor. The items scraped and cut his hands on contact, but he didn’t mind.

There were only three items he couldn’t destroy. Scraps of metal, too dull and thick to be knives, too flat and featureless to be of any particular use. Like rectangular pieces of a broken glass, but not glass.

The others were sorting themselves out. Five shards of glass for Snag, three coins for the recluse. The muzzled woman stared him down. She’d already handed out two of the teeth that served as her token, keeping one for herself.

Even the others, when they glanced at him, radiated hostility.

“I need to update up one of my arms,” Snag said, his voice low. He glanced at Rain and turned his back, leaning against the table as he leaned closer to the recluse, lowering his voice further. “I made a replacement, I want to make the other match it.”

“Today?” the recluse asked, picking up one of the tarnished coins.

“Hmm. I’m not sure I’ll have time.”

“It’s fine either way, for me. You?” The recluse turned toward the muzzled woman for that last bit.

The muzzled woman nodded.

Snag slid a piece of glass across the table, to the recluse’s side. His fingertips stopped at the boundary, and the recluse reached over to slide the glass the rest of the way.

“I guess I get to be pretty strong today,” the recluse said.

“You won’t need your workshop,” Snag said. “And we could use a better sense of tech, for reasons we discussed on the phone. Give me your share tomorrow, too, and I won’t need it for a while.”

“I don’t mind,” the recluse said. He passed the coins over to the others. Two for Snag. One for the muzzled woman.

Rain looked down at his rectangles of metal. They hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t offered. He had, once, trying to curry favor. He’d given them his tokens and he’d never received a thing in return.

He kept the three rectangles of metal in his section of the table.

Rain took a seat in the creaky wooden chair and he waited for dawn, listening and hearing nothing of consequence while the three people talked, or, well, two of them talked and the muzzled woman listened.

He’d tried to reason. He’d tried to talk. He’d tried being angry. There was no use. The only option left was to wait until dawn, and try to listen, to act dumb, and drop comments here and there that could mislead.

He looked over to his left at the dark fifth of the room. No details, no debris, no light. No tokens on the table.

He gripped the three pieces of metal in his hands until the edges cut into his fingers and blood oozed out between them.

⊙

“Rain. Wake up.”

Rain’s eyes opened. No dreams, not really. Only someone else’s recollections and then the room. He felt more tired than he had when his head had hit the pillow. He had a headache and every part of him felt heavy.

“School,” his aunt said, from the bedroom door, her face peering through the crack.

He sat up.

“Go downstairs to eat before you shower, if you’re going to shower. The girls are making breakfast.”

“I will,” he said, before adding an automatic, “thank you auntie.”

She left the door open as she left. Rain was annoyed, but held his tongue.

Swinging his feet over to the side of the bed, he looked at his hands, turning them over. There was no sign of the dirt, grit. No damage from moving the objects on the five sided table, no cuts on his fingers or blood on the back of his hand.

As he often did, he reached out for his individual powers. His own power was at its ordinary strength. The scythes of shimmering, flickering light appeared in each of his hands. It felt right.

The emotion power- he reached for it and cast it out over the empty space in the middle of his room. He was aware of it like he’d be aware of a patch of shade. The effectiveness wasn’t much sharper than creating the shade would be.

When he reached for the tinker power, the ideas that came to mind were paltry, barely much better than how he might manage setting up a snare or the steps for forging a knife. He wasn’t even especially good at those things.

That left the mover power. He used it to get to his feet, pushing himself out of bed and using the power rather than his balance to steady himself.

He’d slept in a t-shirt and boxers, and felt exposed as he canceled out the arrested movement of the mover power, stepped over to the door and shut it. He pulled on a dirty pair of jeans and ran his fingers through his shoulder-length hair until it was reasonable.

His family tended to subscribe to the notion that the kitchen was the center of the home. The buildings that had been erected for the settlement were set up in a way that made for large kitchens. Wood was burning at a massive brick stove with room for six frying pans on it, and there were two girls Rain’s age handling food there. He couldn’t quite remember their names. Heather and Lauren, maybe. Or was one of them Jean? He’d seen them around, but they didn’t go to the school and they’d never talked to him.

Rain’s auntie was at the counter, grating potatoes. Her daughter, Rain’s cousin Allie, stood talking to one of the men that was sitting at the table, while she took her time drying a dish.

Rain knew only one of the men at the table- an uncle, who had said ten words at most in all the time Rain knew him. There was no introduction made for the other two men who sat there.

As good as the food was, as much as the stove was warm and the family close and busy, it wasn’t warm in atmosphere. There was no small talk. There were some glances from Allie, who was washing and drying, and from the girls at the stove. The glances were reserved for when they thought he wasn’t looking.

They weren’t kind looks.

Hash browns, ‘made properly’, his Aunt would say, and french toast cut in thick slices from homemade bread. The bread that wasn’t being used to make french toast was sitting in a basket on the table, with jam and butter sitting nearby. With the production that went into cooking, there was a lot of pressure to eat, to get full. For most, it was necessary, with long days of hard work on the farms.

Not that Rain worked on the farms much.

“Thank you for breakfast,” he said.

The girls didn’t respond.

“You gonna have a shower?” his aunt asked.

“A quick one,” he said.

“Stomp when you’re done,” she said, turning the knob at the base of the sink’s faucet, cutting off the water. The plumbing in the house wasn’t great, and the cold water being turned on meant the shower water would scald.

He gathered his dishes.

“You can leave that for the girls.”

“I already got it,” he said.

He collected a few more things, aware of the looks from the men sitting around the table, and took them to the side of the sink where the dirty pans and dishes were waiting to be washed.

Allie, standing next to him, pulled a knife out of the drying rack. The metal made a sound as it ran against the side of the rack, singing slightly in the wake of it. Between that, the weapon, the hostility he felt from the two girls at the stove, he shivered slightly. He looked out the window.

Those people I saw in my dream want me dead.

He’d paused too long, lost in thought, being as tired as he was. He was very aware of the stares, of the long looks from the men at the table, his uncle excepted. The girls had paused in their work.

“What?” his aunt asked, her voice sharp. She glanced at the girls. Her voice was sharper as she asked, “What, do you need someone to come up and wash you?”

“Gross,” one of the girls at the stove said.

“Hey!” one of the men barked the word. The girl jumped. A rebuke without any elaboration.

“No, auntie, I was just thinking,” Rain said, feeling his face get hot.

“Then save the thinking for school and get going. We need the sink free to finish the dishes.”

He got going.

The shower was hot, even with the cold water cranked all the way around, and he rushed through the process of getting clean. The soap, spooned out of a jar with a wooden spatula to his hands, then applied to the critical areas, was a gooey mess derived from animal fat and ash. He had no idea what the shampoo was, but it was harsh enough to make his scalp hurt, so he only used it every two or three days.

He had scratches and bruises, only some of them from his time with Victoria and the team. He was ginger with them all, checked for the redness of infection, and dabbed them dry instead of toweling more roughly as he finished showering and started getting dry. He stomped hard on the floor, three times, as he stepped out of the shower. The pipes knocked as the water downstairs was turned on again.

The recluse was planning something for three nights from now. He needed to plan, conserve strength. It was possible he would be incapacitated, if the others found a way to hijack the rotation or interfere with his days.

His thoughts were occupied with the logistics and conversations he’d need to have as he wrapped a towel around his waist, checked for chin scruff, and then crossed the hall to enter his room. Clean clothes, bag, shoes.

He did his best to stay out of sight of the kitchen as he headed downstairs, ducking into the front hall and out the door.

The dirt road cut a zig-zagging line between homes and fields. Things had been situated in a way that had been convenient at the time, but the layout didn’t make for good town planning otherwise. Other students were walking to school, older siblings watching the younger ones, friends meeting to talk. Some parents walked with their children to supervise. Other adults were around to supervise. The notorious and inevitable Mrs. Sims was bitching at a group of the fifth graders, splitting up groups of friends to make the boys and girls walk on different sides of the road.

A truck came down the road, and the students moved to the muddy sides where the ground was far softer. It was Jay, stopping periodically to let friends hop into the back.

A short distance behind Rain, Jay stopped in plain view of Mrs. Sims to ask Brianna and Kaylyn Barr if they wanted to ride in the truck, which was already mostly packed with senior boys.

The sisters climbed into the back of the pickup truck. Mrs. Sims scowled, but she kept her mouth shut.

The truck moved a little bit further down the road and stopped beside Rain. Jay leaned past his girlfriend. He had thin facial hair, a baseball cap, and a sweatshirt with a logo on it. The sweatshirt and cap looked brand new, and they also looked like they were from Bet, with the quality and logos. Expensive.

“You want a ride, rain man?” Jay asked.

“No thanks. Walking with a friend.”

“I know who you’re talking about. You know you don’t have the slightest chance with her, right?”

“Of being her friend?”

“Yeah, right,” Jay said. He rolled his eyes. “Enjoy that walk.”

The wheels spun against the dirt road before finding traction. The pickup truck bucked a little with the uneven transition, nearly tossing Kaylyn Barr out the back as the back end came up. Only a quick grab by one of the older boys saved her from a tumble.

A cloud of dust followed behind it. If it was meant to annoy Rain, it didn’t. He turned his back to the worst of the cloud, looking out at the farmland.

“Rain!” Mrs. Sims called out. Some of the smaller students on the road flinched.

Rain looked more her way.

“Get yourself straight to school. Don’t dawdle,” she said.

He could have said something about that. Jay might have. If he hadn’t had the experiences he had, he might even have called her an evil person, said she deserved it. She was an artifact of a prior era, the kind of person who had lived in every small town and rural community he’d known; she was someone who used morality as a stick to beat others with. He could have asked what she was implying, or challenged her.

He didn’t.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Just waiting for the dust to settle so I’m not walking face-first into it.”

Someone else might have made a comment, empathized. Mrs. Sims only said, “Go to school. Be a better example for the little ones.”

He walked.

The people like Mrs. Sims and his aunt were easier to deal with than many of the alternatives. He could understand the people who’d reacted to hurt and loss by becoming harder. He wished he’d been able to do the same, a lot of the time.

Erin emerged from her house as he reached the mailbox staked out in front. He waited while she made her way down, her little brother following.

It was hard not to have his eyes linger on her. She wore a plum colored muscle tank with a cross in black on the front, a black choker with a steel buckle, and black jeans. The jewelry in her ears matched the buckle of the choker, a series of rings in her left ear and a single piece of jewelry in the right, glittering in the sun as she steered her brother along the path.

He’d come to dislike the muscle tops with those oversized armholes on principle, after seeing so many girls he couldn’t stand wearing them as a trashy sort of look. Seeing Erin wear it and look so stunning, he found himself doing a one-eighty on the position on the spot.

“Hey, Erin, hey bruiser,” he said. He stuck out his hand, like he might for a handshake, and Bryce slapped it in a high-five. He and Rain reversed the directions their hands were moving to lightly slap the backs of their hands together, and Bryce moved forward to mock-punch Rain in the hip, then thigh. The third punch missed Rain’s groin only because of a timely twist to one side.

“Careful with Rain, Bry. He looks a little battered, he doesn’t need you giving him more bruises,” Erin said, putting one hand on Bryce’s forehead, pulling him back while Bryce continued punching at the air.

“He’s coming to school with us?” Rain asked. “I didn’t think he went to school.”

“Next year,” Bryce said.

“I’ve got to drop him off at church. He’s being punished, and somehow my parents think a sermon is going to give him direction.”

“What did you do, Bry?”

“I said mean things about Elijah,” Bryce said. “Mr. Jean heard and tattled.”

“You need to be careful who you talk about and how,” Erin said. “You don’t want to upset anyone. What if Elijah heard?”

“Yeah, I know,” Bryce said.

Erin gave Rain a look, from an angle Bryce wasn’t meant to see. Worried, unsure. “You don’t have to come.”

“It’s not a problem,” Rain said.

“Thank you,” Erin said.

Bryce spotted his friends walking down the road with their older siblings, and started to walk that way. Erin bent down, putting her hands on Bryce’s shoulders to catch him. “Nuh uh, Bry. You’re supposed to be in trouble. You walk with us.”

She steered Bryce in the other direction, toward school and church, and as she turned, bent over, Rain saw through the oversized armhole of her top. Stomach, ribs, lacy black bra strap, bra, and a bit of what the bra was meant to support. The look had been automatic, and the moment he realized what he was looking at, he looked away.

He had very complicated feelings on those tops, now, as he found himself simultaneously trying to memorize every detail of what he’d seen and prepared himself so he wouldn’t be an asshole and look again at what she didn’t necessarily intend to show him. He was well aware of how the two things conflicted.

“Are you doing okay?” she asked him. “You’re a little scraped up.”

“I’m always a little scraped up. I’m used to it.”

They walked, Bryce between the two of them.

“I’ve officially watched the last of the videos from the library. Even the bad ones, like E.T.3,” Erin said. “I’m stuck reading and rewatching stuff until they get more.”

“Reading isn’t so bad,” Rain said. “There were five years where my family didn’t even have power at the place we were staying.”

“Every time you talk about your past my heart hurts a little. No TV? No music?”

“Reading by candlelight. Hobbies. You figure out how to entertain yourself. There was a summer some other kids and I dug a hole and covered it with slats of wood, and we called it our hideout.”

Erin pressed the heel of her hand to her heart.

“It was a good hideout. Really.”

“You were so deprived you couldn’t even build a treehouse.”

“We could’ve. We wanted to dig a hole. We covered it with dirt and sticks so people wouldn’t know it was even there, if they didn’t see the hole.”

“How old were you?”

“Ten? Eleven? About Kenzie’s age, I think.”

“When I was eleven? I think we went to Disneyworld at the start of summer. And I had six weeks of camp with the most irresponsible camp counselors. Tons of food we shouldn’t have been allowed to have, swimming, mud Olympics. One of the boys fell on the mud slide and broke two of his fingers.”

“It’s hard to imagine you being eleven.”

“I was the most awesome eleven year old. Man, I really wanted to go back there the next year, but I think our parents all shared notes and realized how dangerous it was.”

“When I was twelve, I think I spent the summer hunting with my dad’s best friend.”

“That sounds neat.”

“It- no. No, it really wasn’t.”

“Aw,” Erin said.

“Dull, wet, buggy. I got to shoot the gun once in three months. I missed.”

“Aww.”

“I was so excited to get back home and see my friends, get back to my routine. Then… no home to go back to. The trip with my dad’s friend was just to buy time for my parents to get everything sorted out for me to go live with my aunt.”

Rain was caught between a yawn and something that might have actually reflected his feelings, and decided to yawn.

“I’m sorry,” Erin said.

Rain shrugged.

“How’d you manage last night?”

She was asking about the dream, as much as she could with Bryce listening in.

“It wasn’t too bad. Pretty usual. I’m tired.”

“Yeah. You gonna grab a nap later?”

“I might. Have to get through school first, and I’m already feeling like I’ll doze because I have a full belly. I woke up to three girls around my age cooking breakfast.”

“Barefoot in the kitchen? Not going to school?”

“Pretty much,” Rain said.

“Spending time with you, seeing how you stack up?”

“I’m the one that’s supposed to be studying or showing interest in them,” he said.

“Creepy as-” Erin paused to put her hands over Bryce’s ears, “-shit.”

Bryce pushed her hands away, nearly hitting her with the stick he held. He was drawing a line in the dirt road as he walked, with an apparent system in mind about how he did it.

“Creepier when one of them’s my cousin. I’m pretty sure she’s my actual cousin, too. It’s hard to keep track.”

“Allie?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s not so bad. She played the guitar at one of the campfires a bit ago, she was good, and she’s nice, she was nice to Bryce when she was helping out the teachers during a nature hike, even though she hates me.”

“She’s my cousin, Erin.”

“I’m just saying, if you’re going to have cross-eyed underbite babies, you could do worse.”

“Ugh.”

“It’s better to stick to the ones you aren’t related to,” Erin said.

“I don’t want to stick to anyone,” Rain said. “I’m not interested.”

“They can apply a lot of pressure. You might end up having to choose one of them.”

“I don’t even know the names of the other two girls.”

“Sounds like another point in Allie’s favor, then.”

“Stop. Please. Have mercy.”

Erin stretched, fingers knit together, hands turned outward and up over her head. The black band of her bra jumped into Rain’s attention and shook him the same way a wildcat leaping in his direction might. What kept his attention was her profile: the way the sun outlined her face, throat, chest. He looked away, his heart now thudding.

She was so beautiful he couldn’t believe they were talking together. Her and him? What the hell had he been saying before about spending a summer sitting in a hole? What was wrong with him?

She sighed heavily as she stopped stretching.

“My family’s been making those noises,” she said.

Rain glanced at her. For someone who had been joking a moment ago, Erin looked so sad.

“How bad?” he asked. He swallowed hard.

“These days? Bad. It’s all they think about. Every conversation, if it runs for more than a minute or two, turns to how pretty I am, and if I have any suitors.”

“You’re talking about the marriage thing?” Bryce asked.

“Yeah,” Rain said.

“Our parents talk about it a lot,” Bryce said. “With Erin, I mean. I’m too young to get married.”

“So are Rain and I,” Erin said.

“Rain?”

“Rain’s getting bugged too,” Erin said.

“I’m getting hints. Girls showing up with chaperones, when they really don’t want to be there, but it’s subtle. Nobody really talks about it,” Rain said.

“Lucky you,” Erin said.

“Are you managing okay?”

“I’ve been going over to the junkyard to shoot at bottles. That helps,” Erin said. She had a serious look on her face. “Might be good to have the practice if you ever need help.”

“I don’t want to get you involved.”

“Getting caught up in your thing would be a relief,” she said.

“I’m not so sure it would,” he said. He glanced at Bryce, to see if the boy was listening.

Nope, drawing wiggly lines in the dirt with his stick.

They were close to the church. There was no parking lot, so the cars and trucks were parked haphazardly. Some were moving at a crawl as they tried to navigate the parked vehicles and the people who were gathering.

Rain glanced at Jay’s truck as they found a path between cars to reach the church. Jay was here, then. Rain was left to wonder whether the Barr sisters had hopped out and headed on their way to school, or if they were attending the morning service, now.

Erin drew looks. She stood out, and not just because she wasn’t a usual for the morning service. It was in moments like this that Rain knew he wasn’t letting feelings color his views on her. He could see the way people acted around her, the way they looked at her.

He was spooked, seeing it. He knew who these people were, he’d grown up with them, and he knew how they functioned. On a level, he was one of them.

Erin took Bryce to one of the moms of one of Bryce’s friends. They exchanged words, and the mom scooted over, having Bryce sit next to her.

Rain was acutely aware of the looks he got too. The opposite of the ones Erin got, really.

Erin joined Rain at the door. People were still filing in.

At the front of the church, a shirtless man climbed up onto the stage and walked back to the sanctuary, where the altar was. The light shone through the stained glass window behind him. He was skinny, long-haired, and tattooed.

“Yo, faithful,” he said, leaning over the altar.

There was a murmur of responses from the congregation.

“I’ve been watching, and I’ve been thinking. You guys have been asking me when I’d speak again, and I think it’s time I say a few things.”

There was a louder murmur, with a few hoots and whistles from certain locations.

“We’ve had some hard days,” he said. “Less jobs, the strikes, the talk of war, it’s getting colder out, and I think that reminds us all of winter. Last winter sucked.”

There were more murmured responses.

“It was cold, there wasn’t enough shelter, there wasn’t enough food. Not everyone made it. We did better than some, but we lost six. We remember them. Jack, Josh, Georgia, Kiara, Christian and Rhys. We remember them, and we remember the cold, hunger, and sickness that took them from us.”

The responses were more animated.

“May they be with the Lord.”

It demanded a response. More of a response than the last.

“We remember the bad days, we remember the end. While I was doing that watching, listening, and thinking, I could tell. People are scared.”

His tanned face was expressive as he emphasized words like ‘end’ and ‘scared’, lines crinkling in around his eyes, betraying him as thirty-something. He gripped the podium as he talked.

“All through the city, through the many worlds, people are scared shitless. Bad days are coming. Everyone knows it. You know it, am I right?”

There was a more vocal response.

“Yeah, you know it,” he said, his chin rising a bit. “You fucking know it. Sorry parents, you can cover your kids’ ears if you’re shy, but this is how I talk. Honest. I’m gonna be honest with you.”

Rain looked at Bryce and the woman he sat with. She wasn’t covering Bryce’s ears.

He looked at Erin, and saw how tense she was.

The speaker continued, “You’re scared and you’re scared with good reason. It’s going to get messy. People are going to die. People are going to deal with worse than death, because that’s where we’re at. That’s how it is in the worlds we dwell in. It’s inevitable.”

He remained where he was, lean muscular arms bristling with sun-bleached hair as he gripped the altar, letting that hang there.

“We’re gonna be okay,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “I memorized a passage. This king Sihon would not allow Israel to pass through his territory. Sihon gathered all his people together and went out against Israel in the wilderness, and he came to Jahaz and fought against Israel. Then Israel defeated him with the edge of the sword, and took possession of his land.”

He pulled his hand away from the edge of the altar and struck it with his hand.

“You know what that says to me? It says you get in our way, you pick a fight with us? You’d best be prepared for the edge of our fucking swords. You’d best be prepared for us to take possession of your land. Do not get in our way, am I right!?”

There was a vocal response.

He raised his voice to be heard as he preached, “Cover your kids ears if you’re raising pussies, parents, but I’m going to say things that gotta be said, and if your kids haven’t heard this yet, you’re doing something wrong. This is the credo we live by. There are fuckers and there are the fucked, and we are fuckers of the highest order!”

Cheers. Bryce reacted, joining in. Erin started to move, to enter the church, and Rain stopped her. He glanced around to make sure nobody had seen.

“We are right and we are righteous!”

Cheers.

“We saw the end, we preached the end, and we survived the end!”

Some people stood from the pews, which forced others to stand if they wanted to see.

“They can shake and sweat and worry about winter and war, but we’re going to fucking thrive!”

Bryce stood on the pew, his high voice joining the crowd’s. He probably didn’t even understand.

Erin didn’t repeat her initial impulse of trying to go in, pulling her little brother away. Rain let his hand drop.

“We don’t get cold, we set our enemies on fire!”

Erin leaned close to Rain to be heard over the roars. “Can we go?”

He nodded.

“If we get hungry, we raid, we pillage, and we’ll eat them alive!”

Cheers. The sound of the mob made Rain think of the mall, of Snag’s dream.

“None of that pussy skipping of the impolite parts. We go Old Testament on the asses of our enemies! Slaves, war, and disaster! We’ll go full Revelations with a rod of iron, and dash nations to pieces! Anyone who’s read that far knows, the end ain’t gonna be pretty, it ain’t going to be kind!”

Rain turned to go. He was aware that people were casting glances his way, that they were seeing him leave. It would be remarked on.

But he’d heard variations of this ‘sermon’ for all of his life. If pushed, he could probably write one.

For now, his focus was on Erin, as he saw how deeply unhappy she was, leaving her brother behind. He caught up with her, walked at her side.

She saw him looking at her, and said, “His behavior gets worse after they make him go to church.”

“I’m not surprised,” Rain said.

“It doesn’t make sense. It’s idiocy.”

“It’s not about sense. It’s about feeling like they have power.”

“They have it.”

“Some.”

She flinched at that, then looked over her shoulder. She slowed.

“I could go in there, drag him away. But they’d get upset with me, and it’s just…”

“You have to pick your battles,” Rain said.

“I don’t get to pick any,” she said. “When do I get to pick a battle and get one I can win?”

He didn’t have an answer for her. The question echoed something he’d felt for some time.

He clenched his fist, feeling the frustration and anger boil up.

In the distance, in the background, he could hear the preacher raising his voice.

“This is the end and the ending has always belonged to us!” The acoustics of the church magnified the voice.

“Let’s go,” Rain said.

“We are the Fallen!”

The church shook with the furor of the crowd and Rain shook in what felt like equal measure, as he saw the hurt on his friend’s face and clenched his fists with a force that should have seen blood seeping between them, as it had in the room he’d dreamed of.

⊙

“Thirty-five, forty people?”

“As a rough estimate,” Snag said. “But you’re not a soldier or a team player, from what I heard.”

“No.”

“Beast of Burden recommended you as more of an assassin. Thirty five to sixty individuals with powers. Plus armed henchmen, drones, minions. We go to war, we do it with the sanction and assistance of the major names, and we intend to leave no room for any result except the one we need.”

“You want them wiped out?”

“Broken, scattered to the wind, if need be. But this one…”

The distorted image projected on the wall of the headquarters shifted. Snag pushed a piece of paper across the table.

“Seventeen years old, by our best guess. We don’t know his name, but we have an idea about his powers. Breaking things, primarily. Mover ability. Tinker ability. Emotion power. The last three are weak.”

“You’re asking me to kill someone young.”

“That hasn’t been a problem for you before.”

“No.”

“Whatever happens in the chaos, whether they’re scattered, broken, arrested, killed, the result we want you to ensure is that this one doesn’t walk away.”

“Makes sense.”

“We could have reached out to someone else. We reached out to you. You should know why.”

“Because you want this kid to suffer.”

A rustling noise, muted.

It was Love Lost who handed the thin slip of paper over, her claws glinting.

The man at the table investigated the check.

“You really want this kid to suffer.”

“If you’re paying, we can satisfy.”

“The check will clear.”

“Then you’ll get that satisfaction you’re after.”

The conversation paused as something grabbed their attention.

“What in the fuck did you do to them?” Chris asked.

“Shut up, Chris,” Sveta said. She gave Rain a worried look, and Rain flinched away from the compassion.

“Victoria’s in a fight,” Kenzie said. “I hope she’s okay.”

Rain pushed his hands through his hair, backing up.

“I hope we’re okay,” Kenzie said. “This is a bit much to deal with just us.”

It’s not to deal with you, Rain thought.

He could see the way Sveta was looking at him. Putting pieces together.

He couldn’t blame her. He was just now realizing what he was up against. For a year, he’d seen them at night. He’d seen them talk, getting everything in order.

For this. To destroy him.

Even hiding among the Fallen wouldn’t protect him. He’d clung to that reassurance and now it was gone.

He turned to go, grabbed his bag.

“Rain,” Tristan said.

“I gotta go,” Rain said. He collected more things. The key he’d been given. “You look after Victoria. Tell her thanks.”

“Don’t panic,” Tristan said.

How was he not supposed to panic?

“Thanks for everything, Tristan,” Rain said. “I’ll be in touch, but I gotta go. I can’t-”

He couldn’t. He wasn’t sure what to do. There was no answer. He had three people after him and they were stronger, more capable. He couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t breathe.

Choking on the sentence he hadn’t finished, he hauled the door open, stepped out to the fire escape, and made his way down at a run, trusting his power to catch him if needed.

He ran until he couldn’t run anymore. He walked, feeling the full force of dread catch up with him as he slowed down. Then he ran again.

“Rain!”

Rain turned. With the panic firmly set in, his first instinct was fear. Even at a familiar voice.

Tristan. Tristan had run after him, and the guy barely looked winded.

“There you are,” Tristan said. “Oof. I turned down the wrong street back there.”

Rain was silent, except for his hard breaths. He felt like he was going to throw up.

“You can’t run. Don’t panic. Trust me, shitty things happen when you panic.”

“I’m dead,” Rain said. “I’m a dead man walking. Holy shit. They’re going to torture me to death.”

“You’ve got to tell people, Rain. You’ve got to tell Victoria, you’ve got to tell Sveta. Kenzie. Chris. Even Ashley- she won’t blink either way, but you should tell her.”

Rain shook his head.

“I’m surprised you didn’t already say,” Tristan said.

“I can’t. I can barely admit it to myself.”

“What were you going to do if Snag or Love Lost mentioned the Fallen while negotiating?”

“I don’t- wouldn’t it be easier?”

“Easier? Yes. Better? No. It’s best if it comes from your mouth first, Rain. The others think this is all lined up against us. But it isn’t. We’re just liable to get hit with the collateral damage.”

Rain wasn’t sure what to say or do. He shook his head.

“No? No what?”

“You tell them.”

“I’m not going to tell them. I’ve been in situations like this before, trying to be an ally, ending up only hurting. Talk to them. Tell them. Write them a letter if you need to put the words in order. I’ll back you and argue on your behalf.”

“I heard that the Fallen attacked Victoria’s hometown. What if they hurt someone she cared about? What if she says she’ll only help the team if I’m not on it?”

“Do you think she would? I’m not so sure.”

“What if?” Rain asked, stressing the question. “They attacked people who were evacuating. There were groups that kidnapped people on the absolute worst day in history, raided them. What if it turns out they hurt people Kenzie cares about? Sveta- do you know what they say about people like Sveta? What I’ve said about people like Sveta?”

“I know what they’ve said about people like me,” Tristan said, setting his jaw. “What you’ve probably said about people like me.”

Rain flinched, breaking eye contact.

“Look at me, say it, and I’ll tell you it’s okay. Because you’re working on it. You’re better.”

“I think you’re really underestimating how little I want to face that side of me, that said those things. Or how little progress I’ve made from being a sack of shit.”

“Look me in the eye,” Tristan said. “Say something like, ‘hey Tristan, I used to be the kind of guy who’d call you a faggot or look down on you because you really like the dick.'”

“C’mon, man,” Rain said, cringing.

“Then you say you’re sorry, and I say it’s not a problem, I figured as much, and I reaffirm that you’re a friend. Really easy script. Then you say it to Sveta. We’ve talked about so much shit, we’ve worked through so much. You have to know we can be cool with this. All of us.”

“I know,” Rain said. “I get it. Fuck. But-”

He was interrupted as Tristan’s watch started beeping.

“Fuck,” Tristan said.

“-But I don’t want you to be cool with it. I’m not cool with this,” Rain finished.

“I gotta change.”

“Yeah.”

“Look after Rain for me, Byron,” Tristan said, then blurred.

Byron wore a long-sleeved, slate-blue shirt with a snake on the front, and jeans.

“I’m going to go,” Rain said.

“What are you going to do?” Byron asked.

“Hide. Figure things out. Think.”

“Okay,” Byron said. “I think all three of those things sound pretty reasonable.”

“Can you tell the others? Fill them in?”

“I think if Tristan is saying no, I should say no too. Especially when I’m not part of the group.”

Rain sighed.

“Go. Hide. Think. Spend time with that ridiculously awesome friend of yours,” Byron said.

Rain allowed himself a small smile.

“Maybe call Mrs. Yamada.”

“Maybe.”

“Seems like a big enough emergency to give her a call.”

Rain nodded. It helped, knowing he could do that.

It helped, hearing Byron calmly lay things out, agree that it was right to get away and get safe. Tristan understood a lot of the other stuff, the fighting, the struggle, the- even trying to come back from being a scumbag. But Byron understood other things.

“Thank you,” he said, without even really realizing he’d intended to say it.

“You have allies,” Byron said. “Friends. Me included.”

“They have thirty-five to sixty people with powers, a hired assassin, and a grudge.”

“And we have a bit of time. We’ll use it.”

“We?”

“Fuck off,” Byron said, without smiling or even sounding like he was amused or annoyed. “You’re a friend. Of course I’m in this.”

Rain swallowed hard.

“Today was valuable. The team has a sense of what they’re up against. Mostly.”

“You think I should tell them,” Rain said.

Byron shrugged. He was Tristan’s inverse, in that he wasn’t one to push, even when he had strong feelings one way or the other.

“I’m going to hide out at the compound for a day or two. I, uh, I’ll think, and maybe I’ll explain when it’s time to come back. When there’s a clearer picture of what’s happening. Make sure they don’t do anything in the meantime?”

“Sure. Tristan heard too, and I think he’d agree.”

“Thank you.”

“If you’re going to hide, you should go before they wrap up that meeting and decide to catch a train heading in the same direction you’re going.”

Rain nodded, swallowing hard again.

He turned to go. Not running, this time, but walking as fast as he could.

To seek sanctuary amid monsters.

Shade – 4.4

I was being watched.

I was being watched at a time when Rain was gone, hiding, when Tattletale was in play. We had enemies, I’d drawn attention. These things, though, weren’t at the forefront of my attention. It said a lot that they weren’t.

The slash on Moose’s face lingered in my mind’s eye, when I wasn’t careful about where that eye was turned.

The train was noisy as it rolled along the tracks. With the longer train journeys, I was primed to expect that the urban would give way to the rural or the buildings on either side would stop. It didn’t. Like a car driving down the highway at night, the streetlights reaching into the vehicle interior and then dropping away, the sun’s light did much the same when it reached in at a low angle, extending between buildings to light up the dark train car.

It was just late enough in the morning that most students had made their way to school, but the students with classes in the afternoon block that had stopped in to check in or change were now leaving the schools. They were heading off to work, to do light construction work, for academic clubs, study halls and to join the patrol block, and many were dressed accordingly. They looked so young.

The train car was packed, and I was glad I’d managed to get a seat, even though it was one of the narrow, tiny ones by the door that flipped up to be flush with the wall, when a wheelchair or baby carriage needed the room.

I’d first noticed the person watching me because her face had a lot of freckles, and out of the corner of my eye, I’d thought she was someone else. On closer look, though, I could see that her hair was jaw length and straighter, her facial structure was different, and she was wearing the clothes of a student athlete, with bare shoulders and arms, gym shorts, and a towel around her neck.

I might have dismissed her then, but she’d been looking at me, looking away when I glanced her way. I found myself looking again a few moments later, because one look wasn’t enough to dismiss the unease I felt in response to a freckle-covered face looming in my peripheral vision, peering past the crowd. The same thing happened the second time I looked at her. I caught her staring, and she looked away.

There had been a time that I would have automatically assumed it was positive. I was recognizable, I’d been a hometown celebrity in a town with a fair number of prominent people, and that had led to me getting recognized by at least one person each time I went out. I’d reveled in it.

Now? Traitorous instincts made that the second or even the third rank option in a list. The first thought in my head on realizing I was being stared at was to go straight to the hospital room, to people staring at wretched me in a vain effort to try to comprehend what they were looking at. They wondered how I even functioned, how I worked, tried to understand the configuration. When I moved automatically, the movements caught the eye.

Even with the most polite and iron-willed of them, they struggled to find which eye or eyes they should look at to make and maintain eye contact, and in the search for that common, natural thing, they ended up staring at the rest of me.

At the rest of the wretch, the sideshow freak, the monster.

How had Byron put it, at the meeting with Foresight? Tristan was nourished by the hardheaded struggle. Byron was recharged by periods of rest. It gave Tristan a natural advantage in their endless struggle over a single body.

I was closer to Byron in that. I was recharged by attention, by adulation, encouragement, worship. It was a natural progression of the fact that I’d been built to be a hero, because I could put on a costume and do great things and get that attention and encouragement.

Had I done things in a different way, it could have even been constructive and healthy. But I’d been a stupid kid. Arrogant. A little worship was good. I’d worshiped Dean. He’d worshiped me. On a level, I’d reached for the wrong things in places, prioritized certain things over others in how I handled the adulation and the public. There were a lot of things I wished I’d done differently.

That wasn’t even the biggest part of why, much like Byron, I couldn’t go to my most natural ways of finding recharge. Like how mental illness obscured the ability of the person in question to even see the problem at hand, my capacity to recover was distorted and damaged. Tainted.

Tristan had remarked on it too, now that I thought about it. Needing people. He wanted to party, to abandon restraint. I wanted… I supposed I wanted not to illogically, automatically, inevitably think of the wretched thing that had occupied that hospital room, anytime someone paid particular attention to me.

I wanted to not feel a deep sadness sinking in when I caught someone staring.

In the places my head went, the wretch loomed in first place, the hero celebrity in second. The third place possibility was that this girl looking at me was something nefarious, and that the young, freckle-faced athlete was an agent of Tattletale or a hire from Cedar Point. Not impossible, but not likely.

Then the fourth place possibility, that she thought I was attractive, not impossible. The fifth place possibility that I had a piece of my breakfast stuck to my cheek or something in my hair. The sixth place possibility, that she was staring off into space and I was somehow always in the way…

My thoughts were mired in something so minor, my heart ached indistinctly, and I was just making myself anxious and upset.

I checked my phone. I could focus on the job. The mission at hand.

You have 49 unread emails.

It was rare for me to have more than three.

Pinned Email: Houndstooth (2 hours ago)
[7 prior messages]
9:15am it is. I’ll meet you guys at the station.

(Unread) Kenzie Martin (5 minutes ago)
oh I wanted to ask again is there any word on Rain? you should be seeing Tristan soon and they are probably in contact

(Unread) Kenzie Martin (18 minutes ago)
thats not me trying to guilt you either

(Unread) Kenzie Martin (19 minutes ago)
it’s okay if you don’t answer

(Unread) Kenzie Martin (20 minutes ago)
but seriously who starts the day with math right?

(Unread) Kenzie Martin (20 minutes ago)
not that they give me detention anymore.

(Unread) Kenzie Martin (21 minutes ago)
I went to the bathroom to send that last stuff because we’re covering the angle stuff and oh m god is it so boring. is worse because I’m not allowd to raise my hand more than a certain number of times now. better to go to the bathroom n be productive than to fall asleep in class or get detention right?

(Unread) Kenzie Martin (24 minutes ago)
I’m super excited to do this

(Unread) Kenzie Martin (27 minutes ago)
I think I decided on the name Looksee. it’s cute right? It’s different enough from optics to work.

(Unread) Kenzie Martin (34 minutes ago)
[Attachment: costumedoodlewoo_2.i – Touch to open in a new window]

(Unread) Kenzie Martin (38 minutes ago)
I know I said I wouldn’t send you any more messages but I forgot I had these scans on my phone:
[Attachment: costumedoodlewoo_1.i – Touch to open in a new window]

[You have 39 more unread emails. Touch to continue reading]

If they’d been texts I would have been alerted with each one, but I hadn’t, and they’d accumulated. I was prepared to continue browsing, wrapping my head around reading through the emails in reverse order, but the train slowed, brakes squealing.

The signs above the exits changed. Car 3: Blackrock Station.

Students departed, then more entered, but the end result was that things were far less crowded. I got a look at the girl who was staring at me, and she glanced away, reflexively.

As people exited, seats here and there were freed up. There was a bit of a shuffle as people hurried to claim seats. A sixteen-ish year old boy claimed the vacated seat next to me.

In that same moment, though, Ashley moved between train cars, entering mine, spotted me, and approached. She wore sunglasses and the black dress she’d picked up at Cedar Point. Strapless, with sheer black fabric enveloping the shoulders and arms, decorated with a lace-like pattern of feathers. The sleeves disappeared into fingerless black gloves. Her little black shoes looked like dancer’s shoes, which fit with the dress she wore.

I raised my hand in a little wave.

“I thought you’d be around,” she said, lifting her sunglasses.

“I messaged you when I boarded,” I said, touching my phone. I saw her expression change. “And you don’t like phones.”

The seat I was sitting in was positioned such that the backs of the actual booth seats were to me. Ashley leaned against the back of one of the other seats, facing me, and the boy just beside me lifted his bag from his lap and used the room she’d given him to vacate the seat.

“Do you want my seat?” I asked him.

He glanced back, looked at me, looked at Ashley, then shook his head. He nearly lost his balance as the train resumed moving.

Ashley took the seat, pulling it down from the side of the train and then sitting on it, crossing one knee over the other and placing her hands on top. Posed, in a very deliberate, conscious way. Even the angle of her head.

I looked past her to the freckled observer, who again looked away. Was it my frame of mind, sitting with Ashley, that made it so the wretch wasn’t as close to the surface, the look not nearly as bothersome?

Or was I overthinking it? Was it that I’d seen the look enough times and seen her reaction enough times that it didn’t feel so heavy, pressing, or potentially hostile? Less about me and more about her, now.

“He’s sensible,” Ashley said. “He’ll go far.”

She might have thought I was looking at the boy who’d run.

“Did you take off your sunglasses just to intimidate him into giving up his seat?” I asked.

She put her sunglasses back into place and gave me a small smile.

“You shouldn’t,” I said.

“Why not? If there was a chance I’d see him again, maybe I shouldn’t, but I won’t. The city is too big.”

“The little things ripple out. If you make a positive or negative impression, people mention them to others, those people mention them or carry them forward. You’re not just interacting with him. You’re interacting with everyone he’s potentially going to interact with in the future. To lesser degrees, sure, but I absolutely think it matters.”

“What’s he going to say? I didn’t do anything, and he willingly gave up his seat. Is he going to tell all of his friends and family that he saw a lady with scary eyes and he ran away like a stray with its tail between its legs?”

“I think it matters,” I said.

“I wanted to learn from you all. I’ll have to take that sentiment and think on it-”

“Good,” I said.

“-because you’ve only given me sentiment. Not one good argument yet.”

I turned my head her way, frowning. She smiled a little more.

“Let’s say you entered the scene, you’ve gathered all your info, you have a nice costume, you’ve trained, you’re badass,” I said.

“Mm,” she made a sound.

“You have your first big job. You make a splash, there’s some media attention, video, something like that. It appears on TV briefly, but people talk online. They’re the ones who create your online profile and fill in your info, they apply the labels, describe things, set the tone. What if the guy you scared off ends up being one of them, and he ends up sitting at his keyboard, remembering you as he decides what to write?”

“I didn’t do a thing to him.”

“But did he leave with a good impression of you?”

She shrugged.

“What happens if this guy finds himself in that situation, ready to make a call about you or share his thoughts, and he describes his horrible encounter with you on the train, how you intimidated him and said odious things?”

“I said nothing.”

“And he’s a teenager, he’s a guy, you’re a girl, he’ll think about this scene again, he might be bothered, and he’ll want to resolve that feeling. Maybe he lies and badmouths you online.”

Ashley looked like she was the very definition of unimpressed.

I shrugged.

“I hate the internet,” she said. “Despise it. When I become a villain, I’ll move out to a border world where the internet isn’t established and I’ll take over. I’ll rule as a queen, without any need to concern myself with teenagers who could lie about me without fear of reprisal.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. It was my turn to shoot her a small smile.

“Yes, yes,” she said. She brought her head back, leaning it against the wall behind her. “I’ve been brought low, relying on sentiment over fact. How the tables have turned.”

“That wasn’t actually what I was thinking,” I said.

I didn’t get a chance to elaborate. The girl with freckles approached. She looked spooked, arms close to her body as she held a notebook, but the ‘spook’ was aimed more at me.

Too petite to be the person I’d worried I’d seen out of the corner of my eye, earlier. Years younger – fourteen, if I had to guess. Timid, yes, fidgety, that was similar, but in other ways, she held herself differently. This girl dressed different, sporty and confident.

“Hi,” I said.

“Are you- you’re Victoria Dallon.”

“I am.”

“I’m a fan. I’ve been a fan for years.”

“What’s your name?”

“Presley.”

“You know, Presley, I was just thinking about how I missed the days of living in Brockton Bay, when I’d get to make connections with people. I missed that, and you might have just made my day.”

Her smile was tentative at first and then solidified into something more confident.

“I lived in Brockton Bay for a year when I was nine. My family was going through stuff. That doesn’t really matter but it’s why I was there, and I saw this picture of you and I loved it. I didn’t even know you were a real person or what your name was until a month later. I got a poster of the same picture for my birthday.”

“Which poster?”

“Oh, it had a yellow background, and you were flying, and you had your arms out and behind you, like-”

She took a bit of a pose, chest pushed up and out, arms back with fists clenched near her butt. Well, one fist. She held the notebook, still.

“I know the one,” I said. “That was a magazine cover first, I think.”

“I have the magazine too. And a bunch of other things. Even after I moved to Portland I did everything I could to collect each thing that came out. But the poster was important to me.”

“I’m really glad,” I said.

“It was one of the first things I put on my wall every time we settled into a new place. Later, whenever I was feeling lost I’d look at it. I got into sports because I read you were an athlete before you were a hero, except it’s soccer, not basketball, because I’m too short.”

She looked disappointed as she said it.

“You’re in the athletics block,” I said. “They don’t let just anyone in. I’d bet you’re better at soccer than I was at basketball.”

“No,” she said, with an expression like that was impossible to fathom, even upsetting, eyes wide.

It seemed she needed me as an idol more than she needed me as a connection or someone she could relate to.

“I got a lot of extra flack and attention from the enemy team because I came from a family of heroes and a lot of people knew my name,” I said. “Maybe that was why.”

Presley nodded very quickly. “There’s someone on my team who’s really good, she gets something like that. I really look up to her too.”

“Are you going to keep hugging that notebook or are you going to hand it over for her to sign?” Ashley asked.

Presley looked startled at that, afraid. She’d been working her way up to it, and the issue had been forced.

“Be nice,” I said.

“I’m being nice,” Ashley responded. “The way this is going, this girl-”

“Her name is Presley,” I interjected.

“She’s going to finish telling you how awesome you are, she won’t work up the nerve, and she’ll kick herself for not getting the autograph.”

I rolled my eyes slightly and turned to Presley. “Do you want me to?”

“Please,” she breathed the word more than she said it.

I took the notebook and I took the pen. It had been a little while since I’d done this.

“When I looked at you in the poster I told myself that was everything I wanted to be, fearless and fair and strong and poised. Every time I entered a new part of my life or moved to a new place, I looked at it in different ways.”

I wrote my message on the inside cover, listening while the pen scratched.

“When we had to evacuate because of Gold Morning, we had to leave everything behind.”

I looked up. “I’m sorry.”

“But we went back, after everything calmed down. We went back to the house and it was mostly intact, except for broken windows and water damage. We could only bring what we could fit in the car, but I made sure to bring that. I wanted it with me for whatever comes next.”

“I can only encourage and inspire, and I’m really glad if I’ve helped with that. The strength, the fairness, the poise, though, that comes from you. Everything you’ve triumphed over, surviving the bad days, getting to here, then doing well enough to be part of the athletics block,” I said. I closed the book, the pen still between the pages. I passed it to her, and put my hands over hers as she took the book. I met her eyes. “That’s you. That’s your power. Pretty much what I wrote, but I wanted to say it too.”

As I moved my hands away from hers, she smiled and hugged the book.

A moment later, she turned to Ashley. She lowered her voice, “Do you have powers?”

Ashley nodded.

“Can you?” Presley held out the notebook.

“No,” Ashley replied.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” Presley said, too quickly, too defensive in how she pulled her book back, how she held it. She looked at me. “Thank you so much.”

“You’re very welcome,” I said.

But as I said it, Presley was already retreating, fleeing back to her spot by the doors, amid all the other students who were standing in the seatless area that would have bikes and prams in it at different stages of the journey.

I could have pressed, even taken issue with how Ashley had handled that.

Instead, I gathered my thoughts. On a level, I did feel refreshed. It had been a really nice moment, the minor issue at the end souring it slightly, but nice all the same.

I was having to get used to having the nice moments be routinely touched with those sour notes.

“I can’t hold a pen,” Ashley murmured.

I looked at her.

She moved her hands from where they rested on her knee. She turned one over, moved a finger. It trembled throughout the small movement. “I’ll have my appointment after we talk to Houndstooth, get tuned up. Until then, it hurts to move my hands and I don’t trust my power. That’s why.”

“You could have explained.”

She gave me a look.

“You could have,” I said.

The look was maintained. Even with the sunglasses she wore, the disdain was clear. “Ripple effects, you said. I wouldn’t be revealing it to her alone. I’d be risking revealing it to everyone she meets from here on out.”

“The good things have a way of rippling out with more strength than the bad things do,” I said.

“So you say,” Ashley said, “while riding on a train through a city in the post-apocalypse. Just one of many shattered, damaged worlds.”

“Cute.”

The train slowed. Presley was at the door, joining the group that was ready to depart.

“I’d like to tell her,” I said, my voice quiet. “Even if we called it an injury, so you weren’t revealing something vital.”

“You really care about this.”

“Yes,” I said. “Don’t you?”

“I care,” she said. “I don’t want to lie and look weak while you lie to look better.”

I tensed.

“You’re strong, yes,” she said, her voice barely audible. She took off her sunglasses. “Poised? I think it’s an act. An effective act, the kind that becomes reality after enough time. But not enough time has passed. Fair? We’ll see. But fearless?”

She made the smallest of scoffing sounds. The train came to a stop.

I started to respond, but there was a hollow feeling in my mouth and throat, where the words were supposed to be. I closed my mouth, then said, just as quiet, “She needs that lie.”

Ashley stared me down.

“Frankly,” I said, still quiet, angry now, “you come across worse and smaller as a person when you say no to something that costs you nothing than you do by admitting you’re disabled.”

“Temporarily disabled,” she said. “You’re wrong. I can’t think of anything worse than groveling before a child and telling her I’m weak when I’m the very opposite. I could kill everyone on this train if it came down to it. One after the other. By the time I made my way to the next train car, they would be ready for me, and it wouldn’t matter.”

I tensed as heads turned. They weren’t responding to the words. Only the emotion behind them.

Had I just provoked her into another rage on a relatively crowded train?

Would my next words? Would my silence? Would leaving? Staying?

“She doesn’t know that it’s only temporary,” I said. “She just thinks there’s something wrong. With you or with her.”

“Let her,” Ashley said. “Do what you want, but don’t make me regret telling you anything.”

I looked over to the side. The people had departed the train, Presley included, and the ones boarding had mostly filed in.

“It’s too late anyway,” Ashley said. “Another face we’ll never see again, that probably won’t make any ripples.”

I stood from my seat. “I’ll be back.”

“Whatever.”

Glancing back, making sure she wasn’t about to go on a rampage as she had threatened, I ducked and pushed past the crowd, hurrying to the door. Tristan touched my shoulder as I passed him.

“I’ll be right back. Can you watch my bag?” I said, turning to face him and walking backward as I said it. I pointed in Ashley’s direction and mouthed ‘and Ashley’.

He gave me a short nod.

The doors closed behind me as I stepped onto the train platform. I took to the air.

Why was this so important to me?

With a bird’s eye view, I could search the crowd, looking for the right hair color, the right height, the clothes, freckle-covered shoulders, chin-length hair.

Was this ego?

Was I just seeking out perverse, self-centered worship, after going without so long? Tantalus finally getting a drink of water after centuries without? A parasitic, sad wretch of a vampire like in those bad Maggie Holt movies, finally with a willing victim?

I’d found her and I hesitated.

But the train was getting away from me. I had to act.

Instinct, rather than action. I wasn’t thinking things through. I wasn’t acting according to the mission I’d planned and set out, was I?

I landed, forward momentum becoming a brisk walk, then a slower one. I saw the surprise on her face. People nearby were startled.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m in a rush. I don’t suppose I could get your email?”

She looked around, possibly looking for Ashley, or at the crowd.

She still held her notebook, and she opened it, scribbling something down. She tore off the corner of the page, then handed it to me.

“I’ll send you something,” I said.

She nodded, wordless.

I left the ground much as I’d landed. The train was already pulling away. I flew after it.

Had I made a mistake, leaving Ashley, when she was riled up? I had no idea how well she and Tristan got along. Were my perspectives straight?

It wasn’t even nine o’clock in the morning, and I was mired in a week’s worth of doubts and second-guesses. That wasn’t me. It wasn’t supposed to be.

I checked my phone as I flew.

You have 52 unread emails.

I’d had thirty nine or forty, after browsing the initial selection.

I was here for a reason. Kenzie was one. Ashley another. Tristan, Chris, even Sveta… and Rain in particular. Rain who was taking a day off from everything.

They needed help. That was the job, the mission. Given to me by someone I cared about, involving another someone I cared about and the team and place in the world she so desperately wanted.

I could do that. But I didn’t want to do it at the expense of people like Presley.

The feelings and the ideas took on a different light when I framed things that way.

It played into how I carried myself, after I touched down on the back of the train, on the same kind of little platform at the rear that Rain had used to jump off.

It played into how I walked, how I organized my thoughts.

I could remember going home after my first official arrest. Bad guy beaten, caught, delivered to authorities. Everything official, with my mom attending. I’d walked in the door, and my mother had told my dad that I’d had two firsts. My first arrest, my first war wound- a cut to my forehead, already stitched up. She’d used her fingers to move my hair, to show my dad.

He’d looked very tired as he bent down, kissed the top of my head.

He’d offered me cookies and milk and I’d rolled my eyes, even though I’d really wanted the cookies.

I wasn’t sure at all about why or if the cookies played into things, but I did remember how I’d stood straighter, how I’d felt taller, more focused.

That was the feeling I wanted to capture, as I walked down the train car, entered the next, walked down that train car, and then entered the car I’d been in before going after my fan.

Tristan was in my seat, talking to Ashley. Ashley was tense. She didn’t look as if she’d calmed down in my absence.

Tristan wore a black jacket over a red t-shirt in a material that looked like it was meant to have sweat wick off of it. He’d painted his hair again and the color reached to the roots.

He moved over from the seat as I approached, leaving the one between him and Ashley empty. Ashley didn’t move, her eyes hidden by the sunglasses she wore. A thin beam of light swept through the length of the train car. Not as pronounced an effect as it had been earlier, with the train slightly lower to the ground, the train at a different angle.

“I’ve come to believe you’re more deluded than the rest of us,” Ashley said, as I took the seat. “Thinking any of that matters.”

“Maybe,” I said. I fiddled with my phone, typing in the email.

“Did you tell her?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I got her email, and I flew after the train. Hi Tristan.”

“From what I gather, you have a fan, and you and Ashley had a disagreement,” Tristan said.

“Yeah,” I said, still typing. “Any word on Rain?”

“Scared as shit but safe.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Is he going to be okay?”

“No idea. But if they go after him, we’re not in a position to do anything. I’d like to ask Houndstooth for advice, see what resources we can tap.”

I nodded.

I paged through the phone, the email entered, and found myself at the home screen for the mail.

You have 55 unread emails.

I checked nobody was in earshot. There were people in the chairs just beside Tristan’s seat, but they had headphones on. I figured we were pretty safe.

“Kenzie might be melting down,” I said. “Or something. I don’t know how to interpret this.”

I showed Ashley. I went to show Tristan, and he was already pulling his phone out of his pocket.

He showed me his.

26 unread emails

“She likes you more,” he said.

“I told her I don’t use my phone. She was bothered at first, but she accepted it,” Ashley said. “Now I’m glad.”

“What is this?” I asked. “There’s a part of me that’s weirdly glad for the stream-of-consciousness insight into who she is and how she thinks, even if this isn’t good, but… this isn’t good. It’s not healthy.”

“It isn’t,” Tristan said. “But it could be worse. If anything, it’s a good prelude or warm-up for our discussion with Houndstooth. We’ll talk with him, we’ll send Kenzie a message, if she hasn’t had her phone confiscated, and we’ll see how things go from there.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m not sure of anything,” he said. “But we all have our weaknesses, and Kenzie’s wrestling with hers. We’ll figure it out.”

I nodded. I took my seat between the two. “Can I ask you two a favor?”

“What favor?” Tristan asked.

“Why not?” Ashley asked. “I made the mistake of going along with an errand with the two most stubborn people I know. I deserve whatever I’m subjected to.”

“Could be we’re the two most stubborn members of the group,” I said. I found myself reaching for that part of me that stood taller, that focused on the mission and the role. “But we’re the three most style-conscious people in this whole exercise. We might be missing Kenzie in that. Three of the four most style conscious.”

“I wouldn’t say Kenzie’s style-conscious,” Tristan said. “But that’s a conversation for another day. What’s this about style?”

“I want to take a picture. Lean in close,” I said. “Please.”

Ashley gave me a look.

“Please,” I said. “And since you don’t have masks, you can use my hand, Ashley. Tristan, cover up a bit with your hand. Look photogenic.”

“I’ve only had my photo taken twice,” Ashley said. “They were basically mugshots.”

“Did you look good for the mugshots?”

“Of course.”

“Then look good for this. Come on. This could be your equivalent to a poster. She thought you were cool enough to ask for an autograph, let’s give her a good picture.”

“Okay,” Ashley said.

The two leaned in close, my hand in front of Ashley’s eyes, fingers parted in the middle to reveal one of her eyes. Tristan used one hand, positioning himself so his hair wouldn’t be in the camera’s frame.

I winked and hit the button to take the picture.

“None of this matters,” Ashley said.

I applied a caption to the picture.

Thanks for coming and saying hi. Picture just for you– keep an eye out for us in the future.

I showed the others the picture and caption. I got an okay from both, and sent it.

I held the phone where everyone could see it. With the first excited response, half of Ashley’s tension seemed to dissipate. With the second and third, she smiled.

Doing this, helping, functioning in my role, I felt less like a vampire. Less like I was serving myself, because the feelings were set aside to where they were secondary.

It felt like a good warrior monk frame of mind for my discussion with Houndstooth.

⊙

We had to walk a little ways to get to where Houndstooth waited. He was in costume, and his appearance at the station would have risked a disruption.

All through the short walk across Greenwich, there were signs of the protests and strikes. Crude posters had been put up, with slogans and rallies to the cause.

It was too early in the day for a real protest, though. Just groups on street corners, some scattered people making a mess and some cleaning up. Stasis.

Houndstooth waited on a hill overlooking the city sprawl. He looked as he had in Kenzie’s projected image. Anubis writ Western, with a shorter, blunter snout and a costume of mixed panels that straddled the line between being a bodysuit and being armor.

“Thank you for making the time,” Tristan said. He shook Houndstooth’s hand.

“It was my request,” Houndstooth said.

“Hi,” I said, as he shook my hand.

“Thank you for coming, Victoria.”

He turned to Ashley. She stood with her hands clasped behind her.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said.

“It’s nice to meet you as well,” he said, taking the lack of a handshake in stride.

The conversation hung there.

“This is hard,” he said.

“We appreciate you helping out with Cedar Point,” Tristan said.

“We can open by talking about that,” Houndstooth said. “You’ve visited?”

“Yes,” I said. “Two of us. One of us more covert.”

His snout moved more in Ashley’s direction, then he nodded. “How bad is it, once you’re there?”

I answered, “Protection racket in full swing. Villains moved in en masse. People moved away when they could. Those that couldn’t are paralyzed now, helping to maintain the very thin veneer of normalcy while paying what little they can to the villains in control. Prancer and Velvet are some of the most prominent drug distributors right now and they’re in charge, so it’s likely serving as a hub for that.”

“Some very violent capes are active there,” Tristan said. “A few of them we have a tenuous relationship with seem to be gathering soldiers with an intent to go to war. It looks like that might include us, but we don’t know one hundred percent what they’re up to.”

“As expected, then,” Houndstooth said.

Ashley said, “They have rooms to rent, but they cornered that market. They’re welcoming newcomers, but only capes, only ones who will help them out. The businesses are struggling or closed, and nobody outside of Cedar Point is moronic enough to buy in. Cancer at the roots, the tree will die.”

Houndstooth said, “I remember back on Bet, we had a system we used for the areas where the good guys couldn’t win, or where things were too bad to recover. It was mostly small towns. Evacuating, shutting off all power and water from the outside, closing down and blockading the roads, making living there as difficult as possible, perimeter blockades, regular raids, visits from big name capes. There was serious consideration given to giving Brockton Bay that H.O.S.V. designation.”

I had to assume his attention was on me as he said that last bit.

“They said no in the end,” I said.

“What’s your feeling on that?”

“I think I would have made peace with it if they’d said yes,” I said. “It wouldn’t be what it is now.”

“It’s a pretty mixed thing right now.”

“It is,” I said. “I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer. As it is, it has its positives, it’s meant a lot to some people that it recovered as much as it did, it was a huge part of us rebuilding after the end. But I’m not at peace with it either.”

“What happens to Cedar Point in the end, then?”

“We weaken their hold, we leave room for more established parties to settle in and act as a counterbalance, instead of things all going the wrong way. You mentioned Brockton Bay. We saw what happened when the scale tipped too far one way. Too many heroes out of the picture, myself included, not enough coming in.”

“If we uncover anything particularly bad, and we might have already found something bad, we’ll strike at them as we make our big play,” Ashley said.

Tristan and I looked at her.

She added, “With the help of other groups and forces.”

“We can be one of those other forces,” Houndstooth said. “Kings of the Hill aren’t big or strong, but we’ve got our territory and we’re helping to keep the peace. In exchange, we could use help when it comes to tackling some of the other problems. Ideally, it would be you three. Not…”

“Kenzie?” Tristan asked.

“I’d prefer to say kids,” Houndstooth said.

“You’re going to have to get around to talking about her,” Ashley said. “You can’t dodge the subject forever. I’ll get irritated and walk away if you try.”

He folded his arms, walking over a little. The hill had several trees on it, and his armor panels glinted here and there as dappled light touched it.

“You said this was hard,” I said.

“Did she touch any of you before you came here?” Houndstooth asked.

“She went to school this morning. We came here,” Tristan said.

“I suspected that would be the way it went. It’s why I wanted to meet when she was in school. Minimizes the chances.”

“Why does it matter?” I asked. “We’re bugged?”

“Trackers, cameras, microphones, or-” he paused, and his mask meant that if he was making an expression or trying to convey something with the pause, it was more or less lost. “-Sound cameras.”

“She’s a lot better than she was when you knew her,” Tristan said.

“That’s great,” Houndstooth said. “I really do want things to work out for her. It’s just hard. I need to protect myself, my old teammates. I want to protect you. I want people in general to be safe. All that aside, again, I do want positive outcomes for her.”

“But?” I asked.

“But the Kenzie I know didn’t allow for that,” Houndstooth said. “So I had to prepare for this meeting, trying to figure out what to say and how to frame things while not hurting anyone.”

“She’s been in therapy for a little while,” Tristan said. “She’s improved by leaps and bounds from even the first time I met her. I really want to reinforce that.”

“I hear you,” Houndstooth said. “I’m just worried you’re not going to listen, and if that’s the case, then it’s a bad replay of me, our Protectorate leader and our PRT liaison talking to her school. It’s a replay of us having a meeting with her new foster parents. It’s a repeat of us talking to the parents of a new friend she’s made.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“We explained, they heard us, but they didn’t listen. They didn’t take it to heart, because she is- was nine. She’s cute, she’s precocious, and she has a really skewed skillset where she’s really good at getting close to people and she’s really, tragically bad at staying there. Messes follow.”

“She’s moving in a more measured way as she relates to the people around her now,” Tristan said. “She’s more easygoing. And so far, staying close? She’s doing okay. Fingers crossed.”

Houndstooth’s hand moved, thumb tapping against the side of his finger, and it looked like he was going to say something.

“Capricorn, was it?”

“Or Tristan.”

“Tristan. I hear you. I’m listening. She’s in therapy, she’s better. She’s made strides. If you had to give her a number, how much better is she? Throw a number at me. Eighty percent?”

“Ninety five,” Tristan said.

“Ninety,” Ashley said.

“Okay,” Houndstooth said. “Five or ten percent of what I saw? Still pretty fucking bad. I’d like to give you some advice and double check some things. As the person who’s been there and crossed his fingers before.”

“That’s not fair, you’re-” Tristan said.

“Tristan,” I said, cutting him off.

I was focused on Houndstooth. I was pretty sure I’d beaten him by a hair in responding.

“I asked you to have this chat as my side of our mutual agreement,” Houndstooth said. “I’m asking you to let me convey this to you. A lot of it is pretty mild. Give me a chance to say my piece, and you decide what to do with the knowledge.”

I glanced at Tristan.

“I’ll shut up,” he said. “Sorry.”

“I’m here to listen,” Ashley said. “Then I’ll say my piece.”

She had a piece to say? I hadn’t known this when she’d invited herself along as one of the group’s ‘leaders’.

“Please,” I said, to Houndstooth.

“I’ll give you some of the same advice my bosses gave to us and the people who interacted with Kenzie. Minimize the homework she does. That includes work-homework. Cape homework, if you want to call it that.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because she’s so eager to please she’ll hurt herself in the process. She had an art project in fourth grade, it was supposed to be done over the course of a month, following the instructions from regular handouts the teacher gave. Eight or ten handouts, I think it was. She asked kids a grade older than her what they’d done for the same project, and she pulled two consecutive all-nighters to do it. Her foster parents didn’t even realize she was doing it, because it turns out a surveillance-countersurveillance tinker is really good at sneaking out to the garage and being quiet.”

“Surveillance-countersurveillance,” I said.

“She went that far because she wanted to wow her teacher and see the expressions on their face,” Houndstooth said.

“It wasn’t good,” Tristan said. “Their reactions.”

“Shocked, almost horrified,” Houndstooth said. “And Kenzie was devastated to the point of being broken when it didn’t get the reaction she wanted it to. She was so stressed out over it in the days after that that she threw up in class, which- it didn’t win points with her classmates, and it led to her being transferred to another class. Devastating on both fronts, because she had classmates she liked and she loved her teacher.”

“How do you get ahead of that?” I asked. “What do you do to balance it?”

“Treat it like a full-time job?” Houndstooth asked. “Preventative measures, like the ones I’m recommending. She’ll go the extra mile unless you set up a roadblock to disallow that progress. So you have to stay ahead of that. She’s a headache in that.”

“She mentioned she has a slip for study hall that gets her out of homework. It sounds like they’re letting her use it,” I said.

“Great. I’m glad that’s there. It goes beyond just school. She’s working on this job of yours at Cedar Point?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“What limits did you set on that? On her schedule?”

“She needs to do her schoolwork, she doesn’t let it impact her grades or attendance. Standard rules of conduct for Wards, carried forward.”

“That’s one step, but it’s not enough. She’s ninety-five percent better? That five percent says she’s losing sleep, sitting in her bedroom or bunk in the dark, checking cameras and feeds or searching old footage. She’ll work herself to the bone trying to uncover that gem that she can turn in to earn your affection.”

I looked at Tristan, then Ashley.

I looked at Houndstooth. “You think this is likely? Even with her doing better?”

“I would bet you real money. And I’d be thrilled to, because my team is in a bad spot for funding, and it’d help.”

“Fuck,” Tristan said. “We can narrow the window, set time restrictions.”

“Or we have her keep the majority of the tinker stuff at our place,” I said.

“Do both,” Houndstooth said. “She’ll be working on other projects, possibly surprise projects, very similar to her art project in intent and execution.”

“She’s working on some side projects,” I said. “The eye camera. A teleporter.”

“You do realize she doesn’t build teleporters, right?” Houndstooth asked.

“She doesn’t lie,” Ashley said, stern. “Don’t imply she does.”

“I wasn’t implying,” Houndstooth said. His voice softened, “I framed that wrong. I think she can build Teleporters. But she doesn’t. For the same reason she doesn’t build guns, mechs, A.I., chemicals, bio-stuff. She can do that stuff, but she’ll make half a percent of progress in the time it takes her to complete a whole project in her skillset. She’ll spend hundreds of dollars in materials to get that half a percent.”

“And the way you describe this-” I started. “She’ll actually, genuinely try to complete the teleporter project, even at a glacial pace, at a massive cost to her well-being?”

“Exactly,” Houndstooth said. “At least as far as I understand it. She’ll try to finish the project, she’ll believe it and make others believe she can do it, but I’d bet she’d self-destruct before getting a fifth of the way.”

“For all this talk of self-destruction and sacrificing health and sleep, she seems to be doing okay,” I said. “Freaked out after her call with you, weirdness, but… nothing that can’t be handled, I don’t think.”

“After the art project thing? When she threw up in class? Didn’t cry before, didn’t cry after. Not that we saw. I saw her cry once, and we were all crying then. Somewhere along the line, she learned that being troubled means people pulling away or pushing her away.”

“She’s gotten better at showing it,” Ashley said. “The bag. That was positive.”

“That’s really, really good, then. Because before? It took the world ending to crack her. Outside of that, you’d have a nine- she’s eleven now?”

“Yeah,” Tristan said. “Thereabouts.”

“You’d have an eleven year old, then, who’s internalizing so much that she loses hair in patches or makes herself sick. She didn’t ever cry, she didn’t signal how upset she was. Even if she’s doing better, you have to pay attention.”

“For ten percent of what you dealt with?” I asked.

“Victoria,” Houndstooth said. “The school stuff, the Wards stuff was structured. There was natural pushback when she stepped over lines. Punishments, rules for the classroom, rules for the Wards, oversight, teams of people having hours-long meetings about her. The art project, moving classes, her being bullied because of her behavior and her visceral reactions to that, the bullying in school, all of that was the easy stuff.”

“Can I ask about the hard stuff?”

“You can ask, but I don’t know if I can summarize it. We had a nine year old girl with no stopping points when it came to anything social. No brakes, a practically nonexistent sense of boundaries, and zero emotional defenses.”

“An acquaintance of ours described her as a bull in a china shop with a profound love for dishware,” Tristan said.

“Don’t joke,” Ashley said.

“It’s pretty apt,” Houndstooth said. “And I don’t think anyone’s laughing.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“One of her classmates’ families moved away, in large part because of her. One or two other families were seriously considering it. At least one of her teachers from the training camps was being investigated with a job and career on the line. Most people who were involved knew what the reality of Kenzie was, but procedures had to be followed, and when you have someone as vulnerable as she is, you can’t ever be one hundred percent sure. We had a similar thing with our Wards team leader, early on, but we were more proactive in anticipating it, and they were allegations of a different tint. I wish I could convey the trail of destruction.”

“No,” Ashley said.

“No?” Houndstooth asked.

“She’s not a bull in a china shop. She’s not a headache, she’s not a bringer of destruction, a tinker, or Ward, a nine year old, or an eleven year old. You keep reducing her down, you make her small, and you make the problem big.”

“The problems were big,” Houndstooth said. “The problems threatened to end several careers, derailed others, and uprooted a family from their lives and hometown. She likes and falls in love with everyone and it’s only because of us being attentive that she didn’t actively let herself be the prey of a villain group or dangerous lunatic in some desperate hope of finding a connection with them.”

“She’s not prey either,” Ashley said, more heated. “She’s Kenzie Martin. She’s a person. You may have only seen her cry once but I’ve seen her cry more times than I can count.”

“Really?” Tristan asked. “When?”

“During the meetings. After. During private conversations.”

“Crying is good,” Houndstooth said. “It’s a step forward. It’s very possible she’s made a lot of steps forward. It’s clear you guys care about her and believe in her. But I’ve met and interacted with Kenzie Martin, and I have a really hard time envisioning a Kenzie that’s fixed.”

“Like she’s a broken machine,” Ashley said.

“I don’t want to say better because better can mean partway. What I’m saying is that I can’t see a Kenzie that was that badly off, who’s… normal now. Or ever.”

“I hate that word,” Ashley said.

“I don’t think there are any good words for something that hard to encapsulate,” Houndstooth said.

“What do you advise?” I asked. “About the non-school, non-Ward stuff?”

“Pay attention when she talks about new friends or people in particular, get ahead of that, introduce yourself, keep a close eye on things. Talk to her teachers. Talk to her foster parents, or the people at whatever institution she’s at. They’re probably pretty overloaded, but make them pay attention. Get everyone on the same page. Same rules for everyone, boundaries, sticking to those boundaries, limit physical contact and gestures of affection unless okayed by the therapist.”

My eyebrows drew together. I glanced at Tristan, and he gestured, hand moving as if to dismiss, urging me to move on. I was pretty sure Houndstooth saw it too.

He didn’t speak up or act on it, though.

I made a mental note about the emphasis on foster parents. I’d need to have a conversation with others and pay more attention to Julien and his wife.

“Frankly, I’d really lock down the school thing. See if you can have her rotate classes or do something non-classroom. Discourage friendships with classmates, because that’s not going to go well. If she starts showing true romantic interest in anyone, shut it down hard. I wouldn’t advise her being on your team, frankly.”

“That’s extreme,” I said.

“It’s dehumanizing and disgusting,” Ashley said. “Until she’s better, no human contact or relationships. Nobody can get close to her, nobody can show kindness, nobody can help her or accept help from her? Just a breath or two away from you saying you don’t ever think she’ll be normal. You’re disgusting.”

She was starting to walk away, toward the path that had led us up the hill.

“Ashley,” I said. “I get what you’re saying, but we did agree to hear him out as a favor.”

“You hear him out then,” she said. “Tell me what you think I need to hear when you tell the others. But I’m not going to stay here and listen to this degenerate imbecile reduce her to a problem that can be solved like that. She’s human.”

“Can I tell an anecdote?”

“Could I stop you without killing you?” Ashley asked.

“Can you wait for us at the station, Ashley?” Tristan asked.

She stalked off, and we were left with Houndstooth.

Houndstooth looked toward me and Tristan. “There was a time, about a year back, where I was talking to a teammate. He said a food addiction was the only addiction that you couldn’t go cold turkey on. You can’t not eat, and that’s hard, when the addiction makes dealing with food in moderation next to impossible. Immediately, I thought of Kenzie. I thought, within a second or two of him saying that, he was wrong, there was another addiction like that. You say she’s human, but she’s a people addict. She’s addicted to humans. You can’t expect a young girl to not interact with people, and you can’t expect her to deal with people in moderation.”

“And you think the way to solve that is to… minimize that interaction to the barest bones?” I asked.

“Over months and years, gradually loosen that belt. If the therapist okays it.”

I sighed.

“She’s doing exceptionally well,” Tristan said.

“You could hold a gun to my head, and I wouldn’t say she lacked a work ethic,” Houndstooth said. “She’s brilliant for her age, she’s good-hearted in her way, and she doesn’t deserve a thousandth of what she’s gone through. It’s heartbreaking and worrying.”

Kenzie had named Houndstooth’s team as her second big heartbreak.

“Fuck the agents.”

“Powers and agents don’t even really play into this,” Houndstooth said. “If you took away her powers and the influence of her agent today, I’d give you all the same warnings tomorrow.”

⊙

We let ourselves into the headquarters.

Sveta was on her way. Chris was taking the day off for more Indulgence, not Wan, and that last part was supposed to be important.

Rain’s absence in particular was very much felt, now that his situation had been painted in stark relief. Everyone was a little bit worried, now.

Ashley had her appointment. Tristan had to give Byron his turn.

Kenzie sat in her chair at the table-turned desk, the projector showing the camera’s image of Cedar Point.

“Did you skip class to get here as quick as you did?” I asked.

“No,” Kenzie said, not turning around. “I went to class, I stopped in at study hall at the start of lunch and asked if I could go early. They said okay. You can call if you need to check.”

“I don’t need to check,” I said. “You’re honest.”

“Sorry for all the emails. Sveta yelled at me. Well, she didn’t yell, but she came close. I sent her almost as many as I sent you.”

“Did you eat lunch?”

“It’s in my bag, in case I get hungry.”

“Too nervous?” I asked.

She turned around in her computer chair and smiled. “Yeah.”

“Houndstooth wanted to make sure you were okay first. Making sure you weren’t getting too much homework,” I said. “He had some tips about how we should make sure you aren’t tinkering yourself to the bone after hours.”

“It helps sometimes. Distracting myself with it.”

“We should figure out a balance. He was suspicious you were staying up late, watching and rewatching camera feeds.”

“When I can’t sleep it’s nice to be able to watch that stuff with my laptop beside me in the dark room. I doze off.”

I nodded.

“Did he say the embarrassing stuff?”

“I don’t know what qualifies as embarrassing,” I said. “Problems with teachers, school. Tristan and Ashley defended you pretty fiercely.”

“And you?”

“I just want to figure out what needs to be figured out,” I said. “So everyone’s happy and healthy, and the team stays together and positive overall. I shared some of the good stuff I know of.”

“Did he mention the old lady?”

“I’m not sure.”

“She was on the internet and she wanted a replacement for her dead daughter and I almost went with her, and then later we started thinking she killed her daughter. Embarrassing.”

“That did come up.”

“And how I fell asleep watching TV on my friend’s couch?”

“That didn’t, I don’t think.”

“Super embarrassing,” she said. “And my foster parents?”

“Very briefly.”

She nodded. She smiled. “Thanks for telling me.”

I put my hand on the back of her chair and spun her in circles, my arm passing over her head on each rotation. “Sveta’s on her way. I think the others are mostly getting sorted out. With Rain hiding out, they’re resting up and getting prepped. Did you get the email?”

“I had my phone taken away. I’m supposed to go to the principal’s office with my mom or dad tomorrow if I want it back.”

“I suspected it was something like that,” I said. I smiled. “Less emails, and no using your phone in school unless it’s an emergency. Houndstooth is going to make a move late this afternoon.”

Kenzie put her hand out and stopped herself from spinning.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“He doesn’t want to see me or say hi?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“He probably had a good excuse. He’s good at those. It took me a while to figure out.”

“He doesn’t want to tip off the villains about his relationship to us.”

“It makes sense,” Kenzie said.

“Do you want help with homework while we wait? And you can eat your lunch?” I asked. “If that nervousness has eased up.”

“I’ll eat,” she said. “Help with homework would be a good way to kill the time, too.”

“Perfect,” I said.

I stepped away to look at the whiteboards while Kenzie got ready.

Her voice small and quiet, I heard Kenzie remark, “At least I get to see him on camera.”

Shade – 4.5

I watched over the group.

We were getting settled in. Tables were moved, whiteboards arranged, and chairs put together. It was starting to look more like a hideout. Sveta was doing her name in a fancy script on her board, Kenzie was doing homework, and I had plugged my laptop in, with my notes up, but it wasn’t my focus in the moment.

Byron had taken his turn. Two hours and fifteen minutes after we’d parted ways, Tristan was back at the hideout. He’d taken off his black jacket and folded it over the back of a chair, and was doing some of the setup stuff, while wearing a red t-shirt, jeans, and chukka boots. He was athletic, and I remembered Byron hadn’t given me that impression when I’d seen him.

“Hey Tristan,” I said.

He’d moved over to his whiteboard, and stepped back and away to look my way.

“Hey, what do you think?” he asked. He extended a hand, indicating his work: he had sketched out a rough floor plan of the room. The area was an open-concept apartment, a bathroom closed off, the rest of it without walls, which gave us our room to maneuver, and it looked like Tristan was trying to figure out where the other things we needed might go. A list of bullet points said ‘cot’, ‘mini fridge’, and ‘team sign’.

I frowned a bit as I saw that last one.

“Team sign?” I asked.

“Sure. I figured it would be good for morale. We could have Sveta paint it and put it up on the wall. Something nice to remind ourselves that we’re a team.”

“I could paint something,” Sveta said, looking away from her work. “I’m kind of anxious to have a name, and we’d have to decide that first.”

“That could be neat,” I said. “My take on reading that was that you wanted to hang the sign outside.”

Tristan smiled. “Something nice and big, colorful, with a by-line saying something about how we’re a covert team of heroes.”

“I wasn’t sure,” I said.

“Believe it or not, I’m not a dumb guy,” he said. “Stubborn, maybe-”

“Definitely,” Kenzie called out, sitting at her desk. She was leaning over her homework.

“Most definitely,” Sveta said.

“Fine. But I’m not dumb. I’m thinking about the things we need to get in terms of things we can fold up or pack away, since we may be moving a lot. We can fold up the cot, I can carry a mini fridge, these tables have legs that can fold up to the underside, and for the sign, I was picturing getting three separate canvases and having us put them up there so it connects or lines up.”

“Could work,” I said.

“Three part name?” Sveta asked.

“No idea,” Tristan said. “Sorry, Vic, you were going to say something?”

“I was going to ask if you train, or if the extra strength is from the powers. Biokinesis or whichever.”

“I train,” Tristan said. “I was just thinking of setting up a punching bag or something, actually.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“I usually end up with restless energy to burn. I lift, I run on the treadmill, and I had a class I took with Reach, but obviously it’s been a while. Works with my enhanced strength.”

“So it does help, then.”

“You look like you do something,” Tristan said.

“I do,” I said. “Or I did. I don’t have access to my dad’s equipment or the stuff I had while helping out with the Patrol Block.”

“Does it help? Powerwise?”

I shook my head. “Forcefield derived strength. I’m strong enough to tear apart an engine block with my hands. That wouldn’t change if I didn’t get off the couch and weighed three hundred pounds or if I was a bodybuilder.”

“Why bother if you can tear apart engine blocks?” Tristan asked.

“Why do I walk when I could fly? I’d atrophy, for one thing, and I can’t always use my strength. I don’t have the control to do something more delicate. I- I honestly don’t trust my power, a lot of the time.”

Sveta came to stand beside me, to get a look at Tristan’s idea of a finished floor plan and join the conversation.

“…There’s a middle ground, and I’d like to be able to function in it,” I finished.

“It’s kind of where I’m at,” Sveta said. “Except I’m not trying to find a middle ground between one hundred miles an hour and a standstill. I’m using this body to bring myself to a point five percent of the way between zero and a thousand miles an hour.”

“Vroom,” Kenzie said, without turning to look at us.

She’d been just a little subdued.

“And it doesn’t change, then. It is what it is?” Tristan asked. “For both of you, I guess?”

“Yeah,” Sveta said. “Or- I don’t know, but I’m strong enough. I’m not going to go try to figure out what I can do to make these things stronger.”

As Tristan glanced at me, I made a rectangle with my fingers. “It’s complicated. It fluctuates. I could name some terms and things that apply there, but I don’t want to bore you.”

“I’ve been bored enough times. I know a lot of the terms. Sechen ranges?”

“That’s one of them. Powers often get stronger with certain influencing factors. You read up on that?”

“We did a ton of testing with Reach, and we saw a lot of parahuman science people while we were trying to figure out a solution. They think it’s a straight multiplier. I have one point three to one point six times the strength and overall fitness.”

“Handy,” I said. “And Byron?”

“A bit of resistance to temperature extremes. He gets a higher percent, he’d probably remember his specific numbers better than I do, but unless it’s winter or we’re dealing with a heat wave, it doesn’t apply as often.”

“On the note of Byron… the second part to my question is, how does the exercise thing work for Byron? Because exercise is monotonous enough when you’re getting something out of it.”

“He commented on that a while ago, actually. We negotiated something. He made a short list of movies, and I watch his movies while I work out. Similar thing with the trips here and back. I sometimes give him extra time, especially if I have something to think about, which is most times these days.”

“That sounds pretty good.”

“Wasn’t always good,” Tristan said. “Moonsong had some things right, back at the Wardens’ place. I wasn’t always good at being fair. It went the other way, Byron-”

Tristan stopped there.

“I won’t finish that thought. Byron is Byron, and I’m me, and I’ve got to own my shit without comparing. I wasn’t always good at being fair,” Tristan said. “I’m good at a lot of things. I can kick ass and look pretty great while doing it, I’m tenacious, I tend to finish what I set my mind to. But fair is hard.”

“It is,” I said.

“It’s hard enough figuring out how to be fair to ourselves,” Sveta said.

“Too true,” I said. I glanced over at Kenzie.

“Punching bag?” Tristan asked. He pointed at the corner, next to Chris’ whiteboard. “I don’t need to do anything special for you guys?”

“Regular punching bag for me,” I said. “I’ll use it. It’s going to be a chore to move if we change locations, though.”

“Noted,” Tristan said. “Maybe we should all get one pain-in-the-ass contribution to the hideout and this can be mine.”

“I’ve already got mine,” Kenzie said, from the other end of the room. She kicked her box and the images projected on the wall changed.

“Bag’s good,” I said, as I started walking over. “No objection.”

I approached Kenzie. The image was projected onto the wall in front of her, moving between the two cameras. An addition had been made, and as each person walked down the street, stylized crosshairs tracked their faces. Most had logos and names. A lot of them were just things in the vein of ‘[New31]’ with the number changing, not names.

One of the cameras moved. It focused in on a scene where two people wearing aprons were smoking by the back stairs of a restaurant. The little space between four buildings didn’t really qualify as an alley, as it looked like back doors and fire escapes were the only way to get down to the area. An enclave, maybe. The camera moved until it tracked a person in costume. The guy’s mask looked like it covered all but a third of his face, the bottom right of his jaw and the top left of his forehead exposed, with ceramic shards framing each ‘hole’. Curved metal bars reminiscent of piping extended around to the back of his head, holding the mask in place.

The camera seemed to recognize the mask, and labeled him as ‘[Kitchen Sink]’. We’d seen him before, but the label thing was new.

Off to the side, as part of a sidebar with data and labels, there were a series of countdown timers.

HT & Team: 8:21

Ashley Train to Station: 0:45
Average Ash Walk Time: 4:10

When I stood behind Kenzie’s chair, I saw that even with a dozen workbooks and pieces of homework strewn in front of her, she wasn’t doing her schoolwork. She had a projected image in front of her, drawn out in three dimensions, with the same image drawn on a paper in front of her in marker. The lines of the three dimensional image looked similar to a marker’s. With gestures and prods of a pen, Kenzie adjusted the particulars.

“What do you think?” she asked. She used her hands, gesturing, and made it bigger. Turning around in her chair, bringing the drawn object with her, she moved her hands and superimposed the image over her head.

A mask, or a helmet. Eyeless, in a way, with a flat pane extending from the eyes, over her nose, down to a pointed chin. Three round lenses were placed along the line of her eyebrows, one round lens was on each cheekbone, and she had two spherical attachments, much like the buns she tended to wear her hair in. Probably intended to fit over the buns.

“I like it better than the one you wore for the training exercise,” I said. “It does make me think of a spider, with all of the eyes.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“I don’t think you make me think ‘spider’ at all. It’s a bit too inhuman. What if… can I draw? I don’t want to ruin your drawing.”

“Go ahead. Use my pen. Squint one eye when you want it to draw.”

The countdown timers marked Ashley’s departure from the train. The ‘walk time’ timer was highlighted and started counting down.

I tried my hand at drawing little triangles at the side of each of the round lenses. A tiny triangle to represent eyelashes.

“Oh, cute!” Kenzie said. “Can you draw a second, smaller one? And leave off the eyelashes on the cheekbones, because I’m doing something different there, and-”

“Here,” I said. I passed her the pen.

She began to change things, keeping all but two of the eyelashes I’d drawn.

Someone labeled ‘[Joe]’ walked down the street, a bag slung over his shoulder. He entered the same bar I’d encountered Moose outside of. The one where Snag and Love Lost had gone inside.

I looked at some of the other names.

“Fifi?” I asked.

“Huh?” Kenzie asked. She looked up, and I pointed at a blonde girl with hair that looked like she’d just about destroyed it with bleaching. Frizzed out to the point I doubted she could get a comb through it. She’d resorted to using a headband and hair tie to try to get it in order. The headband and hair tie didn’t match her outfit.

“Oh. She looked like a Fifi. I named some of the ones I see a lot.”

“She does look vaguely poodle-ish, and Fifi seems like a poodle name to me.”

“Exactly,” Kenzie said, with satisfaction. She returned to writing down something that looked like code and formula, periodically poking her pen at her projected image of her mask.

I looked at ‘Fifi’. “Poor her. When I was a little younger than you are now, I tried dying my hair to be like my cousin, and it went badly. I was so inconsolable.”

“What happened after?” Kenzie asked.

“My mom hired a professional to get me back to normal, and it was mostly fixed. We bought some products to keep my hair from ending up like that after. I can’t imagine the professional or the products were cheap, and we were pretty tight on cash back then. She knew it was important to me.”

My heart hurt a little, thinking of that.

“That’s the way it should be,” Kenzie said.

“Yeah,” I said.

She turned my way, putting on the projected helmet so it was superimposed over her head. When she took her hands away and moved her head, the helmet moved with her head.

Now, though, the eyes of the mask widened and closed, as camera-like shutters closed around the edges. The eyelashes moved up and down a little, and shutters moved in lopsided ways, with only some of the shutters closing. Coming down from the top, curved forward, angry. Coming in from the bottom.

“Are you changing your expression?”

“Yes! It worked. Awesome. Okay, and let’s try this.”

Her eyelashes moved, until one was pointing straight up, one was pointing straight down. The eyes all briefly turned white.

“I think that worked. White eyes and… targeting mode?”

“Not targeting mode. I could build something like the flash gun into it. I can strike a pose and do the eye thing, like they’re crosshairs, and flash. There’d probably only be room for one shot. Okay, colors-”

She tapped her pen on her desk. The mask changed from shades of gray to pink and sky blue. I winced, and she immediately changed to the next. Seafoam green and black. Through each change, the circles at her cheekbones remained a slightly different shade, more muted.

“Something less garish, maybe?” I asked. “That one looks a little villainous. Cute, but villainous.”

She tapped her pen a few times, then made a mark on the paper.

Lemon-lime and dark gray, with green-gray circles for the cheekbones.

“Better.”

“Ooh, I know a thing. I can do a thing.”

She turned, and she started scribbling. She seemed energized.

But as she turned, the image at one of her cheekbones broke up, becoming transparent, like a few squares had been cut out of the image. It flickered as I moved my head to view it at another angle.

“You’ve got a distortion,” I said. I pointed.

“Silly me,” she said.

The entire helmet disappeared.

“Something similar happened when your picture was taken at the Warden’s HQ,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“You’re wearing a projection?”

“Not really,” she said. She scribbled. “I’m wearing tech, and it conflicts with stuff so it can be hard to coordinate. I wouldn’t call it wearing.”

“No?”

“Wearing makes me think full-body, or covering my head and I mean, I had that costume thing for the training, and that didn’t last that long. How could or would I wear something else and have it last all day or whatever? I mean, I wish I could.”

“I wish I could,” I said. I didn’t want to press or be harsh, but I didn’t want to let this lie either. I went easy, instead. “I’m slightly concerned if you’re using projections like that.”

“I’m not that devious,” Kenzie said. “I wouldn’t bring something and pretend to have a short battery life so I can hide that I have a longer battery life for something else I’m secretly using. That’s not what I do and that’s not how I am.”

“I know,” I said. “I don’t get the impression you’re devious or that you’d go to those lengths.”

Kenzie looked up at the clock.

Average Ash Walk Time: -1:13

“She’ll turn up,” I said.

“I know. I just want her here before Houndstooth calls,” Kenzie said. “One second.”

She kicked the cube. It went dark, and the camera image dropped away.

“Victoria!” Tristan called me from the far end of the room.

“What?”

“Can we use your computer?”

“Yeah.”

Tristan and Sveta gathered together at my computer, Tristan’s hands at the keyboard.

“The tech you’re wearing. The distortions. I want to make sure you’re taking care of yourself. That you don’t have dark circles under your eyes, or bruises, or anything like that.”

She turned her head to look at me over her shoulder and smiled. “It’s off. I turned my tech off to synchronize everything across all fields. This is me.”

She showed me her phone, where the progress bar was filling up.

“Gotcha,” I said.

“I know Houndstooth said stuff. I think he said it in a caring way because he’s one of the best guys out there. True blue hero, like Weld. Like you.”

I was reminded of how I’d handled Presley on the train. I’d recognized how she’d needed me to be more than human, because she idolized me, she’d seen me as something to reach for.

I wondered if Kenzie wanted me to be the same thing.

“I don’t know if I am. I’m pretty angry about things. I’m… really concerned about a lot of things. Negative emotions drive an awful lot of what I do.”

The lock on the door clicked. Ashley let herself in, then locked it behind her. She smiled at Kenzie and me, then gave the other two a small salute.

Kenzie had visibly brightened at Ashley’s appearance.

“The things you do are good,” Kenzie said. “At least as far as I’ve seen and researched.”

She researched me.

“And I think that’s what counts,” Kenzie said.

“It’s nuanced.”

“If Houndstooth sat you down to tell you about me and he didn’t say I’m bad at nuance, he screwed up,” Kenzie said. “And he doesn’t screw up.”

The projector box lit up, and the video image popped back up. Kenzie’s phone changed from the progress bar, and her helmet reappeared, floating just over the paper where it had been drawn.

“Roughly one minute until Houndstooth!” Kenzie reported.

“Got it,” Tristan said.

Ashley approached, standing by Kenzie’s chair, and laid a hand on Kenzie’s left shoulder.

“You good?” I asked.

“Working hands. No pain. We’re still working with this cretin?”

“Cretin?” Kenzie asked.

“Houndstooth,” Ashley said. “He didn’t impress me.”

“Okay, wow. Let me start by saying you impress me,” Kenzie said, looking up at Ashley. “I love those videos you’re in, and I loved seeing you train. You’re awesome. And you’re totally, one hundred percent wrong, this once. Because Houndstooth is awesome and impressive too.”

“Houndstooth’s concerns seemed to come from a well-intentioned, good place,” I said, interjecting. Kenzie’s head whipped around to look at me over her other shoulder. I added, “And despite that, he seemed to come to some extreme conclusions. There’s nuance, between where you’re coming from and where you end up. Like we were just talking about.”

“When I called him a cretin I was being gentle. He’s a disgusting, disappointing, subnormal excuse for a hero, cape, or human being.”

“I will fight you over this,” Kenzie said.

“You’d lose.”

“I will go to war with you. Houndstooth was one of the coolest people to me at one of my uncoolest times.”

Tristan and Sveta had noticed things were a little hairy and were approaching at a jog. I interjected, saying, “We might want to drop this. Let the topic lie.”

“No,” Kenzie said. “Not if she’s going to say anything more like what she just said.”

“He talked about you like you were nothing more than a problem.”

“I am a problem!” Kenzie said, raising her voice.

“Easy,” I said. Tristan and Sveta joined us.

“I’m a problem,” Kenzie said, quieter. “I was.”

“You’re more than the problem,” Ashley said. “That waste of space didn’t-”

“Do you want to go to war?” Kenzie asked, rising out of her seat. “I can build an army of camera drones. I have advantage in the air. I have battlefield awareness. And I’ll fight you on this until you explode me all over the place or you say you’re wrong about him. Don’t say bad things about him. Not when he’s someone that counts. Not when you’re someone that counts. Okay?”

Sveta reached out and pushed Kenzie back down into her seat. Tristan was closer to Ashley, facing her, ready to get between the two.

“Kenzie,” Sveta said. “Ashley’s coming from a good place here.”

“I know that,” Kenzie said. “I also know that Houndstooth is.”

“You’re better than he makes you out to be. You can’t put so much faith in the words of someone who so clearly knows so little,” Ashley said.

Kenzie shook her head, smiling like she couldn’t believe the conversation she was a part of.

“He’s weak, and he’s a loser. He’s the lowest of the low.”

The phone trilled with a rising series of beeps. The projected image on the screen showed the person calling: Houndstooth.

Kenzie leaped forward, swatting aside Sveta’s hand and dodging mine. She grabbed the front of Ashley’s top, and hauled it down, making Ashley bend down.

Ashley’s hand moved, and Tristan grabbed her wrist, stopping it from going wherever it was going to go. He grabbed Kenzie with the other hand, ready to pull her away if need be.

“Woah,” Tristan said.

I moved closer, putting my hands on Kenzie’s shoulders, freeing Tristan to focus more on Ashley.

So small. Her shoulders were narrow.

Kenzie raised her free hand, and pressed it against Ashley’s mouth, so her fingers were on either side of Ashley’s nose. Had her fingers been longer, the tips and nails might have been near Ashley’s eyes.

“Don’t say anything,” Kenzie said.

The phone trilled its beeps again.

“Please don’t say anything. Please.”

There was a pause, silence.

The phone spat out its series of beeps.

“Please let this go okay,” Kenzie said. “That will do more than anything.”

The silence hung. The phone could only ring so many times.

Kenzie started to smile, and the smile faltered. “Please? I’ll do anything.”

Ashley straightened, pulling away from Kenzie’s hands. She turned away, folding her arms.

The rest of us relaxed. Kenzie, too, turned away, stepping away from my hands. She grabbed the phone off the table and tossed it to Tristan.

The phone was mid-ring when Tristan answered.

“Sorry about the delay. Capricorn here. Four of the six members of the team are here, and our coach is here too,” Tristan said. He backed up a few steps, until Ashley was in front of him, facing him. “I think we’re going to put you on speakerphone if that’s okay.”

Ashley nodded once.

“Great,” Tristan said. A response for both Houndstooth and Ashley, it seemed.

Kenzie hit a key.

“Hello again,” Houndstooth said. “I’ve got my team here, and we’re north of Cedar Point. We’re getting sorted out, costumes already on, but there’s other stuff to do. Minions to summon, ammo to load. I’m really hoping that none of it is needed.”

“Same here,” Tristan said. “We’ve been keeping an eye on things and I think it’s pretty quiet right now.”

“Perfect.”

I raised my hand a bit to signal I was going to speak, then stepped forward a bit. “Victoria here. I think there are three villains-”

Kenzie’s hand went up, four fingers extended.

“Four villains out and about around the city. A few left on a road trip earlier in the afternoon. There are also a couple you’ll want to be aware of.”

“Anything you can give us is great.”

Kenzie hit a key. The camera moved to Kitchen Sink, with his ceramic mask.

“Kitchen Sink. He’s the closest to you, big, minor brute aspect, but his thing is he acts as a blaster. Long and sustained series of junk being thrown at high velocities. Everything but the kitchen sink, as the saying goes.”

“That’s so bad a schtick it’s great,” a voice on the line said. One of Houndstooth’s subordinates, feminine-sounding.

“He’s in the company of Hookline. Minor mover, has a hundred-foot long cable he telekinetically controls. It can’t be broken or damaged, short of some very select powers, and it will shake off or slip free of a lot of things that would snag or impede another weapon. Frost, hands that try to grab it. So don’t try. It moves faster and acts like a whip, so be super careful if a fight happens. There’s a hook on the end, and he’s most dangerous if you’re at or just inside that hundred foot limit of his range where the hook is flying around. Which brings me to my next point.”

“They’re willing to hurt people?” Houndstooth asked.

“Kitchen Sink and Hookline are. They’re part of one clique in Cedar Point that’s more violent than the others. Aggressive, violent, even borderline bloody. They might be acting as enforcers for others.”

“Breaking kneecaps,” Tristan said.

“Got it,” Houndstooth said.

“Hookline and Sink,” the feminine voice said. “Oh my god.”

“Moose seems to be going around between groups, passing on messages or checking on things. Strong brute, something to do with shockwaves. He hits hard, he moves a lot faster than you’d expect from someone that big, and he has decent combat sense. I wish we could give you more information on him, but all I know is from a brief scrap with him.”

“You said the other two might pick a fight. What about this guy?”

“Low odds the other two pick a fight without checking with the leadership, but if someone was to pick a fight, it’d be people from their group. Moose would sooner negotiate or look to talk than fight, and he’d only really fight if he thought he needed to or if he was certain he could win. I think your worry is going to be having something in mind to tell Moose that passes the sniff test.”

“We’re curious what’s going on, the Hill is a mess, and we’re wondering if these are greener pastures than Greenwich.”

Tristan said, “If others are going to show interest, we want to drop a hint. Something that makes them wonder. You could mention sponsorship and a reshuffling of jurisdictions.”

“There’s talk of war,” Sveta interjected. “I know someone who’s having to spend time away, and they’re bringing people in from other teams to fill holes.”

“I heard about that,” Houndstooth said.

“You could use that. It happened with villain communities in the past. A void appears, villains rush to fill it, there’s upheaval, and then things settle.”

She looked at me as she said that last bit.

I’d said something like that at the group therapy meeting, hadn’t I?

“If Moose challenges us, I’ll say something like that.”

“There’s also a woman that’s collecting protection money right now. Bluestocking. From the brainiac clique.”

“These guys are so lame, I love it,” Houndstooth’s subordinate said.

“There’s something to keep in mind,” I said. “These guys congregated here. If something happens, and I don’t know if Moose would let it unless you forced the issue, then you’ll have a lot more in your hair. They’re banding together and as lame as any individual might be, they’re finding a lot of people who match up with them. Thematically or in style.”

“We’re seeing that more in general,” Houndstooth said. “Lots of capes condensed into a relatively tight geographic area.”

“You’re going to see it in effect here. Two clairvoyants are keeping an eye on the area. One of them is a clairaudient, so they’ll have an ear on the area too. I could go into detail, but I think it’s better and easier to just say that once you enter Cedar Point they’re going to be fully aware of everything you say or do. Be careful what you say, and be aware we can’t communicate with you unless it’s an emergency.”

“That also means no mockery or jokes,” Houndstooth said, his voice quieter, like he didn’t have his mouth near the phone. “And as far as we’re concerned, your team doesn’t exist.”

“It would mean a ton if you could be especially careful about that,” Tristan said.

“We’ll be careful,” Houndstooth said. “I trust my guys. Give us a couple of minutes, and we’ll move through, make our faces known. I want to plan what we do if we run into the guys you talked about.”

“Call us again when it’s time,” Tristan said.

“Will do. I like this a lot, good briefing, great intelligence. This is great stuff, guys.”

The call ended.

Tristan huffed out a breath, glancing at Ashley.

“Great stuff, and he likes it,” Kenzie said, quiet. Her legs kicked, just barely scuffing the plastic rim that the wheels of the computer chair stuck down from. “Now I get to see Houndstooth on camera. Wooo.”

Her voice was so quiet it might have sounded unenthusiastic, but the speed her legs kicked at doubled with that last utterance.

“We should get people out there in case things go bad and we need to extract,” Tristan said.

“I can fly out,” I said.

“I’ll go,” Sveta said.

“I can be there in ten minutes if I need to be, maybe as few as five,” Tristan said. “I’ll hold down the fort here until then. Ashley- I’d rather keep you in reserve. If everything falls to pieces, we’ll bring you in to great effect.”

She nodded, and then she walked away, approaching the empty whiteboard that was supposed to be hers. Some of her things were in a bag at the base of the board.

Sveta and I stepped out, and I used my flight to lift up off the fire escape.

“I’m worried about them,” Sveta said. “And I wish there was a flagpole or tree close by I could grab.”

“I can help a bit with that last part,” I said. I rose up and away, then extended a hand.

She shot her hand and arm at me, and I caught it. She pulled herself my way, not at her fastest, but fast enough I felt my heart jump in my chest.

I flew back and away, as she hauled herself in, and matched her general direction. It made for a tiny bit more slack.

She let go of me, and she pulled herself to a tree. From there, she moved to a roof.

Like a frog’s tongue, snapping out, seizing something. But the frog went to the fly, rather than the other way around. To the branch, to the railing, to the fence, then to the chimney.

She was faster than me for short distances, and only a bit slower for the sustained movement. We didn’t have far to go, so she did pretty well at getting ahead of me. Only the escape from the fire escape had slowed her down.

“Hold up,” I called out, as she started to move northward. “Here’s good.”

We parked ourselves near where I’d been the day prior, on a rooftop with the water separating us and Cedar Point.

“I’m glad it’s you and me,” she said.

I bumped her shoulder with mine.

The phone rang. I pulled it from my pocket, connected my earbuds, and put one bud in my ear, one in Sveta’s.

“One camera on H.T., one in Moose’s general vicinity,” Kenzie announced. “The valiant H.T. is leading his team in. Five of them.”

I touched the button on the screen to mute my end of the conversation, so we’d only hear, not say anything.

“We tried to get ahold of Rain and we couldn’t. I’m worried,” Sveta said. “I know he’s impossible to get ahold of when he’s with his family, they’re off the grid but I don’t know.”

The phone flicked between a view of Houndstooth and the villains.

“Today’s the third time Chris chose the optimism-indulgence route in five days, I think.”

“What do you mean? He’s not balancing it out?”

“I asked what he was doing to balance it out and he said I should mind my own business.”

I could see the thread of what Sveta was getting at.

“You’re worried about things as a whole.”

“Aren’t you?” she asked.

I nodded.

Except maybe worry was the wrong word. It implied hand-wringing. Sweating, nervousness.

It wasn’t that I was afraid or that it was worse than worry, either. I was becoming far more aware of the problems, for things as a whole.

“What the mother-loving hell?” Moose’s voice came through the earbuds. It sounded weird, captured by cameras at a great distance, sent to Kenzie, sent to us, passed through the earbuds. He’d just received the news. The video on the phone showed him sending people away on errands. Fetching others.

“We have movement,” Tristan said. “They’re getting organized.”

We watched. I carried on with my conversation with Sveta. “Ashley has had a couple of serious episodes that I’ve seen now. Many lesser episodes, too.”

“Yes.”

“There’s a big part of me that was waiting for the other shoes to drop and that part of me feels… not worse, now that those shoes have dropped,” I said.

“I don’t feel not worse.”

“I can see flashes and hints of what you’re trying to bring out in Ashley,” I admitted. “She’s not someone I would have spent time with, in another context. I don’t know how to handle things when she casually mentions her capacity to murder people, as if it’s a way to win an argument.”

“The threats are usually empty,” Sveta said. “That’s a plus.”

“I want to figure this out,” I said. “I want to help. It’s like Kenzie is a distillation of every vulnerable person I’ve ever tried to help, and Ashley is a distillation of every really fascinating branding exercise where you take a random villain and try to paint them as a hero and even bring out the hero inside them. Tristan and Byron are this really fascinating problem with powers and I’m a power geek and I really wonder if there’s a solution. ”

“How do you parse Rain?” Sveta asked quiet.

“I mean-” I stopped. “I’m doing exactly what Ashley got so angry at Houndstooth for doing. I’m reducing people down to conveniently sized problems. I get that, you know? They aren’t just that. Kenzie is really complex and intelligent, she’s clearly been through a lot, and I one hundred percent believe Houndstooth when he says she’s good hearted. The fact that she clearly adores Ashley and she fought her that hard on things to stand up for someone else she holds close to her heart? That’s amazing. I could say similar things about Ashley, Tristan, Byron.”

Sveta nodded. “And me?”

“I’m so caught up in everything I…” I tried to find the words, and felt a pang. I tried to make sense of that feeling as I said, “I find myself missing you, even though you’re there.”

“I know. We should have talked like this sooner.”

“You’re doing amazing and my biggest fear with you is that I’m going to be an obstruction, not a help.”

“No, I can’t ever see that.”

“I worry. I don’t want to tamper with something that’s working.”

“I need help. I’m anxious, and there are things I need. Not from a teammate, but-”

“From a friend?” I asked.

She nodded, something in her rattling slightly with the movement.

“As one part of that, then, I really want to take you shopping, that needs addressing, because this-”

I touched her top. She was wearing a beige top with a blue anchor on the front. The top was in two pieces, knotted above the shoulder, with smaller bits knotted along her sides.

“This is cute, but I really want to see more sides of you.”

“I want you to take me shopping too,” she said.

I reached for her hand, and I gave it a waggle.

“I’m thinking about Rain a lot,” Sveta said.

“He has me worried. Not just because of the hit out on his head. But because he’s not telling the truth about everything. The lies make sense, it seems to make sense to hide things when in his situation. But I’m not getting to see that good side of him either. So for now, I want to help him. But my motivations are somewhat selfish. My hometown got wiped out by a seemingly insurmountable, inevitable, unstoppable force. We lost. I- I don’t think I ever fully came back from those losses.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“And now we have Rain being targeted by a seemingly insurmountable, inevitable, unstoppable force. I’m being selfish, but I want to help him and get a win this time around.”

“I don’t think that’s selfish.”

“My entire hero career before the hospital and the years leading up to that career were a fantasy or exercise in me having powers and being a hero, and I’m not sure I was ever heroic about it. I just see that past me as wholly motivated in selfishness, ego, pride, and a drive to be celebrated.”

“I don’t think it’s selfish,” Sveta said. “You’re not that. You’re here, doing this. You’re helping.”

“The ends justify the… possible justifications?” I asked. “I just had this conversation with Kenzie. I’m not sure it’s a good thing if I’m having it again.”

“It’s where your head and heart are at.”

I shrugged, looking at the video feed.

Moose and Prancer were meeting up. Prancer had two friends with him. On the other feed, the heroes were walking through the neighborhood. Talking to shop owners and residents. Sink and Hookline watched from the sidelines, Houndstooth’s subordinates hanging back and watching them in turn.

“Where are you at?” I asked.

“Weld has been telling me things about what’s going on elsewhere. Things he shouldn’t be telling me, but I think a lot of it is the kind of thing like a husband with a certain position might tell his wife, sometimes, even when those things are confidential.”

“Wife?” I asked. I raised an eyebrow.

“Shut up,” Sveta said, lifting her chin a bit, looking mock-affronted. “Not another word about that.”

“You’re the one who said the word.”

“Anyway,” Sveta said. “I can’t repeat those things, but I worry more than I used to. I get anxious. There’s a part of everyone else in the group in me, and when they struggle it feels like I’m struggling.”

“I can sort of relate to that.”

“I need people and I scare them away. Tristan told me what Houndstooth said. None of it’s too surprising. There are people who know a dangerous amount about me and I think they’d hurt me if they had a chance. I’m a killer. I’m constantly at war with another side of myself. I’m perpetually off balance and I don’t know if I’ll ever have that balance.”

“That kinship might be why you’re able to connect to the others.”

“Don’t say it. Don’t sound like Weld.”

“It’s true,” I said. “You’re the team’s mom.”

“Oh no,” Sveta said. “That’s so much worse than what I thought you were going to say. I thought you were going to call me the team’s heart, like Weld does. I can’t be a mother. No!”

I was about to respond, but Sveta reached up with a hand. Her prosthetic finger tapped the side of the phone.

Moose and Prancer. They’d wrangled three others. I didn’t recognize any of the three. Bluestocking was way off to the side, just barely in earshot. Almost half of Houndstooth’s group had turned around and were keeping an eye on Hookline and Kitchen Sink.

“What brings you here?” Prancer asked.

“Passing through,” Houndstooth said.

“To where? This is a peninsula. It’s why Hollow Point is a point.”

Houndstooth shrugged, radiating smug, a lack of concern.

“The Kings of the Hill. You’re a long way away from where you normally hang out.”

“Changing times. Some other people might be looking to take over the Hill.”

“That doesn’t explain why you’re here,” Prancer said.

“Maybe they want to be Kings of the Point,” Moose said.

“There’s nothing to be gained here,” Prancer said. “It’ll take you twice as long and five times as many fights to get half as far.”

Houndstooth laughed. One or two members of his group were almost simultaneous in laughing as well, but Houndstooth was louder, more confident, and probably the focus of the camera’s microphone, to boot.

The villains shifted their footing. There were no laughs. They didn’t seem impressed.

Houndstooth explained. “You’re aware you just described an uphill battle to a group called Kings of the Hill?”

“Then you should know all the better,” Prancer said. The force of the response was hampered a bit by the fact that Houndstooth’s group was chuckling again.

Points to Houndstooth, he was doing pretty well here. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen him interact with someone and not really have the presence or power to stand up to the people he was facing down.

“What a theme. The hunting hound, nipping at the fleeing deer’s heels,” Houndstooth said.

“If you’re going to nip, I’m going to gore,” Prancer said. “You’re not going to come out ahead in this.”

“Yeah?” Houndstooth asked. “Would you like to have a little skirmish right here? Your eight to our five. Or are you going to let us pass through?”

“You can’t pass through,” Prancer said, exasperated. “Its a peninsula. You can turn around and go back the way you came, though.”

Houndstooth chuckled. He put a hand on a teammate’s shoulder, and turned the guy around. The five members of his group turned to go.

“Faster response,” I said. I touched the button on the phone to unmute myself. “I’d like to keep a camera on Prancer’s group. I want to see their response.”

“That’s the plan,” Tristan’s voice came through.

A few seconds passed, as Houndstooth’s team headed back the way they’d come.

“I’m not a mom,” Sveta said.

“Okay,” I said.

There was conversation on the phone.

“I don’t want them in here,” Hookline said. “Fuck that.”

“We don’t know what they’re doing,” Prancer said. “It’s fine. Go easy.”

“They made a mockery of us.”

“They made a mockery of themselves,” Prancer said.

“I think you’re the only one that’s dwelling on the peninsula thing,” Velvet said.

“We’re fine,” Prancer said.

“Were they related to the blonde, Victoria?” Moose asked. “Pretty much the first thing I said to her was that she’d end up outnumbered and having to skedaddle. Someone hears that, they might call friends.”

“They’re still outnumbered,” Velvet pointed out.

Prancer replied, “I don’t know, Moose, but yes, we will always have the numbers advantage. For now I’m content to wait and see what happens. If they move in, we have the resources to answer them. Bluestocking? Can you tell Bitter Pill I want to talk to her about her team? I want to keep a closer eye on things.”

“I can,” the woman with glasses said. The one that had been collecting protection money.

“We’ll be fine,” Prancer said.

“What I’m wondering,” Kitchen Sink said, “Could this have to do with the truck of-”

“Shut up this very second,” Prancer said.

There was silence.

“No,” Prancer said, “I doubt it does, and you shouldn’t talk business unless we’re inside with the Speedrunners or Caveat helping to ensure things are private.”

“You’re doing a lot of talking,” Sink said. “But I’m thinking you’re not doing a lot of doing. Those guys walked in and walked out. They might come back and they’ll be a headache. Speaking as someone who’s been collecting rent-”

“If you want to talk business, you do it inside,” Prancer said.

“-it’s going to impact that,” Sink said. “We have to explain. You have to explain, really, because I’m saying fuck this conversation.”

He punched Hookline lightly in the shoulder, gestured. The pair of them turned to walk away.

“Cracks and clues,” Tristan’s voice could be heard over the phone.

“And two of the locals following Houndstooth’s group,” Kenzie reported. “They’re aiming to catch up.”

I took off. I paused in the air, hand out.

Sveta sent out her hand. With the wind currents above the water, the hand moved off-course. I flew over to catch it in the same moment she flexed her tendrils and sent the hand to where I’d been.

We coordinated, I caught her hand before it dropped into the water, and she pulled herself to me. She had a silly smile on her face when she drew close.

“We’ll work on that,” I said.

I flew over the water. When we reached the first tall building, I dropped Sveta, before changing course again.

She went low to the ground, pulling herself straight to the street level. I flew high, to the point where Birdbrain shouldn’t have a high enough perspective to see me, much like with Kenzie’s high-flying cameras.

I retrieved my phone. “Do we act?”

“Act,” Tristan said.

I drew closer.

Hookline’s hook was out, and Kitchen Sink had a machete in one hand and a gallon tank of probably-kerosene in the other. He kept the large red plastic can, tossed away the machete, tossed away the textbook, tossed away the manhole cover-

I was guessing, hoping they wanted to count coup, injure and disappear.

It didn’t seem terribly bright. I didn’t want to let them count coup or do worse. We’d made a pledge to Houndstooth’s group.

Sveta’s hands appeared out of nowhere, grabbing Hookline by the ankles. He fell hard on the initial tug, and was then dragged beneath a parked car.

The hook moved, lashing out. It caught on the corner of a building, Hookline’s attempt to haul himself free.

My focus in the moment was on Kitchen Sink.

I landed so I was a foot behind him, pushing out with my aura.

“Run,” I said.

He turned, wheeling around with hand drawn back, a rather large, full bottle of alcohol gripped by the neck-

I smashed my forehead into his nose. When he didn’t immediately go down, I did it again. I didn’t give him a chance to recover from there. My forcefield was down throughout the process, as I stayed within a foot of him, my aura buzzing with the range pulled closer to me, active and focused on him.

I could fly, so I didn’t need footing. I used it when I had it, to give a little more oomph when I punched him in the stomach, but at the times I would have needed to pause to get my feet in the right places under me, flight drove me forward. Punch, knee to his stomach, a shove against his shoulder, as he drew the connected arm back to swing with the bottle or use his power to throw it point-blank.

He realized he couldn’t draw either weapon back, and dropped the plastic jug, jabbing at me instead. He hit me in the ribs, and it hurt.

I hit him in the nose, and I was willing to bet it hurt more.

He realized what was happening, and compensated with an exaggerated step back, anticipating he’d be pushed away, the foot would arrest that movement.

I brought my hand close to his face as I flew up, and he shielded it.

He was trying not to fall down, but with his feet planted far apart-

I flew down, my foot striking on his thigh, close to the pelvis. It forced him into awkward almost-splits.

My hand on the back of his head, I pushed his face down toward the road. He didn’t try to stop the movement with his arms out, instead folding his around his face, to shield it.

The impact was hard, elbows striking the road, and from the sound he made, his nose hit the arms that were around his face, and that hurt enough.

Sveta had moved across the street. She stayed low, and her hand snaked out, snatching for Hookline’s ankles, trying to once again drag him beneath the vehicle, forcing him to clamber or squeeze out.

As I landed on a car roof, intentionally making a sound, he glanced back at me. His face was bound in ripcord or something like it, with a gap for his eyes. It pulled his teeth back so they stood out, perpetually bared.

At least he brushed.

The distraction meant Sveta could get a hold on him. He stabbed an engine block with the hook, to try to arrest his movement, hands on the chain.

I walked over to the hook, and slapped it free. By all rights, I should have destroyed it, but his thing was that he made his weapon invincible, untouchable.

He tried to catch me with it, but Sveta had him and the hook didn’t reach out as fast as Sveta pulled him beneath a dusty construction vehicle.

I collected a mailbox and a pallet of construction material, and set to blocking off his exits, so he would be stuck beneath the truck until someone got him out.

There were others approaching already.

The fastest of them arrived. Moose. Love Lost. A mismatched pair.

Sveta put out her hand, not extending her arm, and I caught it, clasping her wrist as she clasped mine.

Braindead and Birdbrain had no doubt clued in the local villains. They would also let people know what Hookline and Sink had been intent on doing.

Others sounded like they were just around the corner.

I glanced at Love Lost. The woman who wanted to kill Rain. Who wanted to torture him to death.

Rage. Anger. Hate.

There was so much I didn’t know about that scenario, but I could see that the sentiment was very much real.

Her claw went to her mask. I had just about no interest in seeing what she could do. I flew skyward and out of reach, bringing Sveta with me.

Hopefully, for just a little bit longer, we would leave them wondering who we were.

Shade – Interlude 4b

Rain climbed down from the back of the pickup truck, slinging his bag over his shoulder with the contents rattling. Two older guys departed at the same time. The truck puttered as Rain walked around to the driver’s side door. He handed over some bills. The inside of the truck was choked with the smell of cigarettes, and the man at the wheel was partially obscured in the dark and smoke, his features lit by the changing colors of the radio display.

“Thank you,” he said. He didn’t sound like himself.

He only got a grunt in response. The driver counted the money before putting it aside.

The two older guys approached the window, one of them with a twenty-four pack of beer that looked badly weathered, as if it had sat out in the rain for a month. It was the other that went to the window to pay.

With the settlement being so off the beaten track, the only way to get in and out was to either have a working vehicle or to pay someone to make the drive. Rain was pretty sure that his comings and goings were being reported to people higher up the food chain.

He didn’t have alternatives, not unless Erin gave him a ride.

He kept his head down and made the walk along the side of the road. Here and there, the packed dirt was loose, not held together by weeds or grass, and his footing slipped. It made the walk a trudge.

It was late, and houses were lit by candle and lamps. Across the field, a tall bonfire blazed. The two guys with the beer were making their way there, climbing over a fence to take the shortest path possible. Were Rain to visit, he’d see people like Jay. Old enough to mess around and get into trouble, but not yet married. There had been a time when he’d wanted to be one of the older boys at those little parties.

Were he to visit, he’d be grudgingly welcomed. He’d be expected to laugh at the jokes, to agree with the things said, to play along. He would be expected to take the ribbing and jokes at his expense, and there would be a lot. He would be expected to keep to the unspoken contract. Adults let those kinds of gatherings happen because the people who attended played along. They didn’t complain too much when it came time to do something with or for the sake of the community. The tribe. The gang.

Rain walked, well aware he’d let the day, afternoon and early evening slip away from him. He’d left the others and caught a train, and he’d been unable to bring himself to come back here. ‘Home’.

Jittery nervousness had transformed into a dull feeling of dread. That dread leeched into and through him like a poison, as if his realization about his high chance of dying had transformed into something that made him feel like he was being eaten alive, being killed by the dread.

He would have thrown up, if he weren’t so tense that he wasn’t sure he could bend over and bring himself to.

He pushed himself forward. Erin’s house was the next one, and there was light in the window. He trudged onward, the earth at the side of the road giving way beneath his feet, as he sank in, pulled himself up and forward, then sank again in a few steps later.

He would have walked in the middle of the road, but Jay’s group was out there at the fire drinking, and Rain didn’t trust them or many of the others to have headlights on and their eyes on the road.

Erin was there, sitting at her window on the second floor. She was keeping an eye out for him, still wearing the shirt with the cross on the front from earlier. The light from her television cast the shadows around her in various shades of green.

She raised a hand in a wave as he drew close enough for the light from the house’s windows to illuminate him. He raised his own hand.

With the house being at the end of a path, and Erin being on the second floor, her voice was almost inaudible as she asked something. She pointed with him as she asked it, then raised her hand in a barely-visible ok sign.

Was he okay?

Rain stood a very real chance of dying.

He was standing there, not responding, his thoughts tearing through his brain. He had options but none of them were options. If he went to the Wardens for help he would become embroiled in something bigger, because he knew things and he’d be expected to share those things. The Fallen would target him and there was no guarantee the Wardens could keep him safe. There was a chance it would push away Erin and pull him away from the group, as he was taken to safe custody and expected to testify. There was a chance the revelation would mean Victoria pushed him away, or Sveta did, or even Chris or Kenzie.

He could share with the group, but for many of the same reasons he couldn’t go to the Wardens, there would be a price. Things would change.

The person online- no guarantees.

Mrs. Yamada – she could offer support, she could help him ask others for help, but there was a limit to what she could do.

Erin repeated the question, calling it across to Rain.

A moment later, she put her book, down, holding her hand out. Telling him to wait.

“I’m okay!” he called out. He wasn’t.

Erin reversed direction and put her head out the window. In the background, one of her parents- her mom, it looked like, stepped into her room, standing behind her.

Rain raised a hand in a wave, and Erin’s mom waved back.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow!” Rain called out.

“Yeah!” Erin replied.

Rain adjusted his bag at his shoulder, then resumed the trudge. The false normal and the lie that he was okay was something that felt almost real, he could hold to it for a short while.

Not for the entire way back. When he did arrive at the edge of the property, with its hastily constructed house, the fenced in yard, and the stable, with a field stretching out behind it, the dread, at least, seemed less pointed.

The knowledge he might die sat heavily, all the same.

He let himself into the house and put his bag by the stairs. Everyone was in the kitchen. His uncle was looking over the paper from earlier in the day. Allie had a crossword and dictionary, and Rain’s aunt was engaged in what seemed like her neverending stream of tidying-up and tending to the property.

“Sorry I’m late,” Rain said.

“It’s fine,” his aunt said. “Did you eat?”

Rain shook his head.

“Food’s on the stove if you want it. If you don’t, let me know so I can put the leftovers away.”

Rain got a bowl from the cupboard and approached the stove.

“You look like lukewarm shit, Rain,” Allie said.

Rain’s aunt smacked Allie across the back of the head, hard enough that when Allie bent forward, she stayed like that for a few long seconds.

“He does,” Allie said.

“I probably do look like shit,” Rain said.

“Doesn’t mean she needs to say it,” Rain’s aunt said. She gave Allie a lighter slap on the back of the head, while Allie was still bent over her crossword.

Rain hadn’t yet ladled the stew into his bowl.

He couldn’t do nothing. He needed… As horrible as this situation was, as horrible as each new thing he learned seemed to make the situation, he needed to figure something out.

“Uncle,” he said.

He heard the papers rustle.

“Face your uncle if you’re addressing him,” his aunt said.

Rain did. His uncle was of average height, muscular as many of the farmers were, with graying blond hair that Rain’s aunt cut neatly every few days, and very tan, weather-worn skin. The man could have looked so normal and disarming, with a face that might even have looked friendly, but instead he wore a perpetual glower. He never smiled, and he rarely if ever spoke.

There was no light in his uncle. Had Rain not lived with the man for years, he might have said he was a sociopath, just in how he held himself, the look in his eyes, and how joyless his rote existence seemed. If the Fallen needed a job done and wanted able, loyal bodies, Rain’s uncle would go without question or hesitation.

“Would you teach me to fight?” Rain asked.

“You don’t want to do that,” Allie said.

“Butt out, Allie,” his aunt said, hand going up but not delivering another smack. “This is between boy and man.”

Rain’s uncle folded his paper, then stood from his chair, putting it back under the table. He made his exit by the side door, entering into the fenced-in yard, the door left open behind him.

“What are you waiting for?” Rain’s aunt asked. “Don’t keep him waiting.”

Rain hurried, going back to the bottom stairs where he’d left his bag. He opened the bag as he reversed direction, heading to the kitchen, fishing in the bag for the things he needed.

He had one mechanical arm out as he passed his aunt and cousin. His aunt was unreadable. Not as dark as his uncle was- his aunt gave the impression the light had been almost entirely extinguished, but the woman could smile, for the rarest of occasions. She had things she cared about and prioritized. Dim or reduced to dark embers, but not gone.

He pressed the arm to his shoulder blade, and felt the connection flare, burning through his nerves to his brain. A small, tiny window opened in his consciousness, with his awareness of the arm and its position. He was aware of the air against the current that ran along the outside ‘skin’ of the arm and hand.

He used the extra arm to help hold the bag while he got the other arm out, slapping it back against the blade of his other shoulder.

His uncle waited by the wooden fence, the perimeter made up of only three broad wooden slats punctuated by the stout posts.

Standing there, illuminated only by the porchlight, his uncle gave no impression there had ever been a light there at all.

Rain had two more arms to connect, but they were smaller, attached at the elbow, only reaching as far as his wrist. They were older and he’d tuned them back up to working order with the intention of leaving one for Kenzie to study. He’d forgotten, in his haste to leave.

He approached his uncle. When he got within three or so paces, his uncle took a step toward him. No prelude, no intent apparent in his action. With a second long stride, the man reached out to shove Rain’s shoulder hard, pushing him toward the fence.

Rain cast out the emotion power around them, and felt the feedback buzz, the faint response that let him know the power was working.

That done, he reached up. His normal hand grabbed his uncle’s wrist. A mechanical hand grabbed his uncle’s elbow, fingers digging in there, in an attempt to force it to bend. The smallest hand grabbed for two fingers, pulling them backward.

His uncle pulled his hand up and away, and then kicked Rain in the thigh.

Rain fell, his mechanical hands were too slow to let go, and he could see as the two right arms came apart in pieces, wires stretching between wrist and forearm, forearm and elbow, before snapping. The individual parts fell to the shadows and grass.

His uncle kicked him while he was down, boot to ribs.

Rain reached for the pieces, picking them up with two left hands. The forearm, broken at the front, was almost like a broken bottle. He scrambled back, two broken pieces of his arms held in his real hand and his one remaining, full-size mechanical arm.

He dismissed the emotion effect, re-cast it out, just to ensure it was over his uncle. Not that it seemed to do much. He’d tried letting it sit on people and some of the farm animals before. It didn’t work. He could only hope there was some nuance he could use.

Fuck, his ribs and leg hurt where he’d been kicked.

His uncle walked away, his back to Rain. He approached the fence, then reached over it. Allie wasn’t far away. She’d gone through the gate and was leaning against the outside of the fence, watching.

A shovel. Rain’s uncle had picked up the shovel that had been leaning against the fence, almost as long as Rain was tall, with a spade-shaped head. There was an implicit ‘if you’re going to wield a weapon, so am I’ to the act.

“Don’t kill him,” Rain’s aunt said, from the stairs to the kitchen.

Rain’s uncle turned, and gave Rain’s aunt a long, slow look.

“I don’t want to have to explain it to the leadership,” she said.

Rain’s uncle reversed his grip on the shovel, holding it near the spade-end with both hands.

Rain backed away a little as his uncle approached.

The first swing of the shovel was preliminary, measuring distance. Swung like a baseball bat, it made the ‘whoosh’ sound as it sliced through the air. If Rain hadn’t leaned back, it might have connected with his nose.

Rain lunged forward. He had smaller weapons.

His uncle didn’t swing the shovel back the other way. Instead, moving his hand up to grip it at the middle, he swung it so the upper end caught Rain’s mechanical arm, the lower end caught his wrist.

The mechanical arm broke with the impact, the shattered forearm dropping from its grip.

Rain felt the pain of the impact against his wrist as something that extended along his entire forearm, through his hand, tingling in his fingers.

He knew how to throw a punch, and with his uncle holding nothing back, he had no reason to do so either. He closed the distance, his chest connecting with his uncle’s as he punched low, aiming for the stomach, just beneath the ribs. Repeated blows, strikes with fist sharp against muscle and fat.

Fingers tangled in his hair, gripped tighter until Rain’s scalp hurt. He was pulled away, then without the hand letting go, he was flung into the fence, cheekbone and shoulder crashing into the broad plank closer to the top.

He was pulled away, not allowed to get his balance, and then thrust toward the fence again.

He used his mover power to arrest the push, to make himself stop. He drove his elbow into his uncle’s arm, where only the connection pad and the shattered remnants of the arm remained, raking the damaged metal and wire against flesh.

His uncle pulled away, and Rain was there, suspended for another second.

Rain couldn’t cancel out his mover power before his uncle got his footing and came back at him, driving a knee into his middle. He crashed into the fence and landed hard.

He hauled himself to his feet, one hand on the fence, and his uncle kicked him before he was entirely there. A kick at the armpit, so Rain’s hand couldn’t support him any longer. His mover power wasn’t available to stop him from falling, and- and it wouldn’t have mattered in the slightest if it were.

The pain radiated through him, now. His uncle stood tall, one hand at his arm, which was bleeding, and paced. The feedback Rain got wasn’t accurate enough to let him know where his uncle was, and it was hard to find a position where he could look up and over.

He grabbed the fence and heaved himself to his feet.

His uncle looked at his aunt, and Rain took that as an opportunity to sprint full-bore for the man. He leaped, heedless of personal risk, of the fall that might follow, and kicked sideways with all of his force.

He connected, shin to side. He saw the pain on his uncle’s face. Then he used his power to suspend himself, before he could tumble hard to the ground.

It suspended him for too long. There was no canceling it, and however long it lasted, a second and a half, two seconds, maybe even approaching three seconds, it was enough time for his uncle to turn his way and kick him, hard.

Rain dropped, in too much pain to calculate how he broke free of the power’s hold, and landed in the grass and dirt.

He was kicked several times while he was down. Back, buttock, leg. He wasn’t sure if he’d been kicked sharply in the side or if it was only the way he’d recoiled and made an existing wound pull that made it feel like it.

His mechanical hands broke at the slightest excuse, his emotion power didn’t do anything he could identify, and his mover power made him a sitting duck in any real combat situation.

The kicking had stopped. Rain lay there, his breaths coming out as wheezes. His thoughts were so mired in sick hopelessness that he could barely think straight.

A hand was extended. It seized Rain by the upper arm, firm, and heaved him to his feet.

It occurred to Rain, too late, that his uncle wasn’t the kind of person to offer a helping hand.

Still firmly holding Rain’s upper arm, with Rain bent over, his uncle struck him across the face. It was only the fierce grip on Rain’s arm that kept him from being knocked to the ground yet again.

Again, Rain was struck across the face. His head sagged.

The next hit caught him backhanded, across the ear. It was impossibly loud, painful, and it made his thoughts dissolve into sparks. His ear rang like a siren in the wake of the hit.

Rain, almost insensate, punched in the general direction of his uncle’s stomach, turned his face toward the ground so it would be away of any further blows, and kept punching blind until his uncle let him go.

Rain stumbled back, snorted, coughed, and tried to straighten, before giving up on the latter. He put his hand on his knee to steady himself.

His uncle approached, and Rain backed up. His uncle’s turn to return the favor, now. Swats, a knee, a punch, a shove. Even the lighter contact was painful, because Rain hurt, and each light contact forced him to move one way or the other while existing bruises and injuries punished those movements.

“Okay,” Rain managed, huffing out the word. “Stop.”

His uncle didn’t stop, pushing out with both hands to shove Rain back into the wooden fence.

With an edge of desperation, Rain pulled out the silver blades. It didn’t make his uncle hesitate.

He threw the first blade, and the pain at his armpit altered the trajectory, meant he didn’t finish the swing. The silver scythe passed through his uncle’s head, the two remaining pieces carrying forward, sailing out to strike the side of the house.

A silver line encircling his head, Rain’s uncle stood there, drawing in a deep breath.

“Okay,” Rain said. He hunched over, hands on his knees, coughed, then snorted. “Don’t sneeze or do anything. That’s all. Thank you.”

His uncle remained where he was, glowering, eye sockets only barely illuminated by the silver light from the mark.

The mark would fade soon. Ten, twelve seconds. Rain watched and waited, nervous of the possibility of disaster.

The silver line thinned out, went away. Rain’s uncle touched his face. A moment later, the man strode toward Rain, a dark look on his face.

“Stop,” Rain said, voice weak. He realized the futility of it as he said it. His uncle didn’t intend to stop until one of them was unable to move.

The other blade still in his hand, he threw it out, with the blade only traveling a matter of feet before it crossed through his uncle’s midsection, the vertical and horizontal lines of the plaid work shirt illuminated in the gloom.

“Stop,” Rain said, again. “Or you’ll die.”

His uncle looked down, spreading his hands.

Then, his expression changing, the man looked skyward, sighing. Rain took the twelve seconds of rest to try to gather his thoughts, not looking skyward, but toward the ground. He-

Heedless of the mark, his uncle kicked him. The force was such that the silver mark flared, and it cut what lay beneath.

Again and again, the man kicked Rain. He stomped once, as Rain lay too close to the ground to be properly kicked.

“I think he learned whatever it is you wanted to teach him,” Rain’s aunt said. “Why don’t you come inside? I’ll make you tea, and I’ll look over those scratches.”

Rain waited, knowing that if his uncle decided to ignore the order, there would only be more pain. Pain that could kill him, if it meant he wasn’t able to fight back when Snag, Cradle, and Love Lost came for his head.

Instead, fabric draped over Rain’s head.

“Replace it,” his uncle said. Perhaps the eleventh and twelfth words Rain had ever heard the man say to him.

Rain reached up and pulled the fabric away. The plaid shirt. Sliced across the middle. His uncle was fine, because-

Because, Rain realized, closing his eyes, the power only affected one thing at a time. It would hit clothes first, the person second.

He opened his eyes to watch as his uncle walked away, wearing an undershirt and jeans, opening the door to the kitchen and closing it behind him, the light in the fenced-in yard diminishing with the door closed.

Rain lay there, trying to breathe, hurting from head to toe.

“Dad doesn’t even have powers,” Allie said, from the other side of the fence.

Rain winced, realizing she’d seen. She was still there.

“You did better when you weren’t using your powers,” his cousin said. She paused. “You okay?”

Rain’s nose felt stuffed, every heartbeat making his entire nasal cavity pound. He snorted, hard, and pain ripped through his skull, blood spraying the grass in front of his face. He huffed out a breath.

“I’m-” he started. “Fine.”

He was going to die. Not here, not because of this. But he was going to die.

“I’m not sure what you were expecting,” Allie said. “Dad is the kind of guy who thought he’d teach five year old me how to swim by throwing me into a pond. I think this is him applying that same principle to teaching you to fight.”

Rain huffed out a breath. His ribs hurt like hell, but-

He drew in a deep breath, winced at the pain.

Not broken. He’d had broken ribs before.

“I don’t know if you were around then, but when mom had cancer, it was just dad and me and a couple cousins in the house. He’d do stuff like tell us to sweep, and if we didn’t sweep right, he’d give us the belt. He wouldn’t even tell us what we did wrong or why we didn’t meet expectations. We had to figure it out.”

“I remember,” Rain managed. “I was there.”

“Then why the hell did you think this was a good idea? There are other people you can ask. That you have been asking, unless you’ve been lying to us. You could have gone to them.”

“I could have. I wanted-” Rain coughed. “I wanted this.”

“This? Oh, you’ve gone and lost your mind.”

Maybe, Rain thought. Maybe he had. He’d fit right in, if he had. But he’d wanted, needed to know if, when he was desperate and in very real danger, there was anything he could pull out or do.

There wasn’t.

“You sure you don’t need help?” Allie asked.

“I’ll manage,” Rain said, his voice coming out strained. He fumbled out with one hand, reaching for the fence.

It took him some time to get to his feet. He ended up leaning against the fence, hugging it, while trying to breathe properly.

He was pretty sure the dread and emotion in him was enough that he could have thrown up if he’d tried to. He was also pretty sure he would black out if he did.

A truck roared as it rolled down the dirt road, moving too fast in the dark. That would be why Rain walked on the side of the road when he walked that way in the dark.

“Rain,” Allie said.

“Mm?”

“I know we’re not close. I’ve probably been shitty to you.”

“Better than a lot of people,” he said.

“I mean I’m not in a position to ask any favors from you,” she said.

Leaning over the fence, still hugging it, he stared down at the dark grass on the other side. He didn’t respond.

“But I really, really need you to get your shit together,” his cousin said.

He winced, closing his eyes. He opened them almost immediately, because he worried he might black out.

“You’ve turned some heads and drawn a lot of attention,” Allie said. “You managed to do something nobody really thought was possible. You put a rung on the ladder that’s even lower than the unpowered. The person with powers that suck. Because if you have shit powers, you’re not going to trigger and get other powers. You have no chance.”

“Yeah,” Rain said. He barked out a couple of coughs, feeling a stabbing in his sides with each one.

“I really, really need you to figure something out,” Allie said. “If you need something from me to help you figure it out, I can try helping. But I need you to be… not this.”

He focused on breathing, absorbing the words.

“You know why I’m asking, right?”

He nodded slowly, mindful of the throbbing headache, pounding in his ear, and his sinuses. He wasn’t sure if she could see him in the gloom.

“Nobody really wants you as a husband for their daughter, or as a husband for them. They’ll go through the motions but they don’t want you.”

“Yeah,” Rain said.

“Sooner or later, they’re going to get fed up with you. Then they’ll try pairing you up with someone and getting some babies out of you, see if those kids end up being worth anything in a few years. When they do, nobody’s going to jump at the chance to be with you or marry their kid to you.”

Rain winced, tried to stand straighter.

“They’ll look back and forth and everyone will avoid eye contact, and then their eyes will settle on my mom and dad. They’ll pair me up with you, because that’s who mom and dad are. They’re dutiful, and they’ve sunk so much into this that they aren’t going to stop believing anytime soon.”

He knew it to be true. He’d worried about it.

“And don’t go thinking of Erin. I know you like her. I know you probably hold out some secret hope you’ll get paired up with her.”

“No,” Rain said.

“It’s fine if you do. Everyone probably does. She’s hot. But it’s because she’s hot that she’s going to end up with some forty year old guy close to the leadership, or she’s going to run. Give up on her now. If you don’t, I won’t just be the pity incest wife, I’m going to be the pity incest wife with a heartbroken husband.”

“You could leave.”

“Everyone thinks they’ll leave if it looks like they’re going to get a bad pairing. How many actually do? When things are close to that point, they start keeping a closer eye on you. You get asked to have a chat with the leadership. They don’t leave you the choice.”

Rain used the fence to help himself stay upright as he limped toward the kitchen.

“I’m not going to be one of the idiots that thinks she can get away,” Allie said. “I’m making peace with it.”

He paused as he saw the shadows of his destroyed tinker arms.

Slowly, he began working his way toward the ground, so he could pick up the pieces.

“Stop,” Allie said. “It’s painful to watch you. Let me.”

He let her.

She hopped the fence, walked over to the shadows, and bent down, feeling out for the pieces and picking them up.

“This isn’t going to zap me or anything, is it?”

“Don’t-” Rain paused. “Don’t touch the oblong pieces, the thin ones. Hold them by the stems with the wires, or the shoulders.”

“Okay.”

Gingerly, Allie collected most of the pieces. She handed them over to Rain. He took the contact pad that had ripped away and switched it off before gathering it into his arm with the torn shirt.

Allie gave him the last piece, then kept her hand on top of it.

“Figure it the fuck out, Rain,” she said.

I’ll die, I’ll get killed by my cluster, and I won’t be a concern for you anymore, he thought, staring into the little dots where her eyes were reflecting the distant fire.

I’ll die, he thought. I can’t fight my unpowered uncle. How can I fight… all of that?

“I’ll try,” he said.

The door opened. Rain’s aunt.

“Allie, there you are. Inside. Get the bigger first aid kit from the basement. I want to patch up your dad’s cuts, and the smaller kit doesn’t have any bandages.”

Allie turned to go, obedient.

“If you want first aid, Rain, knock on the master bedroom door, or go straight to Allie. She’ll tend to you. For now, get yourself to bed. You’re coming to church in the morning.”

Rain swayed slightly on the spot, then said, “Okay.”

The door closed behind his aunt.

He got to his bag and dumped the pieces of the arm into it. Picking it up, he made his way inside. The stew had been put away. No dinner.

He went up the stairs and into his room. He settled in at his desk. The day’s homework was on the table, waiting to be done.

Slowly, he set out the pieces of his tinker hands.

Days worth of work.

No secret to be uncovered, no use he hadn’t yet figured out. Not legs, not claws.

This, these fragile things, they were the only things that came to mind when he reached out for his tinker power. Between ten and thirty minutes passed while he found all the smaller pieces, setting them in the right places. He had some wire and tools on his desk, and he got them out. To start with, he would fix everything he could fix in five seconds. Then he would move on from there.

The spell was broken as his alarm clock buzzed. He always set it for the evening, not the morning, because there was a timeframe.

He started to rise to his feet, but he’d been sitting still too long, while hurt too badly. His body refused to cooperate.

With inching progress, he made his way toward the alarm clock.

“Rain!” his aunt called out from the other room. “Shut it off!”

Inching progress, shuffling steps.

He made it to the alarm clock, but not to the bed.

Rain’s consciousness was snuffed out like a candle.

⊙

Cradle.

His dreams are strange.

A hand slamming down on the table, a paper beneath it. A mouth opening. A man that might have been Cradle’s father spoke, but it wasn’t words that came out. It was the frantic cries of the crowd, the screams, the shouted jumble.

The paper crumpled slightly as the hand on it closed into more of a fist.

In the background, a very prim and proper woman stood with her back to Cradle.

The parents, Rain interpreted. Disappointment and anger. I can understand that.

The scene changed. A balding man in a suit, sitting across from a desk. The bulletin board behind him had child’s artwork on it.

His expression was plaintive, worried. The words from that somber older man’s face were the scream of someone that had been burned, stopping as lips closed together, starting as they parted. His hand moved more papers, sorting through the pile in front of him.

Cradle’s point of view moved, shaking left and right as he shook his head.

The balding older man’s expression changed from worry to something stronger. Upset. Deep concern.

The principal, Rain interpreted. He’d seen variations on this. It was usually like this, or else smoke, rubble, or broken glass poured from people’s mouths instead of words. Cradle wasn’t doing so well?

He could understand that too.

It’s even of a similar vein. Unrealized potential, as far as I can understand it. Report cards, teachers, father figures, they want something from him and he doesn’t deliver. He doesn’t hand it over.

Then the long hallway. The trudge. Cradle’s hand was visible as he reached up to fix his glasses, as he reached out to the window. In the distance, far away, the sounds of disaster could be heard. The stampede, the fire.

School again? A lonely hallway? Isolation? I used to call him the recluse.

Cradle took off his glasses, and all was a blur. When he put them back on, he was facing teenaged peers.

Their faces moved as if they were shouting, expressions twisting. The only sound to come out was that of the stampede. Feet tromping, people shouting with words blending into one another. Teeth came together as a word was finished, and the sound was of a bone breaking. One of the teenagers pushed Cradle down. His glasses were set ajar by the fall.

This time, as he fixed the glasses, he was in the shopping center, standing.

Things moved as if in slow motion. Inevitable.

What does Cradle feel when he’s here? Dread?

Cradle’s head turned, everything moving as if it was underwater, as he looked at a group of men and women with tattoos. They were loud, too loud, as they gathered together, talking among themselves.

He looked the other way. He saw other faces. Faces that would be in the crowd shortly. A couple that were about thirty years old. Then an older man and woman.

The old couple get trampled early on, Rain thought.

Eyes roved slow-motion in the other direction. In a store with colorful graphic images in frames, and other things in glass cases, a big guy with long hair, a nose ring and an impressive beard was talking to an older man, while tapping one of the framed cartoon images. No sound came out of his mouth as his lips moved.

Images like this would be the best Rain would get at seeing Snag’s face uncovered.

There were others. The twelve year old girl with her friends, that Snag would fail to help. She would die in the crush, after slipping from Snag’s grip.

A lot of the children and elderly in the mall would be counted among the dead.

One of the three girls said her goodbye to her friends. The movement was slow motion as she ran across the plaza of the mall.

She was smiling as she approached the woman who waited for her. The smile fell from her face, she slowed, then hung her head.

The woman showed the girl her watch, tapped it, her words were stern and entirely unheard. There was only silence in this slow motion prelude to the event.

The woman with wavy red hair, a sweater that failed to hide her impressive chest, and an ankle-length skirt. Heads turned to watch her berate the child. The child looked nervously back at her friends.

Love Lost.

Things accelerated, as the scene rushed forward. Everyone to their positions.

Three explosions in quick succession, loud after the silence, the blasts tearing across the plaza the opening of one of the exits. Blue flame.

Then the movement, everyone trying to get away. The layout of the shopping center allowed only one good escape route, and everyone rushed for it.

Another acceleration, skipping ahead in time. The sound of the stampede, the crowd, all of the noises that had been made or hinted at earlier, now came to the forefront, crashing into the present moment. Cradle was close to the front of the crowd. He was shoved, he tried to catch his balance, and he fell. His glasses came away from his face, they were stepped on.

Twice, he reached for the glasses, and his hands were stepped on. There was a desperation in it, more of a struggle to get them than there was even an attempt to stand. The scene was blurred but his hands were as clear as anything.

Close by, a woman screamed, and the sound was prolonged, multi-part.

He found his glasses and put them to his face with bleeding fingers. He was kicked, stepped on.

Did I subconsciously take myself there? Rain thought.

He reached up, hand extended.

Pleading for help, reaching and unanswered, Rain interpreted.

How did all of what came before lead into this?

⊙

Rain was in the room. He picked up the chair.

He didn’t venture a response. He knew what the answer would be.

He didn’t really want to face the others, either. They were the people who wanted him tortured to death.

For now, he sat in the chair. There was no reason to stand. He didn’t even need to find his three tokens. It wasn’t as if he was giving them away, or getting anything.

His power would be what it was.

Snag approached the table, clearing away the debris, finding his glass. He turned to stare at Rain.

Rain wanted to answer that stare, wanted to provoke. He stared across to Cradle’s space instead. He breathed deep, none of the injuries from earlier present. They appeared as they were, in a way. Snag in the same sorts of clothing, partially hiding his appearance, never looking like he’d just come from work. Cradle wore civilian clothes. Love Lost…

Love Lost rose from the chair. Still wearing the muzzle-mask, still wearing the dress with the slit up the side, the heels, her nails painted. She never took off the mask, now, so it was enough of a part of her to be brought into this space.

Her eyes were downcast as she approached the dais and gripped the edge. She only lifted her eyes to stare Rain down. Abject hatred.

It felt like an hour passed before Snag spoke.

“Cradle. I’d like the coins before we run out of time.”

Cradle came from around the corner of one of the concrete slabs. He looked worse for wear.

It’s always harder when it’s your night, Rain thought.

Cradle found the coins, gripped them in one hand, and slammed the hand against the invisible barrier that separated his section from Snag’s. Snag caught one out of the air before it could hit the floor. The other two landed on the flat surface of the dais.

“You know what the shittiest part of this thing is?” Cradle asked.

Cradle always liked to talk on his nights.

“You infected us,” Cradle said, looking at Rain. “We each got a piece of each other.”

“Bleed-through,” Rain said.

“So you’ve done some research,” Cradle said. “We were pretty decent people before. Love Lost yelled at her daughter, but-”

Love Lost’s hand slammed against the dais.

“But she wasn’t evil,” Cradle said. He turned to Love Lost. “Sorry.”

Love Lost glared at him.

“Snag was even a bit of a hero,” Cradle said.

Snag sighed. “I don’t really think so.”

“The girl you helped? Friend of Love Lost’s daughter? Come on,” Cradle said.

“I don’t think so,” Snag said, looking away.

“We were decent people,” Cradle said. “And now we’re not. Because of you. Because you’re infecting us.”

Rain looked away.

“Kill yourself,” Cradle said. “I don’t want any piece of you in me. Just… wake up and kill yourself. You can’t be happy with the Fallen. So just end it. Kill yourself. Everything becomes easier.”

“I’m not going to do that, and I’m not with the Fallen,” Rain said. “Not anymore.”

“Kill yourself,” Cradle said. “At least that way it’ll be easy.”

“Are you listening to me?” Rain asked.

“Kill yourself,” Cradle said. “If you don’t, then some time, maybe a month from now, maybe a year, we’ll come for you. We’ll take all of that ugliness you gave us and we’ll give it back. With interest.”

The coins rattled in Snag’s hand.

“Kill yourself,” Cradle said.

Love Lost’s fingernails clicked against the top of the dais.

“Kill yourself,” Cradle said.

The fingernails clicked.

Rain stood, turned with his back to the dais, venturing further into his section of the room.

A bang made him turn. Cradle had slammed his hand against the dais.

“Pay attention,” Cradle said. “And kill yourself.”

“You think I’m going to listen to you?” Rain asked. “Because you say it over and over?”

“I think if I say it often enough, there’s a chance it’ll catch you when you’re weak. It could cross your mind at a critical time. It’s a small chance, maybe, but I’m not doing anything else with the rest of my night. I could keep it up tomorrow night, or the night after. I could come up with something else.”

Nails clicked against the dais.

“Kill yourself,” Cradle said.

⊙

The church service concluded. The speakers rotated on the regular, and today’s was Mrs. May. She was a respected figure in the community, but she wasn’t respectable. She was a harpy of a person, with a shrill voice and a grating laugh she was inclined to use at the slightest provocation, and most people either loved her and her rhetoric, or they despised her. She performed a lot of sermons, usually with plenty of warning to others and often with women in attendance. Much of what she said appealed to that crowd.

Rain took some small solace in the fact that because his aunt and uncle had made him come, they had been obligated to sit through this. They weren’t part of Mrs. May’s sub-congregation.

He wanted nothing more than to go, to get to his workshop, and to do what little he could to prepare. As he made his way to the door, however, his aunt was caught up in a conversation with one of Mrs. May’s group. Oh, wasn’t the sermon so delightful? The word choice here, the passage, wasn’t it perfect? Rain was here, that was unusual, was Rain married off yet? No? What about Allie? Surely Allie had suitors.

Different preachers to appeal to different crowds, with diehard adherents attending every sermon. It didn’t matter that the ideas contradicted, that the sermon the nervous Reverend Patman gave to a small congregation of Mrs. Sims’ type was the polite kind of message that could be heard elsewhere, while the inappropriately dressed Mrs. May preached how wives had the duty of keeping their husbands’ balls drained, prostates massaged, and stomachs full.

The people who wanted to believe believed, and Mrs. Sims’ type stayed because… Rain wasn’t entirely sure. Because there was a safety in madness, maybe. Part of why he stayed, really. Or because leaving and trying to forge a life elsewhere was harder than staying and ignoring the ugliness and contradiction. Harder than lying to herself and thinking she could bring order to this chaos.

Rain walked through the door to the overcast outside. Allie joined him, her eyes widening slightly in the only communication she would give him that she didn’t agree with the sermon or the crowd.

“Hi Allie,” a guy said. He was about eighteen, his tousled blond hair was grown out, and he had a natural smile with a mouth that seemed too wide.

“Hi,” Allie said, shy. She looked down.

“Hi Rain. You look like you went to war and you fought your way through the entire enemy line.”

“Hi Lachlan. I think that might just be the politest way anyone could describe this,” Rain said.

Lachlan chuckled.

“You guys are just… hanging out here?”

“We’re waiting for a ride,” Allie said. “I think Rain would rather get a ride than walk, after fighting through that battlefield you described.”

“I can give you guys a ride,” Lachlan offered.

“No thank you,” Allie said. “You’re a dear, but I’ll just wait for my parents.”

Lachlan twisted his head around. “They’re caught in conversation with the Screeching Mimis.”

“Shh! Lachlan!” Allie shushed him. Some heads had turned.

Lachlan grinned. “I’m just saying, they’re going to be a while. Once those four get their hooks in, people can’t get away for half an hour or more, and with your parents not being regulars, there’s a lot to catch them up on.”

“Don’t underestimate my mom and dad,” Allie said. “We’re stern stock.”

“I will keep that in mind,” Lachlan said, smiling like he’d been let in on a secret. He looked at Rain. “You want a ride?”

Rain looked at Allie.

“Go,” she said. “It’s embarrassing being seen next to you when you’re this beat up.”

“What?” Lachlan asked. “Be fair, come on. Rain’s one of the esteemed. He’s blessed with power. He’s like nobility around here.”

“Bastard nobility, maybe,” Rain said.

“You’re blessed,” Lachlan said, voice firm. He smiled, then said, “And I’m your humble, obedient servant that would be glad to take you anywhere you want to go. I’m at your service.”

Rain glanced again at Allie. “If you could give me a ride to the machine shop, I’d be grateful.”

“Absolutely. Bye Allie.”

“Bye.”

Lachlan led Rain to his car. It was a nice one, a sleek blue sedan, roughly five years old, and in near-pristine condition considering it had survived the end of the world. Rain got in the passenger seat with a wince and a grunt.

Every part of him hurt.

He could remember being in the room, the repeated words, and he dreaded tomorrow. Every moment that passed ratcheted up the dread.

Being hurt and facing a night like that magnified the fact that he didn’t feel rested. Even naps were beyond him, when his thoughts were this disturbed.

He looked over at Lachlan, and felt a twinge of sadness.

The car whisked its way along the road, slowing here and there to give a wider berth to the people walking on either side.

“You like Allie, huh?” Rain asked.

Lachlan laughed. “Yeah. It’s part of why I asked you if you wanted a ride. I’m at your disposal if you need anything at all, though. Don’t think I’m disloyal or selfish.”

“It’s okay,” Rain said.

“I sort of hoped I could give her a ride too and have a chat.”

“I guessed that too.”

“You know how I’m sort of the poster boy for the Fallen?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m eighteen, and I’m of a good age for marriage. They say I’ve really helped out, so I can have my pick of almost anyone. I made it really clear I don’t want anyone who doesn’t want me, and the leadership told me anyone I took would come to love me in time. That’s how it works.”

“Okay,” Rain said.

“But I’d rather have someone who wants me, still. So I was wondering, you know…”

“If Allie was interested?”

“Do you think she is?”

“I could tell you,” Rain said. “But that’s only what I think. With something as serious and binding as marriage, you’d want to be sure. I can ask her outright, then pass it on to you.”

Lachlan chuckled. “Yeah?”

“If you want.”

“Now I’m nervous. Yes. Yes! She’s great, you know. There was a campfire a month ago-”

“You heard her playing guitar?”

“She sang. She doesn’t like singing because some of the others, like Jay- don’t think I’m disloyal…”

“It’s fine.”

“Jay and some of the others make fun of her singing, or they join in and she hates that. But her singing is really nice. It was a small group, just a few of us, and we listened, and I think I fell in love with her right then. If I could listen to her sing for the rest of my life, I’d treat her like a queen.”

“I’ll ask her. I’ll tell her some of that, if you don’t mind it.”

“Yes. Sure. I’m nervous now,” Lachlan said. “I was also wondering- she’s not necessarily the only one I’m considering.”

Rain’s heart sank.

“Do you know Nell?”

“I know Nell,” Rain said, feeling relieved. “Jay’s twin.”

“She has power too.”

“Do you like her?”

“I- she’s pretty, and she’s told me she’s interested.”

“But do you like her?”

“She told me she’s interested, and she’s close to the leadership. Do you know if I have to say yes?”

“I don’t know,” Rain said. “I might not be the person to ask.”

“You’re the easiest to talk to.”

“If they told you that you can pick anyone… you can probably pick anyone. But Nell might not be a fan of yours afterward.”

Lachlan frowned.

“Let me ask Allie, on the down-low. Maybe if she says no, you go to Nell and act like she’s the first and last person you considered for a wife.”

“What if she says yes?”

“Then you would have to decide if having her at your side is worth possibly having Nell be upset with you.”

Lachlan huffed out a sigh.

“The machine shop is just down the block,” Rain said.

“Thank you for talking to me,” Lachlan said.

Rain looked his way.

Lachlan’s hand adjusted its position on the steering wheel. His hand trembled a little in the moments where it wasn’t gripping the wheel.

“Sure,” Rain said.

Lachlan pulled the car to a stop. “Gotta ask you one more thing, if you don’t mind giving me a minute of your time.”

“Okay,” Rain said. “You saved me more than a minute, so I don’t mind.”

Lachlan got out of the car as Rain did. In the time it took Rain to work his way to a standing position, Lachlan walked around the front of the vehicle to the side of the road and pulled off his t-shirt.

He turned so his back was to Rain. Rain, in turn, was faced with a tattoo. Words in bold letters, inches-high, shaded, with thick outlines. The first word was just below the nape of his neck, and the last was in the small of his back.

Jesus
Virgin-Mother-Fucking
Christ

Two hands, middle fingers extended, were on Lachlan’s shoulder blades, the fingers pointing up and outward. Each hand had a nail through the center.

“It’s new. What do you think?” Lachlan asked. He smiled as he turned to look at Rain over one shoulder.

“It’s big,” Rain said.

“Isn’t it? It was hell to get it done. Shoulder blades and ribs especially, all in one session.”

“It’s… very high quality. I see a lot of bad tattoos around here, and that’s… the lines are straight, and the shading of the letters are good.”

“Then you like it? Awesome. You think Allie would like it?”

“I don’t want to speak for her. I can ask her.”

“Nah, I’ll show her. I see her at the bonfires a lot. Thanks,” Lachlan said. “I’ll see you around. If you need anything-”

“I’ll ask.”

Lachlan grinned, and got back into his car.

Rain was left only with the deepest feeling of sadness. He was so tired, he ached all over, and his heart ached too. He wanted to tinker, and later, he would reach out to Erin. She would listen, he would give her a tempered version of how his days had been-

The machine shop was badly weathered, not well insulated, and existed primarily as a large shack, with two stories. It was where cars and pieces of equipment were brought to be repaired, with communal tools left for anyone to use.

The second floor, though, was mostly left to Rain. He winced with every step up, then let himself in.

He wasn’t alone.

Erin was already there, sitting with her knees to her chest, face buried in her arms.

Rain’s heart sank. A tiny, selfish part of himself bemoaned the fact that it didn’t stop. That he didn’t get to rest. It was threats to his life leading into him asking to be beaten to restless nights, church, Lachlan…

He wondered if that was the monstrous part of himself that he’d passed on to the others. The person he had been felt unrecognizable now, to the point he couldn’t even say what was him anymore.

Erin was crying. Clever, brave, beautiful, compassionate, caring Erin. Seeing her cry made him want to cry, more than anything else in the past twenty-four hours.

He had never seen her cry and he felt as terrified with the unanswered question of what had done this as he had felt with the threat of being tortured to death.

“Are you okay?”

She jumped slightly at the words. She hadn’t heard him come in?

“No,” she said. She blinked, and the blink squeezed out a tear. She looked away and wiped the tear away. “I’m sorry. I know this is your workshop, but I needed to get away.”

“It’s okay. What happened?”

He didn’t want to know. He wanted to help her at the same time.

“I had a run-in with Tim,” she said. She swallowed hard.

Tim. Another of Rain’s uncles. Tim who was Seir, who wore the preserved head of a horse but was the furthest thing from the lithe, athletic form of the horse, and the furthest thing from the attractive form of Seir the demon, as was described in the book some of the preachers liked to recite from. Tim was forty, fat, ugly, and he had standing sufficient that he would run the settlement if the top two people in charge were somehow unable to.

A run-in with Tim. Rain had his suspicions about what had happened. That it had happened to Erin?

“I’d beat the shit out of him if I thought I could,” Rain said.

“You look like you had the shit beat out of you,” Erin said. She blinked a few times, wiped away the tears. “Are you okay?”

He wasn’t, and he couldn’t tell her he wasn’t. Not when she was this upset.

“I’m always a little bruised and scratched.”

“That’s more than bruises and scratches.”

“I’m okay,” Rain lied. “And you’re not. Can I do anything?”

As if that had brought everything back, Erin’s expression briefly crumpled up. She fixed it with apparent effort, and wiped away at more tears that had been squeezed loose.

She shrugged, and it was very, very apparent to Rain that she was trying to seem cavalier about something that wasn’t cavalier.

He had such a sick feeling in his chest, seeing this.

“Every time I cross paths with him, he makes comments,” she said.

“Yeah. That’s- that’s Tim.”

She shrugged. “He told me I should go to church. Mrs. May is lecturing, I think?”

“She finished.”

“And he said Mrs. May could teach me what I needed to know to please a husband.”

Rain nodded. If she was marrying Tim…

“I told him to go fuck himself.”

“No,” Rain said. He saw her expression and looked away.

“I know it was stupid.”

“You can’t- he has a lot of power. It’s not that he’s right, but sometimes you have to keep your head down. Some of these people will kill you if you say the wrong thing. Or worse. Surviving is- it’s the most important thing.”

“I know,” she said. She averted her eyes. “I felt like I could, in the moment. There were people nearby. I- he pushed me up against a wall, he threatened me with some pretty vulgar stuff, with the crowd watching.”

“You need to get out of here,” Rain said. “You’re- you’re not Fallen. You’re decent. You’re kind. You think. You don’t believe this stuff. You don’t deserve this.”

“I can’t go,” she said.

“Because of Bryce? Your parents?”

“Of course because of them! You don’t understand!”

“I really don’t.”

“My parents are the good, decent people. If I have any good traits it’s because of them and how they raised me. They- they’re really kind, they were perfect. They tucked me in at night and they punished me fairly when I was wrong, they- they played with me and sat down to do my homework with me and they really truly loved me. They did everything right, they never embarrassed me.”

Rain stood there, taking that in. He tried to imagine what it was like.

“They- they talked to me and cared about what I had to say. They- they aren’t this.”

“They aren’t Fallen?”

“They aren’t! They’re… they’re scared. The world ended and they lost everything, we lost family and friends and everything they worked for, and they broke down a little. These people got their hooks in and my parents bought it. But they’re still the same people. They’ll turn around and realize how bad this is… won’t they?”

“I don’t know.”

Fresh tears spilled forth. She buried her face in her folded arms, brought her legs closer.

“You need to get out, save yourself first. Then you can try pulling them out.”

“I think if I do that, I’ll lose them forever,” she said, her voice muffled.

Rain wasn’t sure what to say.

He’d never really had family, certainly not like Erin had described.

Even if she lost them forever, at least she would be okay.

“My dad,” Erin’s voice was small, muffled.

“What?”

“He was there, while Tim said all of that stuff. Bryce too. He just stood there. Then he apologized for my behavior.”

Rain was lost for words. He felt a tear well up and out and wiped it away before Erin could see.

“I’m so sorry.”

“After Tim left, I freaked, and all my dad would say was that I shouldn’t have provoked him. He said I should go to church like Tim suggested. My dad, Rain. With Bry there.”

Rain reached out, then withdrew his hand.

“I can get a car,” Rain said. “I’ll borrow one, we can go for a drive. We’ll do whatever you want, find your favorite food, talk. Get away from this.”

“I don’t want to go out there,” Erin said. “Not like this. Can I stay here? Please?”

“Of course,” Rain said. Was it for the best? If she got in a car with him, he wasn’t sure he would be able to stop driving her away from this. He’d been born to this, but she hadn’t.

He still felt lost. He wasn’t sure what to do.

“Do you- can I give you a hug?” he asked.

She didn’t even answer. She rose to her feet, walked up to him, and wrapped her arms around him, face buried in his shoulder.

He put his arms around her. He’d never imagined such a thing could feel so horrible and harrowing. The horribleness didn’t even have anything to do with his injuries, that every point of contact hurt. It wasn’t his body that hurt.

Rain stared off into space, feeling much like he imagined the shell-shocked in war-zones to feel.

He thought of Cradle’s reaching out for help, people stumbling past him, knocking his hand away.

⊙

“Hello? Mrs. Yamada speaking.”

“It’s Rain. I’m- I’m really not doing great. Can we talk?”

“I thought you might call. Victoria and Sveta reached out to me. I’d planned to call you this afternoon to check on you. Listen, I’m expecting a patient shortly, and I can’t adjust that. We can talk for a few minutes, or, if it’s not an emergency, I can call you in an hour and a half, and I can give you a lot more time.”

“Please,” Rain said. “The second one.”

“Be easy on yourself, Rain. I’ll call you in an hour and a half.”

Rain hung up.

He’d reached out and there was a reach back.

He had that.

Erin was asleep on the other end of the room, on a makeshift bed, Rain’s spare change of clothes piled atop her as a kind of blanket. Her hand was under her pillow and her gun was in her hand. He wasn’t sure if she knew he’d seen her do it.

Cradle had described him as a monster. He wasn’t sure if he was, but as he sat at his work table, trying to work quietly, he imagined he was willing to become a little more monstrous if it meant saving the likes of Erin from becoming a lost soul like Lachlan.

His tinkering might have been limited, but he had other skills. He’d survived in places more rustic than this for a time. He could make blades. He could make traps and snares. His scrap with his uncle had taught him he couldn’t win a fair fight against even the unpowered, not with his powers being what they were.

He’d draw on every resource he had to keep it from coming down to a fair fight. When he went back to the group tomorrow, it would be with a different mindset.

Shade – 4.6

“Help me understand how this makes any sense at all,” Natalie said.

We were outside of a bagel place, close to the station nearest the Wardens’ Headquarters. Natalie had bought a salad with chicken bits in it. I’d never liked eating cold chicken, so I’d picked up a salad without the extras, and a toasted bagel sandwich with fish, black olives, tomatoes and cream cheese. We sat at a table outside.

Natalie was wearing a shirt with a folded collar under a work-suitable navy-blue sweater, with black slacks. I’d seen Kenzie wear a similar outfit a few days earlier, though Kenzie had had a skirt, and Kenzie had worn it better.

The group’s ‘lawyer’. She was just a student, but mom’s verdict was that she knew her stuff well enough to serve, and she had a good sense of what was happening in the future.

I explained, “The area we were surveilling had a team of heroes come through, at our urging. They had a brief interaction with the embedded villain population, suggested they might be sticking around, and then left.”

“And they were followed? By the entire group of villains?”

“By two, Hookline and Kitchen Sink,” I said. “They were angry following the discussion, were previously established as exceedingly violent, and they have criminal acts that are awaiting process.”

“They’re not in the nine percent?”

“Is it nine, now? I was hoping the number would go up, not down.”

“Nine now,” Natalie said.

“They aren’t. I think most of the villains in Cedar Point are trying to stay clear of that line,” I said. I took a bite of my sandwich, then wiped the cream cheese from the corner of my mouth with a flick of my thumb. Thoroughly disappointing.

Nine percent. I’d known it as the ten percent, which had been a neater, rounder number. With the courts badly behind, only a certain number of crimes and criminals were being rushed through court, and it wasn’t based on the time of the deed. There was something which might have resembled a balance right now, but it was slipping fast. People wanted to focus on getting themselves sorted out, there was plenty of work with reasonable pay, and the people who thought they could game the system ended up falling into the ten percent. For those who did, the hammer came down hard and decisively.

There was, however, a population of people who’d realized they could get away with things if they avoided being among the nine or ten percent worst offenders. It seemed to me that the gap was widening as people got more settled in and dissatisfied. I knew some areas were using a lottery system to deter the lesser criminals, choosing the crimes they’d act on and prosecute by drawing them at random.

“Do you and did you know the crimes these two have awaiting process?”

“Hookline dangled someone out of a fourth story window. Witnesses saw. He was presumed to be acting as collections for a money lender. The neighbors heard shouting about debt, not when Hookline was there, but in general, with the victim and his partner.”

“And you know this how, if it wasn’t pursued?”

“It was reported on in the paper for that area, a few months ago. I have a copy of the article on my laptop. I had to take the picture with my phone so it’s not the best. Do you want to see it?”

Natalie shook her head. “I’ll believe you.”

“After the article there was a reaction to Hookline. Some public gatherings, anger, some backlash against the money lender. Hookline left. No telling if he was made to, fired, or if he wanted something easier. Ended up at Cedar Point.”

“And the other one? Kitchen Sink.”

“One of a couple who worked under Beast of Burden, who was crime boss for New Haven. Sink handled collections for the protection racket.”

“Any serious crimes?”

“He trashed one business in a way that made it very clear his power was at use. He creates semi-random items and flings them around, and the business had a lot of semi-random items flung around, shelves trashed, windows broken.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “Victim didn’t pursue anything. Authorities aren’t going to do anything if the victim isn’t talking.”

Natalie’s forehead wrinkled. It was a weird contrast for someone who had a whimsical pixie cut with a curl at the front and oversized glasses, to seem as joyless as she did. She didn’t seem to like her meal, and she seemed interested but not excited or engaged by this.

I ate more of my bagel sandwich, letting her think. It would have been so much better if it was salmon, but it wasn’t. The olives were mushy and lacked bite, which made me wonder if they were old, scavenged, imitation, or if they’d lost something in transport. The worst thing was the bagel – I’d eaten here before and it had been better then.

“You assaulted and battered two individuals,” Natalie said.

“Let me get my laptop out.”

“They didn’t make the first move, by your own admission.”

“Their intent was clear. They had weapons. I’ll show you the video.”

“Please.”

I fished my laptop out of my bag, packed up my bagel and set it aside, and set the laptop down so Natalie could see. It was a bit warm from being in my bag and being left on low-energy mode, but the boot-up was fast. I already had the pertinent files and videos in a folder.

“First video, overhead view. Do you have headphones?”

“I do.”

I waited until she had them out. She put them on, and I plugged in the jack. I hit the spacebar to start the video. She watched, putting her arm up and over the top of the screen, to shield it from the sun. I offered my own arm to help. The video came in at an angle, zooming in, and showed most of the conversation, followed by Hookline and Sink’s retreat.

When she started to take off her headphones, I held up a finger, then navigated to the second video. It showed same events, but a better view of Houndstooth’s group, and then expanded out to show how Hookline and Sink were closing in.

Natalie watched the fight and the follow-up, with Sveta and I retreating. Moose did the work of freeing Hookline from underneath the car I’d blocked in.

It was hard to see in the noonday sun, especially when I was half-standing, my arm out to help shade the screen, but I could see Hookline’s reaction, slapping away Moose’s hand. He stalked off, and Sink belatedly followed, something held to his bleeding nose.

“Clear intent to injure,” Natalie said.

“That’s what I said. I did mention the weapons.”

“There’s a view, and it isn’t my view,” Natalie said, reaching for her salad, “that if you have a power then you’re armed at all times. Sometimes judges hold that view. I would rather assume that you would have a judge that held that perspective and be wrong, than to assume the opposite and be wrong.”

“Right,” I said.

“A better option would be to inform the heroes.”

“Couldn’t. Clairvoyants with some clairaudience,” I said. I opened a sub-folder, clicked an image, and let it pop up. A boy in a wheelchair, a woman pushing it. He wore a helmet with a fake brain under glass at the top. She wore a bird mask. “They’d hear anything we communicated, so it was radio silence.”

“You could have dropped down in front of Houndstooth and told him about the situation.”

“Similar risk. We don’t want to hint at the prior relationship and we do want to suggest there’s a growing presence of heroes, to give them reason to second guess.”

Natalie sighed. “I’m not a very conservative person in reality, but I do think your situation needs a conservative eye.”

“I can agree with that,” I said.

“With a citizen’s arrest, there needs to be an actual arrest. I recognize you had to leave after the other villains showed up, but normally the process of performing an arrest like that needs clear indication of a crime in progress or one just committed, and it needs the authorities to be involved.”

“Citizen’s arrest?” I asked. “Capes get a lot more leeway with those.”

“One second. The process would be for you to contact me and contact the authorities, before anything happened.”

I opened my mouth to respond.

“Where possible, and it wasn’t possible here. I get that.”

“Yes.”

“You would, with my counsel and go-ahead, step in, take action, and then wait for the authorities to arrive.”

“Authorities who are only acting on nine percent of the cases,” I said. “Why a citizen’s arrest and not an arrest with standing?”

“A costumed arrest? We don’t know for sure if they’re going to allow those with the new legal system. I’d rather lean on something tidier that we can be fairly sure will carry forward.”

I leaned back in my seat. “That’s a lot more conservative than I anticipated. Operating as if capes aren’t a thing?”

“I think capes are going to be a thing,” Natalie said. “But we have reason to believe they’re going to be a thing people are going to want to handle in a different, more careful way, now.”

I packed up my sandwich and pitched it into a nearby trash can.

“No good?” Natalie asked.

“Bagel was flavorless and textureless. It looked great and tasted… not like it looked.”

“They got popular, so they started freezing excess bagels and defrosting them to serve.”

I made a face.

“We’re making strides, Victoria, but I think we’re in for a culture shock when people realize that as much as they’ve been waiting eagerly for things to get closer to normal, we’re not going to get a lot of the old normal we’re eager for, and we’re going to get some of the less pleasant parts.”

“You’re talking about the law?”

Natalie shrugged. She was holding her plastic thing of salad, spearing some with a plastic fork. Before popping it into her mouth, she said, “Lots of stuff.”

My laptop was taking up some of her table real-estate, so I closed it and pulled it closer to me.

“Expectations,” she said, once she was done swallowing. “If I’m working with you, I need to know what yours are.”

“That’s a simple question with an answer that could take me a day to get through.”

“Your mom wanted me to ask you if you were still looking for work,” Natalie said.

I tensed a little.

“I was asked to ask the question and pass on the response if you gave it.”

“When we pay you, it’s not for you to be a messenger between me and my mom. If I want to talk to her I can call her.”

“Okay,” Natalie said. “She had something else to pass on.”

“And I’m not interested,” I said, my voice firmer. “Thank you. I will get up and walk away.”

“Please don’t. Really, please don’t. There are a lot of things I want to talk about sooner than later,” she said. “During our last meeting, I know it was brief, but I wanted the lay of the land. I was hoping this meeting would be a chance to get a more comprehensive sense of what you wanted to do, and what I’m doing for you. Both of your mother’s questions tie into that.”

“Did you talk to her about our meeting?”

“No. Not for the last one. For this one, I went to someone lateral to her. She approached me independently with these things, and told me to reach out to you if you didn’t reach out anytime soon. Because you would want to know.”

I wished I hadn’t thrown my lunch away. I would’ve liked to have something to violently toss into the wastebasket, as an outlet for what I was feeling. I shook my head a little.

“It’s relevant,” Natalie said. “And it’s important. I promise.”

I shook my head more. All around us, people were going to and from lunch. There was actually a city-like stream of cars on the road toward the center of the megalopolis proper.

“Tell me then,” I said.

“There were two attempted breaches into our email server last night. It looked like it was directed at your mother. They put a moratorium on sending and receiving email for three hours while they did some backend stuff, and there was another attempted breach partway through that. Tech people are looking into it.”

I nodded. I looked at my laptop. Cedar Point, except I wasn’t aware of anyone who would be especially good at that stuff there. The speedrunners were tinkers, but nothing suggested they were tinkers with talents that translated to hacking into the email servers in the Wardens’ headquarters. Bitter Pill was a full tinker, but her specialty put her even further from that kind of operation.

Houndstooth appears, adding to pressure, Sveta and I make our appearance, and a little while later, an attempted look at a close relation’s emails. I could see the thread.

Would Tattletale have succeeded? If she had the power to see weaknesses, it could extend to security systems. During the bank robbery, she’d done something to gain access, though I couldn’t remember particulars. It had been ambient noise around then. She’d also collected info on Empire Eighty-Eight.

Someone they hired? Was the fact that they didn’t go straight to Tattletale important? A sign of a schism?

“My mother thinks it has something to do with me,” I concluded.

“She was called in for confidential discussion this morning, she got out of the meeting, said she couldn’t get in touch with you, and told me to reach out. I think so, yeah.”

“I can’t have you being her messenger. It’d impact how this arrangment works,” I said.

“Even if it’s pertinent? Letting you know things like the possible breach into emails? That they’re looking into people close to you?”

“The problem is that it’s always going to sound like a good reason.”

“Could it sound like a good reason because it is one? Sometimes, even?”

I drew in a deep breath. I collected my laptop and put it into my bag.

“Don’t leave, please. I don’t want to drive you away. I do want to understand,” Natalie said. “The first and last thing I said at our last meeting was that I was concerned. I’m more concerned now.”

“Why ask me about whether I was looking for work?”

“Because she asked me to ask you, if I thought it was appropriate, and I thought it might be.”

“Of fucking course,” I said.

“Don’t get angry,” Natalie said.

“I’m not angry with you.”

“Before we got derailed, I was talking about expectations. You flew into that scene with no hesitation.”

“I’m invincible,” I said. A lie, yes, but I wasn’t about to trust her with the truth.

“I know that, but isn’t there always some risk you’ll be hurt, or that there will be some consequence? You’re paying me, you’re involving your family, and the hack could be the tip of the iceberg. I have to wonder, how much are you putting into this?”

“I know my own limits, Natalie.”

“Are you looking for work?”

“Are you going to report to my mother and tell her if I’m not?”

“No,” Natalie said. “And I’m offended that you’d ask.”

“I’ve been pulling occasional shifts here and there doing cape work. Keeping the peace at protests, standing guard here or there, in the general vicinity of cape functions. I volunteer too.”

“Is the volunteer stuff as a cape?”

I sat back in my chair, and shifted the position of my bag. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

“It doesn’t seem like much of a balance.”

“You’re aware I’ve never had that balance?” I asked, in my best ‘get real’ tone.

“You went to high school once upon a time, didn’t you?”

“As the girl that was an out and open superheroine,” I said. “Because of a decision my parents made.”

“I haven’t seen my dad in years. I don’t even know if he survived. I know what it’s like to have parent issues,” Natalie said. “I do get it. But is this really what you want? Your mother is concerned-”

I grit my teeth.

“-I’m concerned. I can definitely see the similarities between you two. You’re both firm in your convictions and it seems like you both give things your all. She’s usually the first one in and the last one out at work.”

“Can we stop talking about my mom?” I asked. Angrier than I’d intended.

“Okay,” Natalie said. She stopped there. “Give me a second. I’ll compose my thoughts.”

I gave her a few seconds. My ankle crossed over the other, and the top foot tapped against the ground. My fingers fidgeted with the strap of the bag that laid against my chair.

“I’m your lawyer. For you and your team.”

“Not my team. Just a team I’m looking after.”

“There’s an implication of overseeing and ownership, but okay. I’m the lawyer. I can give you counsel, and if I know who you are and who you want to be, I can tailor that counsel. My tendency is to be conservative, because there’s a lot we don’t and won’t know.”

I nodded. “There’s a degree to which I want conservative.”

“I hear you. I would strongly encourage something more lawful. Calling first, letting authorities know, checking with the lawyer, doing what you’ll do, working with authorities after.”

“Not every situation allows for that. Having a plan is great, and I’m all about laying stuff out and being smart about things. Sometimes there’s no time, and you have to make choices.”

“Yes,” Natalie said. She paused, fixing her glasses. “Yes. If these are the three stages of the plan, with prelude, action, follow-up, maybe you can skip one, and you can explain it away to the authorities.”

I nodded. “That’s not unreasonable.”

“Except… If you have to skip two and rush the other, is it possible that you shouldn’t have acted at all?”

“We should have just let Houndstooth’s group get attacked from behind?”

“Or waited to send them in,” Natalie suggested. “Or not had them come in at all, if you couldn’t be sure you’d be able to handle the lead-in and follow-up.”

I drummed my fingers on the table. “There’s more to it. These guys are in contact with people. If we let them operate as normal, try to catch them in the act, they’ll use their leverage and catch us first. We have to apply some sustained pressure. Test their relationship with their contacts. We’ve talked it over with other groups and they agree it makes a degree of sense.”

“Houndstooth?”

“They were one. They really liked it, even.”

Natalie’s brow wrinkled. “You said sustained. Do you have more lined up?”

“A team is going to call a local realtor, looking into the possibility of moving in. We’ll see if they react.”

“Then?” she asked.

“We might have some more people lined up. Another group might be passing through, and we’ll be more ready if something comes up. My cousin is swinging by.”

More brow wrinkles. “You’ll pressure them until they crack.”

“Until they start to. Then we or someone we trust targets that weak point.”

“When things crack, it’s often sudden. Hook and Sink would be an example of that.”

I nodded.

“If it’s sudden, it’s hard to take the necessary steps before and after,” Natalie said.

“It could be,” I said.

“You don’t have to give me an answer right now, but please think about what you want this to be. You can act faster and more flexibly if you’re loose with the law, but you’ll lose your chance at getting a big success past a judge’s desk. I can help you if that’s the route you need to go.”

“But you think we shouldn’t go that way.”

“The people on the team are young, so you need to think about what you’re teaching them. You need to think about your balance of real life and cape life.”

“I’m not-” I started. “I never got that. Even before I had powers, the cape life had taken over.”

“I can understand why you would resent her for that, but-”

“That’s not it,” I said.

She sat there, waiting like she was expecting me to elaborate.

I almost got angry. I pushed that back.

“I’m not going to get into particulars,” I said, calm. “It’s between me and her, and it would make things messy. Nobody benefits from that. Least of all you.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll think about what you said. About what I want, what I’m doing, keeping an eye out for balance. The team and what they need.”

“The kind of counsel you need me to be.”

“Yes,” I said. “Absolutely. But I need something from you too.”

Natalie nodded.

“Don’t involve my mother in this. Don’t pass on information, give hints, or respond to hints. Lawyer-client confidentiality should be in effect.”

“I’m not a lawyer, exactly. I can and do intend to do that, absolutely, but-”

“Act like one, here. Please. She’ll convey her side of the story, probably not in an obvious way, and I need you to be neutral. I won’t be sharing my side, but assume I have one.”

“Okay,” Natalie said.

“I can’t get into that stuff. I can’t afford to,” I said.

“She does care about you, you know,” Natalie said. “She might not handle it in the best way, I don’t know the details, but I know that she is smart and caring, and both of those things are magnified when it comes to you.”

I stared at her. My first thought was that I wanted to strangle her, because of the frustration I felt even before what I’d just said, her going against it, and how she seemed to not get it at all. Even with an absent parent? I wondered if it was something wholly different, like a parent that had left and cut contact of their own volition, rather than a parent that she’d cut herself off from.

My second thought was to tell Natalie what my mother had done, and to hope she understood. Even if I knew it would blow things up, cause chaos, screw up Natalie’s relationship with a superior.

I could see the worry on her forehead, as she looked at me. In that look, I could see that I was the bad guy here. I was the one Natalie thought she had to worry about, and my mother was the smart, capable, caring professional.

Anything I did in reaction to this would only make me seem more unreasonable.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” I said, pushing the emotion back, doing my best to sound normal. “Are phone payments okay?”

“They are,” Natalie said.

I took a minute to get everything sorted out, glad to have something to focus on, then tapped my phone against hers.

Sixty dollars out of my account. A glance at the screen verified my account standing. I had two hundred for rent to Crystal, seventy five for utilities. Even before any possible temp jobs in costume, I had enough to get through next month, two or three more meetings with Natalie or even fewer with anyone we replaced her with. Natalie was cheap and willing and I didn’t disagree with her non-family related advice. It made sense.

“Thank you,” she said. “And thank you for lunch.”

“I’ll see you later,” I said.

She was the pawn, not the problem. My mother had chosen her for a reason. A play of a sort, possibly unintentional or automatic. It wasn’t a play my mom had made because she was a mastermind, natural or otherwise. It was just how she was, how she navigated people. Everyone close to her had had to learn how to deal with it.

The tragedy was that as much as it was a conscious or unconscious bid for a reconnection with me, it would achieve the opposite.

I put my music on, and walked to the nearest bit of park so I could take off without causing too much of a commotion.

⊙

I let myself into the headquarters. I was secretly glad to find I wasn’t the first person in, seeing Kenzie at the desk, wearing the same clothes from yesterday.

As that fleeting sentiment passed, I was alarmed, seeing Kenzie at the desk, wearing the same clothes from yesterday.

“Kenzie?” I asked.

“Oh!” I heard her speak, though she didn’t move. Kenzie-at-the-desk winked out of existence.

“…Kenzie?” I tried again.

“I’m on my way!” she said, through the computer speaker. “I was hooked in by phone and forgot I had a virtual me set up to appear if I called. It’s only half done. I’ll be there soon! How are you?”

“Don’t dive too deep into the team stuff or tinkertech, Kenzie,” I said. “Take a break, turn off your brain every once in a while.”

“I turn off my brain by tinkering,” she said. “It’s like how on some computers you can push the number so high it goes back to zero, except it’s brain activity.”

“Kenzie,” I said. “Put the phone away. Close your eyes. Don’t fuss about things.”

“But-”

“Is there an emergency?”

“No.”

“Then hang up, put the phone away, close your eyes, and don’t worry. Everyone’s coming, we’ll tackle some things, compare notes, and all will be good.”

“Bye.”

“Bye Kenzie. See you soon.”

“In… twelve minutes. About. And Rain is coming, but he’s going to be later. He’ll arrive in-”

“Hang up the phone,” I said. “Or I’m going to start unplugging things at random.”

“Bye then.”

I didn’t respond, because it was apparent that Kenzie had to get the last word. The ambient noise came through the phone for another few seconds before she hung up. The cube to the right of her desk went dark.

It was strange to be in the space when the others had yet to arrive. Normally, my focus was on the task at hand, here. I wanted to be the rock, unmovable, in case others needed to reach out. It was hard to be that with Natalie’s words in my mind and the room empty.

The whiteboards were people’s thoughts encapsulated. Mine was numbers to call, things to do, a rough timeline of events, with the next being Auzure’s call to Cedar Point. They were Houndstooth’s recommendation. I added notes about the hack.

Kenzie had her costume notes, tinker notes, some drawings in erasable marker of her face, a circle with large eyes, a kiss-shaped mouth, and two buns, and various hearts and stars. She had two boards, one mounted on the wall behind the one with two legs and four wheels, and the tinker notes spilled out from the side of the one in front to the one in the back. So did the stars and hearts, for that matter.

Chris’ was at the other end, opposite her desk. I walked over to it, glancing at the others on the way. There were some names written down, but most had been erased.

Menagerie
Zoo
Zoological or Zoologic?
Hodgepodge or Hodge? Podge?

Note to self: bring books for Rain

All written in the bottom left corner. ‘Chris’ was in the top right corner, the ‘h’ smudged where a sleeve had rubbed up against it mid-write.

Ashley’s board was empty, except for a very elaborate, stylized rendition of her name. Kenzie had found some fonts and displayed them on the whiteboard for tracing. Ashley had okayed this one.

Just ‘Ashley’. Nothing else figured out.

Rain had two boards, like Kenzie. One on wheels, another on the wall behind. Unlike Kenzie, they weren’t even remotely organized by topic. Snag, Love Lost, Cradle, ‘5’, known acquaintances, tinker hands, contact pads, timeline for Snag’s operations, known places the cluster had been with lines drawn to names of acquaintances, name ideas with ‘handbreak’ crossed out because Tristan had apparently vetoed it, a crude calendar with the names of cluster members filling in blanks, Love Lost due tonight… and so on.

Just red marker and some brown, presumably to put in different words in gaps yet keep them distinct. Or because Kenzie had stolen the red marker to draw hearts.

Tristan’s was next to Rain’s, and Tristan’s was mostly devoted to team name ideas, room layouts, broader organization and schedule, and some minor notes on money spent. Byron hadn’t really showed up in the hideout, but Tristan had still devoted a quarter of the board to him. A list of movies. Aimed at letting Byron maintain a degree of communication with Chris and Rain, it seemed, from the comments on the side.

Sveta was taken up by a mix of art and names. She’d written out names not in a list, but as solitary words. Images had been drawn around them. Beneath ‘Moor’, a girl’s hair, wavy, with a fish head poking out to the right from between the two curtains of hair. It was very detailed for art on a whiteboard, with each scale getting a texture. Above ‘Lash’ was a feminine figure in stark black lines with back arched, head back, and breasts pointed skyward, the breasts so pointed they could have been used for Kenzie’s geometry homework. To the right of ‘Cirrus’ was a face drawn out in lines, frowning. ‘Berth’ was sitting in the bottom right corner in tiny text. The image was so small it was barely legible. It might have been Sveta’s rendition of herself, potato-shaped with arms and legs flailing. A line was drawn between its head and the word ‘no’, a speech bubble without the bubble.

I felt oddly fond at seeing it. That kind of mental working was inexplicable to me, but I liked seeing the hints of it.

After Sveta was my whiteboard, neatly organized, then Kenzie’s two, which I’d already noted.

I wanted to help them.

No. The boards didn’t convey it, the boards were things as they should be, even, but they needed help.

On so many levels, they needed help.

The by-proxy interaction with my mother had affected my mood. Natalie’s words and concerns had too, but it was hard to know how many of those were my mother’s and how many were her.

The concern, with emphasis on the word like I could remember Ashley doing… Even after I’d been hurt by the Nine, had worse done to me by my sister, and gone to the hospital, I couldn’t remember my mother ever expressing concern for my activities as a cape. If such was expressed in Natalie’s expression and words, then I could believe it was Natalie’s.

Concern for what I was doing, the path I was walking? I could see it being my mother’s, through Natalie-as-proxy.

It made me sad and angry and frustrated all at the same time, and I didn’t have any outlets for that. The punching bag hadn’t yet arrived and been set up, and I wasn’t about to throw myself at the villains. Not that I wanted to operate that way.

The villains were so simple, so easy. Cedar point. Bad guy central. I was supposed to dislike what they did and I did dislike it. I didn’t see anything redeeming in them, I had the power to stop them, and I wholly planned to. If I could mess with Tattletale in the process? Bad guy, I was supposed to dislike her, she’d done little that redeemed her, and it was personal, besides? Yeah. Fuck yes. But I’d do it smart, not by impulse.

Others… not so easy. My dad. Gilpatrick. Mrs. Yamada, even. They were the good guys and they hadn’t handled things perfectly. I felt varying degrees of heartbreak because of them but I couldn’t blame them. Not easy.

My life was filled with people I wanted to get angry at and couldn’t, because they were fundamentally broken and flawed. My mother. My sister. Amelia. Amy. I’d said her name and thought about her for ten lifetimes’ worth, in just the span of two years. I felt vaguely ill that I was doing so now, even if it was for the sake of doing as Natalie had asked me to.

The only thing I hated more than being victim to other people’s emotional impulses and fucked-upness was when those other people were so close to me that it all came down on my head. The furthest thing from easy.

The door opened, interrupting my thoughts. I turned my head to see.

Sveta and Ashley. Tristan absent, even though he would normally catch the same train.

“Hi,” I said.

“What are you doing standing in the dark? At least turn the lights on,” Sveta chided me.

“There’s more than enough light from the windows,” I said. “It’s bright out.”

“I’d expect that behavior from Ashley, not you,” Sveta said.

“Sounds right,” Ashley said.

Sveta flicked the switch, looking up as the lights took their time coming on. It made me think of my mom. Turning on the lights, even when not strictly necessary. I could remember visiting friend’s houses and feeling like something was odd when other parents didn’t do it.

“What are you doing?” Sveta asked.

“Thinking.”

“Uh oh.”

“Constructive thinking. I think. I hope. Had a chat with Natalie.”

“Uh oh,” Sveta said, again, as she sidled up to me.

I gave her a light push. She smiled, righted herself, and half-stepped, half-stumbled right next to me. She gave me a hug from behind, setting her chin on my shoulder.

Familiar sensation, there, in an eerie not-familiar way.

“Tristan’s walking the sprogs,” Sveta said. “Rain’s late.”

“Kenzie mentioned,” I said. “The second part. Sprogs?”

“Chris and Kenzie. I thought it was clever.”

“It was.”

She nodded, head moving against my shoulder. “You’re looking at the boards?”

I gestured in the direction of the whiteboards. “Natalie wants to know our mission statement, so she can fine-tune her advice. She wanted a lot of things, some harder to put into words than others. I’m looking at the whiteboards, trying to figure out what the thread is and how I can help.”

“Your board is empty, Ashley,” Sveta said.

“So?”

“Are you going to call yourself Damsel of Distress?” I asked. “For that matter, what are you doing, costume-wise?”

“If you’re going to tell me not to wear a dress while I’m out with you all, you can fuck off,” Ashley said.

“Not wearing a dress could help with the Manton issues. You’re more likely to use your power to blow up the edge of a flapping dress than the part that hugs your body.”

“You can fuck off,” she said, again.

“Ashley likes dresses,” Sveta said. “We’ve had conversations about it. She thinks I should wear some, and I’ve had to repeatedly reinforce that I don’t have the legs for it, because I don’t have legs.”

“They multiply a lady’s grace,” Ashley said.

“You can’t exaggerate a negative,” Sveta said.

“You’re attached to the image,” I observed.

“Obviously,” Ashley said, turning to face me.

She was attached to just that image. I wasn’t sure if she had multiple versions of the same dress, but she didn’t change things up much. She had, however, bought the new dress in Cedar Point, and we’d seen on camera as she considered nail polish.

She wanted to change, maybe. But… how long had she stuck to this style? I’d fancied taking Sveta shopping, but now I was intrigued by this puzzle.

“It’s a shame you damage your dresses,” I said. I indicated the hem of her dress. “Are you learning to tailor or do you hire someone?”

“I’m studying it. Saves me money.”

“Okay, so… I have a bit of a crazy idea,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes.

“Bear with me,” I said.

“Bear with her,” Sveta said. “Victoria knows fashion.”

“You’re leading up to this like you know I’ll hate it.”

I nodded.

“Out with it, then,” Ashley said.

“Hair,” I said.

“No,” was the response, without a beat missed.

“I can’t promise it would work, but hair can confuse the Manton effect. It might be that the power gets confused because it’s a part of your identity and a part of you, but it’s not alive either. There are parahumans who impregnate their costumes with hair to make them resistant to their own powers. There are some who have costumes that are just hair, or mostly hair, but those are pretty scanty, as you can probably imagine.”

“I think I’ve heard of that parahuman,” Sveta said. When I arched an eyebrow, she said, “The hair impregnation thing.”

“I’m not going to cut it off,” Ashley said.

“That’s fine. I’m not even sure it would work, and it would be a shame to do it if it didn’t.”

She nodded.

“You could try saving the hairs that come free while you’re sleeping or brushing your hair,” I said.

“How much would I need?” Ashley asked.

“If it did work, you might not even need much. A strand every quarter-inch or so, along the length, or along the parts that are likely to get clipped by your power. Maybe a bit more.”

“And it’d be white hairs on a black background,” she said.

“You could, you know, not wear black?” I ventured.

“I like black,” she said. “It’s elegant. It works. The black dress every woman has in her closet for occasions is black for a reason.”

I was actually enjoying myself, because of the puzzle, and because it was my longest interaction with Ashley that hadn’t come to blows.

“Dye it?” Sveta asked.

“Doesn’t work,” Ashley said. “I have natural silver-blonde hair, but I use my power-”

She put her hand to the side of her head and used her power. I stepped back, stumbled into Sveta, then reached out to help her catch her balance.

Ashley’s hair settled back into place. Her pupils took a long few seconds to reappear.

The door swung open. It was Tristan, looking alarmed.

“We good,” Sveta said.

“My eyes and hair lose their color,” Ashley said, in a non-sequitur for Tristan.

“You’d lose the dye,” I said. “Probably.”

Kenzie and Chris appeared behind Tristan. He let them in.

“What happened?” Chris asked.

“Talking fashion,” Sveta offered.

“Which involves reality-shattering explosions, naturally,” Chris said. He grinned.

He was wearing a newer t-shirt, with a gorn-metal band’s album cover on the front. Not my style. He was broader around the middle, but I diplomatically avoided mentioning it.

“You’re taller,” I observed.

“One and a half inches taller,” Chris said.

“He went with the indulgence thing yesterday,” Tristan said.

“Yeah,” Chris said. “I knew there was a risk I might be useless for the day, putting myself in a state where I just sit around, eat, play games. So I fucked off. I’ll hit anxiety a few times in the next while, but I’ll make it mad twitchiness so there’s some more motive behind it, instead of it being paralyzing. That’ll be fun.”

“That sounds like you’re going overboard. Shouldn’t you be balancing things out?” I asked.

“Shouldn’t you be minding your own business?” Chris asked. “Go talk fashion. I’m fine.”

He walked over to his corner, near where his whiteboard was. Kenzie moved to follow, and Chris turned around, reached out to grab her by the shoulders, and turned her to face us, before going back on his way, to his whiteboard.

“Fashion,” Tristan said. “Okay. We’ve got some stylish and artsy people here. I’m not so up there on girl-fashion, but I’ll contribute what I can.”

“Ashley is married to this look,” I said.

“Married is the wrong word,” Ashley said.

“How would you put it?” Sveta asked.

“A long time ago, when I was still finding my way, I didn’t even have the clothes on my back, not intact ones. I had no friends, no family, and law enforcement was after me. I had nothing. I spent a lot of time thinking about who and what I wanted to be. Characters I liked, clothes I liked, people I’d thought were elegant and imposing. I found this. I built this,” Ashley said.

What had her role models been, for aesthetics? Cartoon movie villains? Evil sorceresses and witches?

“When you had nothing, you found this, and you want to hold onto that,” Sveta said. “I can understand that. I hold onto things that were important to me once.”

“Like Weld,” Kenzie said.

“Among others,” Sveta said, giving me more of a hug.

“I don’t want to hold onto anything,” Ashley said. “I am that. People spend their entire lives trying to find the right image for themselves and I found it when I was Kenzie’s age.”

“I don’t think you’re going to win this one, Victoria,” Tristan said.

“Theoretically speaking,” I started.

“Alright. I’m getting out of the line of fire,” Tristan said.

“Don’t be mean,” Kenzie said.

“Call with Auzure in a short bit. Rain might miss it,” Tristan said.

“Theoretically speaking… can I put something out there?” I asked.

“Can I stop you?” Ashley asked.

“Tell me to and I’ll stop right here. You can do your thing.”

Sveta rocked her head left and right on my shoulder, chin digging in, until I shrugged her off. Ashley considered.

“Theoretically,” Ashley said.

“Theoretically,” I picked up the prompt, “You’re going to be a hero. You have a crystal clear image of what you’ll look like as a villain. Your every expectation is that you’ll stop being a hero at one point and return to villainy.”

“That’s not theory. That’s fact.”

“But what is theory is… what if, to avoid your hero self and villain self getting mixed up, you tried something different, in the here and now? It keeps your villain persona distinct.”

Ashley folded her arms.

“Different how? I get the impression you have something in mind,” Sveta said.

“Pshht!” Ashley made the sound, shushing Sveta.

“Don’t pshht me.”

“What if, theoretically,” I said, “You cut off the hair? White hair for a white costume. You can still do something with black accents here and there, but we can go more… white goth. Or something in that vein.”

“I’m not goth,” Ashley said. “And I’m not cutting my hair.”

“Theoret-” I started.

I saw her expression change.

More seriously, I said, “You cutting your hair could be a commitment. You could go back to being the long-haired villainess, but only after a period of time. You’d be locking yourself into being a hero in the meantime.”

“A hair-based time commitment,” Sveta said.

“There’s no reason to do it,” Ashley said. “To preserve my costume? For that minor gain, I’m supposed to risk looking like a simpleton? No.”

“What kind of black accents?” Kenzie asked.

“No,” Ashley said.

“Black around the eyes, like heavy eyeliner, maybe decoration in the hair, or as part of the mask, something to frame the edges of sleeves and dress.”

Kenzie went still. She gave Ashley a sidelong glance.

“What?” Ashley asked.

“Back before Mrs. Yamada told me I wasn’t supposed to give anyone a birthday present, I was thinking about what to get you.”

“If Mrs. Yamada said no, then there’s probably a reason,” I said.

“The group was new and Ashley and I were only just starting to talk, so it would’ve been weird, I think. It wouldn’t be for just Ashley either, it’d be for the group.”

“Spit it out,” Ashley said.

“Eyes,” Kenzie said. “I can put these things in your mask and it would project over your eyes. We could have you wear a white costume, and then there would be bits that are black, and then we could make your eyes totally, one hundred percent black, or totally white.”

“Hold up,” I said.

Kenzie turned my way.

“When you say something like ‘I can make this’, I have to ask… how easily?”

“Super easily. A few hours easy,” Kenzie said. When I didn’t shut her down, she turned to Ashley, “We could have it so smoke comes off of your eyes and trails behind you as you walk. or blurry light, like when you wave a sparkler in the dark, or particles, like shapes, or blurs like your power makes, or-”

Ashley put a hand on top of Kenzie’s head. Kenzie stopped talking.

“Do you want to? Do you like it?”

“If I went to buy you a gift, to balance it out, so it was equal, what would you want?”

“Went? I don’t want you to go anywhere.”

“I meant some other time.”

“No gift,” Kenzie said. “Hang out. Talk with me. Come on, we can use your whiteboard. We’ll talk and take notes, and figure out what your costume might be. Let me search for things on my phone-”

Kenzie took Ashley’s hand and led her to the whiteboard, tugging her along. Ashley didn’t object too much along the way.

Near Kenzie’s computers, Tristan had his arms folded, his eyebrow raised. Sveta had her head cocked to one side as she studied me. Chris was dumping his bag out on his little table.

“She’s not hard to figure out or anything,” I said, quiet enough that only Sveta would hear me. “At one point she said we were pretty similar people.”

“That leaves me with way more questions than answers,” Sveta said.

Tristan called out, “Don’t get too into it, you two! We’re listening in on the call with Auzure soon!”

Ashley raised a hand, waving him off. Kenzie was just nonstop background chatter now.

“What are you thinking?” Sveta asked. “You’re introspective today.”

“Extraspective, right this moment,” I said. “Thinking about the big picture.”

“Think out loud.”

I shrugged. “The team. How it fits together. How I fit into it.”

“A bit of introspection then.”

“No, not exactly,” I said, the thought clarifying as I said it. “How’s Weld doing?”

“If he could get tired he’d be dog tired. I need to have a talk with him soon, before things get to a point where I don’t see him ever,” Sveta said. “I hate to add anything to his plate, but I have to be assertive.”

“I’m glad you have him,” I said.

Sveta smiled. “I’m glad I have him too. Even if he’s tired and gone most of the time. Why are you asking about him?”

“When Jessica- When Mrs. Yamada asked me to sit in with the group and help out. She asked Weld first, didn’t she?”

“Ah, you caught that,” Sveta said. The smile disappeared. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure if you did, and I didn’t want to risk hurting your feelings.”

“Was I second choice?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. Sorry, I don’t know for sure, but Weld was asked and he said no, but he said he’d be free a little while after. She could have waited and had Weld sit in, but she chose you.”

“And she seemed okay, almost relieved, at me doing this,” I said.

“As okay as she is with any of this,” Sveta said.

The display on the wall lit up. The trill of the phone filled the room.

“They’re calling us first,” Tristan said. “Everyone come. Seems like Rain is going to miss this. Sucks.”

We gathered at the desk.

“We need something to call you,” the woman’s voice on the other line said. “Dido speaking, with Auzure.”

“Dido, this is Capricorn. You’re on speaker with most of the rest of the team listening in. We’re working on the team name. We’ll have something soon.”

“I wanted to go over the particulars, make sure we do this right. We’re going to be calling…”

I mostly tuned it out. Tristan had it handled, and it wasn’t rocket science. I wasn’t that fond of Auzure, either.

Natalie had asked me what I was doing.

I’d been asked to be here. I was damaged, and Mrs. Yamada knew it. Why was I here, then? Yesterday, I might have said it was so I could provide this kind of direction and guidance. So I could talk to the lawyer, handle situations like Kenzie’s and Ashley’s, and be a friend to Sveta.

Was I right? Thinking that Yamada had felt like she’d done her job in putting me here? Was I overthinking things after my talk with Natalie, paranoia rearing its ugly head again?

“Beautiful,” Dido said. “Should we conference you in?”

“No,” Tristan said. “We’ve got a number you can call, it’ll route through to them, and it won’t be as blatant as a conference call.”

“Lovely. I wondered if I should mention something. Good to work with people who know what they’re doing. What number?”

Sveta mouthed the word ‘slimy’ at me.

Water off my back, now. I’d just dealt with my mom and this was easy by comparison.

Tristan gave the number, and the call was terminated.

He checked his phone.

“Rain wants to know if people are okay with him inviting Erin. They’re still half an hour away. She gave him a ride and they stopped along the way. He says he’s safe, no trouble, but he wants to talk, and he wants her here when he does.”

Tristan’s voice was just a bit tight.

“I have suspicions,” Sveta said.

“I know, I think,” Tristan said.

With that, I felt like the musings crystallized. I wouldn’t know until I talked to Jessica, but I had more of an idea. Things made a degree of sense.

“Not here,” I said.

“Hm?” Tristan asked.

“Gut feeling, but we’ll meet him to talk somewhere nearby, as soon as this call is wrapped up and we’ve seen how they respond. Half an hour should be plenty of time. But let’s not do it here,” I said.

Shade – 4.7

“Hello? This is Andre Giannone.”

“Andre, hello. We were hoping you could help us out. We want to rent some locations in Cedar Point.”

“Where did you get this number?”

“We went to the source. Mortari Construction handled the building in Cedar Point, and they gave us the name of… Andrea Giannone? Could it be your daughter we’re wanting to contact?”

“I am Andrea, I go by Andre. Easier, not having to explain that I’m not a woman. It’s a man’s name where I was born.”

“That’s great. Andre, aren’t you the one charged with leasing the properties?”

“Their records are out of date. I’ve washed my hands of the business. Look elsewhere.”

“Can you give us the number of the person we can call?”

“No. There are no vacancies in Cedar Point right now, and I won’t give you the number because I don’t know who is handling things.”

‘Won’t give you the number’, I noted. Not ‘can’t give you the number‘. Despite not knowing?

“A cursory internet search suggests there are a lot of vacancies in Cedar Point. People are noting it and asking why.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You live there.”

“I keep to myself. Look elsewhere. Stop bothering an old man.”

“Mr. Giannone, I understand if you’re scared. Don’t answer me if you’re worried people are listening in. We’re heroes.”

Was the summary silence on the other end because he was worried people were listening in, or was it shock?

“We’re heroes. We’re a corporate team with plans of settling in. We know there are vacancies, and we know you still have signs up. If we can get this working, we’re going to look after you and the people in Cedar Point.”

“What? A corporate team?”

“Of heroes, Mr. Giannone. We call ourselves Auzure. Au for the chemical symbol for gold, azure for blue, I don’t know if that will help you remember. You’ll see us around, if we can do this without stepping on anyone else’s toes.”

“Toes? What?”

I glanced over the others, and saw Tristan doing the same thing. His eyes met mine. I wondered if he had the same thought I did, about how Dido’s clarification about the name would only confuse people.

“Jurisdictions, Mr. Giannone. It wouldn’t be good if we turned up there and ended up in a turf war with fellow heroes over who gets to help.”

“Why would there be fighting to- there’s nothing here. There’s nobody here. It’s a nowhere place. Everyone who could leave left. Everyone else wants to be left alone.”

Was he aware of the contradiction in what he’d said? That there were no vacancies, but there was nobody there?

Dido went on, taking on a tone that made me think she was in sales. “It might be a nowhere place right now, Mr. Giannone, but I promise you, Auzure can change that. The other heroes want to change it. Whatever happens, you’re going to get some stellar heroes in your neighborhood. Hopefully it’s us, and we can clear the way so that everyone that left can come back.”

Dido’s earnest, almost painful optimism toward the end was contrasted by the sputtering reply.

“You’ll make this place a warzone.”

“We’ll handle things in a good way. Trust us. Auzure is gentle but we get the job done.”

There was inarticulate sputtering on the other side for a few seconds. “I’m not the person to bother with this. Don’t call me again.”

Mr. Andre Giannone hung up the phone.

“Kenzie,” Tristan said, putting a hand on the back of Kenzie’s chair.

The camera shifted, focusing on a small house on the edge of the downtown strip. Tall windows and a realty sign, with the second floor having suggestions of an upstairs apartment.

“I feel bad,” Dido said, speaking to the dead air.

“Can we talk back to her?” Sveta asked.

“No, but-” Kenzie hit a few keys. The call ended, and then the phone rang.

“Here you are,” Dido said. “Beautiful. Was that what you needed?”

“We’re going to see,” Tristan said. “The man you called is going out for a walk.”

Mr. Giannone was dressed in a suit jacket over what might have been a thin sweater or long-sleeved shirt, with nice hair combed straight back from his face, but where he might have looked dashing, gray hair or no, he had bad posture that made him look older than he probably was. He walked with what I could only call alacrity.

“Patching in,” Kenzie said. “We’ll send you the video after, but for now it’s going to be audio only.”

“Lovely! I get to see and hear the rest?”

“It’s part of the deal,” Tristan said. “We’ll pass on info about villains and the greater villain network as we pull things together. We’re hoping you’ll keep from stepping on our toes in the meantime, as you put it. Houndstooth was saying you were better than some of your teammates about jumping into something like this without regard for us.”

“Hmm. I could see it if we were itching for something to do, but I don’t think it’s likely. Right now, I don’t think we could. Too much to do already.”

“The war?” I asked.

“That’s a big part of it.”

“How is it? How bad?” Sveta asked.

“I have no idea. It feels like none of the people doing the talking and negotiations want it to happen, especially as we’re getting hints about how bitter a war it could be. Earth C doesn’t mess around.”

“Do you think it’s going to happen?” Sveta asked. She sounded more anxious now.

“The diplomats and most of the people at the very top on both sides are fighting it, but it seems like things are moving inexorably in that direction. Yes.”

Sveta’s chin dropped a bit as she looked down at the ground. I reached out for her, and stopped as I heard a small ‘thup’ sound, followed by another.

Her arms and legs hadn’t moved, so I took it as her tendrils striking at the interior of her body in the same way a prisoner might punch the wall of their cell.

“My hope is we’ll keep moving at this steady, unwilling pace, there will be an initial exchange of blows, and both sides back off,” Dido said. “My worry is that something explosive will happen. Another broken trigger, an attack from Earth C doomsday radicals, an attack from the Fourth Sect, someone stupid from our world trying to take territory over there. I could go on. It might spark something lasting.”

I approached Sveta in a way that let her see I was coming, moving slowly. I wanted to ask if it was okay to make contact, and I didn’t want to say it out loud, where the others or Dido might hear.

“Fourth Sect?” Tristan asked. “Have I heard of this before?”

Sveta saw me and reached out. I took her hand in mine, and reached out with the other arm to put it around her shoulders.

“I’d call it a cult but I’m not sure it’s the right term. They’re a minority power with a strong political voice. They want war, to thin their own populations after too much ‘be fruitful and multiply’. Hard to get into in any detail on that cycle. Some of Gimel’s biggest allies in Earth C are people who want to postpone war because it makes the Fourth Sect weaker.”

“Your thinking is if they get to the point where they’re desperate, they’ll try to spark something,” Tristan said.

“Not my thinking. People higher than me. They’re some of what we’re watching out for.”

Tristan glanced at Sveta, then said, “We’re okay, right? We do have the edge on powers. Makes for an incredible toolbox.”

“We have an edge, but it’s not as big as you might think,” Dido said. “Our side has people who can detect or see powers, and what we keep hearing from them is that this guy has powers, but on the down-low. That woman has powers, nobody seems to be aware. A lot of them are using their abilities to maneuver into positions of power.”

“Can we stop talking about this?” Sveta asked. It felt strange hearing so abrupt a question when I hadn’t felt it in her body or breathing.

“We can,” Tristan said.

“Sorry,” Sveta said. “To cut in like that.”

“I don’t mind, love,” Dido said. “We can talk about other things. I’d welcome the distractions.”

“Mr. Giannone is at the center of town. He seems to know where to go to talk to the villains,” Tristan reported.

“Lovely,” Dido said. “Some silliness to take my mind off of things.”

Silliness. We were treating this situation as serious, we were trying to save Cedar Point and the people within, and we were trying to break up a criminal organization before it extended its reach too far or imploded. With all of our various issues, with one team member’s life on the line, we were making sacrifices and devoting ourselves to this in the long term.

Silliness?

To someone that was trying to head off a war with another universe? I could concede her that, but I could also think she could have worded it way more respectfully.

I decided to write her off as a bit of a ditz and let it be.

Giannone entered the bar, and my first thought was that we wouldn’t have the audio or video.

Moments later, however, he emerged with Prancer.

“…not involved in this.”

“Andre, if you don’t want to be involved, walking into the bar where we gather isn’t the way to do it. Not voicing your issues in earshot of ten people with powers. Let’s talk in my office.”

“Being seen walking into your office isn’t any better,” Andre Giannone said, resisting being led by the arm. Prancer stopped trying, and the older man said, “Thank you.”

“We’ll keep it polite,” Prancer said, “Both in what we talk about, and in appearing civil.”

The people in the bar could see out the window.

“They called me. What am I supposed to say? If this goes to court-”

“Let’s not talk about court.”

“What if?” Andre said.

“It’s not going to. The courts have too much to do to bother with someone like you. Even with people like us.”

“You said the heroes wouldn’t bother either, and how many have we seen or heard about now?”

“Andre. Listen. If they decide they’ll bother with petty crime, they’ll come after me, the other villains. They won’t go after the scared citizens. If they thought someone had done something, they would think it was because the people were forced.”

Prancer’s tone changed at the end there. Too light to be anything but joking. I wondered how tone would play out with the court, if Giannone was charged. I let go of Sveta and walked over to the whiteboard to note the question. Something for a future discussion with Natalie or someone like her.

“I don’t want this hassle,” Andre Giannone said.

“I understand. We’re already taking steps. We’re getting information, we’re getting help. We’ll have more in a bit, and we’ll fill you in.”

“What am I supposed to do when they call?”

“Hang up. Say whatever you said. Tell them you have no space. Do whatever you have to, but don’t rent to them. And don’t show up at the bar. Call me.”

“I wanted to get you sooner than that.”

“Call. Now, who was it that called?”

“Something about blue and gold.”

“Goldenrod?”

“No. I don’t know. Maybe.”

I felt a kind of satisfaction at the confusion. Dido was a salesman, maybe, or a face-person, but she wasn’t a marketing person. The way she’d described Auzure hadn’t been a good way to make it memorable.

“Could it have been Auzure?” Prancer asked.

“That’s it, I think.”

“Okay,” Prancer said. “I know someone I can ask for more details on what they’re doing. That’s good. Useful.”

“Who do you know?” Dido asked, as if Prancer could hear her.

Prancer continued talking, oblivious. “Next time, remember. That’s all you need to do. Leave it to me to decide if we need to worry.”

He laid a hand on Andre Giannone’s shoulder as he said it. It was a way to show support, and also a way to steer his conversation partner, suggesting the man walk back the way he came.

“I’ve held up my end so far,” Andre said, resisting being guided as he said it.

“And you get allowances others in the neighborhood don’t. Nobody knocks on your door. You have tenants.”

“Nobody’s knocking on my door, maybe, but I’m getting calls.”

“A call. One,” Prancer said. He walked, one hand on Andre Giannone’s shoulder, getting Andre started on his way. “And we’re taking steps to rectify the unwelcome attention. Things should calm down soon.”

“Okay,” Andre said. He looked at Prancer. “I don’t need to worry?”

“You don’t need to worry.”

Andre walked away. Prancer stood where he was, hooking thumbs in his jacket pockets, head tilted. The camera got a good angled view of his expression as he turned around. A confident smile.

A smile for the people in the window who might be looking at him, but he spoke under his breath, too quiet for even Kenzie’s camera to pick up.

“Can you get that for us?” Tristan asked.

“Yep!”

It took a short bit, and Prancer didn’t re-enter the bar, instead walking over to the building across the street, where his ‘office’ apparently was.

“What the hell is going on?” Prancer’s hiss came through the speakers.

“We’re going on,” Chris said.

“Thank you for the help, Dido,” Tristan said.

“I’m glad to, hon. I was worried I’d bothered an old man for nothing, but he’s in this, isn’t he?”

“We had cues he was.”

“Let us know if you need anything else.”

“Thanks,” Tristan said.

The conversation wrapped up with some goodbyes, and the call ended. Windows closed, and parts of Kenzie’s computer-cube went dark.

“We’ve got one group passing through later this afternoon. We could postpone it if needed. These guys are Houndstooth’s recommends,” Tristan said. “Victoria? You’ll handle it?”

“My cousin will come with. Just in case they’re keeping an eye out for me and have surface-to-air planned.”

“Missiles?” Chris asked.

“Anything,” I said.

“They’re starting to adapt,” Tristan said. “Info and help?”

“As far as info goes,” I said, “Natalie said someone tried hacking into the Wardens’ headquarters, specifically targeting my mom.”

“Wasn’t me,” Kenzie said.

“I feel like if it was Tattletale, they would have been cleverer about it. Sveta, since you were seen too, though they probably can’t connect you to your past self, you might want to make sure all accounts are secure.”

“Okay,” Sveta said.

“Then that only leaves Rain,” Tristan said. “Decompress, take notes, do whatever. We leave to meet him in a few minutes.”

He was taking on the leadership role. Ashley had seemed to want it, and she’d included herself when Houndstooth had wanted to meet people in charge, but she wasn’t fighting him on this.

I noted that, and I wondered.

I watched as the tight cluster of the group broke up. No longer gathered around the screen, standing behind Kenzie’s desk, they moved toward their individual spaces. Chris had the largest bubble around him, where he didn’t have people within it. His gait was different than it had been.

Ashley went to her board. She’d been quiet throughout, and now she stopped in front of her whiteboard. A mix of her writing and Kenzie’s marked it, with her writing along the center, each line slanted as if it was written on an angle, like a tower of stacked coins that was about to buckle and fall. Kenzie’s writing marked the bottom third, with a few drawings of eyes.

Whatever means of communication they had devised between them, I couldn’t decipher it. I couldn’t even begin to read Ashley’s handwriting. Kenzie went to Ashley to resume their prior discussion.

“You okay?” Tristan asked. I turned to look. He was talking to Sveta. “You didn’t like that talk about war.”

Sveta shrugged. She smiled as I joined their conversation. “Thank you for the hug. I didn’t even realize how upset I was until you came up to me.”

“Anytime,” I said.

“Was it the thought of Weld over there that got you?” Tristan asked.

Sveta shrugged, but it wasn’t too effective with her suit. “What threw me was when Dido talked about how people with powers were getting positions.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it might not be only that. The people with positions might be getting powers.”

“Cauldron?” I asked.

Sveta nodded. “Earth C is a major reason we had the supplies to rebuild. They say they did it out of goodwill. I think Cauldron made it happen. Gave powers to key people so they would agree, made deals.”

She put out one arm, indicating the window and the city beyond it.

“How much of that was bought and paid for with crimes against humanity? I saw some of what they did. I heard a lot more about it. My entire life, this body of mine, it’s because of them,” Sveta said. “It’s awful to think about.”

I looked out at the city that gleamed with traces of yellow and gold in the light of the early afternoon.

“I don’t know a lot about them,” Tristan said.

“I only know some,” I said. “The info came out after, but it trickles out, there’s a lot of guessing to be done.”

“I don’t have to guess,” Sveta said. “I can tell you more some day. But it’s going to take a few minutes longer than it takes to talk to Rain.”

Chris had joined Kenzie and Ashley’s conversation. Kenzie was bouncing with excitement, trying to get Chris’ input. He seemed reluctant to dish, but quick to shoot down this idea or that idea.

“You want to sit on this, skip out on the Rain conversation?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Sveta said. “I think I have to go, because I’m one of the only people who knows most of the story. It feels like I’m the only one who knows most of everyone’s story. I know yours, Victoria. I know Rain’s, I think. I have my suspicions about what he’s going to say.”

“I think I know,” Tristan said. “And I have a few big worries.”

⊙

I flew around the area before settling down. Everyone was gathered.

Erin drove a different vehicle than the last time. It was a sedan, small and very dusty. The accumulated fine dirt on the side had settled into waves that looked like very flat, spread out sand dunes, set on a vertical surface, with peaks, valleys, and patterns.

Erin opened the door. The dark makeup around her eyes was heavier, her hair was unwashed, and she wore a slim-fit sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up, a cat on the sleeve. Her low-rise jeans were tucked into calf-height boots.

“Hi Erin,” Kenzie said.

“Hi, critter,” Erin said. “How are you doing?”

“I was having a good day, but now this is happening. Feels ominous.”

“Yeah,” Erin said.

Rain took more time to get out of the passenger seat. He moved like an old man, shutting the door, letting a backpack fall to the ground by one of the car’s wheels. He had a black eye, his ear was swollen and scraped up, and his face looked asymmetrical in a way that suggested swelling on one side, with no distinct source. His knuckles and fingers were badly scraped up, with tape covering up some of them.

He was wearing a raglan tee with black sleeves, and jeans so old that they must have been as soft as sweatpants. The knees were worn through, and the knees beneath were speckled with scabs.

“You’re hurt,” Kenzie said.

Rain nodded.

“Did you get attacked?” Chris asked.

Rain shook his head. “Not by Snag’s group.”

It was hard, to pull back and watch. I’d tried for the call with Dido, stepped back to observe, letting Tristan take point with directing the others. He was good at it. Sveta being the one who had struggled had pulled me in a bit.

I wasn’t sure strict objectivity was the way to handle this, but getting too close didn’t help either.

That line of thought got me thinking about how I hadn’t ever really had to watch my back. Not among those I considered allies. Not among friends. Not among family.

And that, in turn, made me think about my sister, and the sick, hollow, angry experience of being betrayed by someone I’d thought I could trust more than I trusted myself.

I stood across from Rain and I felt like I had in the bank. The bank had been dusty, partially my fault, the floor scratched up by the passage of giant dogs, littered with discarded pieces of paper and dropped belongings. It had been dark, the rain pattering outside.

Much like Rain stood by the front of the car, hurting, his life in danger, my sister had stood a distance away from me, a knife to her throat.

Following that there had been the revelation of secrets. It wasn’t that I held Rain close to my heart or anything. It wasn’t even that I particularly trusted him. Only that I recognized the pattern.

“Shit,” Rain said.

“If you’re going to draw this out, at least tell me this isn’t you explaining everything and dropping something heavy on me,” Tristan said.

“No big news for you,” Rain said.

Tristan nodded.

“You’re going to tell us what’s been going on with you?” Sveta asked.

Rain looked at Erin. “Yeah.”

“She’s tied to this?” Sveta asked.

“Yeah,” Rain said. “Kind of. She could walk away free and clear if she wanted, I think. She knows most of my situation. Not all.”

“I’m moral support,” Erin said.

“No,” Rain said. “Because there’s stuff you don’t know. Kind of. It’s complicated.”

“You’ve got a look in your eyes,” Ashley said. “Fiercer.”

“I spent a good day and got a beating trying to find that fierceness,” Rain said. “That thing that would let me say this. Tristan called me out, said I needed to tell you guys, because it impacts what we’re doing. I needed to do some figuring out before I was able.”

“Yeah,” Tristan said.

I was silent. I could only see the parallels. I held my tongue because I didn’t trust it. If this was an echo of that situation in the bank, I had no better idea on how to handle it now in the present.

No rain, no enclosed area. We were at the edge of a park. It was sunny out.

No knife to anyone’s throat, not that Rain’s expression said any different.

“You’ve been hiding with powerful people,” Ashley said. “Capes, probably.”

Rain opened his mouth, then nodded.

“A gang.”

“A family,” Rain said. “Gang doesn’t really say it.”

“It was always us and them. And there was a lot of hate directed at them,” Rain said.

The in-group, out-group… and family. I could connect dots. I deliberately avoided doing so.

I focused on the situation instead, on the others. Chris was quiet, smiling slightly, but the smile had been a small, persistent thing since he’d nose-dived into indulgence. Tristan was quiet, but most of what he had to add were things that it was Rain’s responsibility to share. Ashley handled the questions.

No- Sveta joined her voice to Ashley’s. “You’re related to those powers. It’s why you have such a hard time pulling away.”

“The Fallen,” Rain said.

I winced. There were a lot of implications to that.

“Oh,” Kenzie said.

“I kind of connected the dots already,” Sveta said. She put a hand on Kenzie’s shoulder. “You first connected to Tristan after the God thing.”

“Religion came up in therapy,” Rain said, for the benefit of the rest of us. “Tristan came up to me after and asked about which church my family attended. I’d had a bad week. Nearly as bad as this week has been. We’d already connected some. Both of us have people invading our heads, questions of self, we talked a lot together in therapy. I cracked. I told him.”

“Yeah,” Tristan said. “Mom and dad were looking for a church. I thought I’d ask Rain. I don’t think Rain’s church would’ve suited them.”

“It’s not funny,” Kenzie said. “Don’t make jokes.”

“I’m not laughing, Kenzie,” Tristan said.

“They hate black people, don’t they?” Kenzie asked Rain.

“They’re a big group,” Rain said. “It’s hard to get into just how varied the branches are, the different beliefs, how they add up, some of the leaders that have come and gone. It’s hard to just point at them and say they hate this or they hate that.”

“Most of them hate black people,” Kenzie said.

“…Yeah.”

“Did your family? Did you? Do you?”

Rain looked back at Erin. “Yeah. I did. Once. You have to understand- it’s hatred for anyone and everyone, because that way it keeps everyone close to the family. So ‘black’ was just one more label, you know?”

“Back at the first meeting with Mrs. Yamada. You kept giving me looks,” Kenzie said. “They weren’t because I pay attention to the clothes I wear and dress nice, or because you were trying to figure out what was wrong with me.”

“It wasn’t about you,” Rain said. “I was figuring stuff out then. I was trying to reassess my whole way of thinking. It was me, not you.”

“It was you,” Kenzie said. She paused. “Being uncomfortable with me being there.”

“It was-” Rain started. “Me being uncomfortable with everything.”

“Including me. Especially me, right then,” Kenzie said. She paused, waited for a response. When Rain didn’t deny her, she added, “That… sucks.”

“Yeah,” Rain said.

“I’m not saying you suck. It sucks to hear it.”

“If it helps,” Rain said. “I’ve changed a lot since then. I’m still figuring some stuff out.”

“A lot of different groups to un-hate,” Chris said.

“I- kind of,” Rain said. “I still catch myself a lot. I think of things, I realize I’m making these assumptions. Then I want to change and I don’t know how. I try to use you guys as role models or talk to Mrs. Yamada, or I read, look up and watch a movie. But it’s a lot to re-teach myself.”

“Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Natives, Middle Easterners, then gay, trans,” Tristan rattled off.

“Deeper than that,” Rain said. “I had to start with re-figuring women and how I thought about them. I’m still pretty shitty, as much as I’m trying, because I hear you rattle that off and my first thought is ‘some of these aren’t like the others’ and I have to stop myself.”

“You’ve said a few things,” Chris said.

“Probably.”

“I figured you were a redneck.”

“Worse,” Rain said.

“They get in your head,” Erin jumped in. “They got my parents. My little brother. They got Rain when he was little. I accept he’s trying.”

“There was a Fallen group that found a pair of people like me,” Sveta said.

Rain closed his eyes, looked down.

“Boy and a girl. Case fifty-threes. Arizona. Peat and Fen. They showed up in a few cities, did some stunts, hero-ish. Junior level stuff. But they were juniors, we think.”

“I know the story,” Rain said.

“They were terrified of vehicles and they hated the idea of the PRT. They had a lot of peculiarities. They couldn’t stay in one place for long. Communities pulled together. It was a really cool thing, they’d get motel rooms paid for by fans, they had tutors come to visit. There was talk of trying to get them into the school system. It was tricky because they were tricky.”

Rain nodded.

“It was a really cool thing,” Sveta said. “There were blogs that followed them, and they were really positive. There was art drawn of them- I really liked that. A couple of times a week there would be articles talking about how they were doing something new and better and it was a step forward.”

“I knew some of it,” Rain said.

“You should know all of it. There was a time in my life when I could only vicariously enjoy those sorts of things, and I’d wake up and I’d tell myself I would check the blog after lunch and I would check the art page after dinner, and that was the sort of thing that helped me get through the days. Weld stuff was first thing. There were others. But Peat and Fen were big.”

“I know,” Rain said.

“They went down the wrong stretch of road and some Fallen jackasses on motorcycles thought they’d get a good reaction from people by holding the pair down and taking a chainsaw to their horns. To decorate their fucking helmets!”

Rain nodded, averting his eyes.

“Knife marks suggested someone tried to cut off one of their faces to wear it as a mask. You can imagine how I felt,” Sveta said. She moved her hair, showing the edge of her face, the mass of pencil-thin black tendrils behind it. “Since I’m only a mask and an assortment of lethal weapons. You can imagine how I felt, when instead of my daily pick-me up I got the news that they’d died from loss of their horns.”

Kenzie ducked her head, and started to walk away. When I went to follow and check her head, Ashley held up a hand and bid me to stop, following Kenzie instead.

“This isn’t an inquisition,” Erin said. “Rain isn’t responsible for everything the Fallen have done.”

Sveta ignored Erin for the moment. “Other Fallen groups have taken us for freak shows. The embodiments of the end times. Tom and Jake Crowley. I know that’s not on you, Rain, but you have to realize they aren’t good people.”

“I’m more than aware.”

“Then at least tell me you’re not going to go back,” Sveta said.

“I have to,” Rain said.

I could see Sveta’s face fall.

“I have to,” Rain said. “I have no choice. Really.”

“Okay,” Sveta said, her voice sad. “I think you have more choice than you think you do.”

“I really don’t. If I could do anything else, I would. I’m aware of a lot of things that are worse than Peat and Fen,” Rain said.

“What happened to Peat and Fen is pretty fucking bad,” Sveta said. She turned to Erin. “You’re not responsible for what others did, but if you’re leaning on them for protection or strength, then that’s not okay. You can’t use that strength.”

“They have my family,” Erin said.

“And they don’t let you go,” Rain said. “It’s all… very complicated.”

Ashley returned to the group. Kenzie was still sitting in the grass, a distance away, her back to us.

When I looked, Ashley gestured. Telling me to stay.

Rain looked pretty battered. Dejected.

He met my eyes.

“There’s more to it,” Ashley said.

“Oh yeah,” Rain said.

“If you won’t say it, then I will,” Ashley said. “I’ll guess. You killed people.”

Rain went very still.

I could remember a similar look on my sister’s face.

He huffed out a breath, hands at his lap as he slouched back against the front of the sedan, sitting against the hood. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.

“Yeah,” he finally said.

“Innocents,” she said.

“Kids,” Rain said. He looked in Kenzie’s direction. At Chris. Then he looked over his shoulder at Erin.

“Why?” Chris asked.

“I’ve been asking myself that a lot.”

“You maimed people,” Ashley said. Still on the offense.

“Long term injuries. Burns,” Rain said. “To people of all ages.”

“For fun?” Ashley asked.

“For respect, if anything. I don’t know,” Rain said. He looked back to Chris, since he was really answering his question. “Because a large part of me had only ever known the family, the lifestyle. All of the language – outsiders were… less. It was okay to hurt ten of them if you helped one of the family’s.”

“They had your whole childhood to work on you,” Erin said.

“Doesn’t excuse it,” Rain said.

“No. But it explains it,” she said.

“Your whole life?” I asked. My first time speaking in this conversation, maybe. I wasn’t sure – I was in a different mode.

“My parents were early adopters, mostly on the fringe. They got more into it as it grew. Renamed me early enough I don’t remember my original name. Rain O’Fire Frazier.”

“That’s terrible,” Chris said.

“Shush,” Sveta said.

“Everything about the Fallen is terrible,” Rain said. “A few years after the name change, they sold me to a family halfway across the country, used the money to fuck off traveling like they’d always talked about. My guardians right now are people I’ve called my aunt and uncle my whole life. I got powers with the cluster trigger, at a time I was just one more set of hands and a weapon, a henchman. That was supposed to elevate me and… it did the opposite. That was my wake-up call.”

“It’s good you had one,” Tristan said.

“I don’t like the idea of you going back,” Sveta said. “When you pull away is when things get worse, when violence happens.”

“It’s why I’m not pulling away,” Rain said.

“You’re with us,” Tristan said. “You’re doing your own thing.”

From the bank robbery to the period after. Trying to find normal again. Rain had been more open. Did that change the course of this particular river, compared to the one I’d known? Or were the key elements all there, still? The discomfort, the ‘I’m trying but I’m not going to do anything different’?

Did it still lead to disaster in the end?

“Is the critter okay?” Erin asked. “Kenz?”

“She’ll be fine if this ends and the group is still together,” Ashley said.

“Are we?” Rain asked.

“I’m not going to say no,” Sveta said. “But I think you need to go. Yesterday. Get out of there. Trust the Wardens.”

“I would if I thought they would protect me,” Rain said. “But they’re busy. The news articles say they’re not even here lot of the time.”

“I’m okay,” Tristan said. “This is ninety-five percent known stuff, and elaboration on other stuff.”

The voices of the others were a jumble. Chris didn’t care about anything. Ashley, as odd as it was, seemed most uncomfortable.

“Victoria,” Rain said. “You’ve been quiet.”

“Yeah,” I said.

I was aware of the silence that followed my statement.

“Snag’s army. They’re after the Fallen,” I said.

“Yeah,” Rain said.

“But they want you.”

“Yeah,” Rain said. His expression darkened as he said it. No illusions about what was in store for him if that happened.

“Because of the kids, and the others you killed. Because they blame you.”

“Yeah,” Rain said.

I nodded.

“I can tell you the details, if-”

“I’m going to go,” I said, interrupting. I was aware of the looks I got. “Tell Kenzie everything’s cool. I’ll be back. I just need to think on this.”

No actions out of instinct. I’d think, piece everything together.

I flew away from the scene before I could say or do something I’d regret.

⊙

Another group was patrolling the area that afternoon. Crystal and I stood on a square of crimson forcefield, well above Cedar Point, watching.

They were an older group, a bit of armor, some swords, a spear. One of them was a Brute who carried a crossbow bigger than I was. I’d always liked those things.

Simple. Easy. Bad guys bad and a bit lame. Good guys a bit lame and doing good work.

“I’m going back to the PRTCJ,” Crystal said. “Next week.”

I didn’t want her to go back. There was very little to like about the group.

Ironically, the advice I was following in regards to that had to do with cults. Not putting up too much of an offense, not scaring them into throwing up walls.

“It’s been two weeks,” I said. “How do they handle that?”

“No idea. Pay deduction, extra drills, demotion.”

“I told you what I heard from D. There’s war on the horizon.”

D. Dido. In case we were being listened to. Prancer’s clairvoyants could have been listening in, and he could have hired additional intelligence gathering. No telling. We dodged particulars.

“That’s part of why I’m going,” Crystal said.

“Spooks me,” I said.

“You doing this spooks me,” Crystal said. “I want to meet everyone at some point.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“You think you have a handle on this?”

“I think so,” I said. If ‘this’ meant Cedar Point. “On other stuff? Less sure.”

“What can I do? We want you more sure.”

“Looks like our guests are free and clear. We’ll see what they say later. I’ve got a meeting. Do you mind flying with me?”

“I’m glad to. But we gotta eat.”

I wasn’t hungry, I was rarely hungry after thinking too much about the past, and I’d been thinking about it a lot during the discussion with Rain. Still, I nodded.

I picked up the bag and the books I’d placed atop the field, putting everything away. Crystal dropped the forcefield, and we flew with me leading the way.

It was already getting dark. The flight wasn’t a short one. I put on my music, because conversation was hard with the wind in my ears.

Time to think about Crystal and the PRTCJ. The war with Earth C. Rain. Kenzie. About what the hell I was doing here.

The sun had set by the time we arrived. The waterfront had a railing with oversized posts a boat could be lashed to. I leaned against the railing, checked my phone, and sent a message.

Mrs. Yamada approached from our right. She had food from a nearby food truck.

“Crystal,” she said. “It’s so nice to see you.”

“You too,” Crystal said. She gushed just a bit as she said it. She’d met Mrs. Yamada at the hospital. They’d had talks about things. About Crystal losing Uncle Neil and Eric. About me.

There was a brief catching-up. Pleasantries. I chimed in once or twice, then found I didn’t have it in me. I stared out over the water.

“I think- do you mind giving us privacy?” Mrs. Yamada asked.

“Sure. How’s the food here?”

“This? It’s good.”

“Wave when you want me to come back. I’ll be enjoying the view until then.”

Mrs. Yamada leaned against the railing next to me. Her dinner smelled amazing and I still didn’t want to eat anything.

“Sorry to be eating while we talk. I haven’t had a bite to eat since grabbing a protein bar and a pear at five forty-five this morning.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Please eat. Thank you for seeing me.”

“Thank you. Is everyone okay?”

“Intact, yes. Okay? Were they okay when I met them?”

“They were in a place where I felt like they could finish their own journeys. Most of them. I imagine there’s some backsliding here and there, difficulties and things that aren’t okay because of external stresses and internal factors within the group.”

“Some,” I said. “Some figuring things out from moment to moment. Small triumphs.”

“That’s good. More or less what I expected.”

“Rain revealed his situation,” I said.

“I heard,” Mrs. Yamada said. “You wanted to do some thinking.”

“I did,” I said.

“I can’t do that thinking for you. But if you want to talk out loud, I can help you along the way.”

“When it comes to Rain, I think I get it,” I said. “I’m not okay with it, but not in a way that’s going to ruin anything. It sucks to see the big and little things that affect the others. Some issues close to Sveta’s heart.”

“You’re thinking about something else,” she concluded.

“Yeah,” I said. “When Weld showed up at the first session, he said he was sorry he couldn’t sit in.”

“He did.”

“You asked him to counsel the group on their hero idea before you asked me.”

“Before the community center, before your boss called me. Yes.”

“He said no, but he could help in a while.”

“More or less.”

“But you chose me in the end. You could have waited and had him sit in, and he’s… a great guy who everyone respects. You chose me, for reasons besides timing.”

“I’m not much of a schemer.”

“That’s not saying I’m wrong,” I said.

“No it isn’t. But I’m worried if I say yes, then there’s expectations, and there’s disappointment if this doesn’t end up going well. I’m far from superhuman, I make mistakes, and this could be another. What are you thinking this is?”

“You wanted a quality I had, that Weld might not. I was thinking about the team, the traps we could fall into. Is it the paranoia? The fact I can’t quite trust people?”

“That seems like an unkind way to describe yourself.”

“It’s true.”

“Unkind, still.”

“You wanted someone that isn’t too enmeshed into the group. Someone wary that’s seen the Asylum and knows the sort of thing that comes out of there. Someone that might see how they operate within the dynamic now that most have let their guards down. You think something’s up, and you didn’t tell me what it is because you didn’t want me going in with too many preconceived ideas. Because… you wanted to see if I drew the same conclusions. Something bad’s in play with this group.”

She nodded to herself.

“Am I wrong?” I asked.

“You’re not wrong,” she said.

Shade – Interlude 4c

She stared up at the ceiling, tears in her eyes.

“It’s not like I didn’t give you warnings,” he said.

“I can’t change your mind?” she asked. It sounded like pleading, begging.

She looked at him. His head was shaved, his chin was marked with stubble, and he looked weary. The front door was ajar, the world outside dark. He had his jacket and shoes on, and he stood in the hallway, while she stood in the living room. The water hadn’t even dried from when he’d walked in from outdoors and it was clear in his body language he was about to go.

He took a long time to decide what to say.

“I’d say you could tell me things were going to be different-”

“They will.”

“-But you’ve told me it before,” he said. “I don’t believe your words anymore.”

“This isn’t just about me,” she said, raising her voice.

“Seventy-five percent me, twenty-five percent you, then,” he said.

“Don’t fucking reduce it to numbers,” she said, angry now.

“We’ve talked about this,” he said. His voice was calm, in stark contrast to hers. “I’ve tried to be fair. I outlined what needed to change. That you needed to take it easier and be more reliable. I don’t even know where you are some nights, and it’s not because of work.”

“It’s part of the job!” she said. Her voice echoed down the hallway, and the echo came back different. “It’s the work culture! How many times do I have to say it!?”

“I’ve outlined what needed to change. The therapist took my side. She thought it was fair. We agreed on rules, the therapist signed off on them, and you broke them,” he said. His voice was more weary than his expression was. “How many times have I had to get Ever out of bed late at night, get her things, and bring her to the hospital like that because you’ve gotten hurt? You’re a mom.”

“I’m a human being! I’m trying to find a balance!” Again, the echo, louder, jumbled, not going away as it bounced off of the walls, building and multiplying.

“She’s almost five. She’ll be in kindergarten this September. In the last four years and seven months, She’s learned to walk, talk, do some chores, and she’s going to go into school knowing some reading, adding, and subtracting. She’s figured all that out. Why can’t you figure out your balance in that same time?”

“Oh fuck you, Lee!”

“Dad?” the voice was small.

Lee turned and stepped aside. The little girl- Everly, she’d crept up, and now she stood in the hallway that went from the front hall toward the bedrooms, fidgeting with her nightgown.

“Oh, hon-” her words were nearly drowned out by the jumble of sound.

“Hey Ever!” Lee’s voice interrupted hers, positive, happy. Were the point of view not from the woman’s perspective, Love Lost’s perspective, then nobody would’ve heard the small, broken sound that escaped her throat. Another person might not have seen how the lens was watery, blurry at the bottom edges with tears.

Lee bent down and swept Ever up in his arms. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“You’re shouting.”

“No I’m not, goblin,” he said. He squeezed the girl in a hug. As he did, he turned, his face where Everly couldn’t see, and gave Love Lost an accusatory, disappointed look.

No I’m not. But she is.

“Where are you going?” Everly asked.

“I have to go away for a bit.”

“You weren’t going to say goodbye?”

“Were you?” Love Lost asked. She didn’t shout, but the words reverberated and echoed down the hallway and through the house as if she’d voiced the words with a megaphone.

Lee’s look was much fiercer, this time.

“It’s not goodbye,” Lee said, the gentle tone disconnected from expression. “I’m going to see you soon. Promise.”

“Wizards can’t lie, Daddy.”

“I know, baby.”

“And we’re wizards. It’s not allowed. It’s a pact of a promise.”

“I know. You and me, we’re wizards and we keep our word.”

Love Lost shook her head, looking away, elsewhere in the living room, down at her hand, which was clenched. When she opened her hand, her palm had a row of half-moon marks in it.

Lee set Everly down. “Go to your mom. Sorry, goblin, but I’ve got to go.”

Everly looked at her mom, hesitated, both hands on her dad’s leg, then obediently crossed the way.

Love Lost knelt on the living room rug, folding her daughter into a hug, her head buried in the little girl’s shoulder and hair.

“I’ll send you the papers by the end of the week,” Lee said.

Love Lost flinched, whole-body, as the door shut with a solid impact. The sound broke up as well, scattered, became a hundred trampling shoes and boots, bangs. Picture frames rattling became another kind of rattle, of things clattering, falling down.

The floodgates opened, and her arms still encircling Everly, she used her thumbs and fingers to try to wipe tears away. To keep Everly from seeing.

“Why are you crying? Mom?”

She shook her head.

“Mom? What did I do?”

Her voice broke as she tried to speak. The noises were too loud- the jumble.

Her eyes were wrenched open as people pushed in close. Her surroundings were claustrophobic, not even accounting for all of the people. Folded tables and pallets on either side of her, many with papers stuck to them. The words ‘event’, ‘convention’ stood out on the paper. People pushed, shoved, and Love Lost pulled closer to the wall, put her head down, burying her face in her daughter’s hair.

“Mom,” was the faint sound, almost drowned out.

Love Lost looked. She made eye contact with her daughter, now grown, twelve or so years old. Makeup around her eyes was thick, bright, smudged. Strands of red hair with one strand bleached and colored blue had fallen across her face. Everly looked terrified.

People pushed past, and Love Lost did what she could to hug her daughter closer. The space between the piles of stuff might have seemed like a refuge at one point, but it wasn’t big enough for two people. Love Lost sat on the ground, her back to the wall, pulling Everly in as tight as she could.

A man squeezed by, and Love Lost looked down at where her hand gripped her daughter’s waist. The friction of the man pushing past had skinned the back of her hand.

Love Lost shouted, inarticulate, and her own voice was inaudible. Angry shouts, telling people to get back, to give space. Someone tried to stick a leg into the gap between her and the folded tables leaning against the wall to one side. The tables rattled as the picture frames had, a steady, endless, echoing drum.

Her daughter said something, but the noises- too much noise.

I can feel the vibration of her speaking against Love Lost’s chest, Rain thought.

Love Lost screamed words at the crowd.

The pressure of the packed crowd was such that the stacked tables couldn’t handle it. Something gave, and the tables fell, sliding down against the ground, taking the legs out of a dozen people in the crowd. The result was a domino effect, people falling over and taking others with them. Others sought relief from pressure in moving over the crowd.

The ripple effect in the crowd was more like a tidal wave crashing through. One moment, where Love Lost’s eyes moved over the crowd, saw people falling, saw others pushing-

Her daughter was torn from her arms by the shift in the crowd. She watched, the scene slowing down, the noise dying out, fingers grasping, as Everly’s face was forced- shoved into the side of a table that hadn’t fully collapsed.

The only sound was the impact, a single, hard knock. The dull echo and the rattling.

Her eyes went first to the slash of red, the gap between nostril and teeth, where the upper lip had split. Then to Everly’s eyes, which pointed in slightly different directions, unfocused. Gone.

She reached for Everly and the movement of the crowd didn’t let her make contact. People moved in, stepping on her, on Everly’s body, and Love Lost fought, fierce, desperate, and animal.

A scream tore from her lips, a multi-note sound. Anger, desperation, despair, grief.

Love Lost leaned over the counter, hands at her temple, as the screaming on the television stopped, replaced by a jingle, jarring voices. Bugs danced on the screen, turning around to wiggle their rear ends, showing off the symbols stamped on their shells.

“Everlyn,” she said.

Her hands moved at her temple, and the scene distorted with the movements.

“Everlyn!” she raised her voice. The shout echoed through the apartment.

She heard the tromp of running feet. The sound echoed, became a part of the background noise.

“Yes mom?” the voice asked.

“Turn it down. That’s loud enough to bother the neighbors. And turn it off, if you’re not watching.”

“I was going to watch.”

“You were in your room.”

“I wanted to find someone to watch it with me.”

Love Lost looked over as two stuffed toys were placed on the counter’s edge. Ugly things, with twisted faces. One of them looked like a ballsack with arms, legs, and a bulldog face. Ugly toys were apparently the in thing. The other was alright. A princess doll with red hair.

“See?” Everlyn moved the toys, animating them with wiggles and moving a finger up to raise the princess’s arm.

“I see. Now turn it down.”

“Okay.”

The toys were left where they were. A moment later, the volume of the children’s voices singing the repetitive song started dropping. The noise of the lingering echoes remained.

“Quieter,” Love Lost said. Her fingers moved at her temples, drawing her eyes into slits, as she stared down at the sink.

The sound of the television dropped again. The two toys were whisked away from the edge of the counter.

“Thank you,” Love Lost said, raising her voice to be heard as the footsteps retreated at a run. She drew in a deep breath and sighed, aggrieved.

The peace lasted about five seconds. Something crashed, a loud sound that cascaded, as if everything had fallen down.

“Sorry!” Everlyn called out, from the other end of the house, her voice high. “I’ll clean it up!”

Love Lost raised herself up straight, then went to the kitchen cupboard, retrieving a bottle of headache pills. She doled out two into her hand. The stem of a wine glass was briefly visible as she washed them down.

The theme song had ended, and the television was high cartoon voices, now.

Love Lost buried her face in her hands and sighed.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Mom.”

“What is it, Everlyn?” Love Lost’s voice could only be described as barely restrained, slightly muffled with her face still in her hands.

“Can I show you something?”

“How bad is the mess?”

“Oh, that. I’ll clean it up after. Can I show you something?”

“Can it wait? Please? I’m not up for it right now.”

“Okay.”

Love Lost remained where she was. The sounds in the background settled into a throbbing sync. The television show broke away to show ads, high cartoon voices replaced with adult announcers touting toys and kids screaming their glee in response.

She raised her head up, and a slice of color caught her eye. She looked- the princess doll, sitting on the edge of the counter. The weight of the doll held down a little booklet.

She set the doll aside, noting the paper shield stuck to the arm with two pieces of clear tape. The cover of the book had two women on it, both with red hair.

The woman in a dress with the shield was in the book, alongside a figure that wasn’t supposed to be a woman, but Everly. A child drawing herself as larger and more prominent, with a scarf drawn overlong, sprawling out over the page.

The red-haired wizard had once had a teacher but he was gone. There was only the knight who had ‘raised her up’, who had red hair like her. The knight ‘detected’ crimes and was always very tired and very grumpy.

Children on the television in the background shrieked. The sound became a growing echo of screams.

Love Lost’s vision blurred slightly, and she paged through. The lead-in to the book took a long time, and the confrontation at the end was brief, as the demon was slain.

Love Lost looked away, at a small collection of empty bottles on the counter, tucked beside the microwave and the wall, set out of reach.

She finished looking through the book’s ending. She closed it, hand pressing down the front cover so it would lie flat instead of sticking straight up. The teacher’s sticker was in the corner, a tiny superhero silhouette holding up a giant ‘A+’. The teacher had penned out a response, saying in length how much they loved it.

Love Lost’s thumbnail dragged against the construction paper, scratching the words the teacher had put down, the edge of the nail finding the grooves where the pen nib had dug into the softer paper.

She pressed the book to her chest, and picked up the doll. The paper shield came undone, and she carefully pressed the tape back into place along the doll’s arm.

She walked down the hallway, then pushed open the door.

Toys and stuffed animals were scattered across the floor. Love Lost’s eyes roved, over posters on the wall, mostly wizard things, more of the goblins. Homework assignments and one picture of Lee were taped to the wall, at waist height and below.

An eight year old Everly was on her bed, surrounded by toys. She watched her mother, expression solemn.

“I’m sorry I forgot to turn off the tv,” Everlyn said.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Everlyn looked at the closet. A set of metal poles with baskets had been pulled down, bringing down the basket from the back of the door in the process. The stuffed animals from within had been emptied onto the floor of the room, with one pole leaning against the child-size chair in the corner of the room.

Everlyn nodded.

“I love this,” Love Lost said, pressing the book against her heart.

Everlyn smiled, “You do?”

“I love everything about it,” Love Lost said, for emphasis.

“There are parts I worried you wouldn’t like.”

“I love it all,” Love Lost said. “Can I sit?”

Everlyn moved over so her mother could sit down beside her. She took the doll back.

“When you wanted a scarf for Christmas, did you want one like this? Like-”

“I like the one you gave me.”

“But did you want one like this?” Love Lost looked at pictures on the wall. The sound of her own heartbeat echoed, the sounds that the television spat out growing louder in the distance, like an onrushing train. She pointed. “Like that?”

Everlyn nodded, “Yes.”

“What do you say we go shopping later? We’ll see what we can find.”

Everlyn nodded, emphatic. “Yes please.”

Love Lost reached for her daughter and wrapped her in a hug.

“I’m going to try to be a better mom, okay?”

Everlyn nodded.

Everlyn pulled to one side. The movement of people around her tugged her, threatening to pull her from her mother’s arms. Her expression was so afraid.

Again, just as before, down to the last detail, the pressure of the packed crowd was such that the stacked tables couldn’t handle it. The tables fell, sliding out and across the floor, bowling over a section of the crowd. Again, the domino effect, again, people fell over and knocked or pulled others down with them.

Again, people climbed over the fallen.

Once again, the sound seemed to fade. Once again, things moved in slow motion as Love Lost’s eyes moved along the same path, noting the same details, the same imminent result.

Her daughter was torn from her arms. Love Lost watched as Everly’s face was driven into the side of a half-fallen table.

Again, the only sound was the impact, a single, hard knock. The dull echo and the clatter after the fact.

Love Lost’s eyes traveled the exact same path as before, as if moving along a groove. First to the slash of red, the gap between nostril and teeth, where the upper lip had split. Then to Everly’s eyes, which each moved independently of the other. Gone.

The dull echo of the impact against the table was the only sound as she reached for her daughter. The movement of the crowd didn’t let her make contact. People moved in, trampling the two of them, separating them, and Love Lost fought, with nothing knightly or good about how she clawed with fingernails.

A sound tore from her lips, a sound in many parts, for a feeling that couldn’t be put to words or wordless scream.

Then that sound, too, went quiet.

Tear-blurred vision with light from the windows slicing in through the brief gaps that appeared between people became something else. Light on the horizon.

Love Lost sat with a ten year old Everlyn, facing the water, and the soft glow on the far side of it. All around them, people milled, noisy.

“Do you want to do anything?” she asked.

Everlyn looked up at her, confused, then looked back.

Love Lost followed her daughter’s eyes. The orb of the sun was behind them, peeking in between buildings.

She turned to look at the light on the horizon. Gold.

“Do anything?” Everlyn asked.

“We could go to the ice cream truck over there, and see if we can get anything.”

Her daughter looked at her as if she was crazy.

“We could go to the shelters, but I don’t think it would help.”

People ran this way and that. Not sure where to go. Love Lost seemed determined to stay still, stay calm.

She reached for her daughter’s hand, and that hand trembled as she took it in hers.

As if something had swept over it, the water briefly went still, every wave stopping, the ocean appearing as a flat expanse of ice or glass for the briefest moment.

The golden light flared, and it took nearly five seconds before the effect touched the water, breaking the spell. The ground shook as the effect carried into the ground beneath them, and some people who were running lost their balance.

Everlyn’s hands went to her mouth. One was the hand that Love Lost held. Love Lost gathered both hands up in her own.

“I don’t understand why the ice cream,” Everlyn said. A sentence garbled by confusion and stress.

“I wasted so much time. I thought-”

She didn’t finish the statement.

Her daughter gave her a look, confused.

“I don’t know what to do,” Love Lost said.

“Hug me,” Everlyn said.

Love Lost hugged her daughter without hesitation or reserve, burying her face in Everlyn’s hair.

“Too tight. That hurts,” Everlyn said.

The sound of the crowd mounted, the distant rumbles and rattling echoing. People brushed across Love Lost’s arm, in greater and greater numbers-

⊙

Rain found himself in the room. He didn’t reach for the chair. He didn’t move.

The view of Gold Morning had been the third of seven scenes.

All punctuated by the same repeated event.

It had been the same way, every fifth night for the last year, with little variation. Sometimes more scenes, sometimes less. He’d seen all of these before.

It never hit him any less hard.

Snag was up, standing at the dais. Cradle, too, had approached it. Rain could hear the murmurs of their conversation.

He hated to look, but he looked.

Love Lost was in the small chair. The same chair that had been in Everlyn’s room.

Rain recognized the stuffed animals, the toys, and the little belongings. Nothing too personal, none of the wizard pictures. None of the swords-and-sorcery superhero stuff that the more moody eleven and twelve year old Everlyn had kept on her wall. None of the toys were ones she’d indicated any attachment to.

Hollow.

Love Lost sat in the chair, limp, not twitching a finger or shifting her posture. Tears marked her cheeks, darkened with the makeup from around her eyes. Unblinking, tears flowing, she glared at Rain.

It was disconcerting to see someone cry and not blink or move.

He hated this. He hated seeing that and he couldn’t imagine what it did to Love Lost. He hated that it took something away from the sympathy, that he had to temper it with his awareness of her wanting him dead.

She had been a deeply flawed person, but that didn’t make the love, the pain, or the resulting emotion any less felt. Just the opposite, in the end.

She poured hate into her glare as if she could somehow make Rain feel the loathing and anger.

With the personality bleed, he thought, she probably could.

⊙

Rain felt his heart sink further as Victoria flew higher.

“Crazy,” Erin said.

He looked back at her. She still stood by the door of her dad’s car. She looked so weary. “Me?”

“Her. The flying, I mean. It’s crazy to go from a conversation to seeing someone take off and disappear into the sky like that.”

He’d wanted to convince Victoria more than anyone. She was the least biased in his favor because she hadn’t spent so long in group therapy, listening to his side of things, empathizing and sharing with him. A part of him had wanted to get her on his side because she wasn’t that far from all of the strangers he walked past or took the train with every day- every person who he knew would hate him if they knew his full, unfiltered story.

In the background, Kenzie had stood up. She was looking in Victoria’s direction. Sveta broke away from the group to approach her. Disconcerting, in a very different way, to see how Sveta turned her head away, and she hadn’t fixed her hair since moving it away. The thin-ness of her face, the fact that the only thing behind it was the muscle-like bundle of finger-thin tendrils.

He hadn’t seen that often. It reminded him of catching a glimpse of Erin’s bra strap. Something hidden, that he wasn’t supposed to see. It left him feeling uncomfortable in a completely different way.

Disconcerting, to see Sveta looking at him, catching him looking, and the anger and hurt in her eyes. He thought of Love Lost.

Sveta was one of the kindest people he knew. Having her angry at him? It sucked. But Peat and Fen had been the closest thing she’d had to kin for a long time.

He couldn’t wrap his head around that, because he’d never had real kin. He’d never been in one place for long enough, he’d never been welcomed.

“You look like you’re in shock,” Tristan said.

Rain blinked. Was he? “I- for a long time, yeah.”

“Did you talk to Mrs. Yamada?”

“Yesterday afternoon. She helped me work up the courage to come. You were right. They all needed to know.”

Tristan nodded.

He was aware of the subset of the group that had gathered. Ashley, Tristan, Chris, and himself, with Erin in the background. He looked back at Erin.

He knew the accusation Moonsong had leveled against Tristan, and he had an idea of what that was about. Ashley hadn’t hidden her past. Three out of the five people present had killed in the past. It was disorienting, to track the number as it climbed.

Sveta had an especially bloody past. She’d even gotten blood on her hands after leaving the Asylum.

“Has Victoria ever killed anyone?” Rain asked, before he realized he was asking it.

The reaction was as one might expect. Blinks. Surprise from Tristan. A snort and smile from Chris.

“What are you asking?” Chris asked.

“I thought the admission I’d killed people would have had more impact than the things the Fallen has done in the past,” Rain said.

“I can’t speak for the others, but I guessed,” Chris said.

“Someone doesn’t have your kind of guilt without something that bad or worse,” Ashley said. “You didn’t think you had a choice.”

“I didn’t,” Rain said. “But it doesn’t change what I did.”

“I know,” Ashley said. “When I was talking to the group about understanding what I’d done and how, I knew that sometimes Mrs. Yamada would say things and it wasn’t to me. Most of the time, when you asked about things, it wasn’t about me, it was about you.”

“Sorry,” Rain said.

Ashley shook her head. She looked the way Victoria had gone. “She hasn’t killed anyone before, if I had to guess.”

“Just Victoria and the kids, then.”

“Just Victoria and Kenzie,” Chris said.

Rain looked at Chris. Chris shrugged. “Accidental.”

“Only Victoria and Kenzie. Sounds right,” Ashley said.

“Yeah,” Chris said.

“Christ,” Rain said, under his breath.

“You talking like that was what got me asking about you and Church, remember?” Tristan asked. He folded his arms. “What’s your plan?”

“I’ve got to drive Erin back tonight. If it’s okay, I’ll get together with the group tomorrow. I’ve got some junk for you to drop off, if that’s okay.”

“What kind of junk?” Chris asked.

“Bear traps, wire guillotines, blades without handles.”

“Really,” Tristan said.

“He’s not lying,” Erin said. “I helped him load the car.”

“They’re going to come after me. I’m going to plan accordingly. I’ll cover my escape route, and I’ll make sure I’m armed if they close the distance.”

“They run on walls,” Chris said. “Or jump onto walls.”

“I’ll cover the ground,” Rain said, firm. “I’ll figure something out for the walls.”

“I can help some with that. I’m going the anxiety route, so I’ll be crawling up the walls for the next few days. I can give you some perspective on where to put traps.”

“Thank you,” Rain said.

“You want to set traps… around the headquarters?” Tristan asked.

“And some place we can retreat to if we go into Cedar Point and have to retreat out of. It’s going to be hard to find places that work that won’t put civilians in the target area.”

“You can talk to Kenzie for that,” Chris said. “Make them remotely armed.”

“Okay, wait, stop, stop,” Tristan said. “Is this really what we’re doing?”

“It’s what I’m doing,” Rain said. “For this specific scenario, as a just-in case. I have to do something, and this is stuff I know about.”

Tristan ran his fingers through his hair. He turned to Erin, asked, “Are you okay with this?”

“A while ago, I wouldn’t have been,” she said. She set her jaw a bit, “But I have a gun now, and I know how to use it. Half of the reason I’m carrying it is in case those people come after Rain, or if they come after me as a way of hurting him.”

Rain felt so sad, hearing that.

Sadder, at knowing the other reason she had it.

He hated this. He hated that he saw Tristan here, looking so distressed. He hated that Sveta was so upset, that Victoria was gone, that Kenzie wasn’t rejoining the conversation when being left out was something that bothered her so much.

He hated himself, for being at the crux of so much of that. He could remember Love Lost’s penetrating glare.

How much of this self-loathing stemmed from her loathing of him?

“I don’t know what to say,” Tristan said. “Guns and maiming?”

“You don’t need to say anything,” Rain said.

“I feel like someone needs to say something,” Tristan said. He looked around the group, at Ashley, Chris, Rain. He looked back at Sveta and Kenzie. “Shit, out of the four of us, it’s supposed to be up to me to make the moral argument?”

“You don’t need to argue,” Rain said. “Really, I get it. It’s shitty, but I thought all day yesterday about this. I’ve got to do something.”

Tristan paced a little, then walked a short distance away. He muttered something under his breath.

It was Byron who walked the same short distance back.

“Hey,” Rain said.

“Hey,” Byron said. “I’m supposed to talk to you, I guess, since Tristan can’t figure out how to.”

“I’ve got to stay alive,” Rain said. “I can’t lie down and die, and the only way I can figure out how to get through this is to be a little more vicious. I’ve been in these guys heads for a year. They will kill. They hate me that much.”

Images of Everlyn flickered through Rain’s mind’s eye.

Byron was nodding.

“Kill or be killed,” Ashley said.

“Me being killed might be deserved,” Rain added.

“You don’t deserve to be tortured to death,” Erin said. “And I don’t believe in death for crimes committed either. Only in self defense, if there aren’t other options.”

“Death is a reality when powers come into play and people aren’t willing to play nice. It’s why so many of us have body counts. Other teams aren’t that different, I’m sure,” Ashley said. “A lot of powers don’t come with a ‘stun’ option. A lot of other powers don’t come as part and parcel with power-users who would or could use that option if they had it.”

Rain shook his head.

“I don’t think you deserve the torture and-or murder kind of end either,” Byron said. “I’m not going to say no to the traps, or to Erin’s gun. If it comes to staying alive, use them. Do whatever you have to that doesn’t put others in harm’s way.”

“Thank you,” Rain said.

“I’m going to say some other stuff, though,” Byron said. His expression was so different from Tristan’s. More serious by default than Tristan’s was when Tristan was being serious. His words had weight, even spoken more quietly. “I’m going to tick Tristan off, saying this, but I’m going to start off by saying I really don’t like the team idea.”

“That’s going to tick him off, yeah,” Chris said.

“The idea has good parts to it,” Byron said. “It’s even cool to see people like Ashley and Kenzie talking about team names, getting excited about costumes. But that’s where they’re at, Rain. They’re still figuring it out. Victoria is focused on that right now, I think. A lot of talk of costumes and names.”

“We talked about that a fair bit,” Ashley said.

“The shitty part of the idea?” Byron asked. “The thing that worries me? It’s the idea that the worst things might bubble to the surface and get in the way of this being genuine or good. Chris is talking about Kenzie making components or alerts for traps that are going to potentially maim? No. That’s… really not right.”

“You’re talking about me?” Kenzie asked, smiling as she asked it.

“Maiming?” Sveta asked.

The pair were rejoining the group, after their heart-to heart.

“We’re talking about how far we’re willing to go to save Rain,” Byron said.

“Oh. That’s obvious. All the way,” Kenzie said.

“No,” Rain said. “Not if it compromises stuff. Byron’s right.”

“If you’re going to take serious measures, I think it should be separate from the team,” Byron said, quiet and serious. “Let them be heroes. Be a hero with them, with that other stuff being secondary. Keep it away from the hideout and headquarters.”

Rain nodded.

“It doesn’t mean these guys can’t help you,” Byron said. “It means that if you’re planning on matching your enemy in preparing to go to war, you can’t ask others unequivocally to come with you.”

Rain nodded again. He felt something bitter well up deep inside, and his expression twisted as he looked away.

“I missed stuff,” Kenzie said.

“I’ll tell you after,” Ashley said.

“Sorry Rain,” Byron said. “Take that as advice from someone in the diminishing population of people with reasonably clean hands. Advice from someone who had a very close up view of hands getting unclean.”

“I shouldn’t ruin them,” Rain said, looking at the group.

“Escalate if you have to, but don’t make it part of how the team operates,” Byron said. “Because yeah, that might ruin them.”

“You’re overestimating how intact we were when we started,” Chris said.

“I’m estimating that the team started from a place of healing and support,” Byron said. “If this is going to work out at all, and I really don’t think it is, sorry Tristan, it needs to hold on to that.”

“I like that,” Kenzie said.

“Thank you,” Byron said.

Ruined. Rain had a sick feeling in his gut. He looked back at Erin.

“I’ve spent nearly two years living with the Fallen,” Erin said. She smiled, but her heart wasn’t really behind it. “Don’t go thinking you ruined me, because they’ve got dibs.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Rain said.

He was struck with the urge, almost panic-level, yet driven by that strong core he’d spent all of yesterday trying to dig up, to say something that would maybe save Erin. To tell the others to grab her, or to not let her go back. He could tell the truth and it might even work, or he could lie, and it would work slightly better, but be limited more to the short term.

She had a gun and she had it partially because she was his friend and she wanted to protect him.

She had it, in part, to protect herself against the people she was going back to.

“Thank you for hearing me out,” he said to the group. “I guess I’ll see what Victoria says or does tomorrow. If I’m welcome.”

“I think you are,” Sveta said. “And I think Erin is too, but we’ll discuss if we’re okay having her in the headquarters. If we aren’t, we’ll still hang out, talk, make sure everything’s good.”

“That sounds nice,” Erin said. “I could do with more friends than just Rain.”

Rain nodded. Privately, he wanted that for Erin too. Especially if something happened to him, he wanted her to have people to reach out to.

“I wish you weren’t going back at all, Rain,” Sveta said. “I can’t say it enough.”

I wish I wasn’t going back either, Rain thought. I wish I wasn’t taking Erin back.

Byron blurred, his eyes flaring as he became Tristan.

“No,” Tristan said. “I appreciate you stepping in, sorry for pushing you into that conversation. I need to think. Take the rest of my time.”

There was another blur. Tristan became Byron again.

“It’s late,” Rain said. “I think- we’ll go back?”

Erin nodded.

“Want a ride, By?” Rain offered. “To the station?”

Byron nodded.

“Anyone else?” Erin asked. Rain wished she hadn’t, but waited patiently while the others discussed.

They were going back to the headquarters, to check tapes and discuss, and to prepare for another patrol group that was going to do a walk-through of Cedar Point. It would just be Byron, Rain, and Erin in the car. Sveta had maybe noticed that Rain wanted to talk to his closer friends, and had steered the group’s arrangement slightly.

They three of them got in Erin’s dad’s car, leaving the traps and other junk in the boot. Rain took the passenger seat, suppressing his grunts and groans of pain as bruises made themselves felt. Byron took the back seat.

He wanted to talk to his friend, and he wasn’t sure how. The first fifteen minutes of the drive were agony, in a way.

Any other time, he would have been just fine with the fact that Byron was someone who seemed content to be quiet, to not make conversation.

They reached the train station, and Erin pulled into a parking spot.

“You didn’t tell them about the room,” Byron said.

“The room?” Erin asked.

“Dream thing,” Rain said.

“Should I get out of the car or plug my ears or something?”

“No,” Rain said. “I trust you.”

“Nah. You boys talk. I’m going to run to the vending machine, since it’s a long drive. You can fill me in on the way back if you want.”

She climbed out of the car.

Rain watched her go, feeling a pang of sadness.

“She looks stressed,” Byron observed.

“Bad day yesterday. It’s starting to catch up with her, Fallen being Fallen.”

“And even like this she’s so stunning it sucks the air out of the room,” Byron said.

Rain looked in the direction Erin had gone. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know how you do it.”

“I’m not doing it. Not well.”

Rain wasn’t just talking about Erin.

“Today wasn’t easy,” Byron said.

“Last night wasn’t easy. If I wasn’t forced to sleep I’d have been up all night freaking out. Instead I had to have some of the shittiest memory-dreams, and then put on a poker face so I wouldn’t show any weakness to the people who want me dead.”

Byron thought for a moment, then said, “Last night was Love Lost?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Byron echoed him.

“You said something about the air being sucked out of the room, and I feel like it’s always that way. I can’t breathe, I can’t focus, I go from one bad moment to the next and I don’t even get the mercy of sleep. That’s without even taking Erin into account. Who’s-”

“You love her.”

Rain reeled at the idea.

“I don’t blame you. I don’t think anyone would.”

“I- I spent all of last night watching someone have the one person they cared about most in the world get torn from them over and over again. Then I saw the aftermath. Hurting Erin would be the one way they could do that to me. I guess I do.”

“Yeah,” Byron said. “I think anyone in your situation, in ours, in this kind of thing, if they had someone being nice and cool, they’d cling to that. Love would be natural and inevitable.”

Rain nodded.

“But Erin’s special, I think. She’s someone you could fall in love with, in any situation, not just one where she’s the one port in an ugly storm.”

“Yeah,” Rain’s voice was hollow.

“Be good to her,” Byron said.

“I can’t,” Rain replied. “Because the most ‘good’ thing I could do for her would be to kidnap her and take her away from all of this. But if I did, she’d never talk to me again, and I’d lose my mind without her having my back. I hate myself for it.”

Byron was silent.

“Instead, I’ve got to drive back with her, take her back to that. Actual, serious danger. I feel like I’m going to panic any second, I can’t figure out a clear way out, you’re right that I can’t drag the others into it, so there’s a part of it I have to do myself, the uglier, more monstrous part and-”

“That’s hard,” Byron said.

“I’m not sure I’m strong enough. That’s why I decided at the last minute I couldn’t tell them about the room. If I did, I feel like they’d read a selfish undercurrent into things.”

“It would tie your hands,” Byron said.

“It- kind of. The room, and how the powers are doled out. It incentivizes us killing each other. I’m weak. I’m really weak. If I kill them, I probably get stronger. That’s my only way out, and if I admit it to the team, and if one of the cluster die, it’s going to be something entirely different from most of us having taken lives in the past, under duress or before the amnesty. It’s going to be real and now.”

Byron nodded slowly, looking out the window.

“Does that change how you see me? That I’m seriously thinking about killing them?”

“Yeah,” Byron said. “It doesn’t surprise me. I don’t exactly blame you, or blame you for not wanting to tell the others.”

“But?”

“But if you want to have that conversation, I think you should have it with Tristan, not me. You sound an awful lot like he did, and I don’t think he liked how it ended up.”

Byron opened the car door. He put a hand on Rain’s shoulder, brief, as he made his exit from the vehicle. He crossed paths with Erin, who was returning, accepted a chocolate bar from her, and disappeared around the corner.

Erin dumped the collection of junk food onto the space between the two front seats, then put the sodas in an empty trash bin on the floor of the car, so they wouldn’t roll around.

“Good talk?” she asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

“I thought you two needed the elbow room,” she said. “Sugar and caffeine is for if you want to stay awake on the way back.”

⊙

Rain was startled awake by a hand at his shoulder. Candy wrappers fell from his lap as he sat up straighter.

It was dark out, Erin was in the driver’s seat, face illuminated by the reflection of her headlights.

She looked spooked.

The path to the camp cut through woods, and the boundary where the area had been cleared out and the settlement began was marked with posts and a signboard that hung overhead. ‘Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here’.

It was supposed to be a cute reference. It seemed apt now. Standing around the two posts, on either side of the road, were Tim, Jay, Nell, Levi, Amos, Ruby and Naomi.

Tim was the oldest in the group. His mask was a horse’s head, cut up, twisted around, and rigged to work as a mask. The mouth pointed up and to one side, teeth bared. Tim’s eye peered through the open eye socket of the horse’s, the back of the head and cheek of the horse serving to house the roll of Tim’s chin. He was tattooed heavily, with more black ink than pale white skin, all textured by heavy body hair. It was macabre enough it didn’t look ridiculous, especially in the stark light of the car’s headlights.

Not Tim, not really. Seir.

The teenagers were in civilian clothes, the crevices of their face cast into shadow by the angled light. Jay had his mask in hand, long hair held back by his baseball cap.

Erin’s hand went to the gearshift.

To park?

No. To reverse.

“No,” Rain said.

It wouldn’t work, they wouldn’t get away, and they’d be punished for trying, as sure as they would be any other time they tried to make a break for it.

“Just… drive,” he told her. “Slowly.”

Seir walked over, as the car crept forward. He stopped by Erin’s car door, peering at them with the one eye.

“Cozy,” The side of the horse’s head parted as Tim spoke, a slit opening up between temple and the joint of the jaw.

Erin kept her eyes forward.

“What have I told you about not ignoring me?” Seir asked.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Erin said, turning her head to look at him. Her neck and jaw were stiff.

Seir’s eye shifted, looking at Rain.

“My brother-in-law beat the shit out of you,” Seir said.

“Yeah,” Rain said. “He did. I literally asked for it, though.”

“So I heard. What candy is that?”

Rain felt in the dark cab of the car, until his hand rustled a bag that wasn’t empty. “Grape apes.”

Seir reached his hand through the window, and Erin twisted her face away. The hand was held out, and Rain placed the bag of candy in it.

Seir ripped the bag open, and put a handful of purple monkey gummies into his mouth. He chewed noisily.

“Your repeated absences have been noticed,” Seir said, mouth full.

Rain was silent.

“Buying candy?” Seir asked.

“And using the internet, doing research on powers.”

“And?”

“Going into the city. Shopping.”

Seir chewed more candy. He didn’t ask any questions, and Rain didn’t volunteer anything.

The bag of candy was about the size of two fists put side-to-side. As time passed, Seir rummaged in the bag, found more, chewed them, cramming more into the slit in the horse’s head before he was even done with the last mouthful. He must have finished three quarters of the bag as the silence stretched on, his one eye on the pair.

Erin flinched as Seir tossed the mostly empty bag into her lap.

“Leadership wants a chat with you,” Seir said.

Rain had been sleeping minutes ago, but now he was more than awake. Those words- if he’d gone straight to bed, no longer bound by the rhythm of his power and the demands of the room, even being as tired as he was, he wouldn’t have been able to sleep. Not after hearing that.

“With-” he started. He wanted to word it right. Couldn’t show weakness. “Me? Now?”

If he asked if that invitation included Erin, Seir might say yes, just out of spite, might make her go.

Please don’t make Erin go.

“You. We were to wait and bring you as soon as you turned up. Which is now,” Seir said.

Rain opened the car door. He didn’t look at Erin, he didn’t say a word. He got out of the vehicle. He closed the door.

She drove away, through the settlement center, to her parents’ house.

Rain was left with his escort.

They talked among themselves, but they avoided talking to him. Seir remained close, ready to push at Rain’s back or shoulder if he dragged his feet. The rest were a half-circle behind and to either side of them. They talked among themselves, but they avoided talking to him.

Fear driving his senses to the next level, Rain was very aware of the smell of the grape apes. A candy he’d never be able to eat or smell again without feeling nauseous.

If he even got that far.

The house wasn’t even two years old, but it looked older, because the white paint on the wooden slat exterior was haphazardly applied, brush strokes long and the paint allowed to go thin. There was a white-painted fence, and none of the teenaged escorts went past the gate. They stopped beyond, standing guard there.

The front door was unlocked. Rain was ushered inside, the door was gently closed, and Rain was made to walk further.

In the living room, six of the senior Fallen were seated. Drinks sat on side tables, assorted snacks sat on a platter on the coffee table. The domestic scene was made eerie by the masks they wore. Demonic faces, many homemade. Several had been farm animals, the flesh altered with the power of a man Rain didn’t see present, so the pigs and sheep would have half-human, distorted faces before they were killed and skinned. Women in nice dresses with nice hair had heavy tattoos that reached up their necks and beneath their masks. A man wore the hide of an animal around his waist, wearing no shirt so the letters carved out and left to scar on his belly and chest would be visible.

Rain could trace his family connection to most of those present.

He could trace his connection to the meek young women who stood by, ready to serve anything requested. The one with her back to Rain had old lines of red dots soaked through the back of her blouse, criss-crossing.

The assembly was silent, wordless, watching from behind masks as Rain was urged to the stairs.

Even Seir didn’t go upstairs if he could help it.

Rain felt every ache and pain, every human doubt he’d experienced over the past two days, as he ascended those ten stairs. The second floor was spartan, with a long rug, a small table with a vase of wilted flowers on it, and a light overhead. The hallway extended to rooms to the left and the right.

He knew the door was to the left, but he looked the other way, as if there could somehow be an out.

He saw Lachlan, standing in the hallway, toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. He reached up to pull the toothbrush free.

“Rain,” Lachlan said, smiling. His voice was a hush. “Hey, good to see you.”

Rain didn’t have the words to respond. It was surreal, seeing Lachlan here.

“Did you talk to Allie?” Lachlan asked.

Rain stared at Lachlan. “Not the time, Lachlan.”

“Leave the boy be, Lachlan,” Seir said.

A faint thump from the left end of the hallway made all of their heads turn.

One of the meek servant-girls from the living room stepped into the hallway to stand next to Seir, even though she looked like she didn’t want to. She looked up, checking.

“Go,” Seir said.

Rain didn’t need to be told. He walked to the end of the hallway. The doorknob squeaked.

The inside of the room wasn’t all that decorated. Dresser, bedside table, and a four-poster bed with sheer drapes winding up the posts.

“Mama,” he said.

She wasn’t his mother, but it was how she was addressed.

Rain averted his eyes, but he could see the white drape of the nightgown, the feet on the floor. She was sitting so the post and the sheer drape kept him from seeing a lot of her.

But he saw some. Her presence jumped into his head. He looked away, but it didn’t help.

Mama Mathers. Taller than him, gaunt, wispy of hair. She wasn’t old, but she had the presence of an old woman, thin enough that it seemed like she would break or crumple into a heap if struck. She stood right next to him, leaning over him. She touched his face, and he flinched.

“You’ve been pulling away,” she said. Her voice was just as ethereal as the rest of her. “There is no away, Rain. You should know that.”

He remained still, trying not to look.

“We give the young ones so many allowances, and we’ve given you more than most. We thought you would find yourself. Have you?”

“Working on it,” he said, his voice quiet.

“How long has it been since we last talked?”

“Years, mama,” he said.

Her fingers traced his shoulder-length hair. “I told you to grow your hair long, back then.”

“Yes, mama,” he said.

“Do you remember why? Any boy of mine that does anything to catch my eye, good or bad, I have them do it.”

Rain nodded. No words would have come out if he’d said anything, so he didn’t try.

“The girls know it, but the boys sometimes need to learn it. I’m content to let either be my soldiers, but that requires zeal. Not everyone has it. Not everyone cleaves to their role and position. Everyone has responsibilities, and it takes a soldier to obey.”

Rain nodded again.

Her voice took on a different tone. No less ethereal, but haunting-ethereal, now. “The hair is to remind you that if you won’t be a soldier for the families, we’ll have you be a slut. We’ll get children out of you. If you fail at that, if they’re sickly or disobedient, we’ll geld you like we would any of the farm animals.”

Rain’s nod was stiff.

“You’re so distant. Have your aunt and uncle failed us? I’d thought your uncle was so dutiful.”

“They’ve done everything right,” Rain said, eyes on the corner of the rug on the floor.

“Your uncle beat you. You’re weak but you’re one of our blessed,” she said, speaking in his ear. “We could have him crippled or killed.”

“I asked him to, mama.”

“Even so,” she said.

“He is- he’s everything you want in a soldier,” Rain said, and his words were halting as he tried to defend a man he didn’t even love or like. “Hurting him to make a point or impart something onto me would hurt the Fallen more than it helped anything.”

“Allie then,” she said. Her voice was a whisper now. “Has she said things to you, to make you pull away?”

“Allie will be as dutiful a wife as my uncle is a soldier,” Rain said. His neck was so stiff his head shook slightly as he talked.

“Have you talked about it with her,” Mama Mathers said. She leaned over to put her face in front of Rain’s. He closed his eyes. “Leaving?”

“We both know you don’t ever leave,” Rain said.

“Then where have you been, Rain?” she asked.

He couldn’t voice a response.

“Anyone who can’t answer my questions isn’t a soldier,” she said. “If I can’t get an answer when you’re right in front of me, I won’t breed you, either. We’ll take your mind and identity, or we’ll take your balls.”

“I’m weak,” Rain said. “I’ll be your soldier, but I need to figure that out first.”

“You’ve had a year.”

The words echoed Lee’s response to Love Lost.

“I’m going to kill the people who triggered alongside me. Hopefully, I can take their power.”

Her hand brushed his cheek.

“You have a time limit,” she said.

He nodded, stiff.

“I’ll be watching,” she said.

He nodded again.

There was only silence after that.

“May I go, mama?” he asked.

“Rain,” the voice came from the bed, even more ethereal and thin than it had been. He felt chills, hearing the voice. He felt the words worm into his head.

The bedsprings creaked as she stood, holding the pole to steady herself. He looked away. She only now stood from the bed.

“Rain,” she said. “Look at me.”

He resisted.

“I will have you killed if you do not,” she said.

He looked.

He’d only seen her leg and foot, and she’d jumped into his head, tactile, audible, present, impossible to ignore.

Now, seeing her in full, it was more pronounced, heavier, insofar as the frail woman could be ‘heavy’. Her hair was long, bleached silver, and frayed. Her face was thin enough that it appeared older.

It was worse.

“Why would you leave, when we haven’t talked?” she asked. “You’ve been standing there, talking to yourself.”

“Sorry, mama,” he said.

He knew how she worked, but he couldn’t ignore the apparition in situations like this, because ignoring her and having her turn out to be real was the sort of thing that got him killed.

“Everything I said to you before now, it came from within you. I saw and heard much of it,” she said.

He hated seeing her, hated hearing her. He hated knowing it was for real.

“You should know these things to be absolute truth, divine and malign both,” she said. “The fears, the promise you made.”

“Yes, mama,” he said.

“Every time you think of me or mention me, I will be there. I will know where you are and see what you are doing. I will take stock and I will make my judgments. You will think of me, while saying your prayers on waking and on retiring, kneeling by your bed. Before each meal.”

He nodded, stiff.

“It’s been years,” she said. “You only think about me a few times a day. I thought it was time we were reacquainted. You have your mission.”

“I’ll kill my cluster.”

“And be a loyal soldier. Think of me,” she said. “If you don’t, you know what will happen.”

“Yes mama,” he said.

“Allie. Your aunt and uncle. Erin, her family. And you won’t see me. You’ll see other things.”

“Yes mama,” he said.

“Give me a kiss, now.”

She didn’t bend down, so he had to raise himself up to give her a peck on the cheek. He hated the contact, he hated how large she loomed in his vision, how that would give her more of a foothold.

He hated everything.

“Go, now, it’s late.”

He escaped the room, doorknob squeaking. In the process, he nearly collided with Elijah. It was only his own doing that stopped him.

Elijah held a bowl of water with a sponge floating in it in the crook of one arm. He had a slight smile on his face, barely visible through the long white-dyed hair he had. it was long enough to drape around his collarbone.

Behind that hair, his eyes were a milky cataract white. Not just for show. Seeing his cane was the only reason Rain hadn’t walked into him and spilled the water.

“Elijah. Escort Rain to the door, please. He seems unsteady on his feet.”

“Yes, mama,” Elijah said. He fumbled, and found a place to set the bowl down on a dresser.

Rain didn’t want the escort, but he didn’t want to refuse. Mama Mathers-

Rain flinched as she appeared, standing further down the hallway.

The figure made a small sound of amusement.

Elijah fumbled for his arm, then seized it tight.

The blind leading the sighted. Rain went, reaching out for the railing as soon as it was in reach, so he could have something to hold onto, and so he could keep Elijah from falling if it came down to it.

“Only the guilty are as upset as you seem to be,” Elijah said, his voice smooth, silky, and dangerous.

Rain didn’t reply, focusing instead on the stairs, trying not to think-

Mama Mathers appeared at the bottom of the flight.

He’d gotten so good at controlling his thinking, and it was all for nothing, now. Even thinking about not thinking about her was now enough. It might be for weeks or months.

“It’s hard, I know,” Elijah said. “I had a hard time with it for the first few years.”

They made it far enough down the stairs for Rain to see that the living room was empty, now, but for the meek women who acted as servants in the white cabin, cleaning up bottles and glasses,.

“I fixed it myself, after getting powers,” Elijah said. “Looked myself in the eye, mirror right in front of me, and I told myself to enjoy it. To like it, my own mother a mere thought away. To be loyal.”

When Rain heard the word ‘mother’, Mama Mathers appeared in the living room. They were fleeting images, each lasting for seconds, five or ten at a time. Her head would turn, and she would look around herself, or she would stare at him.

“I’m sorry,” Rain said. He wasn’t sure why he’d said it. Dangerous words. “I’m sorry you had to go that far to find loyalty.”

Not better words, but he wasn’t thinking straight.

Elijah’s fingers dug into Rain’s arm.

“I can’t see anymore, Rain. My eyes have no power.”

Rain nodded. They were at the door now. Elijah didn’t let him go.

“But what I say? My words have more power than before. All I have to do is tell you to, and you’d want it. I could tell you to be gleeful to have the worst punishment we can offer, and you would be, because it would be in service of the Fallen and Mama.”

Again, the image, standing outside, wearing her nightgown, hair blowing in the wind.

“Like I did for Lachlan,” Elijah said.

Rain nodded. “I know. But I don’t need that. I don’t want it.”

“Whether you want it or not has nothing to do with it, Rain, and never did. Don’t disappoint mama.”

He let go of Rain’s arm. Rain stumbled on his way down the stairs.

“Be careful walking home,” Elijah said, his tone light. “It must be dark out.”

Rain pushed past the gate, passed Nell and Jay, who were still standing guard.

They started to approach him, and for the briefest moment, as he felt panic flare, his power appeared at his hands. They stopped, and Rain stumbled back more steps.

“Sorry, Rain Man,” Jay said. “I know it sucks.”

Nell sounded less sympathetic. “Don’t do anything reckless now. Never goes well.”

Rain shook his head, turned and jogged away, down the dark dirt road, with scarce lighting.

When he couldn’t see anyone or anything around, he leaned over the ditch and emptied his stomach’s contents. It tasted like all of the preservatives in the candies he’d taken, so he could stay awake and keep Erin company. That reminded him of Seir, of Tim, and that only made his stomach churn more.

Mama Mathers crossed his mind and was standing on the road above, watching him, as he straightened.

He staggered past her.

He couldn’t go home. Too far away.

His workshop. It wasn’t far. Dark, it required fumbling. He let himself in, made his way up the stairs, and collapsed to the floor as soon as he had it shut behind him.

The fact that the light was on was slow to register.

“Rain,” Erin said.

“Don’t,” he said. He didn’t want her to see him like this.

She knelt beside him. He shook his head.

She wasn’t strong enough to move him, but when he realized what she was doing, he didn’t have the willpower left to resist. She pulled him closer, so his head was in her lap.

She stroked his hair and shushed him.

Mama Mathers stood above the two of them, watching, and he couldn’t bring himself to mention it.

When the cluster dream whisked his consciousness away, it was a mercy.

Shadow – 5.1

Experience told me that after waking up from a bad dream, it was better for me to move. The emotional and mental impact of being tired for the rest of the day was far lower than if I remained in bed and stewed. Either way, I rarely fell back into sleep.

It was one of the few things that had been easier at the hospital. Sleep had been regular, reliable. There hadn’t been any stretches where I’d have nightmares or insomnia for three nights in a row and the littlest things would be a grind by the third day. The drugs had been part of my diet, to ensure I fell asleep and woke up at certain times. They didn’t do much about the nightmares, but even waking up hadn’t ended the nightmare back then.

I was perpetually tempted to get something to help, but the degree to which I was tempted was a warning bell in the back of my mind.

Sleep, eating, having a space to retreat to, physical affection, attention, socializing, breathing. It was always the basic, animal things that came apart in the wake of stress and crisis. Things broke down, got twisted, or they were reminders.

I woke up and I pulled on a pair of jeans. Red-dyed raw denim, washed with something dark that made the creases and seams very apparent. They were a little looser fitting than my going-out jeans, and I’d settled into wearing them when I was at home and my dad was around, or now, when Crystal was around. It felt less like I was a slob if I was wearing them at home, especially if anyone dropped in.

Dean had tried on red jeans once, while I was shopping with him. His uncharacteristically self-conscious reaction had had me in stitches. If I hadn’t been able to fly, I would have been on the floor laughing. It was a good memory and a large part of why the jeans were a security-blanket level thing for me.

The memory had a nice second part, when Dean had mentioned that even the brief wearing of the jeans had turned his legs and underwear red. His best friends and I had been there as he’d recounted how concerned he’d been before realizing, and how the redness on his underwear had been worse where it pressed against the jeans, especially at the front. He’d described it as a clown-nose smudge on the front and his friends had been nearly falling out of their seats.

Even now, it put a smile on my face.

There were other memories too. Some from the same trip, others from other dates. He’d tried on a lot of jeans and to this day I could remember a pair where he had looked perfect: in profile, in the narrow waist and hips, the broad shoulders, the pert butt. He’d lifted up his shirt so I could see the fit, and I’d seen the thin trail of body hair leading up to his navel, his flat stomach, and the bones of his hips just above the jeans. Already warmed up by my laughing fit earlier, I’d worked myself up into a tizzy, the best words for it, and I’d maintained the tizzyness until twenty minutes later when we were cutting through the parking lot to the bus stop. I’d pulled him aside for a make out session.

I missed him so much it hurt, but the memories were happy ones and they were a good buffer against the bad night’s sleep. I kept my t-shirt and underwear on from yesterday and I went without a bra, pulling on a white sweater with too-long sleeves and a wide collar that left my shoulders bare.

The fit was snuggly and enveloping, as if the sweater itself was giving me a hug; kind of what I was shooting for when a not-insignificant part of me felt like I was five years old again, scared and wanting to crawl into bed with my mom and dad.

Set on putting the nightmare and the associated feelings behind me, I got some socks, underwear, sports bra, and a camisole top, stowing them in my bag where I already had my wallet. I pulled on some sneakers, sans socks, and headed to the balcony door. I eyed the clock in the kitchen as I passed it. Fifteen minutes to five.

I flew toward Cedar Point.

⊙

“You’re not wrong,” Jessica Yamada said.

I stared out over the water. There was something sinister at play with the team.

Crystal was out at the water’s edge now, leaning over the railing. Forcefields made a kind of table or tray for her to set her food down on. It drew the attention of bystanders, in a ‘look at that, how cool’ way.

“Double agent? Someone under the influence of another?” I asked.

“Telling you would be telling you who,” Jessica said. “Which, unfortunately, would be betraying confidence.”

“Can I think aloud?”

“You can.”

“I got on this track of thought because I have an ominous feeling. I liken it to, uh, to my sister.”

“Keep in mind that hindsight might distort the picture with your sister. It’s easy to look back and think things were better or worse than they were.”

“I- yes,” I said, conceding the point. “Yes, but I can take key moments in isolation, scenes I remember with vivid detail, conversations down to the word, and I can use those as waypoints. I can recall what led up to what and what happened after, because I’ve replayed it all in my head a thousand times, and I can compare that to this.”

“Don’t lose sight of how replaying events in your head to such excruciating detail might distort the picture, as will gathering all of those like memories together.”

“I’ll try not to,” I said. “Thinking aloud… you think something’s up. You’re equipped with all of the facts, you know people’s stories, most of the secrets. Sveta said something about how she’s kind of unique in how she knows the most about most people, if I’m included in things.”

“I imagine she does.”

“I had no background going in, but I called you to talk because I had worries, and I’m realizing the general shape of your worries and why you brought me in. We’re at the same conclusion, but we got here by different roads. Something’s wrong or it’s going to go wrong.”

Jessica ate while I talked.

“You would be allowed to break confidentiality if there was a real and imminent risk of danger, or if there was a danger to a vulnerable group. And in the event of child abuse?”

“I would if I knew there was a danger to any involved,” Jessica said. “I would also have to disclose if required by law – a muddy thing these days, with the world hanging in suspension while the laws are being written.”

“I’ve run into that a bit,” I said, thinking of Natalie.

“And if I had to disclose to obtain payment or ensure proper care, as I would if I was giving care to someone who then had to go to the Asylum. In either of those two cases, for law or working with other mental health professionals, I would get the patient’s permission first.”

“So it’s not that, obviously. But you’re really worried. It’s something that you think is likely enough that you want me there to keep an eye on things.”

“I gave some serious consideration to whether the risk, though not a certain one, was worth the cost to the patient, to my career, and to the other patients I might no longer be able to look after.”

I looked at Jessica. She took another bite of her barbecue chicken sandwich, adjusting the wrapper to catch the drips of sauce and bits of lettuce and onion.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

With index finger and thumb still holding the sandwich, she held up some fingers to block her mouth while she chewed. I nodded, and waited for her to finish the mouthful.

She swallowed, paused, and then said, “I mean that if I were to report, there is a chance my reasons for reporting might be seen as insufficient, unproven, or unclear.”

“Just a suspicion. A strong one. Not enough reason to bring authorities into it or take action against the person or people you’re worried about.”

“Yes,” she said.

“What would happen?”

“It’s hard to say. The future of the law is unclear. But I can say I would be tied up in proceedings as they judge whether I had merit, which could take months or even more than a year. Even if nothing happened, the fact that it even had to happen in the first place might impact who I could work for. I might have to take a leave from work, and I might not be able to work with the Wardens or with critical-risk, powered juveniles.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“The PRT was stringent about who they would hire and take into confidence, and there’s no reason to believe the next group to take power will be any less careful. Even with that in mind…”

She trailed off.

“You thought about telling people. That doesn’t seem… just. There are a lot of people that rely on you. Even with the group therapy kids, it’s pretty clear. I feel like if they didn’t have you, some pretty bad stuff would happen. And they’re, what, ten percent of your caseload? Less?”

“Less. But I can’t ignore one wrong involving my patients for the sake of ensuring I can maintain care for the rest. Thankfully, it isn’t that binary in reality. I can act clearly and decisively when there’s a clear and decisive danger. I can ask multiple someones that I know and respect to keep an eye out.”

“Me being one?”

“Yes, Victoria. You’re one of several. Some are waiting until the group is more visible, people in the Wardens will reach out and coordinate, they know where your group originated and that I’m concerned about where it may go.”

“I may not be the best choice- I know you didn’t choose me, exactly. You wanted me to try and steer the group away from the hero thing. I volunteered myself for this and you were…”

“Relieved to have one set of eyes on things, on a more ongoing basis.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“If you need to back away from this, you can,” she said. “Tell me and I’ll help. Others will help to keep an eye on things, if at more of a distance. I involved you initially and I was glad when you seemed to be interested and invested in a way that played to your strengths and that you enjoyed. I was, again, relieved to have more eyes on things. I do not, however, want you to suffer for it.”

I looked out over the water, which was so very dark and expansive. The city didn’t keep many lights on at night, with the power situation being what it was. Less lights to reflect down on the water after dark, less light reaching the clouds up above, to make the sky lighter.

Ink black darkness.

“How have you been?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“Back at the Asylum, after you had worked on your motor control, I had you keep a journal, with the attendant’s help.”

Dark, heavy feelings, to match what I saw over the water.

“Each day in the calendar started with a drawn out cross, with a number written in each of the four quadrants. We tracked how you were doing in various areas.”

“I didn’t make much progress.”

“You moved on to the independent care facility.”

More dark, heavy feelings.

“How would you fill it out now? Physically, emotionally, contextually, and in the immediate picture with your personal needs.”

“I have no earthly idea,” I said.

“It might be worth paying attention to,” she said. “Have you called the number I gave you? The therapist?”

I shook my head.

“If you sat down with a friend or a loved one and they told you they felt as you have these past few days, their worries, wants, needs, and problems, would you want them to talk to someone qualified?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I would.”

She took a bite of her sandwich, diplomatically avoiding saying something.

“Yeah,” I said. “I hear you.”

⊙

I stopped in at the group’s headquarters, landing on the fire escape, and unlocking the door with my key.

Lights started to turn on, computer monitors appearing, Kenzie’s cube glowing at the corners, as her projected image appeared in the computer chair, fritzing.

“It’s fine. Go back to sleep, Kenzie,” I said, to the room. “I woke up early and decided to go flying. I’m using the shower.”

There was a pause, and then the various projections, images, screens, and lights went dark, in the reverse order they had turned on.

I wondered if I’d actually woken her up, and if she’d actually heard me.

The apartment was fairly spacious, to the point it could have been a two-bedroom place if it actually had walls. As it was, the only walls encircled the corner, where a single shallow closet and the bathroom were. The bathroom, I couldn’t help but note, was ridiculously small for the size of the overall apartment. Toilet, sink, and shower stall, with barely any room to squeeze in between one thing and the thing or things beside it.

I stepped into the bathroom and disrobed, leaning out past the door to hang up my jeans outside, so the humidity of the shower wouldn’t get at them. I hung up the rest of my clothes on the inside of the door.

It was paranoia over preserving the raw denim and bringing out any dye that regular wearing hadn’t already worn away, maybe, but I’d spent a week’s pay on the jeans. If they had been free, I still would have been attached to them, because they reminded me of Dean, and because they were getting to be the most comfortable jeans I’d ever had, after rigorous wearing. I was going to be fussy.

I hadn’t gotten to be fussy with other things. A year after I had gone to the hospital, my mom had donated just about all of my clothes to charity.

There had been things I’d bought with Dean, with friends, with Aunt Sarah or Crystal. Uncle Neil had always spoiled me rotten, going to Crystal for tips on what to get me, and there had been four or five things I would have liked to have. Some had been milestone things, dresses I’d worn to school events, clothes I’d gotten to take home from photo shoots, and small accessories I’d bought as rewards to myself, like saving my first thousand and two thousand dollars, when I’d thought I might move to another city to follow Dean, if the PRT moved him.

It hadn’t been like she’d needed the room. Dad had moved out by then, I was gone, my sister was gone. It had been… her ripping off her own band-aid, by giving away my treasures.

I could have turned the shower to a scalding heat to try to find a physical way to reflect what I was feeling otherwise. I could have turned it to freezing cold, to wake myself up.

I opted for the embrace of warm water in lieu of the warm hug of the sweater I’d taken off. I got into the shower and used my flight, bringing my knees to my chest and hugging my legs tight, closing my eyes.

I rotated in the air a few times over the course of what might have been twenty minutes, letting the water pour over me. I didn’t open my eyes once for the duration, and I didn’t feel like I might fall asleep.

⊙

I finished my recounting of my observations of the team. Jessica finished eating.

Rain was in a bad spot, and he’d revealed himself to be Fallen. Kenzie and Houndstooth. Ashley and her outbursts. Chris and his lopsided dips into one emotion. Sveta’s worries. Tristan and Moonsong.

“No team name, a lot of missing cape names. I know you don’t like the cape name thing-”

“It’s not that I don’t like it,” Mrs. Yamada said. “I think it can make sense to take a hero name as an adult, but for someone younger, it can be one part of a greater issue. It’s hard enough for a teenager to decide who they are without the icon, the mask, and the name taking so much focus.”

I wanted to argue the point so badly, and I was too tired to do it. A passionate debate about powers, identities and costumes with Jessica, outside of the bounds of a therapy session? It would have been great.

“There’s going to be a war,” I said. “Rain is going to be swept up in it, if he hasn’t already. They’re hoping to kill him in the chaos. The others might be swept up in it.”

“We’ll try to keep that from happening.”

“If it happens, we can try to make sure it happens in the safest, most controlled way possible,” I said. I saw the look on her face, and hurried to add, “I know you want to keep it from happening, but they want to protect each other, and they do want to stretch their wings and flex their powers. It’s part of being a cape.”

“It is,” Jessica said. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“Will you be swept up in it? Do you want to stretch your wings and flex your powers?”

“I don’t want to flex my powers,” I said. “I do want to be involved. I… see this as a snowball rolling downhill. It’s chaotic and it has the potential to do a lot of damage, some of it inevitable. But for all their flaws, I think they are holding onto what you wanted to impart on them, for the most part they need… nudges.”

“Nudges?”

“To change the course of the snowball. Reassuring Sveta. Redirecting Ashley or giving her an excuse to do what she wants to do anyway. Keeping Kenzie from overcommitting herself. Tristan gets into things and needs a bit of a shake, and he’ll step back from the headlong charge. Rain- more complicated, because it’s not him, exactly. Self doubt, but it’s external factors pushing in on him that we need to worry about.”

“And Chris?”

“I don’t even know. I plan to keep a close eye on him, because I haven’t figured him out and he doesn’t seem like he wants to share any of himself, which makes me worry. I’ll see if I can figure out what to do.”

“Nudges and keeping an eye on things,” Mrs. Yamada said. “I think you’re on the right track. Step back if this is wearing on you.”

I shook my head. “Everything wears on me. Eating and sleeping wear on me. Stepping back wouldn’t do me any good. I’ll call your colleague. Do what I can.”

“Self care,” Jessica said. “Yes. Be kind to yourself, reach out for help if you need it. You have friends. Don’t lose sight of that.”

I looked over in Crystal’s direction. She waved the foil-wrapped sandwich in the air, as if baiting me. I found myself tempted, when I hadn’t even been hungry before. “Yeah. I just realized how ravenous I am. I feel like there are a hundred more things I should tell you that you need to know, but…”

“Not enough minutes in the day, even if and when I get more with a helpful someone’s power. I know. Go eat.”

I stepped back from the railing. “Sorry, I skipped breakfast and I tossed my lunch.”

“I’d have stern words for you, but I barely ate today either. Take care of yourself, Victoria.”

She hugged me.

“We’ll talk again soon,” she said, without breaking the hug.

I nodded.

I hadn’t worked out what I was doing in regard to Rain. A part of me had hoped for guidance. In the end, it had been better to give Mrs. Yamada the lay of the land. If she was suspicious, then my mention of outbursts, of backsliding, of stubbornness, confrontations or secrecy might have been the cue she needed to make a decision.

If she was okay with where things stood, then so was I. I would nudge, I would keep an eye out, and I would look after myself. I felt more peace than I had, having had the conversation.

“Bye,” I said, my voice not all there because I was a little choked up. I couldn’t wholly pin down why.

I broke the hug and went straight to my steaming barbecue chicken sandwich. Crystal too.

⊙

Shower off. Tangled mane transformed to wet combed locks, wet locks transformed to damp braid. Clothes on: sports bra on under sweater, sleeves rolled up around the wrists, red raw jeans, socks and sneakers. The clothes I’d hung up on the bathroom door had been effectively steamed while I was in the shower, and my hands smoothed out the wrinkles that had accumulated from my clothes being in my bag.

Self care, to have a shower with no disturbances or worries about bothering Crystal. To dress in things that felt right.

The computers illuminated as I walked through the main room.

“Go to sleep,” I said. The computers went dark.

I had to fish through three coarse paper bags of groceries that we’d stowed under one of the tables to find the food supplies. A small bag of lime and chili chips, a protein bar, some preservatives with pepperoni stick added in, more stick-shaped preservative packs with cheese in the mix, dried fruit, two bottles of vitamin water, and a large thermos of regular tap water

Breakfast.

Laptop. I flipped it open and turned it on. The agenda for the day was laid out in glowing words against a dark background. More groups would walk through.

I had messages from the night prior. Fume Hood. Another friend and support. Hero teams planning to patrol in Cedar Point. Other, related things. There was a vein of positivity running through it all. The hero teams reaching out, expressing interest, wondering about the response they’d gotten, or expressing curiosity about villains who’d showed their faces but hadn’t been involved. Who was that guy? What’s her history?

It was easy to be standoffish, to draw lines in the sand when it came to jurisdictions, to make territorial noises and see the other teams as competition.

This was a balancing act, but there were benefits. The heroes we were connecting with knew some of our names, faces, and voices.

The clock told me it was a quarter after six in the morning as I left the headquarters.

My feet left the fire escape and touched down in Cedar Point a few minutes later. The shifting temperature and the proximity of the water cast Cedar Point in a heavy mist. There weren’t many lights on, but the ones that were on made the surrounding mist glow.

Not many people awake.

I walked along the rooftops, flying up to the points higher than I could get with a skip or a jump. Briefly, I turned on my forcefield.

Briefly, I saw the mist stir, as facial features and hands moved through it. If I hadn’t known what I was looking at, I wouldn’t have been able to make much sense of the swirl here, the vaguely oval void there.

It wasn’t a good feeling, to verify that, but I’d treated my heart gently this morning, armoring it in sentiment. I could take that much.

I sat on the edge of a random rooftop, got my laptop out, and opened it.

There wasn’t internet here, but I had files saved on my computer. Random pictures I’d saved, old PRT documents I’d scanned and saved for printing for my collection, that I hadn’t gotten around to deleting or printing, and some things I’d typed up for the Patrol block.

One leg folded under me, the other dangling off the edge of the roof, I poised the laptop on my knee and dug for what I could find on costumes and branding. I created seven folders, one for myself and one for each of the six members of the team, and began copying files over to each, where relevant.

The pepperoni sticks were stale, brittle and tough enough I had to gnaw on them to soften them enough to bite through. Tasty, though.

A small truck beeped with surprising loudness as it backed into an alley. One person got out to guide it, waving and gesturing, as the headlights of the truck illuminated him in the fog.

The truck fully backed in, he turned around. Pausing, he looked up at me on the rooftop. He raised an arm.

I packed up my laptop and hopped off the roof. I landed silently behind him. He wore a jacket with a lime green reflective vest over it, and the combination made him look much bulkier than he was.

“You’re the one who knocked Moose on his ass,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Just… hanging around with your computer?”

I shifted my bag at my shoulder.

“I saw the glow of the screen,” he said.

“Felt like I should make a stake. It’s easy to show up during the daylight hours, but it means something else if I could be here at midnight or at six in the morning. It’s interesting that it seems like the people who keep watch haven’t responded to me yet.”

“Yeah?” he asked. “Huh.”

“What’s in the truck?”

“Produce,” he said. “It’s not a good haul. My buddy back at the depot picked up a box of melons, it was liquid. Sloshed himself in watermelon juice, shoulder to toe. Long day of work ahead of him.”

“Just shipping it out, leaving it to the stores to complain?”

“I guess they hope enough people won’t bother that it balances out.”

I nodded.

“What do you think?” he asked. He extended an arm.

I drew in a deep breath.

“About Cedar Point,” he clarified.

“I think this place is going to get wrapped up in a war,” I said.

“Yeah?” he asked. “Because of the heroes coming through?”

“Because it’s building up to something, whatever the people in charge seem to want,” I said. “The war is going to start here or it’s going to come here.”

“Should my buddy and I get out?” he asked.

“You might want to,” I said.

“We pay a fee to do business here, our manager covers that, but we have to face down the people in costume who collect the fee and give us a hard time, too. Boss can’t handle that. Stuff off the boats and trains hasn’t been as good lately, profit margins are getting slimmer. Maybe we’ll try telling the manager it’s not worth it.”

“Is it a problem? The heroes being here?”

He had to think about it.

“Yes,” he said.

“Okay,” I responded.

“But it’s a necessary one,” he added.

It meant a lot to me, to hear that. I held myself to the idea that if I couldn’t trust the law, I could trust what was right. If I couldn’t trust either, I could reach out.

I couldn’t trust the law. It was in flux. Natalie was trying to predict it, but it was more question mark than full stop. As for what was right, I wasn’t sure I could trust myself, and I couldn’t trust the team. Jessica could give me some direction, tell me that I was all clear if I kept an eye out, to nudge. The other teams could validate and suggest they liked this direction. Collaboration, at least, felt right.

Reaching out, I could get some affirmation from this nameless guy in a reflective green vest.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You said war,” he said. “Not a battle?”

“I think it matters more,” I said. “There are other places. They’ll follow suit. The entire city might change course, depending on what happens.”

“Huh. I’m Jerry, by the way,” he introduced himself. He pulled off a glove to extend his hand my way.

“Victoria.”

“No hero name?”

“No hero costume,” I said. “Yet.”

“Can I give you a nod or a wave if I see you, while you’re hanging around, then?”

“Better not. When the villains are awake, they’ll be keeping an eye on things. With powers.”

“No shit?”

“On everything,” I said.

“I might talk to my boss, then,” he said. “Sounding more like I should stay clear.”

“Good,” I said.

“And you’ll be here, then? Staking a claim? Preparing for war?”

“Making sure that if nothing else, instead of it being fifty villains and no heroes, it’s fifty villains and one hero. It’s me being ridiculous, but I feel like that’s important.”

“Lonely,” he said.

“Nah,” I said. “I think I’ll have allies when it counts.”

⊙

The entire group arrived pretty much all together. Tristan, Ashley, Sveta, Chris, and Kenzie. The westbound train arrived at twelve-thirty, and the eastbound train was just shy of ten minutes later. Delays and other passing trains changed things up, but it seemed if the group wanted to meet at the station and walk together, they could.

“Here already,” Ashley observed.

“Yep,” I said. I held up a hand as Kenzie walked past, and she gave me a high-five.

“Cool jeans,” she said, without turning.

“Thank you,” I said. She went straight to her desk, kicking the cube that sat on the ground by her chair to boot it up before falling back into her chair and hitting the lever to boost herself up.

“Did you see the emails from the other teams?” Tristan asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“No,” Ashley said.

“I’ll show you in a moment. You’ll like it,” Tristan said. “They were talking some and they like this. Cedar Point was a thing that was bothering a lot of people, I think.”

“Civilians too, maybe,” I said. “I dropped in early enough the villains weren’t really awake. Talked to a few. Feelings on heroic intervention range from positive to mixed. Considering that feelings on heroes are mixed in the first place…”

“We were talking, thinking I’d pay a visit,” Chris said. “Keep them on their toes.”

“I’d rather wait,” I said. “Rain said his trigger group would be out of commission for a few days while repairing and healing from injuries. It’s been a few days. They were hiring people, and they probably won’t wait too long before they use those hires, or else those people might get caught up in other activities.”

“I’m primed to do something, and I think you guys would rather I do it there than in here,” Chris said. “We’ve got- what, two teams coming through today?”

“Two with a third holding back. Third one is a single cape, they want to actually do something,” Tristan said.

“We need to discuss that one,” I said.

“They’re paying,” he said. “If we give him clear directions on how to ruin a villain’s day, he’ll pay us two hundred bucks. It’s a good precedent.”

“People are coming through,” Chris said. “If we need it, I’ll be a distraction. I’m quick, I’ll be in and out.”

“Maybe,” Tristan said. He looked at me and Ashley.

“It was the original plan,” Ashley said. “I say let him.”

I made a so-so gesture.

“Yeah,” Tristan said. “We’ll debate it when the time comes. It’s anxiety?”

“Yep. Mad Anxiety.”

“Great,” Tristan said. “It’s not the screaming one, is it?”

“Mad is the screaming one,” Chris said. “I wanted to make an impact and if we need me as a distraction then screaming is good.”

Tristan said something Spanish under his breath and went to his whiteboard. Swear words, if I had to guess.

“I’ll go in,” Ashley said. “We said I would after a few days, and if things are happening, I want to already be recognizable around there. Will the eye camera be ready?”

“Yes,” Kenzie said. “Oh, Victoria, I bought some energy drinks if you want them. And I have a thermos of a coffee my dad and mom really like.”

“What coffee?” Sveta asked. “Weld and I were trying to find one he might like, but it turned out he wants it super bitter, because that’s the only way he can taste it. We had a bunch of things of coffee taking up space, and I took it on myself to drink it. I even gave some away.”

“You should bring it in,” Tristan said. “Supply the team.”

“I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me. Except I can, because I don’t think about what I have in the cupboards unless I’m standing in front of an open cupboard. I have other stuff.”

“How far has this food experiment with Weld gone?” I asked.

So it went, the conversation sprawling, back and forth, casual, from work to life.

I’d woken up before dawn, taken the necessary time to pull myself together, and then tentatively reached out, to make sure I wasn’t just centered in my own self, but in what I was doing. Reaching out to make sure it seemed right and, to a slightly lesser extent, that it was within the bounds of the law. Reaching out, too, to have more contacts.

I had a bad feeling. No, more than that, I had bad feelings. About the team, what lay beneath the surface, the war over Cedar Point, the Fallen, the clash between Snag’s group and the Fallen, and the danger to Rain.

But I knew why I was here. A potential disaster lurked here. Knowing that made everything easier, in an ironic way. The dissonance of not feeling right about being here had eased.

There were clear, defined, acceptable enemies to face down.

“I don’t want a wig,” Ashley said, to Sveta.

“I’m saying, if you cut your hair-”

“If.”

“Then it’s an option. It could even give you a secret identity. Kenzie, the eye thing you were talking about, you can give Ashley eyes with irises, right?”

“I could.”

“Eye color, hair color, clothes,” Sveta said.

“Wigs get pulled off or lost in a fight,” Ashley said. “It’s undignified.”

“You do realize I’m wearing a wig.”

“I realize you’re wearing a wig and you have the capacity to pound someone’s face in or dangle them off the side of a building. They’ll learn to respect you if you make them,” Ashley said.

“You do realize we’re supposed to be heroes, right?” Chris said. “Nominally?”

“Not nominally,” I said.

“What’s nominally?” Kenzie asked. “How do you spell it? I’ll ask the computer.”

“And I’m not about to do any of those things,” Sveta said.

Ashley ignored us. “Me? I can kick them, or I can turn them into a bloody smear using my power. That’s pretty much it. I don’t have the manual dexterity or hand strength to use a weapon, I can’t punch them without damaging my hands. Kicks won’t do enough, using my power does too much, and the mess would be inconvenient. I don’t want a wig.”

“You don’t want a wig. Fine,” Sveta said.

“I have some images on my computer,” I said. “Hair and eye makeup, some costume related.”

“Show me?” Ashley asked.

We walked over to where my computer was on a table. I found the folder and opened it.

Sveta leaned over me, half-hugging me from behind as I clicked through the images.

“I was thinking of a name to do with swans,” Ashley said, as I clicked.

“An awful lot of the bird names are taken,” I said. “It was a trend once. What were you considering?”

“Swansong,” she said. “If I go with the white costume.”

“I can check, but I’d have to go through my paper stuff,” I said.

“Isn’t that kind of a bad omen of a name?” Sveta asked “Like, last dance or ‘I’m going to retire today’?”

“I like bad omens,” Ashley said.

“I like this one,” I said, indicating an image. “I have a folder for you too, Sveta, just so you know.”

“I’m curious what you’re thinking.”

“All over the place,” I said. “Lots of stuff where I might not even remember why I saved the image in your folder.”

“Guys,” Tristan said.

He had our attention. His phone was to his ear.

“Rain’s nearby. He wants to know if he can bring Erin.”

Just like that, the mood of the room shifted.

We exchanged looks, and there were tentative nods, some real nods, no vetoes or refusals.

Tristan gave the a-ok. He hung up.

The silence lingered for a few seconds.

“I like Erin,” Kenzie said. “And I’m really glad Rain’s coming back so soon.”

“Yesterday was hard on him,” Tristan said. “And… Coño, it was his night last night.”

“His night?” I asked.

“His dream,” Tristan said. “It’s always hard.”

“Sounds like a good dream to me,” Chris said.

Tristan picked up an eraser from by the nearest whiteboard and threw it at Chris.

“I like this one,” Ashley said. She tapped the frame of the laptop screen.

“Elaborate,” Sveta said. “You’d have to draw it on every time you went out in costume.”

“It could be projected,” Ashley said.

“It could,” I said. “If it’s easy to do, we could do that. I think the thing to do would be to make sure you look good if the projector breaks or loses power, and then build on that.”

“Like the wig idea,” Sveta said.

Ashley sighed.

Rain opened the side door of the headquarters, letting Erin in first before following.

I’d gathered myself together earlier in the day. For the first time since the Patrol block job, I felt like I almost had my feet under me.

Tristan had said Rain had dealt with a hard night on top of a hard yesterday. It showed. Something hollowed out, something wounded. He looked like I’d felt after Snag had gotten his hands on me.

When he approached the table next to his whiteboards, Erin stepped back a little to let him pass. It was a subtle thing that I couldn’t help but notice, but it played into the second half of my observation of him. That he seemed more dangerous. Where I felt stronger because I’d pulled myself together some and clarified my direction with Mrs. Yamada, Rain conveyed something more in how he’d come undone.

Even yesterday, his face swollen on the one side, black eye, cuts and scabs, it had seemed that idea had held true as he’d found the strength to reveal his background.

What had he dreamed, last night, that this was what had come to the surface? Was this the strength of desperation? Something else?

Rain greeted Tristan first, almost falling forward in a ‘bro’ half-hug with just the one arm, the pat on the shoulder.

He gave a nod to Ashley as she was closest to him as he rounded the table. Sveta gave him a pat on the shoulder, a smile, and a few murmured words that got Rain to nod a little, his expression relaxing a little in what might have been a smile for someone else. She left us to go talk to Tristan.

Rain stopped a distance away from me. He didn’t quite face me, and instead said, “We good, Kenz?”

“Yup. I’m glad you came. And you brought Erin. You want to see my toys, Erin?”

Erin walked from the side door to Kenzie, but ninety-five percent of her attention was on Rain and me. I hadn’t quite seen her like this.

I hadn’t seen Rain like this. He almost swayed where he stood, eyebrows slightly furrowed, clearly in deep thought.

I didn’t like the Fallen. They scared the shit out of me. I hated everything they represented. He’d killed people, children, and it didn’t seem right that he was standing here and that was passing without incident.

Maybe his condition, mental and physical, represented just how hard he was fighting to get free. Maybe it suggested it wasn’t passing without incident.

I put out my hand. When he went to shake it, I grabbed him by the wrist, instead.

He flinched at the unexpected gesture, looked to one side, and stared off into space momentarily. There was a part of me that recognized that too. Bad dreams.

He forced his attention back to us and our exchange, looked down at our hands. He took my wrist. A clasp, more than a shake.

“We good?” he asked, not making eye contact. His voice was faintly rough-edged, like he’d screamed himself hoarse. As if a small part of Snag had found root in Rain’s throat.

“We’re good,” I said.

“Let’s get ourselves organized,” Tristan said. “Training wheels are off, and we’ve got a few things going on today. Ashley’s going back in, and it makes sense to insert her before things get messy. Two hero teams are swinging through sometime after that, we’ve got Chris on standby and one hero who wants to pay us to get a chance to do something, which we’ll want to discuss.”

“There’s Prancer to account for too,” I said, releasing Rain’s wrist, approaching, “He’s had a day to think about what we’re doing and a day to get countermeasures in place. He reassured his friends that he had a handle on this. Let’s prove him wrong.”

Shadow – 5.2

“Maybe trouble,” Kenzie said.

I was digging through my bag when she said it. I set some of my things aside and headed to the front of the room. Erin was standing beside Kenzie, while Kenzie regaled her with stuff.

Rain was thirty feet away, sitting in his computer chair in his nook. Some of the tables we’d arranged were situated so the long side was against the wall, but in the interest of giving Rain some desk space, we’d set up two so the shorter ends of the table were against the wall and the tables jutted out into the room, his whiteboards against the wall between the tables. He’d unfurled a roll of paper tablecloth, laid out his arms on it, and was using marker to draw on the tablecloth and make references.

His bag was open, and I could see the jaws of a bear trap and a bit of chain within.

He looked up, met my eyes, then looked at the screen. He remained where he was. He, Sveta and I were the ones who hung back a bit. Him because of his work, and Sveta and I because we were rummaging in our bags.

“Continuation of a bit of family drama,” Kenzie said. She hit a few keys. The camera’s image on the screen focused in on one section and rotated.

Nailbiter and a teenaged girl were standing outside of the nail place where Ashley had been comparing her nails to the outdated example images in the window. A middle-aged woman with bleached blonde hair was holding the teenager’s wrist. The angle didn’t allow for a very good view of Nailbiter or her expression. She didn’t seem to be doing anything to step in.

The teenager had a resemblance to her mother, but was slender. Her hair reminded me of how Byron wore his, it was the same medium-long length, slicked straight back from the face, but the teenager’s was bleached where Byron’s was black. In facial features and in expression, the teenager was a younger mirror of her mom. Neither was happy with the other.

“What’s this?” I asked. “What’s the drama?”

“The girl is Colt. She was working for her parents, but business was slow, they weren’t paying her, and now she’s working for Nailbiter.”

“Working how?” Tristan asked.

“Muscle, I guess?” Kenzie asked.

“She can’t weigh more than a hundred and thirty pounds,” Tristan said.

“Okay, well, she’s hanging out with Nailbiter and she’s getting paid, I think, because she’s had new clothes lately,” Kenzie said.

“You’ve been watching her?” I asked. “How do you know all of this?”

“I’m not watching her watching her. That makes it sound like I’m being creepy spying on people. Geez. It’s because they keep having shouting matches at night, and idle cameras go on alert mode at loud noises, so I end up hearing stuff.”

“So you’re being creepy eavesdropping on people,” Chris said.

Kenzie glanced around her desk. “I’d throw something at you if I could find something I’m okay breaking.”

“Family issue, okay, but what’s going on now?” Tristan asked.

“And do we need to step in?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Kenzie said. “Colt left the place to go talk to Nailbiter on the street, and they started to leave when Colt’s mom, Tammy, went after her and stopped her. Her sister, who’s about my age, she went outside with Tammy the mom and ran back inside.”

“Audio?” Sveta asked.

Kenzie hit a key.

Chris asked, “Who names their kid Colt? Or is that a shitty nickname?” Chris’s second question had him inadvertently talk over the start of the audio feed. Kenzie shushed him.

“…cking let me go!”

“Get inside! You’re still in trouble for stealing!”

“Fuck you! I deserved something!”

“She’s been helping, you haven’t!”

“The one time she helps, you decide to pay her, and I get fuck all because it’s the one time I decided to go out instead!? Fuck that, fuck you!”

“Is this how we’re doing this!?” the mom screamed at Nailbiter, ignoring her daughter for the moment. “You want money from us while you’re scaring away the business, and now you’re taking my little girl, too!?”

“I’m not fucking little!”

“She decides,” Nailbiter’s voice had a slight whistle around the words. “I’m losing patience, Colt. If I walk away from here without you, I’m not bringing you along again.”

“I decide, not her!” the mother raised her voice. “I’m the mother!”

“Then the two of you need to decide,” Nailbiter said. “Now.”

Colt hauled back, her arm still in the firm grip of her mother’s two hands.

I looked at the door. If I flew over now-

A sound of an impact made me look back to the screen. Colt’s mother had turned away. Colt had her free hand raised. She’d slapped her mother.

Her mother moved to retaliate, and Colt pulled back out of the way. There wasn’t much heart behind the swing, either. Not for the mom. The teenager tugged to try to free her arm, and when she couldn’t, she swung again. Not a slap this time, but a punch.

Kenzie looked away before the second punch could land. She didn’t look back for the third or fourth.

“Shitty name girl’s got grit,” Chris said.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think that’s grit.”

“Colt!” the father hollered the word, on emerging from the nail salon. Colt backed away, arm free of her mother’s grip, while the father advanced.

Nailbiter stepped forward and to the side, to put herself between Colt and her father. The father stopped in his tracks. He looked at his wife, then leaned over for a closer look, touching her cheek where it already looked like it was going to be a heck of a bruise.

He and his wife stood together as they squared off against Nailbiter.

“She’s mine, now,” Nailbiter said.

“Are you, Colt?” the father asked. He got angrier as he talked, “Are you hers? You’d hit your mother, who sacrificed so much for you?”

Colt looked spooked, in that moment. Kenzie zoomed the camera in further, moving the mouse.

It was Erin who said something. “Say no.”

“Fine. I’m hers,” Colt said. “Fuck this. At least she pays me.”

“Brave sounding words, while you’re standing behind her. You’re not going to stand aside, let us handle this as a family?”

“No,” Nailbiter said. “She’s an employee.”

“I don’t want trouble,” the father said. “We can leave it at this.”

“If you want,” Nailbiter said.

“Good,” Colt said. “Leave it and fuck off.”

“Don’t come home,” the father said, and his voice was hard, now. “Don’t show your face in front of me, your mother, or Reese again. Be her errand girl. I’m done trying with you.”

Colt was silent.

“Patience lost,” Nailbiter said, the dry whistle catching on the ‘s’ of Lost. “I’m going.”

“Mom?” Colt asked. I heard her ask that, and I wondered if she wanted her mother to grab her, to drag her away.

“What are you asking me for?” Tammy asked, one hand at the side of her face. “If you’re going to go, then go.”

“Yeah?” Colt asked. She spat the words, “Fuck you.”

“I’ll be by next week to collect,” Nailbiter said. “See you then.”

Another whistle on the ‘s’ of ‘see.’ Nailbiter and Colt walked away. The father hugged his wife.

“Is this kidnapping?” Sveta asked.

“No,” Tristan said.

I shook my head. “We could call authorities, but I have a hard time believing we’ll be able to get cops out there, and have them take action with a nearly-18 person who doesn’t want to cooperate or go back home.”

“Having the police show up to take her away might make her dig her heels in more,” Sveta said.

“Stupid,” Erin said. “So fucking stupid. Colt and her parents both.”

Her eyes were a touch moist as she shook her head, arms crossed, and ducked past Sveta and I.

“Too close to home?” Sveta asked.

“I can’t talk about home. Sorry. Give me a second.”

“Okay,” Sveta said. She met my eyes.

I had worries, but they were ones I’d rather not voice aloud. Nailbiter had a history that had seen her arrested and sentenced harshly, without much delay. Post-Gold Morning, she’d settled back into her role as a violent cape, serving as what might have been Beast of Burden’s second in command.

She was calmer than she’d been reported to be in the one article I’d been able to dig out of my boxes of notes, part of an article from a magazine, listing the Birdcage’s residents at the time. The last page of the article, annoyingly, hadn’t been preserved. I’d pulled the page out for whatever article or image was on the other side.

Either way, violent, as might have been expected for an ex-con with rusty nails instead of teeth. Prison and nine years might have changed her a bit from the person described in the article, but I doubted Colt was in good hands.

“Okay,” I said. “We don’t want to ignore this. I’ll make some calls later. I’ll see what I can find on Nailbiter. She was from North Carolina, I think, and some of their capes are still around. I’d have to track down a veteran. We’ll see what we’re up against. If I get a chance, I’ll have a conversation with her.”

“And say what?” Chris asked. “Parents don’t want her, intense nails-for-teeth lady does.”

“She didn’t want to go, and I think her parents wanted her to stay,” Tristan said.

“‘I never want to see your face again’ sounds like a real term of endearment,” Chris said.

“If she’s with Nailbiter,” Tristan said.

“I’ll talk with her,” I said. I looked at Ashley. “Given the crowd you’re likely to run into while you’re over there, there’s a chance you may see her.”

“She hit her mom, several times,” Ashley said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Her mom was willing to hit her back. Colt learned that behavior from someone.”

“You’re assuming she picked that up from her parents? That’s a bit of a leap. We can’t know for sure,” I said.

“We can guess,” Ashley said.

“But we can’t know,” I said. “It’s… far from great, that situation, Colt, her parents. Maybe think about what you might say or do if you run into her.”

Ashley shook her head slightly.

“No?”

“I was thinking more about Nailbiter,” Ashley said.

“Okay, you should already know she’s dangerous,” I said.

“I’m more dangerous, I’m not worried. I want to go. Sooner than later.”

“Do you still want to do the eye thing?” Sveta asked.

“If possible. I’ll take my mask off when I’m with others.”

Sveta turned to me. “Did you find anything usable?”

“Mascara.”

“I have stuff, plus the white cover-up. Erin? Do you have anything?”

“I have stuff,” Erin said. “What are you doing?”

It was a series of last-minute tasks, Sveta, Erin and I helping do up Ashley so she could present a good face. Kenzie was high-energy, switching from watching to fiddling with the yet-to-be inserted eye camera to talking to Chris about what he was doing when he went out.

“Any word on Snag’s group?” Rain asked. Ashley was in a chair with her back to the table Rain was using for work on his hands.

“We’ve seen Snag and Love Lost around,” Kenzie said. “Love Lost more than Snag. She was in a bad mood yesterday. She went away for a while.”

“Snag is tinkering, and if Victoria’s description of how he operates was any clue, he can tap into his other powers through his tech,” Rain said. He slapped something metal down on the table, hard. “And I’m struggling with something that should be simple.”

“I want to talk to you about tinker stuff after,” Kenzie said.

“I had some small arms for you to mess with, but they got broken,” Rain said. “I have the contact pads.”

“Awesome,” Kenzie said. “I think we can figure something out.”

Ashley was patient as we applied some white and black eyeliner, then used Sveta’s cover-up to fix the color around the eyes.

“I wish I could do this,” Sveta said. She was handling the holding of the various brushes and objects, so we could hand one to her and take another. “But my hands can’t hold the brushes and pencils, and I wouldn’t feel safe with my tendrils out so close to Ashley’s face.”

“Tendrils,” Erin said.

“I don’t know what Rain told you, but I’d probably accidentally rip out Ashley’s eye.”

“If they do a bad job, we can wash it off and you can try,” Ashley said. “If you rip out my eye, then I’ll have the intimidation effect I want. Of a different sort.”

“Of course,” Sveta said, with an unusually sarcastic tone. “You’re fine with losing an eye, that’s badass. But you can’t wear a wig, because if it was knocked off, that would be embarrassing.”

Ashley sighed. I nearly stabbed her in the nose with the eyeliner pencil.

“Don’t move,” I told her.

I finished with the eyeliner, and stepped back to admire the work. A white line along the lower lid, to make the eyes appear larger, and black mascara, because her eyelashes were apparently white without. Erin had handled the careful application of fine veins of black eyeliner that fanned out from the eyes in parallel with the eyelashes. They had been drawn in waves with each wave washed out with pats of the white cover-up, so the lines appeared to fade out and have dimension. At each corner of each eye, I’d drawn a hooked triangle, with the hook pointing down at the inner corners and up at the outer ones.

Erin had a bit of the softer, artistic touch for the lines and fading-out, I had the steadier hand for the line work.

The only mirror was a compact mirror, too small to show everything, so I took a picture instead. I showed Ashley.

“Good,” she said. She smiled.

“Stay put,” Kenzie said. “Eye camera. Here we go, and I can’t touch your face because I don’t want to smudge the nice makeup.”

“Camera first next time, then,” Ashley said.

Erin clearly had the heebie jeebies, as Kenzie held the needle within a few inches of Ashley’s eye, swinging it within half of an inch of the eye as she rotated one part to get it tighter.

“Okay,” Kenzie said. “Here we go. Same as before, but don’t flinch and keep your eye fixed on one point. Making contact on three, ready?”

“Ready.”

“Zero, one, two, thre- wait.”

Ashley stayed stock still, waiting.

“Haha,” Kenzie said. “I should turn it on first, or it won’t phase in. That would’ve been a mess.”

“Would’ve ruined my makeup.”

“On three, this time. Zero, one, two, three. Can you feel it this time?”

Erin shook her arms, as if she couldn’t shake off the goosebumps, and walked away, her back to the scene.

“I feel like it’s there, but it doesn’t feel five percent there.”

“And…” Kenzie held up another, shorter needle. “For the effect. On three. Zero, one, two, three.”

Kenzie stepped back. Ashley’s pupils were gone.

“Ta da!”

“Projection?”

“Super low tech,” Kenzie said. “I put liquid eraser on the projection caps, which aren’t phased in. It’s not perfectly matched to the rest of her eyes, but it works if you aren’t looking super close.”

I took a photo and showed Ashley.

She stood from her seat, and bent over, hand on Kenzie’s shoulder, planting a kiss on the very top of Kenzie’s head.

“You like it?”

“It’s good.” Ashley looked at Sveta, Erin, Kenzie and I, and then said, “Thank you.”

With that, she put her mask on carefully, eyes still decorated behind the eyeholes, and walked briskly on her way.

“I feel pretty good about how we did there,” Erin said. “Can you send me the picture?”

I passed a copy of the picture to her phone.

She checked she had it, then smiled. “Thank you.”

“Not a problem.”

“It’s nice to have something. I haven’t had many wins lately.”

“Are you doing okay?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Anything I can do?” I asked.

“This is cool, superheroes, distractions,” she said. “I was super into this cape stuff once. And this stuff helps Rain, in a roundabout way. Which might end up helping me.”

Rain was at his whiteboard, scribbling furiously in red marker. He’d written a list of ten items, and he was erasing all but the bottom three, the aggressive side-to-side motion of the eraser making the whiteboard rattle against the wall.

“Rain?” I asked.

He stopped, still facing his whiteboard. “I had ten ideas on things I wanted to try. I did some napkin level tinker-notes and found out tolerances are lower than I thought. Scratch eight ideas, now I have two, which is probably going to become zero when I do the next set of calculations.”

“Being a tinker is hard sometimes,” Kenzie said.

“Kenzie,” Rain said. He brought one hand up to his forehead, back still to the room. “If I could build one of the things I’ve seen you make, I’d be happy.”

“Sorry,” Kenzie said.

“I can’t do stuff. It’s not hard, it’s impossible.”

“Go easy, Rain,” Tristan said.

“I’m sorry I touched a sore spot,” Kenzie said.

Rain shook his head, turning around, hand still at his forehead. He dropped it, looked at Kenzie, then looked away. “I do appreciate the thought. Yes, being a tinker sucks sometimes.”

“Maybe you can take a look at my tech later,” Kenzie said. “You can see if it inspires stuff. And you can explain the contact pads. Being a tinker might have its bad points, but we can be two tinkers working together.”

“I’d like that,” Rain said, and it sounded a touch forced. “Yeah.”

Kenzie’s smile looked more forced than Rain’s.

“Why don’t you take five minutes, step outside for some sun and fresh air?” Tristan asked.

Rain looked like he might resist. He looked at the board.

“You’ve said it helps,” Sveta said. “It’s how you unwind. Nature and space to think.”

“I have,” Rain said. “Yeah.”

“If it’s okay, I’ll have the camera above the door turned on, so we can make sure you won’t get kidnapped,” Kenzie said. “Or someone could keep you company.”

Rain nodded. “Alone is good. The camera is fine.”

“Got it.”

He paused at the door. “You’re great, Kenz.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry I’m shitty, that wasn’t about you. I was ready to snap at anyone, I was so frustrated at this stuff.”

“It’s okay.”

“Go outside. Take a bit,” Tristan said.

Rain stepped out onto the fire escape. The door slammed behind him, more because it was a heavy door than because he’d actively slammed it.

“He needs help,” Erin said, quiet.

“It’s a bad situation,” I said.

She nodded.

“That wasn’t about you, you know,” I could hear Tristan telling Kenzie. “He’s stressed.”

“I know. But it isn’t cool. There’s a big part of me that feels like it is about me.”

“It isn’t. Cool or about you.”

I looked around the room. Chris was at his station at the point in the apartment furthest from the screens that wasn’t inside the bathroom. He was bent over a video game.

The cameras were capturing video from high overhead. One came down at an angle, and the other was a bird’s eye view, depicting only the tops of heads. Ashley had yet to arrive. The cameras tracked automatically, based on the people they recognized and their apparent importance. One was following Nailbiter and Colt.

But there was another measure of tracking: it seemed to judge by number. The other camera was shifting to look northward. The labels popped up as people were recognized, so distant they were barely more than stick figures. The labels congealed together into a single large label above the small crowd. Twelve unrecognized individuals.

“We didn’t have a patrol coming through, did we?” I asked.

“Not for an hour,” Tristan said. He turned to look. “Oh what? Fuck me.”

Kenzie ran past Erin, Sveta and me to get to her desk, seizing control of the cameras. She focused in on the crowd.

“What’s going on?” Tristan asked.

The costumes were distinct enough for me to recognize them before any icon came into view. Bold contrasts of light and dark, angles, armor panels, and bright colors. Masks tended to be full-face. All of it looked like they had one very tired designer working on their costumes. Cohesion to the max.

The camera caught the icon, and it popped up in a window, blur-corrected. A figure running to the side, drawn out as a collection of triangles and irregular shapes. Their arm was out and holding an arrow-shaped shield. Others had slight variants on the same icon, to play into costume textures and other minor details.

“Advance Guard,” I said.

“We haven’t talked to Advance Guard,” Tristan said. “We actively avoided bringing Advance Guard into this.”

I looked at Erin and touched her shoulder. “Do you want to go get Rain?”

She nodded.

A second screen was projected onto the wall to our left. The camera began gathering blurry portraits together, lining them up in three rows and four columns, each showing one mask. As the camera got better resolution shots, they were overlaid over other shots of the same person, the images clarifying in stages as each image was uploaded. Some details remained blurry, while others became bold and precise.

Rain entered the room. He approached the desk with arms folded, looking weary.

Everything was still clarifying as Chris exited the washroom and belatedly joined us.

Spright was one. Shortcut another.

“They invited themselves?” I asked.

“Fuck them if they did,” Tristan said. “This is our jurisdiction.”

“We can worry about that kind of thing later,” Sveta said. “Do we intervene?”

“It could be a trap,” Rain said.

“He’s right,” Chris said. “Prancer’s supposed to try something.”

“We’re supposed to think he paid off Advance Guard?” Tristan asked.

“He could have,” I said. “They’re money hungry, with fancy costumes and nice facilities. I’ve had pretty mixed reactions dealing with them, too.”

Tristan frowned. “Okay. I’m bothered they’re just marching in here. Assuming it’s not a trap, what’s even their plan?”

“The locals might have called for help,” I said. “Advance Guard could have been that help.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Sveta said.

“Twelve capes. Many I don’t know or recognize. I don’t want to rule anything out.”

“Makes sense.”

“They’re good,” Tristan said. “And there’s a lot of them.”

“But they’re aggressive. Their usual M.O. is to blitz a target,” I pointed out.

“Not out of the question here,” Tristan said.

Even though they were walking in as a group. The place being a peninsula mattered. It meant there were less routes to get in. It made it easier to keep watch. There would be eyes on Advance Guard, clairvoyant or no.

“I should go,” Chris said. “I’ll have my phone. If we need to do something, I can jump in.”

“Be careful,” Tristan said.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll change when I’m close. Don’t record me, Kenzie.”

“Why?”

“Because I have to ditch the clothes, or I’ll tear them to shreds. I’ll be naked. I want privacy.”

“Okay, um, I’m very fond of you, Chris, but despite the fact that everyone seems to think ‘tinker camera’ and immediately think of that, the perverts, that’s not how I operate. I don’t want to see you naked, so you’re good.”

“I’m noting that you haven’t said you won’t record me.”

“I won’t record you, Chris! Relax! You’d think you already did the anxiety thing.”

“I did, yesterday, to get home faster.”

“Okay, um- lost my train of thought.”

“That’s a good thing,” Tristan said, taking some authority. “Chris, go. Kenzie, turn the cameras away.”

“I’ll go too,” I said.

“No. Hold back,” Tristan said.

“Hold back?”

Tristan said, “Ashley’s in there. We don’t want her arrival to coincide with yours, and you’ve shown up a lot. We already came pretty close with you and her being within a day of each other. Her being connected to Chris is less bad, and he won’t even be human. Let’s keep them from making the complete connection.”

I saw his hand move. Flat, at an angle, as if telling me to stop, but not quite stop.

He was trying to communicate something with me?

Caution? Something else?

“Okay,” I said.

He gave me a little nod, turning back toward the screen. “We send you in if it gets ugly.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t,” Rain said.

“Is Ashley in their clairvoyant’s usual range?” Tristan asked.

“Yes,” Kenzie said. “Should we call her anyway?”

“No,” Tristan said.

I wanted to ask why he’d signaled me, but I could hardly do that. I likely wouldn’t get an answer until this was over with.

The villains were gathering. The initial group that appeared was roughly the same size as Advance Guard’s group.

I could see Kenzie’s labels with the attached names. Love Lost was in the crowd of villains. Snag was absent.

Colt was hanging back, not far from Nailbiter.

On the wall, the Advance Guard mugshots were filling in. I looked for the familiar first and found them already named. Spright, Shortcut.

Mayday, Siren, ReSound, Gong…

“Mayday,” Kenzie said. “He was Baltimore.”

Signal Fire, Flapper, Prong…

“I trained under Signal in San Diego, too,” Kenzie said, adding, “I’d really like to use that training someday soon.”

“Someday,” Tristan said.

“You dropped the ‘soon’,” Kenzie said. “We need to talk about that, after.”

This was difficult enough without you getting involved, Advance Guard, I mused.

“Every time I run into Advance Guard, it’s a headache,” I said. “I run into the one incorrigible asshole in the group, their timing sucks, their choice of where to show up sucks, or it’s more than one of the above.”

“Must be how Prancer feels,” Tristan said. “Heroes turning up out of nowhere.”

The two groups advanced until they were in sight of each other.

One of the capes on Advance Guard’s side held up a hand. She continued approaching until she stood halfway into no-man’s-land between the two factions.

Kenzie’s computer blipped as the label connected to the individual at the front. ReSound was the spokesman, apparently. Her outfit had a lot of circles reminiscent of records or speakers, with the depthed concentric shapes and circles of color in the center of black circles. The icon on her chest was made of crescent shapes, not triangles, with the shield being a half-circle.

Prancer didn’t step forward to meet her, not immediately. Instead, he waited for a moment, surrounded by his allies. Velvet was in the crowd. Moose was absent. So were Hookline and Kitchen Sink. Some stragglers were catching up.

Ashley entered the street, and Kenzie’s camera provided the label above her head: ‘Swansong’.

“Should be Damsel, until she takes the name officially,” I said.

Kenzie typed it out, replacing it.

Damsel was situated near the back of Prancer’s group. Some people reacted, but nobody attacked or lashed out.

She didn’t even flinch at the people around her or the unexpected situation. She walked through the left side of the crowd, until she was near Prancer’s left flank. She leaned against a wall, arms folded, and stared at him, rather than at Advance Guard.

Prancer did note her presence, and looked momentarily annoyed.

The annoyance seemed to spur him forward. He met ReSound at the middle of no man’s land. The camera zoomed in to focus on them.

“This is getting tiresome,” Prancer said.

“What ‘this’?” ReSound asked. I’d expected her voice to sound altered, as many capes with sonic themes did, but she sounded normal. Confident.

“The routine. You guys show up, you’re interested in the area, but you don’t commit.”

“We commit,” ReSound said.

“Hm? I don’t follow.”

“We’re committing. We’re staying for long enough to finish the job. We’re here to break up the villains in Hollow Point.”

“Job. You were hired?”

“We hired ourselves,” ReSound said. “We break up priority targets, and we got to talking. You guys seem priority enough.”

“Based on what?” Prancer asked. His composure had cracked, but he didn’t raise his voice so much as he allowed emotion to affect his words. “We sell grass, we live here. We don’t shit that much where we eat.”

“Who was it?” ReSound asked. “Kitchen Sink. Hookline?”

“They pointed you our way?”

“Someone thought they were funny names, and they were joking about it-”

Tristan groaned out loud.

“-and they wouldn’t say why they were here in the first place. They aren’t alone either. Others have been through. A lot of people find you very interesting.”

“We’re very boring villains, really,” Prancer said. “Insignificant.”

“Houndstooth, no,” Kenzie said. “Ugghh. I recommended you.”

“It was fucking Foxtrot,” Tristan said. “Foxtrot is the clown in Houndstooth’s group.”

ReSound was taking a moment to consider Prancer’s claim of being boring.

“I don’t believe you,” ReSound said. She offered a half chuckle and said, “It doesn’t matter. We do this, we get some points with the public, and with the current attitude about capes? Points matter.”

“We outnumber you.”

“We train. I’m sure you went to great efforts to get your people together. Did you watch us on your cameras, then make sure to bring in a few more, so you could say you outnumbered us?”

“Cameras?” Prancer asked.

On camera, ReSound pointed skyward, not that far off from pointing directly at the camera we were using to watch the scene.

Some heads turned, following the pointing finger.

In the headquarters, Kenzie shoved her keyboard out of the way and brought her forehead down to the desk.

“Not ours,” Prancer said.

“Again, I’m not sure I believe you,” ReSound said.

“If you’re going to doubt everything I say, why are we even talking?”

“Because we always declare war, Prancer.”

“No. You’re up to something.”

“What makes you think that?”

“The fact this conversation feels like someone trying to keep me on the line so they can get a wiretap, doling out just enough information to keep me interested. We’re done,” Prancer said. “Don’t pick this fight.”

Prancer was halfway back to his group when Advance Guard took action.

Spright. He dashed forward. Enhanced movement, straight for the Hollow Point group. If he was a speedster, he wasn’t much of one. Faster than a normal human could manage, but hardly a blur.

“Avant!” ReSound called out, and the sound was magnified, loud, echoing far faster than a normal echo could or should. The camera’s sound died, dissolving into crackles. Several of the Hollow Point villains covered their ears.

Prancer was one of them. Spright ran past him, and the leader of the Hollow Point group flared. He became blurry around the edges, with the blur reaching out five feet in every direction. It subsided, but he retained the effect around his silhouette. The gold on his costume, from his mask to the deer’s head in profile at his collarbone, with antler over one shoulder, all became larger, more intense, more like glass with amber colored lava within its confines. The green of his costume became smoky.

Breaker form.

But as he adopted the form, Spright used his own breaker form. It wasn’t much different, and Spright managed to keep ahead of Prancer, running toward the thinnest ranks of the stunned villains. Toward Ashley.

She used her power, a blast to drive herself in Spright’s direction, as she aimed to intercept. She was in the midst of people, which limited her options, so she ran several paces before she was clear to use another blast.

Still in breaker form, Spright reached out. A scintillating cloud of energy exploded from his hand. He used the recoil to change course.

Of course.

From there, it was a brawl. Spright disappeared into enemy ranks with his own powers exploding out around him. With the use of powers, he ducked and dodged between, went over, and slid under people. He made it out of the back of the crowd and dashed toward the deeper part of downtown. Ashley couldn’t keep up, but Prancer could.

Love Lost staggered forward as ReSound maintained her sonic assault. One we couldn’t hear or get a sense of, because the camera audio had died.

She ripped off her mask. Then she screamed back. Advance Guard was throwing up defenses before it seemed like the scream hit them.

I couldn’t hear what it sounded like, but I could see the effect. The people who weren’t fully protected, ReSound included, were laid low.

Had it not been for shimmering forcefield-like barriers and strange crystal growths, she might have been able to hit the entirety of Advance Guard, aside from the absent Spright. As it was, she got maybe three or four.

“The emotion attack,” Rain said.

Resound’s body language changed completely. A moment later, she lunged for Love Lost, swinging punches, grabbing.

The black haired woman didn’t let her make contact. She stepped back out of the way, raked with claws, avoided the grab, clawed again. With the second slash, blood was spilled.

The other affected people in Advance Guard were turning on teammates. Most shouted, silent with our lack of audio, rather than attack.

My first thought was, fuck Advance Guard.

My second thought was to register the blood. Blood. This is serious now.

“I’m going,” I said.

“We’re coming,” Tristan said.

Shadow – 5.3

We hurried to get ourselves put together. Tristan was often the one to take point on the organization side of things, but for the moment, he was ducking under a table, dragging out a plastic bin with his armor in it. No breath or focus to spare.

“What are we doing?” Sveta asked.

“I guess we all go,” I said. “Control the situation, then help the heroes, in that order? Tristan?”

“Yep,” Tristan said, as he straightened up. He pulled off the v-neck long sleeved shirt he was wearing, undid the necklace with steel beads and a metal ram’s horn, and dropped them into a corner of the plastic bucket. He had his non-armor costume on under his clothes, form-fitting and covered in patterns that gave some character to what was visible in the gaps between the individual pieces of armor.

“What can I do?” Rain asked.

“You come if you’re up for it. Kenzie too.”

“Yes,” Kenzie said, without hesitation.

“I want you on the periphery,” Tristan said, stressing the periphery part. “Kenzie, you’re staying close to me, you’re backup and problem solving, we’ll figure out where to park you and keep you as a reserve.”

“You’re bringing me along?” Kenzie asked, wide-eyed.

I listened and watched, pulling off my sweater with one hand, the other hand holding my camisole top in place.

Tristan answered her, “I promised you I would. You can keep an eye on things with the cameras?”

“I can,” she said, enthused. “Oh shoot! I need to get last minute costume stuff done, and I have it loaded with stuff for Chris.”

She began rummaging, hurrying to get ready.

“You want me along?” Rain asked.

“It might be best to have everyone along in some capacity. You stay far enough back the clairvoyants can’t see you and so you won’t run into Love Lost or the others.”

“Okay,” Rain said.

“Sveta and Victoria together. Erin? Good to have you here, but-”

“It would be weird if I stayed while you’re all gone. I get it,” Erin said.

I put on the sweatshirt. I’d peeled off the previous design, and put on a new one. It was better than the mess before, a similar aesthetic, with the circle and stylized rays, but the lines curled more, reaching out to the seams of the sweatshirt, where they blended into thin black bars. The hood was framed with the same design.

More of my self-care, to get my outfit somewhat in order. I’d done a little something to the mask, giving it some black accents, but it was still predominantly white.

Not that it mattered much. I didn’t place a serious priority on my secret identity. Anyone who could put two and two together would know my face, including the villains in Cedar Point.

Sveta applied her mask. She’d taken one of the temporary masks, but in the time since we’d gone out together, she’d taken some art supplies to it. The same color scheme that covered her prosthetic exterior, with deep, dark blues and greens, neon oranges and yellows, now covered her mask.

“That’s great,” I said, briefly, before applying my own, making sure it was symmetrical.

“Thank you. The color rubs off, so it’s only a temporary thing.”

“The masks aren’t meant to be long-term,” I said. “We’re making do until we’re more settled.”

I plucked at my sweatshirt as I said it.

“That’s temporary then?”

“Yeah,” I said, giving her a hard look. I glanced back at the screen. “Going to do something better, but I have to figure some stuff out first.”

“Okay, haha, I was worried I’d have to dance around my friend having low standards for her costume,” Sveta said.

I snapped my head to look around, and saw Sveta stick her tongue out at me. I gave her a light push. “Fuck off, and not the time.”

“This is better than what you had before.”

Baby steps. Better costumes as I figured out what I was doing.

What was I doing? I could see the mob on the screen. I knew from my experience with the broken trigger that mobs were hard to wrangle. Adding my emotion power to the mix, when Love Lost’s had already taken hold?

More than anything, I wanted to think things through. I wanted to be intelligent in how I went about the cape thing, but there were times that couldn’t happen. This time, where blood was being shed, was one.

If law, right and wrong, and the input of others didn’t serve to clarify matters, then I wanted to do what would weigh on me the least. I was glad that those least-weighty things were often the lawful and right ones.

It was selfish. If a time came in the future where I was disabled, with nothing to do but sit in a hospital room, thinking about the past and dreading my non-future, I didn’t want my memories to be something I had to endure, or things that soured on reflection.

I didn’t miss the fact that as that idea rolled through my head, the ‘if’ of the idea had the faintest catch to it.

An idea to hold onto for when I saw my new therapist. When, not if.

“I’ll organize these guys,” Tristan said. He was strapping on his armor. “I’ll run to catch up. You two figure out what you’re doing. Remember Chris and Ashley are out there.”

I looked at the screen, looking at the labels of the capes involved in the fight. Prancer and Spright were maneuvering around each other in the middle of downtown, not far from the pub or Prancer’s headquarters. Nailbiter had left the larger brawl and were giving chase.

Snag’s name had appeared and was in the shifting jumble of labels over heads.

“It’s too chaotic,” I said. “If we throw ourselves into that mess, I’m going to hurt someone, Sveta is, or we’re going to get hurt.”

“Go after Prancer and-” Tristan turned his head to check the screen on the side. “Spright. Keep an eye out for Love Lost and Nail. Do what you can. I’ll signal you once I’m closer. We’ll deal with the mob when we’ve more of our own people around. Us stragglers will call Chris and the hero oversight.”

“Good,” I said.

I didn’t want to waste more time. I pushed the door open, holding it for Sveta, and then took her hand.

I picked her up and flew. When I was higher than any of the buildings in the area, I paused to turn around in mid-air, looking down at the headquarters.

“Something bothering you?” Sveta asked.

A lot of things were.

I flew toward Cedar Point. If I waited too long, Prancer and Spright would have moved on from the area we’d seen them.

“Tristan. He’s getting everyone out of there,” I said, while we flew. I had to raise my voice to ensure I’d be heard.

“And?”

“And- it’s like that riddle,” I said. “The wolf, the chicken, the corn, a boat with room for the man and one thing in the boat at a time. He’s-”

My voice dropped away as we drew close enough that I could hear the faint scream and the reverberation. I partially lost my train of thought.

“I’m not following you,” Sveta said.

“He’s either pulling something or he’s worried someone else will,” I said. “He’s taking possibly unnecessary steps.”

I felt Sveta’s arm move, where it was wrapped around my back. Tightening.

“I don’t like this,” she said. I could barely hear her.

“Me interpreting things like this? Tristan? Rain? The awful puzzle analogy?”

“Any of it,” Sveta said. Her voice grew louder, so I could hear her properly again. “I don’t want to make this mistake again.”

I wanted to ask, but I heard another scream. I could see a distortion in the air, as colors pulled away from trees and buildings as if they were watercolor or the color was multiplying, casting the surroundings into shades of red and purple. The effect was brief, and the distortion faded. No damage had been done to the surroundings.

I could feel the effect of it, even from a distance. My heart rate picked up, and for a moment my thoughts and feelings spooled out. There were a hundred things I was holding in my heart and head that had to sit there. There were worries, irritations, traumas, and causes for outright fucking fury that I couldn’t do a damn thing about. Just being on the periphery of the effect made them swell up and jostle together.

Sveta’s arm tightened around me. I could hear the thump, thump, thumpthump of her tendrils against the inside of her body.

I met her eyes. I could instantly tell that she’d been affected more than I had.

I was resistant to emotion effects, because I generated them. Snag had hit me hard because he’d hit me where it hurt the most.

My rage? It was there, beneath the surface, but it wasn’t a weak point. It was a regular point.

Changing course, I flew straight for the nearest rooftop. Sveta let go of me and dropped down the moment we were close enough. She was unsteady on landing, and after her legs didn’t keep her upright, she landed on her hands and knees on the roof’s surface, which was covered in black shingle-like tiles, four feet across. Puddles of water settled in the parts that were lower than others, waiting to be evaporated by the sun.

I kept my mouth shut as the emotion effect subsided, and walked over to the roof’s edge.

Love Lost had joined the chase, running alongside Nailbiter, who had extended her limbs. They made a racket as they ran. Love Lost’s claws scraped the road and kicked up sparks, and she was faster than an ordinary person.

Nailbiter, though, had extended her limbs, but they got narrower as they grew longer, and had become black and gnarled in the process. Her jaw hung low, the joints on either side extended, her jawbone made longer and narrower, and the teeth extended further.

She looked like something half-crocodile, half-scarecrow.

She had no problem with mobility or strength, apparently, as she took strides that were fifteen feet long.

Prancer was only a short distance behind Spright. Spright ducked in between two parked trucks. As a maneuver, it put a truck between himself and Prancer, and forced Prancer to anticipate which way he’d go, or if he’d carry on straight and go down the alley.

Prancer hopped up onto the vehicle in the same moment that Spright slid under it. The two seconds it took Prancer to look around and try to find out which way he’d gone were seconds he could run, using enhanced speed.

He half-jumped, half-climbed up a building, with Prancer in delayed pursuit. Setting foot on the edge of the roof, he leaped backward, in a backward bound that saw him arcing over sidewalk, street, sidewalk, and put him on course to make contact with a building’s face.

I started forward as Nailbiter reached out. Her arm extended, long, thin, and rigid, fingers doing the same as they became points so fine and far away I couldn’t even make them out. Spright kicked out and brought an arm up to deflect the piercing fingers with the armor there. He landed on the roof, and an intervening building meant I couldn’t see where he went from there.

I was flying in that direction when I saw Love Lost reach for her mask. She pulled it off, and I changed direction, reversing course and throwing myself against the roof I’d just left.

The scream pierced through the air, raw and magnified in volume. I could see the distortion flare up around the edge of the roof, where the effect was cut off, but it didn’t extend through the building or the roof. I didn’t feel the change in heart rate or breathing.

The color change and distorted blur in the environment was limited to an area in front of Love Lost’s mouth. Solid objects blocked it.

I chanced a peek. She was down on the street, running past us, Nailbiter a distance ahead of her. She didn’t seem to have noticed me, even with her emotion power.

Damsel was chasing as well, only as fast as she could run, nothing augmented but the blasts, which she wasn’t using.

Sveta, Ashley and I. I’d come this way because we were the worst people to deal with Love Lost. I’d been ready to leap to Spright’s defense against Nailbiter if I had to, but Love Lost being here complicated that.

At least Spright seemed to be managing, whatever he was doing.

“Sveta,” I said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m ok-” she started, and the interrupted ‘okay’ sounded like ‘oak’. “I’m trying to tell my body not to murder my suit.”

“Can I do something?”

She shook her head.

“Okay.”

On the street, Spright had escaped Prancer. He returned to the main street, saw Nailbiter and Love Lost close by, and broke into a run. The breaker effect was steadily fading.

Prancer’s power, I knew, was a breaker effect, to go by the PRT classifications. It was the most misunderstood classification in playground arguments and online debates, to the point where every power had probably been called a breaker power by someone. Where changers were powers that changed one’s form and were physical and mostly bound to the natural world, breaker powers were on-off, tied into enabling powers or powersets, and were ethereal or rule-breaking.

Prancer’s ‘on’ switch was a power-derived form that made him fast and nimble. Running and jumping around made the effect steadily ramp up. It made him fast and evasive.

It was good to think about the mechanical side of powers, to dwell in fact and things that made me think of reading cape magazines in bed and talking to Dean.

Sveta’s voice stirred me from my thoughts. “Positive side is I just found out I’m all instinct when I’m forced into attack mode. My body isn’t smart enough to figure out how to get out of the suit.”

“Good thing,” I said. I meant it as I said it, saw the fleeting smile on her face, but I was also kind of distracted.

“What’s going on over there? It helps if I focus on external things I can’t accidentally murder.”

“Spright’s running, I lost track of him. I’d go to him and ask what the fuck is going on, but he’s trying to be slippery and he’s good at it. I’d talk to Prancer, but it’s exactly the same thing. I don’t want to go after Love Lost and fuck up. I’m wondering if we should run, go back to the mob.”

Sveta nodded.

“I hate to leave Spright,” I said. “He might not know about the violence, or who’s after him, and this is a- in big fights, outright wars, it’s good to identify solutions. If I can get to Spright, I can stop this.”

“Love Lost is the biggest problem?”

I nodded.

“I think I can get her,” Sveta said. She shifted position and sat back. “I don’t want to hurt her, but I think I can get her.”

“You sure?”

“Reasonably sure.”

“Rule of thumb I’ve been thinking about? Seventy-five percent. No more than three-quarters of the hurt they’ve done to others. She made ReSound bleed a lot. You can make her bleed a little.”

Sveta winced.

“Or not at all,” I said. “But remember that she’s willing to hurt Rain. If she had a twisted ankle or something, it’d make a lot of things easier.”

Sveta nodded.

“You good?” I asked.

“I wanted to do this. Go get Spright.”

The best way to get control over this situation. Spright had been sent forward as the vanguard of Advance Guard. Was it to lead others on a wild goose chase, or was he after something?

I flew a course that put me directly over the rooftops, so the buildings were between me and the pairing of Nailbiter and Love Lost. There had been some time since the last scream. Her mask might have been put back on, which would have meant a delay before she could hit me with something.

That delay had been a factor when Sveta and I had both visited Cedar Point together, to deal with Sink and Hookline. It might be a factor here.

Prancer’s power wasn’t a threat, but it was a serious consideration. It made him fast and hard to track down. Once upon a time, it had meant he could run drugs and make drop-offs as a petty criminal.

The drawback was a concern too. He was forced out of the breaker state and made mundane if he got hurt.

I spotted the colorful set of blurs that was the pair, and changed course to follow. They were leaping between building faces, positioning feet to avoid putting one through a window, and covering as much ground up and down vertically as they were crossing horizontally. They were fast enough now that if they had been moving in a straight line, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up.

Flying over the rooftops, moving in a straight line to close the distance, I caught a glimpse of Nailbiter climbing up a two-story building with the ease someone else might climb up onto a desk. She moved like she was on stilts, or like she was all stilts.

Pointed ones, as I understood it.

Her arm moved, swinging. I heard the sound of fingers as fine as needles slicing through the air, and put my shield up.

I couldn’t even see her fingers, as they crashed into me. Shield down, I changed course before she could close those fingers around me and set me up for something else.

Her mouth yawned open. My shield wasn’t yet up when her teeth extended, but I was able to get down enough she wouldn’t hit me. Each tooth pointed in a slightly different direction, and she had a lot of nail-teeth. I heard the faint whisking sound of the thinner-than-needles teeth hitting things almost purely at random. Each hit with the force of a knife swung overhead and into a table.

There was a pause, and I heard an unearthly screeching sound.

The teeth had stopped just short of penetrating windows. With each small movement on her part, points scraped against glass.

I saw something thicker than a tooth withdrawing. Changing course, I maneuvered between buildings, barely a few feet above the ground, my forcefield up.

Several feet in front of me, a vague column that looked like it was more shadow than substance lunged out into my path.

My first thought was that it was one of Sveta’s arms. It wasn’t. I tried to fly under it, since I was already so close to the ground, and the individual components fanned out to bar my way.

I crashed bodily into them, my shield absorbing the hit, and the impact made them slap against the side of a dumpster in the alleyway. The thing was crude in a made-just-after-the-world-ended kind of way, four pieces of thick metal, welding, and handles for the dump truck. The hit made one of the sides buckle, the weld at the side closest to me splitting violently.

I turned to look the other way, and saw Love Lost with one clawed hand resting on a crouching Nailbiter’s fingers, guiding them. Nailbiter had both hands together, fingers pointed at me, and the fingers were extended out.

Enhanced strength, and the ability to extend any part of her body, making that part rigid and thinner.

She moved her hand, and two fingers pressed me against a wall, needle thin bars against my throat and thighs.

I couldn’t trust that my forcefield would come back in time. My feet were only barely touching the ground, but I could fly. I flew away from her, sliding between the extended digits and the wall.

She increased the pressure, and I had to stop, lest I give myself road rash while scraping against the concrete wall. Another nail-finger shifted position, slapping me across the cheekbone and ear, and pressed my head back.

Her mouth opened. I didn’t see her do anything, but I threw up my shield all the same, the moment I felt it was ready. I pushed out, hard, and the wretch did the same, gripping and pushing the finger bars that had trapped me. A foot from my face, her tongue struck hard against an invisible surface. It would have gone right through me if it had connected.

I moved while I could, between fingers and wall. I could feel here and there where there was a bulge where there had been a knuckle. I could only imagine how it worked when it wasn’t extended fingers, but the rusty nail-teeth. Doing this would have been like running a saw against my throat, face, and thighs.

These two were dangerous. I flew straight up, the moment I was free of the fingers, rounding a corner.

Instincts told me to press forward. I wanted to go after Spright, or remove the threat.

I stopped instead. There was a limit to how fast and how far they could travel. I had a second.

Love Lost could have hit me with a scream while I was pinned. She hadn’t. She could have seen Sveta and I with her power earlier. The second might have been explained by her thinking we were bystanders, but the first?

Was it that she would have been hitting Nailbiter’s fingers? Not a good idea, to provoke an enemy who was standing right next to you, not when that enemy was very good at hurting people.

An easy conclusion to jump to, but not the only one. I’d been thinking about breakers, the on-off. It wasn’t out of the question that Love Lost could only sense emotion when she wasn’t projecting it. It could be a thing that alternated, with a period of time where she could see, a period she could project, with the mask serving to restrict it. It could be that her scream disabled her sight for a time after using it, while the power gobbled up energy for another activation, the sight only available when the power was primed and ready.

That attack into the alley had been timed to try and hit me, or at least to anticipate me. My flight pattern hadn’t been predictable. I didn’t want to have more nail-fingers in my face the second I was up above the buildings. I wished I was better able to figure this out.

The scream, too. She made people pissed. Irrationally, recklessly angry. When she’d done it to ReSound, she’d been prepared for Resound lashing out. Maybe she hadn’t done it to me because she couldn’t handle me in a fight?

Sometimes the simplest answer was the right one.

I could call Kenzie and see if they have anything to report, but that might show our hands. We were already showing so much.

I heard a distant scream, terrified, and it wasn’t Love Lost’s. At the same moment, my phone vibrated in my pocket.

Pulling it out, I checked the screen. A text from Kenzie, now listed on my phone as ‘Ls’ for Looksee.

Ls:
coast clearish

I flew straight up, until I had a view of the situation. I didn’t have a thinker power, but a view of the battlefield from above counted for something. If my forcefield broke, I would take evasive action.

What I saw had to be Chris. I was far away, so I couldn’t see him well, but it had to be him. It was a face, six feet tall, three feet wide, with no cheeks or anything but a spine connecting the top half from the lower half, as if the chin and bottom row of teeth were the ‘head’ of an insect, the rest of the head the thorax. The setup was surrounded by a ring of spider-like legs in varying shapes and sizes. They looked like flesh and not chitin, though, muscular meat with a pronounced ‘elbow’, coming to a pointed tip where it touched the ground or face. He jerked and twitched, large eyes wide, and some of the legs seemed to be more focused on clawing at his own face than on keeping him mobile. I would have said it was like someone dragging his fingernails across his cheeks, but he didn’t have any cheeks.

He screamed at them, and it was the sound of mortal terror. He’d succeeded in getting Love Lost and Nailbiter’s attention, and now huddled at the foot of a building, pulling against it as if he could pull himself through the seam between sidewalk and store. They didn’t seem to know what to make of him. I didn’t blame them.

Love Lost touched Nailbiter, and pointed in my direction.

Yeah, she could see me. I braced for evasive action.

Anxiety Chris screamed again, louder. Nailbiter moved a hand, and he darted to one side, taking a wild path that saw him running up the wall and off the side of the building, radically changing direction as he touched ground.

He was quick. I was put in mind of a bug darting to the darkness as the lights came on.

They were caught between keeping an eye on me and keeping an eye on Chris.

When Love Lost touched her mask, Chris sped another fifteen feet in a heartbeat.

She pulled off the mask, and she screamed at him. I could see the distortion, aimed more at the ground now. Roughly conical, it covered a lot of area.

Chris twitched, jerked, moved this way, then that. He raised his fleshy spider legs and pointed two tips at them, and Love Lost moved slightly behind Nailbiter, as if she’d find cover behind the exceedingly thin limbs.

Chris screamed back, raw and scared.

There was a moment’s pause, and she screamed at him again. Compounding the effect?

He screamed at her again, quivering in the wake of it, and crept closer.

Nailbiter’s fingers stabbed the ground between herself and him.

He screamed, brief, and ran away. It seemed he couldn’t move in a straight line, or the evasive action was built in, because he traced an ‘s’ shape as he ran.

I flew to put buildings between me and her. Where were Spright and Prancer now? We’d diverted the dangerous elements, but I wanted to fix things. I wanted to take concrete, measured steps to make things better, now that Advance Guard had shit the bed as badly as they had.

I wanted the world to make sense again. And Cedar Point didn’t make sense.

Two more screams, both in short succession. Anxiety Chris’ scream. I turned to look, and I saw the faint shadow of Nailbiter’s nail-fingers stabbing skyward.

Love Lost was running up the fingers. They were thin, but she didn’t seem to be struggling.

Her mask was off, and she was looking down. Looking for me.

Scratch my earlier theory about her not wanting to provoke me.

I couldn’t get to cover fast enough, so I did the opposite. I headed straight for her. If she thought she could deal with me, I wanted to see what she’d do. I pushed out with my aura for the first time, to make it harder.

She would be resistant, like Snag was. Still, I refused to believe that she could deal with my aura, scream, at me, and take evasive action against my charge while thirty feet above the rooftops.

Nailbiter lashed out. Teeth. My forcefield took the hit, and I carried forward. Love Lost lost her footing, teetering, then leaped hard off of the fingers.

I flew straight down, to put myself out of Nailbiter’s reach, while Love Lost leaped sideways.

She touched the side of Prancer’s headquarters, the claws of her hands and feet finding traction on the surface, and she moved like she was running, claws catching and helping to propel her.

There was the wall-running power. She moved fluidly along a vertical surface, claws helping. Her hand went to her mask, and a hand reached up from below, grabbing her ankle.

Sveta.

Love Lost was pulled away from the building. No longer able to make contact with the surface, she fell at a diagonal, in the direction of the rooftop she’d originally been falling down to. I could see her reorient herself in the air, twisting to put feet beneath her, but she couldn’t stop falling.

Not a terminal fall, most likely, but it’d be a hard one.

In the distance, I could hear Chris screaming as he ran. He covered a lot of ground, apparently, because the scream faded with each passing second.

Good job, Sveta, I thought. Not showing her hand, catching Love Lost by surprise, and staying clear of that scream were perfect. It had taken her a while, but I didn’t blame her for moving carefully and having trouble finding the right position and moment to act.

No, that was exactly what I was wanting to do. It was energizing, in a way, exciting. For all my doubts, I liked that at least one person was on my wavelength.

Chris had done his thing too. Not bad, but he’d shown himself to Nailbiter, and it worried me that he could have been stabbed if Nailbiter had been a little more willing to pull the trigger and impale him.

I flew in Sveta’s direction, and found her waiting, her back to the wall, phone out.

She jumped when I floated over to her.

“Good,” I said. “I’ll tell you how good after.”

She smiled. She showed me the phone.

Ls:
prance lost sprite. sprite on roof to W of u
we here at edge of town. mob splitting up. some headed ur way

As I read the messages, a new alert popped up.

Ls:
nail dam comin

I grabbed Sveta’s hand, and prepared to fly away when Damsel appeared in the alleyway. I could have called her Ashley, but she didn’t give me the impression of ‘Ashley’. Shadows fell across her face, accented by the mask and makeup, her eyes were eerily white, her hair was white, and it made for an attention-grabbing profile. If I hadn’t known better, I might have been intimidated.

Nailbiter appeared, looming over Damsel in a crouch, three times as tall as Damsel was, so thin in places as to be almost invisible. Her face was still prolonged, jaw hanging, teeth pronounced.

Love Lost was in Nailbiter’s cupped hand, crouching, holding one finger for balance. I couldn’t tell how hurt she was.

“I’ll deign to let you two help me against the wannabe Alexandria and the girl with the paint,” Damsel said, dismissive.

Nailbiter pulled her face back together, the features drawing shorter. “You aren’t Cedar Point.”

There was a whistling ‘s’ sound on Cedar.

“I am now,” Damsel said. “Mess this bad? Ripe for takeover.”

“We can discuss that,” Nailbiter said.

“Interested?” Damsel asked.

“You’re being hasty,” Nailbiter said. “I’d be interested if I wasn’t loyal to Bob.”

Love Lost swiped out with a claw, dashing claw-tips against the wall to her left. It made a sound, and both Damsel and Nailbiter focused their attention on her.

She pointed at us.

“Yes,” Nailbiter said.

She started forward, with sufficient clearance to go over Damsel, and I flew with Sveta’s hand firmly in my grip. I could hear Damsel used her power in the same instant, lunging forward.

It bought us time, that she hurled herself forward while Nailbiter was trying to place an extended limb.

Time to get around a corner, to take pre-emptive evasive action.

They turned the same corner, and Sveta had turned herself around. She cast her hand out, and gripped Love Lost at the neck and hair. Love Lost had her hand at her mask, and stopped, not screaming.

“Sorry!” Sveta called out, as she hauled Love Lost free of Nailbiter’s grip, pulling her halfway toward us before letting go.

Love Lost was like a cat, apparently, acrobatic enough to keep her claws under her. Still, she was moving fast, momentum was a thing, and the resulting landing was a bit of a roll and tumble, before she managed to stop herself.

Scraped up and glaring, Love Lost watched as I put some vertical distance between us. Nailbiter slowed to avoid trampling Love Lost, falling behind slightly, and then raised a hand, aiming.

Reflexively, I brought up my forcefield and heaved Sveta up, back and away. Instinct. I couldn’t have my forcefield up while holding her.

I couldn’t even watch to see what Sveta did. My focus was on Nailbiter.

She chose to try to get Sveta while Sveta was in the air. I saw the mass of teeth extending, spearing out, and they were aimed too low to be aimed at me.

I flew down to intercept. Forcefield up, I grabbed them after they had extended past me, pushing down, redirecting. The wretch had to have grabbed them too, because she moved like superstrength applied. All of the teeth were attached to her and when I moved some of them, I moved them all.

That done, I looked back for Sveta. The inverse of Love Lost, to tumble so bonelessly through the air, with no ability to reorient herself.

My forcefield scraped against the nails as I flew past them, pushing them more before a last-second course correction to intercept Sveta. I caught her.

“Warn me!”

I nodded. It was very possible I felt more alarmed in the wake of the moment than Sveta did, and she looked really alarmed.

I looked back. Love Lost and Nailbiter were on the ground, and Nailbiter wasn’t pressing the attack.

“You going to explain that?” Sveta asked.

“I can,” I said. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, but- what was that analogy? Wolf, corn, chicken?”

“Wolf,” I said. I had an ugly, heavy feeling that thoroughly crushed the moment of triumph. I flew down, setting foot on the rooftop. Each passing second, it bothered me more. “Wolf.”

“I don’t follow. I didn’t follow the analogy in the first place, but- secrets? Maneuvers?”

“Just… wolf,” I said. I didn’t want to explain it in detail. “Control issue. Similar to yours.”

I saw her forehead crease above her mask.

“You didn’t have one before.”

“No I didn’t,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “You should have told me.”

I tried to formulate a response. She wouldn’t look directly at me.

As I opened my mouth, she looked down at her phone, as if she was looking for an excuse to look away. The tiny change in her expression gave me pause.

“What is it?”

“Come, Spright’s moving.”

She grabbed my arm, tugging.

“You can carry me?” she asked.

I nodded, seizing her with a firmer grip than necessary, carrying her off the roof.

Spright still had a vestige of Prancer’s power, even though Prancer was nowhere nearby. I could see him running along a rooftop. He leaped from the rooftop’s edge, to the building face next door.

The building was Prancer’s headquarters. A stone building with a clocktower on the top.

Touching fingertips to toes, as his feet pointed straight forward, Spright passed through an open window and landed at a run. For Sveta and I, we had to get there first, and then we had to maneuver ourselves through the window. I supported Sveta so she could climb through and then looked around to make sure we weren’t being observed.

Well, if the clairvoyants were awake, and they had to be with the day still young, Chris still screaming in the distant background, and various other noises and chaos, then we were being observed.

But I couldn’t see anyone who could follow us into the building.

The things inside were… not especially nice, even though attempts had been made. It made me think more of a parent teacher conference room and my mom’s office when she was really deep in work. Budget desk, budget chairs, budget stuff in general, with the doors being wood that hadn’t even been polished down that nicely before being painted, and some signs of domesticity, with a jacket on the back of a chair, signs of eating at desks, and personal touches littering the space.

Spright was already across the floor. A binder was open in front of him.

“Spright,” I said.

“The heroine who was Glory Girl, and a friend,” he said, sounding pleasant, even casual. He picked up the binder and turned our way. “I heard you were around.”

I stalked toward him, reaching for the top of the chest-plate that served as the closest thing I’d get to a collar. He scrambled back, staying just out of reach, turning to flight when his feet failed him. He dropped the binder.

Failing to get a grip on him so I could shake sense into the man, I settled for pointing a finger accusatorily at him.

I could hear Chris screaming in the background, a distant sound I couldn’t place, that might have been a giant tinker device going off.

This entire thing had been about taking a topsy-turvy world and making it topsy-turvy for the bad guys, unseating them and breaking their hold. It had been about sanity, and they’d pulled the most insane fucking stunt, and they’d upended it.

But I couldn’t burn bridges. They were… how would Ashley have put it? Blithering idiots? And I had to get along with them. Heroes needed to cooperate, the team needed it, and I wanted to be diplomatic.

“Fucking why?” I asked.

Shadow – 5.4

“You’re pissed,” Spright replied.

“Why?” I asked, again, stabbing my finger in his direction. He stepped back out of the way of it. “What the hell is Advance Guard doing?”

“This is how we operate,” Spright said. He put the binder he was holding down, moving a few things to look at the things on the table. Having verified something or verified the lack of something, he gave Sveta and I his full attention. “We identify targets in need and we handle them. We’re good at it.”

“What about jurisdictions?” I asked.

Spright paused. One finger tapped the desk. “This is Foresight’s. They got this territory when we held a lottery for the major areas of the city.”

“Did you talk to Foresight?” Sveta asked. Her tone was a marked contrast to mine. It sounded pitying or pleading. Spright had already pointed out how I sounded.

“You think this is your territory,” Spright voiced his realization aloud.

“Did you talk to Foresight?” I repeated Sveta’s question in my own way.

“Not me personally,” Spright said. “Okay. We need to talk this out, but now isn’t the time. Let me do my thing, two to five minute investigation, then if you wanted to let me copy some of your powers to make a graceful exit, I’d appreciate it. Then we have a conversation.”

He put one hand on the binder. I put my hand down on the corner of the binder, and slid it away from him.

“ReSound got sliced up,” I said.

I could see Spright tense. “How sliced up?”

“Enough that I’m mentioning it,” I said. “And enough that we need you to go straight back to your team and tell them to leave. Then we can have a chat.”

“Okay,” Spright said. He walked around the table, putting it between us. “I hear what you’re saying.”

“Time is of the essence here,” I said. The change in position worried me. Was he going to bolt? Or anticipating violence from me?

I changed my stance, forcing myself to relax my posture.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve raided enemy territory or the first time someone was hurt. We have a pattern we operate by. I handle my part and I trust the others to handle theirs.”

“And Cedar Point?” I asked.

“Will be better off in the long run,” Spright said.

“Capes aren’t liked right now,” Sveta said. “The local villains have been pressuring people here who can’t afford to leave, which makes feelings toward capes even lower. We were doing something here. You can’t just…”

The pity or pleading in her voice gave way to frustration at that last part, to the point she couldn’t finish her own sentence.

“…Create a mess and trust they’ll be better off,” I said.

“Yes. Exactly, thank you,” Sveta said.

“Others have been coming-”

“Were invited to come,” I said. “Screened, to avoid a screwy situation.”

“We were invited too!” Spright said.

There. Now the situation made some sense. Advance Guard had been invited. It wasn’t by us. Someone looking to screw us up or throw a wrench into the works.

Sveta and I exchanged glances.

“What?” Spright asked.

“You may have been played,” I said. I had to keep in mind that the clairvoyants could be watching. “Maybe you should walk us through your side of the story.”

“Any minute now, people could come after me. They’ll figure out we’re in here,” Spright said.

“Fast version,” I said.

He moved, taking two quick steps to one side, before slapping his hand down on the table. “It wouldn’t be out of the question for you to be working with the bad guys. Stalling me, throwing a wrench into our plan. It’d even be a good cover, for a team like Prancer’s B-listers to try to corner or confuse the hero jurisdiction too.”

“Completely out of the question,” I said.

“Not a moment’s hesitation?” he asked. “No outrage or indignation?”

“It makes sense for you to say it. But not if you do any digging. I’m a cape from a cape family. Every surviving relative I have is a hero or ex-hero. If I pulled something like that, I’d get caught and I’d lose my entire family and their respect.”

“I’m dating and living with Weld from the Wardens,” Sveta said. “He’d lose everything, and I wouldn’t do that to him.”

Spright’s head turned. He analyzed Sveta, then me, peering through the lens of his future-elfin mask. “Straight to talking about your relationship to other people. Nothing about yourselves. Good cops have crooked cop kids and girlfriends.”

“References and connections matter,” I said. “I could say any number of things about myself, but that’s my words out of my mouth. Talk to my dad? My cousin? They’ll give you a clearer picture of who I am.”

“I remember her. I’ve talked to Weld,” Spright said.

“And?”

“Fuck,” Spright said. “Alright. Fast version? We caught wind of what was going on here when someone was commenting on the stupid cape names here. We asked around. Teams building bonds, taking turns to help out in a place that needed help.”

“People talked about stuff that they needed to keep their mouths shut about,” I said.

“They didn’t talk,” Spright said. “Not as far as I know. But secrets are hard to keep when powers are in play. They didn’t talk Cedar Point, but they were psyched about working together on a level outside of what the Wardens are negotiating. On a lower level, I mean. We have the meetings at the Wardens headquarters, and people were stopping in at the same place.”

“And you asked Foresight?”

“Not me. Mayday. He said we were clear to go.”

Who the hell had Kenzie’s old boss talked to, that we weren’t roped in?

“Foresight is tied up with war stuff right now,” Sveta said.

“They are,” he said.

“Is it possible the key people were tied up, and Mayday talked to lower-level members of Foresight?” Sveta asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“Hold the questions along those lines,” I said. “Good theory, Sveta, but we should get the particulars later. Time’s short.”

“Okay. I’ll check the window,” Sveta said.

Time was short, and the clairvoyants were possibly listening in. There was a degree to which I didn’t want to reveal too much to them, at the same time I wanted to get the situation straight.

Was it a play, then? Or was it bad circumstance?

Hard to know without talking to Mayday.

“Our version?” I asked. “We’ve been juggling multiple teams, trying to keep on the down low, and we’re holding the fort until a team decides to settle in permanently.”

“You, specifically,” he said.

“Us, as a group. We’re setting up as a team,” I said. I thought of the clairvoyants. “We’re getting ourselves set up, we’re still getting costumes and names, headquarters, and a long-term plan. This is an interim job, and it gets us some money, connections, and favor.”

“And you think we bypassed that?”

“You bypassed it. The team is getting paid by people who want a chance to get some practice in and mess with the Cedar Point guys while they’re bewildered. We’re getting resources. We’re draining their resources. They’re spending money to hire help, they’re losing people. They pull favors from major players, get answers or other stuff. What I arranged, my part in this, is that one of those players gives us a cut each time we provoke these guys to call. It drains the bad guys and I can give these guys their startup cash.”

Sveta was walking around the perimeter of the office. She stopped and looked my way. “You’re telling him?”

I’m telling Cedar Point. They want answers, and I’m going to give them Tattletale.

I hadn’t wanted to do it so soon, but it was something in keeping with my warrior monk philosophy. My goal here was stability. To minimize the ripple effects and keep things from pinging off of one another to cause a greater disaster. I wanted things to stop.

“Yeah, I’m telling him,” I said.

I could see Spright consider it.

If this madness continued without a scapegoat or a target, then it would only continue unabated, with endless escalation. So long as Cedar Point thought they knew what was going on, they would move predictably, rather than windmilling their arms around and stirring up chaos.

“You were just talking to me about how the company we keep and our references matter. You’re working with the villains?”

“Working with heroes. Accepting the big picture villains are a part of the picture we’re not going to be able to shake, and adapting to that. Trust me when I say I do not have any fond feelings for who I’m talking to. If you knew the name and did some digging into my background, you’d know that.”

He reached down to the table and fidgeted with a carving, the shape only partially blocked out. Wood shavings surrounded it.

He didn’t give a response, seemingly considering.

“Spright,” I said, dead serious.

“I don’t like the way you’re doing this,” he said.

“I like you, Spright. I liked our talk before everything went to shit, when we first met. But the feeling is mutual. I don’t like how you guys are doing this either.”

I watched as he nodded slowly.

“We were here first,” I said. “I’d really like to cooperate with you guys like we’re cooperating with other heroes. But either someone’s messing with us by giving you a false go-ahead, or you guys fucked up somewhere. Whichever it is, you can’t be here.”

“Or Foresight fucked up,” he said.

“Or that,” I said. I didn’t believe it. I repeated myself with more emphasis, “Whichever it is, you can’t be here. If you were supposed to be here, it wouldn’t be a surprise to us.”

He flicked the wooden figurine across the table. “Damn it.”

“Go talk to your people, convince them to quit this,” I said.

“I will,” he said. “Can I use your powers?”

“You don’t want to use mine,” Sveta said. “If you even can.”

“You sure?” he asked. “I get an intuitive sense of movement-related powers. Yours seems okay. Coded weird, but I can push past that.”

“Mine’s dangerous,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, “Be careful.”

“I’m terrible at careful,” he said. He turned to me. “Flight. And… shadows of feet and fingers groping for handholds? I don’t think that one would move me very far. Only by inches.”

It was the most direct reference to the Wretch I’d heard someone make. I wanted to reply, to look normal, and I couldn’t.

My heart pounded more with the one question and two follow-up sentences than it had with all of my irritation and anger at Advance Guard.

“Can you use only the flight?” I managed.

“Yes. Absolutely,” he said. His feet left the ground. “Cover me? We’ll take the direct route.”

I followed, meeting Sveta before we reached the window. As Spright passed through the open window, I saw the look my friend gave me. I saw it again as I passed through the window, turned around, and put my arm around her waist as she made it through the window in a more than slightly awkward way, prosthetic body not cooperating fully.

My arm around her waist, her arm around my shoulder, we flew after Spright.

Airborne, a ways ahead of us, Spright put his arms out to his sides. Ribbons extended out from his wrists, loose in the air, one from each wrist.

I gave him a wide berth as I realized what they were supposed to be.

He gave us a sly look over one shoulder, then reached out. The ribbon moved faster than the eye could follow, reaching for a ventilation duct on a roof. He pulled himself to it, in a very familiar way, reached out with the other, and through a combination of flight and use of the two ribbons, sped well ahead of us.

I realized what it was I was seeing.

“I’m kind of not a fan of these guys,” I said.

“I kind of get what you mean,” she said. With the wind in my ears, I looked at her to track what she was saying better. The look on her face broke my heart a little. It was a longing look, where she didn’t take her eyes off of Spright and his casual use of her power until he was out of sight.

A trash can was knocked down here, the contents blown around by wind. A section of roads had cracks in it that I was pretty sure weren’t from the road settling.

In the distance, I heard Love Lost’s scream. The mob. She and Nailbiter had returned to the scene, it seemed.

I reached for my phone, and I hit the button.

“It’s me. Update?”

“I can talk? Are you there? Did you leave?” Kenzie. Looksee.

“I don’t think they’re listening in on phones, no,” I said. “Codenames only, to be safe.”

“Codenames. It’s Looksee here with Capricorn. He’s on the phone. I lost track of who with. I’m at the perimeter. Are we good to go?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Hand me over to Capricorn as soon as he’s free?”

“Can do.”

Closer to the scene where the fighting had initially broken out, things were more chaotic. I stopped at a rooftop to try to get a sense of it all.

Eight members of the twelve initial Advance Guard capes were present. Spright was near someone I presumed was Mayday, a guy who wore a costume with red and black armor panels and a cape that covered one shoulder.

“Handholds and footholds?” Sveta asked, quiet.

I pressed the phone against my chest, to muffle it. “Yeah. I guess.”

“That’s the wolf? I saw the expression on your face.”

In the midst of the fight, Advance Guard was actually faring well enough, even though I couldn’t tell where four of their members were. Spright was having a conversation with Mayday, as villains approached them, crowding in. Mayday raised a hand, palm flat, then brought it down, so it pointed forward. Villains started scrambling out of the way.

From the distance, a flare of red light rose against the blue sky at the horizon, framed with something shadowy and dark that made it stand out clearly.

It was deceptive, in its general oblong shape, which became a circle and became oblong again, and its apparent lack of depth.

I realized what it was and put my hand at Sveta’s arm, in case I needed to pull her away. A projectile of some sort. It soared toward us, and touched down in the middle of the battlefield, with Mayday running to intercept it, getting clipped by one of Nailbiter’s claws on the way.

It hit him, almost dead on, and smashed into the road like water might, a mess of red strands that glowed to the point they were almost neon, in a sea of darker and darker strands. The webbed ball dissipated, broke up, the lines spreading out to run through, around, over and under almost everything on the ground. The larger portion of the mass skidded nearly a hundred feet before breaking up. Mayday’s team had been carried along with the skid, and as the strands dissipated, they were on their feet, standing in formation. The villains who hadn’t scrambled out of the way were at the edges, lying down, or pushed between parked cars. No property damage had been done.

They were outnumbered two to one, but Advance Guard wasn’t losing. They looked battered. Two of them were being locked down by one of their fellow teammates. Affected by Love Lost’s scream, it seemed.

The phone’s speaker buzzed against my chest. I picked it up.

“The bad guys have reinforcements coming,” Looksee reported. “From your five. I think that’s how it works, right? Five is behind and to your right? Or is twelve o’clock directly behind?”

“That’s how it works, Looksee,” I said. “Five is right. We’ll keep an eye out.”

I looked back over my shoulder. Did I want to get involved in the brawl like this?

“Victoria?” Sveta asked.

Down on the road, Advance Guard were using an area that had become a bit of a bottleneck, with one section of sidewalk fenced off with railings that had been bolted down, so there could be a patio outside one restaurant, and several cars were parked beyond that fence and on the opposite side of the street. Mayday retreated through the bottleneck with a flying ally shielding him by catching some flung balls of flame in what looked like a web of glowing lines in geometric shapes. Mayday raised both hands, palms flat, forming a ‘y’, and then brought them down.

In the distance well behind him, twin flares of red energy appeared at the horizon. One of them might have been headed straight for me.

I fixed my grip on Sveta’s arm, then carried her skyward.

Up, away, clear of the immediate fight, until the figures on the battlefield were specks. I stopped there, at a height I was pretty sure the clairvoyants couldn’t track me, where the phone I held still had two bars of signal.

Comfortably away, secure, and private. Close enough to see if the reinforcements appeared.

“Scary, being up this high,” Sveta said. “Scarier that you aren’t answering my question.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be sorry. Answer me.”

I nodded. The sick feeling that had hit me when Spright had commented on the wretch’s existence hadn’t gone away. It was worse, if anything.

Mayday’s power hit. Two shots, barreling in from the horizon in a matter of seconds, each half the size of a house. The red balls were more oblong than before, where the last one had only appeared that way because of its arc. The shape might have been why they traveled further as they hit, carrying people away. While villains scrambled to get to their feet. Lines spread out, forming overlapping triangles, circles, squares, and stars, extending in a pattern around the woman who had been shielding Mayday.

I pressed the phone down against my chest.

“You’re being weird,” Sveta said. “And weird can be allowed, believe me-”

She let out a small, hollow laugh.

“-But bad weird isn’t. You’re not just pulling away. You’re pushing away. Throwing me away, literally.”

“That’s not-”

“You threw me aside, Victoria. Literally. You didn’t warn me.”

“I wouldn’t throw you if I couldn’t catch you, okay?” I asked. I wanted to put my thoughts into words without blurting them out, but I couldn’t do that while defending myself and simultaneously making sure I didn’t leave the heroes down below undefended.

“It’s not okay,” Sveta said. “I feel shitty for bringing this up now, but it’s really not okay that I barely recognize you sometimes, and it just got shoved in my face twice.”

“I don’t want you to recognize me.”

“Not that. Not- mostly not that. Not- I’m glad you’re you again. I’m glad I can communicate with you without you bringing every conversation back to the topic of your sister.”

I flinched. I didn’t blurt, but I did voice something safe and reliable, something I’d already said, because it was safer than that. “It’s the wolf.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything. Spright told me more than that. I really, really don’t want to find out stuff from other people instead of you, Victoria.”

“It’s- My forcefield moves with a mind of its own,” I said.

She didn’t retort, and it was my instinct that I’d hear her retort. That wasn’t based on her, not on the time we’d spent together at the hospital, where we’d kept each other company, communicated, shared a computer and tried to keep each other sane. It was based on what I’d want to do. She’d been pressing me, attacking, aggressive. Were it my old self, without the two-year long reality check, I wouldn’t have been able to just stop after being on that verbal offensive. I would have pressed.

She didn’t.

“Since the hospital,” I said, for elaboration.

“Moves on its own? Does it make you move?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“But it fits your body.”

“Not anymore,” I said. “Not this body.”

I didn’t elaborate, because I didn’t have it in me. I waited, let her put it together. I saw her expression change, and I focused instead on Advance Guard against Hollow Point down below.

We were higher up than a ten story building would be.

“Sorry,” I said. “Having this conversation with you when you can’t storm off or walk away.”

“Don’t drop me,” she said.

I nodded, stiff.

She shifted her grip, extending an arm to reach for my shoulder. Her prosthetic foot tapped against mine, then her toe settled on top of it. I held my foot rigid while she pushed herself up a bit, pulling on my shoulders until she’d raised up.

It took some doing, and it took me realizing and helping her a bit, but she found a position where she could wrap her arms around me in a hug.

My eyes remained on the scene below as I hugged her back with one hand. My other hand still held the phone against my chest, and Sveta’s hard chest pressed hard against the back of my hand. It hurt and I didn’t make her stop.

I wanted to hug tight, but the pain reminded me it didn’t matter, because it was only her shell.

“Thank you,” I said, instead. “Thank you, thank you.”

“Idiot, moron. Tell me.”

“I haven’t even told Mrs. Yamada.”

“Lamebrain. You don’t think I one hundred percent get it? You don’t think this stuff makes sense to me? More than anything or everything else?”

“Maybe I didn’t want it to be got,” I said.

She moved her head, knocking it against mine. She did it again.

It made me think of the hospital. Of a time shortly before she’d left with Weld. A couple of weeks before, maybe. Physiotherapy, working on my manual dexterity, they’d given us video games and controls we could use. Sveta had done a lot of it, and picked up more of it for the social aspect, so she’d joined me to egg me on.

She’d done the head-knock out of frustration then too. I’d been so focused on trying to get movement out of my hands and translate that to the controls that I hadn’t been paying much attention to the game.

It was a bittersweet memory, which was about as good as things had gotten, then. Two or so weeks later, Weld had gone to see her. I could remember her anticipation leading up to the meeting. She’d been so upset over the Case fifty-threes defecting en-masse from the Protectorate and Wards, and Weld’s visit had turned that around.

It hadn’t gone well. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened. Then Weld had come to see me. He’d treated me with more human decency than I’d had out of anyone but my therapists, patient advocate, or the other patients for months. He’d been patient, ignored my ramblings, he’d been gentle, asked what he could do for me. It couldn’t have been easy. I’d been a mess.

I’d convinced him to go back to her, with a renewed perspective. Later on, I’d given them my blessings. She’d walked away from the hospital with her hero and freedom. Weld had gotten my only real friend and one of my only unabashed, unpaid-for allies.

I drew in a deep breath and sighed.

Sveta spoke first. “There was a time I was with a team. Things came to a head, a climax. It turned out half of the team had one idea of what we wanted, and the other half had another. Blood was shed. People died. Really- really cool people. The deaths weren’t as bad as the betrayals. I don’t want this to be a repeat of that.”

“Neither do I.”

“So I want to ask, because I didn’t ask then. What the hell are we doing?” Sveta asked.

“Hugging. Trying to keep this situation from getting too out of control.”

Whatever reinforcements Kenzie had mentioned hadn’t caught up with us yet. The battle lines were separating, now. Advance Guard was now a group of seven people. I wasn’t sure where the eighth had gone. Spright was at Mayday’s side, talking in short sentences. Here and there, enemies lashed out.

“Those things are now,” Sveta said.

“I think… we know what it is to be powerless, and to be stuck like that, and not always having people able or willing to help. Just about every member of the team does.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll help those people. Cedar Point is a group of those people.”

“Colt.”

“Colt included,” I said.

“Can we get in there?” Sveta asked.

I hesitated.

“This is our jurisdiction.”

I put the phone to my ear. “Looksee?”

“Heyo.”

“Where are those reinforcements?”

“Fighting in the ranks. They’re gathering themselves together. Eight more.”

“Okay. Is Capricorn there?”

“He’s on the phone. Talking to Foresight now.”

“I want to move now. Before this ends one way or the other. Have him hang up and give him the phone. We make an appearance.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear at the enthusiastic noise she made.

“I’m here,” Capricorn said, on the other line. “I spent five minutes on the phone with Natalie before giving up.”

Giving up? I remembered trying to convey the situation with Hookline and Kitchen Sink, before having to resort to video evidence. Maybe we’d need to get her access to Kenzie’s feed.

“I was talking to Foresight, they don’t know what’s going on with Advance Guard,” he added.

“Neither does Advance Guard, apparently. It’s time. We should act before things get worse.”

“Ok. On our way. E.T.A. five minutes.”

Sveta shifted her grip on me at the same moment I flew straight toward the ground. Her hand slipped from my shoulder, and I caught her.

Fucking Advance Guard, fucking Prancer’s people, fucking wretch, hospital, mom, Amy.

It couldn’t be easy.

The thoughts flew through my mind and I left them behind as I plunged. I slowed and stopped as we reached the ground, still landing hard enough my legs bent, and I nearly dropped to one knee.

I’d put us right in the middle of Advance Guard’s group.

“They’re friendly!” Spright called out.

“You sure about that?” Shortcut asked. He was on the periphery, holding his polearm.

“Pretty sure,” Spright said.

On the other side of the bottleneck were sixteen villains with a scattered few mooks. Mooks augmented with Bitter Pill’s tinker stuff, it looked like. Foaming at the mouths, in a way.

Snag was there, in the back. Love Lost had retreated as well.

No, there was more to it. There was a division in the enemy ranks. Prancer, Moose, Velvet, Etna, and someone who might have been a thinker, in one group. They moved and talked to one another like they were cooperating. There was a faint red fog around them, heavier at the ground, at ankle height.

Bitter Pill’s group had Bluestocking, the six mooks, Crested, Birdbrain, and Foggy Idea. That group was more visually distinct, all but the mooks being tidier, and they hung back. The mark between them and Prancer’s group was subtle. They were at the edge of the fog, and they held themselves differently. Crested with his fan and Birdbrain with a bullwhip were the only ones with weapons.

Compared to that subtle distinction between Pill’s group and Prancer’s, the Nailbiter, Love Lost, Snag, Damsel, and a couple of the more violent and dangerous looking ones, like Sidepiece and Disjoint, were standing such that there was a fifteen foot gap between them and the others.

Anxiety Chris was in the distant background, perhaps a block away, screaming. His change would be fading soon, I imagined.

Eighteen of them.

Seven Advance Guard, Sveta and I, with Capricorn and Looksee on the way.

Love Lost screamed, and the diagram-drawer blocked it. Nobody caught at the edges. I imagined it helped the group had shrunk to seven.

“I can’t convince you guys to up and leave?” I asked.

“Our teleporter is pulling one at a time,” Mayday said. “She’d pull us all at once, but the impression got scrambled when the scream hit our thinker.”

Sidepiece and Disjoint were moving to flank the group, sneaking around a parked vehicle. A diagram-wall appeared to block them off. Disjoint hopped up onto the vehicle and was knocked off as Mayday swung a hand in his direction, casting out a tiny version of the red projectile he’d been bringing in from the horizon. As Disjoint landed at her feet, Damsel started cussing him out for getting in her way.

“It’s going to take a bit,” Mayday said. “Gets harder as our group shrinks. Injured go out first, then the less mobile.”

“They have reinforcements incoming,” I said. “Infighting is slowing them down, but the enemy group is going to get larger while yours gets smaller.”

“We know this,” Mayday said. He had a deep, rich voice, which was muffled slightly by his mask. “The thinker I mentioned, Mapwright, showed us before evacuating out.”

“They have more strong capes than we were led to believe,” the diagram-woman said.

“We need to talk about who you talked to,” I replied, under my breath.

The good guys were stuck, in a way. Powers aside, the vehicles and nearby railing were the only things that kept the Hollow Point villains from charging in all at once. It wasn’t that they were that great an obstruction to a group of people like Nailbiter, Moose, or Prancer. It was that they made it so that for people to pass that point, they needed to approach in ones and twos.

“We need to talk, Prancer!” I called out.

He didn’t answer, verbally or otherwise. There was a dark look on his face, and it was the violent clique that grew louder. Not Snag, not Love Lost, but Nailbiter and her fellows. Damsel didn’t jeer, but she said something, and one of the villains smirked.

“Let’s call a ceasefire!” I raised my voice again.

At the front lines, Velvet flung a rusty newspaper box with telekinesis, more to take away something that contributed to the bottleneck than to outright attack. It crashed hard, squealing as the metal side slid against the rough textured road.

That would be their answer, then?

Fuck them.

Moose stepped forward, and Shortcut took a step to meet him. The road distorted, space rippling and appearing like water, spray and all, and he leaped forth at Moose’s side. Shortcut was there, pole in motion, the blade at the end making the end heavy even as he used the dull side to connect with the back of Moose’s leg.

Moose didn’t go down, and swatted in Shortcut’s direction. Shortcut disappeared, appeared again, swinging. This time the blade was more apparent. Moose was forced to take a step back.

Bitter Pill had a group of six men and women around her, toward the back. They looked like zombies. Each had their heads lolling back, and black fluid flowed from their mouths like water from the edge of an overflowing sink. She was giving them orders, her voice lost in the other noises.

Mayday raised his hand, then brought it forward. The entire assembly of villains reacted. Etna, who wore a revealing robe in glossy silk, and a black mask with six horns, threw globs of superheated glass. The robed woman who drew the magic-circle diagrams raised her defenses, only to be caught off guard when Moose, feinting to throw Shortcut off, charged her.

Moose’s charge meant much of Advance Guard leapt to the fray, Spright included, and Bitter Pill gave the order for her zombies to attack. They charged, spilling black fluid from their mouths in the same way someone with a very full jug of water might have water sloshing out.

That was Sveta and my cue to get involved. I flew forward. Sveta snatched out with a hand to pull one’s ankle out from under it, dragging it into the middle of Advance Guard’s ranks.

“Don’t hurt them! They’re people!” someone called out behind us.

I changed direction, as I saw Love Lost get a boost from Snag, which segued into her running up the side of the building. Two long, lunging steps, with metal glittering around her one leg, dangling like extensive jewelry, damaged in an earlier fall or at some point in this altercation.

Still, she grabbed onto a windowsill, twisting around to reach up with her mask.

Sveta’s hand went up. Love Lost shifted her grip, her back to the wall, arms out to either side to grip different windowsills with her claws. She refused to go down.

It did mean she couldn’t remove her mask and scream. I flew skyward, out of the group assembled behind the bottleneck, toward the building’s edge.

Nailbiter was keeping her eye out for me. In the midst of this kind of chaos, with this many witnesses, she couldn’t go for the lethal strike, but she could interfere.

Brutes had a way of gravitating toward Brutes in a fight. It was a kind of weird rock-paper-scissors thing, where rock tended to favor smashing rock.

I used my forcefield to swat aside Nailbiter’s claws. So soon after the conversation with Sveta, to bring it out and be acutely aware of it, to think briefly of the hospital, it was disorienting. It made the moment dark.

More of Nailbiter’s claws shielded Love Lost, keeping me from getting to her and pulling her free. Not directly. I saw Love Lost lower her head and raise her more intact clawed foot. She was using it as another hand.

Flying higher, I looked to Sveta. I reached out my hand, and she sent hers to me.

She pulled herself to me, then reached down, grabbing Love Lost from above.

To hold the windowsill and avoid being pulled down was one thing, but being pulled up was another.

Love Lost slashed, raking at Sveta’s arm and tendrils. Sveta let go, and let Love Lost drop.

It was Snag who leaped out, flying in a straight line to catch the woman in one mechanical arm, before she could crash into the midst of the crowd of villains.

Sveta pulled herself back down to ground level. Meanwhile, I flew over the enemy group, putting myself behind the herd of enemies, while they scrambled to do something or get clear of the incoming Mayday projectile.

It was intimidating, being on the ground, while a ball of abstract energy the size of a one-car garage hurtled toward us. I was pretty sure it was very selective about who it affected, catching people up and depositing them in a way Mayday thought appropriate, but even with that, I found it distracting.

I’d put myself close to Bitter Pill and her group. The thinkers, the clever ones. I used my aura, to pressure them, to catch their focus while the projectile sailed toward us.

It was Crested, folding fan in hand, who turned my way as I walked in their direction. All of the darkness of the hospital was in my eyes. My anger at everyone I couldn’t change or fix was in my body language. The aura was one thing, but I could be the focus of those feelings of fear and awe that my power stirred in them.

Crested swung the fan. I knew what to expect, and I wasn’t surprised when the fan spun, the folded metal slats multiplying, as the fan became a circle that became a spiral, each multiplied slat larger than the last. The effect was reminiscent of an ammonite fossil. A shield of interconnected metal slats that bit into the road and formed a wall between me and them.

“Crested!” Bluestocking called out. “We need a barrier against-”

Crested started to fold it up, but it was too slow. I flew forward, forcefield up, and hit the barrier, just to add to the intimidation and shake the other guys.

I hit the barrier again.

It kept them from erecting a defense. Prancer grabbed Velvet and leaped up to higher ground. Others ran for cover in the last seconds. Some tried to approach me, to use the other side of Crest’s barrier to defend themselves. I pushed out with my aura to discourage them in the last moment.

I was barely touched, as it washed over me like hot air from a hair dryer. Others were dragged a hundred feet down the road, pushed back and away from the bottleneck. Bluestocking’s blue stocking was shredded by the contact with the road, stained red.

They were a jumbled heap. They hadn’t pushed past the bottleneck or delivered a serious blow to Advance Guard before the bizarre siege weapon hit.

I flew back to our side.

“Let’s end this!” Mayday called out.

“Are you surrendering? Six of you and your two helpers,” Prancer said. “And-”

Behind him, Beast of Burden was arriving with reinforcements. The leader of the violent clique. No blood, no barbs or spikes, but the armor he wore was steel, and it looked like slabs had been cut off of tank armor. Helmet blended into body armor, so broad and heavy it didn’t leave a hint of a neck. The helmet had bull’s horns longer and thicker around than my leg and only slits for eyeholes. The chest armor was a slab shaped roughly like chest armor, and similar measures had been taken for the metal segments that encircled parts of his arms and legs. Cleat was with him, and Cleat was spiky in a way I’d anticipated Beast of Burden being.

Beast of Burden, ‘Bob’, was quick for a guy wearing armor as heavy as his.

But we had reinforcements too.

At our rear, Capricorn, Rain, and Looksee were arriving. Looksee had her armor on, much as she’d designed it. Four spheres at the back of her head, to encapsulate hair buns, five lenses at her face, lime green and gray color scheme.

Rain had gone with something relatively simple- a combination of loose clothing with a hood, a mask that made his face look like a robot’s, and gloves that did much the same. He wasn’t wearing extra arms.

Did he look sufficiently different to mask him for Love Lost and Snag? Nothing about their expressions suggested anything.

We were gathered. All together, or as together as we could reasonably be. Chris had run off, and Ashley was on the other side, walking the fine line of being hard to manage and believable.

“Hey, Mayday,” Looksee said.

He was silent, as he turned to look at her. She had her flash gun out.

“Aw shit no,” Mayday said.

Shadow – 5.5

Orange motes began dancing around the trucks and railing that were serving to slow Prancer’s group down. The people who hadn’t been pushed very far back actually backed away from the motes.

Glowing particles from one parahuman could be harmless or negligible, they could be concentrated points of energy that cut through flesh like a hot knife through butter, or they could be concentrated points of energy that un-concentrated into sizable explosions, given an excuse.

I made a loop of the area, getting a better look at Beast of Burden’s violent capes that were on the right side of the street -their right, my left- and with a gap separating them, the other capes, with the thinkers and Prancer. I gave a wide berth to the particles, to help sell the idea they might be dangerous, and then landed beside Capricorn.

“Holding up?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t set it off unless they get close.”

“That’s the plan. Mayday,” Tristan said. “Good to meet you. Are you caught up on things?”

“Spright filled me in. This is your jurisdiction?”

I answered, “We’re babysitting it while other teams tour it. They liaise with us. That you didn’t says something went wrong. People are messing with us, Cedar Point, or both.”

“We can discuss that later,” Mayday said. “My team, Teri, Signal, Prong. Who’s out?”

“I know you might need me, but my focus is gone,” the diagram woman said.

“Go,” he said. The word was barely out of his mouth when she went out like smoke dissipating into air. The smoke held the colors that had been her, initially covering the black of her costume’s fabric, the dark blue armor panels, the lighter blue ‘magic circle’ images on those panels, and her apparently near-black skin and hair. The smoke included the interior colors too, however. White for bone and fat, and lots of pinks and reds.

Within a second and a half, she was gone.

“Prong, Signal Fire, we decide who to evac next depending on situation.”

Five Advance Guard remained, with the five of us. We were outnumbered almost three to one by the collected villains of Cedar Point.

Spright, Mayday, Signal Fire, Prong, and one other. It was a woman with a short dress as part of her costume, leggings beneath, and long sleeves with the panels helping to form the bones of ‘wings’. The panels at the front of her mask swept along the sides of her head to form a wing pattern.

I was going to guess she was ‘Flapper’. A hard name to tie into the aesthetic of the Advance Guard.

Two mobile capes, and three that were waiting to be teleported out. I was betting Mayday would be last. Once their group was small enough, I was betting they would make a break for it. We’d want to be able to go too.

Capricorn’s orange motes were rising up and filling the area between buildings.

Past the curtain, I could hear Ashley’s power.

“Hey!” Prancer called out. “Civilian property. They pay us, we leave their stuff alone.”

Ashley said something I didn’t hear. Nailbiter sniggered.

Natalie was going to get upset with us again.

The standoff couldn’t last. We were walking backward, putting distance between ourselves and the group, while the orange motes collected and filled the space.

“Hi Signal,” Looksee said. “We didn’t interact for very long, but-”

“Optic,” Signal Fire said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Except I changed my name. Trying one on for a fit, but a teammate was making fun of me for it. You actually remember me? I thought you wouldn’t, maybe, because you had so many trainees-”

“I remember,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. “It’s so nostalgic. It’s been a while, Mayday-”

“Not the time,” Mayday said.

“Oh. Okay,” she said. “Okay. Shutting up now.”

“You know the kid?” Flapper asked.

“She was one of my Wards, once,” he said. “The less said, the better.”

“Wait,” Spright said. “Is she the one you mentioned?”

“The less said, the better,” Mayday said, in a tone that left no room for doubt.

“Geez,” Spright said. “From the stuff I heard, I thought she’d look way different. Older.”

“Let’s leave it,” Mayday said. “I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place.”

“Nice to know that people are talking about me,” Looksee said, with a touch of sarcasm. “We talked to Houndstooth, by the way.”

“It might be worth talking to him,” I said. “He can round out what Spright said. His team passed through.”

“I’ll do that. He’s a good one,” Mayday said. There was a pause. “We’ve met and talked a few times.”

“Avenguard too?” Looksee asked.

“No comment,” Mayday said.

“I’m missing context,” Flapper said.

“Why don’t we focus on current events?” Sveta asked.

“Please,” Mayday said.

“Spright, keep an eye on the ones to the left. Flapper, right. Intercept and obstruct for Signal and me to tag.”

Rain raised a hand, pointing. To our left, on the other side of the barricade, a hand and arm of thin parts was reaching up, tips embedding into the side of the building and piercing through.

Nailbiter was climbing the building face, to get up and over the orange motes.

I flew toward her at the same time Spright started running in that direction.

Off on the other side of the street, Velvet sent a trash can sailing through the orange sparks. Metal rings held wooden slats in place, prettifying the exterior of a half-filled plastic bin. Trash emptied out as it turned over, and it passed harmlessly through the orange points of light and the trails they’d left.

Testing them.

That was for others to handle. I wasn’t looking at the time it happened, but at the corner of my vision, I saw the trash can change direction in the air. Sveta, possibly.

Nailbiter found her position on the wall, toes extended and digging in, and pulled one hand away to point it at Spright and me.

It was hard to tell how fast it was coming at me, because the individual fingers were so thin and their extension so fluid. I tried to judge it, flew to one side, and was struck regardless.

Before I could get hit again, I changed direction, letting myself fall down, away. I’d had to deal with guns before. If I couldn’t see the fingers and teeth stabbing for me, I would treat them as I might treat bullets. She was mobile, strong, and as far as I was concerned, she had powerful shotguns for fingers and teeth.

I landed hard on the ground, rolled, and let her dismiss me, changing her focus to Spright, who was flying up toward her, his arms extended, with fingers drawn out, long and thin.

I waited until they clashed, fingers striking one another like ten rapiers striking ten more, and then I flew, pushing off the ground for that miniscule extra boost.

Spright extended his arms, flying down while keeping his hands in place, his arms long and high above him. I could see the points of Nailbiter’s teeth pass above him, saw her turn her head toward me-

With her being extended across so much of the wall, I had room to maneuver while still pressing the attack. I went low instead, seized her ankle with the wretch manifesting around me, and hauled her back and away from the wall.

It wasn’t an easy or immediate process to dislodge her. In another circumstance, I might not have been able to budge her. In this circumstance, gravity helped a bit. She couldn’t do a lot to keep herself from having those long needle-fingers pulled out of the wall, except to extend them further.

Sidepiece hurled something at me, and it exploded against the wall, a foot from my head. I glanced at her, saw her tear one of her exaggerated ribs out from beneath a cutoff t-shirt with so much cut off from the bottom it was indecent, above a stomach that looked like a zombie’s, with flesh bloody, raw and open where literal pounds of flesh had been torn away. The spine and area around it were intact, as was the navel and stomach on the opposite side, but the sides were completely gone.

She flung it at me. I let go of Nailbiter, flew down, and hit the ground with an impact, my aura flared out. I didn’t stop for half a second before immediately taking off again.

“Don’t fucking hit me, ‘piece!” Nailbiter screeched the words behind me, but the manner of speaking was even worse, as her teeth were retracting.

Again, I used my aura as I touched wall, not as heavy an impact, but I hit the edge of a window frame, and it made glass rattle. Aura out, harder than before.

I zig-zagged, ground to wall, wall to a point high overhead, point above to ground again. I made each point of contact with a surface something they had to pay attention to, putting them off guard, making Sidepiece have to turn around.

I took off again, flying toward her, aura at full blast.

Straight line, impact, straight line, impact, the pattern was ingrained. I flew toward her, the impact a damn promise I’d made, and then changed course in the air, veering away from Sidepiece, aura stopping abruptly.

She threw a rib, but it was a throw she’d been planning to throw at me while I charged at her. It went far afield, sailing in the direction of Capricorn, Mayday, and the rest of the group, and hit the road.

She didn’t have time to get another pound of flesh ready to hurl at me.

Nailbiter was getting herself situated after the adjustments she’d made to try to cling to the building, one of her hands out, fending off Spright. She saw me coming, but too late. I hooked my arm around her middle, her long torso in the crook of my elbow, and I pulled her away from the wall, successfully this time.

Once I’d pulled her away, she was flailing, searching for something to hold onto. I didn’t give her the opportunity to get a grip or find an angle to get me. I checked the coast was clear and tossed her down.

“Capricorn!” I called out.

“Okay,” I heard him say, a distance away.

Nailbiter landed across the truck, surrounded by orange motes. The motes solidified, turning into the ridged white stone with orange-yellow veins running through it.

Nailbiter was stuck, part of her torso, her butt, and one arm caught in Capricorn’s stone. The wall covered a considerable height, reaching up to the second story of the neighboring buildings, with some isolated spikes reaching up to the third.

I landed on the wall, and Spright landed right beside me. He reached out with one extended hand, flexing it.

“I love the changer forms I get to steal,” he said. “They last for so much longer than other stuff, and I get more of the offensive side of it than I do with other stuff. This is great. Thank you, Nailbiter.”

“Fuck yourself!” she screamed, voice distorted. She reached back with her one free hand. Both Spright and I leaned back and used the top edge of the wall for cover as the extended fingers stabbed upward, thin.

“Do that again, and I’ll return the favor,” Spright said.

“Stay put, Nailbiter,” I said. I looked at Spright. “You should go. I can do more against them like this, and if you wait too long you won’t be able to catch up with the others.”

“No objection,” Spright said. He somersaulted backward off of the wall.

Our group was running, now. The only reason they hadn’t run earlier was that the bottleneck had been too important, too essential to keep the villains from coming at them as a mob. Now there was a wall dividing the two groups.

I had the bird’s eye view as I stood on top of the wall. Damsel began shooting at the wall, putting holes in it, while Moose stepped back, assessing the situation.

I flew down to the wall, close enough to Nailbiter that I was pretty sure Moose wouldn’t come tearing through the wall and trample me.

My back to the wall, hands out and pressed to the uneven surface, I waited until I felt the vibrations of Moose’s running footsteps. It was hardly necessary, because Nailbiter kicked with her legs and screeched something at him, loud enough that Advance Guard and the therapy team could be aware of what was happening.

I pushed out with my aura, hard, extending it through the wall.

The thudding footsteps stopped.

On the other side, I heard Moose’s voice, then a laugh.

Yeah.

Gave him pause, at least.

He didn’t charge the wall, but he did punch one gauntleted fist through it. A moment later, another fist came through. He grabbed the intervening bit of stone and hauled on it, pulling out a chunk.

I backed away, facing the wall and Nailbiter’s rear end.

Moose peered through the hole.

“We meet again,” he said.

“Sorry about the face,” I said.

He moved his metal mask a bit to one side, showing me the three grooves that ran from the corner of his jaw to his cheekbone.

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry.”

“I got a compliment from a girl, she thought it was gnarly,” he said. “It’s not all bad.”

“Stop fucking flirting and get us through, Moose!” someone called out, on the other side of the wall. Velvet, I was guessing.

“My mom would cry if she saw it, though,” Moose said. He lurched forward, shouldering his way through the hole he’d made, leaving a Moose-shaped hole behind him.

On the other side, I could see Prancer’s entire group backed away as segments of the stone came crashing down behind Moose. More time, more delay for our side.

Delay that would be needed, it seemed. Moose was fast on his feet, more than super strength and good form might have suggested- each footstep seemed to produce a focused blast where his feet landed, a geyser of dust behind the ball of each foot, blasting out to five feet behind him. There was Prancer in his breaker state.

Just behind Prancer, Velvet drove a truck through the hole Moose had made, the side view mirror on one side scraping off on the wall’s edge. Capes were in the vehicle and perched on top.

They’d been smugglers, suppliers, and getaway drivers, in another life. It made sense they could move when they needed to. Normally it meant them getting away, but here it applied to the chase.

I couldn’t catch Prancer, and I wasn’t going to throw myself headlong at a truck filled with what had to be a half dozen people with powers.

I could have gone for Moose, but I didn’t want to make his mom cry any more than she might, and he was moving fast enough and hard enough I wasn’t sure I could stop him without causing reams of property damage.

Better to go back to the others. They’d rounded a corner, and were heading northward, toward the main highway and the train tracks. I flew direct to them, putting myself ahead of Prancer and his entourage.

I flew alongside the others. Looksee was keeping up, inexplicably, and it was Rain who was lagging. Capricorn had one hand at his shoulder.

Mayday, just to Capricorn’s right, wasn’t the fastest either. Prong was gone, and Mayday and Signal Fire were the only ones left in Advance Guard who didn’t have mover abilities.

Spright had the benefit of both Flapper’s power and the lingering effect of Nailbiter’s transformation. That put him well ahead of the rest.

That seemed to be his thing. Always staying ahead, always with just a bit of an edge in mobility.

“They’re coming. Moose and Prancer are charging in. Velvet has a car,” I reported.

“Got it,” Capricorn said.

I saw the orange lines moving across the road. I could see the pattern and the logic. Rush jobs, but they snapped into being as Rain and Mayday passed over them. Rows of spiky growth across the road.

“I could use my power, but I’d rather keep it under wraps,” Rain said.

“Do,” Tristan said. “Have your gun ready.”

Gun? Erin’s?

The villains rounded the corner behind us, and they started catching up. Moose saw the spikes and bent low while running, tearing his hands through them, scattering whole chunks of them in passing, not even slowing in stride.

Moose broke more of the spike strips. Prancer ran up one of the horn-ridden poles while it was still moving through the air, the butt end slamming against the ground as he put his feet on the ridged spikes. He planted a foot on the end as the pole tilted toward the ground, pointing in our general direction, and leaped, hard.

I pushed out with my aura, hard, and flew to intercept, forcefield down.

He was quick, and determined enough the aura didn’t give him much pause. I drove an elbow in his direction, normal human strength, and his fingers found the crook of that elbow. He leveraged that into half-pulling, then half-kicking himself over my arm and shoulder. Lighter than he looked, and he’d used me as a stepping stone, closing the distance further.

Sveta’s hand caught him before he could grab Rain from behind. She pulled herself to him and possibly by dint of him being as light as he was, him to her. They met halfway, and crashed in a heap. The breaker form dissipated.

Sveta was quick enough to recover that I didn’t even reach her side before she was up, reaching out. Her feet skidded on the road for the first moments as she hauled herself away from the defeated Prancer, Moose almost on her.

“Stop them!” Prancer called out to Moose.

The big guy had only slowed slightly, to check on his friend, and now he picked up speed. Behind him, Velvet was driving her truck through gaps that were narrower than the spacing between the truck’s tires. She veered to one side, then the other, and possibly augmented by her power, drove the truck tilted on one side, only the rightmost wheels making contact with the ground to pass through the gaps Moose had made. The guy on the roof of the truck was a good two hundred feet away, but I could still see the whites of his eyes as he held on for dear life.

The group carried on making a break for it. As Advance Guard left, we’d have to figure out what to do with our team. I wasn’t sure if their teleporter would be able to evacuate us in the same way.

Ahead of the group, Anxiety Chris was at the corner of the street, clutching at his face with all of his legs. He screamed as he saw us coming.

Spright picked up the pace, flying in his direction with a combination of my flight and Flapper’s, his arms with extended fingers buoying him forward, like bat wings without the webbing between. He touched ground, running, making a beeline straight for the guy.

I wanted to call out a warning, but I wasn’t sure if it was right to. I’d have been outing Chris’ role in our group.

His power affects the mind.

“Don’t!” Sveta called out.

“We don’t know what it is!” I added.

Spright ignored us both. Again.

Screaming without pausing for breath, Chris traveled the ‘S’-shaped route, trying to take evasive action, and Spright remained on his… not heels.

“Give!” Spright called out, as he drew closer, until he could almost touch Chris.

They remained like that for a brief while, Chris trying to escape, Spright chasing. The screaming continued.

Spright’s pace slowed, and he let Chris run away. Spright glanced back at everyone else, assessed the situation, and then took flight, putting himself closer to Flapper.

“We’re close!” Capricorn called out.

So he had a destination in mind. Good.

The van had stopped to collect Prancer, but it was catching up. Moose continued to bear on us.

I’d have to intercept him if he got too close, I knew.

I could still imagine the scene of his face erupting in blood as the wretch clawed it.

Further ahead, I could see what Capricorn had done while he was waiting around. A wall of his stone barred the street. There were gaps wide enough for people to pass through. Three gaps, and the group was more than three people. Some members of the group turned around, ready to help and run interference while others slipped through the doors in single-file.

At the side window, Etna climbed out, reaching, and hurled globs of molten glass.

I intercepted the first, forcefield going up at the last second as I swatted it aside, aiming it in Moose’s general direction.

“Incoming!” I called out, because I couldn’t intercept the second.

The group looked back and saw the incoming white-hot orb. People moved out of the way. Looksee didn’t. The glob hit her across the head, which struck the wall behind her hard.

The camera with the projection device mounted on it clattered on its way to hit the road, the final landing muted as it landed glass-side down.

“Aauuughhh!” Looksee cried out, in a not-very-convincing agonized scream. “I’m dying, I’m dead! Auughh!”

“Looksee,” I heard Rain say.

Moose came to a halt, standing by the southeastern corner of a small apartment building, while we stood at the northeastern corner. The truck skidded to a stop. People had stopped in their tracks. Some eyes were on Etna.

“Mayday, I loved you, you were awesome. Signal Fire, you were a great teacher. Team, you’re the best, I love you with all my heart! Remember me, avenge me!”

“Looksee, they know it’s a projection,” Rain said.

“Shit on me, did not want this today,” Mayday said.

It didn’t seem like Looksee had heard, from her tone.

“I know, duh,” the camera said, the ‘oh’ sound at the end of the word stuttering slightly. She laughed, enthusiastic. “I’m just having fun.”

The villains were still back there. They were unloading from the truck. Some expressions were sober, others were dangerous.

“You’re willing to go this far?” I called out. “Shooting a kid?”

“I thought you’d catch it,” Etna said, her voice small both because she was far away, and because of disappointment in herself, it seemed. She was more Prancer’s camp, if I remembered right, despite the dangerous power that might otherwise have put her in Beast’s.

“If she’d been real,” I said. “This would have been a fuck-up of the highest order.”

“If she’d been real,” Beast of Burden said, making the truck bounce as he climbed out of the back, “She still would have been causing trouble on our turf. It wouldn’t have been undeserved.”

“No,” Prancer said.

“Yes,” Beast of Burden said.

“No,” Prancer said. “That’s not how we’re playing this.”

“It’s not how you’re playing this,” the man replied. He was shorter than Moose, he wasn’t especially greater in size, but the massive horns of his helmet were as wide across as Moose’s musclebound Brute shoulders, and his armor had to have added three hundred pounds of weight to a two hundred pound frame. “If they don’t want you and if you’re willing to play for keeps, Etna, I’ll take you.”

“No thanks,” Etna said.

“We’re in this together,” Moose said. “Let’s not ruin that.”

“No,” Beast of Burden said. “No we’re not.”

Disjoint had been the one on the roof. He went to Beast’s side. Nailbiter had stayed behind, for obvious reasons, Damsel hadn’t been invited onto the truck, and Sidepiece hadn’t made it on.

Snag was present, he’d been in the back of the truck too, but we’d heard his stance on the cliques and groupings. His glowering mask looked especially ominous in the moment, as he stared us down. He couldn’t have known his cluster-mate was part of this group, staring at him at the same time.

Either way, he wasn’t part of Beast’s clique. Love Lost might have gravitated in that direction, but she hadn’t come.

Still, the two members of Beast’s clique were standing apart, and Beast was breaking away.

“Do this again, and I’ll kill one of you,” Beast said. “You come to fight or take a stand, be prepared for a fight.”

“Stupid,” Prancer said.

Beast of Burden shaking his head was dramatic, with the horns on his helmet swinging. “Necessary. You can wrap this mess up yourself. Put a fucking bow on it for all I care, deer man.”

He turned to walk away, shaking his head. A nervous Disjoint followed.

Prancer looked between Beast of Burden and those of us who hadn’t ducked through the Capricorn’s wall.

Rain bent down and picked up Looksee’s camera, shaking it slightly, as if that would dislodge the cooling black glass that caked part of it.

“Cameras,” Prancer said.

Rain nodded.

Prancer raised a hand to his head, found hair that was sticking up after his tumble of a fall, and pressed it down, running fingers through it to try to set it in place. “How long?”

“Long enough,” I said. “We know you’re bleeding people of cash, when they don’t have enough. You’re using this place to run drugs to the rest of the city, and you’re- you were giving safe haven to crooks like Nailbiter. Who took a teenager away from her parents earlier today.”

“If you take me out, someone like Beast is going to take my place.”

“If I leave you where you are, that’s going to happen too. Someone stronger and meaner will take you out, and they’ll be very hard to dislodge because of what you’ve already set in place.”

“This isn’t you, Prancer,” Sveta said. She was perched on Capricorn’s wall.

“It isn’t, you’re right,” he said.

“Stop. Disband,” I said.

“No,” Prancer said. “This role isn’t me. I have a lot I need to learn, but I’ll change until I fit the role. I think most of these guys will work with me to do it. We need this.”

Velvet put her hand on his shoulder.

“Your people are organizing to mount a war right under your nose,” I said. “Against acceptable targets, yes, but if you think today was a bad day? You’re underestimating just how bad it’s going to get when the Fallen come after you, and the damage they’ll do to everyone and everything between them and you.”

“Not under my nose,” Prancer said. He looked back at Snag. “We’ll manage.”

“You need to keep your mouth shut about that,” Snag growled.

“No. You need to loop the Wardens in. Get the full picture, get help. If you fight them, you need to win, unequivocally.”

“It’s handled,” Snag said. “And if you don’t keep your mouth shut, you’ll be sabotaging it.”

“These are people the PRT couldn’t stamp out,” I said.

“It’s handled,” Prancer said, echoing Snag. “This isn’t about the PRT, or about heroes and villains.”

“What’s it about, then?” Sveta asked. I had to look past Rain to see her. He was remaining silent.

“It’s about monsters,” Prancer said, pacing slowly. “Speaking of. Garotte?”

“That’s not my name,” Sveta said.

“Circe says hi,” Prancer said.

I could see Sveta’s expression change.

“Yeah,” Prancer said. “If you’d only arrived a few hours later. Whatever. We have resources. This is about standing on our own two feet. If we do this raid right, no matter how you interfere, no matter what Beast does, breaking off with his people, Cedar Point is going to be a thing.”

“You do this wrong, and a whole lot of people are going to wish they were dead,” I said.

Prancer continued pacing for a few seconds, then stopped.

“That’s fine,” he said.

“If you’re willing to involve those people in this, we might have to stop playing nice,” I said.

Prancer sniffed out a small laugh. “Alright then. Moose?”

Moose turned his head to Prancer, then to us.

“Sorry,” he said, smacking the knuckles of his gauntlet into his palm. Without any more preamble or prelude, he charged us.

Rain backed toward the door, the loose sleeve of his costume covering his one hand, while he held the glass-caked camera. He withdrew the flash gun, pointing it at the enemy group.

I turned my head, covering my eyes with my arm. The gun wasn’t even aimed at me, my eyes were shut, and my arm was in the way, and the darkness of my vision still turned pink, shaded slightly by bones between me and the group.

Rain emptied the gun, firing again and again. From the changes in the flash’s angles, he was moving while firing.

Moose crashed into the wall, rather than into any of us.

The flashing had stopped, and I flew skyward. I deemed myself safe to look, and saw as the others ducked through the openings in the very thick wall, Tristan sealing the apertures behind them. Moose sat on the ground, and the rest looked bewildered.

I shook my head and flew to the others.

⊙

We were all gathered. Advance Guard’s group was assembled in entirety, including the supporting members of the group. I warily watched as a healer cape did his work. Flickering images overlapped as he pressed his hand down on ReSound’s shoulder.

Nothing like Amy. It still bothered me. True healing powers were something comprehensive and powerful, to cover the bases necessary for all the various sicknesses and maladies, while also wreaking meaningful change. Powers themselves didn’t lend themselves to healing, as a general rule, either. Not unless they were selfish.

Even the strongest self-healers I’d met had been pretty fucked up. Crawler had been one.

Rescue was present, the teleporter who pulled people away. Mapwright was a straggler, a woman with a limp. She went to Mayday’s side, and they clasped hands. The place where their hands met glowed a soft pink, and then Mayday’s eyes glowed pink behind his mask.

“Who’s that a block to the north?” he asked.

“Civilians. Kids eating popsicles,” Mapwright said.

“Then we’re clear to talk,” Mayday said. He pulled off his helmet. He did the thing a lot of capes with helmets did, wearing a basic mask beneath. He was thirty-five or so, had warm black skin, with a very long face and sharp chin, arching eyebrows, a thin mustache at his upper lip, and a line of beard from the middle of his lip to his chin. His head was shaved.

His face didn’t really match the impression he gave with his helmet on, with the broader, triangular face panels. That was part of the point, I supposed.

“This was a clusterfuck,” I said. “We ended up showing ourselves, you pointed out our surveillance, you disturbed the peace, and the entire situation got more chaotic.”

“Easy,” Capricorn said.

“She’s not wrong,” Rain said.

“I know,” Capricorn said. “But… easy. I don’t want to be enemies with Advance Guard.”

“No,” Mayday said. “The sentiment is mutual.”

“I agree. It’s not the kind of thing we need these days. But I’m upset,” I said. “We just had to play a lot of our cards that I really would have rather kept up our sleeve. I’d love to know why.”

“Spright said he explained.”

“But he couldn’t tell us who gave you the okay.”

“We had messages. Cedar Point was asking for help, Civilians asked us. It’s not a shock. We’re prominent,” Mayday said.

“Can you forward those to us? Help us trace them?” I asked. “I think it’s more likely a mastermind in the background pulled this.”

“Believe it or not, we’re prominent,” Shortcut said. “It’s a hell of a lot more likely people thought they needed help and called us than this conspiracy idea of yours.”

“Did you talk to Foresight?” I asked, ignoring Shortcut.

“We did,” Mayday said. “The leadership is wrapped up in a war-”

“Thought so,” Sveta said, voice soft.

“-and we communicated with one of their lieutenants.”

“Communicated how?” I asked.

“Oh my god,” Shortcut said, his head rolling back.

“Email,” Mayday said. “One phone call.”

“Can you verify those exchanges for us?” I asked. “I know someone who saw two attempts to hack their email.”

“Some people in the Wardens had the same,” Mayday said. “Legal.”

“Same people,” I said. “It’s not out of the question someone managed to spoof something at you, threw out bait.”

“That we bit?” Spright asked.

I shrugged.

“We’ll look into it and let you know,” Mayday said. “We’ll figure this out.”

Looksee wiggled, sitting on the curb. “I’m psyched to be working together again.”

“We’re not working together, Optics,” Mayday said.

“Looksee,” she replied, quiet.

“Looksee,” he said. He paused, then said. “No.”

“You need to explain this to me,” Flapper said. “Because as far as I can tell, you’re being uncharacteristically shitty to a kid, and you’re good with kids.”

“He’s not being shitty,” Looksee said. “He’s nice. No need to get into it.”

“I think there’s kind of a need to get into it,” Flapper said. “Please. This is going to bother me.”

“This is the kid,” Spright said. “Cost him his promotion.”

“Not directly,” Mayday said. “Flapper, if you’d just take my word for things and leave this, I’d appreciate it.”

“I would if it was the only thing that went sideways today,” she said. “I’ve seen teammates compromised, acting strange. Some were because of drugs, others were Strangered. Two things in the same day? Just… explain?”

Mayday folded his arms. “She went from institutions to being a PRT focus in Baltimore. Not a concern, not an asset… something between. She went from there to training camps, moving her around so she couldn’t get too attached to anyone. San Diego included. Signal Fire?”

Signal Fire explained, “Coworker of mine was investigated. Looksee left her computer open and kids messed with it, changing her online profiles. They found photos, they took the computer to people in charge.”

“So embarrassing,” Looksee said. I went to stand next to her, and put my hand on her shoulder.

Sveta sat down next to her. Looksee leaned into her.

“Kid in a swimsuit, hanging out with an instructor at a hotel pool, all smiles, the two of them hanging out, pictures of them shopping, eating out of a food truck, being in places he shouldn’t have been near. They looked close. Questions were raised, answered pretty quickly, because of kid’s prior history, but it still had to be investigated. It wasn’t wholly impossible he was skipping patrols and hanging out with the kid instead.”

“Doctored photos,” Mayday said. “Kid was lonely, thought photos of her and the instructor she liked most would be nice to have. BFF close, in the pictures, which looks weird when the guy is fifteen years older than her.”

“I know that now,” Looksee said, quiet.

“Then she goes to the parahuman Asylum, and from the Asylum to Baltimore, with Youth Guard getting involved. Baltimore. We have an inner city, we have gangs, we have some troubled kids in our Wards. Had. I hate to outright say it, Looksee, because I do think you’re a good kid-”

“Everyone says so, but I did bad stuff,” she said.

“Uninformed stuff,” he said, gently. “But bad, yeah. It was more trouble to deal with her than to wrangle all the other Wards combined. I get out of the toilet stall in the men’s room and this kid is sitting on the counter by the sink, waiting, has been for twenty minutes, dead silent for the first time in her life, because she wants to talk to me. There aren’t cameras in the bathrooms. It’s a blind spot. How does that look?”

“Sorry,” Looksee said.

“She works herself to the bone, it looks bad for the department. She intentionally misses the bus or fakes hours so she can spend more time with us, so we have to have people drive her home or pick her up. Which also looks bad, because it’s time spent alone or in proximity to a kid who isn’t just vulnerable, but throws herself headlong at people who prey on the vulnerable. Kidnappers, people who would work a tinker to the bone, people who want to hurt the PRT.”

“Threw, not throws,” Looksee said. “Okay, maybe throws a bit, but only a little.”

“It was a hundred things like that. It was everything that could have made the Youth Guard crawl up our ass to light warning fires. We could have hired two new capes from elsewhere if it wasn’t for the fines and administration costs.”

“Sorry again.”

“She’s doing way better,” Capricorn said.

“Good.”

“She’s a great kid. Talented as hell,” Capricorn said.

“I’ve talked to Houndstooth, Avenguard, and Spotter. I think you’ll find we’re mostly on the same page,” Mayday said. “We don’t disagree, necessarily, but…”

Looksee nodded very quickly. I gave her shoulder a rub.

“Except I don’t know if I’m as nice as they are,” Mayday said, not finishing the thought he’d left to trail off. “I took over the department because that kid sank my predecessor. The question mark hovering over the bathroom thing was part of what cost me one golden opportunity to get up to the Protectorate core team, during the final year, when we were dealing with the new Endbringer situation. She ruined a lot of careers, teachers, heroes, social workers, and I can’t be fair to her because I’m pretty fucking bitter about it.”

“You could try,” I said.

“I could. I won’t. Advance Guard is walking away. Consider it a blessing, if you want. We don’t usually back off. But we’ll do it here,” he said, glancing at Looksee. “We’ll give you Cedar Point to look after, I’ll ask about what you said, look into the possible hack and validity of the emails. Spright- you get stuff in their office?”

“I went where Mapwright showed me,” Spright said. “But we didn’t get that far. These guys wanted me to go straight to you. We spent most of our time figuring it out.”

Mayday said, “That’s not your usual, Spright. You’re more of a scoundrel than that.”

“Pretty girl- pretty girls tell me to get moving, give me a convincing reason?” Spright asked. He offered an amused chuckle, looking at Sveta and me. “I might listen properly for once.”

“You’ve never listened to me,” Flapper said, archly.

“Or me,” Mapwright said.

ReSound didn’t say anything, but she cleared her throat.

Spright chuckled nervously.

Mayday raised a finger, while Spright’s head was turned toward Flapper. Beside Spright, Signal Fire reached out to seize his arm.

“What gives?”

Mayday walked up to him, seizing his other arm. With his free hand, Mayday patted Spright down.

He reached beneath a flat armor panel, and withdrew a notebook with a rubber band around it.

He tossed it to Capricorn.

“Amends,” Mayday said. His expression was solemn. “Good luck.”

They went on their way.

⊙

I paged through the notebook. It was a ledger, devoid of numbers. Transactions as barter, with a great deal of shorthand.

We knew what the truck was, now. With all of the preparations for war, a truckload of guns had made a disappearance. Prancer knew where it was.

He was a proper arms dealer, now. It wasn’t an insignificant number of guns.

We had notes on the other work he was doing. Drugs. Robbery for hire, moving things between the illicit, villain-run camps on corner worlds. There were plans for other things. In the future, he seemed to have two days where he and his people would be moving humans. It wasn’t clear why or for what purpose, but they were to be delivered from one corner world to another.

Once they realized the notebook was gone, they would change their plans.

Kenzie was all smiles, so excited from the excursion and her involvement in it that the issue with Mayday seemed to breeze past her. Still, we were leaving her mostly alone, with Sveta keeping her company. I could remember her blowing up over her bag.

Some of Kenzie’s attention was on Ashley. Damsel was still in Cedar Point, giving us a window into what Beast of Burden was doing. For the time being, he was having beers with his clique. They were to remain in Cedar Point, but they’d have their own corner of things. They would leave Prancer alone if they were left alone, but I doubted things would remain that way. One group or the other would grow.

For the time being, Beast and Damsel’s group told war stories. Nailbiter, agitated, had left a bit ago. We’d tracked her on the camera as she met up with Colt and a young guy. The three of them went for a walk along the waterline, Nailbiter asking about ’employees’, the young guy answering, while Colt remained silent unless spoken to.

I finished reading through the notebook and handed it to Rain, who was working on his arms. The mask and sleeves were set aside, Kenzie’s work, not his.

His expression was grim.

“How are you dealing?” I asked.

“It was my day,” he said. “And I couldn’t even use my power without stirring up more trouble than it was worth.”

“We need to talk about things,” I said.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Not today. Please? Today’s been rough.”

I nodded. I pushed the notebook in his direction.

Chris had the corner, his back to us, and he was hunched over a video game. Oblivious to the rest of the world, drawn into his shell.

Tristan and I were the ones without a place to be. I met his eyes, and I walked out to the fire escape.

He joined me.

I stood by the railing at the little balcony-landing outside the door. Tristan sat on the top stair.

“You were trying to keep Kenzie from being alone in the building,” I said. “And from being alone with Erin and Rain.”

“Yeah.”

“Keeping Sveta and I together.”

“No manipulation or strategy there. You two fit.”

“Do I need to worry?” I asked.

“That’s a loaded question,” he said.

“Can I trust you?”

He didn’t answer me.

“Or is it that you don’t trust them?” I asked.

“It’s a really fucked up thing, if I consider myself one of the more trustworthy members of the group,” he said. He turned around to look up at me. “Rain- he’s in a bad place.”

“In more than one way,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t want to ask him, but… what Fallen family is he from? The last time I ran into Fallen, they were Crowleys, but… it’s not just Crowleys left, in Gimel, and the Crowleys would be bad enough.”

“I don’t think he’s living with the Crowleys,” Tristan said. “But he won’t tell me.”

“Okay,” I said.

If we were people who’d been powerless once, set out to help the powerless, that might mean Rain and Erin were people who were very high on our list of people to help. He’d brought her for a reason. Had he expected her to communicate with us? Or was her presence meant to communicate something?

“One last question,” I said.

“Go for it,” Tristan said.

“The hand signal earlier today,” I said. I mimed it, hand not with palm facing forward at Tristan, but at an angle, so palm would be facing his feet instead, were he standing up.

“Hm? I thought that was obvious.”

I shook my head.

“Stop,” Tristan said, palm out, facing forward. He pointed forward with three fingers, “Go.”

“And…?”

He made the gesture. “Go slow. Ease up. I figured it was intuitive.”

I chuckled under my breath.

“Not at all,” I said.

Tristan smiled.

“You were wanting to juggle the group,” I said.

“Feeling my way through it,” he said. “This is new to me. I’m worried I’m going to fuck it up. Rain’s my friend. I care about them all. Even Chris, God help me.”

I hesitated before speaking.

“Is it- is it okay that I’m here?” I asked. “I’m not making things worse by being here?”

“No. I don’t think you are,” he said. “We need the help.”

“Okay,” I said. “Good. It would be pretty hard for me to walk away at this point, if you said no.”

“Yeah. Probably,” he said.

We sat for a bit. There wasn’t much more conversation. I was tired, after waking up early, and the adrenaline was long gone, leaving me weary to the bone, even though I hadn’t exerted myself that much on a physical level.

When Tristan stood and stretched, I took that as an unspoken cue. We went back inside.

It would have been tidy and neat for more to happen before we packed up for the day, but it seemed everyone involved was licking wounds or replenishing their batteries in their individual ways. I could hear Ashley’s voice, volume lowered on the camera, as she ranted about something, and Beast of Burden chimed in with monosyllables. Prancer looked after his territory, cleaning up the rubble from the walls, talking to people, trying to get sorted.

Love Lost and Snag emerged from their apartment building, and Love Lost’s leg was fixed. They stood outside for a while, Snag talking periodically, making comments.

It was right when we were getting packed up to go, Kenzie had dinner with her parents and Rain had to take Erin back to the camp, that things started moving again in Cedar Point.

A camper van pulled up and parked in the middle of the street, near where the bottleneck had been. The people that emerged were Case Fifty-threes.

Sveta went tense.

“Do you know them?” Kenzie asked.

“Circe,” Sveta said. “Whippersnap. Bristle. He must have researched me or asked Tattletale about me, and then reached out to them after. They were teammates, once. They know me.”

“You talked about them in group,” Tristan said.

Sveta nodded.

Other cars were pulling up. I looked at the clock. It was six in the evening. This was a pre-arranged meeting time.

This time, the cars were sleek. Six black cars, one large truck.

The drivers remained in their seats, and the occupants of the vehicles exited out the backs.

“These are ones you should know,” Tristan said. To me.

I recognized Tattletale, from the lead car. She had a kid with a bird on his shoulder with her. She smiled.

I saw Snuff, and I saw other assorted henchmen. Soldiers, like Coil had once used.

In one of the cars further back, Imp climbed out. Eerie to see her older, now. There was a crew of kids with her, all wearing masks.

Parian. She had been a rogue. Turned to the dark side. Flechette. For the briefest period of time, she had been a teammate. She went by Foil now, I was pretty sure.

The truck? Rachel Lindt. Hellhound. Bitch. She had a bevy of dogs.

The Undersiders chatted like long-lost friends. Tattletale was exempt, standing back, smiling.

There were others I didn’t recognize. They’d gathered capes. Henchmen, teammates, connections. Big and small.

Cars were still pulling up and parking as I watched Tattletale approach Prancer to shake his hand. Her Undersiders were at her back. I could see Nursery in the background. I spotted someone who might have been Kingdom Come.

I then saw her put her gloved hand in Snag’s large mechanical one, shaking it. She smiled like it was a joke she got that nobody else did.

“They’re meeting about the attack,” Sveta said.

“Or they’re making it tonight,” Tristan said. He put his bag down.

“Shh,” Kenzie said.

The pair were walking away from the greater group. With all of the cars parking, even in the growing gloom, the car headlights illuminated the area. Tattletale and Snag stepped toward shadow, where they were out of earshot of most others.

“You located him?”

“I’ve known where he was for a very long time,” Tattletale answered Snag.

Love Lost was approaching. Snag turned his head to see.

The two communicated briefly, a word from Snag, Love Lost tapping the backs of her hands together twice, the metal there clinking.

As they had that exchange, Tattletale looked around idly, her eyes turning skyward.

Her eyes locked on the camera, looking directly at us.

“Love Lost says-”

“Cradle’s arrived.”

“Yes. He’ll wait for the crowd to thin out before deploying. And you-”

“We’ll deliver,” she said. “You’ll get your fourth, I get each of you for three years.”

“That’s fine,” Snag said.

“Just don’t tell me whatever you end up doing to him, and we’re golden,” she said.

Shadow – Interlude 5d

It’s my night. No control over what happens.

Rain’s senses were flooded with a turpentine-alcohol taste, filling his mouth, then his nose. People laughed and cheered, and flesh strained around his face.

He pulled free of the headlock as the fluid hit his eyes, and leaned over, sputtering, trying to blink the alcohol out of his eyes. The cheers became more laughter.

Rain groaned, facing the ground, and it was a primal sound. “Are you trying to kill or blind me?”

“Ew, you’ve got some fucked up snot,” Nell said.

He brought a hand to his nose, and realized the ‘fucked up snot’ was a tendril of snot that was extending from his nose, made more liquid by the caustic, homebrewed alcohol.

He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, caught the snot, and threw it into the fire before leaning back.

“Here,” Jay said. “Drink.”

He pushed the glass jug at Rain. The inside looked almost moldy with the way the pulp clung to the exterior and caught the light. The contents sloshed within.

“If I drink more I’ll be useless tomorrow,” Rain said.

“You’re going to be useless no matter what happens,” Allie said, to laughter.

“Fuck you,” Rain said. He felt his face stretch into a smile.

“Drink, Rain man,” Jay said, more forcefully.

Rain looked up at the guy. A year older, Jay was tall, his hair shoulder length and blond. His light facial hair and the smoke of the fire behind him caught the light of the bonfire, but the same light didn’t catch most of his other features. His eyes weren’t visible.

No choice. Rain took the jug. He tipped it back, and the taste of it made him cough more.

The other teenagers around the fire cheered.

“You’re going to be a soldier,” Jay said. His tone was such that none cheered. Some knew what it meant to be a soldier, some didn’t, but all respected Jay as the leader of their age group and they knew this exchange was between Jay and Rain.

Rain nodded. His vision shifted slightly as the alcohol made itself felt. He looked up at Jay, and his eye settled momentarily on the long hair.

“I’ll be a soldier,” Rain said. “The Bible talks about the end times, it talks about armies springing forth, powers, and the deaths of the unworthy. Everything that happened and happens, the Dragon, the Harlot, the seven bowls, and the armies, with all of the soldiers… even the bad stuff is all God’s will and God’s doing.”

“God’s will,” some others echoed.

“People have to step up to be soldiers in those armies,” Rain said.

Not original words, but they were accepted as truth by the group. Some believed wholeheartedly, and it was clear in their eyes. Others were newer, unfamiliar with it, but they played along. As they heard the voices of people who truly believed, they would hear it and start to come around. Such was the intent.

The Rain of the past, as he spoke the words, believed.

Jay reached over, and put his hand at the side of Rain’s head, fingers in Rain’s hair, where it had started to grow out.

“Put the fear of God in them,” Jay said. “And you watch my back.”

“Yeah,” Rain said. “We’ll give ’em hell.”

Jay let go of his head, refused to take the jug back, and walked around the circle, attention on others.

Time passed. He could remember a lot of the thoughts he had, as he’d looked at people. He wasn’t the only person who was earning his stripes as a soldier. Others, he knew, would be there, and he’d looked at each of them, powered and unpowered, thinking about whether he could trust them, what to watch out for. Barnabas was violent and could never stop when he got riled up. Hiram hated Rain because Tabitha, the girl Hiram had liked, had liked Rain. It didn’t matter that Rain had never reciprocated or liked her back. Hiram might even take an excuse to hurt Rain, if he had one. Rain had thought about how he’d try not to be alone with the guy.

They ended up together anyway. Hiram was a good soldier and he asked for Tabitha. Now she’s pregnant with his kid, and she pretends to be happy.

Helps that I’m on the lowest rung of the totem pole.

More time passed. Rain felt the alcohol even through the dream, laughed more than necessary at a few of the jokes from people in the sidelines.

He looked at Erin, who was sitting on the other side of the fire, talking to Jay, shaking her head. He’d sat where he sat because it gave him a better view of her.

Delilah got up from her seat, hands filled with the blanket she’d draped over her lap, and sat down next to Rain. “Give me a drink?”

Rain hefted the jug. It was heavy enough that he had to help Delilah manage it, controlling its tilt so she wouldn’t have it all slosh into her mouth, as Jay had done to him.

“Oh, gawd, that’s awful,” Delilah said.

Rain offered the jug to others in arm’s reach. When nobody took it, he set it down on the ground by their feet. The fire’s light illuminated the contents.

Firewater, he thought. He’d thought it at the time, though it was closer to moonshine.

“Here,” Delilah said. She held out the blanket.

“I’m warm enough,” he said. Even in the dream, he felt the alcohol warming him from within, the heat of it, the buzz. Everything was fuzzy around the edges and his stomach felt ready to revolt if he moved, so he didn’t move.

“Here,” she said, again. She scooted closer, until her side pressed against his. “I’ll make you warmer.”

He didn’t resist as she arranged the blanket over their laps. He didn’t resist either as she slowly undid his zipper beneath the blanket. Everyone around the fire was talking, the fire had died down and nobody was stoking it or replacing the wood. Some people had started home.

She took him in her hand, easing him out past the zipper, and he made sure to fix the blanket so nothing was apparent.

“My brother,” she said. “He’s going out for the first time too.”

Rain nodded.

“Protect him?”

“If we’re even in the same place, sure,” he said, trying to sound normal. He glanced at Erin.

I’d been so worried about what she thought.

They sat like that for a bit, her hand moving. The fire snapped loudly, as a log broke, and they both jumped.

Nobody saw or cared. Delilah’s hand moved again beneath the blanket.

Rain let his head move, leaning it on her shoulder, nose and mouth in her hair. She smelled good.

“Talk to me,” Delilah said.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Tell me you’re a good soldier.”

“I’m a good soldier,” he said. His mind had been a blank.

“Some imagination, please. Tell me what you’ll do.”

“That’s what you like?” he asked, almost incredulous, but he couldn’t put much incredulity in his words without heads turning their way.

He felt her hair move as she nodded, and he definitely felt her finger move.

“I’ll make them beg for mercy,” he said.

“Work your way up to that,” she said. “And you’ll make them beg for God to save them.”

“I’ll make them bleed,” he whispered. She nodded fiercely. He added, “I’ll make them cry.”

“Weep,” she said. “Better word.”

“You’re so fucked up,” he said.

“Keep going. If you stop, I stop.”

“We’ll make them think they’re already in Hell, with the fear and the pain,” he whispered.

“That’s good,” Delilah said. “That’s imaginative.”

“It’s stuff I’ve heard all my life.”

“Are your aunt and uncle your real family?”

“I think so. I don’t know,” He said. Rain could remember how weird it had felt to be talking family while in this situation. “My mom called my aunt her sister when we lived in the same places, which wasn’t always. I know I’m related to a lot of people here.”

“Not me,” Delilah said. Her face brushed against his as she pressed her mouth to his shoulder and bit him lightly.

Near Jay and Erin, Allie stood from the log stump she was using as a seat. She took a second to gather her guitar and sling the strap over her shoulder.

Rain put a hand on Delilah’s, telling her to stop for a moment.

Allie approached. She looked at Rain and Delilah, eye dropping to the blanket, and rolled her eyes, whites visible in the gloom.

“You good?” Allie asked.

“I’m great,” he said, terse. “Obviously.”

“Obviously. My prayers are with you tomorrow. I might not see you before you go.”

“Thank you.”

“My prayers are with Joel too,” Allie said.

“Thank you,” Delilah said. “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”

“Do you want to meet? We can keep an ear out for word on how things go, watch the news.”

“Allie,” Rain said. More terse than before, he said, “Go.”

Allie smiled, smug, and sauntered off, guitar bouncing behind her.

“Can I keep going?” Delilah asked. “I have to be up early, but I want to send off at least one soldier.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Rain said.

In the dream, he was warm in many ways, face flushed, buzzing with the strong alcohol, head pounding in time with his heartbeat, and a good feeling suffused him.

In the dream, as he went through it again, there was none of the psychological, where it was divorced from the physical. He despised himself a little for succumbing to his instincts in this moment, he’d never even especially liked Delilah. He agonized over if Erin would notice anything, because he liked Erin. Even back then, he’d gotten along with her little brother.

And above all else, he dreaded what came the next day.

⊙

It was a sunny day as they climbed out of the little bus and the trucks. Rain watched as a few people in the parking lot looked their way, saw the tattoos, the shirts with crosses on them, and the masks.

The people turned the other way, changing their minds about their plans to go into the shopping center. They would, Rain knew, agonize over what to do, whether to call for help. The Fallen appeared here and there, sometimes only to make their presence known, only causing trouble on the rarer occasions.

In a matter of hours from this point, weeping, these people would be talking to the news cameras, saying they should have seen what happened and called.

Rain fixed his mask. It was hard plastic. A demon’s face.

“You,” Seir said. He had his horse’s head on, and heavy black clothes that left his arms bare, where he’d wrapped chains around them. He indicated Rain. “Special job.”

He never liked me, Rain thought. Something about family ties, old grudges he can’t resolve because some people aren’t around anymore.

But he’d listened. Rain went with Seir, looking back at the others.

They went around the side of the shopping center. One employee was out the side, smoking. A teenager of Rain’s age, slightly overweight, her hair tucked under a flat-top cap with a visor at the front.

Her eyes on her phone, cigarette at her mouth, she didn’t see them.

Seir raised a hand. There was a sound, halfway between a rumble and drumming, almost a stampede, and curling lines of black spilled from Seir’s palm. The dozen or so lines didn’t curl so much as they bounced, each moving in a smooth half or quarter circle before stopping, curving back or at a right angle to carry on its way.

Where they hit solid surfaces, they exploded into rough silhouettes of Seir, mask and all. Each was as black as the lines – like gaps in reality rather than mere black that absorbed the light of the sun. Each had eyes that glowed as they looked around- one human eye where it peered through the horse’s eye socket, and one of the horse’s eyes.

One, twenty feet above the ground, tore the security camera from the corner of the building. Another appeared beside the store employee, who was running now that she’d heard the sound and saw them. It snatched her up.

Seir became shadow, and the figure with the girl in its arms became Seir.

Others were turning over trash cans, breaking glass in car windows. Ten in all. The ones that finished doing their damage disappeared.

Rain continued walking. He could feel his heart pounding.

“Bad for you,” Seir said, wrestling the girl around and taking the cigarette. He took a puff. “Are you bad? Are you a sinner?”

“Please,” she said.

“Open,” Seir said.

“What?”

“Open wide!” Seir screamed the words.

She opened her mouth and kept it open. Seir took another puff, still holding her, his face next to hers. Rain could see her trembling.

He could remember how he’d felt. Uneasy.

Seir held the cigarette, only half burned, and held it up in front of her face. Then he flicked it into her mouth, hard enough it had to have hit the back of her throat. His hand caught her before she could spit it out, and he held his hand firm over her mouth.

It took what had felt like a minute before she stopped struggling and went still in Seir’s grip. Only fifteen or twenty seconds.

When Seir held her by only one wrist, she didn’t fight. Her eyes were wide, terrified.

“Spit on her,” Seir said.

Rain spat on the girl’s face.

If I’d hesitated even a fraction of a second, he would have destroyed me and said he was justified doing it.

“Give me an excuse,” Seir said. “Fuck up one time.”

“I’m not going to fuck up,” Rain said.

“I’m giving you an easy job,” Seir said. “You won’t have much of a chance, but I think you’ll manage to fuck it up anyway.”

He dragged the girl, jerked her arm when she wasn’t fast enough. Her hand went away from her face to wipe away the spit, and Seir shook her hard.

“Leave it there,” he said. She did. Seir looked back, and said, “Kid, what do you think you’re doing? Open the fucking doors.”

Rain opened the double-set of metal doors. Rain could see within, see the plaza on the far, far end of the hallway, the signs on either side, and the stacked tables and pallets, people walking this way and that, going about their days.

Rain heard a muffled shriek. Three shadowy Seirs hauled the girl off her feet, the fourth holding her hair and mouth.

She was lifted up until she was horizontal to the ground, then forced to the ground.

“Make a sound,” Seir said, “And I’ll kill you. Stay.”

Fingers knotted in her hair, Seir held the hair and let the doors swing shut, trapping the hair there. He stepped on it for good measure, straightening with a grunt.

The man took a chain from around his arm and wound it through and around the door handles, squares of sheet metal, and hauled the chains tight. He rummaged, and a moment later, came up with a padlock. He put it through several of the chains to keep it tight, but left it unlocked.

“You’re guarding the door,” Seir said.

“I wanted to do more,” Rain said.

Did I? Rain wondered. His old self was so long ago, so far away.

“Cry about it. We’re scaring the shit out of them. Step one in scaring the shit out of them is not letting them escape. Got it? Let any of them go, you’re not going to get another shot at being a soldier.”

He reached a hand out for Rain. Rain knocked it away, then backed up a step.

“Don’t disappoint us, boy,” Seir said. “You know how fucking bad it is to disappoint us.”

“The only disappointment today is that I’m left guarding a door.”

Seir snorted.

Black lines flowed up from Seir’s head and shoulders, arcing and bouncing off the wall on their way to the roof.

Seir took the place of one of his shadow selves, leaving a shadow on the ground. It lunged at Rain, and Rain jumped back.

Only a feint. The shadow looked like it was snickering, then disappeared.

Rain gave the now-absent Seir the finger.

Then he was left to wait. He stared down at the hair that still stuck through the door, stuck there.

Someone at the corner of the building walked out to their car. Rain turned away, hiding his masked face.

The day was slightly overcast, but the sun was bright. Rain fidgeted, back to the wall, hood up and head down. When the explosion hit, he could feel it through the walls of the building.

He looked down at the hair.

The door jumped, chains clacking and screeching against the metal of the door handles. Rain stepped back.

He heard the thuds, the pounding of fists on the metal, and the first of the shouts. As the thuds escalated, his own heartbeat picked up. He could feel the rush, hear the pounding of his blood in his ears joining the cacophony from the hallway.

He could make out the words, the pleas.

His hands went to the chain, traveling along it to the lock. He could feel each push from the people on the other side, until the pushing stopped outright.

Not because the people had stopped, but because there was so much pressure that it wasn’t possible to pull the door back.

He looked up, for Seir, then to the side, and he gripped the lock.

His hand fell to his side.

He could hear people screaming and shouting, and he closed his eyes. There were still thuds on the door, pounding fists. Those, too, came to a stop.

Just the outward pressure on the door, and sounds from people further inside.

An interminable amount of time seemed to pass.

On the other side, he heard the scream he now knew to be Love Lost’s.

A huff of noise left his mouth, more cough than anything. He brought a shaking hand to his face, and his vision jerked, spasmed.

His hand fell again, grazing chain, and he stepped back. No longer muffled, the laugh left his lips. It didn’t stop, continuing when he couldn’t draw in the air properly, small, hysterical, wild.

He sucked in a breath, almost pulled himself together, and then the laugh came out again, while his hand pressed against the door.

He was still laughing some time later, when Seir appeared. The man created a shadow near Rain, took its place, and shoved Rain down.

“Fucking moron!” Seir swore. “This is supposed to scare them, not kill them! How the fuck do you think we’re supposed to clue them into the power of God, goodness and badassness both, if they’re all fucking dead!?”

Rain’s mad laughter continued.

Seir kicked him, hard, in the stomach. It didn’t make the laughter stop, but it did make it quieter.

Seir hauled on the chains, then used his shadow selves, and began tearing at the door, breaking the chains with the strength of the shadows and the help of the pressure on the other side.

Rain’s laughter died as the handles shattered with the force. Fragments of flat, shattered metal skittered along the pavement, alongside some pieces of chain. The doors were open.

People had to climb over others. They flinched as Seir’s shadows tore at the pole that stood between the doors, then tore more at the frame, opening the aperture wider.

People stumbled out, and smoke followed them.

Rain started to climb to his feet, then fell, his hand going to his stomach.

Seir shot him a look, then created his shadow copies, and went to the roof.

Rain climbed to his feet, hand at his stomach, and found himself staring down the crowd, angry, hostile. His hand had been near his mouth from the laughter, and now it touched his mask.

He could feel the instant the trigger hit him like a bucket of cold water being sloshed over him.

⊙

Rain found himself in the room, awash in self-loathing. Bending down, he reached for his chair.

Stumbling, he dropped to one knee, hand on the loose floorboards and pine needles below.

No chair.

No, it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. It was ten feet away, lying on its side, broken. The lighting in the room was different. Almost everything had been scattered to the ground, damaged, or both.

They invited someone.

He lurched to his feet, looking around. In Snag’s area, a shelving unit collapsed noisily, metal shelves falling. Snag cursed in his characteristic growl.

Snag emerged from among the shelves, giving a wide berth to some bent shelves that leaned precariously. He looked at Rain, then looked away, scowl etched around his eyes. To Cradle, he said, “This may have been a mistake.”

Cradle emerged from the shadows around his area. His fingers traced broken construction, the concrete slabs had cracks running through them. More worrisome, however, was the fact that the invisible wall that rested between Cradle and Love Lost was streaked with blood, which ran down in thick, chunky globs.

At the base of the wall, a body so mangled it barely looked human was slumped against the wall.

Love Lost approached it, and knelt down beside the corpse.

It’s like an intense fight happened while the rest of us were off dreaming, and this person lost hard, Rain thought.

“This is going to be a hassle,” Cradle said. “She brought bodyguards.”

“Do you need help?” Snag asked.

“I took precautions when Love told me old one-tooth here was dangerous. Fuck. Fixing our situation is going to be hard if the powers lash out at the people who get involved.”

“Do you want one or not?” Snag growled.

“Give me one. I might need to make a run for it.”

Snag passed one piece of glass over to Cradle.

Mama Mathers, Rain thought. He braced himself for the appearance, and saw nothing. He scanned the room, looking. Too much to hope that it would have brought her in, for the same treatment the one-toothed woman had been given.

Emotionally, after his visit with Mama Mathers, after the dream, he felt raw. There was a part of him that wanted to break down in tears. But to show weakness?

Blood still worked its way down the invisible barrier. It was responsible for some of the altered color in the room. Where others’ spaces had been cast in shades of blue and purple, it was now redder.

The others would discuss, they’d share out powers, while leaving Rain out of the loop, and then they would go back to trying to kill him. Rain, meanwhile, would wake up and find himself where he’d been the night before. Mama Mathers would watch his every move.

“I need help,” he said.

The looks on their faces. Hate, hate, and a cold stare through scratched-up glasses. His heart sank.

“There are people with the Fallen who need help. Innocents. The Fallen- they use powers to force us to act a certain way, keep us from leaving. There are-” Rain started. He looked at Love Lost. “There are kids at risk.”

Love Lost’s hand went out. She punched the barrier between them with enough force that something in her hand audibly broke. She trembled with a mixture of pain and sheer loathing as she lowered her hand.

The hand would heal when they woke up, but still- to go that far.

“There are kids who are being forced to comply with powers. The ones who aren’t brainwashed the usual way are made to obey with powers.”

“Convenient excuse,” Cradle said.

“In that dream, I wasn’t under the influence of any powers except for a watchful eye,” Rain said. “She was observing me back then, but it doesn’t appear in the dream.”

“Shut up,” Cradle said. “Stop. We hear this every five-”

“I’m desperate!” Rain raised his voice, advancing. “It’s bad.”

“Good,” Snag said.

Love Lost nodded.

“Suffer,” Snag said.

“Innocents are going to die, or worse! I can give you information on the Fallen. You can use it to stop them.”

“We’re not going to cooperate with you,” Cradle said. “Anyone else, but not with you.”

“I can tell you where they are, I can tell you how they operate.”

“No.”

Emotionally ragged, Rain almost opened his mouth to mention Erin.

“I’ll- if you cooperate, if you save these people-”

Save Erin. Save her brother. Save Lachlan.

They’re going to force me to go to the team. They’ll find out about them. If they get their hooks in Tristan- in Sveta? Kenzie?

His teeth chattered with emotion.

“We’re not going to help you,” Cradle said.

“If you do,” Rain said, “I’ll do what you want. Tie me to a chair, torture me for days. Kill me. But save them.”

Love Lost shook her head, looking away.

“We’re going to come after you,” Cradle said. “Could be tomorrow, could be a week, could be a year. Then we’ll do that anyway. If you’ll lose people and things you care about in the meantime? Good. And you can know we let it happen because of your fucked up attitude infecting us.”

“Fuck you,” Rain said. “Whoever or whatever you were before, it wasn’t normal or good. People staring at you with disappointed looks from across a desk, looking at reports? What was it? Because you weren’t living up to potential? You’re proving them right.”

Cradle didn’t flinch. “You don’t know anything.”

Rain clenched his fist. He looked at Love Lost. “Your daughter would be disappointed in you.”

She raised her other fist, ready to punch the barrier again.

“Don’t take the bait,” Snag said. “Don’t give him that satisfaction.”

“If you got anything from me, it wasn’t evil,” Rain said. “It was willful blindness, being fucking sheep with no self-esteem or self-respect. What happened to that Snag that helped that girl?”

It was Cradle who answered, “You guarded the door while he was trampled on the other side, and you laughed. You see what we went through in our dreams, but you were the one getting a drunken handjob and laughing while we faced the worst days of our lives.”

“It was panic,” Rain said.

“Fuck that.”

“It was panic. It was a nervous reaction!”

“Fuck that,” Cradle said, dismissive. “We’ve heard it before, but-”

“Why do you think my share of the powers breaks things apart? They’re thematically tied into who we are! And my share is to shatter things because I was fucking shattered, right then!”

“It’s a power to destroy because you destroy things. Do you know how I know?” Cradle asked. “Because you fucking told us. Day one. You, me, him, her, in this room. You laughed. You told us we deserved it. You threatened us.”

“Kill me, then. Stop the Fallen, kill the monsters at the top, like Seir, and then kill me.”

“We’ll do all that without your help,” Snag said. “Give us time. Wait for it, dread it.”

Rain was shaking. He approached the dais. He found the his shards of metal.

He snatched them up and gripped them as a stack in his hand.

He turned his back to the dais, the three others, and the mangled body.

⊙

Fingers ran through Rain’s hair.

“Shhh. Easy.”

He closed his eyes. All of the aches and pains, the soreness in his throat from vomiting, and the more physical side of his emotional exhaustion were making themselves felt with every beat of his heart. Sunlight streamed in through the window of the machine shop.

“Rain.”

He startled, flipped over, and scrambled away from Mama Mathers, her fingernails scraping his scalp. She knelt on the ground by where he had been sleeping.

His back was to the wall as he stared at everything that wasn’t her. Looking at the images and hearing them made them last longer. His prosthetic hands – if he dwelt on the design, focused on the schematics, on the work he needed to do, and the possibilities, if he didn’t think about-

Her hand touched the side of his head. He flinched away, then froze, shaking.

He was so tired. Already, he was on edge.

“You’re going to show me what you’ve been up to. Show me the progress you’ve made in preparing to kill the others with matching powers,” Mama Mathers said.

He stared at the sunlight that came in through the window, the dust in the air illuminating it. More dust and sawdust on the floor had patterns where footsteps had left tracks. Clothes had been layered over a bag to serve as a kind of pillow. Erin’s sweatshirt. There was a wet spot where he’d drooled on it.

“Don’t disappoint me,” Mama Mathers said.

He made his way to his feet, his bruises and aches from his encounter with his uncle not helped by his sleeping on the hard floor. He bent down to get the bag, picked up the sweatshirt, and folded it so his drool wasn’t too obvious.

Was Erin safe? She-

Mama Mathers was in the corner of his vision. Even his suspicion about who was responsible if Erin wasn’t safe was enough to bring her to bear.

She would have had to go home. Her parents were fanatic enough they’d excuse almost anything, but he couldn’t imagine her staying all night.

A note sat on the table, beneath a connector tab from one of the digit manipulation systems he’d been working on. He really wished Erin hadn’t moved it- just the fact that it wasn’t in order meant another ten or fifteen minutes of work.

Not that she could have known.

You sleep like you’re dead. It’s freaky.
See you in the morning, bud. We’ll figure something out.
~Erinnn~

The name was penned out in an exaggerated cursive, the ‘n’ exaggerated and drawn out long with a dwindling series of dips and raises.

Bud.

He touched the name and realized he still had her sweatshirt.

He wanted to hold it to his face and inhale, only because he felt so desperate and alone that he wanted any connection that wasn’t- wasn’t her.

Mama Mathers approached the window and looked outside.

He might have wanted and done the same connection if it was a boy. If it was Byron, or Tristan. Not because he was that way, but…

He didn’t have much.

There was a knock at the door. He reached for the note, folded it, and put it in his pocket.

“Come in.”

Erin. She’d showered, and she had a stack of lunchboxes under her arm. Three. She wore a t-shirt with a blurry skull design bleached onto the front, crosses for eyes and separating the teeth, jeans, and high boots.

“What’s that?” he asked, indicating the lunchboxes.

“Food. I asked my mom for breakfast to go, and lunch too, and she went overboard. I thought after a day like yesterday, you might want to take it easy. Hot breakfast, coffee in a thermos, and some lunch for later.”

“And the other?” he asked. His voice was more hoarse than it had a right to be. He felt the disparity between dusty, injured, weary himself and clean, beautiful, vivacious Erin.

“Breakfast for me, duh.”

“Oh,” he said. His thoughts went in the wrong direction. Mama Mathers paced the length of the room.

His life wasn’t his anymore.

“You can crash in your workshop today, figure your things out. If you want dinner, I can bring that to you too.”

“I have to go,” he said, aware of Mama Mathers’ stare. “I need to talk to the others, and I need to deal with my cluster.”

“Okay,” Erin said. “I can drive you.”

“You don’t need to.”

“I can drive you. It’s fine. When do you want to go?”

“As soon as possible? I need to shop for stuff, for my hands, and I want to stop by the library. We could eat on the road.”

“Perfect,” she said. “I’m ready to go, so get your stuff.”

He nodded, stiff.

“Can I?” she asked. She pointed.

Tired, dazed, trying not to think, he was momentarily dumbfounded.

She pointed with more intensity, until he looked down. Her sweatshirt.

He handed it to her, then turned to get his arms together. His stuff hadn’t been touched from the night prior, but there was other stuff he wanted to bring, just in case.

“Did you jerk off onto my sweatshirt?”

He looked at Erin, stunned. He looked at the wet spot of drool.

“I- no. Drool,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Fuck, you look like you just ran over my dog. I was joking, I wanted to try to get a smile out of you.”

She smiled, encouraging.

He opened his mouth, then closed it. He was so far from smiling, he couldn’t even process the idea. He was all too aware that Mama Mathers was watching the exchange.

“Oh, honey,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry,” he said, again, automatically.

“It’s okay. Let’s get on the road and get the stuff you need.”

He nodded. He followed behind her, firmly shutting the door behind him, and the smell of breakfast was intoxicating. He felt hollow inside, in more ways than one, and the idea of food to fill him up, after throwing up, after missing meals, with only candy and caffeine to tide him over, it made him almost delirious, his thoughts momentarily freed of the trap of thinking, not-thinking.

But thinking about the trap only brought her out again. She stood on the street, looking around, as he got into Erin’s dad’s car.

He took the boxes, opened his, and started eating immediately. “Thank you.”

“My mom’s a good cook,” she said. “I did the pancakes, because they’re easy. Made properly, not out of a box.”

“It’s the best thing I ever tasted,” he said.

As the car rolled down the dirt road, he could see the camp outside the window. People who were only just waking up, meeting in town to eat at the communal dining hall, or borrowing what they needed to harvest crops or do a day’s worth of building.

“So, silly story, bear with me.”

“Silly story sounds good.”

“My brother and I, we had a game we’d play a year or so ago, when we were new here and there wasn’t much to do. A series of codes and signals.”

Rain nodded. He worried he was too tired to process anything complicated, but Bryce was young.

“Some of it was so we were on the same page, and if our parents were being especially kooky we could touch our hair near the right ear. It was a good way to stay sane without making them upset or defensive.”

“Okay.”

“And the other sign, it was folded arms. We couldn’t do it all the time, or it’d be obvious, and we’d obviously have to change the subject.”

“I don’t follow. You’d cross your arms when-”

“Be careful when you eat the sausage, by the way. It’s handmade, but it has gristly bits in it that will do a number on your teeth. I swear they’re bone shards, they’re that tough,” Erin said.

Rain looked at her. He made the connection, realized what she was doing.

Mama Mathers was in the back seat, leaning forward, and Rain folded his arms.

“Yeah,” Erin said, with emphasis. “Exactly. It’s miserable, because my dad loves the things. I can’t mention it, you know. I haven’t been able to since we first arrived here and that was first dropped on my plate. He’ll get super defensive, and my mom keeps making them and giving them to Bryce and I.”

The rest was filler. Rain processed what Erin had intended to say, things he mostly knew.

The folded arms were to tip the other off that Mama Mathers was looking. It was more of a concern for Rain than for Erin. Erin’s introduction to the woman had been fleeting. New visitors that were brought in as serious residents were given a glimpse of her, and a bit of a listen of her voice. Most didn’t even realize what had happened, until they broke a rule.

The effect was weaker, only kicking in if Mama Mathers was mentioned by word, written or spoken, or possibly if she was thought about at the same time as a strong emotion was felt.

Erin couldn’t tell the others any more than he could, or Erin wouldn’t have been allowed to come.

“I’ll eat your sausage if you don’t want it,” he said.

“You go right ahead, you madman.”

They drove into the city, and his arms were crossed for much of the trip.

⊙

“Just don’t tell me whatever you end up doing to him, and we’re golden.”

“That’s fine,” Snag said, again.

In the background, the dog girl approached, the girl in the bodysuit, scarf, and demon mask walking at her side.

“Bitch,” Tattletale said. “This is kind of a clandestine meeting.”

“My favorite kind,” the girl in the demon mask said. Snag startled, his hand raising. Tattletale moved forward, hand out to rest on top of it.

“My recordings do not like this person,” Kenzie said. “I’m getting a billion and two warning messages.”

“Memories don’t track her,” Victoria said. “She was relatively new when I left Brockton Bay. Cameras record her better than the eye does, but the footage degrades over time.”

“Uuuuugh,” Kenzie groaned. “This messes up so many things. Let me reboot.”

The screen went dark.

“Our memories of this should be fine, unless she’s gotten stronger over time.”

“Do powers do that?” Rain asked.

“That’s a complicated question with a lot of answers,” Victoria said. “Kid capes tend to get a better grasp on their abilities than adults do, but that’s partially because they adapt to the agent’s wavelength. It’s part of what feeds into the myth that kids are stronger.”

“Not so much that they’re stronger,” Sveta said. “Just that there’s less person and more power?”

“Something like that,” Victoria said.

“I know that reality pretty well,” Sveta said.

“There are other things. Some have hidden uses or nuances that aren’t made obvious to the user. Most powers are instinctively usable, but there are gaps, sometimes, or things about the power you need to figure out.”

“We’re back!” Kenzie announced, as the screen lit up, showing the camera footage, Tattletale’s group all gathered. “And I have to say I love gothic doll girl’s dress. That’s awesome.”

“Don’t wear a frock, Kenzie,” Tristan said. “A tinker in a frock would be a travesty.”

“Having to keep all that neat and tidy would be a nightmare. I’d rather spend that time on my cameras. But she looks awesome.”

“Beside her is Flechette. Was Flechette. Foil, now that she’s gone over to the dark side,” Victoria said.

“Dark side?” Chris asked, from the other end of the room. He snorted.

“Get out of the damn corner and join the conversation, you goon,” Tristan said.

“The corner is comfortable. I can see everything.”

See everything.

Rain was aware of Mama Mathers, standing on the edge of the group, watching, paying mind to the others.

“Good boy,” Mama Mathers whispered in his ear. “We’ll be ready for them.”

He crossed his arms. Erin wasn’t around, but it was habit, and he worried his hands would shake if he wasn’t careful.

Knowing what he’d done to those people in the mall ate at him. The woman with her hair in the door hadn’t survived. Others had died in the crush. Some were children.

But Rain knew. He’d have to kill Mama.

He’d have to kill Snag. He’d have to kill Love Lost. He’d have to kill Cradle.

“I don’t want to go inside,” Bitch said, on the screen.

“You came all this way, and you don’t want to go in?” Tattletale asked.

“Across universes,” the girl with the very ironic demon mask commented.

“Across parallel worlds,” Tattletale clarified.

“I came all this way because you said I had to.”

“I said it would be a good idea,” Tattletale said.

“And I came.”

“It’s a good idea because we all need to be on the same page, and we need intel on all these people we’re going up against. I meant for you to come to the briefing.”

“Briefings are important,” Foil said. “Especially for something this big.”

“Tattletale can tell me before it happens,” Bitch said.

“Or you can come in, and you can listen. It’ll be good for people to know your face.”

“I don’t care about those people. It’s a nice night. I’ll sit with my dogs and stand guard.”

“She’s right,” the girl in the demon mask said. “I’ll come with you and hang out, if that’s cool.”

“No,” Tattletale said. “For you, it’s absolutely mandatory.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair. Go. Inside. Rache, find a nice seat by the water. Everyone, again, I shouldn’t need to repeat myself, but your antics are making me worry, watch what you say. They’re listening, and they’re watching.”

“You sound paranoid,” Foil said.

“Deservedly so,” Tattletale said. “If you have to say anything about the job, say it indoors.”

“Or I can not talk,” Bitch said.

“Or that. Go. Shoo. You guys, indoors. Snuff, watch the cars.”

Rain watched as Tattletale herded everyone.

“Jesus,” Tristan said. “These are the guys who took over a city?”

“And run one of the most established areas of Gimel,” Victoria said.

“I ran into some of them when they came to Cauldron, right on the heels of the Irregulars and the whole mess there,” Sveta said. “They were there at the end of the world. They played a big role in it.”

“Credit where credit’s due,” Tristan said.

Victoria had her own arms folded. Fingernails bit into her upper arm. “Give us some intel later, Sveta? Or do you think that would be unfair?”

“I can give some intel.”

Tattletale, business done, stepped away, and when she was at the side of the building, nobody in her immediate area, she leaned against the wall.

She drew a phone out of her pocket, and pressed it to her ear. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a lighter, but no cigarette.

No, Rain realized. Not a lighter. It flipped open, but there was only a button on the top.

“What is that?” he asked.

Kenzie hit keys. “No phone calls live.”

“You’re tracking that?” Sveta asked.

“Part of making sure we’re not being listened to. No biggie.”

Tattletale hit the button.

“Uuuuugh,” Kenzie groaned. “What is she doing? This is messing up other stuff.”

“Victoria.”

All eyes went to the screen. It was Tattletale that had talked.

“Optics, or whatever you’re calling yourself now. Capricorn. Sveta. Creepy kid. Boy from the Fallen. Not sure if I just outed you, but there we are.”

“Are we supposed to reply?” Kenzie asked.

“I’m creepy kid?” Chris asked.

“Cute stunt, alleging I’m working with you. I’m sure you have camera footage to help build the lie. Fine. You win. You ruined my day and it’s going to be a headache for a while. This insane grudge you’re nursing? It’d be great to call it even.”

Victoria didn’t move a muscle.

“Fifty-fifty odds you’re shaking your head at me right now, G.H. If you’re not, you’re standing there being all stoic, really wanting to be. Fine. Five of you need to butt the fuck out. The sixth needs to run. These guys really want him gone, and frankly, after hearing what they had to say, I’d almost cheer them on.”

I can’t run, Rain thought. I would have run a long time ago, if I could.

“I know you’re not going to, but if I jumped straight to that, it’d sound too aggressive. I’m going to be unusually gracious and give you this warning. Tonight is the briefing. After that, we’re going to have a war. Be as far away as possible, be crafty, and maybe they’ll run out of money to pay me before they catch up to you. If you can’t get away, put as many people you don’t give a shit about between yourself and these guys as you can. You’ve been staying in the camp for a while, that’s a good place to be.”

“She’s giving us advice?” Chris asked.

“Mastermind games,” Victoria said.

“I’m going to hold nothing back when it comes to finding you, as soon as my contract starts, and I’ll tell them exactly where you are within minutes. They’ll come after you, they’ll get you, and they’ll do things to you that make me squeamish. If your friends are in the way, Fallen boy, they’ll probably do the same to them. I could list off a hundred things I’ve seen and even done that would drive the squeamish point home, about how it’s actually pretty amazing they got me, but this doo-dad is almost out of juice, and I don’t want this recorded or overheard by our friendly clairvoyants.”

“Uuugh,” Kenzie groaned. She mashed the keyboard with her palms. “That’s what she’s doing.”

“Cost me a lot too,” Tattletale said. “Sorry Optics. Victoria? Third time I’ve been really gentle with you or your people. Kind of hope-”

Tattletale stopped. She smacked the lighter-sized jammer with her hand a few times. Looking back up to the camera, Tattletale gave it the finger, then turned to walk away.

“Thinkers are scary,” Tristan said.

“Fuck her,” Victoria said.

“Are you okay, Rain?” Sveta asked.

“Nothing about that was really news. Except just how confident she is she’ll find me.”

“I think she could say the sky is lime green with confidence,” Victoria said.

“I’m… not reassured,” Rain said.

“Whatever you want to do, we can back you,” Tristan said.

Rain, arms folded, was aware of Mama Mathers. He looked at her. He prayed for someone to notice, to put pieces together. He saw Victoria and Tristan exchange a look.

“Come home,” Mama Mathers said.

“I’m going to go back,” he said. He didn’t have much of a choice.

“We’re going to help, okay?” Tristan asked. “This thing is happening, you’ll be over there, we have people on both sides of the conflict, you on the one side, and-”

“And an agent on the other,” Rain finished, before Tristan could name names. “If that group is even part of it.”

“They are,” Kenzie said. “They’re attending the briefing. A lot of friction.”

“This goes down tomorrow, and we will make something happen,” Tristan said.

“We’ve got your back,” Sveta said.

Rain nodded. Tired as he was, with only a brief nap in the car to sustain himself, he felt emotional.

No words.

“I’m going to talk to the Wardens,” Victoria said. “It’s time. They’re probably already aware something’s up, this many major players getting together, but I can provide context and get you help.”

He nodded again. He didn’t have it in him to speak.

The Wardens wouldn’t want to help him.

He walked over to where his stuff was, grabbed the cosmetic things Kenzie had given him, and exited the door.

Erin had gone home earlier, at the time of Advance Guard’s appearance. With all the chaos after, they’d canceled the other plans. It wasn’t worth it, and the cat was out of the bag.

He had the support of the group, potentially the Wardens, of Erin, and even Tattletale giving advice and a head start.

He wasn’t sure he deserved it.

⊙

The ferry-car that Rain had called was jam packed, and the trip was made more uncomfortable by the fact the road into the camp was choked with vehicles. There were trucks, jeeps, and the barely-intact rush jobs that more enterprising people had put together from scrap, back when they’d needed workhorse vehicles and there hadn’t been enough cars coming out of Earth Bet. Sheet metal welded together to form car bodies, with Frankenstein interiors and engines.

Even after the cars had been available again, the car junkies had kept making the ugly beasts, as a point of pride.

He had spent enough time around the other branches that he knew the cliques and groups, the tendencies, styles of dress, and the favored tattoos. All three sub-groups of the Crowley family were present. All three brothers.

Mama Mathers knew about the attack, because she’d seen what the group had seen. She’d called in help.

Tents were going up, cars were parked on lawns outside houses, to the point it looked like every house was throwing a massive party, and bonfires dotted the dark fields and hills. Even the forests were eerily illuminated, as whole groups of people were bringing down trees and dividing them into firewood.

The Fallen weren’t outnumbered three to one anymore.

There were others, Rain saw. Groups that he didn’t know, but that the Crowleys were no doubt familiar with. Bikers. Scattered people from the Clans.

If they fended off the initial attack, and they might, Rain knew they would attack back. They’d hit Cedar Point, wiping it off the map and they’d do a lot of damage to everything between here and there.

The truck stopped several times. Many of the people in the vehicle with Rain were Crowleys, new to the camp, so the truck drove well past the point of the central settlement, to deliver multiple people to each house.

It meant, at least, that Rain had transportation direct to his place. Two guys got out with him. They were Crowley jackasses- actual titles they wore with pride.

“Rain,” Mama Mathers said. “Stop.”

He stopped in his tracks. The two jackasses gave him a look. He waved them on.

The woman’s hand, spectral as it was, felt real as it touched Rain’s hair. He flinched, but she persisted. He remained where he was, head turned away, neck stiff.

“This was good,” Mama Mathers said. “I’ll reward you.”

He didn’t move a muscle.

“Enjoy your evening, my soldier. Tomorrow, we show them we’re not to be trifled with.”

Rain turned his head, to look for clarification, but she was gone. There was a distant sound, like a flock of birds taking off.

He’d slept on the train, but this whole scene was so surreal. She’d-

He stopped, bracing himself for her appearance. For the physical contact.

She hadn’t appeared. The sound remained. A thunderous flapping, far away.

Mama Mathers, he thought.

There was only the sound.

She’d freed him? For only tonight?

Adrenaline coursed through him. His eyes were wide as he strode forward. He had- not opportunity, but something. He walked at a speed that was only a run, passing the jackasses, pushing his way into his aunt and uncle’s house.

His aunt and uncle were in the living room, organizing sleeping arrangements for five boys and girls, ages ranging from sixteen to mid-twenties. Soldiers, like Rain had once been. Crowleys. Allie was at the kitchen table, with others her age sitting around her. Adult women were cooking.

He was free, or almost free, and he was surrounded by Fallen. What was he supposed to do?

His aunt spotted him. Her expression was unreadable, and she shooed him off.

His room. He’d go there, he’d regroup. If it hadn’t been commandeered to give others a place to sleep. He had some spare things in his room. Weapons, traps. He took the stairs two at a time.

Jay’s sister was in the hallway. Nell. The house was crowded, but the upstairs had been kept quiet.

Nell stared at Rain as she put headphones on. The stare persisted as he walked past her, her head moving to keep him in her sight. He was uncomfortably reminded of Love Lost. This wasn’t hostility, but-

Threatening? Ominous?

He opened the door to his room, and let himself in.

The room was occupied.

Rain swallowed, hard. “Erin.”

Erin sat on his bed. She didn’t make eye contact, her fingers picking at the blanket she’d put over her lap.

She was wearing only a silk nightgown.

“They were waiting for me when I drove in, like last night,” Erin said.

“No.”

“They took me to the big house,” she said.

“To the leadership?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Elijah? Valefor?”

“To the elders, in the sitting room. They told me I’m to marry.”

Rain swallowed hard.

Erin put her hand forward. When she pulled it back, two simple golden bands were left on the dark wool blanket Rain kept at the foot of the bed.

“They’re giving me to you,” she said, her voice lacking inflection. “If-”

“Erin.”

“If you want me.”

“Not like this.”

“Can you hear me out? Can you let me talk? Because I’ve been sitting here for hours. They took me to my house, they made me change. When I wasn’t dressed how they thought I should dress, they went through my room and picked this out. This isn’t my choice, so you know.”

“I don’t-”

“Hear me out? Please. Before you say anything and I lose all composure. I know you’ve helped me out a ton, and I’ve helped you out, but can you do this for me? Let me talk?”

Rain nodded.

“I want to do this. I want to- I want you. Please. I thought about it and I’ve been thinking about it as a just-in-case. They asked me at the big house, they said Mama Mathers wanted to pair you and me, and they asked what I wanted, if it were to happen. There’s this dilapidated house I think it could be fixed up nice and expanded to be a proper house. It’s on the outskirts, near the old gate. It’d be ours. For us.”

“Erin-”

“And my parents could move in. I want them away from everything, not so involved and tied in. They’ll make them move, and they’ll start being more rational if there aren’t those influences. You and I together. I know you don’t want to stay, but we’d barely be part of the community, that far out.”

“I can’t.”

“Listen,” she said. She stood from the bed, and he looked away as he realized how short the nightie was. She scooped up the rings and held them in cupped hands. “Listen. Please listen. I only liked you as a friend, before. But a few days ago, you gave me a hug, and it was nice. I started thinking, if it had to be someone, I wanted it to be you. Once I started thinking like that, I started thinking about how you looked nice. Kind of 90’s bad boy, with the long hair, ripped jeans and flannel, very Bender in Breakfast Club, except you’re way more attractive than Nick Cage.”

“You’re rambling, and-”

“I’m terrified,” she said. She stepped forward, well inside his personal space, until her chest touched his. He pulled back, back to the closed door, and she didn’t pursue.

Instead, her hands went up, fingers pinching at the very edges of his shirt.

“Please,” she said. “You. My parents. My brother. This is the only way I get anything close to a happy ending.”

“You need to come with me. We’ll run. There’s going to be this war, anyway, and-”

She was already shaking her head.

“I can’t leave them. I lost everything. My family lost everything. If they lost me too? If I lost them? I couldn’t ever.”

“This place will destroy you.”

“Not if- not if we get that house on the outskirts. We’ll be far enough away, we won’t have a lot of involvement. Please. I see the way you look at me. I’m not dumb.”

“I can’t.”

“If you want me barefoot and in the kitchen, I can-”

Rain made a face, shook his head, looked away.

“No. I didn’t think you would. But…”

Her presence was overwhelming enough he worried he might do something stupid. Every look he’d averted, every thought he hadn’t completed, every time he’d jacked off and thought of her, but hadn’t ever been able to let himself imagine a scenario to go along with her, they were things that had been left incomplete, like a hole inside of him. Love with a missing letter.

She was, standing before him, promising that.

“That you’d suggest that… isn’t that the destruction I just talked about? That’s not you. That’s this fucking place.”

Mama Mather’s disconnected presence was like bird’s wings against the exterior of the house, rustling.

Erin was barely able to speak and barely audible as she said, “You want this. I want this.”

“Yeah.”

“Give me my family, Rain. Be my family.”

“It would destroy you,” he said.

She shook her head.

“And it would destroy me. It’s the one thing I can’t do.”

She went very still.

“I love you, Rain. I really think I do. It took me hours sitting in here and considering possibilities, but I do love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Don’t say that. Not when you’re also saying no, when they’ll marry me off to someone else instead.”

“You need to leave.”

“I can’t.”

“You need to leave. You can go. While everything’s going to pieces, I can get your parents and brother. The team will. We’ll kidnap them, we’ll get them out.”

He could see the glimmer on her face. The hope.

He could see it die.

“If it failed, I’d lose them. Unequivocally,” she said. “I can’t risk it.”

“Erin-”

“I can’t!” she raised her voice.

The murmur of discussion downstairs grew quieter. People were listening now.

“I can’t. The world ended and I have nightmares every night. I lost friends. Losing my family will destroy me more surely than anything.”

Rain wanted to reply. He remained silent instead.

Something in his expression conveyed what words couldn’t. Her expression changed.

She hit him in the chest, hard. She hit him again, drumming him with her fists. He didn’t resist.

She stopped, clutched his shirt, and pressed her face to his chest.

It was all he could do not to wrap his arms around her in a hug.

“This isn’t you,” he said. “It’s this place.”

She pulled away.

“You need to leave,” she said, with restrained anger. “If you say no to this, they’ll want to know why, and the reason why is that you aren’t loyal.”

She wasn’t wrong.

He stepped away. He approached the window, and he looked outside before creating his silver blades.

“I’d die for you,” he said. “But I can’t be Fallen.”

“Then fucking die, Rain.”

He cut into the bedroom window with his blades. With a strong tap, he let the glass fall to grass below.

If it hadn’t been his day, he wasn’t sure he’d have had the precision to cut like that, or the ability to so easily tap it out, without breaking the glass.

He hit the ground, and he started running.

⊙

Rain punched the numbers into the keypad. He was on the train, and he had no destination to travel to. He couldn’t go to the others. He couldn’t go back to the camp.

His finger traveled over the number pad. One, seven, four, six, nine, three, and M.

The numbers painted out a letter on a conventional number pad. He’d just drawn out ‘H’.

Nine, seven, four, six, four, one, three, and D. He’d drawn out ‘E’.

Seven, one, three, and N. ‘L’.

‘P’ was the last letter. One, seven, nine, six, four and S.

The letters were a code of their own. An incomplete word or phrase.

He sent the message, and he waited, staring at the phone.

He got his reply. A text: 9713A97139E17593S9746413Y

He translated it. ‘Come’. Letters: A, E, S, Y. Put together with his, ‘Madness’ and the stray Y.

In plain text, he asked ‘where’?

In code, he got his reply. It was lengthy enough it had to have been pre-prepared. An address.

It took him an hour to get there. A dark part of the city, where the power hadn’t been kept on.

A door as opened. Candles were lit within.

The woman who faced him was petite, and wore a rabbit mask with a uniform that looked like a soldier from the 1800s. A rapier dangled from her waist.

“March,” he said.

Wordless, she invited him to come in. He did. Further inside, he could see others. A trio of people. Another pair.

Other clusters.

“I’m out of options,” he said.

“You know what I want,” March said.

“Foil. Flechette. From your cluster. I’ve seen her.”

“I’ve been planning on dealing with her and her acquaintance Tattletale for some time now. It puts me in a unique position to help you.”

“You want her to die.”

“That discussion can wait until tomorrow. For now, you look like you need to sleep.”

Heartbroken, exhausted, he couldn’t bring himself to say no.

⊙

He dreamed, and the dream slipped from memory as soon as he entered the room.

Rain bent down for the chair, found it in its usual place, and set it on the ground.

There was no discussion. The others stood, Snag approached the dais. Love Lost hung back. Cradle paced.

Rain sat, and he watched. After so many hard days and nights, he felt eerily calm.

Not so much left to lose, in a way.

It dropped from the sky, and it bounced on the tip of the crystal spike that stood up from the center of the dais. A token. A coin, flipping in air, a shard of metal as it showed its other side. A tooth, shadow moving across it as it rotated in the air. A piece of glass.

It bounced on the point of crystal with eerie accuracy, landed, wobbled, and then slid to one side, breaking apart as it slid. Rain stood, and he approached the dais.

He pushed everything else aside, and he collected his shards of metal.

With them, a piece of glass and a coin.

Today mattered. The others’ expressions were trying not to betray anything, but they were bothered.

I’ll see you tomorrow, Rain thought. And at least one of us here is going to die.

Shadow – 5.6

Sveta tugged my arm, dragging me off the train. The sky was dark and the lights of the city were at their deceptive stage where so few apartments and buildings were lit up that it looked like it was four in the morning, not seven in the evening.

“Come on,” she urged, tugging.

“There’s stuff to do before everything happens tomorrow,” I said. “I really want to, but plans.”

“Change your plans. You need to talk to the Wardens, right?”

“I was planning on doing a write-up I can bring with. I sent an email before we got on the train, I’d have to get my computer or phone out to see if they responded already.”

“Come on. Talk to Weld. We’ll work something out for the rest.”

More to keep us from getting in other people’s way, I let Sveta drag me out onto the train platform. We stood outside the train while people got on. I had only a minute to decide if I’d do what I wanted to do, which was to go with Sveta, or if I’d do what I needed to do, which was to prepare for an imminent war that too few people seemed to be aware of.

Lots of the people were staring or glancing at Sveta, with her unusual body. The noises that body made as she tugged at me drew as much attention as the colorful suit.

“Let me check my phone?” I asked. “It might change what I’m doing.”

“Okay.”

The connection was slow as I waited for my email to load, the diamond shape in the center of the blank page folding into itself endlessly in the ‘loading’ loop.

I sighed a little as the train doors closed and the train went on its way.

“Don’t sigh at me, Victoria,” Sveta said. “The train doesn’t matter. You can fly.”

“People make fun of you on the internet if you get caught on camera while browsing your phone or laptop while flying. I wanted to sit and chat with you about dumb, meaningless stuff-”

“Which we thoroughly did.”

“-and then spend the rest of the trip typing notes.”

“I used to admire that side of you. It was a good thing when you were doing the physio, and when you were watching those videos of university classes. Which were incredibly boring, I’m sorry.”

“They were the highlight of my day.”

“They were so boring. I don’t know how you make powers boring, but they managed. But you had the mental fortitude to push through it.”

“I enjoyed it,” I said. “Really.”

“But I’m worried about that attitude now. If I had real hands I’d reach up and feel your shoulders to see how tense you are.”

I relaxed my shoulders as casually and naturally as possible.

“If you’re stiffer than the girl with the prosthetic body and her metal boyfriend, you need to relax. Spend some time with me and Weld. We’ll talk about tomorrow.”

“I need to call Crystal first.”

“Invite her!” Sveta said. She reached out and jostled my arm roughly. “Bring her. Tristan was going to come by later with some stuff for me, when he has his turn again. He’ll have updates. We can make it a little leadership meeting.”

She looked so happy at the notion.

“I’ll ask if she’s interested,” I conceded.

“I’ll have to figure out what we’ll eat,” Sveta said, in an almost sing-song, happy way.

My phone finally loaded. I had messages and emails. I ignored them and sent one to Crystal.

Me:
Sveta’s trying to drag me to dinner with her and Weld. You want to come?

“I’m not trying to drag you,” Sveta said, as she set her chin down on my shoulder.

“You were literally dragging me.”

Best Cousin:
yes! where? what do I bring?

“Nothing,” Sveta said. “We’ll have to order in.”

Me:
Blue binder from the coffee table. It has a magazine cutout taped to front.

“That’s not nothing,” Sveta said.

Best Cousin:
I meant food u dumbass

“I like her,” Sveta said.

“People are feeling abusive today,” I said. “Something in the air.”

I told Crystal not to bring food, then typed out the address as Sveta recited it. I left the message typed in the box.

“Address is right. Hit send,” Sveta said.

“We’ll compromise,” I said. “Because I have about a hundred things I’ve been keeping in the back of my mind, and I had everything arranged in my head so tonight would be the night I pulled it together.”

“What’s the compromise?”

“I need to get organized. If we’re not getting some stuff done for tomorrow, I’ll cut out a bit after dinner, and we’ll do it another time.”

“Deal. I think you’ll find we’re better at balancing the cape stuff with the real stuff. In a way, it’s all mixed up for us already.”

“Alright,” I said. “Yeah.”

She hugged my arm. “Send a message to Weld, too? Let him know?”

I did.

“This way,” she said. She walked with a bit of a bounce in her slightly ungainly step. I wasn’t sure she would have been able to if she wasn’t holding onto me.

Stratford station and the surrounding neighborhood were an area of the megalopolis I primarily knew for its airfield. Helicopters were in and out, and as someone who often had to fly past, I had to be mindful of the airspace. I usually flew low or gave it a wider berth, using the highway to the north as my guide.

Now that I was in the neighborhood and moving at a walking pace, I could see it was one of the quainter areas. It was one of the first areas to be settled, and the buildings were smaller, with more houses. Not too dissimilar to my mom’s neighborhood. Even the apartment buildings were three or four floors tall at the highest. Like many of the buildings in the early settlements, they’d been built broad rather than tall.

My phone buzzed and I checked it.

I had two messages, excepting the six others I had from Kenzie.

The first was from the Wardens. They wanted to talk at ten thirty in the evening. Committee. Team heads would be there.

I showed Sveta.

“Damn. We can’t spend that long together,” she said.

“We do have things to do.”

“I know,” she said.

I sent a copy of the message with the time to the others.

The other was from Ashley:

Dark Damsel Ashley:
At my apartment with BoB henchmen to get my things and talk to landlord. Moving to apartment in BoB territory. Taking chance to send message while away from the c-voyants.

She’d sent the message to everyone.

I reported, “Ashley’s moving into Cedar Point, which I’m not sure I would have recommended, but she seems to know what she’s doing.”

“She’s doing fine,” Sveta said.

“She’s doing exceptionally, when it comes to the acting. If that’s acting. The way she’s letting these people see where she lives and she’s taking her stuff to Cedar Point, when it might be the site of some fighting? Or infighting? That’s where I might have given her other advice.”

“The way she’s unreservedly going forward might make it more believable.”

I nodded. “She’s in Stratford, isn’t she? We could bump into her.”

“Other direction from the station, but yeah.”

“Do you meet or anything? It’s hard to picture you guys together without the group.”

“We’ve met a couple of times. Um. Mr. Armstrong came by twice, and he invited us all to lunch.”

“Weld’s foster dad, kind of.”

“Kind of. And he looked after Ashley, once upon a time, when she was in custody, once, and making sure she had some of what she needed, when she was homeless. He’s a big reason she’s free now, instead of being an unofficial prisoner with a protective guard, like some of the people from the Birdcage and the S-class threats.”

“Yeah. You met for lunch?”

Sveta smiled. “It was a bit awkward, most of the time it was two or three of the four of us talking and the rest didn’t have anything to add. But I’m glad we did it. There was one moment where we were talking about something, I forget what led up to it, but for most of that lunch we were all very aware of the difference between us, and Weld said something about how people stared. Ashley said she’d trade places with me or Weld, because she would like to be monstrous, because it would simplify things and it would make it more natural to be intimidating. Nevermind that we’d really rather not be called monsters.”

“Yeah.”

“And Weld said something about that, and Mr. Armstrong tried to clarify, but it wasn’t getting through. I remember thinking of just how huge the gulf was between us, and then I tried to explain things too. I said how it was different from wearing a certain dress or acting a certain way, because you can’t take it off. You can’t get away from it. And that makes it something different. Any situation you don’t have control over is automatically worse.”

“What was her response? You said it was a moment.”

“It was really, really good. She understood and then all of us were talking for the first time that lunch. Weld, Ashley and I were all talking about very different things, pressure, differences, and the rest of the world feeling like something that presses in on us. But we were on the same wavelength, with Mr. Armstrong chiming in now and again to clarify or add a point. When the group started talking about wanting to make a team, I think that was one of the things that made it something I could be really interested in, instead of something where I had to say ‘yeah, that’s cool, but what about Ashley?’.”

“I can picture that scene. Was it what Armstrong wanted?”

“I snuck a look at him, and he looked pleased as punch. That was the last time we all got together. I wonder if that moment was what he was going for, and he considers his work done now that it happened.”

“It’s taken me a while to get that far with the group. I’m not sure I’m all the way there.”

“I’ve had to deal with it too, realizing it’s not all peaches and cream.”

“Peaches and- You mean peachy keen?”

“Either,” Sveta said.

She was giving me a cheeky look, probably because she knew I’d react. I rolled my eyes.

“Reality is a thing,” Sveta said. “Stuff’s going on.”

“The honeymoon period is over,” I said.

“Yeah. It wasn’t really a honeymoon. More like it was nice when it was an idea, but once we executed it, we had to deal with stuff.”

I nodded.

I double checked my phone, which was still in my hand, then pocketed it.

“Was there another moment?” I asked.

“I went over to her apartment once, before a session. Not long after the lunch thing. It’s nice, she seems to save up to buy nicer things, but there are gaps. So she has a really, really nice black leather couch, a black glass coffee table, a nice television, and a piece of art on the wall that looks expensive… and then for the rest of the room it’s moving boxes to sit on and put stuff on.”

“I can sort of understand that. I don’t think it’s unique to her. When you first move out on your own, most of the time, I think you get other people’s leftover stuff, or thrift store stuff. Everyone’s getting started over anew now.”

“Yeah,” Sveta said. She shrugged awkwardly, like it was a motion she hadn’t practiced much. “But she loved all the things she had, so much. There was something there. I could see the person she might have been, without powers, or the kid she was before powers. When I was defending her to you, in the first days we were with the group, that’s what I thought of.”

“I like what she’s been doing for the group. She’s been honest with me, but I don’t know if I’ve seen that glimmer of light.”

Maybe I had. When Ashley had seen Presley’s responses on the train.

“I don’t know if I’d call it light.”

“I don’t either. But… I’m imagining what you’re saying. I’ll keep it in mind. I’ll keep an open mind.”

“Please,” Sveta said. “And we’re almost there. The place might be a little messy, to warn you.”

“Crystal and I are two people crammed into an apartment with room for one person, I don’t think it’s a problem,” I said. I withheld the part where Crystal was a bit of a pig.

The apartment building was one among many, in a building with a post office built into one corner of the ground floor. With the small post office taking up a quarter of the ground floor, the remaining three quarters were divided into two spaces, it seemed. The hallway was open-air, more tunnel than hall, and there were windows on both sides, looking into both the tunnel and a small, narrow yard. I could see children’s toys in the yard.

Sveta went to the door, and fished for a key on a lanyard that she wore around her neck.

“Ground floor. Convenient.”

“Yeah. Weld worries sometimes that if he was on an upstairs floor, if it was wooden floors, he’d cause too much wear and tear and then plunge through.”

Sveta opened the door. “I’m home. I brought Victoria.”

“Hey!” Weld stepped into the kitchen. He wore a black t-shirt in a tougher material, jeans, and the same rugged sandals I’d seen before. A set of headphones were hanging from his neck.

Sveta went straight to him, and he had to catch her so she wouldn’t crash into him. She kissed him, then planted another kiss on his cheek when he turned his focus to me, smiling.

“Victoria. It’s so great to see you.”

“Sorry to drop in, and I’m also sorry I’ll be distracted tonight. I hope you don’t mind if I get my laptop out at some point. We have stuff to coordinate and figure out.”

“That’s fine. I’d love to talk shop,” he said. “Things have been weird with my team lately. The gears of bureaucracy grind slowly. Just one thing.”

“One thing?”

“Don’t say sorry. I get enough of them from her.”

“Don’t say that!” Sveta said, scandalized.

“Three unnecessary apologies before breakfast, another two after breakfast, before she’s out the front door. At least one in a text message.”

“I’m not that bad.”

Weld smiled, then planted a kiss on the side of her head.

“Don’t try to mollify me or distract me. Not while we have company,” Sveta said. She pointed at me. “She needs to unwind. I thought we could do that and still hammer out the essentials.”

“We’ll try,” Weld said.

“Make yourself at home,” Sveta said. “I’m going to go rinse off. I’ve been cooped up in this body and I’m all waxy and gross inside here. I’ll be back out in a minute.”

“Do you want me to take your body?” Weld asked.

“I’m okay. I’ll bring a change of clothes in with me.”

Sveta broke away from him and half-crashed-into, half-hugged me. Clearly happy, she went off to do her thing, leaving Weld and I.

“Make yourself comfortable. I’d offer food and drink, but I’m not sure what we have. I don’t usually partake-”

Weld paused as Sveta closed the bathroom door.

“-unless she’s inflicting an experiment on me.”

“I heard that,” Sveta said, opening the door, before shutting it again.

The apartment wasn’t what I would have called ‘messy’. In a way, it was very different from Crystal’s place. There was no detritus, nothing left lying around.

Drawers had flat, painted metal faces, with no handles. Furniture was divided into things with no legs with what looked like it might have been stone framing the edges, and Sveta’s favored grappling structures, which were poles extending from floor to ceiling with various platforms and things to hold on to. Even the walls had metal bracing at the corners, painted over so Weld wouldn’t stick to them.

“Case fifty-three living,” Weld said.

“She said it was messy. I don’t see it.”

“Then I did a good job with my last-minute sweep and clean up,” Weld said. “Living room?”

I let him lead me to the living room. I put my bag down by the coffee table and sat down on the couch, which looked homemade to withstand someone who weighed a few hundred pounds sitting on it. It was so firm I nearly bounced off of it while sitting down. Once I set my weight down, though, it gradually eased up, hissing as it adjusted to my weight.

Leaning forward, I looked outside into the yard. A toy plane was parked on the lawn, the kind a kid could sit in and push with their feet.

“Did Sveta tell you what’s going on?” I asked.

“Some. I had trouble following who was who, sometimes, but I got the gist of it.”

“There’s an attack planned on the Fallen tomorrow. One of our… not sure how to put it, or how much you know. Our contact, they’re at risk. There are innocents there, and I’m not sure the villains care about sparing them.”

“How can I help?” Weld asked.

I adjusted my bag at my shoulder, to indicate, and said, “I’ve got a report partially written up. If you could glance over it, let me know what you think? You know the Wardens and what their mindset is.”

“Sure.”

“I wanted to do some stuff with my costume later, but that might have to wait. It’d be nice to finalize some costume things when I get back to my place, but timing is getting tighter, since it’s already… seven thirty, and we have to get halfway across the city for ten thirty.”

“My offer stands, you know,” Weld said.

“Offer?”

“To help with any of the metalwork, when you get a new costume.”

It took me a second to connect the thought.

“What the hell, Weld? That was years ago, when I was thinking about rebranding and joining the Brockton Bay Wards.”

“It stands,” Weld said, smiling.

I paused. “You’re sure? I have stuff at my apartment.”

“I’m sure.”

“Thank you,” I said. I fired off a quick series of texts to Crystal.

Me:
Have you left yet?

Best Cousin:
i’m on my way out the door. promise

Me:
If it’s not too heavy to carry, can you bring the black shopping bag with the yellow leaf on it from under that table?

“Thank you,” I said, as I finished.

“You’re worried about this,” Weld said. “Sveta said you were tense. It’s bad?”

“It’s the Fallen, which aren’t great, and it’s a lot of villains who are pretty desperate for relevance. We’ve got to pitch this to the Wardens, I think we need more hands on deck, and from the murmurings I’ve heard, there aren’t many to go around.”

“There are some,” Weld said. “Advance Guard is on standby, others are out of rotation.”

“Advance Guard is… a thing,” I said. “We ran into them earlier. I’m not sure they’d cooperate unless made to.”

“You might run into trouble getting anyone to cooperate. If they aren’t occupied, they’re officially on standby. Their instinct is going to be to be ready and available in case something bigger happens.”

“Then I’d want to frame it in a way that would justify bringing these people out of standby?”

“Yep. Show me what you have?” he asked.

I pulled out my laptop, setting it on the coffee table, which was three planks set atop six planks, set firmly in place with metal bands around the perimeter. I wondered if it was built to be easily remade or rebuilt if it got broken.

The planks had been painted in what I recognized as Sveta’s style. Clear, bold outlines, almost like a paint-by-numbers picture, or a stained glass picture, but the colors that filled each space were rich, varied, and multi-textured. Blue that became green, or shaded red, or mottled orange.

Weld sat down next to me. I opened the document and showed him.

Three sub-factions in Cedar Point. I’d outlined the people in brief, with them named in more detail at the appendix, pulling out old records, files, articles and more to depict them in as much detail as I could without getting too lost in the exact facts. I’d put down their motivations, whether it was money or personal, I had notes on their adherence to the rules, real and unwritten, and I’d outlined other things about their behavior and patterns.

“The problem with some of this is it doesn’t leave the immediate impression that this is something that multiple hero groups are going to want to step into,” Weld said. “It’s deep knowledge that someone going into the fight would love, the geeks will love it, but it’s not something that’s going to get people into the fight, if they aren’t already convinced.”

“Yeah. It’s too dry. I’m thinking the notes on petty crimes are distracting from the gravity of the situation.”

“Yeah.”

“Instead of an introduction to the parties involved, I could open with a presentation on the scenario, frontload it with words like war.”

“Not war,” Weld said. “That’s going to remind people that there’s something bigger on the horizon that we need to be ready for.”

Bigger. We had a group with a dozen capes and we had another forty or more capes from Cedar Point going on the offensive.

“Of course. Maybe… potential loss of civilian life, fallout, and provoking a retaliative back-and-forth that extends across the city at a time when resources are already tested. Something that you don’t want happening behind you while you’re facing a war in front of you.”

“Sounds like you have the right idea.”

“Weld?” Sveta called out.

“Be right back.”

I worked on the document while Weld joined Sveta in the washroom. Title page written, the size of confrontation outlined, and the ramifications made clear.

I was writing it to try to convince a group of seasoned heroes and the people who managed them. It felt convincing, because I was feeling nervous, getting into everything that was involved.

The last time I’d been in something of this scale, I’d been spit on by a mutant the size of a truck. I’d had most of my flesh melted off and necrotized, and I’d been left vulnerable and helpless.

At that point in time, with the pain being as bad as it was, my emotions all over the map as I thought one thing and felt another, I’d been ready to die. I hadn’t done nearly enough, but I’d fought and I was ready for it to be over. The chance at living hadn’t been worth the risk of being healed.

Tattletale had lied to me, and had forced Amy on me. She had some small responsibility for everything that followed.

So easy, in moments like this, for there to be a point of weakness. Letting my guard down could do so much damage.

I left the document like it was, so there was room for more revisions before polish. I checked my messages.

Eighteen total messages from Kenzie. Photos of the body part of her costume in progress, some more stream-of-consciousness, she let me know when she was going to dinner, then when she came back. Pizza, apparently. She’d wanted to have her hands free to focus. She also wanted to know what to bring.

Which raised a question about what our exact role would be in things as they happened. Our priorities.

I put that aside. It was for the group to discuss.

Tristan. Last I’d heard, he was talking to the lawyer.

Tristan the Goat:
waiting for legal advisor nat now.
am not optimistic but got video footage from Ls as you recommended.
ugh. if nat keeps me waiting any longer I’ll have to switch for byron.
going to svetas later btw. will update properly around then.

I sent him a message to let him know I’d be at Sveta’s place.

Tristan had been frustrated by Natalie earlier, but we’d try this, because I’d had a small amount of luck after giving her something more tangible to work with than my reports. We’d try bouncing people off Natalie until we found one that worked. If any one member of the group ended up being good at working with Natalie, we’d keep them in that role as legal liaison. If Natalie couldn’t be worked with, we would find someone else.

An email from Byron, twenty minutes after that.

Byron the Blue:
rain left a voice message for me and Tristan. sounded rushed. he isn’t staying at his place tonight. he might go back tomorrow but sounded weird. specifically said he was messaging us to drop details so we would have lead if something happened to him. ominous.

More details to come. Will send you the voice message when I get home to computer and figure out how

Concerning.

A message from Presley, sent via Email and translated to a text:

Presley from the Train:
Can u ask ur friend from the train how she gets her hair so white?

It put a slight smile on my face, when everything else felt so heavy. I made a mental note to ask.

There was also a group text discussion too long for me to search through, mostly Kenzie and Chris, where Chris was asking what forms we needed for him for tomorrow. I scrolled down to the bottom, at which point Tristan was no longer participating.

Creepy Kid:
Blind rage would be a mistake I think. Sudden Shock is quick…
…Or Keen Vigilance. Slow but tough…
…and I’d be able to see and hear most of what was going on.

Heart Shaped Pupil:
Is that the one with all the eyes?

Creepy Kid:
That’s Multifaceted Interest. You call yourself a good student?

Heart Shaped Pupil:
I am a good student. Interest and vigilance are the same for you.

Creepy Kid:
Same range of the spectrum as Vigilance but diff’t. Is open and loose…
…You haven’t seen Vigilance. Same thing but focused more and pulled together tight…
…Think armadillo with ears like a fennec fox and bigger eyes…
…and claws because its keen

Heart Shaped Pupil:
Awww

Creepy Kid:
Very not aww. Ugh.

I added my own thought to the text conversation.

Victoria:
We want you on sidelines. Fast would be good. Rescue, evacuate civilians

Heart Shaped Pupil:
Vicotria!!!
Victoria!
How are you? Excited?

Creepy Kid:
I can make that one form. But I want to get my hands dirty too.

Hands dirty? I paused, thinking about that. Looking back at the conversation, I skimmed things. Chris had contributed more than half of the conversation, going into detail, ideas, plans.

I had never seen him quite this engaged. Was it because he was more comfortable online than in person? Or was it because he wanted to get his hands dirty, as he put it?

Victoria:
Why?

Creepy Kid:
_This_ is why I’m doing this hero team thing…
…I missed the visit to the Warden HQ because I wasn’t at the computer…
…which was my fault. I need to be a part of this.

I didn’t reply immediately, instead sitting back, thinking about things, while Kenzie responded, sharing some of the same image she had already sent me as part of the chat.

Chris wanted to be a part of this, and the visit to the Warden HQ. He wanted to be part of the big things? The large events? But he didn’t care about the rest? Were the big events tied to big emotions?

I couldn’t understand him.

A knock on the front door got my attention. Weld stepped out of the bathroom, towel at one of his hands, and let Crystal in. She had the binder and the bag. She was wearing her bodysuit with a jacket and jeans. The ‘Laserdream’ logo on the front, an arrow with a series of lines flowing behind it at a diagonal.

“This is so damn heavy, Victoria” she said.

“If it was too heavy you should have left it,” I said. I hurried across the living room and down the hallway to reach her, relieving her of the bag.

Greetings went around. Sveta stepped out of the washroom, wearing her body again, with a sweatshirt and sweatpants on. Her makeup had been washed off, and the tattoo was clearly visible on her cheekbone. She gave Crystal a hug.

“They’re preparing for a crisis,” Weld said.

“I know,” Crystal said. “Believe me, I know.”

We moved to the living room. I set the black cloth shopping bag down, and fished inside.

“What’s in this bag?” Crystal asked.

I pulled out some of the costume materials.

There were four ways to go with a costume. The first was to make it yourself. It leaned heavily on one’s own ability, and I wasn’t sure I had the ability to keep everything trim while also giving it a unique cut. The second way was to buy it, but that had problems, and a lot of the places and people that offered costume making services had a way of injecting their own tastes into things, so one of their clients often resembled another. The third way was to have someone else handle that for you, working for the like of the Wards or Wardens and leaving it up to the Branding department. Not an option for me.

The fourth was to mix and match. I’d take a small shortcut. I’d bought black and white versions of the same hooded top, picked for the slanted cut around the collar, shoulders, and the more sleeves. I could cut one up and use it to apply trim to the other and know the cut would match. Then I’d apply the additional elements that would make it a costume.

“I was going to do some sewing to keep my hands busy while I read up on things, but plans changed.”

“Cloth isn’t that heavy. What else is that, that makes it so heavy?” Crystal asked.

“Spare stuff from dad,” I said. I pulled out some equipment. It was the right kind of material, all in a matte gunmetal, but the texture was all wrong. Dad was ‘Flashbang’ and the armor panels, mask, straps, and guards were all in the style of a grooved grenade exterior. I’d always thought it was a dumb theme when most flashbangs were smooth-exterior canisters. “I was thinking I could maybe get you to trim it, Crystal. Sear off the knobby bits and leave just the panel of armor. I haven’t quite worked the process out.”

“I can do that. What look do you want?” Weld asked.

I grabbed the binder, and began flipping through it. Costume notes and ideas.

“There are years of geeking out in that binder, for the record,” Crystal said.

Sveta collapsed into the seat next to me, looking at the art I’d picked out for reference and ideas.

I found pages, opened the binder to retrieve them, and then closed it so I could fish for more.

“Hood, layered long sleeves I can remove as needed for weather. Fingerless gloves with decoration. Metal decoration at the front and edges of the hood… like this image here. Spikes, like my old tiara, but at the shoulder, decorating edges of the hood, and at the breastplate… which would be structured on a basic level, just like this image.”

The breastplate was flat, with only a slight curve to deflect blows. A matching, briefer plate rested against the collarbone and upper breast, the bottom part overlapping and sticking up slightly.

“A bit of a warrior angel,” Weld said, turning one picture around so it was right-side-up for him.

“Without the wings. Yeah, maybe,” I said.

“Sweetie, no,” Crystal said. “You’re one of the very few capes who can get away with a breastplate that shows off the assets, because you have the forcefield. You don’t want to be pervy about it, because that’s a whole different kind of cape, but a costume should make more of what you are.”

I rolled my eyes at her.

“It would be utterly criminal if I let you do that,” she said.

I shook my head. “If any kids end up looking up to me, or if any became heroes, I don’t want them thinking that kind of armor is okay. It’s asking to get hurt.”

“It’s still way better than a bodysuit, and we’ve been wearing those for years,” Crystal said.

“I like the idea of armor. I intend to get up close and personal, and my defenses won’t always be up.”

“I know that,” Crystal said. “I can see it. But you shouldn’t hide in your costume. It shouldn’t bury you. I said the same to- I’ve said it often enough before.”

She’d said the same to Amy.

I hadn’t missed the fact that Amy had worn a hood as part of her costume.

Maybe I’d go with black cloth, applying the white trim, rather than the inverse.

“I think Victoria should dress the way she wants,” Sveta said.

“So do I,” Crystal said. “But I also think sometimes friends and family need to steer you a bit.”

“I don’t see it as hiding,” I said. “That’s not the reasoning or logic. I want the costume to have weight, while still being form-fitting at the torso and arms. Layers, armor, the hood. Breaking from the norm is important, because it makes an impact. Most of the time, you see a cape in a hood, and you naturally glance beneath, and there’s a gimmick keeping the face beneath from being seen. Another mask, or power-generated shadow, or something else. They’ll just see me. Glaring or smiling, but it could have more impact when they do.”

“No mask?” Crystal asked.

“I thought about it. I might have one for protective reasons, for intense situations or cold weather, but… it’s not me.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Spikes,” Weld said. “You want me to do those? And the breastplate?”

“I don’t have a breastplate,” I said. “Just the extra pads.”

“I can blend them into each other. The shiny coating will be pretty thin, though. I have stuff of my own.”

“Please,” I said. “That’d be amazing.”

Sveta bumped her shoulder into mine. “See? Seee? It was so good you came.”

“You sound more like Kenzie than yourself right now.”

“This is good. People! We collaborate.”

“I need more information on the spikes before I do the rough shape,” Weld said. “You made notes on this. Five spikes at the shoulder, uneven?”

“Rays more than spikes,” I said. “They space out, four, and then one shorter. Minor gap between the four and one.”

“Any reason for the short one?” Weld asked.

“Symmetry,” I said. “It curves in, so it’s more toward the front of the shoulder, and it leads into more of the same at the breastplate decoration.”

“Hmmm.”

“No?” I asked.

“Hhm. I’ll trust your instincts,” he said. “I can work faster if I heat the metal up. I’m going to go set up the forge.”

“Why barbecue when you can use lasers?” Crystal asked. “Lasers are great. We can collab and gossip like schoolgirls while these two work out their business.”

“My schoolgirl impression leaves a lot to be desired,” Weld said.

Crystal grinned. “But barbecue sounds good, while we’re on the subject. I was tempted here with food and promises of a chance to tease my cousin.”

“Ah, right. I tend to forget, because I don’t eat much,” Weld said.

“Wait, wait, wait. Promises of what?” I asked.

“Implied promises, at least,” she said.

“I can order in,” Sveta said. “We can do the teasing later.”

“You guys laugh, but I can fire back just as hard.”

“I look forward to it,” Crystal said.

They headed over to the door that led out into the backyard and the brick patio, collecting a few of the components, and paused at the door.

A kid, about five or six, was at the glass door. His mouth was pressed to the glass and he was exhaling, so his cheeks puffed out and the inside of his mouth was in plain view.

“He’s one of the kids from next door,” Sveta said. “We don’t use the backyard much, since Weld tears it up and I have a harder time walking on grass. Sometimes they say hi.”

“Open sesame!” Weld called out.

The kid hurried to obey. He milled around Weld and Crystal as they got themselves organized outside. Crystal set up a forcefield to keep the kid at bay while starting to heat up the metal. The kid seemed fascinated by the field.

Sveta and I remained on the couch, watching Weld, Crystal, and the kid through the glass.

“It’s nice, having the kids around,” Sveta said. “Annoying sometimes, but mostly nice.”

“Yeah. Do you do much with them?”

“We babysit. I have art in my room that I got from them. I gave them some back. I think it’s important. Reaching out, having that human connection, having people have good experiences with us.”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Five spikes, one shorter and set apart. Is it a hand?” Sveta asked. Her voice was quiet. For me alone. “A dangerous hand?”

“Yeah, a bit,” I said. “A bit of the sun, glory, crown of the statue of liberty motif. But the hands are- yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because sooner or later, people are going to find out about the w- about my forcefield. It might be a certain power interaction, it might be dust in the air or rain streaming down it. Maybe a person looks through a tinker lens and sees it. I’ll make my uneasy peace with it first. I want to own that side of myself, at least a little, before that happens.”

“What were you about to call it, before you stopped yourself?”

I hesitated. “The wretch.”

“Is it? A wretch? It’s strong, isn’t it? I was thinking about it, and how you carried Kenzie’s box. You used straps.”

“More about where it comes from than what it is,” I said.

“Mine is anxiety and instinct,” Sveta said. “If you ever want, I can tell you some things that Mrs. Yamada taught me. But try to figure out what it’s doing first, then figure out how to work around it.”

“Thanks,” I said. Looking for a bit of an escape or out, I reached out for the binder, and shifted its position on the table.

“Owning it sounds like a good start. That’s the last I’ll say until you ask. Now, tell me, do you have anything in here to help inspire my costume?”

“I have so much in here for your costume,” I said, smiling at least in part due to my relief that that conversation was over.

⊙

Sveta and Weld’s place had been tidy before, but it was something else by the time the next knock on the door came. Costume pieces, straps, cut cloth, paper bowls of clearly recycled paper with inauthentic Chinese food within, metal, costume notes, and two laptops.

Weld had put his music on. He had an eclectic taste, and the current song was, as close as I could place it, rock with one of the two vocalists using throat singing.

Tristan entered, carrying his bag over one shoulder. Natalie followed him in.

“Who’s this?” Crystal asked me.

“Natalie, the paralegal, and Tristan, the teammate.”

“I like Tristan’s choice in colors,” Crystal said.

I didn’t get a chance to respond, because Tristan and Natalie joined us in the living room.

“Crystal. We didn’t meet,” Tristan said. “I was watching on camera while you visited Cedar Point.”

“I love the hair,” Crystal said. “I like the color, too. I have a soft spot for boys who are brave enough to dye their hair. If only you were a bit older.”

“I’m flattered,” Tristan said. “Those aren’t the boys I tend to go after, myself, but my dating life isn’t very… alive, either.”

“Ah, is that so?” Crystal asked. “Here, come sit. I think there’s a clear space somewhere here.”

“Costume stuff, apparently. And we’ve got the munchkins on the screen,” Tristan observed. He bent down and waved for the camera that was built into the corner of the laptop. A tiny Kenzie waved back. Chris existed only in text.

“And this is Natalie,” I introduced Natalie. I wasn’t wholly sure why she was here, but Tristan had wanted to invite her, and I wasn’t about to object if he was trying another way to get her more onboard. “Mom recommended her. Natalie, this is Crystal, my cousin.”

“Pleasure,” Crystal said, half-standing to extend a hand.

Natalie shook it and gave Crystal a tight smile back. Crystal gave me a momentary glance as she sat back down.

“I’m sorry we’re such a mess right now,” Sveta said. “The apartment is usually nicer.”

“I totally understand,” Natalie said. “Don’t worry.”

“Food,” Weld said. “Help yourself, please. Sveta doesn’t eat much and it’ll go to waste otherwise. I think we kept track of the ones I ate from and put them away.”

“Why does it matter?” Tristan asked.

“I don’t have much sense of smell or taste. We’ve been exploring, and we’re getting further afield, trying things that are not so good for flesh and blood.”

“We started with capsaicin and citric acid concentrate,” Sveta said.

“Among other things,” Weld said.

“We’ll find something,” Sveta said.

“Hoping so. If it tastes funny, don’t keep eating it,” Weld said. “I think we removed all of the dishes I tried.”

“I’ll pass, thank you,” Natalie said.

Tristan sat down on the floor next to Crystal, grabbing a spare bowl, before portioning out contents.

“Any more word from our absentee?” I asked.

“Nothing except a string of seemingly random words left in case he disappears for good. It’s cryptic enough it would take some trying to find him, which I think is what he intends.”

“It might be a good thing,” Crystal said. “If they’re after him.”

“Tactically? Yes. But he’s a friend. He told me almost everything,” Tristan said. “Not this.”

I looked at the screen of the computer. Rapping my fingers against the edge of the laptop twice, I said, “C says it’s unusual for our missing member to use something that cryptic. He’s not wrong.”

“There’s a lot of unusual happening with him lately, I don’t know what conclusions to draw from that,” Tristan said. “He gives himself a hard time because he doesn’t realize that he has a lot of inner strength and a lot of general talents the rest of us don’t have. I think he’s capable enough to come out of this intact, barring the worst case scenarios.”

“I worry about the people around him, too,” I said.

“I do too,” Sveta said. She held out her arm while Weld checked the fit of a different arm encasement. His finger drawn to a point, he raked it along the metal to mark a part that needed fixing.

“We’ll figure this out,” Tristan said.

“How did the talk go?” I asked, looking between Tristan and Natalie.

“Natalie and I covered the events of the day,” Tristan said. “Byron is loaning me time so I can do more. He’ll help some tomorrow too. He’s not up for the hero thing, but this is serious enough that he’s on board. We’re a little more divided on tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Byron,” I said. “As for tomorrow, Natalie, maybe you could take a look at the proposal for the Wardens?”

I turned my laptop around for her. She took a seat on the ground to read it, no longer standing and hovering around like she didn’t know what to do with herself.

On the screen of Sveta’s laptop, Kenzie was elbow-deep in electronics, unable to type. No recent messages from Chris.

Just about everyone had their costumes ready. Kenzie was going to equip Chris with some projectors.

“Two major groups of capes,” I said. “The Fallen aren’t to be messed with. They were a minor nuisance for years, with some bad stuff going on in the background, with kidnappings, murders, mutilations of minorities, case fifty-threes included, and a lot of low-level terrorist or attention-grabbing stunts. The group we’re focusing on now, I believe, are the Mathers. Each of the major branches took an Endbringer as a theme, and the Mathers took the Simurgh.”

“The kidnappings were their thing,” Weld said. “Back in Bet, they would go after isolated capes, ages sixteen to twenty-five. These capes would be married into the family. Thirteen incidents over seven years. Three of the kidnapping victims stayed. Three died. The rest escaped, were released, or were freed by PRT intervention. The PRT tried to go after them, but they moved frequently and they had anti-thinker measures in place.”

“It stands to reason they still have them,” I said. Because Rain had been hiding among them.

“Stands to reason,” Tristan said. “Looksee, that means you keep cameras off of the Fallen, unless we give the all clear. We don’t know if it goes through cameras, and your cameras are weird enough it might be more dangerous.”

Kenzie took her hands off of her work to type. Protests, it seemed.

“We’ll present our situation to the Wardens and we’ll do what we can to get them on board. Whether we get them or not, we’ll have some priorities, small scale and big, and they’ll be what we default to if we’re caught in the moment.”

“May I?” Tristan asked, scooting over and shifting the laptop so it was at a middle ground where both he and Natalie could read it. Natalie gave him an annoyed look. “You wrote them down. Good.”

I leaned forward. “This attack on the Fallen? It’s villains looking for validation and a chance to show their stuff, and a lot of natural and justified hate for the Fallen. They’re an acceptable target, and the Hollow Point group wants to show they’re a force unto themselves. Part of the group will be going after our teammate, unfortunately, and we can’t control that directly. But he’s not the focus of the larger group.”

“We’ll trust him, that he knows what he’s doing, if he’s hiding,” Tristan said.

“We have to, your buddy Chris says,” Crystal said.

“I was gracefully avoiding mentioning that, Chris,” Tristan said.

I went on, “Depending on how the scenario unfolds, we may need to evacuate bystanders. The Hollow Point group is attacking the compound. They arrived in cars, they had low-tier members out gassing up the cars for a trip, so we can assume they’ll drive and they’ll arrive at the compound, taking action from there. They’ll probably split up, with teams that know each other sticking together.”

“Factions within the group,” Sveta said. “Already some infighting.”

“Yep. I emailed people my last draft of the document. It covers the groups to expect. Read it tonight or early tomorrow. In a big engagement, we can’t just throw ourselves into the skirmish and hope things will resolve themselves,” I said. “Tristan is more comfortable managing the group in the heat of the fight, I think. I can give a bird’s eye view, and I’ll communicate what I can. If I can’t solve an emerging problem myself, I’ll try to give direction to those who can.”

“Are the younger members of the group participating?” Natalie asked.

“Not directly,” I said. “We talked about it. We’ll do the same as we did in Cedar Point yesterday. Looksee as toolbox, if she participates it’ll be as a projection, and we’ll keep her removed from the Fallen. She focuses more on the Hollow Point group. C runs interference.”

“Text from Looksee,” Crystal reported. “She says her mom can drop her off with her projector. That’s an adorable image, a cape being dropped off by a parent.”

“Not so adorable,” Tristan said.

“She wants to know if you can carry her projector in.”

“You’re the one carrying it,” Tristan said, to me.

“Not in,” I said. “We’ll bring it and keep it near our retreat, so we have a point to fall back to.”

“Alright. What does Looksee think?”

“She says that’s fine,” Crystal said.

“The focus in big engagements is to identify the points we can change, and act on them,” I said. “Rescue and civilians will be a continuous one.”

Natalie moved the laptop, turning it toward Tristan.

“You’re done?” I asked.

“I read it. I didn’t get into the list of capes, but I read about the ones in charge.”

“And?”

“I think the justifications for getting involved are sound. That depends on what the Wardens say, mind you. If they don’t agree, I don’t agree either. It does seem to me, however, that it seems like the kind of thing where heroes are very badly needed. I hope you get their help.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I don’t think the younger members of the group should be involved.”

“Looksee will be more or less remote,” Tristan said. “Creepy kid will be venturing in only when we give the a-ok.”

“As… Sudden Shock and Deep Reflection?”

“I guess,” Tristan said.

“If the Youth Guard were active, they’d say no,” Natalie said.

“Can you mute the laptop so they don’t hear?” Tristan asked.

Crystal covered the microphone on the laptop with her hand.

“Natalie,” Tristan said. “If they Youth Guard were active, they’d say no, and the kids would get involved anyway. That was a thing that happened in my experience.”

“Oh man, my brother and I gave everyone headaches,” Crystal said. “Our grades dropped and our parents were told we had to give up the costumes for a few months until we pulled them back up. Our parents, the Youth Guard, even the PRT was asked to keep an eye out for us. We were scoundrels.”

“Right?” Tristan asked.

Crystal took her hand away from the microphone. Both Chris and Kenzie were protesting at length about being deafened for that segment of conversation, with lines of chat appearing so fast they were hard to read. Kenzie seemed to mostly enjoy joining her voice to Chris’.

“I’ve given my advice.”

“They’re members of the team,” Sveta said. “We’ll keep them safe.”

Natalie pursed her lips but didn’t say anything.

“Let’s talk about major objectives,” I said. “On the small scale, we help the civilians. Pulling away from that, there are a few worst case scenarios here.”

⊙

“Major objectives,” I said. “Containment, control, resolution.”

It was late, and the light from the windows were dark. The administration in charge of the Wardens were sitting at the tables in front of us, to our left, and to our right. Chevalier and Valkyrie were present, sitting directly in front of me. Legend’s seat was empty. I saw the name plate for Chief Armstrong, white haired with a very pronounced chin and a crooked nose. He looked more like a mad scientist or a quirky grandfather than a major figure in the cape scene.

Some of them had laptops or tablets. Chevalier was one of them. He’d taken off his gold and silver helmet and wore a cloth mask beneath. Not his serious armor set. Valkyrie was in full costume, helmet on, and had no technology. She did have a a specter standing just behind her right shoulder. A man with a hazy silhouette.

I wore my costume. The white decorative trim on the black fabric was missing, and I planned more ornamentation for my gloves, but the rest was intact. Spires of gold like my old tiara stood up at my shoulders, the middle-center of my breastplate, and decorated the armor around my legs and on my gloves. The decoration at my forehead was a weight that kept my hood down, and my hair draped out over my right shoulder. A protective mask hung from my belt, the curved surface resting around the curve of my thigh. I’d don it if there was danger, and if I didn’t need to speak.

The costume had a weight to it. It felt almost right.

“Talk to me about containment,” Chevalier said.

“The worst case scenarios here are that this becomes a problem for the city,” I said. “If the Fallen lose but aren’t wiped out, precedent suggests they’ll hit back harder. We could expect guerilla tactics throughout the city, terror attacks, and a hit against Cedar Point in particular.”

“The area that has been colloquially named Hollow Point,” a woman said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Capricorn answered.

“We’ll be operating from the perimeter, because getting into the thick of the situation would be beyond our abilities. Part of our aim will be to keep Fallen from splintering away to regroup and lash out. We’ll have a tinker trap waiting on the main road out of the area, and we’ll have eyes on the logging roads.”

“Does this perimeter extend to containing the villains of Hollow Point?” a man in a suit asked. “If they rush in… does this tinker trap trap them there?”

I looked to my left, where Capricorn stood in his armor, then to my right, where Sveta was. She’d donned some decorative additions. As I wore spikes that echoed the wretch’s hands, Sveta wore armor that curved and curled away.

Kenzie was workshopping and had an earlier bedtime. Chris had wanted to come, but we hadn’t been able to get him in costume, and having him around and uncostumed wasn’t a good look when we wanted to present our best face.

He’d been a little upset.

“We debated that,” Capricorn ventured. “Our instinct is that Cedar Point’s villains would get desperate, if they were trapped on hostile territory. That would risk civilian well being. The trap is a soft deterrent more than anything else. We think we’d let them go rather than try to force it, but we decided we’d leave it up to you, should the Wardens decide to get involved.”

“Then we will get back to you with our thoughts, should we decide to get involved,” the man said. Tristan ducked his head in acknowledgement.

“Control,” Chevalier said.

“The document we sent you outlines a few priority targets to watch out for. In the old days, their wiki pages would have had warnings. Our focus is more on Cedar Point than on the Fallen, because we have an incomplete picture of the latter. These people are more likely to hurt civilians, and they’re likely to escalate the situation. If we can target them and remove them from the picture, we will. We have a contact keeping an eye on them already.”

“We could supply what we have on this group of the Fallen,” Chevalier said. “Whether or not we get involved, I think we lose very little by rounding out your knowledge there.”

He checked with others, and got nods of affirmation.

I felt my heart skip a beat. Whether they agreed or not, they weren’t saying no. They weren’t telling us to go away and mind our own business.

“Thank you,” I said, once I found the words.

Capricorn spoke up, “Our goal with control is to keep an eye out for anything that would make the situation that much worse. If we take out or hamper these problem elements, the situation is free to wind down. If we don’t, there’s a risk it perpetuates, and that’s something we want to avoid.”

“Resolution, then,” Chevalier said.

I was so glad I’d outlined things as Weld suggested, with clear objectives and scenario outlined in the first few pages. Chevalier was really using them as guideposts, picking up whenever nobody else was talking, keeping the meeting running smoothly.

“What resolution do you want?”

“We want a resolution,” I said. “If this ends and the Fallen aren’t wiped out, they’ll hit back. The city suffers. If it ends and they are wiped out, Cedar Point is going to become something more pronounced. We’ll want to be mindful of who is in play, and who might take charge of that.”

“As things come closer to a conclusion, we may take a role,” Capricorn said. “If we’re strong enough, and if we have the resources, we could clean up those who are left.”

“That’s a stretch,” Sveta said. She hadn’t said much, but I had the impression she was intimidated by the room. “We focus on civilians first. We’d need a lot of firepower before we can think about handling that kind of clean-up.”

“We’re not in a position to give you a lot of firepower,” Chevalier said, emphasizing ‘lot’. “Valkyrie cannot engage that group of Fallen, and I’m tied up elsewhere with diplomatic roles. Many other Wardens and subordinate teams are busy. Advance Guard is on standby. We’ll ask them to assist you.”

I don’t want them, I thought.

“We have junior Wardens, as well. They’ll assist. We’ll let them know tonight and they’ll be at your disposal tomorrow.”

Them, I wanted. It meant Weld. It meant potential others, who I knew and very much respected.

“Thank you,” Tristan said, my voice and Sveta’s only a bit behind his.

“You’re right about this. We knew something was stirring, but we didn’t have the impression it was this bad. I’ve been keeping updated on the Fallen, I can’t promise it’s accurate, but you should know the families interact. There may be one or more of the Crowley sub-branches present. They also associate with various biker gangs, the various racist factions, and other religious villain groups and ideologues. Be prepared for any of them.”

“Yes sir,” Tristan said.

“In case of emergency, if you find you’re in over your head, leave. Retreat, wash your hands of it. Your lives come first.”

Sveta and I nodded, as Tristan said, “Yes sir,” again.

“I think those are my thoughts,” Chevalier said. “Any further comments? Anyone?”

Some heads shook. Others were silent.

He fixed his eyes on us. “Any final thoughts, concerns? Anything not in this document we should know, or anything you’ve learned since writing it?”

There were a few somethings in the document we hadn’t mentioned or outlined in full.

We’d mentioned Rain, though not by name, as only a contact in the Fallen, who might or might not have been compromised. I’d detailed how we had someone, Ashley, acting on our behalf in Cedar Point, and how we might have Rain in the Fallen camp when we took action. It would give us more control over the situation, if we had that information and those levers to pull.

We could have said more about Rain, and we hadn’t. Rescuing him was a mission statement.

We hadn’t said one word about the therapy group, or our individual issues and crises.

Much as I’d wondered if I should mention my time in the hospital during job interviews or when applying to teams, I’d been left the question of it here, standing before the committee.

I could be honest, say something, and they almost certainly wouldn’t let us do this. I could have mentioned my background when applying to teams, and I would have had even worse luck joining them.

Or I could stay silent.

“No,” Sveta said. Her voice was soft in what someone else might have mistaken for timidity. I knew she was nervous, but I didn’t think it was timidity. She was thinking the same thing I was.

“No sir,” Tristan said, with confidence.

“No,” I said, adding my lie to theirs.

Shadow – 5.7

It was an overcast day. Our nights were dark with the city power rationed and most apartments and businesses left unlit, and emerging from that to a day where the sun couldn’t shine through had an effect on the mood of the Megalopolis.

I was fully in costume, and I was surrounded by people who weren’t. New Haven wasn’t the closest settlement to the Fallen camp, but it was close enough that people were bound to pass through. It was the time of afternoon where everyone who had work was working, too late for lunch, too early to end the work day.

There were still people at the coffee shop, favoring very relaxed clothing. Some were students, part of one block or another, with no work for them for the moment. Most were keeping an eye on me.

Image was so important. I had my hood down, because it was large and heavy enough to be warm, and I didn’t want sweat in my eyes later, when it mattered. Having the hood down and the metal mask at my belt meant that I could present a fairly friendly face.

The coffee shop was somewhat industrial in feel, with a floor of poured concrete that had been altered after pouring to give it a look very similar to wooden floorboards. The bottom half of the employee’s counter and the counters that jutted out from the walls with stools lined up beneath them were more concrete. Everything else was wood.

I waited in line like everyone else, encouraging the woman in front of me to stay in line when she offered to let me cut ahead. It could have been fear, respect, or help. Free coffee for the cop or feeling the pressure of a parahuman standing behind her.

There were looks from people who were clearly bothered by my being around. There wasn’t much I could do about that.

On the other side of the coin, one of the teenagers who weren’t in school was trying to surreptitiously take a picture of me with his phone, which I noticed because the girl sitting next to him kept jostling him and trying to get him to put it down. Interest of the positive but borderline troubling sort.

I was reminded to check my phone. Kenzie was only a little way away, and was messaging to ask where to meet. It looked like Tristan had it handled.

The woman in front of me finished collecting her order.Two boxes of donuts and other assorted breakfast desserts, stacked on top of one another and tied with twine, and one thing of coffees, plastic with four cup-holders and a handle in the middle. I already had a soft drink, and I wedged it between the coffees before picking it all up.

“Are there others in town?” the barista asked.

“Others?”

“Capes?”

“We’re passing through,” I said. I keyed my voice to be audible by others. We were close enough to the Fallen camp it wasn’t out of the question that they would have people planted here to keep an eye out for trouble.

“Okay. A lot of the ones who show up cause problems.”

That would be because this area of the city was relatively close to this group of the Fallen. There was another that was even closer to them, but it was small and somewhat disconnected from the city. A few houses, a gas station that doubled as a hardware supply and grocery store, and a dentist’s. Here, at least, there was a place to watch movies. I could imagine Rain’s peers piling into cars and driving into the town, and the headaches that no doubt followed.

“I’m more interested in solutions than problems,” I said.

She smiled slightly. Her eye flicked to the next customer, and I took that as my cue to get out of line.

“Have a nice day,” I said.

As I turned around, the teenager at the one table put his phone down. His female friend looked unimpressed with him.

“Want a photo?” I asked him.

“Hm? No.”

“He does,” the girl said, sounding as displeased as she’d looked.

“Here,” I said. I put the donuts and coffee down on an empty chair on their table. I stepped back a bit, then flew, so my toe was barely touching the ground, my other leg bent slightly. I turned my body so the white gold color of my breastplate would catch the light coming in through the window. I put my hood up, and the ornament at the peak of the hood with rays forking up slapped my forehead.

I’d need to figure out something to do about that.

He had his phone up by the time I settled into my pose, both hands on my hood, the parallel spikes that extended up from my shoulder now pointing back.

“Got it,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Can I see?” I asked.

He showed me.

“Is something happening?” he asked.

“Somewhere else,” I said. “I’ve got a ways to go to get there, though.”

Not technically a lie.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m figuring that out,” I said. “But I’m thinking I’ll name myself after a star.”

“Cool,” he said.

“And I should get this to my people,” I said, dropping out of my flight and rapping a finger on the lid of my cup. “You take care.”

“You too,” he said, a grin passing over his face. He nudged his friend. “See, told you it wasn’t a big deal.”

“Could’ve been,” she said. She shot me a smile. “Sorry about him. Bye.”

I winked at her before collecting my things and heading for the door.

It was stupid and people had probably been rolling their eyes at me in there, but I was left smiling. I liked being in costume again.

I kicked off of the ground and flew skyward.

The others would be arriving. Friendly faces. Some unfriendly ones. New Haven was our meeting place. There was a portal here, and it was one I was familiar with. If I didn’t want to go through the portal in New Brockton, but I wanted to go to Brockton Bay, this had been the most convenient option. It had been where the patrol block passed through and focused most of its work.

Speaking of.

I found my place in the town and spotted the bus. New paint, some windows covered up rather than replaced, but it was the bus. I flew to it, timing my landing so I landed next to it while it was at a stop sign.

The door opened with an agonized sound that suggested some repairs still needed to be done. Jasper was in the front seat.

“Hi,” I said. A hand covered in coarse hair appeared from the side, giving a wave, and I poked my head in to see. Gilpatrick was sitting in the seat just in front of the stairs. Bald, bushy eyebrows, hairy arms, and Patrol outfit. I gave him a small wave back.

“Hi,” Jasper said. “You look way different.”

“Should we get out?” Gilpatrick asked.

“Not unless you have questions,” I said. “You got the documents?”

“Yes,” Gilpatrick said. “New Haven patrol is already at the location. Others are still to arrive. We’ll coordinate and figure out where we need to go once everyone’s here.”

“Don’t take the main road north or east. Take the dirt road to go east instead of the highway. The road you want to go down doesn’t have a name. Just turn northward at the giant cow.”

“Giant cow?” Jasper asked.

“Wood. Someone had to be the first to build a giant cow, I guess,” I said.

“In a time when resources are scarce and we need to do all the building we can, someone built a giant cow?” Jasper asked.

“Let it go,” Gilpatrick said.

“Here,” I said. I stepped into the bus, put the box down, and used one of the back-swept spikes of metal on my glove to cut the twine. I handed Gilpatrick the box.

“Thank you.”

“Stay safe,” I said.

“Hey, before you go,” Jasper said. He adjusted his sleeve.

“Don’t,” someone said, behind him.

His sleeve up, he turned around to show me. A playing card, with a jester’s cap on it. ‘Jester’ was spelled out beneath.

“Everyone’s giving me shit about it,” he said, but he smiled.

“You actually did it,” I said. “You like it?”

“Yeah.”

“Then that’s what’s important.”

He smiled. “Yeah.”

“Are they calling you Jester like you wanted?”

“They have to, don’t they?” he asked, still smiling.

“Yes they do.”

“Don’t encourage him,” Gilpatrick said. “Get in touch after, okay? We’ll chat about how it went, catch up.”

“Will do. Thanks for everything,” I said.

“Anytime.”

I collected the remaining box of donuts and the tray of coffee. I flew back and out the door of the bus rather than back down the stairs. The door was still closing, screeching shut, as Jester put the bus into motion.

The patrol would be part of our extended perimeter. Evacuating the citizens and containing the problem to just the Fallen camp were almost mutually exclusive things. We couldn’t let people go without risking that they’d cause trouble elsewhere. We’d funnel them into the patrol block.

It’d be three buses or vans filled with young men and women. All would be seventeen and older, uniformed, with guns and some semblance of an idea what to do. There would be instructors, many of whom were ex-PRT, and many graduates.

The others had already gathered, situating themselves in a parking lot with aborted construction of a store partially blocking them from view. Kenzie had arrived, and laid down at the back of the van, helmet off, legs bent at the knee and dangling over the bumper. A woman that was very clearly her mother stood a few feet away, her back to the open van door. Tristan, Sveta, and Chris were there, standing a distance away. Only Chris was uncostumed. He wore a beige sweatshirt with the hood up, and jeans. The ‘sash’ he kept with him for wearing in costume was wrapped around his shoulders like a scarf.

I landed.

“There you are,” Tristan said.

“I spotted Gilpatrick. Two of our four truckloads of Patrol guys are here. The other two are on schedule, I think.”

“Are those donuts?” Chris asked.

“And coffees, with one soft drink,” I said.

I handed over the box, giving Chris his soft drink. I distributed the coffees, giving one to Sveta and one to Tristan. Kenzie pulled on her helmet and jumped out of the back of the van, running past her mother.

“You sure you don’t want a drink?” I asked Kenzie. I’d asked in earlier phone conversation.

“Have stuff in the car.”

I looked back toward the ‘car’, the van, and made eye contact with Mrs. Martin.

Steel rings at the back of Mrs. Martin’s head kept her dreads away from her face in a deliberately messy style, the metal of the rings a contrast to the hair and the skin that was closer to real black than brown. A series of steel bangles hung from her neck and one wrist, carrying on the aesthetic.

She wore an amazing bohemian-style top, predominantly red, the pattern detailed, the fabric as light and loose as it could be without floating off of her. The sleeves were cut so they technically stopped at the elbow, but the excess fabric at the bottom edge of the sleeve was such that it grazed the skin of her legs, beneath her shorts. Her sandals were stamped straps of red leather that went from her toes to encircle her ankle, red on black skin.

She was young enough she might well have been a teenager when she had Kenzie, clearly fashionable, she was slim, and she had more poise than some superheroes I knew.

Put all of those things aside, and she could have been any parent at a PTA meeting, with stress lines in her face that didn’t match her age, and a rather normal face beneath her very striking makeup.

“Mrs. Martin?” I asked.

“Irene,” she said.

“Hi Irene, I’m Victoria.” I smiled and put out my hand to shake hers. She didn’t shake mine so much as she put her fingers in my palm. A little bit at a loss of what to do, I shook it as best as I could. She took it in stride.

A bit of a diva.

“I love this,” she said. She brushed her fingers down the front of my breastplate, then plucked at the fabric of my sleeve.

“It’s new. Made it yesterday.”

“In one day?”

“Kind of. It was a group effort.”

“We added to my suit too,” Sveta said.

Kenzie’s mother gave Sveta a careful look. Sveta’s body had curls and sweeping lines extending up from the shoulder, out from the elbow, and out of the collar of her top, which was more of a costume top than her other clothes. All had been painted.

“It’s good work,” Kenzie’s mother said.

“My mom is kind of an artist,” Kenzie said, as she came back from the donut box, two donuts in hand. “She works with my dad right now. She does interior decorating. She makes houses look nice for sale, dad sells them, and she helps the families find the kinds of things they want after they buy.”

“I’m an aesthete, not an artist,” Kenzie’s mom said. “I appreciate others work and do what I can to make others appreciate those works. I can’t create much of my own.”

“Aesthete,” Kenzie said. “Got it. Do you want a donut, mom?”

“No,” her mother said.

“You mean ‘no thank you’,” Kenzie said.

Her mother gave her a look.

“Manners, please,” Kenzie said. “We’re with my friends. Don’t embarrass me.”

Irene Martin clapped her hands together, sharp, and turned to me with a smile. “I don’t want to fight. Are we going to get this machine out of the back?”

A part of me wanted to address the aborted conversation, but Tristan jumped in before I could.

“I gave it a shot, Victoria, but I’m far from being strong enough,” Tristan said.

I glanced at Kenzie, who smiled. I decided to let the subject drop.

“I strapped it up before I wheeled it in,” Kenzie said. “I hope that helps.”

“It does,” I said. “Out of the way.”

They stood back.

I hope you like the costume I made for us, I thought, as I released the wretch. As far as I could understand it, I was effectively wearing clothing with room for three of me, too many sleeves, too many pants legs. I was putting my hands through two sleeves, into the matching gloves, and I had the benefit of the strength. If I was quick, I could do things before the other arms and legs started moving about, around me, in front of me, behind me.

I hauled it back as smoothly as I could. The others backed away more as I brought the large cube out onto the ground.

Mrs. Martin adjusted the back of the van to fix the ramp. She turned around. “You have what you need?”

Kenzie climbed into the back and came out with some smaller cases. She put both donuts into her mouth, biting down into them to hold them, so her hands were free enough that she could pull three straps over her head. She retrieved the donuts. “Yes.”

Her mother shut the van door.

“I won’t be home for dinner, probably,” Kenzie said.

“Will you need another ride?”

“Probably not. I’ll make my own way back. I’ll be late. You and dad can have a date night or something.”

Irene Martin didn’t respond to that. She glanced at the other members of the group.

“It’s just a suggestion,” Kenzie said.

“You wouldn’t tell me what this is, but it’s serious, isn’t it?”

Kenzie groaned.

“Is it?”

“It’s pretty serious.”

“Will I get a phone call tonight, telling me you’re in the hospital?”

Kenzie groaned louder. “Go. Thank you for the ride. Enjoy your day. Enjoy time with dad. Okay? You don’t have me around to bother you.”

Irene Martin threw her hands up. Kenzie gave her a push, and Irene walked around to the driver’s side. She turned around there. “Victoria?”

“Yes?”

“You could come over for dinner some night.”

“Yes,” Kenzie said. She did a double take, between her mom and me, then turned to me and said, “You could.”

“I-” I started. I wanted to connect to the team, help them, and divine any underlying crises or subterfuge. It was the first time I’d seen the two of them even remotely on the same page. It seemed fine. “Sure.”

Kenzie pumped both fists.

Irene Martin pulled away. I turned to face the other members of the group; Tristan, Sveta, and Chris were very different people, and all faced me with expressions of alarm and horror.

“Yes, awesome,” Kenzie said, as she joined the group, depositing her things. “I can show you my main workshop. We could have a great dinner, my parents are top notch cooks. Do you like pasta?”

“I do, yes.”

“There’s a dish I love and we haven’t had it in months because I couldn’t find a good place for Italian sausage, but I did the research on my own and found one place with good reviews. I could ask my mom to make it. Oh, and you like cape stuff, I have some magazines, and if you want them for your collection, we could collab.”

Chris approached.

“My mom seemed to like you a lot, I haven’t ever known her to do that before. A lot of people-”

Chris took Kenzie’s hand. Her eyes lit up as she kept talking.

“-seem to like her a lot, she’s a charmer, but she hasn’t invited-”

He maneuvered the donut Kenzie was holding into her mouth.

“-amfohn oher beguh,” Kenzie said, around the donut.

“Don’t talk while you eat,” Chris said. “You’ll choke.”

Kenzie nodded.

“Let’s focus on the mission,” Chris said.

Kenzie nodded.

Tristan provided the update on where things stood. “Advance Guard is here. They didn’t want to meet. They’ll go to the north end of the compound and work south from there. The Wardens’ backup are running late. Transportation issues.”

“And Rain?” I asked.

“No update,” Sveta said.

“Ashley?”

“One message. She saw the clairvoyants getting ready and she took the opportunity to send something. She’s on her way. Beast of Burden and his group are participating, but they’re not cooperating with Prancer’s group. They’ll be independent and it sounds like they’re out for blood.”

“Let’s get this thing situated, while we still have a chance,” I said.

⊙

A convoy of vehicles traveled down the highway. The cars ranged from the sleek and black to the ones that hadn’t weathered the end of the world so well.

Kenzie’s camera tracked them. There were several pickups, and some members of the various factions stood on the backs of the pickups, hair or capes flapping in the wind. One pickup had Moose in the back, with Etna sitting in front of him. Another had Beast of Burden, who was heavy enough the truck couldn’t bring others. He wasn’t huge, but the armor had heft and the back of the truck rode low to the ground.

Ashley was sitting in the passenger window of a vehicle, one of the three rustier, more worn out vehicles in Beast of Burden’s convoy. One hand maintained her grip, so she could have her head and upper body outside the vehicle, hand out in the wind, hair flapping in the wind behind her.

Behind them, four mutant dogs the size of cars were running at a speed that kept up with the cars. They were meat and armor plates, with no rhyme or rhythm, for the most part. We weren’t in a position to zoom in or get any detailed looks, but I knew from past experience that up close, the meat would look like something between raw meat from an animal that had just been flayed, and the scale of a crocodile, dark and condensed down. One of the dogs, the one Bitch rode, was different from the others, symmetrical, leaner.

There were other cameras, but with only laptops to go by, we didn’t have a lot of screen real estate to go between them.

I hit the spacebar on the keyboard of my laptop. The camera switched to an overhead view of the dirt road outside the Fallen compound. We had the information on the Fallen the Wardens had provided. The address was one part of it.

We also had some notes on the parahumans within. A lot of them were strong.

Nobody was emerging from the Fallen’s area. There were no visits to the nearby town with its gas station, no visits to New Haven, and nobody going to work.

Kenzie’s cube was off to the side of the road, set in a ditch surrounded by tall grass. I’d dropped straight in and flown straight up and out to minimize any scent trails and tracks.

I hit the spacebar again.

The Patrol. They were settled at the edge of the woods, gathered in small groups that formed a loose line. Vehicles were parked, boxes placed on the ground and used as seats.

I struck the key once more.

Advance Guard were more focused on the mission. Mayday was doing a lot of talking, while Mapwright went around touching people. Each person she touched had their eyes flare pink. The organization of the group was interesting to see, with the core members at the middle, others forming a loose ring around them, and the peripheral and utility members, I was assuming, at the very fringes, forming a second ring.

I hit spacebar.

Back to the first feed.

Alt-tab, and I switched to an overhead map. Advance Guard had sent it to us in a message. It gave a view of the forest and roads, lines struck out for cliffs or other barriers. She’d avoided detailing the settlement itself.

We had the details. Thinkers had always avoided scanning for the Mathers family because using a thinker power on or near them had a way of causing severe problems for the thinker. A strapped to a hospital bed screaming kind of severe.

I alt-tabbed back to the video. Tattletale either wasn’t present, or was in a car, not on a dog. I studied the cars until I was pretty sure I recognized the one from the night prior.

“They’re here.”

I was bewildered on two counts. That I heard Tristan’s voice but it sounded off, in a way that made me think someone had died or something had gone wrong. The other half of it was that I thought he meant the villains. Tattletale. Here somehow at the same time they were clearly elsewhere, on the video on my laptop.

It wasn’t Tristan speaking oddly, but Byron speaking normally. His armor was the same general style as Tristan’s, but it had a blue tint, and it was scale, not plate, with fins and conch spirals instead of spiraling horns.

And it wasn’t the villains, who had somehow traveled the rest of the distance. It was the Wardens.

I smiled. “Good to hear. How are you doing?”

“Nervous. I think the kids are too.”

The kids were sitting with their backs to the side of the building-in-progress. Nobody had come into the parking lot since we’d arrived. Kenzie and Chris were chatting. They’d decimated most of a box of twelve donuts between them.

“Yeah,” I said. How much destructive power was packed into those cars, with those dogs? How much was packed into that compound of Fallen?

I folded up my laptop and slid it into my bag. I deposited it with Kenzie’ stuff.

“Anything I can do?” I asked.

“Do?”

“To help you be less nervous. To make this easier.”

Byron shook his head.

“I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you being here too, Tristan, I know you’ve been part of this since the beginning, but it matters. It matters more that you’re willing to make this leap, Byron.”

“I was a hero once. I wasn’t that bad at it,” Byron said. “I don’t want kids and innocents to get hurt. I happen to think… a big way for kids and innocents to not get hurt is for this team to have never happened.”

“We’re doing something good here, today,” I said.

“And I’m here,” Byron said. He shrugged, and his armor made a sound at the gesture.

I didn’t have a response for that. I got my things together and beckoned the kids. As we walked beneath the building, Sveta dropped down from the roof, reeling in her arms with enough force she wobbled mid-step.

The Wardens were a block away.

Narwhal. A big name. She was tall and her horn exaggerated that fact. Her body was covered in scintillating shards of forcefield that looked grey-blue in the light from the sky above.

Weld was there. He had a bag with him that had to have weighed a hundred pounds. Gear for a teammate.

There were seven others. They were faces I didn’t recognize.

And, last but not least, Vista. She had to be seventeen now. As old as I’d been when I’d been hospitalized. She’d updated her costume to show the skin she hadn’t been able to show as a Ward, with legs bare, shoulders and arms uncovered, and she’d dressed up other parts, with new gloves and boots with less cloth and more armor, and a redecoration of the breastplate, so it had grooves running through it. There was a texture to her visor, to the point that it just looked like a pane of opaque green glass, etched with ripples. She had a scarf loose around her shoulders more than her neck, which made me think of Miss Militia.

“Hey, little V,” I said. “Not so little anymore.”

“Hey big V,” she said. “What a time to meet, huh? We need to hang out.”

“We do. So much,” I said.

She approached and gave me a hug, the breastplate of her armor clacking against mine. She squeezed me and I squeezed her back.

“I heard you were better,” she said, quiet.

“Great to see you,” I said. “It seems a lot of other Brockton Bay names are appearing.”

“Tattletale. Rachel. Foil. The other Undersiders.”

“Yeah,” I said.

We broke the hug. She gave my arm a pat as she stepped back. Weld clasped my hand. His other arm was already around Sveta.

“You’re down for this?” I asked.

“You know I am,” Weld said.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “Point me at the bad guys. I’ll turn their world upside-down.”

“They’ll be here in a minute,” I said. Tristan wasn’t here, so I was the de-facto leader on our side. “You’ve read the doc?”

“Yes,” Narwhal said. “Vista, would you do us the honors?”

We weren’t far from the edge of New Haven. The surroundings began to distort.

“My cameras!” Looksee cried out. “Ugggh. They don’t like so many powers and so many of those powers are from your city.”

“You’re staying, Looksee,” I said. “Narwhal, do you have a group hanging back?”

“Our thinker and our blaster,” Narwhal said. “They’ll keep your tinker safe.”

“Don’t talk their ear off, Looksee,” Chris said.

“My cameras do not know how to deal with this power,” Kenzie said, oblivious.

The space ahead of us continued to fold into itself. Street, road, grass, trees and field all compressed. The effect was to create something that looked almost like a portal.

Two portals, I realized. The angle of the other wasn’t clear, to the point the distortions masked it.

Our groups parted ways. From a city under an overcast sky to foliage. The forest was dark. Chris was the first to walk through. Eager, even.

“Phones on vibrate, careful from this point forward,” I said. I changed my phone.

Sveta, Byron and I passed through, entering the forest at the periphery of the Fallen camp. Paths cut between the trees, left by animals and not people.

It was dark, and for the most part, we were well camouflaged, in the dark.

Ahead of us, Chris was crouching. He had a hand at the corner of his mouth, and he was working out the wire from his external braces. His mouth yawned open and he looked incredibly uncomfortable as he adjusted, head twisting this way and that.

From the central pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, he pulled out a disc. He tapped it twice. A projection wrapped around him. Camouflage.

It didn’t make him transparent. It did seem to pull things from his surroundings and create a patchwork exterior. Bark, grass, greenery, a slice of fur. The patches didn’t line up, so it looked more like a nature-themed scrapbook collage than a second skin.

I saw him part his lips in a smile, and the projection disc seemed to take a moment to remember what teeth and braces were. The teeth were there on their own, then they became part of the collage. The metal bits of the braces, sans wire, were next.

He had a second disc. He pressed a button.

A projection of Looksee appeared, crouching as well.

“Cameras are showing them on their way. I’m putting it through to your phones, but it might be-”

Chris adjusted something on the disc. The volume of Looksee’s voice dropped second by second.

Nearly mute, she turned to Chris, hands on her hips.

“If she’s reporting something, let her,” I said.

I pulled out my phone.

The camera footage flickered violently, with patches here and there where undulating lines of code flashed pink against a red background. What I could see at the fringes were that Hollow Point’s convoy was a minute away.

If the shrinking of the glitchy area on the phone was any indication, Vista’s adjustments would be gone by the time the villains turned up.

“I’ll let my brother take point. We trade places as we need to,” Byron said. “We’ll play this by ear, like we used to. Remember that innocent lives are on the line. Even among the Fallen.”

He blurred.

“They’re our priority,” I said.

“Deal,” Tristan said, as he settled in. He was just a hair more obvious than Byron had been, with the red tint to the metal, standing amid a forest of greens, browns, and grays.

Her volume back to ninety percent of normal, Kenzie reported, “Advance Guard is at the twelve o’clock, Wardens to the nine. We’ve got the five o’clock point, road is to our north at the four, running into the camp from the east. The Patrol block is on standby at the two.”

I mentally mapped it out.

“I’ll save my changes,” Chris said. He moved into an area of deeper shadow, and the projection overadjusted for a moment. “For now, I’ll skulk. I’m good at skulking.”

I frowned at him. “You hang back. Your job is to escort people out. Direct them to the Patrol group, who can figure out how to deal with them.”

“I know,” he said. “I can do other stuff.”

The phone wasn’t quite as good a view as the laptop had been. The images were squashed, the figures too small to easily make out. I saw the white blur of Ashley’s hair, saw her disappear into the vehicle.

The dogs lagged behind the cars and trucks. Some of the cars fell behind as well.

As the majority of the convoy turned north off of the highway, Tattletale’s group, dogs included, continued on into New Haven.

“Be safe, Looksee,” I said. “There’s a not insignificant chance she’d target you and use you to find Rain. They have the dogs.”

The projection of Looksee nodded.

The convoy continued to disintegrate. The road as the road made its gradual turn, where it would stab into the Fallen camp from the east. Whoever Beast of Burden had driving was happy to ignore the road and drive into field. Truck tires spun through mud, kicking up detritus.

Depending on where they came in, they might run into the Patrol block.

The bulk, however, were heading down the main dirt road into the camp.

“Tattletale is parking,” Looksee reported. “They planned to situate themselves around here.”

“Shh,” I said.

I could hear the crackle of stones being kicked up by tires on the dirt road, tires tearing through loose terrain.

I could see them. A hundred feet away, barely visible through the gaps in the trees, they were going way too fast down the unfamiliar road.

When the last of the vehicles passed us, we moved toward them, so we’d be at their tail. Chris’ temporary projection-costume altered rapidly to absorb the surroundings. It got weird here and there where it caught a flash of Tristan’s armor or my face.

I heard the distant detonation that marked the first shot fired, the start of the war between the Hollow and the Fallen. I couldn’t tell if it was a trap laid for the vehicles or a power used by the raiding attackers.

We picked up speed. I took flight, and flew fast enough through the trees that I needed to put my hands out, touching and deflecting trees in passing.

My plan was to draw close enough that I could identify what was happening. That would let me help coordinate the group.

If one side was clearly overwhelmed from the start, it dramatically changed how we would be approaching this. The Fallen being annihilated was bad in its own way, much as Hollow Point’s group being annihilated. One suggested civilians would die at the hands of reckless attackers. The other promised retaliation from the defending party, aimed at a nonspecific enemy.

There was something that mandated a change in our approach, from the very moment the explosion sounded and the engagement was started. It wasn’t what I’d expected.

Gunfire. From both sides.

Shadow – 5.8

The gunfire continued. I flew back to the others, positioning myself a good twenty feet from them. My power was active, serving to shield them.

“Get behind cover,” I said.

I was glad to see them listen. Not only did they get to safety, but they weren’t in a position to see if the wretch reached out to any nearby vegetation.

The rules of ‘the game’ were that guns were verboten. ‘The game’. Gangs liked the terminology, and I was pretty sure it had stemmed from that culture. It was the nature of social groups to self-moderate. Things that were selfish and advantageous but that went against the group’s greater interests were acted on. Capes leaned pretty heavily on that abstract moderating force, because the laws had never kept up with us and we’d had to moderate ourselves.

That was the game. It was the walking of the line between the selfish things we did for ourselves and our teams and what served the greater good. Secret identities were to be left alone. Families weren’t to be touched. The day to day of the city and civilian lives weren’t allowed to be disrupted. No killing; no guns.

Capes used swords, crossbows, they used bows and other weapons that were just as lethal as a gun, given a chance. Most of the time it was to coordinate with another power. Capes threw explosive chunks of their bodies, among other things. My home town had had Miss Militia in a role as lieutenant of the Protectorate and then as leader of the team, and she had guns as part of her power.

It came down to symbols, to what the gun meant, and whether the person with the gun was playing along. With a sword or bow, the assumption was yes. When a gun was drawn or fired, barring any context, the assumption was –had to be, even- no. Carrying a gun as a cape and using it implied things that other weapons didn’t.

Tattletale had aimed a handgun at me once, and she had pulled the trigger. In that, at least, she had been playing along. It had been a tool, not a weapon. I had some grievances when it came to her, but that wasn’t one of them.

The Fallen and the villains of Hollow Point? They weren’t playing any games. Powers were used, and a tight cluster of three or four explosions in quick succession were followed by creaking, snapping sounds that might have been trees or a building collapsing.

I heard the sound of wood splintering near me, and I turned my head in time to see the side of a tree crunch inward, as if two axes had bit into it. Bit. The wretch was taking a bite out of the wood.

There were other signs of the wretch’s restlessness nearby. Bark was scraped from trees by hands.

I dropped my forcefield and stepped around a tree until it stood between me and the ongoing gunfire. My back to the tree’s trunk, facing the others, I asked, “You guys okay?”

“I don’t think they’re firing in this direction,” Capricorn said.

“Can you provide some cover?” I asked. “I don’t think anyone’s close.”

“Yeah.”

The orange motes began to dance between trees.

“We move toward the road,” I said. “We’ll cross it, and then we cut toward the settlement.”

“Victoria, you take point. Sveta, put yourself between her and us. Kids, with me. Looksee, watch what your camera is looking at. I don’t want you getting hit by the anti-thinker measures.”

“Uh huh. Tattletale went into a building with some henchmen. She waved at the camera and smiled, which was kind of nice, if you look at it a certain way. Foil, Parian, Hellhound and Imp are leaving and going up your way. If you guys decided you had to run with the guns, you could come back and come after her. That could be good.”

“Brevity,” Chris said. “This is a situation, Looksee, use fewer words.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Let’s stick to the plan,” Capricorn said. He gave me a sidelong look as he said it, and I nodded in response to the unspoken question.

He moved his hand, and walls snapped into existence where the orange motes had been. Their height was such that if I stood straight, I could look over the parts where the spikes didn’t stick up. So long as I crouched, I was clear. I flew low to the ground, the walls to my left, in the direction of the road.

I could hear something that might have been a motorcycle or dirt bike. Others started up. Gunfire answered the revving.

At the end of the wall, I crouched lower to the ground. Flight let me move silently.

The revving got louder, until I could feel it in my chest. I could hear the sound of wheels kicking stuff up, the snapping of branches, and in my efforts to tell where the bike was on the road, I was totally lost. It sounded like it was coming right toward me.

As the bike drew nearer, the sounds became clear. The tearing sound of the wheels wasn’t from wheels on a dirt road, but underbrush. I canceled my forcefield and drew my arms closer to my chest, so they wouldn’t be out to the side.

The bike flew past me. It was a road bike, with metal teeth on the wheels, probably for situations just like this one. One hand on a submachine gun, an Uzi, the other on the handlebars, he zig-zagged heavily, riding it through dense forest, throwing his bike to one side or the other with all of his body weight. Each turn seemed like it might be his last.

His rear wheel skidded along a growth of roots that was as broad as some trees, he popped a wheelie, and when the wheel came down, he came to a stop, now facing more in my direction. Young-ish. Maybe thirty. His hair was long and he had a longer beard, black and narrow at the chin, a metal thing just below his lip. With the cut of his mustache, the points at his eyebrows, and his sunglasses all resembling the shape of the wings of the bats on his leather jacket, I was getting a sense of his theme.

I wasn’t sure if he’d seen me. I remained still. I realized a moment later that, given the theme, that might be a dumb thing to do.

His head bent down, facing the ground, and he was panting for breath. He passed his gun to his right hand.

The wind blew past us. Dust from his trip across the forest floor was riled up further, instead of settling down.

His head turned my way.

I took off, not flying directly at him, but to a point off to his side. Forcefield up, I kept trees between us for good measure.

He shot a burst, and it sounded more like one sound than a series of distinct ones. I could feel the forcefield collapse like a bubble popping. The collapse was almost instantaneous, but not entirely. The bullet had touched a point somewhere behind my feet, and once the forcefield gave, the breaking of the field cascaded from there in the blink of an eye.

My hand went out, and I grabbed a tree to help stop myself as I ceased flying. Tree between us, I flew straight up, arms around my head to shield myself from intervening branches.

Covered by the thickest of the trees, I circled around him.

The engine revved, wheels digging for traction.

He rode off in the direction of the dirt road, and I went after him, staying at the level where the peaks and upper reaches of the trees provided some cover, but were far enough from one another that I could easily fly through the gaps and keep one eye on the biker.

He rode away from me like he knew where I was. Even though he was riding recklessly, he still needed to zig-zag, and I wasn’t sure he would have been any faster than me on a clear path. I could get ahead of him, above him.

He fired. I could hear the submachine gun fire one burst, then another. I could hear the bullets cutting through the air, but they didn’t touch the wretch or me.

I dove, wretch active, and when I cut through the leaves and found a large branch in my way, I let the wretch collide with it. He’d made enough noise with that gun, and I could make some by breaking the branch clean off the tree.

The bike roared as he kicked it into life, using it to get himself clear of the falling wood. Couldn’t get a bead on me, so he was running.

I was already moving, though. The moment I knew where he was going, I moved to intercept. In his haste to get going and find his balance, he’d laid the uzi against one of the handlebars. He wasn’t in a position to aim it at me.

I caught the weapon and the hand that gripped it. He tried to adjust, another wheelie with a spin as everything rested on the back wheel as a kind of forced stop or attempt to bring the bike around to collide with me. I hauled him back and away from the bike before he could finish the motion. He tumbled into moss, stones, and weeds, emtpy-handed.

Wretch out, uzi held firmly in my hand, I flew at the bike as it tumbled to the ground. I swung my hand, backhanded, and the wretch followed suit, demolishing it.

Bat-biker didn’t get up or do much except lie on his side, panting hard. The fall hadn’t been hard enough to incapacitate him.

A fear response? I didn’t even have my aura out.

I approached him and set one foot on his wrist, so it would be easier to keep an eye on the other. “I’m betting someone like you has other weapons. Tell me where, and don’t touch them unless you want me to treat you like I treated your bike.”

He went very still.

I pushed out with my aura, keeping it small. I didn’t want to tip anyone else off about my presence.

“Weapons. Now,” I said.

When I moved my hand, still holding the uzi, he responded by moving his free arm, hiking up his jacket. I could see the handgun there. A beefy, overcompensation sort of gun, which didn’t really suit his average frame.

It seemed he respected the gun more than the person with powers. Stupid.

I collected the handgun. Kicking with one foot, I pushed one of his pant legs up, then the other.

Knife at the ankle. I kept the gun trained on him, released his wrist, and retrieved the knife. He didn’t resist as I stepped on his wrist once again. My hands were pretty full at this point.

“What else?” I asked.

“That’s it.”

Prodding with my toe, using flight to avoid putting too much weight on his wrist, I investigated his jacket. Something rattled.

“What’s here?”

“Cigarettes.”

“Remove them. Throw them aside. Slowly.”

He did. It was a large carton of cigarettes, but as it landed, there were needles with caps on inside, sitting at an angle.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Medical, really,” he said. “Helps with the headaches from my power.”

“Don’t leave stuff out,” I said, amping up my aura some more. I poked more with my toe, and found another weight at the vest pocket of his jacket.

“Phone,” he volunteered.

I kicked down, catching the phone between my heel and a rock. I heard something break. I did it again. I saw his expression change, a snarl.

I flew up and away from him, until I could see the surroundings. I spotted a hole in a tree, and put the weapons within.

He was on his feet by the time I got back to him. He backed away a step, then fell on his ass.

“Bikers. You’re on the Fallen’s side in this?”

He twisted up his face into a scowl so fierce that it looked like a pretty sure thing he wouldn’t open his mouth.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said.

I flew at him. He swung a punch my way, and I put my forcefield up. His arm was too far out to the side, and he didn’t even hit me hard enough to drop my defenses.

I moved right into his personal space, and the sour sweat smell of him made me wish I hadn’t. Seizing his belt buckle in one hand and his belt in the other, I flew.

He was heavy, as I dismissed my defenses. His arms were free and he could have swung a punch, but it would have done more harm to him than to me. Instead, faced with my aura and a very swift ascent, he grabbed onto the top edge of my breastplate for leverage.

We reached the treetops, where the branches were thinner. I roughly deposited him on something that looked reasonably sturdy and unreasonably high up. The impact of my setting him down helped to break his grip on me.

I could hear the gunfire continuing. It had moved. By the sound of it, Hollow Point’s group was venturing along one edge of the camp, moving counter-clockwise along the perimeter.

“Stay put,” I said. I seized his foot and pulled it down, then undid the laces on his boots. I tied them around a branch. “I can make you more comfortable and leave you a way down if you talk.”

“Fuck you,” he said. He clung tight to a branch.

I tied the laces of his other boot to another branch. Then I identified a few key branches he could use to climb down, and, strength up, demolished the first with a sharp strike.

“Shit!” he said, voice going higher as the branch he was on wobbled. “Shit!”

I broke another. Not the cleanest break, it might have served as a foothold or handhold. I kicked it again to make it less of one.

When three branches were broken and there was a good ten feet between the branch he was on and the nearest handhold or foothold, I flew back, assessing the situation. He couldn’t let go of the trunk in front of the branch he was sitting on, and he couldn’t bend low enough to untie his laces, even if he could let go.

“I’m not going to say shit,” he said.

You just did, a few times, I thought. My expression remained deadpan.

I didn’t give him a response. Instead, I left him where he was, and flew down to the ground.

There was a time when using my powers had made me feel powerful. Having superstrength had made me feel strong. Having an aura that instilled awe had made me feel awesome.

I didn’t feel that same rush now. I felt melancholy.

There were more coming through the trees. They didn’t seem especially aware of me, or mindful of the earlier gunfire.

More people in leather jackets. Beards and some sunglasses. I flew up to a higher branch.

Bikers, except these guys didn’t have bikes with them. They’d be part of the Fallen’s network. While Prancer’s side of Hollow Point seemed to be willing to play by the rules of the game, the Fallen hadn’t been so inclined, even before Gold Morning. They hadn’t felt the social pressures because they hadn’t been part of society, living on the fringes and putting a wall between themselves and others. They’d had allies of necessity for certain events and causes, and the bikers had been some of those allies.

When people hadn’t been able to go after the Fallen, the pressures and responses for the Fallen’s actions had come to rest on the heads of the bikers and other allies. People had been less willing to deal with them, more force had been used against them, and the message had been driven home.

The problem with the cycle was that being on the outs made them more likely to bend or break the rules. The wedge between them and everyone else had also made them more inclined to simply fold into the Fallen, especially after Gold Morning.

The amnesty was a thing, crimes had been pardoned, but feelings were still feelings. The bikers had backed up some of the shittiest people around, and that was hard to let go of.

There were three people moving through the trees as a group. Their attention seemed to be fixed on flanking Hollow Point. That would’ve been the motorcycle guy’s intention too, then. Getting around behind and opening fire.

Two of them were heavy, and could’ve been brothers. One of the heavy ones had a tattoo that was partially obscured by his glasses, and a goatee. The other had a metal shackle of a collar around a neck that really was too wide for most metal collars. It made skin bulge out the top and bottom. Similar shackle-like cuffs were at his wrists and ankles, but they weren’t so bulgy.

The one in the center was a breaker. He was a wraith of a person, a statue broken up into solid segments that were hard and almost ceramic in appearance, with electric blue lines spiraling around each of the jet black, ceramic-ish, solid parts. They were connected to other parts by only a deep blue smoke that was hard to look too deeply at. His face was less of a face and more of a solid, triangular surface with a series of six or seven holes bored into it. Each hole was ridged with a corkscrew pattern, cone-shaped.

He didn’t walk and he didn’t fly. He had legs that existed as a jumble of segments, they moved, and he kind of was in places. It reminded me of the animated optical illusions where circles continually rippled outward and appeared to grow endlessly, but they didn’t actually grow.

In his case, the lines and edges of the harder body moved and rippled back, he appeared to stay in place, but he actually moved, with the indigo-blue smoke billowing out behind him.

Two guns. Shackle-guy had a handgun, and the guy with the goatee had a shotgun. Breakers didn’t tend to have gear.

I flew over their heads, and I saw that the breaker’s face wasn’t three dimensional. It was such that no matter what angle I viewed it from, it always faced me.

He didn’t react like he saw me, though. Not just yet.

One of the most underrated things about flying was that it was silent.

I took advantage, lowering myself down behind the guy with the goatee.

The spiraling on the breaker’s arm intensified. I adjusted my flight course- realized belatedly that he was swiping at me. It was hard to process his movements, because he seemed to retroactively be wherever he was going. It was my perceptions, I was pretty sure, and not time manipulation or anything.

He swiped again, and I maneuvered, moving around his buddy at the same moment. He had reach, arm extending as the gap widened between the floating segments of forearm, and parts of a hand.

I shone with my aura, no longer being subtle, seizing the shotgun and put my foot on the goatee guy’s shoulder. I flew up and pushed down and out with my foot. My interest was twofold- to kick him toward his breaker buddy’s arm, and to use full-body leverage to get the shotgun out of his hand. He had good trigger discipline, and so me pulling the gun away didn’t also pull the trigger against his finger.

I had the shotgun and I’d put myself far enough away to be out of the blue breaker’s reach. I brought out the wretch and had it demolish the shotgun in my hands.

If I was going to use an all-or-nothing weapon, I’d rather use the ones I was familiar with.

Still turning in the air, I traveled an unpredictable course, arcing down to the ground, hugging the ground as I traveled a quarter-circle arc, ever-mindful of the guy with handgun. He aimed at me and fired.

His bullet hit the wretch, and I hit him at the knees, bowling him over.

Before he was on his feet, and before the blue breaker could swipe at me, I grabbed him by the ankles. Flying, I dragged him across the forest floor. More to the point, I dragged him in a way that put his upper body and face closer to the ground as I dragged him.

He grabbed me by the wrist, and it took me a second to realize the how and why of it. I’d had him by the ankle, and his foot was now a hand. He was strong- enough that I thought something would pop or break if he squeezed any harder.

I changed course, and I flew him into the base of a tree trunk. I heard the solid impact, and I felt the ‘leg’ I was holding jerk in reaction to the pain, but I didn’t succeed in breaking his grip.

He had a foot where his head had been, and hands at the end of neck, ankle, and each arm. The shackles seemed to be the point where the changes happened. When he bent to bring a hand toward my face, it was with a crease between what should have been crotch and shoulder and far more flexibility than a man his size should have managed. I struck his hand away with a backhand strike, my forearm catching his wrist. Another hand grabbed me by the belt.

My focus, though, was on the hand that still held the handgun. He had his bearings, and he brought it around to point it at me. I seized it, fingers hooked around barrel and handle both.

I hated guns being brought to a cape fight.

I twisted around, heaving him up and bringing the wretch to bear for some added strength at the last moment. I slammed him into the tree, harder.

His grip weakened. I wanted to fly away, but we both still had a mutual, contested grip on the weapon.

The breaker was coming for me, swelling in my vision. It reached, and fingers brushed through foliage. The greenery stretched like it was ooze, strands and bends and all.

When it snapped, it coiled and curled away like smoke, black with blue sparks in it, like a burning paper might have orange.

The rule for fighting breakers was to not fight them in their breaker state, because the breaker states tended to cheat the rules.

I couldn’t wrestle the handgun free, even with the shackled biker weak from his second visit to the tree’s trunk. I bent his wrist back as far as it could, his fingers bending backward as I brought the gun over to one side. His hand began changing, the front of the hand becoming the back, fingers finding angles to grip the gun. He reaffirmed his grip.

He did, however, also lose a bit of ground around the trigger. I checked, then shifted my grip more to the handle and the area around the trigger guard, before pulling the trigger repeatedly. Not easy, given the angle. Not easy, when each shot kicked and was loud, and I had a breaker lurking at the corner of my vision, not registering as having any depth in my depth perception.

I wasn’t quite sure what would happen, but I gripped one of the shackles. For just a moment, I let the wretch out, giving myself the strength to crush it in my hand.

For that same moment, the wretch did something, and the entire body jerked, cloth ripping.

The metal shackle broke, and the hand spasmed, letting go of the handgun.

There was a wound in his stomach, and it closed as he lay there. At the same time, his hand multiplied, swelled, had fingers and teeth appear, and became a misshapen blob. The effect crawled up his arm to his body, which bloated and swelled.

A mouth opened in the middle of it. It snapped in my general direction.

I pushed my aura out as hard as I could. The mass of flesh withdrew into itself. The breaker stopped.

I stared down at the changer-in-flux. A mess of hands, a mess of legs, teeth, fleeting facial features.

My aura radiated intense fear and awe, enough to stop grown men and monsters in their tracks, and in the midst of it all, I felt that melancholy.

“This?” I spoke. “What you’re feeling is a four. The dial goes up to ten.”

The breaker’s fingers traced the side of a tree. The wood became goo and it stretched.

“You can feel the intensity of it, can’t you?” I asked. “You do not want me to turn up this dial. Because this? This is a six.”

I was close enough to trees and ground that when I brought the wretch out, it could reach those things. It broke up the dirt and it bit into wood with fingers. The wood creaked until hands clenched hard enough to break it, and then it broke explosively.

“If I turn it up any higher, you’ll feel that too,” I said. I had the handgun. I looked down at it to figure out how to release the magazine. I threw the magazine down to the ground and held out the gun.

There was a moment’s pause, and then the wretch took hold of the weapon. It flung it out, slamming it into a tree hard enough that it sank into the wood of the trunk.

Still maintaining a grip on the weapon, the wretch dragged it about a foot toward the base of the trunk before it couldn’t anymore. A moment later, the metal began distorting. Something broke and fell.

“You, blue breaker. Go back to being human. All of you stand down.”

Goatee looked at his friend or brother. The wretched thing at the base of a tree. He didn’t stand down, and the breaker didn’t go human.

Maybe it was a minion for goatee guy. It was a hell of a minion, if so. Whatever it was, minion or breaker, I wasn’t about to change my policy on staying the hell away from it.

The breaker started toward me. It stopped when orange motes began appearing. I dismissed the wretch, watching as they looked around.

“That,” I said. “Is an eight.”

The breaker reached out and touched a mote. It stretched the mote in the air. There were lines around it, and it pushed through trails that had been left behind motes, distorting them too, stretching them like it had the leaf.

“I’m pretty sure you don’t want to do that,” I said.

It stopped.

Sveta’s hand reached through the trees, grabbed goatee guy, and hauled him into the orange motes.

Everything snapped into being, except the lines the breaker had altered. They remained where they were, jumping around, wiggling and distorting, before they found a solid form as a spray of rock fragments. I brought my defenses up just in time to deflect the worst of it.

The goatee guy was caught, orange motes around his legs. The breaker waded through it like it was glue.

The stone became water. The breaker no longer waded through it, instead struggling to hold its general shape as the water pushed and sprayed through the smoke. Some of the water was forceful enough to bring small branches down from trees overhead.

As the water’s spray dissipated, the breaker sagged. The smoke was mostly gone. It crumpled, and the segments dissolved into a thicker smoke. As they blew away, one of the bikers was left in the center. A mid-thirties woman with a blue tank-top with a faded motorcycle logo on the front, a potbelly, and a complexion to match the most acne-ridden teenager from my old high school.

“It’s an eight,” I said, quiet and mostly to myself, “But it’s not my eight.”

She started to get to her feet, then slipped in the mud. She remained hunched over.

“We need to have a conversation,” I said.

She spat.

“Your friend. He okay?”

“He gets like that sometimes.”

“Okay,” I said. I tried to avoid looking at the shuffling mass of flesh. Before, it had been only the hands, feet, and head that had changed. Now it was everything but those things.

On a level, I felt bad that I couldn’t look straight at it and that I’d been hurt by others that had once been unable to look straight at me.

On another level, I knew even I’d had a hard time looking straight at me, when I’d been that way. I still did. I’d never really blamed anyone. For abandoning me, yes, but not for not looking.

“You’re going to tell us the layout of the Fallen camp.”

“Can’t,” she said. “Fuck.”

“The anti-thinker measure. Where and who?”

“Can’t.”

The others emerged from the woods. Sveta. Capricorn in blue.

“You’re going to need to give me something,” I said.

“We came to help out the Crowleys. We hang with them sometimes. They’re harmless,” she said. “The- other branch, it isn’t.”

“The Mathers,” I said.

“I’m being told to tell you something. You don’t need to hide at the fringes. You’re welcome to join in, and you’re expected. They- they’ll embrace you with open arms.”

“You’re being told?”

“Fuck them, and fuck this,” the woman with the blue top said. “Not what I signed up for. They got us in here, we were partying last night, and then, out of nowhere-”

“Hey,” the guy with the goatee said.

“Her,” she finished. She turned her head away. “I can’t explain. She says she has hostages. People you know and people who those people care about. You can mess with the attackers, but if you get in the way of the Fallen, people are going to lose body parts.”

Byron spoke up, “Can you take a message back to her?”

“I don’t know,” the biker woman said, sullen. “I don’t-”

She paused.

“What?” Byron asked.

“She says no, no messages. Other stuff. She-”

Her eyes went wide. She looked around, her eyes not focused on anything in particular.

The woman’s voice carried forward, but it was an inarticulate sound, one that became higher, then a warbling shriek, followed by a gasp for air with a sound of its own.

She dropped to the ground, fingers clawing in dirt, twisting like she was trying to get away from everything at once. The noises she made were horrible, and I’d heard some awful noises in my life.

Goatee guy started to approach her. He stopped when I flew a little closer.

“Stop. What do you do?”

“Do? I’m decent with a gun.”

“That’s your power?”

“No. No powers,” he said. He sounded stunned by the question. In the moment, I could see how bothered he was and I had trouble believing he could concoct a good lie.

The woman was curled up now. She pulsed, and with each pulse, dark cracks ran across her body and over her clothes, then faded away.

After a few tries, she stopped trying. She shrieked, and then strangled the shriek.

“Is there anything we can do for her?” Sveta asked.

“We could try knocking her out,” Capricorn said. It was Tristan now. “But it’s not like in movies. That kind of thing does brain damage.”

“I think this does damage of its own,” I said.

“Yeah, well, if you want to try the middle ground of making her brain go dark without breaking her head open, you go right ahead,” Tristan said.

“Let’s not fight, please,” Sveta said. She looked at the thrashing woman. “Shit.”

I flew to the woman. It took me a second of wrestling with her before I could get my hands around her throat. Her hands reached beneath my sleeves and got a few scratches in at my forearm.

I shifted my grip, and I choked her, heels of my hands pressing in. I pulled away when she went limp and the struggling ceased. Unconscious, not dead.

I didn’t need to ask before orange motes began to appear. Restraints, so she wouldn’t hurt herself.

“You’ll need to stay with your friends,” I said, to the guy with the goatee.

He nodded, slumping to a sitting position on the ground. He didn’t even seem to care he was sitting in mud.

Tristan walked away, and Sveta and I both followed.

“Where’s our fourth?” I asked.

“Sent him ahead. He’s out there and he’ll change soon,” Tristan said. He pointed. North and deeper into the woods. Chris would be closer to the Patrol block guys, then.

Good enough.

We were wordless from that point on. We cut through the woods, and we reached their edge, where tree stumps of varying height speared up from the ground.

Across the clearing were hills with stones piled up around them, no doubt cleared from the fields, and houses, large but rustic. Two of those houses were on fire, and one had been partially leveled.

A blip of something green shot from the sky to the ground, far enough away it felt like it was on the horizon, when it was really on the far side of the settlement. The ground shook where we were in response.

If that wasn’t indicator enough of where the focus of the fighting was, I could hear the distant shriek of Ashley’s power. I made eye contact with Sveta, then Capricorn.

Hostages. Guns. Turning allies into pawns. Inflicting something that serious on someone?

No games here. No illusions of any games, even.

For all the issues of our motley team, where so often we could have three people on entirely different pages, I could look at Sveta and I could look at Tristan, and I could know they understood this. The Fallen in particular had gone off the deep end. They’d abandoned their last vestiges of responsibility as capes and as human beings.

That left us the responsibility of giving them an appropriate response.

Shadow – 5.9

A fence gave us cover as we made our way to the nearest house. It had been damaged earlier in the skirmish, to the point that a third of the house was missing, part of the ground floor and part of the upper floor. A good chunk of that part of the building was strewn over the small field behind the house.

The ongoing fight was still far away. I could hear gunfire and see periodic light shows. I would have liked to take a hand in things, but I didn’t want to break from the plan to work the edges of the scene. The innocents first. Evacuation.

“Hey!” Capricorn called out. “Civilians?”

“Try us and see!” was the response, coming down from above. The man was upstairs.

Capricorn looked over at Sveta and I, giving us a dumbfounded shrug.

“We’re good guys!” Sveta called out. “We’re evacuating people who aren’t part of the fight!”

“Yeah?”

“We’ll tell you where to go. There are people in uniform waiting at the edge of the woods. They’ll take you somewhere safe,” Sveta said.

There was a murmured conversation between the people on the upper floor. I could only hear the sound of it. Worried, tense, a word that might have been a swear word from the guy.

“We were stranded up here. Stairs got trashed, and floor looks unsteady,” the guy said. “We’ll take that offer if you help us down.”

Someone else upstairs spoke to the guy, voice tense and urgent.

“We can do that,” Sveta said.

The voices upstairs went quiet.

“I could use my power to secure the building,” Capricorn said. “Making it permanent would mean taking the barricades I made between here and either getting rid of them or making them permanent too.”

I looked back. As we’d made our way between the forest and the first house, Capricorn had erected short walls for cover against gunfire. Some cut into field and road.

It seemed like such a simple thing, but it said a lot about our presence here and what we were doing. The more walls, the safer the route for people to follow as they evacuated, but it also made life harder for anyone who came back here to live in the settlement again. With some of the walls edging into the road, it also created the low-level risk that if Hollow Point was going to end the attack and leave, they’d have a hard time getting out.

Did we want to burn their bridge behind our enemies, when they were fighting something bigger and nastier? The best case scenario here was that the Fallen were neutralized and Hollow Point was left without any true merits to their name. Setting up Hollow Point to find there wasn’t a place to run to? To die? Worse?

No. Not when I’d seen the breaker woman go through the ‘worse’.

“Can you clear away the walls near the road?” I asked.

Capricorn nodded.

He started toward the edge of the broken wall, so he’d be able to see what he was working on. I put my hand out, flat against the front of his armor, stopping him.

The people upstairs were too quiet. After the tense conversation among the members up there, the silence felt off.

I checked to make sure the ongoing fighting was still far away and that our flanks were clear of trouble, put the forcefield up and ventured out first.

At the edge of the broken floor, a pair of men were crouching. What seemed to be two families were gathered in the room behind them, peering through the door. The men and their wives looked more like older teens or twenty-ish, and the kids I could see were four or five.

The floor was shattered, that section of the upstairs open to the outdoors. Slats of the floor that hadn’t been broken when the damage had been done now stabbed out into open air.

“I can bring the kids down,” I said.

“My wife first,” the older of the two guys said. “She’ll look after them as you bring them down.”

“Sure,” I said.

Behind me, Capricorn ventured out. He began drawing the motes. I watched how the younger of the two guys kept his eyes on Capricorn, then leaned forward a bit, floor creaking under him, as he tried to peer down at the orange lights and the outlined trails.

A narrow young woman with brown hair and a red bandanna at her neck ventured forward along the more intact portions of the floor. She hesitated, looking at the guy I presumed was her husband, a blond guy with peach fuzz facial hair and greasy, medium-length hair combed into a fauxhawk. He had tattoos at his neck and at the backs of his hands.

“Go on,” he said.

She ventured forward. The damaged floor creaked ominously, and she stopped.

I flew closer to her, one eye on the two men.

“I’ve got you,” I said, taking her wrists in my hands.

Her husband reached behind his back and drew a handgun as I focused on making sure I had a grip. I could have reacted, but I didn’t, focusing on the woman instead. He leveled the weapon at my head.

“I’m trying to help you and your family,” I said.

“You’re going to help us, yeah,” he said. “You’re going to stay with me, and your friend down there is going to do what I say.”

This wasn’t an auspicious start.

“You alright, Victoria?” Capricorn asked.

“I’m fine,” I said. I verified the wife wouldn’t fall if I let go, then released her wrists. She backed away.

The guy didn’t seem to like how unbothered I seemed. I was worried, I knew what might happen if he fired two bullets, and if he panicked, he might empty the gun at me. I’d had someone do that, once.

Downstairs, Capricorn picked his way across the shattered floorboards and bits of roof as he walked backward.

“You stay,” the guy with the fauxhawk and the gun said.

Capricorn looked off to his left.

He was looking at Sveta. That worked.

The wife with the red bandanna ushered the kids further into the room. She shut the door.

Just the two men, Capricorn and I.

And, faster than I’d expected, Sveta at an open window, past a door into another room upstairs.

“You’re going to go run off that way, armor boy, staying where I can see you until you’re a speck in the distance,” the man with the gun said. “Direction of the big house. It got trashed, but there should be people around there. I want you to report some things, starting with the fact we’re holed up here, and the attacking group went past us. We can get them from behind. Got it? Then you’re going to come back the same way and report-”

I met Sveta’s eyes and nodded.

“-to us. Why are you nodding, bitch?” the man asked.

Sveta’s hand went out. She missed the gun, but stopped extending her arm. It came to rest on his arm, fingers hooking over the top, and pulled it back and away.

Wretch up, I flew into the floor beneath the man’s feet. Already damaged, it broke further, the floor under him becoming a slope.

I reached out to catch, and got my hand around the gun. He fell the rest of the way, his hands out, wrists catching the worst of the impact on uneven ground. He fell to his side a moment later, groaning. The timing of the fall was weirdly off, but only because he’d had to figure out how to pull back and not be resting his upper body weight on two injured wrists.

The other guy put his hands up.

“Can you do cuffs?” I asked Capricorn.

“I can. I can splint, while I’m at it,” he said. He bent down by the guy. “If I do it wrong, though, it’s going to be fifteen pounds of rock hanging off of those hands of yours. You going to cooperate?”

The guy on the ground below spat.

“Yeah. Big man. Keep those arms still,” Capricorn said. He gave me a look, eyes visible behind the eyeholes of his helm.

The door cracked open. The woman peered out.

“Do we need to worry about you too?” I asked her.

“No. Are you still offering that way out?”

“Yeah. Come on, hurry up,” I said.

“Sorry my husband’s an asshole,” she said.

“Mom,” the kid behind her said.

“He is,” she said. “Don’t be like your dad, okay?”

Good enough, I supposed.

I flew her down to the ground, then flew the kids two at a time. The second wife and then the man were last. We led them back and away, and the gunman with his lower arms encased in a single growth of stone was last.

I imagined he could use that stone as a makeshift weapon if he had a mind to, but it was hard to picture him being very effective that way, especially when possibly broken wrists were encased in the middle. Knee-buckling pain, I imagined.

I wasn’t sure if Capricorn had similar reservations, but he withdrew a bit of cord from his belt, and he used orange motes to fix one end to the cuffs and another bit to the guy’s belt. He steered the guy with one hand at his shoulder.

Sveta came around the corner of the house. She put out one hand, and I slapped her hand with mine, holding it for a moment in a victory squeeze.

This? As melancholy as everything else could be, I liked this.

“You’re leaving. We’re going to head that way,” I said, indicating the path we’d made, with the walls for cover. “Any advice on where to go? Houses with children?”

“Most houses have children or people under eighteen,” the wife said, guiding her kids much like Capricorn guided her errant husband. “The red house. Abby looks after some of the children when the parents go to war or go into the city.”

“Do they have weapons?” Capricorn asked.

“Of course. We hunt deer and rabbit when we can.”

“The leadership’s house is totally gone,” the other woman observed. “They hit it first.”

I looked in the direction she was facing. At the corner of the camp, near the point where the road disappeared into the forest, one of the larger houses had been leveled.

On the alert for any drawn weapons, I caught the man putting his hand on his wife’s arm. She looked down.

I hated that. I hadn’t seen it often, over the years, but it got under my skin when I did. From the time I was young, my mom had drawn attention to those things after the fact, when we did some crisis point stuff, responding to domestic violence calls, or when she introduced me to a police detective and his wife she knew. She’d remark on the dynamics between husband and wife, the power plays, and the signs that something else was going on. The intent was to make me aware, and to ensure I’d avoid those same things when I got into a relationship.

“If we send these guys out to the people at the edge of the forest, will you stick with us?” I asked the wife. “I don’t want to repeat this thing with having to fight you guys to help you.”

She looked at the other woman. “You’ll look after my kids?”

“Of course.”

“She’s my sister,” the wife said. “If she’s got my kids, then I’m okay giving you directions.”

“Go,” Capricorn said. He gave the one guy a shove. “Straight line that way. They’re not going to arrest you unless you cause trouble.”

“Don’t be an asshole, Tony,” the wife said. “If you did break your wrists, you’re going to need someone to wipe your tush. I’ve told you before, I’ll only make your life easy if you return the favor.”

“Fuck off,” Tony said, with an exhausted sort of emphasis on ‘off’. “We’re going. I’m getting away from Nan.”

“Yeah,” the other guy said.

The family made their way. They ducked low by the walls, and Tony had to squat and waddle in way I found a little amusing, his knees apart and hands down.

“Nan?” I asked the wife.

“Yeah. Short for Nancy.”

“Alright,” I said. “You’re good, here? I don’t need to worry about you?”

“Family first, friends second, Fallen and faith third,” she said. “If this is what we’re having to deal with here, I don’t want it. I’ll help you get some others I know out.”

Right. It wasn’t because it was ‘right’, but because of her specific priorities. Something to be careful of.

“We ran into someone who wigged out, full sanity breakdown,” Capricorn said. “Same with you?”

“Not with me. I’m… background. I can’t say much more.”

“Yeah, we got the same from them, too,” he said. “Come on.”

Anyone who was anything had a gun to their heads, it sounded like. The people with powers, the people who’d come in to help were now obligated to, and nobody seemed willing or able to elaborate on particulars.

It made me nervous. The idea of the brain-fucking stuff bothered me more than the shackled guy turning into the Wretch-like flesh puddle, back in the woods. My heart didn’t race, but each pound of it felt monumental and heavy in my chest.

We made our way to the next house. It was more intact than the last, but getting to it without risking being shot by anyone in the windows was tricky. Too much open space between buildings.

The woman pulled off her bandanna, then held it over her head, venturing into the open space. Nobody shot. She approached the house, and the side door opened. A middle-aged man met her on the extended stairs that acted as a kind of porch.

She beckoned for us to approach. I decided to do it, because I had my defenses.

I was very aware that the sound of the ongoing confrontation had changed. Things had moved closer. It was hard to map out just where people were, because the camp had a more village-like settlement stabbing through the lower half of it, dense enough to block the view of the streets and the far side. The settlement was densest in the southeast, closer to the road and the ‘big house’. There were more scattered houses and fields to the north and west. Those would be harder to reach.

I flew to the house, landed on the grass, and walked to the porch. Arriving directly at the porch could be seen as threatening.

“What’s on the far side of the trees?” the middle-aged guy asked. He had a salt-and-pepper beard and broad shoulders. He looked like a farm worker, with tattoos that would’ve been fit for a sailor if they had been less biblical and more nautical.

“People in uniform,” I said. “They’re armed, but they’ll only shoot if they see weapons. You should leave yours behind.”

He glanced at Nan.

“They’ll guard you, and they won’t arrest you,” I said, firmly.

“You say. We don’t have guarantees.”

“You don’t,” I said. “But as much as people don’t like you guys as a whole, people have no grudge with you and the amnesty holds until you’re charged with something. Only the ones in charge are a concern, and that’s mostly because that’s how they handled this whole thing.”

“It’s cute you think that,” he said. “We never had fair treatment, and I don’t think we’re going to get it now.”

“We’re here. Some of our people are risking getting shot, even by some of you guys. Do you want to be treated fair? Take the help that’s offered.”

“If we want to be treated fair, the only sure way is to rely on each other,” he said. “That’s not saying we won’t listen to you, but I’m not sure, here.”

I set my jaw, lips pressing together momentarily, because the alternative was that they’d part and I’d say something. I didn’t like these guys. I didn’t respect what they were about.

“Tony and Nan’s sister left,” I said. “They didn’t have as much of a problem with it.”

“Tony had a brain infection when he was young, and he was never that right after,” the guy said.

“He’s nice to look at, though,” a woman said, from the background.

“Mm,” Nan grunted. She sighed. “You guys were the first I came to, to let you know. I thought that was right of me. Do me a favor? Let these people go on their way. They can collect the… ones who are scared.”

“The less loyal,” the woman from before said, from behind the guy with the salt and pepper beard.

“We’re not all soldiers, Mare,” Nan said, and her voice was hard. “Some have kids and they won’t know what to do except run or lose their minds. Houses are falling down. Mine’s gone, Tony and my bed, even. It makes sense to run, I think. That doesn’t mean we’re disloyal. It means we’re fucking trying to survive.”

“Fighting’s tilting this way,” the guy said. “I think the intruders are coming here. We’re going to hold the line, make sure they can’t retreat back this way. You want to go? Go. You come back after.”

“I’m not going to fucking disappear on you, Enoch. I’m a believer. I’ve put up with Tony, for fuck’s sake, from the end of the world to the hereafter. Four months, I dragged him and two kids around until I found you all again. Why would I leave now?”

“How should I know what squirrely thoughts you have in your head, Nan? If you’re going, then fuck off. The fighting’s getting closer. You don’t have long.”

“I can take the kids if you want. Get them out of your hair.”

“You can fuck right off,” Enoch said.

I folded my arms.

“Enoch,” the woman from before said. “Let ’em. We had one of the little ones with a bullet in his mouth, twenty minutes ago. They were suckling on the thing. Nan’s right. They’re in the way.”

“The little ones. Maise and Jake can stay. Maise is ten and she can hold a rifle. Jake’s a decent shot.”

“You’re insisting on staying?” I asked.

“I said what I said. I’m playing nice here. If you want to be a hardass on this, I can be less nice.”

I hated these guys.

“Get the kids,” Nan said.

I backed away, and waited for Nan to round the people up. Capricorn had created a barricade that intersected the fence around the field, blocking some of the path too. He and Sveta knelt by it.

“They’re rounding up some kids,” I said. “A good size group is inside. Guy called Enoch. They’ve got some kids in there, and they’re going to start shooting if Hollow Point shows their faces.”

I heard a distant holler that might have been Beast of Burden. The fact they were close enough for me to hear-

“Fighting is trending this way,” Capricorn said. “Sounds like that might happen soon.”

“Victoria, you worded that like the kids were going to be doing the shooting,” Sveta said.

“Some are. The very young are getting evacuated. I’ll go back and get more info, but there are kids Kenzie’s age and younger with guns in their hands and parents expecting them to shoot.”

“No,” Sveta said. “No, that’s not right.”

“No,” I agreed. “Do you think you can do anything about it, Capricorn?”

“Without tipping them off?” he asked. He looked at the building. “Shit. I’d need to keep an eye on things and stay close.”

Meaning we’d be close to any fighting that erupted and we’d have to deal with Enoch’s group if they found a way out and happened to be pissed off.

A stray bullet clipped the side of the house, twenty feet from us. I huffed out the half-breath I’d intended to use to say something.

“Do it,” I said. I flew over to the house. Nan was gathering the kids. Some had bags.

“We’re ready.”

“Through the woods. Keep going as straight as you can. There are more hero capes to the far north, you don’t want to go that way. Too far east and you might run into the villains as they back out. Northeast.”

Nan nodded.

“They’ll take you into custody and keep you safe. What other houses here do I need to go to?”

“Three houses down,” she indicated. “Tony’s cousin. There’ll be kids.”

I hadn’t missed what she’d said earlier. The friends and family thing. She protected her own, and her advice was suspect for that reason. “What about the houses between here and there? Empty?”

“One should be empty. Last night it was all soldiers, and they’re off fighting, or they should be. House with the sheets hanging on the line is only one person. She does the services some days. It’s not worth the time or effort, the cranky bitch never listens to anyone.”

Yeah. There we were.

“Tony’s cousin. What can I tell them, that they’ll think it’s from you?”

“Tell him Nan said Tony’s gonna need him.”

“Alright,” I said. “Go. I’ll handle it.”

Sveta hauled herself over the fence, then approached so she stood a distance away. As Nan began getting the kids and one man that looked to be about seventy on their way, Sveta guided them, bending low and giving the kids instructions on where to go.

Most looked back to Nan for guidance, and she urged them on.

“Vic!” Capricorn called out.

I turned his way.

“When they get to the woods, have ’em call for Self-reflection!”

“Nan,” I said.

There were sixteen kids, and Nan was still near the door, urging them on. She had some of the young ones stay close to her, and when someone slightly older came out, she paired them up, clasping their hands together, before sending them on their way. She had to take ten or so seconds to get kids sorted before she could spare a moment to respond to me.

“What?”

“When you get to the woods, call out ‘reflection’, loud as you can.”

“Why?”

“Because like you said to Tony, we’re helping you, so help us a bit. This only helps you guys where it counts.”

She frowned a bit, but she nodded.

I took flight, leaving things to Sveta and Nan.

The ‘cranky’ woman’s place first. I flew to the door, and knocked, hard. The mailbox had only ‘Sims’ on it. No number.

“What?” the answer came from within.

“I’m a hero from out of town. We’re evacuating people. Fighting’s coming this way.”

The door opened. The woman was older, but not as old as I’d expected. Her hair was black, with streaks of white running through it. Her clothing style was very severe, much of the neck covered, sleeves to the wrists, dress to the ankle. She looked me over, staring through the screen door.

“If you want to go, there are people waiting. Some buildings have been knocked down. It could happen here.”

“Who else is going?”

“Nan’s family, I’ll be talking to Tony’s cousin next door in a second.”

“Screws loose, all of them,” she said. “The nonsense they spew, the criminal stuff. It’s all madness.”

“You can get out,” I said. “Just head into the woods, go straight, it’s not that thick a patch of woods, and there are people on the other side. They’ll take care of you.”

“I’ll go,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” I said.

Before I could go, she grabbed my wrist. Her fingers were bony.

“I’ve got others to help,” I said.

“There’s right and there’s wrong,” she said. “You can do everything right, moment by moment, and still end up on the wrong side, too beaten down to fight things anymore.”

Why this? Why now? I had the feeling it was more of a confession than advice. She wasn’t Fallen, not at heart? She’d just… ended up here?

How the hell did that happen?

Maybe that in itself was the confession.

“I’ve been beaten down before,” I said. “I’ll find a way to keep fighting. Humans are resilient. We made it through Gold Morning.”

“It’s very easy to lose sight of how beaten down you are,” she said. “Don’t let the little things slide. We have to be vigilant.”

“We do,” I said. “Part of my vigilance is making sure those kids survive. I need to go next door. If you want help getting out, ask for a guy called Gilpatrick, okay? He’s one of the best people I know, and his whole job is knowing and providing resources to people who need it.”

She looked back at her house. She released my wrist and pulled the door closed, drawing herself up taller.

“Bless,” she said. “Many of these people do not deserve to be saved.”

I could have responded. I decided to keep my mouth shut. I wanted her to go so I could help others, not to get caught in a conversation.

Ducking low, she ran across the field, and I flew between her and the worst of the fighting with the wretch out, to provide a bit of a shield.

At the edge of the settlement, where the buildings were thinning out, there was a thick cloud of black smoke. Beast of Burden was there, and Damsel was standing behind him, using him as a shield. I could see the spidery form of Nailbiter and I could make out crackles of lightning backed by dark smoke, along the dirt road and a nearby lean-to or outhouse. There were some gunshots, and I could hear the revving of more bikes.

I flew to the next house. Someone was already on the porch, watching me and the distant fighting. No gun pointed at me, only a look of worry from a guy with a high forehead and blond hair that really needed combing. He had a boy with him, a bit younger than Kenzie, just as blond, just as disheveled, hair-wise. No tattoos – I wouldn’t have known him for Fallen if I’d seen him on the street. They looked like their clothes and even their bodies badly needed washing, like both were homeless, despite having a fairly large farmhouse to reside in.

“Nan says Tony needs you,” I said. “You need to get going. Through the forest, people are waiting. Don’t take any guns, or you might get yourself or your kid shot.”

He asked something, his voice a mumble, as if his lack of self-care extended to not even bothering to form coherent words.

“What?”

“Tony went?” the kid interpreted.

“Yeah,” I said.

That was reason enough for them to go. They took nothing except themselves, and they stuck close together.

The fact that people were streaming from houses to the woods seemed to be cause for others to take the same route. Three teenagers were running for it, now. A girl with brown-blonde hair ran, guitar bouncing at her back. There were two teenage boys, younger, with dark hair. They ran to intercept Tony’s cousin and the boy, maybe to get answers.

These were people Rain had lived with, seen every day. This place, down to the guy who silenced his wife with a touch, the old woman, the people who didn’t take care of themselves, it had been his existence and the building blocks of experience he’d had to use to pull himself together.

No sign of Erin. I did want to help her.

There were gunshots, close. The people at Enoch’s house were shooting. I could see the orange motes around the building, still weaving their way around and up.

I flew in that direction, going higher to stay away from any likely stray bullets. Over the ‘Sims’ house, over the empty house, then to the roof, where the peak would provide some cover. Sveta and Capricorn were staying close together on the ground by the barricade. Sveta peered over it. Capricorn sat with his back to it, facing the house.

More gunshots from within.

Tristan had his hand clenched into a fist. He opened it, and the points of light and traceries took form. The building was wreathed in stone, blocking the windows and doors and shielding it from gunfire.

The job was done, and Sveta and Capricorn both moved away from house and barricade, getting closer to the fighting, dropping down from the path to the field. The dirt for the dirt road to this row of houses had been piled up, so the water would run off the sides, with stones rolled over to separate the looser dirt from the fields. The two of them stayed closer to the stone divider, hunkering down so the hump of road provided some protection.

The people in the house weren’t happy.

We’d have to protect it. We’d assumed that responsibility.

I peered around the peak of the building as the people drew near enough I could see their costumes in detail.

Beast of Burden was constantly backing up as others advanced.

A guy with the proportions of an older teenager that hadn’t quite grown to match his lanky frame was advancing, arms out to his sides. A hood of what looked like flesh was wrapped around a hard mask or helmet. It looked like two human faces with distorted features had been cut away from their owner’s heads, carved into strips, and then bound together, with gaps in both the skin-strips and helmet for him to peer through. A ‘mouth’ yawned open around one eye, and a diagonal slash of a gap between two other strips provided an opening for the other. His eyes were blue sparks of light.

I could see the range of his power. He was the source of the dark smoke and blue arcs of lightning that danced over every surface, Beast of Burden included. Everything in his field of view was affected, and wooden fences, weeds, and bits of wood on the road sparked and ignited. Things closer to him seemed more affected. At about thirty meters, the effect seemed negligible.

Nailbiter backed away, moving with some agitation as her pointed feet stuck into the softer dirt of the road, her mobility hampered. Light arced briefly and fiercely between two of her extended fingers, and she shook her hand.

I could see Sidepiece and Disjoint as part of the group. Beast of Burden’s clique, separated from Prancer’s and now matched in number.

There were other Fallen. A young woman, with a face-concealing hood and scarf that was wound around her hair and down her back, voluminous sleeves around her arms, and no actual torso section to her costume. A black belt at her chest covered only what was essential, and tattoos decorated the tanned skin of her stomach and sides. She was guarding the one with the electric sight.

Evacuating the innocents in the camp was one step. Chances were that they’d go back to the Fallen after. There was no way to get them to cooperate and refuse them that freedom, and the amnesty, as much as it sucked, protected them, even if their leaders were apparently breaking rules.

Anarchy was the word, really. We had to deal with the really problematic ones.

Fallen-aligned capes on dirt bikes tore around a corner, kicking up dust behind them as they joined the fray. Some of that dust reached up to the edges of roofs on two story buildings behind them. Hoodlums, tattooed and wearing cheap demon masks. Boys and girls.

Maybe they were older than I was, but it was hard to see them and assign any kind of maturity. I could hear them whooping as they split up, half of them racing along the right perimeter the darkness and electricity, half along the left perimeter.

The first of them hit the edge of the dirt road Beast of Burden was on, using it as a ramp to go airborne. Others followed suit. They sailed to either side of Beast of Burden’s group, landed in fields and skidded around so they were behind the group, facing Damsel.

Nailbiter reached out. Her fingers struck one of the last bikers to jump. They collided with the thin bars and she drew her fingers back to normal size. The withdrawing and the motion against the biker’s front created slashes at the face, collarbone, chest, and lower stomach. The last looked deep.

Sidepiece, too, clawed her navel away from her midsection in an effort that took a second tug to separate some strings of still-connected skin, and then hurled that flesh to strike the ground a moment before the biker landed. It detonated, and the biker bounced to the ground ten feet from their vehicle.

Our side joined the fight. Sveta yanked another one off of their bike. Blue lights began appearing around the larger group as Capricorn started using Byron’s power.

I took to the sky, trying to get a better sense of the battlefield.

Prancer wasn’t that far away. I could see people I was pretty sure were Speedrunners. Prancer’s crew had guns, and they were shooting blind, because a power was obscuring their view of the street and things beyond. Fallen were moving to flank.

On the very far side of the confrontation where Prancer was involved, I could see the distortion of Vista’s power.

We’d help this group first. I looked for a good place to dive. I could drop down by lightning-eyes, but I wasn’t sure about the hooded girl.

Besides, it seemed like he was keeping Beast of Burden tied down.

Fallen dirt-bikers first.

Beast of Burden’s group second.

I dropped down at a point more or less between one dirt-biking Fallen and Nailbiter, standing so I could see both.

The Fallen in front of me raised a hand. A deep black ellipse appeared at his fingertips, above his head.

I could feel what he was doing, as the air seemed to leave the ‘room’.

A black hole? No. Nothing non-gaseous seemed to be getting drawn in. But my intake of breath felt thin, as if it supplied far too little.

“Whoooooo!” he called out, and the cry was distorted and magnified by the dark blob he held overhead. He revved his bike and charged me.

I moved to meet him, holding my breath so I wouldn’t lose any. The blob had an effect like my aura, but it was physical, changing the rules of the area around him, not anything emotional, and he seemed to have nuanced control. His buddies weren’t suffering.

I met his ambient effect with my own. As he drew nearer, I pushed out with my aura, hard.

I saw him waver. On the other side of me, Nailbiter’s mouth yawned open, and her teeth speared out, criss-crossing, stabbing into dirt, field, stone, and toward the biker and me. I was already flying back and out of the way.

The guy threw his arm down. The blob crashed into the road, and the bike rode the explosion as the effect released, taking to the air.

Her hand went out. She caught him out of the air with extended fingers, and let the bike fall while she held him in the air.

She flicked her arm, hand going out. As before, the rapid slide of finger against flesh had the effect of a serrated knife edge. He was cut five different ways, and he crashed into the ground not far in front of lightning-eyes.

The guy screamed and convulsed as the effect crackled over him, burning skin and setting his hair on fire.

A dirt biker with a demon mask with red rips and gouges in pure white latex ‘skin’ drew a submachine gun, aiming it at Damsel. Sveta grabbed his weapon, but failed to disarm him, as he maintained his grip.

Instead, the biker with the white mask turned ghostly. The ghostly image separated. Several bikers now, each with variants on the theme, red mask with radioactive green gouges and blood, and a blue and yellow mask with red gouges and blood.

All three had guns, and Sveta had only two hands.

Capricorn’s image of blue lines and sparks came into being. Water sprayed, violent and focused largely outward at the bikers. Where it cascaded into the road, it left gouges of mud. Beast of Burden stumbled as one spray caught him from behind.

Ashley was already using the distraction to move. She fired her power, directing it at the road, and launched herself into the air, dress and hair fluttering behind her. The multifacted biker tried to get a bead on her, arms raised to shield eyes from spraying water, and she shot again, changing direction in the air.

“Damsel!” Beast barked. “I told you to not fucking shoot that so close to me!”

I was already flying toward the multifacted Fallen bikers. I used my aura to distract, and closed the distance, Wretch around me.

Had someone been paying attention, they might have noticed the water tracing the edges of the Wretch.

There was that melancholy feeling again.

I closed the distance, and as it happened, so did Damsel. I came at them from the northern end and she came at them from the southern side. The one of the three that had a gun free turned to aim at Damsel.

She shot with her power before he could pull the trigger, and crashed bodily into him.

He split into another set of varieties. Yellow-green, green-red, and purple-green. Two of them drew knives. One of the others was joining the fray too.

I could see how wide Damsel’s eyes were, and I could see her lips move.

Her hand went out, and she blasted. The two in the range of the blast were quick enough to dodge away, and they didn’t move quite like humans anymore. Too fast, too jerky.

“Damsel!” Sidepiece called out. “Get clear!”

Damsel blasted, aiming at the ground with both hands and firing with both, kicking up dust and debris, and catching the front of the motorcycle, shredding it.

The things avoided that blast as well, but as she moved skyward, Nailbiter and Sidepiece both went on the offensive. Sidepiece threw two chunks, and Nailbiter clawed out.

Several of the things seemed to die. Others folded back into each other, and used the momentum of that reabsorption to leap backward. They scrambled for the bike that had been abandoned when Sidepiece screwed up the rider’s landing.

I could see Damsel panting hard.

“Wretches!” she howled the words. “Scum of the earth! You do not deserve the breath you draw!”

She was going to go over the top on them, and I wasn’t sure she was going to hold back or be just bark with no bite. Not like she had during the test skirmish or the train ride with Presley.

“Damsel!” I called out.

She wheeled on me. I saw her eyes widen as I dove.

I put my hand at her neck and another at her arm.

Carrying her, I flew her back and away from the fight.

I could hear the sound of Byron’s power going off again, cutting into the earth, but my focus was on Ashley’s eyes beneath the black mask, lacking any pupil. Her lips were parted to show teeth, and it wasn’t a smile.

Off to the side, her fingers opened, spreading.

She fired her power into the air. I was flying, carrying her, and with the blast, we were forced off course. We hit the soft dirt at the edge of the dirt road and landed in a heap together.

I could have sworn at her, I could have been pissed.

It wasn’t worth it.

“Hi,” I said. We were far enough away we wouldn’t be overheard by others.

She pressed her lips together. Her hand went to my neck, like I held hers. Her fingers felt like real flesh should, but they were cooler than fingers should be.

“This is an act, remember?”

“I’m all out of patience,” she said. “I’m ready to kill someone.”

At the hospital, I’d dealt with a tinker who had the freak-out rants. I’d dealt with people with distorted views of reality. Mostly I’d dealt as an observer, sitting in for the group therapy. I’d thought about what I wanted to say, cringed when people said the wrong things, and I’d written emails to support them or give advice after the fact. Glacially, slowly.

I wanted to handle this in a way that wouldn’t have any observers cringing.

“Let’s not,” I said. “We’re making progress here, okay? Mission is going mostly according to plan, and you’re handling your bit well. People are over-the-top amazed at how well you’re selling this. Keep it a sale. Keep it an act. It’s good.”

She exhaled, like she’d been holding in a breath or ten. I felt her fingers relax at my neck.

“You’re pissing him off?” I asked.

“He’s pissing me off,” she said. “But I’m getting to him.”

“Good,” I said.

“Damsel!” Sidepiece called out, drawing out the first sound into a longer ‘damn’ sound. “If you’re done making out, we could use some help!”

Some of the bikers that had been tossed from their rides were on their feet. Lightning-eyes was pressuring Beast of Burden, forcing him into that plodding, slow retreat.

“Can’t off her without risking her tearing my head off in a death-spasm!” Damsel called out.

“Suck it up and figure it out!” Sidepiece called out.

“So annoying,” Damsel hissed.

A bike revved. I could hear the approach.

Damsel and I separated as it rode up the sloped side of the dirt road. She blasted to create more distance for herself, and caught the edge of the bike’s tire.

The blast served to throw the bike out from under the girl who’d been riding it. The girl landed, skidding across dirt that had been packed by the passage of countless vehicles.

“Stay down,” I said, as the Fallen girl started to get to her hands and feet. I pushed out with my aura.

She gave up, collapsing face down onto the road.

Did she even have powers? Did this particular group mix up those that did with those that didn’t? What a hassle.

Byron had directed most of his power at the road for the second blast. It hampered Beast of Burden’s footing, and it dissolved a chunk of the road. Sveta, as was her tendency, was lurking, looking for an opportunity to reach out.

Crackling with lightning, Beast of Burden called something out- and Nailbiter snatched up two bikes, one damaged, that the convoy of Fallen had been riding. She hurled them at Beast of Burden, and he caught one with each hand.

Pressing them together into a makeshift shield, he charged at the lightning-eyes Fallen. He made it nearly to the guy before the girl with the hood reached up and out. Giant hands wrapped in black rags materialized between Beast of Burden and the two Fallen.

Beast of Burden pressed on. Another hand materialized, grabbing him, and he carried on forward, metal treads scraping through mud.

Disjoint danced out to the side, practically skipping as he went from mud to solid ground, and slashed out with one hand, his hand disappearing.

The woman with the hood fell, and she might have been grabbed by the same hand. The hands disappeared, and Beast of Burden was momentarily reduced to only darkness and electricity as he took the brunt of the blast from lightning-eyes, even with the two motorcycles as an intervening barrier.

He brought a motorcycle down as a club, and he swatted the Fallen guy with the vision power. Then he brought the other bike down, hitting the girl who’d been thrown aside twice with overhead smashes.

The lesser Fallen who remained didn’t have much fight in them.

Beast of Burden’s horned head swiveled to look at us. I flew back and away, so I’d have a good view of things.

“Beast of Burden,” I called out. “Bob.”

He hurled a motorcycle at me. He was a distance away, but he was strong. Twenty feet above the road, I flew to one side to evade.

Grudges. Even if we had the same enemy, he wasn’t willing to even talk.

He threw another bike. This one was more on-target. I flew to evade, and saw motion in the corner of my eye. Nailbiter.

Sveta grabbed my arm, tugged, but with my flight not moving me in that same direction, there was a moment’s lag. Nailbiter’s fingers stabbed at me, and I was forced to throw up the Wretch, forcing Sveta’s hand away.

Fingers and motorcycle glanced off of the wretch within a half-second of one another.

“Asshole,” I said.

“She was mine. I was dealing with her,” Damsel said.

“Shut up,” Beast of Burden said. “Now.”

I flew back and further away. Byron and Sveta were retreating, cutting through taller grass along the side of a fence. Nailbiter, though, had a bit of the height advantage. Even though she didn’t fly, her body was long. She pointed at them.

That was Disjoint and Sidepiece’s indication to go on the offensive. Beast of Burden trudged back to the road. Sidepiece dug out a fragment of bone and hurled it like a dart.

“Dodge!” I called out.

Sveta did. She pulled herself away, grabbing Byron, and then tugged him away. It didn’t get him free and clear, and he was at the very periphery. It looked as though his armor protected him.

He blurred and became Tristan. More confident in a skirmish, maybe.

Beast’s clique began advancing through the field, closing the distance. Damsel joined them.

They had only barely finished managing dealing with these Fallen, with our help, and now they were turning on us. They fully intended to tear through any and all opposition, to be the last ones standing.

I wanted to help, but throwing myself into the midst of that group was difficult. Too many powers, too easy to get hit from multiple angles.

I flew for one of the pieces of debris. A bike engine. Beast of Burden turned on his heel to keep me in view, and said something to the others, keeping them focused on Tristan and Sveta.

I threw the debris, and Beast of Burden slapped it aside before it could hit anything.

I’d meant it more as deterrent than anything.

Disjoint grabbed Sveta, and I could see her stumble. Sidepiece prepared to hurl something.

It was Chris to the rescue. I was pretty sure it was him.

Black, feathered, and wholly unintuitive in construction. He had four legs like a crow’s talons, but large and spindly, and his body wrapped in on itself, with thick scale-like plates like the talons that extended around his ‘face’ and front. The actual features weren’t birdlike, but were nestled in the ‘conch’ of his physical form. If he’d been a banana, the eyes, mouth, and useful features would have been on the inside curve, the outside curve facing forward. But he was more of a tight spiral than a banana, confused by the crests and flares of large, glossy black feathers that filled the gaps.

It was only because his eyes were spaced out that he could rotate them and look out to the sides, each eye yellow with a distorted pupil.

The feathers were heavy and hard, I realized, as he blocked one blast from Sidepiece by rearing up and fanning the feathers out.

He stumbled in response to the explosion, then dipped back and into the field of wooden racks and greenery. Beans, it might have been.

Dark Introspection, he’d called this, if I remembered right.

The addition of an unknown player gave them pause. It was our opportunity to back off. Beast of Burden’s group gathered together.

“I would have had her,” Damsel said.

“Will you shut up?”

“You’re strong but slow,” she said. “You lack grace, and you need mobility to deal with mobility.”

“Enough.”

I could see the others getting together.

I could also see that the Fallen were gathering.

Snag had said he outnumbered these guys? It didn’t look that way. I could see Love Lost and a few others. Cleat. Etna. There were a few mooks, rounding out their number to ten or so, but not many with powers that I also recognized.

They were backing away from a larger group of Fallen, twenty-strong. More young Fallen with cheap masks, less in the way of tattoos.

Their leader wasn’t like that. He had an aura to him. As dark and grungy as the others were, as cheap as many of their costumes were, their skin cluttered with tattoos, he was all in white. White hair, white mask of overlapping segments with no eyes and black lipstick across the feminine mouth, white tunic, white leggings, white cane.

Valefor. He’d attacked my hometown.

He’d be leadership, or he’d be up there. He had that pedigree.

The plan had been to evacuate people, knowing they’d go back. I’d come to terms with that. But the hope, the focus, was that we’d deal with the leaders. If we could deal with the Fallen capes and the lieutenants who were willing to go to war, maybe we could break the back of the larger group, leaving them aimless. Maybe some of those aimless people would find their way back to society.

Twenty of them, and if there were unpowered in there, they were gussied up like the ones with powers, confusing things sufficiently that we couldn’t discount them at all.

Fuck me if this wasn’t about to be one heck of an uphill battle.

Shadow – 5.10

“Valefor,” I said, just loud enough for the others, Damsel included, to hear. “Hypnotist Master. I wrote about him in the document. Don’t look him in the eyes.”

Chris was in his bird-spiral Dark Introspection form, and he curled up further, eyes nestling in deep, so his eye only barely peered out.

We backed up as the Fallen advanced as a crowd. Chris prowled around behind us on long, black, bird limbs, his eye peering over our heads. the pupil resembled a human face in shape, but more a cross-section of the middle of the face.

I wished I’d asked for more details on just how his forms functioned. He might not have answered me, but on the off chance that he did, I’d have some sense of what we could do to defend ourselves. I just knew it was maybe a solution of sorts in the face of Mama Mathers, the anti-thinker measure, her family, or some combination thereof.

Crises tended to highlight things. They brought out the best and worst of us, whether it was courage in the face of danger to our loved ones or craven behavior in the midst of desperation. They showed us who our friends were and how much they cared. I was getting a sense of things I really needed and wanted to work on with these guys, and where our strengths as a team were. Case in point: I needed to figure things out with Chris.

I’d never really had to think about it. I’d grown up with my first team, and I’d known them intimately by default. They had been there by default, up until a crisis bad enough it had broken us.

“You wanna piece of me!?” Sidepiece screamed out the words. She put too much pitch in the higher sounds, and managed to get some vocal fry in the mix.

“You’ve got to stop saying that,” Disjoint said.

Love Lost wasn’t screaming, and the others in her group weren’t attacking. Cleat, Etna, they only retreated in our general direction.

“You want some of this!?” Sidepiece screeched.

“Silence!” Valefor called out. He pointed his cane in her direction, as he shouted it, and a few people tensed from that action alone.

Sidepiece shut her mouth.

“If the intrusive twits give each other advice, I think we should listen,” Damsel said. “Don’t look at him.”

Sidepiece shook her head.

“She wasn’t looking,” Beast said.

“Let’s go,” I said. I turned to go, hand on Sveta’s shoulder.

“Don’t run!” Valefor called out, at the top of his lungs.

My stride halted, and I swayed a bit before finding my footing. Introspection Chris had been quicker to stop, and I bumped into him in the midst of my retreat.

“Don’t go anywhere!” he cried out. His arms were out above his head, as if he shouted it to the heavens.

I turned around to look.

The others were reacting in a similar way. Beast of Burden was one of the last to stop moving, and nearby bowled over the teammates that were using him as a human shield. Sveta lost her balance, tipped over and crashed to the ground, arms paralyzed around her, not moving fast enough to break her fall.

Shit.

I took off, flying straight for Valefor. I wasn’t the only person with the same idea. Nailbiter attacked, fingers stabbing out.

One of Valefor’s people said something, distant enough he was barely audible, his hand on Valefor’s shoulder. Other capes were protecting the group against Nailbiter. One was producing a plume of red smoke that moved in slow motion. The claws hit the smoke and stopped like they’d hit inviolable steel.

The cane swung out my way. “Stop.”

I canceled my flight, dropping down to the ground. I took a few steps forward before I could stop. Our side was twenty or thirty feet behind me, and Valefor was another sixty or seventy feet ahead of me.

Nailbiter kept up the offense, bringing her claws back like she’d been hurt by the curling smoke, and then swiped in from the side, trying to catch the group from the other side. The defending Fallen threw more smoke in the way of the attack, so red it looked like plastic, opaque and moving through the air at a crawl, once it left the Fallen man’s hand.

“Attacker,” someone said, hand at Valefor’s shoulder, indicating Nailbiter.

Sidepiece joined in. She didn’t advance or retreat, but darted out to the side, fingers clenched in her guts, ripping something out.

“Cease,” Valefor called out.

Both Nailbiter and Sidepiece were affected.

Nailbiter stopped, then withdrew her fingers. Breathing hard, Sidepiece held a chunk of what might have been appendix or ovary in her hand, blood dripping freely down her arm and off of her elbow. More blood flowed from the fresh injury in the roadkill mess that was her gut, over her pelvis and the rise of her low-rise jeans, and splattered onto her sneaker.

She dropped the bit at her feet. It detonated, and she was flung to one side.

“Clever, but no. You lie there, guts girl,” Valefor said. “Don’t move a muscle. The rest of you?”

Damsel used her power, hurling herself forward.

“No powers,” Valefor called out.

Damsel stopped.

“No weapons, no tools. None of you. Stay still and wait.”

I hadn’t been looking at him. I glanced at him, and I could see that his eyes were still covered.

The instructions he was getting. He couldn’t see. His power worked without him needing to see? Or had he tapped into another source, replying on a cape that granted vision like Mapwright could get and grant mental images of areas?

My heart pounded, and I felt nausea welling up. The Fallen chuckled. A few of the young hooligan types cackled and danced around, arms waving as they approached, spreading out.

We’d been too tied up with Beast of Burden. What should have been a brief engagement, taking out the two powerful Fallen and then retreating had become a thing. Valefor had gotten into earshot, and apparently that was all he needed.

I was having trouble thinking straight. Paralysis seemed to freeze my thoughts as much as it did my body. I’d dealt with it for two years, being unable to move under my own weight. The need to move became something fluttery in my chest, which fanned the swell of nausea.

It felt like colors were different, as was the clarity of my vision, as if I had someone else’s eyes. I was acutely aware of the feeling of my clothing on my skin, every breath and how they weren’t measured to the breaths before or after them.

No powers, he’d said. I couldn’t bring myself to fly. I couldn’t bring the wretch out. I glanced at Love Lost’s group. They’d been bound by words in the same way.

I looked down and tried to focus.

The Fallen closed the distance. I’d charged in, and that put me front and center. I got a good look at Valefor as he approached. There were white feathers in his hair and around his collar. He bent his head at an angle while talking in a whisper with the person leading him.

His companion stopped him a few feet in front of me, thumbs hooked in the slim belt at his waist.

“Mama told you to help us,” Valefor said. “You didn’t.”

“We did,” I said, still looking down. “We got your people to safety and protected them.”

“I’ve been told there are Fallen casualties,” Valefor said.

“Pazuza and Gel are dead. Smashed to a pulp. Jay and Nell,” his companion said. A guy with a face tattoo visible in the gaps of a ragged head-covering that only let his eyes peer through. “Some injured.”

“Family,” Valefor said, sticking his cane in my direction. “Don’t lie to me.”

The fact that he was talking to me meant that I was off limits for the rest. The hooligans with demon masks and the darker, more adult Fallen walked past me, toward Beast of Burden and the others. We were quickly getting surrounded, except surrounded was the wrong word. We were stones in a river, and the Fallen were the water.

“We didn’t kill your people. We did protect and evacuate some,” I said. “That’s the truth.”

“Evacuated? Yeah, that’s not a good thing,” he said. He walked around me, reaching out until he touched my arm. I flinched a little at the contact. His fingers traced over the decoration at my shoulder.

I felt angry at that. I was reminded of being in the hospital, of being manhandled by nurses and carers that only wanted to get on with their days. When you were a certain kind of helpless, people took it as their right or common sense that they got to touch you.

“You’re going to help us. Tell me you understand.”

“I understand,” I said, the words escaping my lips, barely audible.

“You’re going to help us. You’re going to serve us. Tell me you’re going to serve us.”

“I’m going to serve you,” I said.

Amy. The thought sprung to mind. Amy. Amy. For two years it had been Amy this, Amy that. All my thoughts in service to being with her, thinking about her, wanting her.

Another compulsion. Then and now, when I’d hit my limit, frustrated-

He reached up to my cheek, and gave it two sharp pats, audible. “Good.”

Anger became indignation, enough to choke me, together with the irregular breathing and the nausea. My head shook a little, my vision grew dark around the edges, and I teetered slightly.

I tipped over the brink, past the point where the use of my power was willful and wanted and at the point where it was something I had to hold back.

In surrender rather than intent, I lashed out with fear and self-admiration, and I let the Wretch loose, with Valefor in arm’s reach, in that order.

Had it been the other way around, the Wretch might have gotten its hands on the man. But intimidation took hold, and Valefor was assisted by his manservant, who hauled him back and away. He sprawled in the grass.

The manservant was slower to get back, his attention on helping Valefor. Compulsion, possibly. An invisible hand struck him in the arm, and the arm folded backward, wrist slapping against elbow, skin tearing from the blunt impact and the bones cutting him from within.

What was the rule I’d set for myself? Seventy-five percent? Seventy-five percent of the harm done was fair.

I wasn’t sure how to quantify physical harm against the emotional and mental harm done. Standing where I was, Wretch active, Fallen backing away from me, I was in a fugue, emotions a storm as things I’d been bottling up sought release.

Valefor’s distraction had apparently freed people, or served as a kind of punctuation to end his ongoing commands. I was free, even as the ‘serve’ command lingered in the corner of my mind’s eye.

It was like the Amy compulsion, the desire I couldn’t fulfill, painful to think about and unwanted even in its straightforward way.

Amy, Amy, Amy. A wild, repetitive thought.

I could keep it in the corner and avoid thinking. A trap I wouldn’t fall into if I didn’t take a step or clear partisan action. I wouldn’t help Valefor, but I wouldn’t or couldn’t hurt him either. I couldn’t speak.

I flew up and back to get myself safe. Neutral.

Others were taking advantage. Capricorn slugged a hooligan that was up in his face, gauntlet to chin. Nailbiter, Beast of Burden and the others tore into the crowd that had moments ago thought they could pass through our group without incident.

Love Lost screamed, aiming the scream more at the Fallen stragglers. The red smoke Fallen had already thrown some defenses up around Valefor, so the two of them seemed unaffected.

Others were caught in the effect, and their demeanor shifted. Some looked happy in a demented way, others went cold, and it was hard to tell with others, as their costumes and masks covered them up too much. They charged at Love Lost, and she met them with hands out, claws outstretched. Cleat was a few paces behind her.

Some weren’t getting up. Sveta. I could see her looking up at me. Sidepiece lay where she was. Others weren’t fighting. Chris in particular had backed away. Good.

I still felt nauseous. My skin still crawled. I was still pissed, but it was bottled-up pissed again.

I looked in Prancer’s direction, and saw that he was moving on, heading away from us, not toward. Some of his people looked back.

We were facing the casualties of Beast of Burden’s decision to split apart. Prancer had to know we were here, with the noises and shouting, he wasn’t that far away, but they’d decided to go.

“Stop!” Valefor called out. “Freeze! No powers! No weapons! No tools!”

Again, Beast of Burden was the last one to stop. I turned to look, and saw Damsel off to one side. Her arm was limp at her side, and she gripped her forearm with her hand. Blood ran down to her fingertips.

Valefor had affected his allies, too. There had been a note of emotion in his voice, frustration and a bit of fear.

He couldn’t see. His voice was his control over the situation and he’d momentarily lost it.

There had been a time he’d needed eye contact. Now he used his voice. The trouble with a voice was that it wasn’t focused. I could remember the cane, and the way both Nailbiter and Sidepiece had obeyed at the same time, earlier.

It worked on someone if they thought they were being referred to.

There were mental tricks I imagined someone could do. It seemed like a noose that could be slipped, especially when he referred to people in the general. I just wasn’t sure I could do it.

“Pagan, stand at ease,” Valefor said. He tilted his head slightly and said the words like they were a joke. “Report.”

The one the Wretch had hit shifted his weight until he could roll over enough that his knees were under him. He knelt on the ground, clearly unsteady as he worked his way to his feet as best as he could without his hands. His good arm cradled the damaged one. “Two dead. Ten injured, my best guess. I’m one of them. I need help soon.”

Two dead.

Were those dead on my hands? I’d created a momentary opening, others had taken advantage of it.

What would have happened if we hadn’t been here? Would there be less lives lost? Or would some of the dangerous individuals be Valefor’s captive audience?

Could I afford to even think about that? We were- we were caught again. So long as we could talk and we could hear him, there wasn’t a good way to avoid his effect.

“Fallen, you can move,” Valefor said. “Look for anyone that’s covering their ears.”

Fallen that had been paralyzed started moving

Fear was making it hard to breathe. Could I use that again? Another disruption?

“Girl with the spikes that I was just talking to. Calm down. Don’t try to be clever.”

Just like that, my thoughts were dulled, and I found myself going back to the little meditative phrases and mental loops. Old PRT case numbers, a mantra I’d started to go over once when I’d needed to break a loop of thinking, which had inadvertently become something that calmed me down.

We’d been prepared for Valefor as he was, with outdated records and a printout of a wiki page that had been salvaged from someone’s laptop after the slow process began of rebuilding the internet.

Case zero was Scion. He was also, I presumed, the last case. Case one was the Siberian, technically the one who had first started the case files, as the PRT consolidated old data and tried to get information from other government agencies. Case two was Behemoth, his rise had incited the creation of the PRT. The case series had been an excuse to gather data from international agencies, too. Case three was the lie of the virus, an early claim about the origin of powers, propagated by an early online newsgroup. Case four was The Player, an early Thinker mastermind who had required some greater cooperation across multiple agencies to root out. Later on, The Player would be a case-in-point for the formation of Watchdog and its core purpose. Kenzie’s would-be group.

The first cases had inspired things, major functions and interests. Committees had been formed and those committees had become something. Even though a whole chunk of the early ones were minor or fabrications in the end, the virus theory included, they’d led to things like a dedicated parahuman science department.

Ordered, interesting, familiar. It was calming, even if I didn’t want to be calm.

We’d talked about how to deal with him. Tricks, techniques. I’d thought I could use my aura, to try to override or distract. I’d been right.

I’d gotten two Fallen killed and the ensuing fracas had led to roughly half of them being injured. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. The idea of death weighed heavy, even if it looked as if it was Beast of Burden and Nailbiter’s doing. Violence and death didn’t weigh heavy for them.

“Our side matches yours in number. From what I’ve been told, you’re divided, fighting among yourselves. We aren’t. The strength of faith,” Valefor said. He said it almost ironically. “Let’s tip the scales. You’re going to serve us. You’re going to fight for us. I’ll talk to you one by one and I’ll have you pledge allegiance, starting with-”

I heard Damsel’s power, brief.

Beast of Burden said something, his voice a growl.

“I said not to be clever,” Valefor said. He drew in a deep breath, then tilted his head as far to the left as it would go, where ear would have been touching shoulder if his mask didn’t cover it. “Do you want to see what I can do if I get creative? Someone assist me.”

A Fallen woman near him hurried to his side, supporting and guiding him. She had her tits out, and every inch of her was caked in goopy black paint, which obscured her features and hid details. Where her lips parted, the paint had cracked, so there was only a broken hard ridge, with lips, teeth and tongue behind. It even caked her hair.

It didn’t look like a Tempera sort of thing. Just costume.

They navigated the crowd, Fallen moving out of their way, our guys and the violent capes frozen in place.

Valefor was far enough away from me that I could barely hear him. He stood in front of Damsel.

Her power flared. She stumbled.

The woman with Valefor said something.

“Stop,” Valefor said. “Don’t do that again. Move your hand.”

She pulled her hand away from her forearm. There was a hole where she had dug her thumb in under the skin.

We’d talked about this, but not- not quite like this.

“You-” Valefor started.

The power flared again. She stumbled, spell broken, and then brought her good hand around, toward Valefor.

The woman in black paint let go of Valefor and caught Damsel’s wrist, forcing it upward. The power shot well over their heads, and Damsel fell.

“Cease,” Valefor said. “Let’s distract you. Kill your friends.”

Damsel wheeled around, turning toward Nailbiter and Sidepiece. Then she hesitated, looking up at me.

The woman in black paint moved, lunging to intercept another attacker.

Chris, leaping in. The woman in black kept him from getting his talons on Valefor. He was a spiral twist of feather and scaly talonflesh, with eyes and hard ridges in the mix. His spindly talons raked and grabbed, but the woman in black was fast, strong, and possibly a precog.

He’d picked this form with Masters in mind. Capes that controlled people. He hadn’t been willing to say just how or why it helped, only that he was unsure how well it would work.

At the time, I’d told myself he’d be kept back and out of the way, so it barely mattered, especially if we couldn’t be certain how reliable it was.

Chris got two of his four talons on Damsel, and he tossed her. She used her power while mid-air, and landed roughly on her feet, one hand touching the ground. Her injured arm hung limp.

The arm sparked and she fell.

Fallen pushed past our people to help Valefor, as Introspection Chris tried to reach around the woman in black and scratch him. Powers came to bear: red smoke, a snake that looked like it was made of intestine and barbed wire, sprouting spikes that crackled with electricity- Introspection Chris disengaged and leaped back as the Fallen came rushing at him.

Him was really a quirky word to use when he had this form.

There were two with enhanced speed, and the barbed intestine snake had reach. He wasn’t that fast in this form, even if he was faster than a normal human might have been. The speedy Fallen tackled him. The snake caught his leg.

I flew a little closer, unconsciously, wanting to keep an eye on things, make sure he was okay. Mrs. Yamada had charged me with their care.

The two Fallen with enhanced speed looked related. They sped up, but as they did, their bodies deformed. Legs bent the wrong way, operating digitigrade, the tops of their heads twisted, until their lower jaws pointed the opposite directions that their upper jaws, noses, and eyes did.

From the way he reacted to their hits, they hit hard too. Strength, speed, but at a cost to fluidity of motion, steadily increasing clumsiness and facility.

He shook them, and the first fell, the second slipping and the getting a hold of one taloned foot. Fallen advanced on Chris as a larger group.

The two awkward Fallen speedsters were bleeding, I saw.

Just as the group seemed poised to go after him, I pushed out with my aura, hard.

Heads turned.

I hadn’t even meant to. It was instinct, and it was instinct on behalf of Chris. I didn’t even care that much about Chris.

The act on his behalf brought the pledge to Valefor to mind. I’d promised to serve, and it was a loop in my thoughts now. The usual techniques didn’t help to break it.

It was a peculiar battlefield, so many people frozen in place, the combatants on the Fallen side not wanting to break the spell by jarring anyone too much. I hadn’t experienced it myself, but it seemed that if people were told to stop, and were set to moving by a stumble or a push, that was enough that it needed to be renewed.

Damsel had broken her prosthetic hand to make her power spark, each stumble forcing a renewal. Now she stalked toward the group. Her last order had been to kill her friends.

Thought process: I needed to help Valefor. I needed to help the others. I couldn’t break the mental loop and I couldn’t remain neutral anymore, now that the thought was heavy in my mind’s eye. I would help Valefor.

I flew to Valefor, while everyone’s attention was on Chris. Fallen turned, the woman in black first among them, skin red and sunburned beneath the cracked black paint. There were veins of red through the paint that weren’t sunburned skin peeking through, either, and I saw she had horns, now that I was closer.

I brought the Wretch forth as she lunged for me.

The Wretch was invisible, and she had planned her punch and tackle to hit me, not a force a few feet in front of me. She bounced away, and the Wretch disappeared. Others were so distracted with Chris and now Beast of Burden, who had been jostled in the fighting, they didn’t even seem to notice.

I collided with Valefor fairly hard as I put my arms around him. He couldn’t see me coming, so he couldn’t even brace against the impact. I would help him in such a way that he couldn’t tell me to stop helping and put himself in danger again.

Collecting him, I flew away from the scene.

I would help and serve him. That was the idea he’d planted in my head.

Before he could catch his breath from the impact, I flew in a spiral tight enough his legs went out to the side, and then gently deposited him on a rooftop.

I flew away before he could catch his footing, get a lungful of air, and give me another command.

The compulsion wasn’t gone. It was there.

But it had abated. I’d served the rule, but not the spirit.

The tide had turned. The villains that were assisting us were B-listers, but the Fallen weren’t the cream of the Fallen’s crop either. I flew past the group, jostling people, grabbing them and letting go a moment later.

Valefor wouldn’t find his way back in time, I hoped, and the Fallen were already injured from the brief surprise attack.

A spray of cold water from Capricorn woke up everyone I hadn’t been able to reach. The Fallen retreated, the intestine-snake snatching up two and yanking them back. I did much the same in finding Sveta lying in tall grass, her suit and wig without a head beneath. A knife impaled her back but hadn’t penetrated the shell. I carried her away, feeling the reassuring thump of her presence within.

“You okay?” I asked, once we were in the air.

“Embarrassed,” Sveta said, her voice sounding a bit like it came from the depths of a well.

“Okay,” I said. I landed a distance away, just far enough away we could keep Beast and Damsel’s group of capes in sight.

Once four-legged, now three-legged, Chris limped his way to us. He breathed hard and curled up tight. Byron followed.

“Hey guy,” I said. I wished we had a name for him. “Mr. Introspection. You’re missing a leg. You okay?”

He blinked once.

I had no idea what that meant. Go figure, that he wasn’t any more forthcoming when he didn’t seem to have a working mouth.

“What did you end up doing?” Byron asked.

“Took Valefor away. He’s still out there,” I said. “Unfortunately.”

I eyed Damsel, who was at the periphery of Beast of Burden’s group. There was a dark look in her eye as she talked to that group, clearly heated and I wasn’t there to talk her down.

“Tristan couldn’t switch to me, I don’t think,” Byron said. “When we were talking about capes we might run into last night, we theorized it was a thing we could do, that if he switched to me I might not be compelled, but he didn’t switch.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “We knew there were a half-dozen things we could maybe do, and some worked, some didn’t.”

“I hate- I hate losing control. I only have control over half my life to begin with,” Byron said.

“Yeah,” Sveta said. Her face peered up through the neckhole of her suit. “There’s- Careful, Victoria. Or, Byron, can you put your gauntlets over this gap, fasten it when I say so?”

“Sure,” Byron said.

“Be careful,” Sveta said.

She’d undone a clasp at the shoulder. She brought her head out, twisting it around in a way a neck couldn’t. Her tendrils were bound with metal rings into a loose column that disappeared into her suit. She began working her way into a comfortable position. “Not having control, it sucks. Fuck that guy.”

“Agreed on both counts, but the lack of control helped us,” I said. “It’s how I used my aura. It’s what Damsel did.”

Sveta pursed her lips.

Damsel was stalking. Sidepiece and Nailbiter were sticking with her. Disjoint hung back, talking to Beast of Burden. Etna, Love Lost, and Cleat seemed to be a sub-clique in that group.

Byron blurred. His armor shifted tints from blue to red.

“It’s what Dark Introspection here did,” Tristan said. “Mind-body disconnect, right? Looking inward, elective connection.”

Chris curled up tighter.

“Yeah,” Tristan said. He bent down to give Chris a pat. “You’re so weird.”

“You did good,” I said.

I could see the looks on faces throughout our small group, or what I could see of faces. Chris being wound together, Sveta looking so deeply unhappy, Tristan’s eyes being narrower.

It wasn’t just us. The violent capes were more agitated.

I felt that way. The panic that had let me tap into the aura and Wretch wasn’t going all the way away. I wore armor and a costume that made me feel like standing tall and I felt very small.

Fuck that guy was right.

“What did he tell you?” Tristan asked me. “Orders, compulsions?”

“To serve, to help. I helped by removing him from a dangerous situation. I’m not all the way resolved, there. I don’t want to run into him again.”

“Did he tell you to lie?”

“Stop that,” Sveta said. “She would have to say no if he did, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Not always,” Tristan said. “Sometimes you get loopholes. It’s worth asking.”

I shook my head. “He didn’t tell me to lie. He was distracted, I think. He tried to pull a big gambit to turn the tides and he’s operating blind. Literally, I don’t think he can see.”

I still had the traitorous, general thoughts and impressions from the compulsion. I was familiar with having thoughts that weren’t mine in my head. The mind was supposed to be sacrosanct, the thoughts it contained purely sourced from oneself and for oneself. Valefor had violated the former, like Amy had violated the latter.

On a level, I was just happy I hadn’t killed him. I knew there was an argument for why I should have, had I had the opportunity. I also knew it would have been a betrayal of myself and the me I wanted to be.

For all these reasons and more, mind control was another one of the parts of the game. Too many people found it viscerally horrifying, myself included, and the way things could break down if mind control saw common use was too big of a problem. The natural reaction from society, or from our sub-society, was to fight back.

Valefor obviously didn’t care.

He didn’t give me the impression of someone at home in a big thing like the one we’d been in, especially after the fighting had started, and he’d still been pretty damn scary.

“We could go,” I said. “We caught them off guard once or twice there, and we got some lumps in. It’s not quite breaking the back of the Fallen, but we could pull away, regroup with others, and plan for the perimeter and Looksee’s trap.”

“I want to do more,” Sveta said. “I was useless back there.”

“I can’t back down from this,” Tristan-Capricorn said. “I think if we run into him again, if I’m alert, I might know what to do.”

“If you’re sure,” I said.

He nodded.

I looked down at Introspection Chris. “How about you? You good to retreat to the background? Gallop in if you see the need and feel up to it?”

He lurched to his feet, curled and uncurled like he was stretching, and then loped away, swaying a bit to compensate for the missing forelimb. He bucked a bit, claw reaching up, and then the iffy camouflage kicked in.

“Okay,” I said. “I have a lot of questions.”

“His whole thing is he doesn’t like answering them,” Capricorn said.

“He’s doing his part,” Sveta said. “That was brave.”

“It was insane,” Capricorn said. “No offense intended to present company, brothers, or self.”

“Fine line between bravery and insanity,” I said.

I looked across the clearing to Beast of Burden’s group. Damsel wasn’t pacing anymore.

Capricorn approached and stood next to me, his armored shoulder touching the spikes at mine. Sveta stood at my other side, looking in that direction.

“Do we try this?” Capricorn asked.

“We might have to. I don’t like leaving her alone like this.”

“Okay.”

Capricorn put a hand up. Disjoint was watching us, and nudged Beast of Burden.

Their group went quiet.

I was well aware that Love Lost was a danger to Rain. I was aware of how dangerous these guys were in general. Beast of Burden had killed two members of the Fallen’s inner circle, it sounded like. They’d been people Valefor was close to.

We approached, slow and steady.

“Can we try this a second time?” Tristan asked. “Truce? We deal with this whole situation. There are hostages we need to rescue and we can’t afford to fight.”

“I like the idea,” Disjoint said.

“Backup would be awful nice,” Sidepiece said. She had a really annoying voice. I’d noticed it earlier. A bit of the teenage vocal fry, trying a bit to sound cute, but she wasn’t a teenager and I didn’t think she was cute.

“Not your call,” Beast of Burden said.

“Is it supposed to be yours?” Damsel asked.

“You can be quiet,” Beast of Burden said. “I’ve heard too much from you today. Earn your stripes first, then talk.”

“Hey, Damsel of Distress,” I said.

She turned to me.

“You good? Any lingering compulsions?”

“No. I don’t have much goodness to go around, but I don’t have any compulsion either. I don’t have friends.”

“You gave me a look,” Sidepiece said. She had hair over one side of her face, but she didn’t take very good care of it, and a mask in the same cut as the phantom of the opera one, albeit cruder, covered part of her face. Black makeup filled her lower eye socket and distorted the impression of her eyeshape. “A very flattering murderous look.”

“I thought about it,” Damsel said, imperious and proud, chin rising a bit. “I don’t know if you qualify as a friend, when I barely know you, but I don’t mind your company, Sidepiece, and I can respect a lady with the discipline to have a… twelve inch waist?”

She smiled a bit. Her arm sparked, her power ripping between the wound at her forearm and her fingertips. and she stumbled into Disjoint. Frowning, she backed away until she was a short distance from everyone else.

“Sixteen inches, last I checked, but thank you. You’re a dear,” Sidepiece said, ignoring the power misfire and maintaining her intentionally frayed voice as she feigned higher class.

“Will you help us?” I asked.

“No,” Beast of Burden said.

Nailbiter and Damsel exchanged a look. Nailbiter looked over at Sidepiece.

“Yes,” Nailbiter said, voice whistling slightly.

Beast of Burden wheeled on her, finger pointing. “Not your choice.”

“Democratically?” Sidepiece asked. “I think most of us want the help, Bob.”

“This isn’t a democracy,” Beast of Burden said. “This is a fucking tyranny. You signed on for it, and you agreed I’m leader because I’m good for the business and track record. You also agreed that if the crown is moving to another head, it’s going to do so outside of jobs. Leaders can’t be second guessed on the field.”

“Either we run or we press on,” Damsel said, second guessing him.

“Enough,” Beast of Burden said.

“If we press on, we’re going to face worse than we just did. I agree with Sidepiece and Nailbiter. It makes sense,” Damsel said.

Her power sparked again. She maintained her balance, overcompensated, and stumbled a step the other way.

“You okay?” Sveta asked.

“Just fine,” Damsel said, curt and sounding anything but. She turned back to Beast of Burden. “Don’t be a wuss, Beast. You look weaker trying to go this alone than you do taking the help.”

Before Beast of Burden could reply, Love Lost approached him from behind. She rapped claws with blood still on them on the back of his armor.

He turned.

She pointed at Nailbiter, then at us.

“She’s the client,” Damsel said.

He stabbed a finger her way. “Last warning.”

Her power sparked. This time she fell.

“Good. Stay like that,” Beast of Burden said. He stepped forward and placed one iron boot on the edge of her dress. Damsel remained where she was. Struggling would have been futile.

“Don’t be a dick,” I said.

“Don’t interject yourself into our business. If the client wants help, fine. We’ll do this.”

“We need to find the hostages. We’ll reunite with another group we’re working with and use their thinkers or other resources. If there’s a confrontation, we work together,” I said.

Beast of Burden shrugged, spreading his gauntlet-clad hands slightly. He stepped off of Damsel’s dress, and went to walk in the direction the fighting had gone. It seemed with Prancer mobile and Velvet having some emphasis on enhanced maneuverability when driving with her telekinesis, they were moving around a lot, and the Fallen were giving chase. They had moved away since the fight with Valefor.

Love Lost pointed. She didn’t spare Damsel a glance as she walked on. Some of the others joined her. Nailbiter, Disjoint, and Etna. Sidepiece lingered as Damsel picked herself up. Her arm sparked twice, but she didn’t fall.

She gave us a look, then stalked away.

We cut through the north end of the settlement, toward the northwest corner, and the sound of ongoing confrontation got us jogging after them. Well, I flew, but the rest jogged or ran.

Prancer was engaged. They were fighting with hit and run tactics, and when the Fallen didn’t take the bait or stopped to pause, Prancer’s group assaulted buildings. There was a shop on fire, and a large garage with a truck in it that now had a chunk missing.

A big part of what let them do that was the heroes at the west end of the settlement, and the presence of the Undersiders. Bitch and her dogs were standing beside Vista. Narwhal was close, and two black stuffed animals reared up at the edge of the camp. Foil was there, but Tattletale was not.

No Valefor, but I could see a core group of Fallen with fancier costumes and that kind of presence.

Nobody that looked like they could be Mama Mathers, either.

The pressure was on, and the Fallen looked to be losing ground. There were world-class capes lined up against them. If the actual groups were even in power, and I wasn’t sure they were, then Prancer’s group was playing it in such a way that even if the Fallen won, they wouldn’t have a town left after.

My phone buzzed.

I pulled it out.

Looksee:
Not peeking am reporting what others saying. Precog with me says Vista says that the hostages you want are toward south end of town. Map attached.

The text had an image attached.

I flew skyward, looking.

A group. Valefor’s group, with Fallen civilians and others. The hostages.

We could figure something out.

White flickers danced in the corner of my vision. I looked away, but they persisted. Like the motes of dust in my eye, but akin to snowflakes.

If that was their anti-thinker measure, which might well be Mama Mathers, then even the thinker-esque advantage of having a bird’s eye view was enough to give them an in.

I grit my teeth.

I’d seen the building Looksee had marked on the map.

Dropping out of the sky, I landed beside the group. “This way. The-”

Turning toward Beast of Burden’s group, I was just in time to see him backhand Damsel across the face. It was a casual swing, but he was strong and he wore a gauntlet. She hit the ground hard.

“Jesus fuck, no wonder your team is mutinying,” Capricorn said. “You can’t play nice with others in a crisis? There’s stuff going on! Be a professional.”

“She didn’t even say anything! This time!” Sidepiece said, bending down beside Damsel. Damsel pushed her away.

Her damaged hand at her face, the other used to get to her feet, Damsel worked her way to a standing position. I didn’t see anything resembling Ashley in her eyes.

“I gave her a final warning,” Beast of Burden said.

“Hey,” Capricorn said.

“Damsel,” I said. “Ashley.”

“Stop,” Beast of Burden said, pointing at Damsel, talking over me.

One hand still on her face, she pointed at him and blasted before his expression could change.

Darkness, shadow, distorted space and visual static ripped through armor, flesh, and armor again, tearing a hole clean through him. The hole caved in on itself, metal creaking as it bent, blood fountaining out and splashing up on half the people nearby.

“You stop,” she said.

Shadow – 5.11

“Damsel!” Sveta cried out, as the initial shock wore off.

Everyone was backing away from Beast of Burden and from Damsel, who caught her footing and looked down at the body. Sentences were an overlapping jumble.

“What did you do?” Disjoint asked, eyes wide. His mask was a black stick-on sort, but it was divided into two halves, one for the brow and one for the cheekbones. As his eyebrows went up and his eyes went wide, the two halves separated, revealing red-painted skin beneath.

“What I did is obvious,” Damsel said.

“Fuck,” Sidepiece said. She ran her fingers back through the sides of her hair, and there was enough residual fat and blood on them from her using her power that her hair stuck where it was pushed. “He hadn’t paid me yet.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why did you do this?”

“He stepped on me. He struck me. In a fight? That’s fine, you can hit me in a fight. But like this? When I’m helping? I’ll hit back.”

“That’s not a hit,” Sveta said.

Damsel paced a little. People were giving Damsel and the blood spatter a wide berth, and as she moved, people backed up more.

Nailbiter was on the far side of the group, furthest from me. She prowled on elongated limbs, silent, staring.

Damsel spoke up, “I will not be stepped on. I will not be beaten down and take it with a smile. He wanted to be a tyrant but he couldn’t lead. He didn’t know his own place in things and he thought to tell me mine?”

“So he dies?” I asked.

“He knew what he was doing,” she said. “He-”

Her power misfired. She staggered a bit, and Capricorn and Sveta backed away more. Damsel found her balance, but when she did, her hair draped down in front of most of her face, and she let it hang there.

She continued, “He knew the risks when he went toe to toe with me. When he struck me, it wasn’t heated. It was cold, logical. He knew if he didn’t do something, he’d lose his team. He calculated the risk and he calculated it wrong.”

“You pushed him to that point,” I said.

Sveta touched my arm. Fear that I was provoking Damsel when she was in a dangerous state? Or because I sounded accusatory? Both?

“I calculated wrong, I thought he was smarter.”

She said. She stuck out a foot, and rested her foot on Beast of Burden’s forehead. His helmet had tipped back by its own weight, exposing a face with narrow eyes, and a muttonchop beard. His head was resting on the part of the helmet that had once been behind his neck. She moved his head around by moving her foot.

“Stop that, please,” Sveta said.

Damsel paused.

Sveta pointed at the foot. “Please. Even if he wasn’t a great person, he was human. He deserves common decency.”

Damsel stepped back, placing her footsteps where there wasn’t too much blood. There was a dusty print on Beast of Burden’s forehead now, with some small rocks settled into the corner of his eye, by the bridge of his nose.

“Thank you,” Sveta said.

In the background, lights danced around the shadows of the trees at the west edge of the settlement. Vista and Weld’s group. It caught Sveta’s attention, and I saw her focus her balance, swaying slightly less. I could imagine it as a tension in the tendrils within her body.

On the other side of things, while everyone else turned to look at the shifting reds and blues and greens, my focus was on Ashley. I saw something in her expression, as she looked at Sveta, then at Capricorn, and finally met my eyes. It was fleeting, spooked, more like how an ordinary person might look if they were at the mercy of ex-Slaughterhouse Nine member Damsel of Distress, than Damsel of Distress herself.

Hardly the imperious bearing she had a moment ago.

I saw the expression pass before any of the members of the other group could react. Love Lost tilted her head a little, walking around the periphery of the larger group- a wide periphery, given how we’d spread out and backed off.

“This is the true world of parahumans,” Damsel said, turning to look at Love Lost. Damsel’s chin rose a little, as she went back to being the villain queen. “The other things fall away, but this remains a constant. It’s why we all die young.”

“Endbringers and end of the world helped,” Sidepiece said.

“The end of the world never stopped,” Damsel said. “This is it, continuing, wearing demon masks and cheering about fucking over the rest of us. It’s wearing stupid helmets with horns as long as my legs and thinking it can find its way to power by killing its enemies and stepping on anyone in its way.”

“It’s blasting a hole in someone with a stupid helmet,” Disjoint said.

She turned on him. He stepped back some more.

“Don’t blast a hole in the guy with the stupid limb teleporting power,” he said.

She started to talk, then stopped as her power misfired again. She gripped her arm, pressing down on the hole where she’d dug her thumb in. I assumed it was the point where her arm stopped and the prosthetic started, interrupting the connection.

I was lost. She’d always been tricky to deal with, but I’d mostly had a good sense of what made her tick. I’d been able to talk her down a few times, I knew what she liked and what she wanted.

I didn’t know, here.

“Fuck me,” Capricorn said. “I don’t know what to say. This needs to be answered, but there are people with lives on the line right now.”

“Go,” she said. “You guys seem to be good enough at finding us and showing up at inconvenient times.”

Capricorn shook his head. “Fuck this,” he said. Angrier, he said, “This isn’t over.”

“No,” Damsel said, her chin rising a bit more. “I didn’t think it was.”

“This isn’t good,” Sveta said. “This is pretty far from okay.”

“I’ve always been a long way off from good and okay,” Damsel said.

“That’s not an excuse to turn your back on those things.”

“Oh fuck off, you sanctimonious cyborg,” Sidepiece said.

“Clearly not a cyborg,” Damsel said.

“I’m- yeah. Not a cyborg. And I’m fucking off, don’t worry. People to help. Damsel of Distress?”

“Fuck offff,” Sidepiece said, head lolling back. She stopped as Damsel raised a hand.

“What?” Damsel asked.

“Help yourself so others can help you,” Sveta said.

Sveta and Capricorn were ready to go. I hesitated.

Everything kept coming back to the same scenarios, moments, and scenes. There were parallels, comparisons, things about people I noticed.

A therapist I’d talked to while Mrs. Yamada was away had explained it to me as a consequence of trauma. Some things were just so big in our own heads that they had their own gravity. They demanded to be dwelt on and they leveraged that dwelling to tie everything back into themselves, every detail they invoked and every question they raised. They were impossible to figure out but we had to try, and that trying became more leverage.

She was fundamentally broken as a person. I didn’t know a lot but I knew that, standing here and seeing her standing over a dead body. I’d been there, I’d been a witness, and I’d been galled then too. I’d witnessed a breakdown of someone extremely dangerous.

I one hundred and fifty percent understood Capricorn and Sveta’s reactions.

Those who had their trauma get too big were the types to extend it to everything. A bad event became a fear of the world, or of men, of capes, or it became self-loathing that permeated every part of one’s own being.

The remedy was to talk to someone, to get perspective. Complicated by the fact that sometimes people weren’t equipped to understand or to listen.

I stared at Ashley and the villains who stood around her. They hadn’t rejected her outright. Love Lost, Cleat, Disjoint, Sidepiece, Nailbiter.

They weren’t equipped. Just the opposite.

“I’d like you to turn yourself in, and submit yourself into our custody,” I said.

Her eyes widened slightly.

“There it is,” Nailbiter said, in that eerie voice with its whistles and hisses of breath through teeth.

“There what is?” Sidepiece asked.

“Our hooded girl here called Damsel by her real name.”

“There’s a history,” I said, at nearly the same time as Damsel said, “History.”

“Uh huh,” Nailbiter said, disbelieving. “The timing’s off. When these guys showed up. When you did.”

Damsel spoke without taking her eyes off me, “She probably came after me. I fought her family in Boston. My second trip, a while later, I fought her boss in the Protectorate.”

“Not my boss,” I said.

“No?”

“I wasn’t a Ward for long, and he wasn’t in charge at the time.”

Damsel shrugged, very easily and casually, as if she wasn’t standing over the body of the man she’d murdered.

“I’ve fought your family, and we’ve had run-ins,” she said. “Bonesaw, who brought me back from the dead, fucked up her sister and attacked her family in their home.”

“Don’t go there,” I said.

She raised her hands in a ‘I give up’ kind of way. Her power arced around the one, an aimless stream shooting off skyward at an angle before fizzling out.

“Come into custody, we’ll take you with us, we’ll have you stand down and stay off to the side until this whole thing wraps up,” I said. “I know you’ve benefited a lot from the amnesty. There are people you talk to and people who help you maintain a normal life. If you walk away from this scene, that ends.”

“Holy shit, heroes are annoying,” Sidepiece said. “Let’s go. I’ve got a bingo sheet to fill out, and I’ve gotta land a direct hit with a bit of uterus or set off a combo explosion with a spleen toss if I want to clear a row.”

She approached Ashley, reaching out. Nailbiter barred her way.

Was it worth it? The ruse didn’t matter anymore, we weren’t going to keep her in this role. Like so many things, she’d been great when the going was good. When things got rougher- we needed to figure something out later.

It only mattered in that if we didn’t end up taking her away from this and revealed her role, she’d end up in danger.

“If you come, Damsel, I can’t promise there won’t be consequences, but I’ll testify about circumstances. It’s a chaotic situation with Valefor as a factor, and everything else. They’re mitigating factors. Protect the amnesty, here.”

I saw her start to lift her foot from the ground. Her power flared, and she bent over at the waist, catching one knee with her good hand. It wouldn’t have been enough to catch her balance entirely, but Nailbiter had draped fingers along the one side.

Damsel put a hand on Nailbiter’s finger to steady herself as she straightened.

“You have people to help,” she said. She pushed at Nailbiter’s finger. “And I’m done with this. I’m going to get my arm fixed before I start killing everyone I see out of pure frustration.”

“Good plan,” Disjoint said.

Will you confess? I wanted to ask. Will you tell someone?

I couldn’t ask it out loud, because there was no answer she could give that would suffice for all parties involved.

Leaving wasn’t as good as her staying in our sight, but it was better than staying with this bunch.

Sveta and Capricorn were making their careful way toward Valefor, moving slowly for my sake, and to keep an eye on my exchange with Damsel. I flew to them, and they started moving faster as I joined the group again.

There was still the situation further into the settlement proper.

“She’s walking away,” I said. “Best we can get.”

“I didn’t know it would be that hair-trigger,” Capricorn said.

“I figured it was,” another voice said.

We stopped. Tristan summoned some orange motes around his hand. Sveta brought up one hand, holding her forearm.

The terrain moved. It was the camouflage blur that was Chris, except the effect I’d seen was patchy and inconsistent, and Chris was almost seamlessly fitting into the environment. The form was mostly faded, but I could see the spikes and ridges that were feathers.

“I must be the only person who wasn’t surprised by that,” Chris added.

“How the hell did you get that good with the camouflage?” Tristan asked.”

“Staying still helps. Being a genius helps too,” he said. He made a dry cackling noise. “Not that I’m a genius, exactly. I’m good at getting into the mindset and physical form that makes me good at doing something.”

“And being a weird spiral bird helps with camouflage how?” Capricorn asked. He edged closer to the corner of a building, trying to get a peek of the situation.”

“The introspection-self-reflection-reflection-grief wing of things? Great for self awareness, which is great for knowing just how I’m positioned and how I look. Don’t spend too long looking, Capricorn. They’ve got a fucky-”

I saw the camouflage distort as he brought his hands to his head.

“-power,” he said.

I thought about the visual ‘snow’ and it flared back into existence at the lower right corner of my eye.

“The anti-thinker measure,” I said.

“Yeah. Guess so. One of the Fallen with the hostages. Valefor’s there. My Dark Introspection form disconnects mind from body, which is great if I want to put my body on autopilot or leave it with instinctive actions, but it doesn’t stop my mind from being fucked with.”

“You shouldn’t be this close to things,” I said.

“Well, I am. I did stuff while you guys were running around. I get fucked up when I do the deep self-dive with that form, so I told my body what to do and interjected a few times with new input. I think I’m having a good day, my body definitely was, but it’s hard to tell with the emotional aftertaste.”

“A good day?” Sveta asked.

“Yeah,” Chris said, with a note of something that might have been incredulity, or even curious emphasis. “This is why I’m in the game. Running with the big guys, dealing with the big things. Lives on the line.”

“You’re a kid,” Capricorn said.

“Right now? I’m halfway toward being a freaky personification of Dark Introspection and being a pink skinned scoundrel. We’re all special cases, Cap. Ashley snapping should drive that home, if your daily schedule hadn’t already.”

Sveta looked back in Ashley’s direction.

“You’re talking a lot,” I said.

“I’m desperately trying to ride an excited high here, because the alternative is slipping into Introspection or dealing with the fact some power is trying to drive me nuts. Work with me.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

I wanted to sound more confident and authoritative, but- I didn’t like how we’d left Ashley, or how we’d let that happen. That was something that weighed on me, and the melancholy I’d noted earlier in the day was giving way to something that riffed on the panic I’d experienced with Valefor.

Except the hints of panic I felt wasn’t about one situation with Valefor, or even about this greater conflict. It was about big picture stuff, and one impulse call by Ashley had brought the big-picture concern into focus. I knew she’d called it calculated, not impulse, but I couldn’t see how it could be.

I wanted things to be better and right now, they weren’t.

But I needed to focus. I needed to work with these guys, like Chris had said.

I glanced at Sveta, and she looked just about as lost as I felt.

I reached for her hand and gave it a waggle.

“Hostages,” I said. “We want to deal with Valefor too.”

“I prepared another form in case we needed to fight,” Chris said. “It’s slow.”

“Vigilance,” Capricorn said.

“Yeah.”

“Save it.”

“Fourteen hostages, by the way. There are five Fallen, one Valefor, two people from the Clans, and someone who might be the guy in charge of the bikers. I spent a while looking, and I’m seeing ghosts now, I think.”

“Not good that that’s a thing,” Capricorn said, “But this is good to know.”

He extended a hand down toward Chris, who was still camouflaged, albeit less tidily than before. He straightened, moving his arm like he was pulling Chris to his feet.

“Fuck,” Chris hissed. Things clattered to the dirt around him. Some were camouflaged. Others were containers. “I thought you were shaking my hand or something.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“Food. Because I need to fuel up, and my next form is dense. Some meds. Plus my walkman and pocket atari, and some other stuff. I was sorting out my stuff after getting dressed again.”

“Walkman?” Capricorn asked.

“We’re post-end of the world, I’m not going to bring my phone and risk it getting broken or losing it and having someone use it to figure out my secret identity. Fuck, it’s hard to see it now that it’s not on me.”

“You can’t bring all this stuff,” Capricorn said.

“Fuck off,” Chris replied. “I do things how I do them.”

Capricorn sighed faintly and bent down to help. I took Capricorn’s spot at the corner of the building, peering carefully around.

Chris protested, barely audible but clearly pissed. “No, don’t help. You’re just moving it around, and it’s hard enough to keep track of things when holes are appearing in everything.”

“Holes?” Capricorn asked.

“Holes. Flesh with holes in it like it’s rotting, but round, fleshy, and damp, ground with pockmarks, walls with more holes, and-” his voice became slightly higher pitched as the intensity of them ratcheted up, “Things are looking at me or wriggling on the other side of the holes. It’s not the coolest! I’m trying not to think about it!”

“Shh,” I said.

They stopped talking, but Chris continued to rummage and rustle, and Capricorn stood back, arms folded.

Conversation continued in the distance, as the people managing the hostages talked. I could peer around the corner and past a tree to see a slice of things between two buildings, but it wasn’t much. I didn’t want to move too much and alert anyone.

“Problem?” Sveta asked.

“I wanted to see if I could overhear anything. Chris is seeing things, why aren’t they affected? Is it selective?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” she said.

“I’m going around,” Sveta said. She swayed a little and touched the wall with one hand to steady herself.

“Okay. Be careful. Don’t let them affect you like they did Chris.”

She extended her arms out, reaching out with tendrils that had the arms at the ends to hamper them and weigh them down, then pulled herself away with less noise than Chris made as he packed up his stuff.

The Fallen settlement was wedged in between a ‘v’ of forest, with the road cutting in from the east. The settlement proper was a denser cluster of rustic buildings, and houses dispersed out into the wider area, thinning out the further they were from this settlement.

I had the impression that this was the city center. The main road cut through the cluster of buildings, about two houses down from where I was, and it seemed to do so with a weird angled turn in it. It made me think these buildings had been some of the first, and the road had been an afterthought.

The hostages, from what I’d seen from my bird’s eye view, were being made to sit in the road, corralled by a group of people with powers. Valefor among them.

I ventured further along, checking the coast was clear, then skip-flying over to the next vantage point by pushing off the ground with my foot and flying from there once airborne. The buildings remained dense between myself and the Fallen.

Sveta dropped down from above me, scuffing the wall as she did. It seemed intentional, to keep me from startling too much or lashing out in anticipation of an attack.

She pressed her fingers to my mouth. Leaning in close, she murmured in my ear, “Two to your left. Two to our right. They were told where we are. About twenty feet away.”

I nodded.

She pulled away and turned to one side. I turned to the other, so my back was almost touching hers.

My instinct was to go up. I flew, and at roughly the same moment, Sveta went low, torso almost flat against the ground, and she pulled herself in the direction of Capricorn and Chris.

I brought myself up to the roof level, and navigated the rooftops while using them as cover from anyone on the street.

Gunfire in the distance was met with more gunfire. Prancer, Velvet, Moose, Narwhal, Weld, and Vista, with some of the Undersiders.

My heart pounded. I moved with only light contact using toes and fingertips to guide myself as I stayed as close as I could to the rooftop while not putting any weight on it.

I saw them. A man and a woman. He was wearing a costume with ragged black leather enveloping most of him, and a round metal mask surrounded by leather that obscured the shape of his head. The skin of his arms was tanned with arm-hairs sun-bleached. His visible skin was dripping with sweat. It wasn’t that hot a day out, with the sun hidden behind the clouds but that much leather had to be intense.

The woman was Fallen. Her mask inverted her face, so she peered through the mouth-hole, and horns swept out from the top and bottom corners, for four in total. She’d dressed lightly enough she had to have been cold, with a strapless top bound to her body by thin chains. More chains wrapped around the red cloth wraps that encircled her forearms, pelvis, and legs.

As I looked down from above, I could see that she was touching the wall as she walked by it, leaving a trail of what looked like gaseous glass. It formed edged, hooked shapes as she left it behind.

I flew a course intended to take me behind them, so I could do something quick and decisive.

Yellow lights flared along the length of the glass, gaseous smoke. Eyes.

The smoke billowed out, taking on a more solid form as it became a nebulous mass of teeth, barbs, claws, and razor edges.

I raised my forcefield and smashed it.

My forcefield won, but only barely. The beast-smoke I hit broke into solid chunks, some as large as my head.

The woman- I turned to look and saw her creating more smoke as something that billowed toward me in a wave. I backed away until my forcefield was up, then crashed into it, hard. I saw her stumble back, arms around her face.

Behind her, the guy with the circular mask had four lenses spaced evenly around the mask flare with energy. Four shapes manifested in front of him- long and slim, round, thicker crescent, and a star-like shape with radial spokes.

I pushed out with my aura before he could do anything. The woman stumbled and landed on her ass. The guy weathered it, paused, and then touched the long, slim one.

The other three images disappeared, but the one he’d touched flew at me like a javelin. I threw myself to one side, but it wasn’t even aimed at me.

It flared with a dark amber light as it embedded into the wall, then faded. I put some distance between myself and it.

The woman created more smoke, sending it down the side-street in a wave that grazed buildings on both sides. I flew up and away.

I pushed out with my aura, and it failed. Like a car failing to start, it sputtered and died out. On my second try, it did work, but it felt weak.

Power dampener.

My flight felt fine. The wretch, unfortunate as it was, felt okay too.

Was it because my awe power was the one I’d been using?

The woman with the glass smoke sent a column skyward. As I flew back and away, I could see it expanding out into the air. More demon imagery ran through it, all the overlapping chaos of hell, snapping jaws, and ripping claws.

The guy was creating another diagram. Three images remained, now.

Yeah. This group that was with the hostages was important, if they had people like this as bodyguards and errand-runners.

I flew away from them, trying to get a sense of how vulnerable Valefor’s group was. I was aware he’d gotten some hooks in me earlier, but I wasn’t feeling it as much. I wasn’t sure if the emotional shock of Ashley had shaken me of some of it, or if it was subtle in a scary way.

I saw another glowing object pass through two walls and part of a short fence before hitting the ground twenty feet below me and twenty more feet to my right.

It detonated with the impact, expanding out into the space around it, getting thinner as it did.

The moment I realized it was expanding at a rate that would catch up with me, I flew toward the ground, away from the bubble.

My flight sputtered out, maneuvering dying, speed cutting out, and the entire thing threatening to just give up on me altogether.

I landed hard, with a grunt.

Explosion bomb, javelin dart, and two more, and my flight and aura were both in tatters.

I could at least reassure myself that these things didn’t tend to be permanent unless they were power theft. Powers wanted to be used, and submitting to a power-canceling effect on a permanent basis didn’t make sense.

A mixed feeling, when I thought about the Wretch being permanently removed.

Now it was more or less all I had. I could hear the smoke creatures. I could see the spire that had been sent skyward, that now was a rigid pillar. After they attacked, they seemed to solidify into solid fixtures.

“Work with me,” I whispered.

I brought out the Wretch, and I hit the nearest building, shattering the wood exterior.

I remained where I was, feeling that fluttery panic feeling again, tinged with the heavy feeling that always came with the Wretch. I used the moment to retrieve my metal mask and don it.

I reached out in the direction of the shattered wood, and I grabbed one lengthy piece. “Arm yourself,” I said, my voice muffled by the mask.

The wretch reached out for other chunks of the wall. It bit into them, drummed them with impacts that made the whole building complain, and shredded solid struts with fingernails, punches, and kicks.

I canceled the field, then brought it out again. I seized another long bit of wood, a supporting beam, and hauled on it. The Wretch hit it, and broke it at the base. I stumbled as it came free.

One-handed, using only my regular strength, I tossed the three feet of two-by-four up.

The Wretch caught it.

They were getting closer. I could hear them.

My heart sank as the Wretch gripped the two-by-four so hard it splintered and broke at the middle.

“Use it as a weapon,” I said.

There was no indication the Wretch heard.

The pair were making their approach. The guy had one glowing circle on his mask, now, and a crescent moon of manifested power-canceling energy that he held like a sword.

The smoke woman unleashed her power on me. I charged in, crashing into it, and shattered the first ten feet.

The Wretch threw the two feet of two-by-four, or it let go of the piece as it dissipated.

The block of wood hit the masked woman in the face hard enough to knock her off of her feet and break the horn at the right side of her her chin. The smoke ceased flowing, and the forms went still.

I’d hoped it would use the weapon to break stuff before it broke down in turn.

I watched as she tried to get to her feet, stumbled, and then fell back down again. On her second attempt, she created two columns of her power, letting them solidify, before using them as leverage to stand. She slumped against one, then slowly slumped back down toward the ground.

That left me to deal with the guy who could disrupt powers with his arsenal of minor abilities. Right.

He went to the girl first, still holding his blade, and bent down by her.

“She okay?” I asked.

He didn’t respond. Slowly, he helped her get to her feet.

In the same instant, the two of them looked off to one side, as if they’d heard a loud noise.

He dismissed the sword, one of his eyes lighting up, then drew out the star thing.

He cast it down at the ground, hard. He and the girl disappeared.

The direction they’d been looking. The Fallen that had been watching the hostages.

I ran after them, trying flight when I could. It took a few running steps before I had something that was better than legging it.

Capricorn and Sveta had arrived. That was the only thing I could see as a more or less unambiguous plus.

There was a group on the scene, facing down Valefor and the other Fallen, with the power nullifier and glass-smoke woman having already rejoined them by teleport. A woman with a bunny mask and marching band outfit, ears poking up through the brim of the flat-top, feathered cap. There were three people in costumes that I didn’t recognize, and there was Rain, with the metal mask, gloves, and dark hood. He was tense, and he was tense for damn good reason.

Their arrival had precipitated something I’d seen as more or less inevitable. With as many players in this game as there were, the hostages were always going to be the last card the Fallen group could play, so a part of me had trusted and hoped that they would hold off on playing it.

Something Rain or this mystery group had done had spooked them enough that they’d played the card.

The battlefield was the dirt road that cut an odd angle through the settlement center. On that dirt, Erin was among the hostages that writhed and screamed as they lost their minds.

Shadow – 5.12

Against a backdrop of screaming and writhing, with clouds rolling across the overcast sky, and both dust clouds and smoke rolling over the ground, the three assembled groups were very still and careful.

“Stop it,” Rain called out. “Leave them alone.”

“Can’t,” Valefor said. “She isn’t here. But if she sees you stand down, this might end.”

There were kids in that group of writhing individuals. There was an old man with the lines in his neck standing out taut, teeth bared and clenched together.

“I can’t stand down,” Rain said. “Reversing the protection takes time and effort to undo.”

“Then this is your righteous punishment,” Valefor said. As he started talking, I brought my hands up near my ears.

My powers were still wonky. I could tell. My flight and aura didn’t feel readily available.

Beside me, Capricorn had morphed. From Tristan to Byron.

The Fallen guy I’d just been fighting said something low and under his breath, to Valefor.

“No. The immunity isn’t him,” Valefor said. “Not if the rest of them are the same. Someone helped.”

Capricorn had changed again. Back to Tristan. He walked a little, moving away from me. What were they doing?

The woman with the bunny mask walked, almost strutted around the periphery of things, her rapier in hand. The capes with Valefor kept their attention on her, while Valefor was oblivous or uncaring.

“We’ve got other capes showing up, Valefor,” a Fallen soldier said. Young, and possibly powered. I wasn’t sure if I could read too much into costumes or outfits when unpowered and powered were so diverse, but if I was going to, I’d assume powers for the ones who had more identity to their costumes, with confidence rather than conformity in the designs. This guy had bright colors and a hard mask that wrapped around the top and sides of his head. It was made such that it looked like it had been nailed on, with blood, old and fresh, seeping out from the points the nails went in.

“The ones we fought earlier,” the one with the round mask said. The round plate of a mask with four eyeholes cut into the hard was an identity of its own. It stood out. I knew there were powers there, already. He supported the woman with the four-horned mask and red wrappings.

Those two aside, there were six other Fallen that kept Valefor company. Nine in total.

“Team,” Rain called out, raising his voice to be heard over the screams. “There’s one Fallen that isn’t here. Mama Mathers. She’s close. You can’t look at her without her infecting your mind. Her voice and touch does the same thing, but gives her other avenues of attack. Mentioning her gives her a big opening, it’s why I couldn’t say anything earlier.”

Well, that cleared up something that had been plaguing the good guys for a long time.

“I saw a glimpse of her,” I said.

“You see things?” he called out.

“Yeah. Some. She got our Changer worse. He seems to be dealing alright, though.”

“He’s enduring because he’s weird,” Capricorn said. “What can we do here? These people-”

“You don’t do anything,” Valefor interrupted. “They’re ours.”

“Yours!?” Tristan-as-Capricorn asked, voice raised, blurring. Byron-as-Capricorn shook his head, and offered a more sedate, “No.”

He was almost drowned out by the shouts and screams from the people on the ground.

“Where is Mama Mathers?” Rain asked.

“You should ask her, Rain,” Valefor said. “Let her in, let me in, and pledge to obey. We’ll let you drag these people away, so long as you stay. They’re expendable, you’re blessed.”

“How are you immune?” Tristan-as Capricorn called out.

“Friends,” Rain said. He created blades of silver light in each of his hands. “Found these guys while researching powers and options. March put the pieces together about who I am and where I’m from.”

He’d indicated the woman with the bunny mask. March continued pacing around the group. Her rapier’s tip dragged along the ground. It left a trail behind it, like the water rippling in the wake of a stick being moved in it, and that water had hues of blue, purple, and black running through it for a second or two after the contact.

“I thought it was another kind of brainwashing after I heard about Valefor’s exploits in Brockton Bay, with the arrest and trial,” March said. “It’s a good thing that my group has a lot of powers to work with.”

A lot of powers. Cluster capes?

“A good thing, yeah,” Rain said.

“I’m not poaching him,” March said. “He’ll help me out in exchange for this, here, but he can stick with you guys.”

“With the heroes here, not the Fallen,” Rain clarified.

“Oh yes,” March said. She nodded and the one ear at the top of her mask bobbed where it was folded at the tip. “I should’ve been clear.”

My eyes moved away from March to the people on the ground, then to the nearby buildings. I couldn’t lose sight of the major goal here. Was Mama Mathers there? I could look at the civilians on the ground without a problem, which meant she wasn’t there, or her power was more subtle than that. I’d caught a glimpse earlier, though, so she couldn’t be too far. There were a dozen buildings in our immediate vicinity. Was she watching through the window?

The trouble was, if I saw her, I risked being affected like the people on the ground were. If I didn’t see her, she had the advantage and she could catch us by surprise at a time of her choosing.

The idea of losing my mind like that terrified me, to the point I felt like my gut and my brain were bound in knots. I tried to focus that terror into a cold, rational look at what I needed to do. Mama Mathers was the biggest danger. Valefor was the second. They were Masters and Strangers, the PRT classification for those who controlled others or minions, and the classification for those who infiltrated or deceived. Mama Mathers and Valefor were squarely in the overlap between the two.

I found myself missing my old team. New Wave had had its problems, but I’d known the team and how it worked. I wasn’t a strategist, but I could do fine if I could identify the big problems and solve them. My tendency back in the day had been to hit hard as my method of solving, and to rely on my instincts and the team.

These guys were hard to rely on. New Wave had been all about straight lines of attack and barrier defenses. Lasers and punching, shields and forcefields between danger and the vulnerable. The most indirect we’d been was when my dad made his grenades bounce off walls or when my cousin had created forcefields in unconventional but otherwise simple shapes.

Here? Sveta had disappeared while all attention was on others. Capricorn was… it looked like he was changing forms rapidfire to switch identities, so no one self heard a single whole utterance referring directly to them.

Chris was off doing something, hopefully far away from this. Rain was- he’d contacted people I barely recognized. I’d seen March’s mask before, but it had been in passing. An article about one of the big cities. There’d been a weird dynamic there, but I couldn’t afford to dwell on it. My mind went to a bizarre combination of upper-class and low-class crimes, like corporate espionage and petty vandalism, but I knew almost right away that I was thinking of the wrong person.

It had been something offbeat like that, though. If the people hadn’t been screaming, and if I wasn’t focused on Valefor’s body language and Mama being somewhere nearby, I wanted to think I could’ve placed it.

I still had my hands by my ears, as a crummy and unreliable solution to a serious problem.

My powers had been disrupted, put out of reach and made unreliable, but the effect was dissipating with time. It killed me that the time was time innocents were suffering.

There were goddamn kids in there.

If I flew and hit someone, would I be risking the innocents on the ground? They were close enough together that people on foot wouldn’t be able to get to Valefor without trampling the civilians.

“There’s a pretty one lying next to me,” Valefor said. “Short black hair, or so I hear, she tends to wear-”

“I see her,” four-eyes said.

“That’s all you needed? Hm. Step on her throat. Not enough to kill. Enough to give our Rain a time limit.”

The guy with the four-eyed mask transitioned the four-horned girl to another, more mundane Fallen.

Rain hurled his crescent blade. Four-eyes drew his own, creating the diagrams- two faint and one clear, and he drew the clear one as part of the same motion. His crescent-shaped sword was just in time to meet Rain’s power. Both fizzled out.

I saw as the other silver blade Rain held fritzed, distorted, and faded away. He looked down at his hands.

“He threw something at me,” Four-eyes said.

“If it hit you, don’t move.”

“It didn’t hit me. I stopped it.”

“Then step on the girl, Amaymon.”

I flexed my aura, straining, praying it wouldn’t falter. I saw people turn in my direction, including both Four-eyes and Valefor.

I saw Valefor pause for half a second, catching his breath, drawing it in deeper, and I clamped my hands over my ears, bending over, eyes shut.

Whatever he shouted, I didn’t hear anything muffled than a one-syllable word. He had to refer to us to catch us, and now that I knew that, I could watch for tells. If he drew in a deep breath to shout, or if he said something like ‘You’ or “Everyone’, I could cover my ears.

All around us, most people stopped in their tracks. Capricorn, blurring, changed to blue armor, but he kept walking. I was able to move, and the group with March and Rain seemed unaffected.

Valefor shouted out something, turning in my general direction as he did it. Two words. I didn’t try to make them out.

The Fallen were bringing their powers to bear, now. A snake shaped out of intestine and barbed wire- one I’d seen before. The Fallen that summoned it was drawing a gun with the other hand. Amaymon was creating his four diagrams, reaching for the sphere.

He didn’t manage to touch it. Sveta grabbed him and Valefor both, dragging them out of sight. The afterimage of the diagram hung in the air for a moment before disappearing.

Another was going breaker, arms and bony limbs reaching skyward in a fountain of parts that grabbed their other parts and forced them down in the swell, a large human skull that ate their head, then was swallowed up by a larger animal skull, like a wolf’s, only horned.

They grew larger as they rose skyward, all white bone and jet black body parts.

I tried to fly so I could fly to it before it grew any larger, and my flight only sputtered out.

The one with the intestine snake lashed out, snake lunging from the palm of their hand to Capricorn and I. They aimed and fired the gun at the same time. Wild shooting.

I brought out the Wretch, stepping between Capricorn and the shooter, and even with the Wretch being a larger target, none of the bullets hit it.

I heard the shooting stop, the sound of the small pistol ringing in my ears. I dropped my defenses for just a moment, so I could have the Wretch closer to me when I connected my fist to the Snake’s ‘head’. It slammed into a building, shattering the stones and mortar that lined the lower half of the ground floor. A half-second later, white noise filled my vision.

If that had happened a second earlier, I might have missed. The noise persisted.

I scowled, stopping in my tracks, trying to find out what I needed to do. I couldn’t run in and use the Wretch, not when people lined the ground like that. Not when I couldn’t trust my eyes. She wasn’t making me hallucinate, but she could obscure what I saw.

“Down!” Capricorn said, behind me. “Give me a clear view!”

There were blue motes appearing around the snake-intestine cape and the giant breaker thing, which was slowing in its growth, but was a pretty considerable size already. I realized the noise had gone away.

Ahead of me, the Fallen woman disconnected the snake-thing from her left hand, and passed the gun to it. The motes above and behind her turned to water, spraying down on her and at the giant breaker.

The motes snapped into a solid form, making a creaking, cracking noise as they became a growth of stone that encased part of the snake-woman’s head and shoulder and part of three of breaker’s arms.

The weight of the stone pushed her down and snared the breaker. A moment before she was crushed beneath the stone, it became water again. She was down on three limbs in an awkward position as it all cascaded and sprayed down around her, stirring the packed dirt road into thick mud spray.

I leaped forward toward the spray, flight kicking in at half-strength to give me downward velocity. I came down with one foot on her gun-hand, crushing it beneath my heel. I stepped down by her face, and moved my foot off of her hand. I pushed at her shoulder with my foot, flipping her over, then bent down for the gun.

“Good,” Capricorn said, behind me. He was Tristan, but the water was remaining water.

“Careful you don’t drown the people on the ground,” I said. “They’re helpless. People can drown in shallow water.”

He nodded, quick, before turning his attention back to the big thing, which was adjusting its balance. The unexpected weight on one arm had brought it partially down.

I had to do something. I didn’t want to keep my head down.

I ran to the side. Down toward the direction where Sveta was, away from the big thing. Against my instincts, but I had an idea of what I could do.

Mama Mathers had been here. She was close. If I couldn’t see her without problems, I could only make assumptions. Aura out, I ran along the side of the street, keeping one eye on the battle and the people on the ground, in case I was needed. Women. Young men. Someone elderly. Kids.

Shit.

Ahead of me, Sveta was dealing with Amaymon and Valefor. She’d pulled off her wig and stuffed it into Valefor’s mouth, and was now wrestling with Amaymon. The cape broke her grip and pushed her to one side, and she collapsed into a heap, instead of catching her balance.

He created his diagram while she was down. He touched the javelin-dart, and he sent it plunging into Sveta’s chest before she could stand.

I charged at him, running three steps and then flying the remaining twenty feet. My knee connected with his jaw and he dropped. I landed and made sure he wasn’t getting up.

“Sveta,” I said.

“I’m okay,” she said. She sat up. A tendril stuck out of the hole in her chest, feeling around it before withdrawing. “I’m okay.”

“You have a patch?” I asked.

She nodded. “You have your aura going. It’s distracting enough I can’t coordinate.”

I nodded, and I temporarily eased up on it. “Your power is okay?”

“Yes. Why?”

She hadn’t seen, she’d already backed off before Rain’s had been shorted out, so she would have been too far away. Staying out of Valefor’s earshot, possibly.

“He cancels out powers.”

“You can’t really cancel out being Case fifty-three,” Sveta said. “You’d better get back while I get patched, if your forcefield is weird.”

I could have clarified, but I just nodded. “Good luck. Be safe.”

“You too.”

My aura back on blast, I flew across the street, then back toward the fighting. March and her band of oddballs had been on the far side of Valefor’s cluster of capes.

The large thing had fallen over, one hand planted on the ground near some of the civilians. March ran up its arm, ducking and using momentum to slide up the slope of the arm as a bony claw reached for her.

She ran along the shoulders, cutting as she went, leaped as the head sank into the morass of the body and became two avian skulls that pecked at the air, and then came down, stabbing her rapier into the chest and dragging the point against the giant thing’s torso, cutting as she went down. The blue-purple-black watercolor spread in the wake of the blade’s tip.

She pulled it free, stabbed at a reaching hand, and used it to reorient her fall. She landed hard, her feet planted on either side of a screaming teenage girls’ head. A slight misstep, and she would have caved in the poor girl’s face.

March snapped her fingers and flicked with her blade.

At the shoulder, where the long cut had started, there was a flare of the watercolor spray. Purple and blue, with deep shadow in the midst of it.

Her rapier swept out, pointing. She called out, “Rain!”

The flare was tracing along the line she’d cut like a flame down a cartoon bomb’s fuse.

“I can’t!” Rain called out.

The ‘fuse’ reached its terminus. What had been a flare became a fierce explosion, right down at the base of the breaker.

I flew toward it, bringing out the Wretch, so I could catch it if it toppled onto March and the civilians. It didn’t, falling backward and dissolving as it did.

The breaker form dissipated, and there was only the Fallen with the demon themed skull mask, tipping backward to land on his ass. March plunged her rapier into his chest, then flicked it up, toward his throat.

“It would have been perfect if that had also cut it in two, Rain,” March said. “It was still perfect, but in a lesser way.”

“Can you not use my name?” he asked. “And Amaymon nullified my power.”

The Fallen was patting his chest where he’d been stabbed. He touched his throat. Intact, but the line of watercolor marked him.

“Valefor used your name,” she said. She snapped her fingers. “And you didn’t give me another one.”

Still floating in the air, I could see the flare appear at the breaker Fallen’s chest. He brought his hands to it, quick, frantic, then tried to pat it out.

“Hey!” the Fallen cried out. He lurched to his feet. “Stop!”

March was walking away.

“Hey! Fuck! Help me!”

She flourished with her blade and sheathed it, in the very same moment the fuse reached its terminus. The explosion was smaller, but it was sufficient to take out the front of the Fallen’s throat. He dropped to his knees, still moving inarticulately, eyes wide and stunned, and then collapsed to the ground.

I- I didn’t like the killing, or the casual ease with which she’d done it. These were Fallen, but they were low-level Fallen.

I didn’t want to say not to kill, but…

But there were civilians suffering. Other things to focus on.

I changed course, flying back to where I’d been. I continued down the street. I was putting the bulk of the lopsided engagement behind me, passing by Rain, by two twenty-ish capes with steel-gray hair, and that meant I could fly faster. I kept my eyes on the people and goings-on behind me.

I found what I was hoping for. The screaming, just briefly, changed. The aura extended through the hostages to Mama Mathers, and she affected the hostages in turn. I had a sense of my range, and through that, I had a good sense of her location.

“Rain!” I called out.

“What is it?”

“If she gets me, get people to take out the building.”

“You found her?” he asked.

I dug fingernails into the doorframe, then activated my forcefield. I tore door and part of the frame away from the front of the store. It was one of the smaller buildings on the street, and it was styled as a general store.

The screaming trailed off altogether. I gripped the damaged wall where the doorframe had been attached, and tore at that too. The Wretch struck at other things.

“She says to stop,” a voice said.

It wasn’t one of the people who’d been on the ground. He was older- one of the soldiers. In the eerie quiet, with people whimpering and making small noises, he still had to raise his voice to be heard, with distances.

He was possibly unpowered, and he was holding an axe. He was average height, but muscular, and had a slight belly, such that his body looked more like a solid slab than a chest that tapered down to a stomach or had any proper shape. His skin was sun-tanned, his hair blond with white shooting through it. A bandanna with a demon’s mouth on it covered his lower face.

“You’ve disappointed her, Rain,” the soldier said. Then he said, “You disappointed all of us.”

“For one of the first times in my life, I feel like I’m doing something right,” Rain said.

“No, Rain,” the man said. “She says you might be doing good, objectively, but not right. She says… she’ll surrender herself to your custody. She’ll withdraw her power from everyone here.”

“From everyone,” Rain said.

“As you wish.”

March put the sword nearer to the man’s neck. He gripped the axe tighter.

“Don’t,” Rain said. “He’s a relative.”

She lowered the sword, and she poked the handle of the axe with the tip. She said something I didn’t hear.

The soldier dropped the axe.

Rain was kneeling by Erin. He placed a hand on a little boy’s arm, where the boy lay next to her, hands at his ears.

He reached out for Erin, and she pushed his hand away. When he stood, it was abrupt.

“This feels like a trap,” I said.

Rain approached me. He looked at the building, then raised a hand. In the recess of one voluminous sleeve, I could see another hand hidden within.

“What is it?”

“One person,” he said. “I think.”

“It could still be a trap,” I said.

“Yeah. But… this gets people out safe. If we went after her and she hurt them in the last moment, and if we couldn’t turn it off…”

I nodded.

March was walking toward us.

“You got a look at her. She’s in you?” Rain asked.

“Barely,” I said. “She blinded me once or twice.”

“Okay,” he said.

March joined us. She put out a hand for me to shake. I hesitated a moment, paranoid, then shook it.

“We have things to talk about,” she said. “People we both know. Power things.”

I nodded.

“I’ll go in to get her,” she said. “I’m immune.”

“So am I,” Rain said.

“This is personal for you,” she said. She put a gloved hand on his shoulder. “It’s the objectivity that makes us valuable to each other.”

She winked at me, then sauntered indoors.

She bothered me. I didn’t like whimsical and show-off in someone that could easily kill. The mask and the marching band outfit only marked out the contrast.

“Immune?” I asked.

Rain indicated the two capes with gray hair, a young man and woman. Both had eyepatches, the steel-gray hair, and costumes with white and black. Chris’ age, or a bit older. “Dino and Enyo. They’re multi-triggers, and they’re also twin triggers. One of their powers is that they can transplant body parts, with some special rules. I’m borrowing someone else’s eyes and ears, and a few other bits, so she can touch me and make it hurt, but it’s dulled, and she can’t do anything else. The transplant recipient is back at our base, sedated.”

“All multi-triggers?” I asked.

“She… collects them. I guess. She studies them. It’s supposed to be important.”

Rain was looking back in Erin’s direction. She had the little boy with her, and two adults. From the resemblance, a sibling and her parents. She and they all looked like anyone might after having seen things that had them screaming for ten or fifteen minutes straight. Weary, eyes wide, defensive.

But, all that in mind, she seemed to find refuge in her parents.

“What-” I started.

“This power I lost. Do I get it back?”

“Yeah. I got mine back after ten minutes or so.”

Rain nodded.

“What happened with Erin?”

“The Fallen ruined it. I ruined it. She wouldn’t leave. I couldn’t stay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t let me hurt Mama. I’d do it in a stupid way that might get people hurt,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. I nodded slowly. “One day, maybe you return the favor on that.”

He made a small, amused sound. Aside from a laugh here or there, at the bad cape names, or a good moment with Tristan, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen that from him.

“Sure,” he said.

“All set, coming down!” March called out. “We’re taking this slow.”

“What would you have done, if she hadn’t called it off?” Rain asked.

“Controlled collapse of the structure,” I said. “If she had hostages in there, I’d set it up so she’d have to tell me.”

The whiteness in my eyes flared up. I rubbed at one eye, uselessly.

“There’s a chance she’d throw their lives away to fuck with you,” Rain said.

I drew in a deep breath, sighed. “Yeah. That was a risk.”

“With some people, you don’t get to win,” Rain said. “She’s that kind of person. Be careful.”

I nodded, folding my arms.

“I like the costume,” he said. “March told me I shouldn’t be so negative all the time, so I figured I’d say it. I feel like I’ve missed a lot.”

I winced.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Damsel happened.”

“Damsel?” he asked. “Is she okay?”

“She’s alive and mostly intact,” I said. “Damage to her prosthetic. But someone else is dead.”

“Shit. Is it-”

I could hear March. “I’ll catch you up on particulars later. But you should know, because we’re going to have to explain it to Looksee.”

Rain nodded. “Shit.”

March emerged. She had Mama Mathers wrapped in a bedsheet, which was bound with cord that had tassels on the end. Something from her costume, it seemed.

I didn’t know or trust March. “Is it her? That’s Mama Mathers?”

“It’s her,” Rain said. “I’ve seen her enough to know.”

“You and I need to have a conversation about your power,” March said. “The emotion power.”

“I forgot to turn it off while you were inside.”

“I know what it does,” she said. “It’s not strong.”

“It’s never strong.”

“But it’s not useless either. Nearly useless,” she said.

March walked the Fallen leader out to the street. From the other end of the fight, Sveta had Valefor, the wig stuffed in his mouth and tied in place with lengths of hair knotted together. Her head seemed slim without ears or hair to bulk it out. She looked more intense in expression and demeanor, her ‘scalp’, the sides of her head and her neck formed of the muscle-like gatherings of tendrils. Everything was bound down firm with the metal rings, only the shortest of tendrils curling up and out, an inch or two long, each.

The boy of the eyepatch pairing had a syringe with him. He looked grim as the girl -his sister, I was assuming- reached out to wrap her fingers around Mama Mathers’ arm. She flinched back.

The boy held out the syringe, and the girl depressed the plunger to squirt some out.

They inserted the syringe and injected the contents. Mama Mathers slumped, and then collapsed into waiting arms.

Rain nodded, watching. Capricorn and the others were catching up, with Capricorn reaching out to grab Rain’s hand as he reached his friend. The soldier from before was shackled, the pair with eyepatches went to March’s side.

The civilians were a herd of people, wounded and scared. Some approached us. Others backed off. I had to wonder about the latter group.

“We’ll reunite with Narwhal’s group, to give or get backup,” Capricorn said. “Then we cut across… just about everything, and we evacuate out.”

“Sounds good,” March said.

“We’ll help Weld if he needs it,” Capricorn said.

I weighed the alternatives. There weren’t any great answers. Going it alone and trying to get to Gilpatrick’s group meant we could be intercepted, and it left the others fighting a nasty sort of fight, where guns were being brought into things. Going to the others meant possible problems could complicate things.

The practice of getting ourselves to the western edge of the wider settlement was a bit of a herding game, keeping a dozen traumatized people moving, while simultaneously managing our hostages, Valefor and Mama Mathers. Half of the group kept gravitating in the pair’s direction, and the other half seemed scared of them, even when they were bound and tranquilized, respectively. Erin seemed to do more with an active focus, so she took on some of the cheerleading duties, especially with the younger ones.

One of the Fallen groups was led by a cape with a horse’s head and a dozen shadowy duplicates in his company, all connected together by a mess of black lighting with weirdly curved arcs.

In any other circumstance, the Fallen would have been losing against the Wardens’ bench team and young members, but there were twenty or so civilians with them, and the civilians had assault rifles, and the Fallen capes in their group seemed both confident and costumed enough to be of some importance.

There was a flanking group of the Fallen who’d fallen back and were taking cover by a building. Some Clan capes were mixed into the group. Guns were pointed in our general direction as we emerged, but the guns immediately pointed skyward as they realized who we had with us.

That effect seemed to sweep over the Fallen. I made special note of the Fallen who weren’t immediately going still and quiet. There were ones in elaborate costumes, many with tattoos of text or numbers down their arms. They’d be the leadership.

The one with the horse head mask wasn’t backing off, either. He just gathered his shadowy clones around him.

I kept my distance from the rest of the group, floating out in front, the Wretch active. March was doing much the same, but without the benefit of invincibility. The rapier was extended out, pointing at the people with guns.

Hollow Point’s capes were on the fringes, gathered like they had when Advance Guard had turned up in Cedar Point, with a divide marking the distinction between Prancer’s side of things and the others. Beast of Burden’s group, minus both Beast of Burden and Damsel, a twenty foot gap with only three capes in it, and then Prancer’s assembly, with an injured Moose, an injured Velvet, Bitter Pill’s group with Bluestocking frothing at the mouth, and the Speedrunners.

I recognized the three capes in the no man’s land as Love Lost, Snag, and Cradle. The clients who’d paid for this whole thing, with the aim of getting Rain in the midst of the chaos. If they had an assassin, I couldn’t tell who it was. Nobody seemed especially out of place.

It was my first proper sighting of Cradle. He wore a bodysuit and an elaborate sculpted mask with a hand worked into it, fingers and thumb curled into claws, worked into his face and around his eyes and nose as if seen from the side. His bodysuit had much the same design, white hands against black mesh fabric.

More noticeable was the mech, if it could be called that. He stood on a platform that looked like an outstretched hand. A framework of six mechanical arms and four giant hands extended out and around the platform.

With our arrival, the gunfire had stopped. The heroes’ side wasn’t sending any volleys or attacks out, now that the Fallen seemed more subdued.

Someone on the Fallen side said something, and guns were put down.

“It’s over!” Capricorn shouted. “Stand down!”

They were rule-breakers, killers, child kidnappers, addicts, and worse. They included racists in their number without flinching, because it served their ends. They’d celebrated the end of the world, where billions had died. Maybe tens of billions or more, depending on how much damage Scion had done to parallel worlds.

If they didn’t listen- if they even got desperate, this would be a disaster.

Please stop, I thought, even as I simultaneously thought about what I’d need to do if they snapped. When they snapped.

I had zero faith they’d back down. By body language alone, it seemed Rain felt the same way.

I watched as the first one stepped away from cover, hands raised. Others followed. They glared, looked tense, even said coarse things.

What was the catch? The trap?

Not because they were outnumbered. They’d always been outnumbered. That left me considering other traps, along a broader line. Access to certain people? Would Valefor reveal his eyesight power when people like Narwhal were close? Did Mama Mathers hope to catch someone important with her power?

Or was it more mundane? Surrendering and going to the overtaxed courts could be a way for them to get a voice, with a wealth of attention. If the lawyers and administration on our side wasn’t up to things, and if the Fallen matched it by playing things particularly well, then they could walk away more or less free, with many more followers.

I heard Rain and Capricorn exchange words. Rain turned toward Sveta and I and subtly indicated what he and Capricorn were talking about. Snag was staring us down from the far end of the battlefield, with hilly, rocky ground between us, the trees and Wardens to the left, and the assembled Fallen and their allies to the right.

“March reached out to him before she reached out to me. He knows who she is, which… isn’t great.”

“You think he knows who you are?” Sveta asked.

“We’ll see, I guess,” Rain said.

Prancer had emerged from Cedar Point’s group, and was approaching heroes, hands raised.

If I accepted that things were going reasonably well here, this was a good outcome. Civilians had been hurt, people had died, but Prancer hadn’t achieved his win, and Snag’s group wasn’t going to get their opportunity.

If I accepted it. I couldn’t bring myself to.

There were powerful capes here. Mama Mathers hadn’t had enough people defending her. Had it been that she’d been caught off guard by Rain being prepared? Or was my initial impression of this being a trap correct?

What did she want and what did she get?

I heard a commotion. Noises of surprise and alarm.

The Fallen who had been turning themselves in were now turning on heroes. People were picking up guns.

The number of heroes there had diminished. Heroes had disappeared.

What followed was like dominoes falling, as the trap fell into place. Narwhal created her crystalline forcefields, only for the forcefields to change tint. The horse-head cape sent a duplicate her way, and she wasn’t able to get her forcefields up or into place in time.

From that, I knew the culprits of this turnaround.

More heroes were disappearing. A member of Prancer’s group threw something into the midst of their group, and that something exploded. The explosions repeated, one after another, at steady intervals.

The other-

From our first briefing on them, we’d know they had a guy who could appear at our most vulnerable point and catch us off guard.

I turned away from the spectacle in front of me, looking for the one who might be coming after the ones who’d gotten Mama Mathers and Valefor. Behind us, to the sides-

In the midst of us.

Secondhand looked average, with flat, opaque goggles and a flat top cap, but he flickered intensely with afterimages and suggestions of places he might be in the future. The images were violent enough he looked ready to burst, and he was right in the middle of our group. I swung a punch, and he moved with enhanced speed, ducking it.

The quick movement pushed him over the brink, or so it seemed. He detonated, and everything moved like it was slow motion, as I was thrown off my feet, the wind knocked out of my lungs. Others were shoved back and away from him too. My skin felt like it was tearing apart, because the slow motion was real, and different parts of me were slowed, while others weren’t. My lower body was more affected, as was the part of me closer to the front.

It hit everyone except for Mama Mathers, who Secondhand zipped over to, to catch out of mid-air, and Valefor, who blurred, hair moving slightly, but the rest of him remained unaffected.

That would be Final Hour. The targeted slow-motion, granting a kind of protection.

I used my flight to keep myself from being thrown back too much, canceling out the inertia and then flying toward them. I didn’t have long, and with them this coordinated, they’d dogpile me in an instant.

I went straight for Valefor.

He was still protected as I brought the Wretch out. When I punched him, I could feel the Wretch meet that invisible barrier. I could see, in slow motion through both the expulsion of Secondhand’s detonation and Last Minute’s protective effect, the destruction of Valefor’s lower face as the Wretch passed through the barrier.

I couldn’t bring myself to kill, even now. I canceled out my power of my own volition, when it was clear that I’d destroyed his jaw.

As one, the hostages we’d rescued were taking action. They moved in near-unison, some reacting to the movements of others by taking up the call. They climbed to their feet, and they reached for us, clutching. Their expressions weren’t the ones they’d worn a moment ago.

The disconnection in my thinking and the speed of our immediate reality let me connect that dot too. Valefor hadn’t managed a secret command. He’d planted one on the group before Mama Mathers had laid them out flat.

Telling them to attack us when we were off guard, or when he gave some signal. Erin was coming after Rain. So was her little brother, who couldn’t have been older than nine.

The slow was wearing off. I had only a moment. I flew to the others, grabbing them, dragging them away. Sveta and Capricorn. Capricorn had a grip on Rain’s arm, so I brought Rain too, my fingers straining as I tried to hold onto three people for just a moment. I’d never tried or even thought about it, but in the instant, I pulsed my forcefield on and off, to try to keep the Wretch from getting enough of a presence to reach out and hurt anyone.

I just needed to carry them for a few seconds.

Capricorn disappeared from my grip, and for an instant, I thought I’d lost my grip on him. and my hand crackled as he did. I turned to look, and saw the man with the goggles and mustache pointing his finger at us.

End of Days, I thought, as I headed toward the ground.

He wasn’t even a time manipulator. I felt deeply offended at that fact, or I must have- it was a poignant enough feeling that I could feel it even as I took in the magnitude of just how the tides had turned, and how bad a thing that was. They’d hit each of our groups, and they’d hit us hard.

I heard an assault rifle fire, and others took up the call. It was more one-sided, this time, not two sides shooting at each other, but one side shooting at the rest.

I landed on the far side of a slope, with just Sveta. I took the moment to try to gather my senses. I hurt all over, and I had blood in my eyes. The slow-motion effect from Secondhand.

Sveta had a rip in the edge of her face, but she barely seemed to care. She was more focused on getting to her feet.

Capricorn had disappeared. Damsel wasn’t here. Chris and Looksee were on the fringes or not even in the area.

I could feel droplets of moisture on my bare skin.

Rain.

I flew close to the ground, using the hill as cover, Wretch out in case a stray bullet came my way or cut through the dirt. I peeked around the edge of the hill’s slope. My eyes took in the scene at a glance, and partway through that glance, the scene changed.

Darkness. No sun shining through overcast clouds. Only darkness. Light leeched in through some other way, giving just enough to outline the surroundings.

The air smelled like ash, and it was dry enough that it felt like my mouth and body were being leeched of moisture.

End of Days. He’d caught me, seeing me before I’d seen him.

My heart was pounding. I couldn’t bring myself to speak, because I was afraid I’d scream. The best case scenario was that at this vital, critical moment I’d been shunted out and away, to some strange, dark place.

The worst case scenario was that it was a permanent shunt.

A small sound escaped my throat as I looked around.

A minute passed.

Two minutes. When my eyes played tricks on me through the darkness, I saw Valefor’s jaw shattering. I imagined the battlefield, as it had been.

Anger took over the devastation and surprise. I fidgeted. I adjusted my costume. I flew around in circles, trying to get a sense of what this place was like. I stopped when I flew into a tree I couldn’t see.

I watched as the light grew brighter, as if it shone in through invisible cracks that were widening. The cracks soared tall and wide, and the light flooded in, blinding.

I was hauled out of that dark, strange world and back into my reality, and I felt the change in air pressure, the moisture of the drizzling rain. and I saw that things had happened in the meantime.

Sveta and Capricorn were fighting side by side, with Love Lost and a crowd of controlled civilians between them and Rain. The presence of the mob of Valefor’s affected hostages kept Sveta from getting to any of us, and complicated her skirmish with Love Lost. Two of March’s group members were part of that same crowd, trying to fend the civilians off, and they weren’t trying to be gentle about it like Sveta was.

Rain, meanwhile, was trying to fight Snag. Snag was above him, pushing him to the ground, knee on Rain’s stomach. He’d destroyed one of Snag’s arms and his two good arms were at the remaining, damaged one, which had a slice taken out of it. His other two mechanical arms were gripping Snag’s normal arm, no longer encased in the giant, oversized prosthetic part. Even with their combined strength, the two mechanical arms were losing, cracking and splintering under the pressure.

This was the chaos Snag had wanted.

I flew to him, praying I wouldn’t get another End of Days timeout.

I was halfway to him when Rain’s arms broke.

The blades fixed in the midst of the breakable shells continued up and out, piercing Snag’s forearm and scissoring the space between them as his weight came down and made them shift.

Snag hauled back, pulling away, swinging his damaged prosthetic arm, while holding his damaged regular arm out. Blood poured from the ragged wounds in his arm. One of the blades had gone in one side and out the other.

In any other day, any other circumstance, I never would have imagined I’d have let this go.

But others needed help. Rain was mostly in the clear, as he and Snag parted. Sveta and Capricorn weren’t.

I flew down to where Sveta had been pulled to the ground. Her balance wasn’t good, and when she was brought down, it was hard for her to find her feet again. Once I touched down in the middle of the pack of people, it was a question of getting people back without hurting them too badly. I grabbed her and used flight as much as anything to haul her up and away, so we were above the fighting.

It was a vantage point for me to see Rain facing off against Snag. He’d hit Snag with a crescent blade, and the man had a line of silver across face and shoulder. He didn’t move, and blood continued to seep down his arm and hand.

Sveta reached over, grabbed grass, because it was the only thing to grab, and hauled herself to the ground over there, to where she could talk to Rain or help Snag.

I flew down to Capricorn. Love Lost leaped up at me, intercepting. Her initial contact broke through the Wretch. Her mover power let her connect to me despite the interruption in her course. I felt her claws scrape my breastplate.

I punched her, and she dropped down and away, landing amid people.

Rain had hit Snag again. Keeping him from moving.

On my second try, I got to Capricorn. I pulled him free, holding him with both hands, my arms straining.

I saw Love Lost get to her feet, reaching for her mask.

I saw her sway and then fall, like the lights had gone out.

Snag had already fallen. Either he’d been hit, or he’d elected to try moving, because one of the silver lines had split. His neck was gouged where it joined the shoulder, a wound deep enough it should have exposed shoulderblade and collarbone. It didn’t, because the blood was thick, and his beard was dense.

Rain was on the ground. In the distance, perched on a hill, Cradle slumped on his platform.

The drizzle became rain, punctuated by gunfire. There was fighting everywhere, and even the people that were holding back were hitting pretty damn hard now. Not dissimilar to how I had with Valefor.

Not heroes and villains. Only monstrousness and madness.

Shadow – Interlude 5.x

“Deaths.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re acting on feeling, not fact. If we do as you suggest, people will die,” Jeanne Wynn said. She stood from her seat and used one hand to slide a laptop across the long table, until it was in front of Mr. John Druck. She fixed the angle of the laptop, then stood back. “These are the travel times for the supply trucks, these-”

She leaned over and struck a key.

“Are the production rates for the farms and the expected yield. When we asked, the agriculture groups were conservative. We asked others and did an independent estimate. Our numbers are less conservative, but we’re still cutting it close. We don’t have enough to feed people, and we don’t have enough to shelter people.”

“The workers need protections,” Sierra Kiley said.

“We do,” Mr. Druck said. He leaned back in his seat.

“Absolutely,” Jeanne said. “Speaking for Mortari, we’re not against labor law. We have some notes on future proposals for you to take home, which you should like.”

“Should I? Will I love it?” Mr. Druck asked.

“Not love. But you’ll like it fine. Everything cascades, Mr. Druck. One thing leads to another. We like a lot of the things that fit into the labor protection and we need to be mindful of some of those cascading factors. Shorter working hours improves health, and health is something that is going to rear its head before we’re done dealing with war and winter.”

“The specter of war, not the reality. Don’t try to scare us, Mrs. Wynn,” Sierra Kiley said.

“It’s a reality,” Jeanne said. “But it’s not what I want to focus on right now. Refugees reaching us from Bet are coming with some severe health issues. The worker surveys you were complaining about last week are giving us information today. People are reporting severe fatigue. It looks like your workers are sick, Mr. Druck. They need to account for that, because it’s not going to get better, they haven’t been getting paid while they’re striking, and the weather is getting colder.”

“Of course your surveys are giving you convenient points of data,” Sierra Kiley said.

“What kind of sick are you talking about?” Mr. Druck asked.

Jeanne reached down to the keyboard and moved the cursor before striking a key.

Mr. Druck stared at the screen.

“Show me?” Sierra asked.

Mr. Druck slid the laptop closer to her.

“Is it the power plants?” Mr. Druck asked.

“No,” Jeanne said. “Believe it or not, most nuclear power plants are remarkably safe. Capes and countermeasures were ready to handle most of them the moment we knew what was going on with Gold Morning. There is a radiation problem in Bet and it’s not from that.”

“Because of him?” Buckner asked. The man was prematurely graying, but attractive. He was also the man in charge of most of the news media, new small screen endeavors and new movie projects. In the next year, his work would start to see fruit.

He’d asked about ‘him’. Scion.

“We thought it was industrial contaminants, but it may be deeper than that. Some of it might be how Scion decided to use his power. More of it is the sheer damage he did to the planet itself. There’s a degree of it that’s impossible to know for certain, that has to do with the Class-S phenomena. Portals to other worlds, tinker tech left to molder. It’s not only the radiation either. Methane levels are rising, food stockpiles on that side are dwindling fast, and the people there are getting sick for a variety of reasons. We’re facing some immediate sacrifices if we want to keep the remaining people in Bet alive,” Jeanne said.

“I’m always leery of those who say others need to make sacrifices,” Mr. Nieves said.

Jeanne raised an eyebrow. Gary Nieves was a little on the portly side, and if he wasn’t at least forty, he certainly looked it. Otherwise, the man looked after himself and portrayed a good face to his constituency. Of the five people contending for mayorship over the city, where roughly half of the North American survivors of Gold Morning were staying, he polled in fourth place.

Still, of the five people in the running, he was one of the three who were present and discussing things. In a sense, really. He was slow to provide workable solutions and quick to criticize. In another era, he might have been a politician who rose up by being an effective critic of the incumbent. In this era, there was no incumbent.

“We’re all going to need to make sacrifices,” Jeanne said. “You can see our proposals online. The reception is strong. I can give each of you the first look at what we’re looking at doing, so we can all be on the same page. Anyone can visit our website and see the roadmap we laid out. This, what we’re talking about today, with labor law. It will improve employee health by one stage of separation. General happiness, satisfaction, keeping the peace, lower crime, all are minor factors or two steps or more removed.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re insignificant,” Mr. Druck said.

“Not insignificant. I would say…”

“Relatively less significant,” Jeanne’s assistant and husband Kurt said. He had his own laptop in front of him, and his eyes didn’t leave the screen, peering past thick-framed glasses that faintly reflected the image on the glowing screen. The sky beyond the window was dark, even with it being the middle of the afternoon, and the lights in the meeting room were off.

“Thank you dear,” Jeanne said.

Mr. Druck’s expression twisted. With Jeanne standing beside him, he had to push his chair back to take her in in full. He growled out the words, “Relatively less?”

“Compared to projected deaths in the millions,” Jeanne said, gently. “You can push us on this, but I think you’ll find that when the bodies start stacking up and people start finding out that their loved ones still on Bet are suffering or coming back with cancer, people will start asking why we weren’t more ready. You won’t have people on your side if it comes to that.”

“You’re going to suggest they ask, aren’t you?” Sierra Kiley asked.

“No. But I don’t know what Mr. Buckner will do,” she lied. She glanced at the media mogul.

“The news would report the truth, of course,” Mr. Buckner said.

“Of course,” Sierra said.

Jeanne moved her laptop, sliding it to her end of the table. Kurt handed her four ring-bound booklets without her asking.

She paused, laying one hand flat against the booklet on top of the short stack.

“Our proposal,” she said, returning her focus to the room. She distributed the booklets to Mr. Nieves, Mr. Buckner, Ms. Kiley, and Mr. Druck. “Read it. It’s our suggestion for worker protections and remediation, to go into effect in April of next year. If there’s an aspect of it you don’t like-”

“April?” Mr. Druck interrupted.

“-You may want to see our website. You can add and subtract factors and adjust the numbers, and it will note the effects, based on peer reviewed study and the input of some great minds. You don’t have to agree with the numbers, but they may help you predict our responses.”

“April,” Mr. Druck said, with more emphasis. “They’re not going to stand for this.”

“You riled them up, Mr. Druck, or you allowed them to be riled up,” Jeanne said. “This is in their best interests. Have them return to work. If they work themselves to the bone, lives will be saved, and they could be heralded as heroes in their own right.”

“A tainted word, hero,” Mr. Nieves said.

“People aren’t machines, Jeanne,” Sierra Kiley said. “They’re not numbers on a spreadsheet. They won’t want to go back to work without any incentives.”

“I’m trying to save as many people as I can. If people are reduced to numbers on a spreadsheet here, it’s because we have to work on that scale, we’re doing it in the best ways we can, for their benefit.”

“People are irrational,” Sierra said. “Brockton Bay and New Brockton are platinum standards when it comes to rebuilding after a disaster. Trust me when I say that people don’t act in their own best interests. Especially when it comes to making sacrifices.”

“The only way we save those millions –tens of millions- is if we bring them from Earth Bet to here and give them the care they need. We have to let the remaining refugees in before winter takes hold and before war necessitates barring passage. It means throwing paperwork out the window and focusing on transporting them in, and it’s going to be hell. It’s also going to need people to help it happen.”

“Mr. Druck’s people,” Sierra said.

“And yours. New Brockton is important in this. Talk to your workers. If the ones who were in Bet too long start working now and get sick, they’ll be protected financially. It’s in the proposal. That’s your incentive.”

Ms. Kiley and Mr. Druck leaned together, whispering.

Jeanne took a seat next to Kurt, situating her laptop back in front of herself. She checked her messages. The attack on the Fallen was underway. There were already deaths, and it would get worse before it got better.

No other news. It was the other news that concerned her most. Others were playing a different game, and their perspectives were… distorted. They might have said the same for her, even with her ongoing efforts to maintain some objectvity.

“I think this may be my last day sitting in on these meetings,” Mr. Nieves said, interrupting her thoughts. She noticed that he hadn’t opened the booklet she’d placed in front of him, or even moved it from the position.

“Why?” Jeanne asked.

“I serve a dwindling base. Every day that passes that we don’t go back to Bet to rebuild is a day I lose the faith of my supporters.”

“We’ll be sorry to see you go, Mr. Nieves,” she said.

“No you won’t,” he said.

“Your perspective has always been valuable. A dissenting voice is valuable,” Jeanne said.

“An ineffectual voice, if an essentially critical one,” he said. “Don’t flatter me. I’m not interested, and I don’t want flattery from you.”

The tone of those last few words saw Ms. Kiley and Mr. Druck stop talking and start paying attention to Mr. Nieves.

“I thought we got along fine.”

“I’ve always wondered about these booklets and your computer program. Others wonder too.”

Website, not computer program, Jeanne mentally corrected. “Wonder?”

“The exacting numbers, the complexity. This was made by parahumans.”

“We consulted them, yes.”

He pushed the booklet her way. “This is parahuman, not human.”

“All of us are in this together, Gary,” Jeanne said. “Human and parahuman.”

“It’s as if we’re locked in a cage with a wolf,” Mr. Nieves said. “Except I have to wonder about the ‘we’ part of it. Ms. Kiley is a vaguely familiar name. Not to her credit, but familiar. I could believe she’s not a parahuman. I don’t think she would be a good leader, but she’s not one of them. You, though.”

Not a trailing thought, not a question. A statement.

“We believe in using every resource we have to do the greatest amount of good,” Jeanne said.

Gary Nieves stood from his seat. He picked up the book, holding it by one corner. He looked like he was going to say something, then stopped. When he did speak, it was with a different expression- sadder than angry.

“Sitting at this table, being a part of discussions with other Earths, talking to the Wardens, everything else, it affords us a privilege the people don’t get. We have to hear how bad it really is.”

Sierra spoke, “I’d phrase it as ‘we get to hear’, not ‘have to hear’.”

“It’s an opportunity to help,” Jeanne said.

Mr. Nieves shook his head. “Every time I come here, I hear about new disasters. Machinery that should never have been built, now with dead owners, still running. People that snapped with the end of the world. Broken quarantines. Every time I come, three to five days a week, something new. Today I hear about a war outside of New Haven, and innocents will die, many will come out in body bags.”

“The straw that broke the camel’s back?” Mr. Buckner asked. The media mogul sounded more casual than anything.

Nieves didn’t sound casual. “It’s one more thing. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it’s the parahumans. It’s wolves people like me are trapped in a cage with, and they’re gathering into packs and reverting to their feral programming.”

“Wolves were domesticated to become dogs,” Jeanne said.

“These wolves killed billions,” Gary Nieves said. “I don’t think we can afford to give them more power over us. We don’t have that much left to spare.”

“What would you propose as an alternative?” Jeanne asked. “If you’ll read the booklet, I think it’s sound and there’s nothing especially strange in there.”

Gary’s smile was tight, fighting to become a sneer, because of the feelings he was holding back. Disgust. “I’ve talked to people about it. Ex-PRT, police, scholars. Those conversations were back when I thought I could get a foothold here, when I thought people might see what you’re doing and where it comes from.”

‘What are we doing?” Jeanne asked.

“Using powers. I asked about these proposals and I got a lot of answers and information about powers, the push toward violence and the dramatic, the loss of the human in the midst of it all. There was a time when many people with powers wanted to use their powers for mundane things. Rogues. It kept going wrong, didn’t it?”

“We could have a discussion on that,” Jeanne said. “If it’s a concern, I’d like to address it, because it’s nuanced.”

Nieves shook his head, expression twisting again. “If you know, then you know. When powers are used to produce materials, generate powers, there are traps, aren’t there? The powers don’t want to be used for simple, stupid things like nine to five jobs or manual labor. They want to fight, to hurt, or to cause chaos.”

“Many of them do, yes,” Jeanne said.

“Even when they seem tame, it ends in disaster. Hidden catches, or materials that were conjured from nowhere start to go back to nowhere after months or years.”

“Other worlds, not nowhere. But yes.”

Gary Nieves threw the booklet across the table. “What’s the catch? Where’s the trap?”

“There’s a subset of powers that seem to buck the trend, Mr. Nieves. That’s what I’d like to discuss with you, if it’s a concern.”

Powers derived from other sources. Powers bought and bartered for.

But to say it here, with people like Mr. Druck and Mr. Buckner at the table? Too dangerous.

“I’m done,” Mr. Nieves said. “You don’t need to worry about me anymore. I’m not a general who can handle this war that seems so inevitable, and I’m not someone who can come up with computer programs that break something this chaotic into something deceptively elegant-”

Kurt sniffed slightly.

“-And frankly,” Mr. Nieves said, “It fucking terrifies me that you’re one or both of those things.”

Those were the man’s parting words. Mr. Nieves gathered his things, including an umbrella, and marched from the room that was far too large for the table in its center.

“We’ll look this over and we’ll discuss,” Sierra said.

“I’ll discuss with people, sound them out,” Mr. Druck said.

“Thank you,” Jeanne said.

“I’ll talk to some people about it as well,” Mr. Buckner said. “I’m going to go before there’s any rain.”

“What we discuss here stays off the record,” Jeanne said.

“Yes, yes. Off the record, but still important.”

A power player of another sort, but at least he was cooperative.

Mr. Druck and Mr. Buckner left. Two very different people- the working class spokesman and the master of media with his expensive suit. They talked as they went.

Kurt, Sierra, and Jeanne remained.

“Any word?” Sierra asked. “You were looking at your computer.”

“Seven fatalities. Both villain groups had guns. I haven’t heard about any of your… compatriots being hurt.”

“Citrine-” Sierra started. “Jeanne. There was an occasion about three days ago that I was updating them on our meetings here. Tattletale said that Cauldron once told the Undersiders that they had no interest in being in charge.”

“I’m not Cauldron,” Jeanne said.

“It looks to me like you married in,” Sierra said.

Jeanne looked at her hand, then at Kurt’s. The bands were Damascus, not gold. Hers had a yellow diamond inset into it. Gold had seemed crass, but a yellow gemstone had seemed essential.

“And,” Sierra said. “I couldn’t help but notice you haven’t denied you want to be in charge.”

“Humanity is wounded on an extradimensional, macro level,” Jeanne said. “Finding solutions for this kind of damage requires the perspective of people with a sense for the big picture. The biggest kind of picture.”

“But do you want it? That position, where you’re finding the solutions and looking down on things from that high a seat?”

“Yes,” Jeanne said.

“You might be the only person that really wants it,” Sierra said.

“We might be the only ones who can do it,” Jeanne said.

“Gary’s right. That’s spooky,” Sierra said.

“I don’t think that’s fair.”

Sierra nodded. She gathered her things. No umbrella or raincoat. Jeanne had always felt Sierra was more the type to walk in the rain and let it pour down onto her than to be wearing business casual in a room like this.

The book was the last thing Sierra picked up. She looked at the cover.

“Want another copy to give to Tattletale?” Jeanne asked.

“Sure.”

Jeanne tapped her power, covering the table’s long surface with a yellow tint. In a second mind’s eye, she could see that slice of space as a world unto itself. There were around sixty thousand variables that Jeanne was aware of, but she had to look for them to grasp them. Friction. Tuned… seventy five units.

She gave the book a push, and it sailed across the table like an air hockey puck, rotating. Sierra stopped it with one hand.

One of Sierra’s fingers tapped the cover. “Accord?”

“Yes.”

“Spooky,” Sierra said, again. She collected the book, putting it with the other, and gathered her bag.

Jeanne continued to feel it wasn’t a very fair assertion. She sat back down beside Kurt, at the empty table in a hall that could have hosted an elegant ballroom dance, with tables at either end, a bar, and more room for groups to gather by the windows and socialize.

She poked at the key on her keyboard to refresh the page.

No news.

She moved over to the side of the keyboard to hit the key combination to switch windows, and her fingers met Kurt’s. He was already there, reading her mind, switching the window for her. She hit the key to refresh that page too.

More deaths. Tattletale had broken away while the other Undersiders had ventured into the fight, and Jeanne had no idea why. What was Tattletale doing?

Her fingers knit together with Kurt’s, but backward, knuckles crossing knuckles. The smooth surface of her ring grazed his finger.

Holding her knuckles like that, he raised her hand up to his mouth and kissed her palm, then her wrist.

“You’re worried about something.”

“The Wardens didn’t ask us before they signed off on this, yet they have people devoted to idiotic things like rescuing people from time bubbles and loops. Tattletale is maneuvering and I don’t think she has a good perspective when it comes to the big picture. There are monsters like the self-styled Goddess out there.”

“The Blue Empress of Earth Shin.”

“Sleeper is still parked in Zayin. I wanted to tell Gary Nieves that Cauldron capes are stable. We have the power and we’re not as driven toward violence and drama. We’re safe.”

“Safer,” Kurt said.

“Safer. Yes. None of the others are that safe. They threaten to weaken us at a time we can’t afford it. This idiotic business with the Fallen could leave us without enough people watching the portals. Earth-C could attack and having critical people in an asinine fight could be what leaves us vulnerable.”

“If you wanted it, you could seize the reins. The others are down or out. You could take charge and start making decisions.”

Jeanne leaned back in her seat. She surrendered her defenses, for one fleeting moment. She gave Kurt a look, worried, momentarily insecure.

Kurt was the only person she’d ever allowed herself to show that insecurity to.

He leaned over and gave her a brief kiss. He looked her in the eyes, and he said, “I know where you come from, Jeanne. Somehow, I don’t feel like I’m a species of one when I’m with you. Don’t doubt your ability to do this.”

Jeanne smiled.

⊙

Jean slouched in her seat. All around her, people were talking with lawyers, with parents, with family and friends. There were only fifty girls at the institution, all wearing navy blue sweats, or sweat bottoms and white t-shirts. Guards were stationed at points around the room.

Every week, it seemed, someone left, and someone came back in.

“Do you know who I am, Jean Brown?” the man sitting across from her asked. He was young, but short.

Jean shrugged. “Someone my parents hired?”

“I’m someone that hires, not someone who is hired,” he said. “I own several businesses in Boston.”

Boston. She made the connection and immediately started paying more attention. She sat up, gripping the seat with both hands to push herself up to a sitting position.

“I’ve been made aware that you recently had an altercation with a girl from Boston.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes sir.”

“Tell me how that went.”

What was she supposed to say or do? Tell the truth? Beg?

He seemed like the no-nonsense type. For perhaps the first time in her life, she decided to play things straight.

“When they brought me in here, I was given the tour by another one of the girls in juvie. They pointed out Lindsay. They said everything had to get run by her.”

“Phrasing,” he said. “‘Get run’ is not proper English.”

“What are you, my teacher?” she asked. Reflex.

He leaned forward, meeting her eyes with his. “I may end up being one, Jean Brown. Keep in mind that some lessons are more final than others.”

She felt the thrill of terror as she heard that. One of her hands slipped from the edge of the chair she was gripping and she adjusted her position in the seat, hands clasped together and pressed down into her lap.

“Continue,” he said.

“I didn’t want to run things by her. She was telling us when we could get ourselves- when we could get commissary, and when we could go to the bathroom. Right away, I knew I didn’t like her.”

“This dislike and frustration led to you pinning her down, cutting her lower eyelid off, and lacerating the other eye?” He arched an eyebrow as he asked it.

“I would’ve cut all of the eyelids off without cutting the eye itself if she hadn’t thrashed so much. Either way, I was placed in S.T. and they brought me out to see you.”

“She was mine, Jean Brown. She did me a favor and that favor led to her confinement here. She interpreted one of my instructions too loosely, and that is why she was to spend the one year here before she turned eighteen and graduates out, instead of finding her way out right away. She had a position waiting for her. Now I have to figure out what I’ll do with her… and I have you to deal with.”

Jean swallowed, and found it harder to swallow than she wanted. She tried to look nonchalant.

“She’s not the first person you’ve grievously injured. You have several more years here and after that you’ll graduate to an adult prison to see out the remainder of your sentence.”

Jeanne looked away.

“Look at me.”

She did.

“I’ve noticed the pattern behind your actions here, and I’ve identified it as a desperate grab for standing. It was crude, rising up by cutting people down. You used a razor on a classmate’s face and attacked a teacher.”

She hesitated, then asked, “Sir?”

“Yes, Jean Brown?”

“Can I ask why you’re talking to me instead of having someone hurt me like I hurt her?”

“You may ask,” he said.

When he didn’t follow up, she connected the thought, and asked, “Why, sir?”

“Because, Jean Brown, I understand the desire to rise up and desperately make sense of a world that seems so senseless. I read every file that can be found about you, and I don’t believe you ever had a chance to be civilized.”

“Civilized?”

“Please speak and inquire in complete sentences. I know who your stepfather is, I know who your teachers have been. Your judge remarked on your privileged background, but you were the last file he looked at after an overworked day. He hadn’t had a vacation in five years and his retirement was imminent. He was lazy and he didn’t see you.”

Jean felt a thrill similar to the fear that had run through her earlier. This time, however, it was at the realization that maybe this man sitting in front of her saw her, like the judge hadn’t.

“A lawyer will take and appeal your cases. Lindsay will change her mind about who attacked her, and your other cases will be addressed. You will be out shortly. You’ll get and accept a scholarship for a private school in Boston and then you will rise to the top of the class. You will make no fewer than five friends of standing and class, and you will attend private tutoring classes after school that will round out your education in other things.”

Her head spun with the paradigm shift.

“This will be far more difficult than juvenile prison, and even more difficult than being a newly minted eighteen years old in an adult’s prison, Jean Brown. You will want to do as I instruct, regardless of this difficulty.”

She wanted to ask why, and her instincts told her that she couldn’t and shouldn’t.

Failure wasn’t an option.

“You get one chance, Ms. Brown.”

⊙

“Ms. Kiley’s polls are down,” Kurt said.

“The spike was because of how closely New Brockton is affiliated with industry and construction. It was always going to be short lived. I think she knew it, when she walked away today. Mr. Nieves is gone, Kiley is out. Russel isn’t really trying.”

“Leaving only Mrs. Songmin.”

“She hasn’t attended any of the meetings or discussions. She’s campaigning, but that’s all there is.”

“She is a politician. She knows how these things work.”

“She’s a contender, but not a concern,” Jeanne said. “I’ve never run for any seat or position, but I’m more of a politician than she is.”

Kurt laughed, head going back. The laugh echoed through the empty room.

“You know it’s true.”

“Oh, I do know. I like how succinctly you put it.”

“Being succinct was essential to surviving among the Ambassadors,” Jeanne said.

“I did like Accord,” Kurt said. “Peculiar, but he was an asset.”

Two hours had passed, and neither of them had left the hall or their seats at the table, except to bring a cup of coffee to the table or to use the facilities. The laptop screens glowed and the light from overhead was more mood than office lighting. The rain poured.

Hours ago, things had turned for the worse, in that localized war outside of New Haven. Those things, to an extent, had little to do with them. When they got back to their home and business, they would get the full update on the dead and lost. Documents would be updated, and some plans would be shifted around.

Every five to fifteen minutes, Jeanne checked news and cell feeds to see if there had been an attack from zealots or another crisis taking advantage of the distraction. That possibility concerned her more than the death of Tattletale, the swelling of Fallen ranks by way of mind control, seizing most of the survivors, or any other hypothetical scenarios she might imagine.

Kurt had fallen silent, as he checked his information. His screen was a tide of numbers and account balances for several moments. He refreshed a page, then turned his laptop for her to see. With black text on a white page, and the room so dim, it was glaring, and her tired eyes had to adjust to interpret.

“We found him. The thief.”

“If I found him, others might have too,” Kurt said. He stood and closed the laptop. The acknowledgement that they would have to act was left unspoken.

Others. Jeanne knew who they were.

Jeanne stood as well. Laptop closed and placed in a messenger bag, joined with the booklets and papers she’d brought with her in case more showed.

There were no portals. They couldn’t speak a word and request a doorway to any place or alternate earth. The act of getting to the old headquarters was… arduous. The way to the old Cauldron headquarters was to travel to Cote D’Ivoire and use the spare portal there. It was easier to situate themselves in the city.

Besides. The old base had been commandeered.

Kurt had his phone out and at his side, his thumb typing.

“You’re requesting your brothers?”

“The pair. I’ll reach out to several of the employees. It might be overkill to call in a favor.”

“Worthwhile overkill if it helps us deal with him.”

The car was waiting outside. Every other car on the road was a dark shade or dark gray, but her sedan was yellow. She had a weakness for finer touches like that. She preferred to drive, but she acknowledged that it was better if Kurt handled it, for instances like this. Again, the unspoken communication between them had him going straight to the driver’s side.

He peeled out, with no regard to speed limit or the vagaries of traffic.

Kurt spoke, “Friction, plus fifteen, one hundred feet ahead, in five, four, three, two, one.”

She placed the effect of her power. The car turned, wheels skidding. The nose of the vehicle grazed the back bumper of a truck that was slower to make the turn. She knew there wouldn’t be a mark.

“Forty three minutes away,” Kurt said. “With up to one minute added time for maneuvering around traffic.”

So many things were reliant on resources. Money- they handled money and they had money. Kurt had arranged the trading dollar and he’d made it work. A city couldn’t run on barter, and a megalopolis was far more involved than a city.

People were another resource. They had people, but it was scattered. She had seen and worked out the state of Cauldron over the years, after taking over Accord’s position as head of the Ambassadors. She’d known it to be a very large place with very little staff. That much remained true now. When they needed it, as they did now, they could tap their scattered group and make things happen. It was the nature of their group and the people they collected that when they gathered together, they worked together like a perfectly engineered machine.

Knowledge, they were keeping something of a handle on knowledge. Information on friends, on enemies. They still talked to Tattletale now and then because she was a prime source of knowledge, albeit of the uncertain sort.

Things grew more difficult, past that point. Time was a harder resource to obtain.

Nine minutes into their trip, time and people converged as elements. Kurt rolled down the back windows of the sedan. The windows were barely rolled down when lithe forms slipped into the back of the vehicle, as it tore down a forty mile an hour road at seventy-five miles an hour.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” Kurt’s younger siblings said. They’d cleaned up, and loosely matched Kurt in presentation, though they’d gone for something more fitting for teenagers. Both wore the thick-framed glasses, however.

Kurt became annoyed with them very quickly, so it had ended up being her responsibility to corral them and give them direction.

If she ever had a doubt that she was Kurt’s type, the fact that his clones were so bad at hiding their fondness for her would have banished the thought. It never failed to put a smile on her face.

“Red vehicle. Wind shear slow, type three, offset by three feet left. Make it a minus five, whenever you please.”

She produced a brief field to encompass the left side of a red truck, causing it to pull to one side. Kurt navigated between two vehicles, her sedan centered on the dotted line as it squeezed between the two. The red truck saw them and braked suddenly, pulling further to the side. She canceled out her power before another vehicle could intercept it or the red truck could be forced off course. Kurt picked up speed once he was clear of the gap.

“Could you give the engine special treatment? I know effects on moving things are hard to maintain, but I can keep the speed constant.”

“Time is of the essence,” she said.

She placed the power over the engine, focusing to get it centered. Acceleration.

“This would be easier if we had Fortuna,” she said.

“She gave her all to get us this far. It would be asking a lot, for her to give us the remainder of her years. We’ll see ourselves the rest of the way. She can live her life as she sees fit.”

Jeanne privately disagreed, but she didn’t make a point with it. Not with Kurt’s younger selves in the car.

There was one more resource, time aside, that they were critically short on. Not power, specifically; it looked as though she had a mostly uncontested path ahead of her to the leadership over Earth Gimel’s largest population.

Powers, though? Any authority over powers themselves would be dangerous in the wrong hands. That kind of authority threatened to wipe away any kind of meaning when it came to money, people, knowledge or time. She knew because she leveraged it.

It was an arm’s race to maintain that leverage and it was ruin to lose it.

Which led them to the thief, wheels barely maintaining the necessary traction on the road. They’d started forty-three minutes away and they took twenty minutes to get to their destination.

They came to a stop and the wheels of the car smoked.

“He’s still here?” she asked.

“He hasn’t owned a car in all the years we kept tabs on him, and I had systems set to freeze all transportation. Knowing his usual habits, he’ll know something is wrong and he’ll be running out into hills. More help is arriving. We’ll save time if we wait.”

“Who are we after?” one of the two boys asked.

Kurt rattled off a series of numbers, for facial measurements and metrics.

“We’ll go ahead?” the other boy asked.

“Don’t stray far. Go out that way,” Kurt said.

The two left.

“I never did that,” Kurt said.

Jeanne smiled.

“They’ve picked up other things. I don’t know if it’s because they copy me when they see me or if it’s because they’re getting it in other ways.”

“You should have studied more about powers,” Jeanne said. “I think it’s the latter.”

He frowned.

“You seem annoyed if they’re dissimilar to you and you’re annoyed if they’re similar.”

“I’m offended they exist,” Kurt said.

“I like them. I see them and I’m reminded of how I used to be. We traveled similar journeys, didn’t we? We were vicious once, and now we’re civilized.”

“We’re still vicious,” he said. “Good grooming doesn’t clean that slate, nor should it.”

“Fair,” she said. “Who are we waiting for?”

“A handsome fellow known as Barfbat.”

“I know Barfbat. He took us out to eat, remember? The restaurant had chickens in cages just outside the door.”

“Was that him? Right. Well, speak of the devil and he’ll appear.”

Barfbat winged his way down. Tumorous, fluid-filled growths deflated and his wings retracted.

“Hi Barfbat,” Jeanne said.

“It’s nice to see you, Jeanne. This is really it, Number Man? I’m done?”

“This will be the last favor we ask of you, and your contract from June 1998 will be considered finished,” Kurt said.

“It’s about time,” Barfbat said. “Decades of my life spent keeping a phone nearby.”

“We’ve helped you out along the way, as payment for having you in reserve. But time is of the essence. Can you sniff out our man? I think he’ll be scared.”

Barfbat nodded. A slit appeared down the center of his face, and then it parted in layers, each layer adding to a flower-like bloom that was a comprehensive nose that obscured eyes and ears both. Tumors swelled and filled with fluid around his neck and shoulders, stretching out until the skin was transparent, veins standing out where the light hit them.

He broke into a run, arms extending until he could use them to help run, and Jeanne and Kurt both followed. As they reached the outskirts of the little town, they caught up with Kurt’s younger ‘brothers’.

Barfbat had an augmented body, but Kurt and his brothers had efficient movement. Jeanne was fit, she exercised and ran every day, and she could use her power to help traverse obstacles or reduce wind resistance, but it was still an effort to keep up.

They caught up with the thief. It didn’t take long. The terrain was hilly, and that slowed their quarry more than it slowed any of them.

‘The thief’ was a middle-aged eastern Indian man, forehead creased in concern. He’d grown out a beard and his hair was long, tied into a knot at the back. He dressed simply, ready for the outdoors.

“Balminder,” Kurt said.

The thief, Jeanne thought. The Dealer. He absconded with as many vials as he could take. Kurt had said that along with Manton’s defection, it was one of a series of betrayals that led to Cauldron keeping their roster small and disconnected.

Kurt waved the others back. Barfbat and the two boys backed off, keeping a respectful distance, so the conversation would be quiet.

“I make one mistake,” Balminder said. “Less than an hour later, you’re here.”

“We’ve always known where you were and what you were doing, Balminder,” Kurt said. “The time has come. You have a fair amount left. Give it to us.”

“You’ve hunted me for half a decade.”

“We kept tabs on you for three years and hunted you for the last two.”

“Why not take me right away, if I was so easy to find?”

“Because, Balminder,” Kurt said, “You were plausible deniability and a scapegoat, if we needed one, and you were one of a dozen pieces we kept in play, as people who could be arranged to rescue Cauldron if it was ever lost, if we gave someone a power that gave them absolute control over us. It was good to have some vials out there that would take concerted effort to find.”

“It was a small supply,” Balminder said.

“I know for a fact this ‘small supply’ was not exhausted. You have some left over. It should be a hundred and thirty to a hundred and forty vials.”

“The number is zero,” Balminder said. “They’ve been claimed. I thought they were you.”

“Zero is my least favorite number,” Kurt said, in an uncharacteristically dangerous voice.

“Don’t kill him,” Jeanne said. “We can get answers out of him.”

“We know what those answers will be.”

“We’ll ask,” she said.

Kurt deferred, stepping back.

“Claimed,” Jeanne said the word. “Explain.”

“By a man. A month or two ago. He called himself Teacher. I didn’t even slip up, he just- he appeared. And he had a small army of people with powers with him.”

“A small army,” Jeanne said. “It’s good to know.”

“It is. Thinkers and tinkers, Balminder? Negligible powers?” Kurt asked.

“Not just those. Not negligible. I know my powers, Number Man. I know my shit. This wasn’t trifling.”

“Maybe not an Ingenue tweak,” Jeanne observed.

“He has other avenues of access, then,” Kurt said. “He has the old base, and what was empty is now fully staffed. Now he has an army.”

“We might have to revisit the truce we made,” Jeanne said. “We thought the Undersiders knocked him down enough pegs that he wouldn’t recoup fast. It seems he’s more resourceful than that.”

“Teacher’s Cauldron,” one of the two boys said.

“The Cauldron is fractured,” Kurt said. “Like so many things. We can’t afford the resources to mend the divide or deal with this army, small or otherwise. The city would fall while our backs are turned.”

It might fall nonetheless, Jeanne thought. It was possible to do everything perfectly and to still fail, and try as they might, they wouldn’t get everything right.

“We’ll take the city,” she aid. “No use delaying now. If he has Cauldron, we’ll take everything else. If we take the city, we can control the Wardens. If the Fallen come out ahead, we’ll control them.”

“Um,” Balminder said.

“You can come with us or you can go and keep your mouth shut,” she said. “We’re a splinter of Cauldron, but we could count it as you coming back into the fold.”

“We were never upset,” Kurt said. “Not really.”

Balminder frowned.

“Think on it,” Jeanne said.

She and Kurt walked a short distance away and let Balminder do his thinking.

“You sounded almost as if you hope it will happen,” Kurt observed. “The Fallen winning.”

“Not hope. But I think it’s more likely than not, so I’m planning accordingly.”

“I don’t disagree. Anything to deal with Teacher, is it? Even deals with the devil.”

Shadow – Interlude 5.y

Jonathan held the diaper-clad zombie in his arms with a ginger care.

“I understand not wanting to give it up. This is something special,” he said.

“We might not give it up. We’re here about the price, so we can see what our options are,” the guy said.

The couple Jonathan was talking to were fidgeting. They were young- twenty-five or so, and the guy had tattoos up and down his arms, geometric, with Q-bert on one arm. The woman had a cartoon character partially hidden by her sleeve. As whimsical and bright as the tattoos were, they looked tired and worn out, and their clothes were somewhat washed out in color.

“I had friends who were into preparing for the end of the world,” Jonathan said. “Stockpiling food, guns, and learning survival skills. They loved the zombie movies, naturally.”

“I’m a fan too. I never did the prep stuff though, except for having a chainsaw in our display cabinet. I don’t know if that counts,” the guy from the couple said.

“The scary movies we watch are always tied into the fears of the times. As things got worse and the bad guys seemed to get ground, we got more zombie movies. The inevitable demise.”

“Absolutely,” the husband said. “But whenever we had a movement like that, there was always a turnaround. Things got better, didn’t they? And when they did, so did the movies.”

“Deconstructions, reversals, parodies.”

“I liked the parodies,” the husband said. He indicated the doll. “Like Lenny.”

“Second date,” the wife said.

He glanced at his wife. “Lenny there was an anniversary present.”

“He’s great. You shouldn’t give him up if he’s that important,” Jonathan said.

“He’s important,” the guy said. He looked at his wife again. “But we can’t stay in the tent cities. It’s more important that we have a proper house. We’re selling a lot of the things we brought over.”

Jonathan saw the wife pass her hand over her stomach.

“Ah,” he breathed the sound. “Got it.”

“It’s hard,” the guy said. “Silly as it sounds.”

The man looked like he might cry, and it was because he was looking at selling a life-size doll of a baby with a bite mark in its middle and flesh missing from its snarling face.

“I don’t think what the prepheads were doing ended up mattering, when the end of the world came. The guns didn’t matter much. Different sort of end to the world, they might have, but not here. The food helped in the early weeks, but what really ended up mattering most was having the right mindset. When the end of the world actually came it was a pretty heavy emotional blow.”

“Yeah,” the guy said.

“The people who seemed to do best weren’t always the preppers. It was the people who could get back up after being hit that hard, and the ones with an idea of what to do when they’d been left with nothing. It was better to have the right skills than the right things. Having drive. Preparing for the end of civilization… less so. So long as there’s more than five people around, we’re going to have something like civilization.”

“I think you’re right,” the wife said. “I think it’s true for a lot of people who I’ve made friends with recently. My sister wasn’t a prephead or anything, but she worried a lot about the Endbringers, and she spent all her money traveling to try to get away from where they might attack. When everything finally fell apart, so did she.”

Jonathan nodded.

“She made it. That’s what counts. Hopefully- I’m hoping she figures out how to push forward, like you said. There’s a world out there.”

“I’m not trying to give you the sales patter, because that’s really not me,” Jonathan said. “But if you’re prepared to sell something as important as Lenny…”

He let the sentence hang a moment.

“I am,” the husband said.

“Then it’s good. This stuff…”

He indicated his shop. The cartoons and figurines, the board games and video games. Some things had a secondhand look to them, because they were very much secondhand.

“…It’s not so important when we’re trying to put it all back together again. Save it for when you’re secure, when you have everything you need.”

“That’s the plan,” the husband of the couple said.

Jonathan stroked the baby’s head. “I could give you three hundred in trading dollars. What do you think?”

He could see the flicker of surprise on the man’s face.

“The place we’re looking to buy an apartment in is using N.D.”

“Then it translates to four hundred new dollars,” Jonathan said. “It’s dying currency, be careful. The value drops every day.”

The husband fidgeted as he stared at the little life-size figure. Jonathan couldn’t tell if he was doing it because he was about to break and try to find another way, or if he was trying to etch the figure’s details into his mind’s eye because he was about to give it up.

Jonathan bit his tongue. He was tempted to offer more, but he couldn’t. As it was, he’d barely make back the money selling the figure, if he made any at all. He needed to eat and pay for the store space.

“We don’t have to,” the wife said.

“We need to,” the husband whispered.

“This isn’t a pawn shop,” Jonathan said. “I’m looking for stock that certain people want. I can’t hold onto things. Be sure you want to give it up if you sell it to me.”

He saw the husband frown, fidgeting more.

“If you give it to me, and if I sell it, I’ll get the contact information from the buyer. Somewhere down the line, if you want, you can talk to me, I can give you that information. Maybe you can track it down and offer them enough to buy it back. That’s the best I can do.”

“Okay,” the husband said. He nodded. “Yeah. Let’s do it. For New Dollars, please.”

Jonathan nodded. He moved the articulated doll over to the nearest empty space on a shelf, then walked over to the register, popping it open with the painful metal-on-metal sound he hadn’t quite become used to. He began counting out the money.

“Can you handle this, babe?” the husband asked. “I’m going to run an errand.”

“Sure,” the wife said.

Jonathan glanced up to see the guy walk away.

Nothing was easy.

“Is it hard? Running a store like this? It seemed difficult to run comic or games stores on the old Earth, and things are different now.”

“It’s not the easiest,” Jonathan said. It was an understatement; he had lost twenty pounds since starting the store, because he didn’t eat more than one meal most days, and some days he ate none. “My brother owned a store like it, in the old Earth.”

“Is he helping you?” the wife asked.

“He’s gone. He- I guess he helped, my initial stock included some of the things I was able to get from his store. He didn’t make it past Gold Morning.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“This place helps me feel a little closer to him. I’m contradicting everything I told you guys, but this is what connects me to my loved ones the most.”

“I don’t think that contradicts,” she said. She rested one hand on her stomach. “We’re doing what we can to hold onto those things most important to us. Civilization wins out over madness.”

“I think so,” he said. He passed the money across the counter to her. “Let me give you my number, in case you ever want to track it down. And you can give me your name.”

“An anniversary present for a year or two from now, if we’re lucky,” she said.

He smiled.

“Thank you,” she said. She looked at his nametag. “Jonathan.”

“You’re very welcome,” he said.

She left the store, and he moved the figure from the spot he’d given it to another place.

Nothing was easy. He hadn’t known what to say, so he’d spoken from the heart. The things weren’t so important, it was being able to get up again. That was what got him through the day. He and his brother had lost their parents early on. He’d lost his first job because a manager had shifted blame downhill, and he’d been blackballed from the local industry. Forced to choose between moving elsewhere to find work and staying close to his remaining family, he’d chosen the latter.

Now he had neither. He pressed on.

He helped some more customers, until a torrent of stern words from across the shopping center’s concourse turned his head.

A red haired woman, berating her daughter.

It made him uncomfortable. It was a move away from the civilization and society he hoped things were trending toward.

He retreated further into his shop.

⊙

The Fallen kid screamed as he smashed his chair against the invisible barrier. Over the course of four impacts, he smashed it to pieces.

He’d just relived the nightmare. Everything, from his point of view, playing over again, with scattered context from elsewhere. He’d seen fleeting glimpses of his brother, he’d seen the store, and he had heard the explosions.

Then his world had turned upside-down and emptied out. No store, no money, no peace and healing.

He’d gotten out of the hospital and he’d made his way straight to the shopping center, using his new power to get past the tape and barricade. Everything was gone, from the zombie doll to the boxes of cards and the crate of comics he’d liberated from his brother’s store. There had been a comic in there that might have let him make an emergency payment on the store for a month, and now it was gone.

Then he had keeled over early into a sleepless night, and he had relived that night. Now he was here again.

The boy with the glasses sat with his face in his hands, glasses pushed up.

The woman had had a breakdown the first night and now she looked like she was going to crawl out of her own skin, fingers in her mouth, teeth biting down on flesh.

And the Fallen kid -the fucking kid with the demon mask- went from railing uselessly against the walls of his cage to taunting Jonathan and the others.

He kicked the dais in the center of the room.

“Stop,” Jonathan said.

The kid backed up, got a running start, and kicked the dais again, hard enough he should have broken his foot.

“Stop. You’re not going to do anything.”

Grabbing the edge of the dais, the kid tried to shake it loose.

“Stop!” Jonathan raised his voice.

“He isn’t going to listen. He’s a moron,” the boy with the glasses said, without raising his face from his hands. “He wouldn’t wear that mask if he wasn’t.”

“Fuck off,” the Fallen boy said. “You don’t know anything about us.”

“You assholes set a mall on fire and trapped us inside! You were there at the door!” the boy with the glasses shouted. “Fucking idiots, what were you even trying to do?”

“You call us idiots, but we were right. We said the world would end, and it did. Now you’re all getting complacent again. You still don’t listen to us, so we make you listen.”

“People died,” Jonathan said.

“Their fault, from what I saw,” the Fallen boy said. He sounded sullen. “Through your eyes.”

The woman pulled her fingers from her mouth, and she screamed. She slammed one hand against the invisible barrier, and she dragged her fingernails down the surface until Jonathan thought that one would be pried off. She found her breath and screamed again.

“Shut up! Fuck off!” the Fallen boy shouted.

She’d broken. That she’d broken to the degree she had scared Jonathan, because he wasn’t sure how intact he was.

He might lose it entirely if every night was like this. This was only the second.

They’d all seen into his head, through his eyes. Was it random? One random person every night? An assortment of the things dropping out of the darkness above, distributed by chance?

He looked at the dark fifth of the room.

“You seem to be doing better than any of us. Except maybe that asshole over there,” the boy with the glasses said.

The idea surprised Jonathan.

“I’m not doing okay,” he said. “I feel-”

His voice distorted on that last word, rougher, painful to make the word ‘feel’.

“You feel what?”

“I feel,” Jonathan said, in that painfully rough voice, “Hollowed out. Numb. Angry. Lost.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“My voice-” he said.

“It changed just now.”

“It changed on the day. Smoke inhalation. I’m not wondering why it’s different. Why was it normal?”

The woman crumpled to the ground, hands up above her head, pressed to the wall, her head hanging. The Fallen boy with his crude demon mask stood above her, looking down. He didn’t say or do anything.

“Maybe it’s catching up,” the boy with the glasses said. “Why are we wearing the clothes we’re wearing? Why is he wearing that mask?”

Jonathan remained silent.

Nothing had fallen from the sky. He looked skyward, and saw only the darkness, the ceiling could have been twenty feet above them or it could have been a thousand feet above them, and he wouldn’t have known.

He walked over to the dais, past barren shelves that echoed his shop with no usable stock. He cast aside the debris and let it disintegrate.

He found the shards of glass, and thought of the skylight. Past the smoke, the light of the sun had been so bright on that day. This place was so dark.

He had extra shards today. He held them up for the boy with the glasses to see.

“Why glass?” the boy with the glasses asked.

The answer was the same as it was for the other things. It explained the shelves.

It was him. It was Jonathan’s, intrinsically.

⊙

His mover power let him treat any direction as down, with some nuance when it came to propelling himself forward. He used it to ‘fall’ up to the top of a Fallen home. His combat boots had enough gravel on them to crunch against the overlapping wooden slats.

Love Lost was with Nailbiter and Beast of Burden. That let Snag operate between Prancer and the Undersiders. It was an awkward place to be, because both groups had a way of dancing around things, identifying their own things to do, but those things weren’t in alignment and their way of doing things once they identified a task was different. Prancer tended to apply pressure, if he committed at all, and the Undersiders tended to surgically strike.

Prancer wasn’t far, and the pressure he was applying seemed to be focused on pushing the Fallen out of cover and into the areas where there wasn’t much cover. The area was the point where the settlement of buildings with each building next to the last was thinning out, and it became field and ditch, pond and forest, dotted with large farmhouses. The Fallen in the farmhouses had guns, and periodically opened fire, which made it hard for Prancer’s offensive. More Fallen kept showing up.

Snag wanted to go and help, but Cradle was already there, Love Lost was somewhere nearby, prowling for stragglers, and the Undersiders were dragging their heels, talking and checking those who had been killed or injured, periodically kicking in doors and checking inside.

Biter, Bitch, Foil, Parian, and Imp were all gathered together.

Snag looked down and watched. Two black stuffed animals, each twelve feet tall, were at the group’s back, as they walked down the street, checking doors. The dogs were at the forefront of the group, sniffing.

As they drew nearer, he growled, “Is this what we’re paying you for? The fighting is that way.”

“Blame her,” Imp said, indicating Bitch. Bitch pushed her.

“Protecting our asses,” Bitch said. “Some might be in the building, and if we don’t check it’s clear, they’ll attack us from behind, whichever group we go after.”

“Whichever group?” Snag asked. He stepped off of the roof and let his arms catch his weight before setting his feet down.

She pointed back the way they’d come. “South and east. That way and that way. Doon thinks there’s lots of scared people that way. And lots more that way, of course. North. That’s the bulk of the fighting.”

Toward Prancer’s group, with the fighting.

“If they’re civilians and they’re staying out of the way, we can decide what to do with them later. We leave them alone for now.”

“I hope we leave them alone for good,” Foil said.

“They’re Fallen,” Snag said. “Civilian doesn’t mean innocent.”

“You know our terms for helping,” Foil said.

“I do,” he said. And I know Tattletale’s are different. “Don’t dawdle.”

“Not dawdling,” Bitch said, her own voice becoming a growl.

“Snag, man,” Biter said. “Not worth it. I’m biased, but these guys have some practice. Let them do their thing.”

Bitch spoke as if Biter hadn’t said anything. “I’m covering our rear. Against this many dangers, we can’t get surrounded and we can’t get caught off guard. Doon, nose.”

The mutant dog pressed its nose to the dirt. It sniffed, and it huffed out a breath. The other dog raised its head and brought one leg up, the joint pointing forward.

“Good girl. Show me,” Bitch said.

Snag raised one arm as the Undersiders went ahead, and slapped a large mechanical hand against the forearm. Gripping the arm, he rotated it until words lit up along the length.

“Love Lost. Cradle. I’m at point B. Points A, C, and O, roughly, have fighting, with H being the focus. A and O might be civilian clusters. Clearing B at Undersider suggestion, will move to H.”

“Cradle here,” Cradle’s voice was distorted by the makeshift transmitter. Snag raised a hand to get a better reception. Cradle’s voice came through clearer. “No sign of him. Fighting’s bad. Prancer won’t commit with this much gunfire.”

“They have to run out sometime,” Snag said. There was a series of two beeps, and he rotated his arm until a display came up. The map, with points marked out.

Love Lost had made her reply. She’d found Fallen, further south.

Off to the northeast, there was commotion, but it was too far away for Snag to intervene or act. People fleeing into the trees.

And the Undersiders- he snorted in impatience.

He let himself fall forward, periodically touching ground for the reassurance of it or pushing off of the ground with a hand. As heavy as he was in general, in the outfit he wore, the boots, and the arms that weighed a hundred and ten pounds each, he could feel the ease and flow of movement, the wind rushing through beard and long hair. Power was at his fingertips both through the mechanical arms and the power that let him punch through inorganic things.

His version of the Fallen kid’s power.

He caught up with the Undersiders.

“Drag marks,” Bitch said, pointing at the dirt road.

Her head turned as she looked at a nearby house.

“Coast is… not clear but not unclear. Irredeemably weird,” Imp said. Snag startled a little at the suddenness of the voice from his peripheral vision.

“Weird?”

“I asked Tattletale and she said it was one of the same people as yesterday.”

Snag frowned.

Foil held her rapier, with knives in her other hand, one knife poking up between each pair of fingers. She took the lead. Bitch followed.

Only Biter and Parian remained. Biter didn’t go in, and Parian remained behind with the stuffed animals and dogs. Snag pushed the door open and followed the others up the stairs.

He could hear a whispering and a rustling. As he reached the top of the stairs, he could see past Bitch and Foil to the large cluster of black feathers, illuminated by light from the windows. Four spindly black bird’s legs gripped nearby walls and floorboards.

It spoke, but in a voice so quiet he couldn’t make out the words.

“Sssh,” the bird thing made a sound, and the words that followed were like breath through rustling leaves.

“Hey,” Foil said. “Creepy. I need you to back off and leave them alone.”

Them?

The bird-thing twisted around, until it peered at them with one large eye, the pupil misshapen, like the impression of a skull pressed into ink or mud. As the pupil dilated, the shape filled out to look more like a face.

Beneath it, Nursery, Magnate and a Fallen were lying in a heap.

The bird-thing moved slowly, looking around the room. There was a window to one side.

Snag pressed two fingers against the center of his gauntlet’s palm. He felt the vibrations as the inner cylinder rotated through his options. He settled on the shuriken. Scraping one finger against the palm, he set the loadout. Paralyzing despair. The arm throbbed silently to provide tactile feedback as it loaded the charge from the battery into the loadout of shuriken.

The bird-thing twisted around more, curling up until it was condensed, instead of the broader form that had let it envelop three individuals. Snag could see two smaller bird-limbs pull tight against its body as it withdrew that section into the center. He could see clothes, and he could see hints of other things near that central core.

“Step away from them,” Foil said. “Trust me, you do not want to get on the wrong side of this rapier.”

The bird-thing dragged itself closer to the window.

“That’s fine,” Foil said. “Who are you and who are you with?”

“Tats said it’s the same thing as the screaming skull thing they described from yesterday,” Imp said.

Snag tried not to startle at Imp’s sudden appearance, but the bird-thing did. It jumped, lunging for the window, and Snag fired the burst of shuriken between it and the window.

They exploded into a crackle of energy, intense enough that he could feel a trace of the effect himself.

The bird-thing didn’t seem to care. It shoved itself out through the window, past window-frame and glass. It landed outside, as the group rushed to the window.

Snag could have jumped out, but broken windows were dangerous. He was reminded of the shopping center, of the corridor, with the skylight above, and the window he’d wanted the girl to crawl through.

It wasn’t like the movies. Even with his outfit, it was dangerous, and it looked like that thing was pretty fast.

What was it doing here? Did its presence mean the others were here too?

A growl escaped his lips as he turned toward Nursery. Foil was already checking her and the other two.

“Alive. Burned. I don’t think that kid did it,” Foil said.

“Kid?” Snag asked.

“Tats said it’s a kid,” Imp said.

“Based on what?”

“Based on Tattletale,” Bitch said. “We should hurry, clear the rest of the area. Do you want to bring them?”

“These two are allies,” Snag pointed. “He isn’t.”

“I’ll restrain him,” Foil said. “Can you grab them, carefully?”

Snag picked up Nursery, easing her around until she was over his shoulder. He headed to the stairs.

He felt nothing. No compassion. Nothing of the him he’d once been, that had cared for his brother. In a way, it was easier. Even on his worst, most frustrating days, it was easier to put the feelings away. Dealing with people seemed easier when he could choose if he cared about them, and he only needed to care about a few.

In another way, he hated it. He hated what it represented. That he had once had a tie to his brother, and he’d lost that family connection when, as he communicated with his brother on the phone over hours, the line had suddenly gone dead. It had been by word of mouth, days later, that he’d heard New York had been hit. Struck by a sweep of golden light.

He’d tried to forge something in the shop, and the shop had gone up in flames.

And the ashes, the memories, they had been stomped on, repeatedly, night after night, mixed with the memories of others, drowned out by a select set of events that were replayed ad nauseum.

He switched to communication. “Love Lost. Cradle. The heroes that have been plaguing Hollow Point might be here. Be aware.”

He adjusted his grip on Nursery.

“Hey Foil,” Imp said. “Parian. You’re going to love this tidbit of news from our operations leader.”

“Oh no,” Foil said. “Me specifically?”

“You have three guesses.”

“Old teammates of mine.”

“Okay, yes. Vista and Weld showed up. But that’s not it. This is a lot more fun than that.”

Imp sounded more sarcastic than her usual as she said it.

“March.”

“Geez. You had three tries to get one right, and you got two right in two tries. What’s the fun in that?”

“Oh no,” Foil said.

“You know March?” Snag asked.

“Did you invite her?”

“No,” he said.

“Yeah. I know her,” Foil said. “She’s been after me since… forever ago. She turned up in Brockton Bay twice, after the portal, before the end of the world. She kidnapped Parian once.”

“She wanted to recruit me, months ago.”

“She collects multi-triggers,” Parian said.

Cradle, Love Lost, and himself, then?

Snag frowned. “Let’s go.”

⊙

Snag was silent as he stared out at the other group.

Everything had gone still and quiet as the small band of heroes, March, and March’s coterie approached from the settlement. The Undersiders were circling around to talk to the heroes that had cut off the Fallen’s retreat, Foil’s old teammates included, and the battle lines held.

March saw him, then saluted.

He didn’t return the gesture. His focus wasn’t on her.

Every night, he dreamed. Every night, he saw the others. He heard them, and he talked to them, saw their reactions.

Kiss and Kill. He could understand it, even if the dreams were unique to his own particular group. He knew these people as well as he might know any person he’d been married to for a year. He spent hours every night locked in a room with them, separated by invisible dividers.

What started as a seed of an idea became something more when his eye fell on the one with the hood, draping sleeves, and the faux-machine mask.

The way he walked and held himself- the fact that his presence could explain both the presence of March and the inexplicable intervention of the heroes…

“It’s him,” he growled.

“What?” Cradle asked. He sat on a mechanical hand, one leg dangling.

“With the hood, near March. It’s him.”

Cradle had goggles as part of the suit that networked with his robot. He adjusted one.

“Be subtle,” Snag murmured.

The Fallen were surrendering, now that their leader had been caught. They seemed pretty reluctant to do it. The various groups Snag had hired were talking among themselves, or figuring out what role they needed to play in this cleanup stage of things. Nursery ventured into the no-man’s land, drawing closer to Cradle and him, because she didn’t have a role to play in this. She had a bandage around her burns at her arm and leg.

“Some privacy?” Cradle asked, looking down at her.

“Hmm. Okay.”

“She can stay,” Snag said.

“If you say so,” Cradle said.

“What are you two murmuring about?” Nursery asked.

“We found the one who killed Love Lost’s child,” Snag said.

Nursery fell quiet.

“We would like some time alone with him. Which we can’t do, because this is wrapping up too neatly.”

“It’s not okay,” Nursery said. “I’ll help if I can.”

“Thank you,” Snag said.

“Don’t be an asshole like you were at the community center,” she said. “You have more potential than that.”

She sounded like she was his elder, talking down to him, when she was a fair amount younger. She peered at him through the slash in the cloth mask that encased her head, cinched tight around her neck by the cord she’d wound there. There was blood on the cloth.

“You’re right. This is wrapping up too neatly,” Cradle observed. “It’s eerie.”

Snag pulled his attention away from Nursery and the likely Fallen boy and the heroes he’d inserted himself in.

He made eye contact with Secondhand, and Secondhand looked alarmed. A moment later, the man disappeared.

“Careful!” Cradle said, with alarm.

At the center of things, where the Fallen had been using a farmhouse and the surrounding environs for cover, several of the heroes had disappeared.

End of Days.

Narwhal was slowed. That would be Final Hour. He could slow one target at a time. Snag had helped him work on the frame that helped him apply a variety effects to those slowed.

And Last Minute-

Snag lunged, using his power. He found a grip on one of Cradle’s limbs, and used it to reorient himself, trying to spot his target.

Last Minute was short with a combination of muscle and fat that created a frame that made Snag think of the games store and time with his brother and his brother’s hobbies. He was like a conventional fantasy dwarf, minus the beard. The man had an arsenal of gadgets at his belt, and he’d already drawn some.

Snag couldn’t get to him in time. He focused on getting to cover.

Last Minute wielded a shuriken design he’d learned from Snag, in exchange for a collection of data on lesser gadgets. That exchange had included Last Minute helping Snag with the loadout chamber in his right arm.

That weapon design, he knew what it did.

“Take cover!” he bellowed.

Last Minute threw. The shuriken exploded, with a slight temporal effect applied to all within the area. But he used his power in conjunction with it, and the explosions repeated, layering effects.

Snag jumped. Last Minute used a grappling hook to pull himself away.

Betrayal.

“Why!?” Snag roared.

“Someone’s gotta represent the fourth,” Secondhand’s voice could be heard from the crowd. Everything was dissolving into chaos.

The fourth.

The fourth Endbringer. Khonsu. A time manipulator and teleporter.

They were Fallen? Had they been all along?

Snag roared, giving chase to Last Minute. He had a mover power and his arms. He knew Last Minute had a bag of tricks.

A grenade here- Snag used his power to change direction in mid-air. The grenade exploded, and the people near the epicenter were thrown away in fast-motion, their falls as they landed outside the bubble slower but harder for the lack of equilibrium. Each one moved as it exploded, then exploded again.

There were others, some decoys, some traps, others laying groundwork or sowing chaos, so the crowd of allies were a detriment to Snag. Holograms appeared, repeated, forming clusters of two, three, four.

He saw the boomerangs and shielded himself with his arms pressed together.

He kept them there, as matching boomerangs time-looped to strike his arms over and over.

“Focus!” Cradle shouted. A mechanical hand pointed. Secondhand was already across the battlefield, unloading his charge. “Switch with me!”

He’d leave the Speedrunner traitors to Cradle.

He had someone else to go after. The boy had been sent flying by Secondhand’s trickery. The blast would have hit him hard. He’d be reeling.

Snag used his power to hurl himself back, nearly colliding with Nursery.

The fight was turning the wrong way, now. There was more gunfire, more chaos that served the Fallen’s ends.

Snag let himself fall straight up, zooming up and away from the battlefield. Rain pattered lightly against the side of his neck and his ear. The exaggerated tactile responses of his gloves fed him details on each raindrop, more clear and real than his own body’s senses.

The anger was crystal clear, and everything else was muted and cold. A part of him had died in that shopping center, as a little girl slipped from his grasp, a doll he shouldn’t have bought from a couple for the amount he did burned, and everything stopped making sense.

It hadn’t been a quick death, but the killing blow had been struck, and he’d gone hollow in the ensuing months.

In the gloom, the Fallen shithole and the battlefield were small below, lit by tiny points of light.

He controlled his descent, falling, but not at a velocity that would hurt him, not if his arms took the landing.

Which wasn’t to say Snag intended to land gently.

He dropped out of the sky, and he struck the ground with an overhead swing of both fists. He narrowly missed making contact, as the boy threw himself back. He thrust a fist forward, and the boy ceased moving back in mid-air, then resumed moving, to the side, instead. The punch grazed him.

The boy created curved silver blades in his hands, and swung. Snag pulled back before they could reach.

“It’s really you,” Snag said.

“Offer stands,” the boy said. “Help. Look at them. We can’t let the Fallen win.”

“I don’t intend to,” Snag growled. He took a step forward, and the boy threw one of the silver blades. It crossed Snag’s mechanical forearm.

His first thought was that it was like March’s power, drawing lines that then exploded at the endpoint. There was no fuse, no sign of anything more to it.

He pointed his other hand at the boy, and fired an emotion grenade.

The explosion sent the boy sprawling, and forced Snag to put the hand with the line in it behind him, to steady himself. He felt the tactile response, the metal scraping metal. There was a line carved out of the arm, deep enough he could feel the air rushing in to graze the back of his hand, where it gripped a handle at the arm’s elbow.

A time-delayed slash?

“We’re resistant to each other’s emotion powers,” the boy said, as he climbed to his feet with a groan.

Snag stood straighter, raising one arm to point it at the boy. He used his damaged arm to spin the forearm, the loadout within switching through the weapons he’d packed into the arm.

The boy tried to sprint to one side. Snag aimed and fired a spray of needles, only to see the boy arrest his movement mid-step, then immediately reverse direction. He created more blades and threw them.

Snag used his own power to dash to one side. He could see movement in his peripheral vision. March’s group.

He switched weapons, charging up a rocket with the battery, and fired it so it would land between himself and the woman with the rabbit mask. The rocket soared high, and as he turned toward the boy, Snag chopped his hand down. The rocket followed the motion, turning in the air and spiking into the ground before detonating on impact.

Purple smoke filled the air around the impact site.

It would buy him time.

The boy had shitty versions of their powers. He hadn’t shown his hand with the tinker power, or with the emotion one.

Snag aimed, and he fired the last of the shuriken, no emotion loaded into them. Wide-area spray. They grazed the boy, even with the change of direction.

He anticipated the silver blades and avoided them with a use of his power.

He paused to catch his breath, watching his opponent, double checking that nobody was about to attack him from the flanks. There was an odd chance he’d be caught by a stray bullet, but it wasn’t worth walking away from this for that. Everyone was embroiled in the conflict.

He was clear. He could make this just about him and the boy.

“For all your big words, you’re weak,” Snag said.

“The only words I’ve spoken in the last six months have been pleas for mercy and cooperation,” the boy said. “Innocents- the innocents fighting back there, they don’t deserve that.”

Innocents.

Snag turned to look.

He switched loadouts, then aimed a hand back at the crowd.

“No!”

The boy charged him. He turned to fire at the boy instead, and felt the silver blade intersect his arm again.

He grabbed the boy around the head with his arm, felt two hands grip his arm, and with a wrench, tore the arm clean off.

He used his own power to keep from falling, while the boy did hit the grass. Shucking off most of the metal below the elbow, he reached down with both hands.

Two ordinary hands gripped the mechanical arm, one silver blade flaring, then dying as it made contact. Snag felt the divide in the metal, though integrity mostly held.

His ordinary hand, reaching for the boy’s throat, was gripped by two smaller metal ones, narrow and spindly.

“Give up,” he growled.

“I can’t,” the boy grunted, straining. “I have things I need to do.”

The spindly metal arms creaked and popped as the metal broke under the downward pressure. Cracks ran down the housing, and Snag was very aware of the flaws in the design.

“I’m going to put the Fallen shit- unh. Behind me. I’m going to build something. If you’d just… Let me!”

Building something.

There was a part of Snag that was horrified by the contrast, the inversion of it all. That part of him disappeared into the noise, the screaming and the shouting, the conversations and the straining to hear the whispers. Everything from the room that seemed like it would drive him mad and drive him further from the peace he’d once found, that never felt like it had truly stopped.

He felt numb, and above all else, he felt so very tired.

He wanted to end the Fallen boy in the same way his old self had wanted to put his head down to a pillow after a long, tiring day.

It would be so easy, and… he’d be out like a light.

Metal creaked and popped.

The metal shattered, and Snag’s hand reached the boy’s throat. He felt the pain in his forearm.

Two blades had punctured his arm, in through the wrist and out the back. His weight coming down made them move, turning the two wounds into one wider one.

He pulled back, and blood flowed from the hole. He tried to staunch it, but his oversized mechanical arm wasn’t designed to reach to something that close to him.

With his hand numb, fingers refusing to work as they should, he tried to undo the catches that attached his oversized arm in place. He dug one finger into the gap, and when he pried, it came free, the fingernail breaking, a trail left on the surface of his arm.

Help. He’d get help. He turned-

He felt the impact of the silver blade. A line marked his body.

Two more lines appeared, as the boy struck him.

“Either let me help… or get no help at all,” the boy said.

Snag twisted around.

“Don’t move too fast.”

Rainwater was pattering down around them. Snag’s hair and beard were wet.

“Let me help. I have the things.”

Snag didn’t move. Water joined blood and trailed down his arm to fingertips, then joined mud.

The first of the lines faded.

“You could let me go,” Snag said. “If you had any mercy in you at all.”

“If I let you go, you’ll come after me again.”

“Yes,” Snag said.

He felt the faint tingle of the lines start to fade. The boy hit him again. Two more. One at the neck.

“No,” the boy said.

Snag took a step forward. With his second step, he brought his one intact arm up, and drove it down in a heavy punch. The boy let himself be hit, only bringing his arms up to shield himself.

The impact, dampened as it was, vibrated through Snag’s body. He felt the line at his neck rupture. The blood from his head and neck flowed down and out through the open wound, which extended from shoulderblade to clavicle. With the blood, he felt his thoughts struggle, and he dropped to the ground.

⊙

He was back in the room.

No dream to precede it. No others.

There was a surrender in the moment, as he stood there, and realized why he was there.

Frustration peaked, and then dissipated.

Anger flowed freely, then found it had nowhere to go and nowhere to settle.

He was alone in the room, and for once, there was none of the chaos. None of the jostling or noise, no babble, no overflowing emotion.

He felt like himself again.

No anger, no numbness. He missed his brother, his store. Was it that the connection had been severed, or that this mad quest had ended? His time as a cape was over. There was no going back.

Light and shadow distorted, becoming vague impressions of people that clarified into the people themselves. The Fallen boy was in his room now, bending down to pick up his chair. The boy looked in Jonathan’s direction.

“You really did it,” Cradle said.

Love Lost appeared at nearly the same time. She approached the dais with a quick stride. She met Jonathan’s eyes, looked down.

Jonathan touched the wounds of his arm, his wet beard. There was no pain as he touched the wound at his neck.

The light in Jonathan’s fifth of the room dimmed, then returned to its normal strength.

“I don’t get it,” the Fallen boy said. “I don’t see why you’d die just to hurt me.”

“I hope that by the time she and I get to you, you will get it,” Cradle said.

“Cradle,” Jonathan said. “The way we’re going about this-”

The lights dimmed as he spoke.

“I can barely hear you, Snag,” Cradle said.

“It’s not worth it,” Jonathan finished. He looked at Love Lost as the lights dimmed, strengthened, then dimmed more. “It’s not worth it.”

“We can’t hear you, Snag,” Cradle said.

The Fallen boy looked at Snag, then looked down. There was blood on his hands and clothing.

Interesting, the things they brought and didn’t bring into this space. Love Lost had her mask and outfit, but not the claws. Cradle was always mundane, always with the scratched glasses.

Objects dropped from above.

Three pieces of glass, striking the pointed peak of crystal at the center of the dais, bouncing off unpredictably.

Two landed in the Fallen boy’s space. One landed in Cradle’s. Love Lost ignored them, didn’t even glance at them. She stared across the dais at him, trying to see him in the growing darkness.

She reached up to her mask, and she undid it, pulling the clasp free.

She spoke, her voice disused and broken by a throat raw from screaming, “Rest, Jonathan.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but he knew it would be useless.

“We’ll get your revenge,” she said.

“No,” Jonathan said. “It makes us into monsters.”

“No,” the Fallen boy said, echoing him. “This… it isn’t worth it.”

She did up the clasp, glaring at the Fallen boy.

“I hope I’m not going to wake up to find my throat slit,” Cradle said.

The lights and shadows distorted. The three others left the room.

Snag felt cold fear seize him. He approached the dais, and found his space empty, devoid of litter, of glass, of anything else.

He bent down, searching the space below the dais. He’d discarded things last night. Was there anything? As he got closer to the dais, he felt both sides of the invisible wall converging.

The other three areas were growing dim, going dark as the barrier faded.

The lights went off, the barrier went down, and he gained something of an understanding of what, not who, was in the fifth space, that had been between his and the Fallen boy’s.

With that knowledge, he slipped into dreams of a different sort, knowing that even if they paused or were broken up by visits to the room, there would never be an end to them.

Pitch – 6.1

Capricorn’s weight tore him out of my grip, helped by the fact that I was lost enough at recent events that I’d almost forgotten I was holding him.

He fell ten or so feet and landed in a wet field. The field was set on a slope and he slid a few feet before his feet found traction. Ahead of us, Love Lost had already slumped to the ground. Nothing to do with the fact that I’d hit her- everyone in Rain’s cluster had dropped.

I could try as hard as I was able and it was insignificant, whether it was holding onto Capricorn, talking to Ashley, or hitting Love Lost. It didn’t feel like I was having an impact on things, and I’d cornered and help catch Mama Mathers, the one in charge.

I liked things when they were simple. I could pick the biggest or most important target, remove them from the equation, and things would be better. It was what I’d done with Mama. It was what I’d done with Valefor, smashing his face in.

It was harder to justify causing that kind of damage to Mama Mathers, when we’d needed her for a trump card against the greater conflict, and when so many long-duration powers kept running when the user was incapacitated or killed.

Not that it had worked. The Speedrunners had her and were escorting her to safety, the hostages were now both hostages and hostiles at the same time, and the fighting was more vicious than it had been before.

“Get Rain,” Capricorn said, below me, barely audible over the shouting and the echo of ceaseless gunfire.

“On it,” I heard Sveta, just as I started to fly.

Her handling it was faster and safer than me taking action. I dropped from the sky to land beside Tristan, crouching to use the slope for some measure of cover.

“In over my head,” Tristan murmured, not hunching over so much as he slid down, resting against the slope with his arm back to prop himself up slightly.

“You mean the scale of this?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. I had some more exposure to the really bad stuff than Capricorn did, but I could sympathize. I’d seen something like this with the Slaughterhouse Nine, but I hadn’t been there for the duration of it. That situation had been fewer individuals, but the individuals had been worse. In both cases, it kind of made things easier.

I’d been there for Leviathan, but that didn’t really translate to a small-scale war.

Sveta returned. A moment later, she dragged Rain to us. I pulled Rain close, and reached beneath the collar of his outfit to touch my fingertips to his throat.

“Alive,” I said.

Something exploded nearby. Damp ground was sent skyward, and joined the rain in pattering down around us, speckling everything.

Sveta turned her face skyward, rain running down face and the curling leaves or tentacles of her mask. She hadn’t collected or put on her wig again, which made her silhouette seem incomplete. In contrast, I hunched over slightly, my hood keeping the rainwater out of my eyes.

“I know I’m kind of the leader,” Capricorn spoke, his voice quiet, “But I can’t think straight like this.”

“I know,” I said. My eyes scanned what I could see of the battlefield, while my back remained to the worst of the fighting. March and her group had backed off, the heroes were holding position at the woods to our left, and the Fallen were gathered across two farmhouses and the surrounding structures and fences, the two big buildings about two hundred feet apart. They were using them for cover, and as a place to drag their wounded.

Prancer’s group was having a harder time, further north. They had some vehicles they’d used to approach this area, but battle damage had rendered the vehicles immobile, and the trucks and cars didn’t offer much when they were trying to protect themselves from both hero and Fallen. Compared to the defensive line that Vista and Narwhal could provide, and the actual structures the Fallen had, the vehicles weren’t much, and the group had to work to huddle in the half-circle of vehicles.

Not that we were in a better situation.

The Valefor-controlled hostages filled the space between it all. The group was shrinking as hostages charged after one group or another and were incapacitated or trapped.

“If we don’t have a plan I want to go to Weld,” Sveta said, quiet. Her expression was grim, her face paler than usual in the gloom, damp with water.

“It’s a plan,” I said. I tried to sound confident. “We go to the heroes. We back them up.”

Sveta nodded.

Capricorn twisted around, looking at the situation behind us and to our right, where the heroes were. Orange lights began to flow across the gap, like fat, lazy fireflies.

Guillotines of ice or hard crystal flew from the heroes’ side into the mass of hostages. The guillotines weaved between the hostages, avoiding them, and slammed into the farmhouse the nearest group of Fallen were using for cover. A moment later, the guillotines disappeared, and the section of wall sagged without breaking.

Narwhal’s forcefields.

The Fallen cape with the horse’s head mask or helmet was facing Narwhal head-on, again. He created shadow duplicates, and they struck out at the forcefields as the things hurtled past or toward them. The effect was minor, changing the courses of the fields slightly, but as each construction tore past them, cleaving shadow duplicates in half, seeming to even hit the source of the duplicates, the guy persisted, and he produced duplicates faster than the fields cut them down.

Other capes in Narwhal’s group were turning focus onto him, and yet he was staying in the fight.

One of the lieutenants or leaders of a sub-family, it seemed.

Capricorn’s wall snapped into place, blocking my view. We hurried along it, using it for cover against gunfire, with Sveta lunging ahead to the far end of the wall with Rain in one of her arms. Capricorn lagged behind some, but he had to travel on foot.

We reached the treeline. Two capes knelt by Rain.

“It all went to shit,” a cape I recognized as Fluke reported.

“I noticed,” I said.

I heard a grunt from Bay, a cape younger than me with a tower shield, and saw him struggling. A shadow duplicate of the horse-head Fallen was perched on his shield, reaching down to grab him by the helmet. Bay’s mask was meant to open, but the jet black form of the heavyset Fallen’s shadow was gripping it, holding it closed, and making his weight fully apparent.

Another cape blasted him, and he dissolved into wisps of shadow.

I moved to a tree I could use for cover, and assessed the situation. I could see a shadow become not-shadow, at the same time the real Fallen became shadow. He could swap places with any of his active shadows, and he was able to make them quickly, with those zig-zagging cords of darkness.

“Sveta,” I said. “We might need you to do the flag trick.”

“Against a human?” she asked. “I’d hurt or kill him.”

“You don’t have to, but-”

Two more duplicates appeared. The cords of energy were dense enough near the frontline that it seemed like he could create duplicates near us at will.

“It’s Seir!” Narwhal called out. “He had a kill order. If you’re willing to kill, this is a time it’s okay!”

Seir. I’d heard something about him some time ago, but not in the context of his powers or position in the Fallen. The Mathers family kidnapped people, and Seir had taken a kidnapping victim for a ‘wife’, to use a loose definition of the term. She was one of the ones who had escaped, and her story had been one of a few things that had marked the turn in the wider public perception regarding the Fallen. After that, and some similar stories, the public and started to see them less as detestable pranksters and more as the horrific cult they were.

And from what little I could remember of her story-

“He deserves to die,” Rain said.

“Okay,” Sveta said. Quieter, she said, “I don’t think I can bring myself to kill again. I’m sorry.”

Bay was being harassed again. Narwhal was flanked by two copies, and a cape used a tinker gun to obliterate one while narrowly missing Narwhal, while a forcefield appeared in a position that bisected the other.

Bullets hit trees and pinged off of the forcefields Narwhal had created to give the heroes cover. Each time a forcefield was hit, it briefly became brighter, the edges and lines standing out in bright purples and blues.

“I think the cords are counting as living tissue!” Vista called out, from a point in the group of heroes I couldn’t immediately see.

Behind Seir’s living self, Imp appeared. She jabbed out with a taser, and she touched only the shadow that he left behind. It swung a punch, and she ducked, backing away as four of the ten active shadows turned on her, surrounding her.

The Undersiders were here. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Capricorn’s walls sprung up just ahead of where Narwhal’s forcefields were, and she canceled the forcefields.

“Thank you!” Narwhal called out. When she went on the offensive, it was with more fields and projectiles, less intent on Seir himself, and more intent on cutting through the cords that arced up into the air and down into the ground. Seir’s numbers began to decrease.

A localized storm of power came tearing at us from an angle, like a tornado, but less of a cone and more of a sphere, with a bright green tint toward the center. Narwhal had to stop her offensive to layer forcefields between herself and the sphere.

One of Parian’s stuffed animals marched out into the field just beyond the trees, and was immediately swarmed with three Seirs.

“I know I should, but-” Sveta said.

“It’s fine,” I said. After Ashley, I wasn’t about to push Sveta to test a boundary. I hadn’t known Ashley’s boundary had been as tenuous as it was. I had more of an idea with Sveta. I wanted to jump into the fray, but I wasn’t sure what I could do.

Rain groaned, to my right. I turned my attention to him- one cape was helping him to stand.

“Do you know Seir?” I asked.

“He’s an asshole,” Rain said.

“We can’t seem to touch him. He just dodged an attack from behind,” I said.

“What color are his eyes?” Rain asked, too battered and out of it to really stand or focus on the fighting.

“Yellow,” Bay called out.

“He teams up with another cape in the family, they’ll be someone in the background with glowing eyes.”

Narwhal began attacking with a different angle, aiming at one of the farmhouses. Seir’s real self twisted around to look.

Rain filled us in, in a voice that made it obvious he was still hurting from his fight with Snag. “That’s Ahrima. She gives him danger sense and boosted perceptions by giving up hers. She was supposed to be one of Mama’s helpers, she traded and paid for capes who could protect her if she needed it, but Ahrima didn’t work for her. We still kept her around for others. Get him while she’s distracted.”

Narwhal’s focus was on keeping the thinker-augment Fallen on their heels. I looked at the battlefield.

“Vista!” I called out. “Open space to the right! Keep gunfire away!”

“Yep!” I heard.

I took off. I flew low to the ground, my soaking wet costume making me feel heavy enough I might be pulled down into a crash landing, even though it wasn’t that big of a difference.

As I approached, I could hear the gunfire and see the bullets hit mud, with the occasional eruption of dirt appearing off to the side. Where the light hit the rain in the right way, I could see the odd slant of rain, and I knew Vista had my back.

I used the clear route to get as close as I could to Seir before I changed course and flew at him.

Fighting on the ground meant using footing to get the most out of one’ strength. A punch delivered from a stance with bad footing was ineffectual.

Fighting in the air meant using the same techniques one did with a leaping or jumping attack, with whole body movements, use of weight, but it was a constant use. Delivering an effective attack meant using twists and whole-body rotations, downward or forward force, and timing all movements of the body to work with the flight and where the enemy was at.

I was out of practice, but I was reasonably happy with how I delivered my kick.

I was less happy that he looked past the eyehole of that hideous horse mask with glowing yellow irises and he turned to shadow the moment before my kick caught him across the small of the back.

My kick tore through his shadow’s midsection, and the upper half reached out to catch me by the throat with shadow hands. It had no lower body, and it was keeping up the fight.

Ahrima had given him a bit of help at the right moment.

I hadn’t wanted to use the Wretch to hit Seir when Vista couldn’t necessarily protect me. Now? I could use it like this. I let it unfurl, expanding out from me to cover me and extend into my immediate surroundings. Teeth, legs, arms, hands, feet, without much in the way of rhyme or reason.

Fuck you for making me do this, I thought, and I pushed my aura out hard.

The Wretch tore through the shadow and several of the surrounding channels of Seir’s dark energy.

The Wretch and I began to go on the offensive, adding to the pressure on Seir by removing shadow duplicates and cutting off his power before it could extend too far out.

A bullet hit the Wretch, and I felt it disappear.

Seconds passed, where the painful weight of the Wretch was lifted. The danger of the gunfire and powers around me paled in the face of the danger of the feeling. It was deceptively exhilarating to have the Wretch gone, no longer available at a heartbeat’s notice. I knew it was temporary and how temporary it was, but when everything else was so heavy, just that one deceptive moment caught me off guard.

I continued to go after Seir, chasing his real self in a mad, dangerous game of whack-a-mole, where the mole always won and the person with the hammer could be shot at any moment. The Wretch returned, and a well-timed punch from a shadow Seir destroyed it a moment later.

The yellow eyes weren’t there all of the time, or even ten percent of the time, but Seir was evasive, capable of creating doubles and swapping places with them constantly. He didn’t need danger sense to give us a one in twelve chance of hitting the real him.

Others were joining the fight now. A Fallen cape or one of the bikers was approaching, grown tall, his flesh alternating between something that seemed hard, like calcified armor plates, and flesh that seemed too soft and fluid. Another was approaching with arms raised above her head, and she seemed to be the source of pitch black circles that were now dotting the landscape and air around us.

I just needed to tag Seir at the same time the danger-sense cape was distracted. I needed to do it soon, before he had help.

Forcefields flew past me. Narwhal. The forcefields that didn’t hit Seir’s copies arrived between us and the Fallen capes, then stopped on the spot and rotated, forming a wall of crystal to bar their path.

I heard the impact as the big cape hit the crystals, and I saw the colors flare, brighter than they had when the bullets hit them. The portal cape was running around to try to get around the wall, and was stymied when the wall moved with them.

I destroyed two more shadow copies. A projectile I only barely saw destroyed another two with one shot.

We’d reduced it down to three Seirs. I went after one before more duplicates could spring into being, hit it, and reduced it to tufts of shadow.

The big guy battered through Narwhal’s shield. He broke into a run, long limbs stretching and heavy feet pounding against the ground, charging me.

A forcefield hurtled into him, but this forcefield had a passenger. Narwhal rode it, and she leaped off as the big guy caught the slice of crystal. She landed, and her hair was still settling around her when the forcefields sprung into being to her left.

I punched another two Seirs, well aware I was fighting an uphill battle.

They had formed so each forcefield was a foot apart, and the stack of forcefields overlapped with the fluid armor brute, dividing him neatly into roughly eleven slices.

But the distraction had bought Seir time to make more doubles. With yellow eyes glowing, he evaded the moving forcefields and changed just before new forcefields could cut him in half.

Two more Fallen and one biker joined the skirmish, jumping onto the black portals, which served to send them flying into the next black portal. Each portal was a kind of teleportation gimmick, but they littered the area and were letting the Fallen maneuver with ease. I saw their eyes glow like Seir’s did, and their focus was mostly on me.

That focus was partially by design. My aura still blasted everyone nearby, and that drew their attention.

Still… fuck this.

“Narwhal!? Can I leave you!?” I called out.

“Go!”

I flew away from the scene. I looked back, saw Vista, and saw her give me the go-ahead.

Ahrima was my target. I knew her general location, and she was too dangerous as a force multiplier.

I heard a series of gunshots nearby, and changed direction. The first gunshots didn’t hit me, because Vista was altering trajectories, but as I spotted the shooter, I saw them firing recklessly, putting bullets in the air at random. By pure luck, the shooter was able to land one shot and hit the Wretch.

My change of direction made me harder to track. I flew back and down, touched the ground, and flew toward the sound of the gunfire, trying not to move in straight lines. I saw the cover they were hiding behind and flew around it.

Staying low to the ground, I felt the Wretch re-emerge. Limbs and digits dug into the ground, and tore up the earth below me. My aura roared, the dirt flew around me, and I was within the center, cold and angry.

The shooter had been peering over cover, but the sound of the Wretch carving its way through the ground drew their attention. They turned my way just in time for me to get in their face.

I swatted my hand through the air, and the Wretch followed suit. The difference was that my hand hit air, and the Wretch hit the shooter’s gun hand.

The gun was torn from their hand and sent flying into the dark, wet field behind the shooter, and several of their fingers were broken in the process.

I hated guns.

I changed course, flying out toward Ahrima again, rising higher as I did. I could see the rank and file Fallen soldiers, and I could see the Fallen with powers. There was a concentration that suggested they were defending a car.

I flew at the car, and given how my course went from the shooter I’d disarmed to the vehicle, I approached at an angle where they weren’t really expecting trouble. It let me hit the roof of the car with the Wretch, tearing it off, and between the flying pieces of roof and the aura, Fallen were left ducking for cover.

I saw the girl who could only be Ahrima, eyes glowing yellow, her demon mask featuring an eye on the forehead. She was roughly Kenzie’s age.

My hesitation cost me. Fallen rallied, and soldiers opened fire. I spun in the air and spiraled down, and not because I was delivering a heavy hitting attack from the air. An intense pressure caught my arm, and my first thought was that a power had made a black hole open up in my bicep, with the muscle, bone, and skin being sucked into it.

I landed in the mud, the pressure mounting in my arm. I shut off my aura, because I didn’t need to draw attention to myself when I didn’t know for sure what had happened.

My heart beat, and the beat was hard like a hammer hitting concrete, and between that beat and the next, I felt the first hint of pain and realized what had happened.

Just a normal bullet. I retroactively strung the events together in my head. It had been a burst of fire from something that wasn’t a hunting rifle or pistol, three shots, all at once, and Vista hadn’t been able to curve the shots away from me. One shot had hit the Wretch, and one had hit me.

I remained where I was for a moment. While I had the benefit of shock to dampen the pain, I needed to figure out my next step.

I was surrounded by Fallen, I needed to deal with them before Ahrima.

If I was a cop, dealing with people with weapons, it would be okay to shoot first.

These guys had weapons and worse.

My rules weren’t like Sveta’s rules. She never wanted to hurt anyone again. I wanted to only hurt people if I thought it through and if it was right, lawful, and if I wouldn’t regret it.

Fallen were circling the vehicle, approaching me, and I flew at them. My aura helped to slow their reactions as I bowled into them.

The collision hurt the soldiers. My attention was on the masks in the group. I needed to go after the ones with powers.

I saw the first one, and I flew at them, fingers dragging against skin until I touched a strap. I grabbed it, brought out the Wretch, and used the Wretch’s strength to toss them skyward.

Bursts of strength, letting the Wretch start to emerge, but not letting it unfold to its full breadth, reach, and intelligence.

I flew to intercept and brought out the Wretch for a moment, so their legs would hit the Wretch or hit my invincible self as they descended. If I didn’t break their legs or feet outright, I would at least make it so they couldn’t walk for a good little while.

My arm throbbed. Each time I became aware of the pain, it was doubly worse than before.

People backed away and used the car for cover against me, and I threw myself at the car. I pushed it along wet dirt driveway and I pushed it into the group.

Not that effective, but it did make them relinquish their cover, backing up and spreading out. They had guns, but they didn’t fire.

Ahrima was still in the car, which still had its roof torn off. She slumped in the driver’s seat, draped over the wheel. Shooting at me would risk shooting her.

I hadn’t intended that, but I wasn’t about to complain, either.

As a deterrent, it only worked against one select group of people, though. Prancer’s group opened fire on our area, and a bullet hit the hood of the car. Mud sprayed as a bullet hit the ground near the Fallen group, and they took that as an indication to retreat toward the house.

I flew to pursue, and someone in the group used their power while the others ran.

A beam, or a column of energy, transparent. It enveloped me, and my forward movement stopped when I was only a couple of feet from the group. I could fly side to side, and even slip out of the column of energy, but as it centered on me again, I couldn’t fly toward the source.

That black-hole pressure in my arm made it feel like the muscles in my shoulder and forearm were being twisted up and wrenched into the wound. I pressed a hand against the approximate location of the bullet, and blood oozed between the fingers.

I flew straight down, Wretch out, and I hit the ground with all the strength I had. The person shooting the beam lost their footing, found it, and centered the beam on me again.

Even with the Wretch taking the impact, the vibration and the shift in position doubled the pain in my arm. For an instant, I wished I could pass out and be relieved of it.

Other thoughts flickered through my mind, almost in the same way that idle thoughts ran through one’s mind while they drifted off to sleep. These weren’t restful thoughts, though. It was the people writhing on the ground, and the old conservative woman I’d rescued. It was the graffiti in Hollow Point.

I almost collapsed into that sequence of thoughts in a confused, angry haze. I didn’t. As I rallied, I felt my thoughts clarify with the images.

I couldn’t approach while the beam was locked on me, and I could feel other kinds of pressure mounting, like the head-rush from doing a handstand, but concentrated in my shoulder blades, back, buttocks, calves and feet.

I did as I’d done when Amy had pursued me, after the barbecue. I swung, and I let the Wretch hit the ground. Dirt and mud sprayed into the air and sprayed toward the cape with the beam.

The beam kept the stuff from flying into them, but it didn’t stop the clumps and clods from arcing up and over the beam, landing on and around them.

For a moment, they were blinded and left stumbling back by the force of the mud slapping against them.

It was a Fallen woman with a mask that hid most of her eyes and left only the mouth visible. Her costume was molded to the body, erasing lines and features in favor of more smooth rubber expanses of ‘flesh’ like the ones around the eyes. Only a few isolated symbols and words were carved into the rubber ‘flesh’, painted to be red and angry-looking.

I grabbed her by the rubber between her breasts and lifted her up into the air. One-armed, I heaved her around and rammed her into the car’s hood, hard enough to knock the sense out of her.

A demon loomed in my vision. I tensed- and I saw the demon reach down to the beam demon, applying the taser.

Imp. She was the one who had knocked out Ahrima. She leaned back, settling into the car’s passenger seat.

Right.

“We had the same idea,” Imp said. “Go after this one. I was quicker, y’know.”

My arm twisted in pain. I looked back, and I saw that Seir was dealt with, as were his reinforcements.

“Oh, you’re hurt,” she said.

I wasn’t up to talking, so I gave her a curt nod instead.

“Go get yourself looked after. I got her. We got her, since you saved me the trouble of having to find out who had the car keys.”

I winced, in part because of the pain, and in part because it was another thing where it felt like actually changing the course of this greater thing was hard to do.

I’d broken the Fallen ranks, at least. I’d stalled Seir and then played a part in Ahrima being disabled. I’d have to console myself with that.

I gave Imp another curt nod, and flew back in the direction of the others.

Capricorn had been busy, raising walls between the various fighting factions. It was changing the flow of the fight, and for better or for worse, the Fallen were focusing on Prancer’s group because it was the easiest to hurt.

Weld had reunited with the others, and the other Undersiders, March’s group, Narwhal’s squad with Vista included, and my team were all together, hunkered down by the wall. I landed, and I dropped to one knee when it turned out my legs had surprisingly little strength to them.

Sveta and Rain were talking to Narwhal. Sveta glanced at me, shot me a smile, and then returned to the conversation.

I was aware that March and Parian were talking, further away from the wall and the group.

Given where I’d landed, it was really Vista and Foil who noticed and approached me. Foil saw the blood, and dropped to my side, reaching to her belt for basic supplies.

“Thanks,” I managed.

She glanced back at Parian and March, then turned her full focus to my gunshot wound. The wound sucked at my fingers as I pulled them away from the bloody mess.

Vista waved somebody over. The wave got Sveta’s attention, and she hurried to a spot behind me, where she could support me from behind and look over my shoulder.

“Sorry,” I said. “I got reckless.”

“My fault,” Vista said. “I couldn’t get something up in time.”

“I didn’t leave enough of a gap between me and the people with guns. Nothing you could do,” I said.

The hero from Narwhal’s group had a first aid kit.

“That could have hit the artery,” the cape said. “This is something we can patch up, but you’re going to need more attention later.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“You’re leaving?” Rain asked, voice carrying. I followed his line of sight and saw March collecting a bag as her coterie gathered in a group just behind her.

She answered him, “It seems I’m not welcome here. I’m leaving these guys alone, but I’ll be around until this thing is done. We’ll talk.”

“Okay. We’ll talk.”

March saluted, made a sound like she was chuckling under her breath, and ducked beneath a branch as she headed further into the woods.

“Good riddance,” Foil hissed under her breath. In a different, softer tone, she said, “It’s been a long time, Victoria.”

“It has,” I said. I didn’t like how my voice sounded, but I couldn’t devote the focus to sounding more like a proper wounded superhero. “You doing alright these days?”

“Present mess and end of the world aside?”

I smiled when I probably shouldn’t have.

“Yeah. Surprisingly alright,” she said. “You?”

I turned to look at my injured arm.

“Present situation aside?” she asked.

“Others said you were invulnerable,” Bay said.

“Ran into a power dampener earlier,” I said. I turned my head to look over my shoulder at Sveta, who had her hands on my shoulders. “It might have played a role.”

“Probably did,” Sveta said.

I turned to Foil, looking to change the topic, “What’s the story with this March thing?”

“Long story. We’ll talk later, but- not in polite company,” Foil said.

I nodded. The aborted conversations were rough, when I wanted any conversation at all that could take my mind off the pain.

Capricorn, not in my immediate field of view, reported, “Threw up some walls. Prancer’s not having a good day.”

“Stupid to attack like he did,” I said. I watched as Rachel Lindt emerged from the deeper woods, a mutant dog behind her.

Rachel Lindt was not my favorite person, but Vista raised a hand in a wave, and Rachel returned it, her expression dour. I could let this particular sleeping dog lie, if Rachel was willing to do the same.

“There’s more to the attack than it might seem,” Foil said. “The Fallen are growing too fast. Thinkers, Tattletale included, concluded they were about to connect with some other groups and lock up a bigger alliance. They would have been too big to take down.”

“They needed to communicate with the heroes,” I said. My expression twisted as the hole was pulled closed as part of the stitching. They hadn’t even taken the bullet out, as far as I could tell. I was aware that Rachel Lindt was staring me down with abject antipathy, and it bothered me that I was showing pain in front of her.

“They couldn’t communicate with the heroes. The Fallen apparently have allies hidden in the Wardens’ sub-teams,” Sveta said, her voice a whisper. “By the time thinkers rooted them out, others would have made moves. Or at least, that’s what the Undersiders are saying.”

“Yeah,” Foil said. “This is bad, but the alternatives were worse.”

“We didn’t expect it to be this messy,” Parian added, almost apologetic. Foil nodded.

“You did a good job letting us get Seir, Victoria,” Narwhal said. “Thank you.”

I nodded a bit, head bent in a nod, “That was Imp, mostly.”

Weird words to say.

“Maybe in part, but there were a lot of Fallen there that were focused on you, not us,” Narwhal said. In a tone that suggested she wasn’t going to accept any dissent, she repeated the former, “Thank you.”

I nodded my acknowledgement, because saying anything would’ve meant having to acknowledge it when it didn’t feel wholly appropriate. It was Narwhal being a leader and getting everyone in the right frame of thinking.

“Do we want to take the opportunity to walk away from this?” Capricorn asked.

“You want to run?” Bay asked.

“No,” Capricorn retorted, annoyed. “Retreat. We have outside resources, ones I won’t detail, not when we were just talking about potential Fallen assets in the Wardens, and you guys are Wardens. No offense.”

“None taken,” Narwhal said.

“We can go, hold the wider perimeter, figure out what we’re doing.”

A few people talked all at once. I was one of them.

The talking died down.

It was Weld who spoke up, clearly enough to be heard. “This might be our one shot. Dealing with the Fallen means getting close enough to go after the key members. We might not get another chance.”

“They have a lot of power synergies,” I said. I swallowed through the pain that radiated from my arm and shoulder, the swallow caught, and I was without words until I could swallow properly and speak. I tried to sound normal as I explained, “The chaos plays a role, because it means they can’t coordinate one hundred percent. There’s more room to break up synergies and teamwork than there would be if we pulled back and gave them an hour to talk and sort themselves out.”

“I can tell you who the big names are, and who the key lieutenants are,” Rain said. “I know a lot-”

“Rainnnn!”

The woman’s voice echoed through the trees, thin and haunting.

“Cover your ears!” Rain said, taking his own advice. “Don’t look!”

Don’t look.

I covered my ears, but I heard whispers even with all sound blocked out.

Mama Mathers. Awake.

Pitch – 6.2

Narwhal’s group were some of the more experienced heroes around, hand-picked from teams like Foresight, the Shepherds, and Advance Guard. They were veterans with years of experience, many of them ex-Wards who had grown up with their powers. The Undersiders had taken over Brockton Bay’s underworld and had allegedly compromised its overworld, with fingers deep in the pie of government, local business, and the local hero teams.

Now villain and hero sat together, crouching and kneeling on wet grass and in mud, hands over their ears, expressions grim.

We’d backed off a bit, and now we huddled, with Capricorn erecting more defenses.

Rain had moved his hands from his ears, lowering them. Fluke looked at him and then nervously started to lower his hands. Rain motioned for him to put the hands back, and Fluke wasted no time in doing so.

Rain had put his hands up only to show us and convey the urgency of it. Now he could be our ears, and he had his phone out of his pocket, his fingers tapping on the onscreen keyboard.

The whispers I heard were indistinct, but they came with a return of the white snow in my vision, moving in my peripheral vision and creating shapes that weren’t really shapes, like the way faces could seem to stand out from a pile of leaves or the light and shadow in a cloud.

Rain’s head turned, and I followed his gaze to look at Rachel. Her hands were pressed to her ears, and her mouth was open in an ‘o’. I saw her stop, mouth closing, her chest expanding as she drew in another breath. The water from the branches above poured down onto her, and she didn’t seem to care in the slightest. Her shaggy mane of auburn hair was plastered across her face, and aside from rubbing her forearm across the edge of her eye to move the hair so she could peer between the wet locks, she seemed fine with it.

Again, she did the thing with the ‘o’ shape, and I could tell she was putting a good amount of effort into the sound she was making.

When the mutant dogs responded to her howl, I could feel the low sound run through me, and it was clear the others could too. Rain winced in pain, covering his ears again.

Rachel was shouting, but I couldn’t hear her with my hands where they were. The mutant dogs in the woods moved, running off to our right and left. Around the camp.

My arm throbbed, and I wasn’t sure I could keep covering my ears, even when the effort was mild and I was hunched over, bringing my head down to my hand more than the inverse.

I chanced a momentary listen, and I could only hear howling. Mama Mathers was being drowned out.

Rain typed out his message, and held out the phone for Sveta, Capricorn and I. Vista and Foil drew close enough, and so they got a look too.

If you see mama you will start to see things.
If you hear… start to hear things.
Etc for touch/thinker senses
She can see/hear/thinker through these things

I nodded. I’d known and inferred most of that.

Loose color scheme: white is leader/important Mathers

“Valefor and Mama Mathers,” I said.

Rain nodded, then typed.

Bamet mutates with a touch. Permanent physical mental change. Uses stolen features to alter animals and make them smarter. Would be near stables.

“He wears white?” I asked.

Rain nodded.

He typed, and I felt a pang of irritation at the fact that Rain hadn’t shared this earlier. I could understand that he hadn’t been able, but some of this would have been really good to know.

Coronzon pulls himself into portal and builds up strength. Ive never seen but he comes out messy and big. Has cancer/is not active much except in sitting in as elder in council

“This is the leadership again?” I asked. “White?”

Rain nodded again.

He was typing more when a dog came barreling out of the woods, straight for us. Its mouth was open wide, tongue lolling out the corner, and it howled with the howl momentarily interrupted each time its feet slammed into the earth.

Vista’s power increased the space between the dog and us. The dog might as well have been running on a treadmill, but the treadmill was real ground.

I started to move forward, ready to intercept, and I glanced at Rachel to double check. Some of it might have been that she knew her dogs best, and I could use her reaction to know what to do. Another part of it was that I knew she had a violent history.

I’d already made the mistake of letting that go too easily with Ashley.

Rachel, hands over her ears, was approaching. She shouted something to Vista, but Vista couldn’t hear.

I leaned forward, and I used my good arm to pull Vista down. The level of noise the dog was making was unreal, and I could hear shouting and commotion, including Rachel’s cussing. I remained ready to shield the others as the dog lunged forward, faster in running than Vista’s distortion was extending.

The dog broke free of the distortion and closed the distance. I saw the slobber flying, the rain splashing off of its back, and I saw the eyes, recessed in eye sockets framed in spiky bone.

I threw myself to the ground.

The dog leaped over us, and over Capricorn’s wall.

The Fallen were in the woods, closing the distance to us while we couldn’t look or see without risking running into Mama Mathers.

I covered my ears again, and I risked looking.

With my hands over my ears, I could hear my heartbeat, and I could hear the lowest sounds the dogs were making, the impacts when they ran too fast and hit a tree with the broad side of their bodies, and the crashing thumps when they hit one of their targets.

The patter of the rain was gentle and the moisture was cool against my lower face, the light from the overcast sky was mild and softened by the branches overhead. But for the conflict, the monster dogs and the mass of people in costume, it could have been a really nice day for a walk in the rain.

It was an odd thought, I knew, but I was struck by the contrast.

I wondered if Chris experienced a bit of this, his headphones muffling the outside world, as he took stock of it.

Strange, too, to have the monster dogs present, but not to be having to deal with them as a horrific kind of opposition. I didn’t have to try to get between them and civilians. I didn’t have to worry about failing to save a civilian from the dog that had maimed them.

If and when I heard the howling in the distance, I wouldn’t be reminded that the outskirts of my hometown were being stalked by these kinds of monsters, sometimes with innocents getting hurt.

I really didn’t like Rachel, but…

Paradigm shift, I supposed.

Fuck, my arm hurt. Pulling me back to reality. Civilians were still a concern. The first wave looked like Fallen soldiers. Others might come.

I took flight, going from a position low to the ground to the upper reaches of the trees. I took my hands away from my ears, and the only sound I could hear was the incessant howling of the dogs and the faint static sound of rain against leaves.

Dangerous to use my thinker-one power when Mama could be in the area, but my instinct was that she wasn’t. Now that I was thinking about her, the whispering was back. The snow was the same as before.

The power wasn’t really a power, but the benefit of flying. A bird’s eye view, being able to see the battlefield from a semi-decent vantage point, provided I could get up high enough. I could see motion through the trees, but I couldn’t see much else.

No white. Seir had dressed in black – if Rain had continued to talk, would that have been part of it? How set was it? I could imagine the Fallen identifying themselves as closer to the Simurgh sticking to white or silver, while the Leviathan-favoring Crowleys might prefer green.

No green, no black, no white. I wasn’t even sure if it was that hard-set, or if my speculations were off-point, but it helped on a level. It helped validate my assumption that Mama Mathers wouldn’t be part of a headlong rush, and I liked even the idea that my enemies’ costumes might be conveniently color-coded.

Valefor and Mama Mathers were scary, or Valefor had been scary, but they weren’t warriors, and they weren’t generals. Their weakness in this was that they were subtle players and the small-scale war wasn’t subtle.

I descended, aiming for the group where the Fallen were more numerous and the one dog was alone.

One cape, that I could tell. She wore a biker helmet, with fragments of helmets worked into her costume. Her arms looked like melted plastic, swords with the blades curved into hooks on the end. Weld was fond of the design- what the hell had he called them? She was using them to climb the dog, hacking at its face, and missing as it shook and twisted its head away.

There was a limit to what I could do when my arm was hurt to the point my entire body was feeling it. I grabbed her by the helmet with the one hand, and pulled her back into a more upright position, until her stomach was exposed. I drove my knee into her stomach, and felt some resistance. Light armor.

I kept my knee where it was, and flew straight up, twisted around so my bad arm was furthest from her. She pulled back, trying to get into a position to hit me or fight back, and I used my grip on her helmet to jerk her head down, until her ass was higher than her head.

My old mantra, from before. This was the disorientation.

The issue with her weapons was that they had reach, where the more dangerous part of the weapon was the hook, and I was in too close for her to properly use it. Toward the base of the weapon, the melted plastic was sharp in places and jagged, but it wasn’t going to gut me.

Hook swords. That was what Weld had called them, back when we’d been on a team together.

She brought the crude base of the hook-sword against my armor, and it caught on the breastplate. She used the catch to reposition, twisting around.

I could see that her helmet had changed. It had waves and ripples that looked almost like hair, and it had a melted-plastic emblem as part of the visor, appearing where the eyebrows might meet. It was no larger than my palm, and looked like a star with the bottom two legs removed, spikes radiating up.

It was my emblem.

The armor I’d felt at her middle was my breastplate starting to form. It was completely formed now.

Faceless, featureless, biker girl wrestled to get to a more upright position, and she leaned back far enough to catch the hook of her right hand on my breastplate. She reared back, other arm back, and I did a barrel-roll.

The hook came at me as she fell away, a last-ditch effort to catch herself. I brought out my forcefield just long enough to deflect it, and the hook caught on that instead. When I put the Wretch back where it belonged a moment later, she fell.

Biker-girl was eerie, because of the black melted-plastic look, the faceless visor, and the fact I hadn’t heard her make a sound.

I flew after her, faster than she fell, and I was ready to catch her if she needed it. I watched as she used the hook-arms to swipe at the tree branches, trying to find traction. She caught one branch with two hooks, and one slipped free of the thinner edge of the branch. She swung in a quarter-circle before the other hook came free as well.

She made her descent, hooks finding more purchase, until she found a branch thick and sturdy enough to catch her body weight.

She swung forward, backward, and then lifted the hooks free, performing one flip in the air before landing square on two feet, hooks out to the side.

I hit her a second later, literal flying kick to ribs. She bounced off of a tree before collapsing to the ground. I winced at the pain in my arm, as the impact from the vibration traveled through my body to the injury.

I flew to her side and checked her vitals. The plastic was melting into black ooze, breastplate included. I heard and felt her cough and saw her whole-body flinch in reaction.

“Ribs?” I asked, as I put my hand to her bodysuit-covered collarbone and felt the already wheezy vibration of her breath. She nodded, tight. I asked, “Do you have any fight left in you?”

She shook her head.

“You’re biker, right?”

A nod.

“Stay,” I said. She slumped back. I checked my directions and used Capricorn’s wall as a reference point, as the wrestling in the air had turned me around. I looked down at biker girl, “Nice descent, by the way.”

“Thank you,” she said, her voice soft but strangled, before she coughed hard, with more full-body flinches.

“You guys have got to stop fucking working with the Fallen,” I said.

“I-” she started.

Then I heard her try to scream, and I saw her try to move, as if to get away from something, only for both things to fail.

Mama Mathers.

Rain’s refresher- she watched, she heard, and she could pull something like this, to take any of her people out of commission or make them suffer for a perceived failure.

Or to mess with us. Like with the breaker. Also a biker, now that I thought about it. They were expendable in her eyes.

Nothing I could do except deal with Mama Mathers sooner, or pave the way for others to do the same.

I flew to the others, looking for Weld amid the dogs and Fallen, and finding him taking on four unpowered Fallen and one biker. The dogs kept their distance while Weld fought, barking and howling with a volume like cannons firing.

“Go down!” I called out. “Getting beat by Weld is better than somehow winning and the dogs coming after you!”

“Eat cocks, heathen!” a Fallen soldier shouted.

I approached at a walk, keeping the guy between Weld and I. I saw his agitation grow, as he tried to keep Weld in focus while not ignoring me. He couldn’t run out to one side either, with the dogs around.

A face in the corner of my eye made my head turn. Visual snow. The guy ran from Weld and came after me while I was distracted, machete held high.

I hit him with my aura, and I saw his expression change. His attack was delayed, thrown off by the surge of emotion, and I flew up a bit to put a foot on his chest, my hand down and ready to smack the blade with the Wretch out if it looked like he’d cut me.

I used my foot and my flight to push him in Weld’s direction. The Fallen soldier landed on his ass at Weld’s feet, and Weld stepped on one of his calves. I could hear the bone crack.

A young ‘punk’ Fallen in the group surrendered, dropping to his knees, hands up. One Fallen hefted a baseball bat while approaching his surrendering kin, but then backed off as Weld quickly advanced on him.

It hardly mattered. Maybe the bat would have been more merciful. The surrendering Fallen slumped over and fell to the ground, eyes wide, twitching. No screams, only a near-immediate catatonia.

Those who remained looked and saw, and then they turned toward the most vulnerable target they could see- me.

I hit the ground to spray them with dirt and mud, flying back a little, and one of the dogs lunged in, trampling them.

Weld and I remained where we were, checking that nobody was going to get up anytime soon. We relaxed when they didn’t.

Well, insofar as I could relax, seeing the person Mama Mathers had taken out.

“You get Mathered?” I asked.

Weld glanced at me, then tapped his ear. He turned his head to show me.

No ear canal. He’d welded his ears shut. It was one way to do things.

I gestured, and he nodded. We headed back to where the others were at the more fortified wall, a short distance into the woods proper. Another wall was at the wood’s edge- this group had to have climbed it, and beyond it were the two farmhouses that were near. The denser settlement was a few minutes of jogging beyond the closest farmhouse.

We’d have to leave the fallen Fallen where they were.

As I rejoined the others, I could see more signs of fighting. Fallen had flanked this group.

Prancer’s group was struggling, but these capes knew what they were doing. Sveta, Narwhal, Vista, Capricorn- Rain was just about the only cape present who didn’t have a lot of experience in crisis situations.

Parian was at the far end of the clearing with Foil. As she rejoined us, she tossed something at me, levitating it with her telekinesis. I caught it.

Cloth set around beads or something hard, with thread binding it shut. I saw her tap her ear, and I nodded.

The makeshift earplugs fit snugly, and the cords trailed out a bit.

Rachel looked annoyed. She said something, and nobody could hear her. Imp laid a hand on her arm, indicating her ear, and she gave Imp a more annoyed look.

I turned to Rain, and waited as he typed his message into his phone.

Missing dog.

I raised a hand, then did my best to indicate with gestures that I’d look.

If someone or a group of someones was capable of tying up a dog, then there was a chance it was one of the more problematic factors in play.

I used the bird’s eye view, moving carefully at first, then checking with more confidence as I verified that Mama Mathers wasn’t close.

There was movement. Something big. I flew down to where Rachel could see and indicated a direction.

I flew to the dog.

The dog prowled, the low growls it was making deep enough that I could feel the vibrations in the air, even though I couldn’t really hear. It was a gangly thing, as Rachel’s dogs went, and the plates were lighter. I wondered if it had started as a chihuahua. I was pretty sure breed factored in.

I realized it was focused on something, and flew closer. It snapped at me as I got closer, and I flew back and up.

A small movement made the dog jump back. It saw me and jumped back again.

I realized what the movement was- a figure, camouflaged. The camouflage was dying out, and it wasn’t nearly as effective as it had been.

“It’s you,” I said. I pulled out an earplug.

“-get this thing to stop growling at me? You’re supposed to be strong,” Chris said.

“What are you doing this close to the fighting?”

“Get this thing off me! What are you, deaf?”

I flew down between him and the dog, and in facing the dog, I could see Rachel approaching at a jog.

“Can you call him off?” I asked, gesturing.

She whistled, and the dog backed off, going to her side.

“Thank you,” Chris said.

“What are you doing here?”

“Keeping an eye on things, trying to be ready with my next form if we need it,” he said. His features were almost visible as he moved and the camouflage shifted.

I looked over in Rachel’s direction. “Dog spotted him sneaking up on us. He’s friendly.”

“Hi friendly, I’m Imp,” Imp said.

“Ha ha,” Chris said, humorless. He turned his camouflage-cloaked face my way. “Should I transform?”

I considered for a moment, then shook my head. In a softer voice, I said, “The form’s slow, you said.”

“Yeah. I could keep an eye on things, though.”

“We have someone we’re trying very hard to avoid keeping an eye on, out there,” I said. “You should get those headphones of yours on before we go to the others, because we don’t want to hear her either.”

I heard him rustle.

“Besides,” I said. “We might want to move to a phase two kind of approach.”

“I didn’t think you guys made that much progress,” Chris said.

“Speak for yourself,” Imp said. “Please. I have no idea who you are or what you do, so speak, fill us in.”

“Don’t be annoying,” Rachel said.

“You have a really bad gauge of what annoying is, for the record, especially when you bring Yips along all the time now-” Imp said, indicating the gangly dog. “And Yips is your worst dog.”

“I’m trying to make him a better dog, like I’m trying to make you a better human. Don’t be annoying.”

“Fine. You handle this without my help.”

“Fine,” Rachel said. She reached out, then let her hand drop to her side. She looked my way. “You found my dog quickly.”

I nodded.

“Good work.”

“Okay. Thank you,” I said. There wasn’t a follow-up and there wasn’t really anything for me to say or ask her, so I turned to Chris. “We didn’t make much headway, but they have a crapton of capes and the Hollow Point guys seem to have crumbled. I’m thinking phase two, but I haven’t brought it up with anyone else.”

“Phase two?” Rachel asked.

“Contain,” was Chris’ blunt response.

“Okay,” Rachel said.

I wanted to explain further, but my eye and ear were somewhat compromised. Would Mama hear and adapt?

That’d have to do for an explanation. I’d outlined a multi-stage course of action with a list of priorities, and we were already having to skip to the next big phase, without having removed the capes Rain had mentioned. Valefor was out of action, but Mama was in play, Bamet the animal herder was out there, Coronzon the monstrous changer was there, and then there were the Crowley brothers.

As far as I knew, they were the only Fallen left. The Mcveay’s were kaput, the Behemoth-worshipers with the strong religious bent hadn’t survived the apocalypse.

The Crowley brothers weren’t really water manipulators, by and large. They and their immediate family members tended to riff on the duplication theme, often duplicating things that weren’t themselves.

I’d really wanted to knock out at least most of the leadership before moving on to the next phase. Taking out all of the major leaders would have worked too.

“I recognize you,” Rachel said, interrupting my thoughts.

“What?” Imp asked.

She was talking to Chris.

“You know him?” I asked.

“What?” Chris asked. “No she doesn’t.”

“I know of him,” Rachel said.

“No she doesn’t,” Chris said.

“What?” Imp asked, again. “Wait, the changer thing- this kid is the fucked up bird thing we saw and the crawly skull thing we heard about? And the tentacle thing from the video Tats showed us?”

“Video?” Chris asked.

“Is he?” Rachel asked. “Oh, okay.”

“What? How is that okay?” Imp was incredulous. “You can’t just raise a topic like that and say oh okay.”

“Whatever. It’s not important,” Rachel said.

“You have me on video?” Chris asked, sounding as alarmed as I’d ever heard him.

“No big deal,” Rachel said. “Not important.”

“It’s important to me! I don’t like people recording me without my permission. I get enough of that with the one teammate.”

“Fuck me,” I said, under my breath. Louder, I said, “Guys.”

“You know him?”

Rachel shrugged. She laid a hand on her dog’s neck, and the dog jumped. She sounded like she was trying to be soothing as she told Imp, “Forget I said anything. And you’re being annoying again.”

“Guys.”

“Rachel, you know I love you in the most hetero of ways, but telling people to calm down never works and it’s not working here.”

“I told you to stop being annoying, not to calm down.”

“It’s the same thing, with me. I get stressed, this is how I deal. And I get stressed when you say you know him-”

“She doesn’t, by the way,” Chris said. “Needs to be said again.”

“-I have a right to be irritated when you don’t finish the thought.”

“Thought’s finished. I recognize him. Thought started and ended.”

“How? Who? When? Where? When? Who? Explain.”

“Too much hassle now that you’re being annoying,” Rachel said. “I’m fine leaving it be.”

“I can and will do horrible things to you without you knowing,” Imp growled.

“I’m fine leaving it be too,” Chris said.

“Good for you two, but I’m not fine!” Imp retorted.

I pushed out with my aura, getting their attention.

“We have a job,” I said.

“Good,” Rachel said. Imp, meanwhile, only huffed.

We backtracked to rejoin the others. Chris stuck by me, adjusting his clothes so that the garment he wore in monster form cloaked him like a poncho, the folds covering his lower face. He wore the headphones, but he didn’t have the braces on.

“You’re okay?” I asked. “Not seeing things?”

“I’m seeing lots of things. I need distractions.”

“There are others who are comatose right now because she got to them.”

“Emotion powers don’t affect you as much, right?” Chris asked.

“Yeah.”

“Monsters don’t get to me.”

I thought about responding, but we were back where the others had gathered.

Sveta was with Weld, Narwhal had most of her team, Foil was with Parian, and Vista was sticking close to her team with Capricorn sitting next to her. She was saying something in Tristan’s ear, while he held the earplug just slightly out of his ear, ready to put it back in at a moment’s notice.

I needed to say something to her.

Rain was just far enough ahead of the others that I thought he wasn’t part of the greater group. He was with the stragglers in Narwhal’s team, Fluke included, and they were coming back from a brief excursion, carrying some of the injured they’d collected. The biker girl with the broken ribs was one.

“Can you hear?” Rain asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“We grabbed these guys because we need to see if we can shake them free of the effect. I wrote up more on my phone, to catch you up.”

“Snag did a number on you.”

He nodded. “But I want to help. Take my phone. It’s a resource.”

I nodded. I took the phone, then gestured to the others. “Come. I want to discuss this.”

When I approached Narwhal, Vista and Weld, it was with Sveta, Rain and Chris at my back. Capricorn was already hanging out with Vista, so he had to take only a few steps to join us and be part of our group again.

We were missing two members. We’d soon have another backing us, if Narwhal was game.

“I’m thinking phase two,” I said.

“If we can’t crack this army of theirs and knock out their leadership, do you really think we can contain it?” Weld asked.

“I think we have to change venues,” I said. “We leave. We make this a siege.”

“That’s phase two? No,” Rain said. “They still have hostages, and they have the food to drag this out. Hostages.”

“We’re hurting the hostages by being here,” Narwhal said. “The Fallen and their allies are being subjected to mental torture the moment they fail expectations.”

“We can back off, and you can fill us in so we’re armed with knowledge,” I said. “The closer we get to them the more we get caught up in their rhythm, so I want to pull back.”

“You’re sure about this?” Sveta asked.

“I think so,” I said. “I don’t see a clear other way. We’re pinned down, and that’s even with us having heavy hitters. We can’t get close if seeing or hearing one person can destroy us. The big issue is that they’re united in their horribleness, and we’re… all on different pages.”

Rain hissed, “If I can contribute anything at all, let it be me telling you that you can’t let these guys have a chance to regroup.”

“Multiple buildings are damaged, Prancer’s group set fire to a number of them. They’re in disarray,” Narwhal said.

“They revel in disarray,” Rain said. “W- they were the fastest growing settlement to start from scratch. They’re good at kicking ass when they have nothing going for them.”

“I know you’re concerned about the hostages,” I said.

“Victoria,” Capricorn said.

I moved my hand. The same gesture he’d given me, before. Flat, angled so it wasn’t quite a ‘stop’ gesture, not facing the grass and mud beneath us either.

“Fuck,” Capricorn said. “Rain, I get what you’re saying, but you left. You’re out of the loop. We really discussed this and planned this, and we took it to the heroes.”

“Not that it worked out great so far,” Chris said.

“Don’t snark,” Sveta said, quiet.

“We’ve been accommodating of your situation,” I said.

“You’re playing that card?” Rain asked.

“We’ve been accommodating,” I said, again, reinforcing it. “We’re here, and a big part of the reason we’re here is because you wanted this.”

“I wanted to save good people in a bad situation.”

“Accommodate us,” I said. “Please.”

I saw him make a fist.

“Please,” I said.

It took him a moment, but he relented.

“I’ll talk to Advance Guard,” Narwhal said. By her resigned tone, I could tell she didn’t want to pull out.

I nodded.

“We’re with Prancer, you know,” Foil said, behind us.

“I know,” I said, turning around.

“If you go, we’re staying. We’ll do what we can here.”

“We’ll have to dodge March if she’s still around,” Parian said, quiet.

“Yeah,” Foil said. “This isn’t a good day.”

“Be safe,” I said.

“That’s the plan,” Foil said.

Narwhal called out the order. Rachel called out another. Her dogs were guarding the perimeter, and they drew closer. Some capes took up the job of watching for trouble.

I grabbed Rain by the wrist, as we walked away.

With Mama Mathers infecting us, there was a limit to what I could do. As it was, I dragged my finger along his wrist, and I spelled out words. They weren’t very clear words, only ‘ERIN’ and ‘NO-‘. I didn’t get to write the ‘W’, because he pulled his hand away. He stared at me through the lens of his mask.

I heard him sigh.

I made sure the others were secure and Narwhal’s team was ready to go, and then I flew skyward, until I was high enough up to be safe. I made a call.

“Looksee,” I said.

“Oh my gosh, you have to fill me in on everything.”

“Soon,” I said. “Can you do me a favor, though?”

“Yes,” Kenzie said, with no hesitation. No qualifiers, either.

“Tell me how things have gone on your end, first. Distract me.”

Sure enough, I could trust Kenzie to talk nonstop at the slightest provocation, and I could use that in the moment.

I asked because I needed a bit of cover to give me time to type a message that was easily in my top three messages I never thought I’d write, while not looking at the screen.

Shh. Find Tattle. Coordinate with us & undersiders.

I heard Kenzie’s voice pause as the text reached her. She kept talking, but I heard the renewed excitement in her voice. What kid didn’t love a secret mission?

Pitch – 6.3

No plan survived contact with the enemy, but I hoped it would at least be recognizable in the aftermath.

Phase two. Contain and besiege.

We staggered our retreat, with Capricorn walling off the path behind us before the group moved again. The Fallen sent some people our way, but I had the impression the people were scouts, figuring out where we were and then getting scared off by the razor-forcefields and antisonic booms.

Rain stuck with Narwhal’s group, and even contributed some of the suppressive fire. As I flew around the treetops to keep an eye on things from above, I saw the occasional tree topple, as Rain’s power and something else hit a tree around the same time.

Trees falling was good. It helped to cover our retreat in the same way Capricorn’s walls did.

He kept giving me looks. I couldn’t read his expression while his mask was on, but I could make assumptions. He hadn’t liked leaving, or even pretending to leave, and I knew he wanted to help Erin.

Mama Mathers was powerful. It wasn’t that she had the clout some other top tier capes did, but her existence created a blind spot where we couldn’t keep tabs on the Fallen’s side.

Another wall snapped into existence. Fluke gave the call to move on, and the group ventured further into the woods, away from the area where the Fallen camp was nestled. Narwhal’s offensive team followed behind the retreat, with Fluke staying back to report to her as she caught up with him. Weld was hurrying forward to stay near the front of the group, taking on a semi-leadership role.

With each phase in our retreat, Capricorn’s walls went up faster and bigger. Vista was sticking by him, and from what little I could see as I used my advantage of mobility to check on everything, they were getting along great.

Yeah. I needed to have a chat with her.

Sveta was sticking with Weld, even though they had different focuses in the moment. Weld was directing people and making sure the coast was clear, while Sveta had Weld’s phone in hand, a brick of a thing with push buttons that she needed two hands to hold. He would have dialed for her, or answered for her while Looksee called. Our kid tinker was on the other end.

My phone was in my pocket, the cord of my earphones running up beneath my armor and hair to my ear, where it was covered. I was looped into the conversation.

With the rain pattering down around us, cool but not cold, my setup meant I could keep my hands and face dry, without risking that my phone might get wet.

“I had my moment of heroism, I even caught some bad guys,” Looksee said. “It’s probably kind of lame compared to what you guys are doing, but it’s my first win!”

“Your first win,” Sveta said.

“Mine and mine alone, yes! I was keeping an eye on everything around the camp and the moment things started, a bunch of people in the town got in cars and raced off in your direction. I told my friends here and they told Narwhal and her group, but nobody was in a good spot. So I programmed like lightning, and repurposed the projector box.”

“Not too many details,” I jumped in, wincing at the offhand mention of the trap. “We don’t know who’s listening in.”

“Sorry. But I put up projections of police officers and vans and some heroes.”

“What I’m hearing in this is that you’ve taken the time to capture and keep images of police officers, vans, and some heroes,” Chris said.

He was in on the call too, apparently. I hadn’t known before he spoke up.

“I didn’t keep anyone’s faces or anything, and I changed up the hero costumes,” she defended herself. “I even asked most of them if I could take their picture.”

“Says the girl who could probably make a camera that steals literal souls if she tried. Totally innocent thing to ask, and they have no idea at all.”

“Could not. Souls are for God to handle, numbnuts.”

“Be nice, both of you,” I said. “Tell your story, Looksee.”

Capricorn was jogging along, with Vista at his side. He produced orange sparks, and she distorted the space around them. He shook his head, and the sparks winked out.

It was really, really weird to look at the pair and realize they were about the same age. I’d heard about Vista from Gallant before I ever even met her, and I’d tried my best to take her as a fellow hero first and a kid second, at his suggestion. But she was seventeen, now. Crazy.

“I finished picking out the code and put up my projections just before they came around the corner. They rolled up and stopped because they had a bunch of guns pointed at them. I called the guy Victoria mentioned-”

“Gilpatrick,” I said.

“Yes! I feel bad for forgetting his name. He’s nice. I really like him.”

“You like everyone,” Chris said.

“He’s likable,” I said. “One of my favorite people.”

I heard an audible increase in excitement when Looksee responded, simply from the fact I’d validated her impression. “I see why. They sent a van super quick and took all the people into custody. Fallen, hanging back in the town.”

“They would have been the ones keeping an eye on things,” Sveta said.

“Reinforcements,” Looksee said. “They had guns. The assholes.”

It was Chris who answered that. “We know about the guns. The Fallen and Hollow Point guys have been shooting them all over the place. Victoria got shot.”

“What!?”

“I’m fine. Already patched up,” I said, as I thought, I might need physiotherapy, and there’s a sensation in the center of this mess that makes it feel like the bullet is still in there, but I won’t die.

“I got shot too,” Chris said. “Not that anyone cares.”

“When?” Sveta asked.

“I was Dark Introspection. It didn’t do much of anything, but I still got shot.”

“Don’t talk like that, you guys,” I heard Looksee. “I’m teary eyed even thinking of you guys being seriously hurt.”

Okay, we needed a distraction. “Looksee. I’m thinking of a plan, beyond what we already talked about. You’re a key part of it.”

“What we just talked about, with our reinforcements?”

“Yes,” I said. Our reinforcements. Good to phrase it that way. Tattletale.

“I’m looking into it,” Looksee said.

“Good,” I said. “This is separate. If you’re up for it.”

“Reinforcements?” Sveta asked.

“Rain or I can fill you in after,” I said.

She didn’t respond immediately. Down on the ground, I saw her look up at me, her Brute-and-gauntlet-wearer class phone still held to her ear.

“Okay,” Sveta said.

“Looksee,” I said, hurrying to lay it out now that I’d cleared some of the obstacles and interpersonal issues. “You may have people coming down the road. It’s the easiest way for them to get out if they want to make a run for it.”

“I’ll be ready. With reinforcements, maybe. Depends. They’re not answering.”

“Okay,” I said. “How hard would it be to set something else up? Gilpatrick is wrangling an awful lot of people. What if those people were waiting elsewhere?”

“Elsewhere?” Looksee asked.

“Or… in as many places as you can manage. I’m thinking we put the evacuees in one place, or spread them out. They’re people the Fallen have some reason to care about. We put images of the evacuees in other places, or we fill out the groups. We give them a reason not to shoot the moment they come storming down that dirt road or out of the woods.”

“I’d need to grab images and write some code. I’d have to change the spectrum angle on the- thing. There’s a lot of stuff.”

“Can you?” I asked.

“I can try, but it’s going to be hard, and I’ll be distracted. I might have to hang up so I can focus. Um. Is there anything else I need to do or plan for?”

“No,” I said.

“I’m going to hang up then! Will call back soo-” she announced, hanging up before she’d even finished the sentence.

There was a pause.

“Is the world ending again, or did she really just say that?” Chris asked. “She decided of her own volition to hang up on friends.”

“She’s excited to help,” Sveta said.

She was, I suspected, but I wasn’t sure I’d heard excitement, exactly.

Hard to pin down.

Capricorn was building the next wall within Vista’s distortion. He turned blue, and the wall turned to water. There were shouts as people near the wall had to jump back to avoid getting sloshed. Some couldn’t avoid it and were soaked or partially soaked.

Narwhal raised her voice. I double checked what I could see of the woods, to make sure nobody was coming or passing by our flanks, then dropped from my lookout position.

I hung up my phone as I descended.

“-of you showing off?” Narwhal asked. I’d missed the start of the sentence.

“No,” Capricorn said. He was back to being Tristan, and he was drawing out the wall even as Narwhal grilled him.

“This is a serious mission. Your team posed it as such, and you were there- you saw how high the stakes are.”

“Absolutely,” Capricorn said.

“Yes ma’am,” Vista said.

“What were you doing?” Narwhal asked.

“Trying something,” Capricorn said. “Vista saved me time earlier, I thought we could afford to lose some to try this, because it could save us a lot of time.”

“Capricorn, I get the impression you’re a good cape, the walls are good, you’ve kept a level head. But the people back there- they’re the ones who can’t afford for us to screw up or let the Fallen catch up with us.”

Rain was standing a bit off to the side. He’d been with Narwhal before, and he’d approached, because Capricorn was his friend. He looked at me as Narwhal said the last bit.

Soon, I pledged mentally, without saying it out loud.

“Yes ma’am,” Capricorn said.

“What were you trying to do, powerwise?” I asked.

“Seeing what translates when I change out, if there’s a way to have her help make it bigger, not just move the sparks around faster, and keep it big even after she withdraws her space warping.”

“You were trying other stuff before,” I said.

“Yeah. Flubbed this one, I think something went wrong. The plan was to swap out, swap back a second later, so the wall mostly held… one second.”

He turned blue. Byron.

“Didn’t go according to plan,” I concluded.

“There was a resistance to swapping back,” Byron said. “Had to push in a way I never have.”

“Okay,” I said.

Back to Tristan.

“Scary,” Tristan noted. I was already listening for the sound difference between the pair of them, so I wasn’t relying on sight alone, and I didn’t miss that he’d said the word in a voice that didn’t sound like either of them. Or maybe it was the voice that fell in the venn-diagram overlap of how they were the same, in the middle of their case-seventy situation.

Narwhal gave me a long look. As if I was some kind of judge or voice for the weirdness of the team.

“It’s a tricky power,” I tried answering the look. “If they did figure out a way to save time and let them put up taller, thicker walls, I think you and I would be complimenting them on their ingenuity. This didn’t cost us much.”

Narwhal looked over in the direction of the biker and Fallen we’d collected. Afflicted by Mama, they were dealing with the worst she could deal with.

“We’re backing off anyway, and they aren’t pressing hard. We’ll figure out another angle,” I added, sounding as confident as I could. It felt strange to try to convince someone of Narwhal’s stature. “Maybe figure out how to help them.”

“We can try some things once we get far enough out, and that’s why I’m mindful of wasted time,” Narwhal said. “I miss having thinkers, but we couldn’t conscience bringing them with us, with the risk. They could crack this and help those people. It’s frustrating.”

“It is,” I said. I glanced at Rain.

And there’s Tattletale, ignoring Kenzie’s calls, doing something out there, I thought. I don’t know if she could crack this, but she doesn’t seem too interested in trying.

Narwhal turned to the Capricorn-Vista pair.

“Right now we need steady and reliable, with no surprises. Please,” Narwhal said, with emphasis on the please. “And no more small talk. Let’s stay focused on the mission. I overheard when I caught up to you two. We should save the… complex inter-cape interactions for later.”

Oh, so she’d noticed too.

“Got it, ma’am,” Capricorn said.

Vista didn’t voice her response, and from the way she held herself, I wondered if it was because she didn’t feel comfortable speaking in the moment. She only nodded.

“Vista,” Narwhal said. “Can you cover our flank?”

“Narwhal, ma’am,” Capricorn said. “She does help me put them up faster and better. I’d like her to keep helping. You don’t need to separate us. We’ll stick to what we know works, and we work well together.”

“Vista,” Narwhal spoke in a lower voice, not taking her eyes off of Capricorn. “From what I know of your power, you don’t need to be close to make it work.”

“No ma’am, but I have to put it between the trees and it helps if I’m not too far away, so I can see instead of only feeling.”

“I’ve been aligning the walls to work with her on that,” Capricorn said.

“No small talk,” Narwhal said. “You can stand further back and keep an eye on more of our flank while you work, Vista.”

“Yes ma’am,” Vista said.

Fluke grabbed Narwhal’s attention, and she reached up and over for a forcefield that appeared over her hand, gliding over to him.

“That sucked,” Capricorn said. He was working on the wall again. “I generally pride myself on being a kickass, professional cape, and I just got told off by someone global in stature.”

“I’m on the exact same page as you, Cap,” Vista said. “Except I was a Ward, not a shill, and that’s my actual boss.”

Capricorn didn’t give a visible reaction to being called a shill. Something they’d talked about earlier? A joke?

“I think she’s nervous,” I said. “This whole thing is worse than we thought it would be, and we thought it would be awful.”

“She’s very nervous,” Vista said. “We’re all nervous. So much going on at the borders between worlds and we find out there’s something this rotten this close to home? Things are supposed to be getting better and these guys seem really fucking committed to taking things in the other direction.”

“She’s looking,” Capricorn said, as he turned his head toward his wall. “And we’re still talking.”

“Vista, can we talk?” I asked.

She followed me off to the side.

“I’m going to be cringing about this for the next five years,” Vista said. “I goofed and got distracted, and everything went splat in front of my team leader, my team, my old team leader, you, Capricorn… and I think my boss knew why.”

I had been able to tell what was going on when I was a hundred feet in the air.

“First off,” I started.

“Yes?”

“The bad moments? Never as bad as they are in your own head. You couldn’t predict that. Take it from the bystander and friend, don’t cringe for five years.”

She didn’t respond immediately, but then she nodded, sighing as she did it, like she was letting something free.

“Okay?”

“Okay. What’s second off?”

“Second… do you want it blunt or do you want it gentle?”

“Blunt,” Vista said. “I’m a fighter. I can take it.”

“You have a problem,” I told her, quiet. “You have a thing for unattainable guys in heavy armor.”

I saw her react, like she’d been punched in the gut, before she steeled herself. I could even work out the thought process, as she noted that others were in a position to see us and her. She couldn’t react too visibly.

“Dead son of a cunt, I might actually,” she said, under her breath. “Unattainable why?”

“Can’t say. He’ll tell you soon, I think. He thinks you’re cool.”

“They always do,” she said. “When things are calmer, you need to help me with this.”

“I can try, but before we talk about that-”

“We should talk about it another day.”

“Okay. But on this, just to clear things up in a way I can explain, he has a twin brother. The one in blue-”

“Oh. That’s what that was.”

“It’s not a secret, but it’s not something we tell the bad guys either.”

“Got it.”

“I won’t say go for it, because… messy.”

“We’re all messy.”

“Messy… in a way beyond the cape usual. I don’t think they can date, as it is. And a very different personality. Brace yourself for that.”

“Okay.”

“I think he could use a friend, but again, being blunt-”

I stopped as my phone rang, the earphone still in my ear, cord hidden by hair and armor. I held up a finger for Vista.

“Yes?” I asked.

“It’s Looksee. So I’ve got a thing.”

“Talk,” Sveta said, on the other line.

“I’m getting footage of the Fallen evacuees, two cameras out there, one up close to get the people and one pulled back to track light sources and get another angle. My pulled-back is freaking out.”

“Freaking how?” Sveta asked.

“Literal ghost in the machine freaking?” I asked.

“Yes! Yes, exactly. I’ve never heard that term before but it fits exactly.”

“How has a tinker never heard-” Chris started.

“Don’t look at it, don’t dig into the code,” I talked over him.

“Wasn’t.”

“It’s Mama Mathers,” I said, loud enough for others to hear. “With Gilpatrick’s patrol squad.”

“She was approaching, not with them yet, I think,” Looksee said.

“Looksee, call Gilpatrick!” I warned. “I’m on my way.”

“I’m coming,” Sveta said.

I thought of the secret message to Kenzie. The plan. I’d pledged something to Rain, too. “Has Mama affected you at all?”

“Barely. Ears.”

“Rain, how hurt are you?”

I moved the hand of my uninjured arm at my side, where only he was really in a position to see. A slash, side to side.

“Really hurt. Snag did a number on me,” he said.

With luck, he was lying, and he got my intent. We needed him as the one person who Mama couldn’t control, operating in a place she couldn’t see- away from those she’d infected.

“Situate yourself, cover us to our south,” I said. Again, I made the slash. “Be ready to join whoever, but stay put. Sveta, escort him, then come to us?”

“Okay,” Sveta said, looking at Rain. “Can do.”

“Rain? Fill her in on anything you can on the way.”

“Understood,” Rain said, with a slight emphasis. Rain jogged northward.

“C and I will follow, or we’ll hold down the fort. I’ll call when we can confirm,” Capricorn said.

“I’m pretty mama’ed up,” Chris said. “I’m dealing but it’s distracting.”

“Distracting?” Capricorn asked. He sounded slightly incredulous.

“Seeing the surface of everything peeling away to show the shrieking flesh beneath distracts me. Sue me.”

Capricorn turned his head. “Narwhal’s fighting. I think the Fallen coordinated things so they’d hit all sides at once.”

“She can do that,” I said. “Seeing what she sees.”

“You realize you’re going alone? Until Sveta catches up with you.”

“I realize,” I said, raising myself up off the ground a bit.

I flew, zig-zagging to avoid the worst of the branches, ducking my head and letting smaller ones graze my hood.

I had a view of the broader landscape, and I could see where the roads formed an almost hammer-and-sickle image, the half-circle of road with forest cupped in it, and the line stabbing through the southeast or east, leading to the Fallen camp. Gilpatrick’s group was to the northeast.

The wind blew at my hair and pulled my hood back as I flew. Something I’d need to fix. My arm throbbed with renewed pain, not because I’d moved it, but because I’d changed the angle of my body and that changed how the blood flowed through me.

“Are you with us, Looksee?” I asked.

“I am. I called Gilpatrick, told him. You sound windy.”

I sounded windy because I was flying. Looksee, though- she sounded quiet, and not nearly as talkative as before.

“Are you okay? No effect through your tinkering?”

“No effect,” she said.

I was especially aware of the fact that she hadn’t verified she was okay, and she didn’t sound okay.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Cut the others out of the call if you need to.”

“Already did. Victoria- Damsel is with Gilpatrick. She’s sitting in the back of a van.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“What did I miss? Don’t leave me out.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I haven’t talked with the others about it, they saw, but I don’t think Rain knows yet. We’re digesting.”

“Digesting what?”

“She snapped, Looksee. Not quite like we’ve seen before. I think- she went there because she needed a time out. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Okay,” she said.

I could see Gilpatrick’s trucks. I could imagine where we’d last seen Mama, and where she might have gone. I averted my eyes from the part of the forest where Mama might be.

“Did someone die?” Looksee asked.

“Someone died,” I said.

“She looks like someone died,” she said.

“I’m at Gilpatrick,” I said. “I’ve got to focus. Step back. Get away, phone her, or-”

“I want to help.”

“Then work on projections, or try again with our ‘reinforcements’. Throw yourself into this if the distraction helps. Just don’t look at Mama on camera, don’t dig into code she’s affected, and listen to the little voice inside you if it has doubts about doing something.”

“I’ve got your back,” she said.

Below me, a few people fired into the trees. There was no returning salvo.

I dropped out of the sky, landing more softly than I usually did, on account of my arm.

No Mama. The Fallen were remaining in the trees.

“Victoria,” Gilpatrick said. “Thank you for the warning.”

“No trouble?”

“We had a sudden influx of evacuees. No guns, no problems. We cut it off, told them to stay back.”

“And?”

“And if Looksee is right, I think your problem cape thought she’d conceal herself among hostages and catch us by surprise.”

“If you hear or see her, she can affect you,” I said.

“Great,” Gilpatrick said. “Master-stranger! Noise protection, eyes down! Yellow for open fire, you better remember the rest!”

People scrambled to listen.

“Hey!” came a male voice from the woods.

“How fast does it take effect?” Gilpatrick asked.

“Fast, but limited exposure isn’t too bad. Hallucinations, auditory and visual.”

“I risk exposure, to know what’s going on?”

I nodded once. “I don’t see a better way. Unless you want me to deal with it alone.”

“No.”

Gilpatrick looked like an entirely different man, with the tension in his face and neck. He’d ceased being the tough-but-fair teacher and had become the soldier who had fought real-as-shit monsters.

He held his gun in one hand and a small remote in the other. The active squad members who weren’t managing the Fallen that had already evacuated were standing with ear protection on, caps pulled down with brim blocking some of their fields of view, their heads bent so they stared at the ground a few feet in front of them, instead of looking forward.

Some of them looked pretty fucking scared.

In the background, I saw Ashley emerge from the back of one of the trucks parked on the road. Not repainted schoolbuses, but a heavy metal van that might have transported money once. She walked around to the side and leaned against it, one hand over the wound on her arm.

I nodded once. She nodded back.

Well, some sort of backup, in the event of a dire situation.

And the guy in the woods was still making noise. “Hey!”

“What!?” Gilpatrick called out.

“Don’t shoot!” the guy said. “I’m unarmed, she wants to talk. I’m talking for her.”

Gilpatrick looked at me. I wasn’t sure what response to give. I knew this might be safe in the technical sense, with emphasis on might. This guy could have powers and he could have powers from the same branch of the family, but odds were that he was unpowered and unarmed as he said.

“She might want to talk, but she’s going to use the chance to threaten to do something horrible to hostages,” I said. “And she’ll do those horrible things.”

“Better to open dialogue,” Gilpatrick said.

I nodded.

“You and you alone, come out!” Gilpatrick called out.

The Fallen was a skinny shirtless guy with a beard, tattoos up his neck and tattoos on the whites of his eyeballs. He stood at the edge of the woods. We stood on the road, a ditch with tall grass just in front of us, a hundred feet of uneven ground with rocks and weeds spanning the space between the ditch and the guy. Gilpatrick’s group had made a makeshift bridge with two stretchers side by side, for the evacuees to cross the ditch.

The bearded man paused. “She says her son needs medical attention.”

“We can negotiate,” I said.

“She says you need to think about the long term. You might not like her, but you want her in power.”

“I somehow doubt that,” I said.

“The Crowleys can’t and won’t accept peace. The guns were theirs. She only wants to be left alone with her congregation,” the man said. “They are attacking Advance Guard right this moment. If you stop her and you don’t stop them or wipe us out completely, they will gather up the remaining Fallen and go to war.”

“The hallucinations stop now, and they stay stopped,” I said. “We’ll take Valefor to a hospital.”

“She says he’s your leverage then. To keep the hallucinations gone.”

“Yeah,” I said. I glanced at Gilpatrick, and he nodded once.

“She says she expected to see Rain here.”

“Let’s stay focused on one topic at a time,” I said. “You want Valefor to get help.”

“Same topic, she says. We were talking about leverage.”

Erin stepped out of the woods. She moved slowly, and she stopped, standing just behind and to the right of the man with the beard. Her expression was drawn. She met my eyes, and I saw the recognition.

I saw her look at Ashley.

“Give us Rain, and we’ll give you her,” the man said. “Tell Rain, and he’ll agree to it.”

The trading of hostages, less valuable for the more valuable, maybe.

Rain had powers, so he counted as valuable, and he was immune to her powers, so he was a threat. Hopefully he was a threat who was operating in the background now.

Yeah, I wasn’t about to tell Rain.

The man continued, passing on Mama’s words, “Prancer’s group is done. They’re a non-threat now. They’ll leave with their tails between their legs if we let them, and we’re not ready to let them. Agree to leave us be, and we’ll call back the Crowleys.”

“And you keep your ‘congregation’,” I said.

“Even if you killed the leaders of each family, the congregation would remain,” the bearded man said. There was a feral look in his eyes. “We’re here to stay, unless you’re willing to kill us to the last man, woman, and child. Learn to deal with us. Negotiate. Do you want peace, or do you hate us so much you’d prefer a mindless war?”

“It’s not my place to make deals of that scale,” I said. “I’d have to pass it up to the people at the top.”

“There’s nobody at the top except God,” the bearded man pronounced. I wondered if he was a preacher, with that passion. He was a little less enthused as he went on to say, “No government, no law, no kings or queens. You can decide what happens to Rain and Erin here, you can decide the little things, and we’ll all keep your secret. That will be the shape of our negotiations today.”

“Hi, Erin,” I said.

“Hi.”

“You okay?”

“Not very.”

I nodded.

“Time matters, ‘hero’,” the bearded man said.

“Back off,” I said. “We need to talk a minute.”

“Your loss. The Crowleys are winning. Our offer stands.”

I looked at Gilpatrick, and at the row of his soldiers that were ready to shoot. Erin was among the targets, and there were presumably others in the trees behind. Indiscriminate fire would be disastrous.

I looked back at Ashley, who leaned against the van, almost crushing her forearm in her grip, the grip was so tight.

“You’re right,” Gilpatrick said. “This isn’t our call to make.”

“They aren’t about to wait and let us call up Chevalier and wait for him to finish whatever he’s got scheduled today, and they aren’t going to let us try to track down someone in government who might have the clout to okay this.”

“No,” Gilpatrick said.

I wondered if this was even something we could possibly do. To compromise with a group that was uncompromising and unwilling to change its mind at its core.

“Tick tock,” the bearded man said. Using tactics to make us feel rushed to make a decision. My mom had employed that on me, once, as something illustrative. I’d been too young to appreciate the lesson, at the time. I’d mostly been pissed off.

“There’s no clock,” I said. “Advance Guard can hold their own. They’re good.”

Stupid on a macro scale, but I’d liked how they functioned in a scrap. I could trust that. I wouldn’t get pulled into their tempo.

“They’re outnumbered.”

“They’re good enough that doesn’t bother me,” I said.

“Tick tock,” the man said, again. It irritated, which might have been the point, but it irritated me because it was so stupid and unintuitive.

“Valefor has to be dying, with that wound. If anyone’s feeling the clock, it’s you guys,” I said. “No mother wants their child to die.”

“She says lots of mothers do, but they keep it to themselves,” the bearded man said. “We have time on our side in more than one way. He’s dying slowly, she says. Slowly.”

Slowly. The Speedrunners.

They were operating in the background and every time they intervened, they made this whole situation vastly more difficult.

The old side of myself wanted to kick their asses.

“Tick tock, last chance,” the man said.

Last chance? What was I missing? My eyes scanned the surroundings.

“And it’s done,” the bearded man said. He turned to walk back into the woods. Erin looked bewildered, but he motioned for her to stay.

“Stay put!” Gilpatrick called out.

The bearded man froze in his tracks, his back to us.

“I’m okay with dying, motherfuckers” the bearded man said, but he stayed put. “She’s telling me that one of our powered just got your Rain… and Rain wasn’t where you told him to be. He was coming up on us from behind. Secondhand caught him and now your girl in the armor is cornered. Four against her.”

I drew in a breath.

“Erin here has outlived her usefulness.”

Erin bolted and I flew. Nothing to lose. I flew to where Erin had been, and raised my forcefield. I felt it drop as a bullet hit it, and dropped to the ground.

It was because I was at a weird angle and because my peripheral vision was untouched that I saw it. Two streaks from above, straight down.

I heard the metal crash, and saw circuitry and metal housing scatter.

The gunman behind Erin had lost his rifle and he held his hand in an awkward way as he used the other one to reach down for the rifle. Gilpatrick shot him before he could claim his weapon.

The metal- pieces from Looksee’s camera.

One dropped from the sky to hit the gunman’s hand. The other-

Children and other unarmed individuals emerged from the trees. A wall of bodies. the woman behind them was supported by two Fallen.

The woman was bloody, a scrape down one edge of her forehead and a messy patch of skin and blood toward the top end, hair already matted into it. Blood streamed down her face.

The blood meant I hadn’t immediately recognized it as Mama Mathers. The moment meant I hadn’t even realized the hallucinations had stopped.

Kenzie had dropped one of her flying cameras on her.

And the Fallen – there had been a good number in the woods. Possibly the bulk of Mama Mathers’ faction.

They were charging forth, a wall of hostages goaded to stay in front of them, and they brimmed with all the fury and menace of the legions of hell.

Gilpatrick used the remote to flash. Two red flashes, bright enough that the people looking down at the ground would see the color change. I knew the code from my training with the patrol block.

Get the hell out.

Pitch – 6.4

With the rain we’d had, there was a degree of slipperiness to the dirt and grass. Twenty five, maybe thirty people were coming at us- it was hard to count when the allegiance of some of the hostages was so unclear, and some had guns. All had a loose arrangement of hostages in front of them. Some of the hostages slipped as they ran, and they were trampled by those behind.

Gilpatrick gave me a worried look over his shoulder. He was using the remote- three green flashes. I was left to back up, letting Erin go ahead of me. I crouched by the front tire of one bus. Erin climbed up onto the bar at the side, so her feet wouldn’t be sticking out below the bottom of the painted bus.

The color coding of Fallen came to mind- two were in white, with Mama Mathers being one, held up by two people at the treeline. Another wore white and hung even further back, peering through the woods while wearing a pale leather animal mask.

There were two options there, if I went by what Rain had told me, and both were messy. Animal Master, likely, and the Changer geyser.

One in black- a Fallen that was holding Mama Mathers up. From the way they were handling her, she was still alive. They were trying to take her to safety.

One pointed at me, lifting his gun as he turned to his buddy, who had slipped in mud and fallen a few paces behind. I pulled my head back behind cover.

People opened fire, but they were our people. Gilpatrick stood on the wheel of a bus, and fired over the hood. I peeked at the result with my defenses up- the Fallen who wasn’t in black that was supporting Mama Mathers had created a wall of white-blue material with faces embossed on it. The material cracked as the bullets hit it, and the cracks closed up almost as fast as they appeared.

I’d peeked too long, and one shot me. It pinged off of the Wretch, and I ducked back behind the front of the bus, where the wheel at least partially protected me.

I knew the Mathers were notorious for their involvement in kidnappings and their connections to other families. It was what defined them as a sect of the Fallen. Now I was seeing the long term results of that kind of operation. Rain had already spelled some of it out.

Mama Mathers was a nightmare to deal with, and she’d traded for multiple capes who could protect her. Layers of defenses, and Looksee had slipped past those layers to take her out of action.

Rain dripped off of the front of my hood as I hunched over. My arm was limp at my side, and it hurt all the more because of my position. Even crouching, somehow, made my arm hurt more, because the angle was different, or because the blood flow had changed.

“Captain Gilpatrick!” I heard the voice.

Ashley.

“What is it?” Gilpatrick replied. He had his back to a truck much like I did. Many of his students were crouched in the ditch, the road, another ditch, and a bit of mud and grass between them and the Fallen.

“I want your-”

A series of gunshots from a handful of the oldest patrol block members interrupted her.

“-your permission to fight!” she finished.

He hunched over, back to the wheel rim, reloading. He called back, “I’m not going to do that!”

“It’s not easy for me to ask! I’m trying to respect-”

He looked at me, not her, and interrupted, “You don’t need my permission to fight!”

I didn’t hear the start of her sentence, as someone else on our side fired a gun. A Fallen returned fire and shot the bus.

“-want it,” she said.

“Too bad!” he called out. “You choose, I’ll be a witness and I’ll testify how you handled it, good or bad!”

I looked across the far ditch, furthest from the Fallen, and saw where a stone had been rolled away to make way for the dirt road. It was large enough a tractor or team of horses would have been involved.

They’d be close in a matter of seconds. I put one hand out, pressing it against the stone, and brought out the Wretch. I pulled back, and the Wretch held on. Together, we heaved the stone free from the earth that surrounded it.

“Don’t fuck me,” I whispered to the Wretch. I could hear the fingers and teeth biting into the stone, arms wrapping around it and squeezing until it threatened to break.

Two hundred and fifty, three hundred pounds of rock. The dirt road was constructed so it formed a hump, with vehicles traveling along the raised portion, with rainwater flowing into the ditches on either side, to be reabsorbed or to run off into some larger water source. It was the cover the patrol block people were using, and it was cover I could use, albeit in a different way.

I left the scene, flying low and hauling the rock with me. The Wretch continued to wrestle with it, mindless, carving into it. I worried it would break in half.

Once I was far enough away I couldn’t see the people, I flew over the road, and flew at them from the sides.

Fights were about information first, positioning second, action third. It was why I studied parahumans, and it was why I favored the faux thinker-one power I had in my bird’s eye view, when I could use it without being shot.

Without information, people couldn’t know where they needed to be. If they weren’t in the right place at the right time, they couldn’t act. Positioning was second.

I was fast, silent, and approaching from an unexpected angle. I looked for where the people with guns were, and I released the stone. It hit the ground with no sound but an impact that saw them react. I pushed out with my aura for good measure.

With momentum, it rolled a short distance. It rolled into the group, and four people toppled, a stone that came up to almost hip height hitting their legs with crushing force.

If I was a police officer, I would have been clear to shoot, faced with people that had rifles and handguns. I considered myself clear to demolish anyone who was armed. The Warrior Monk would have been fine with it.

I saw one person who had a gun I could make out, a rifle painted a dark green with a coarse, grippy texture. The Wretch and I relieved him of the burden of having to carry a rifle and having unbroken hands.

I knew I was risking getting shot by the first person with the presence of mind to point a handgun at me in an casual way, instead of drawing the thing and sticking their arm out. Risky too, to fight when I didn’t have the use of my left arm, and a good hit to my arm when I was defenseless could bring me to my knees with the pain.

The aura helped make people stupid, and I could use positioning in another way, moving fluidly and unpredictably as I ducked and darted between people.

I wasn’t about to back off when they were this close to Gilpatrick, potentially Jasper, and others I’d worked with. Even the pissy anti-cape types deserved to come out of this okay.

Handgun? I brought the Wretch out and slapped at arm or weapon. Knife? I did the same. Bat? Easy to hit the weapon and send it back toward the wielder’s face.

A few braver members of their group pressed in, trying to dogpile me, grabbing instead of punching or swinging. Harder to deal with, until I brought the Wretch out a bit longer. I could see them react as it unfolded, like an irregularly shaped bubble around me.

I withdrew the Wretch before it could get a grip on anyone or anything.

One pointed a gun at me, and I flew past the gun to drive my forehead into his face. Instinct, not pre-planning, but I was thinking the Warrior Monk would forgive me on that. My arm hurt, inexplicably, from me delivering a hit with my head, and my forehead hurt. I wasn’t wearing my mask- it still dangled from my waist, the curve allowing it to rest against my thigh.

I didn’t let it show. I watched the others back off, the recent damage and the aura being ample reason. One had four bloody marks swelling on his chest, and I realized I’d been too slow to dismiss the Wretch, or it had been too quick to unfold. She had managed to stab her fingertips into flesh.

Hate. The feeling hit me so suddenly and so unexpectedly that I thought it might have been one of Rain’s cluster-mates. Hate like when I had been in middle school, arguing with a classmate who had spewed out insane, vile rhetoric that would have made them a perfect fit for Empire Eighty-Eight or the Fallen, and he had refused to listen because I was a ‘pretty, privileged white girl’ and that had somehow meant my experiences and opinions weren’t valid, even though he was an okay looking, privileged white boy. I’d hated him and I’d hated that I couldn’t talk or shout sense to him and make him stop or even pause in being such a shitty person.

Hate like I had channeled at my sister, because she had broken something intrinsic in me. Because she had torn open emotional doors I had really wanted to protect and be tender with, so soon after I had lost Dean. She had violated that and staked her claim to what lay beyond those doors, and it was only by twisting devoted, passionate love into devoted, passionate hate that I had briefly been able to retain something of myself and my boundaries. Only briefly.

I hated the Wretch, in that same way. I hated the blood spots I could see where fingers had dug in, the guy now on his knees, fingers at his chest with blood seeping between them. I hated the scratches on Moose’s face.

I hated the ones with broken hands, arms, and legs, the ones who were lying on the ground screaming. I hated that when I’d had the ability to be gentle, I hadn’t been, and now that I wanted to be gentle, I couldn’t.

To top it off, I hated the Fallen.

“Stand the fuck down!” I shouted. “Or I won’t hold back anymore!”

Rain fell all around us. In the ditches by the road, the water made small trickling sounds. I could hear gunfire in the distance, and I could hear the patrol block.

My aura burned dark and intense, and I knew that they wouldn’t be feeling the pause or the odd mid-fight peace of rain and the ongoing violence being more distant.

One of them looked at the hostages, who’d made it to the dirt road and now crouched there. I flew straight for them, pushing past the people in the way with enough force to knock them over.

My thought, my instinct, was that if they had a gun, I wanted to already be there, ready to stop them. They didn’t have a gun, so I went easy. I kicked them across the lower legs, the Wretch momentarily active.

“Stand down and don’t even fucking look at them,” I said, pointing at the people they’d used as human shields. “And don’t fucking think of raising a weapon. I will shatter you, and you can see how well they take care of you here, or you can go to the hospital, get fixed up, and they’ll send you back home.”

I paused. I stared at them, meeting each one’s eye in turn. Roughly half their number were on the ground.

“Do you really think the Fallen are going to look after you when the weather gets colder, food is short, and you can’t be a farmer or a soldier?”

I saw movement. A blur. I moved away, ready to raise the Wretch, and as much as I could raise my defenses as fast as I could put my thoughts together, the attacker was fast and I hadn’t anticipated being blindsided.

The hit was hard, and the only reasons it wasn’t harder were that it hit my armor, at least partially, and I was moving back and away.

I winced, my hip aching. Maybe it was telling, that I’d been driven to get back and away before I’d thought to make myself impervious.

Mama Mathers had kept bodyguards close, but she either had reinforcements from the other family, or this mob had more powered Fallen in it.

It was a Fallen woman. She was younger than me, going by stature and frame. A Leviathan theme to her mask, but with a fin on top and at the sides.

She came at me again, and this time I had the Wretch up. She hit it hard, winced, and turned pitch black, freezing in space.

She got me from behind, a cord encircling my neck, pulling tight. With my breastplate set up the way it was, there was a little flare of spikes, a few inches in front of my chin, pointing slightly outward. The cord or wire caught on that, and I brought my good hand up, gripping the wire.

I pulled to get free, and I met resistance- at the same moment the obsidian black figure in front of me resumed motion. She hit the ground with one foot, and launched herself at me.

I activated the Wretch and tore through cord, catching on something solid enough that the Wretch flickered out.

Metal wire, it seemed. A garotte, no association with my friend and teammate. In the course of moving away from the attacker, I moved closer to the unfrozen woman, and put her off her rhythm. She changed, freezing in place, and the attacker I hadn’t yet seen attacked me from behind, hit me sufficiently hard to make me crash into the frozen woman. The hit was enough that I’d bruise, but the residual impact made my gunshot wound explode with pain.

I twisted around, exerting force against the immobile obsidian statue, and she came to life, stumbling back, just as I saw the attacker behind me freeze.

One attacker, with two bodies. Whatever one wasn’t active was immobile and apparently invincible. Whichever one was active had enhanced speed and the strength that came with hitting things very fast.

The scholar in me wondered for a moment about just why so many Fallen were such massive pains in the ass, with such a solid crop of powers.

Conflict drive? Close associations with other powers? Careful selection and sharing of powers through breeding, insofar as powers were inherited that way?

Wretch out, I punched one woman- hit statue. I pulled the same arm back, elbowing the one behind me- only for her to become statue just in time. The one in front was already moving out of the way of any follow-up attack, the Wretch grazing her, making her stumble a little. She still moved too fast for me to give chase.

She attacked relentlessly, and with a speed sufficient that the Wretch only blocked one in three hits. I could use some basic fighting sense or flying away to protect myself against another one in three, but it still left a gap. One or two hits made me stumble. Another cracked me hard enough across the side of my head that I momentarily couldn’t make sense of what I could see.

I connected one hit, then followed up with a swing, Wretch active, hitting the ground hard enough to send a spray of stones, dirt clumps and mud at her. She went statue and attacked me from behind with her other self, but when I retaliated, the original self had to shake off the residual mud.

I heard Ashley use her power.

She sailed over the heads of Fallen, landing with a bit of a skid. Her hair was wet and slicked back, and her eyes were wide with the extent of their whites showing. No pupils.

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I stated the obvious. “You came.”

“R needs help.”

He did. That he’d run into trouble had been the window Mama Mathers had needed. I would have helped him already, but I could hardly leave my patrol block.

Sveta had been with him, too.

The lizard-demon Fallen came after me. I fended her off, flying a bit away to position myself closer to Ashley.

“Is it alive?” I asked the Fallen. “Your other self.”

The lizard-demon Fallen charged after me again, in lieu of answer. I lashed out, and she became statue. It was like hitting something Clockblocker-affected, from my hometown’s old Wards team. No result, nothing got through.

“I’m giving you one chance to-”

Ashley’s power misfired. She stumbled.

The lizard Fallen went after her. Another cord. Harder to get it around Ashley’s neck, when Ashley was bent double- Ashley brought her injured hand up, and the wire pulled against her forearm, cutting into flesh. Blood welled out.

Power welled out too. The power flared, and the cord broke. The Fallen stumbled back, and became statue as Ashley turned to look at it.

“If you’re a pair and not one cape with a gimmick, you’ll both want to stand down, because my friend hits pretty darn hard.”

“I do,” Ashley said. Long, wet white hair had fallen across her face while she was bent over. It stuck there.

The lizard Fallen cackled, but didn’t respond.

She went after Ashley, instead of me. Two of her at once, but never acting at the same time. One became a statue the moment Ashley looked like she might have her bearings and be able to respond. I flew over, and the Fallen girl moved around behind Ashley, shoving her in my direction, maneuvering to never give either of us a clear shot or angle.

She hit Ashley in the midsection, and Ashley reached out, putting a hand on the Fallen’s collarbone to steady herself. She was hit from behind, one hit to the kidney.

She used her power, and it tore through the statue, ripping it apart. Ashley was thrust away by the blast, and she landed not very far from where the lizard Fallen had dropped to the mud and grass, sitting there in shock.

Ashley hadn’t been lying when she’d suggested her power could hurt me.

It had been the final test, in a way. The group of Fallen soldiers were hanging back, the patrol block having emerged, guns held up. One or two in the Fallen still had guns as well, or had picked them up, but they were badly outnumbered.

Had the lizard Fallen won, I wondered if they would have pressed the attack, even faced with equal numbers and more guns. I wondered if they would have had a choice.

Choice. I looked for the instigator and leader. Mama Mathers had disappeared into the trees, along with the Fallen in black, the one who had conjured the blue-white wall of faces, and the beast-masked Fallen in white.

Gilpatrick’s group began to disarm, arrest and manage the Fallen soldiers, some tending to the wounded, others hanging back and keeping their guns raised.

“R is in trouble?”

“I overheard,” Erin said. “One of Bamet’s animals came to relay information. R was attacked.”

“Rain,” another of the human body shields said.

“I was leaving the full name out, dad.”

“Don’t betray your own, Erin,” the man said.

“Our so-called own betrayed us!” Erin shouted. “Fuck! They never cared. We were only tools to use. Shields to get in the way so they could get up close.”

“No,” I heard his response. I cut him off before he said anything else. There were other priorities. “Attacked where? How?”

“I- I don’t know. I’m sorry,” she said. And in that instant, she didn’t sound like the confident girl I’d talked to. She was shaken. “It- bad. Bamet’s animals, they barely speak English. But his situation is bad.”

I frowned.

“If you find them, don’t kill the animals?” Erin asked.

“The animals?”

“There’s something human in there.”

I frowned. I had to go.

“You good?” I asked Gilpatrick.

“Yes,” he said. “An awful lot of wounded, but- we’ll manage.”

I looked at Ashley.

“I’ll stay,” she said. “Call if you need me, but-”

But she’d turned herself in?

Did she cut herself off because she couldn’t bring herself to say it?

“I’ll protect these people if they need it,” she said, instead.

So many people didn’t look like the ones I’d known. Erin and Ashley both lacked the confidence they should have had. Gilpatrick looked more like the grizzled soldier than the teacher. Even the Fallen- well, they’d been threats and now the most aggressive and armed of them were on the ground, defenseless, making noises of pain.

I didn’t look like the me I wanted to be, probably. So soon after donning my new, pretty costume.

This other me took to the air, flying against the falling rain, so that the gentle patter became something sharp in the brief ascent.

Rain, Mama Mathers, and the remaining leadership figures of the Crowley and Mathers branches.

Roughly in that order, anyway, as far as priorities went.

I could see Capricorn’s work, and he had raised walls in a way that left the Fallen with far less in the way of places to go. Some reached as high as the treetops, most others were shorter, speedbumps and momentary obstacles, such that going around was probably easier than finding a way through or over.

I reached for my phone and dialed.

“-n’t find him,” Capricorn’s voice came through. There was a whoosh of air on his side of the conversation, stopping as he finished talking.

“I can’t do much,” Looksee said. “Victoria’s on the line now. She was fighting. Are you okay, Victoria?”

“Fallen to the Northeast were arrested. One powered among them. Erin’s okay.”

“Rain will be so happy to hear that if we can actually find him,” Capricorn said. Still with the whoosh.

“Mama Mathers got away. But she’s out of action,” I said.

“She’s alive?” Looksee asked.

“Last I saw,” I said.

“Okay,” Looksee said. She sounded funny. “Damsel?”

“She’s staying behind. Protecting them, she said. But she wants to stay in custody, I think. I think it’s a good idea.”

“Okay,” Looksee said, barely audible.

“It makes sense,” Capricorn said. I heard Vista’s voice, and still with the whoosh.

“Are you flying?” I asked.

“We caught a ride,” Capricorn said. “Traveling Narwhal style. We’ll be coming around your way soon.”

Narwhal style?

“Okay,” I said. “Sveta, Chris?”

“Gone, same as Rain,” Looksee said. “And changing. He thinks Keen Vigilance might be able to hear something.”

“Traveling up the east perimeter,” Capricorn said. “Vista says she would appreciate a lift down to solid ground. She’s not super confident of her ability to land.”

“Land? You’re actually on a Narwhal forcefield?”

“Doing loops. They travel in straight lines, but Vista can bend straight.”

Okay. I wasn’t just catching my two friends, then. I was doing it while they were surfing on a flying, crystalline cleaver.

Fuck me.

“I’ll use my power. Tell me when you start to feel it,” I said, my attention all over the place, as I looked for any sign of Rain, Sveta, Mama, Capricorn, and Vista.

“Feeling it,” Capricorn said.

I spotted them, and flew to match my trajectory to theirs. “Only one working arm.”

Vista’s power warped space around us, slowing their speed. It took me a second to adjust. I let the thing catch up to me, and rested my foot against it, leaning back and moving with it.

“Catch him, catch me after,” Vista said, her voice briefly doubled on both phone and in person, slightly out of sync.

I caught Capricorn’s hand. I couldn’t use the Wretch, and the strain of my arm carrying him reached across my shoulder to my injured other arm.

“I’m okay if it’s rough,” Capricorn said.

It was rough. He landed hard, clipping a branch on the way down. He didn’t react or seem to mind, letting go and pointing.

Vista had jumped, and she was descending slower, the space between her and the ground extending.

I flew to intercept. I caught her hand in mine. Again, my arm complained.

Not as heavy as Capricorn.

“Thank you,” she said.

I lowered her to the ground. Capricorn put his hand out, catching her by the upper arm and helping with the final couple of feet.

“Mama knew where Rain was. If we track her, we might be able to find him.”

“I can’t help,” Looksee said, through the phone. “Both of my active cameras broke. I’ve got another covering myself and Tattletale, I could send that.”

Vista seemed confused. I motioned for her to come closer, fished in between my armor and my top for my other earphone, rubbed it against the edge of my hood, and offered it to her.

“It would take time to get here,” Capricorn said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Shouldn’t I very worry about it?” Looksee asked. “I should send them now in case they’re needed.”

“Cameras broke?” a voice came through the phone, hissing.

“Yes,” Looksee said. “Don’t get on my case about it, vigilant dumbnuts, I’m not in the mood.”

“Wondering… how?”

“I dropped one on Mama Mathers and I dropped another on someone with a gun.”

“It worked,” I said. “I don’t know how you aimed that without looking through the camera-”

“I didn’t. My cameras were already fritzing out, so I sent them a slice of program, with facial recognition. I centered it over them, accounted for wind, and when things sounded worst I had my cameras stop hovering.”

“You weaponized… cameras?”

“I told you not to get on my case about it,” Looksee said.

“Am not.”

“I didn’t weaponize the cameras, just so you know. I’ve said I’m not good at making my cameras function like weapons.”

“I remember,” Chris’ snakelike voice came through the phone.

“I weaponized the off switch, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Capricorn said. “Send your camera. If Mama Mathers is out-”

“Pretty sure she is,” I said.

“We can use all the help we can get.”

“It’s not like Tattletale is responding,” Looksee said.

“Victoria, can you give us another set of eyes from above?” Capricorn asked.

I nodded, taking back my earphone from Vista.

“I really hope he’s okay,” I heard Capricorn, the tail end of the sentence almost inaudible as I was already flying.

The weather seemed to be easing up. I noticed the precipitation wasn’t as sharp as I flew up into it. Not like it had been minutes ago.

Capricorn’s walls to the southern end of the camp had served to funnel the Fallen in other directions. The road seemed untouched, the settlement was almost half and half for buildings that had been abandoned and leveled, and the fighting seemed concentrated at the north end, Crowleys and Advance Guard, and where I’d been helping the patrol block to the northeast.

The northeast was a starting point. I imagined they would want to go to where there was help. That meant they’d either head for the center, through open space where I would have to be able to see them, or they’d cut north. The latter would let them move through the trees.

I reported it to the others.

I spotted the first of the animals. A man with a hunched back and the head of a pig, his body heavy with muscle that didn’t match an ordinary person’s. There was a horse, too, but its normal long face had been replaced with a human’s, folding around at the sides in a way that distorted the mouth and made the eyes bug out. Mama Mathers was draped over the back of the horse.

My pulse pounded as I approached. I turned sideways to appear less threatening and held my good hand up for the animals, trying to get them to ease up. My only experience with horses had been at Dean’s family’s place.

The pigman made noises, and I winced. It sounds like a stuck pig. An animal in pain.

I’d wondered how the barnyard cape had blended in with the Fallen aesthetic. I wasn’t wondering anymore.

“Is she alive?” I asked.

“Uuuuuhrh,” the horse moaned, in a halfway sound between a moan and a whinny.

I held my hands up, easing them as I drew nearer. I hesitated, then put a hand at her neck. I felt for a pulse, felt one, and then pried open one of her eyes. I watched it dilate in the light.

I didn’t consider the administration of first aid or medical know-how a strength of mine. I’d taken a class in first aid, and I’d learned it, a long time ago, and I’d refreshed myself when I had joined the patrol, but…

Suffice to say, that base had been covered, for most of my hero career.

The animals reacted, heads turning. I glanced back. the others had arrived. Capricorn, Vista, and Chris as a broad mountain of hair and layered plates with massive ears and huge eyes, a foot taller than Capricorn.

“Mierda,” Capricorn said.

“Erin said there’s something human in there,” I said, staring at the animals.

Chris started to approach. The animals shied back.

He sighed.

“We’ll help if we can,” I told the animals. “But can you show us the way to the others?”

“You don’t want to do that,” yet another strange voice came through the phone.

“I’ve been trying to get in touch, Tattletale,” Looksee said. “You’ve been ignoring my calls.”

“The fact you’re saying we don’t want to do this is a pretty good motivator to do this.”

“Don’t be a child, Victoria. You’ve got the Mathers leader in your hands. Good one. Now leave. Or go help Advance Guard, because they really need it. Your friend Rain is done for. He was always going to be done for.”

“Even if I was willing to accept that-”

“Which we aren’t,” Looksee interrupted.

“Our friend was with him. Sveta.”

“Garotte,” Tattletale said.

“Sveta,” I said, more firmly.

Capricorn and Vista were lowering Mama Mathers to the ground. The ‘animals’ seemed more relieved than anything to have that taken care of. The existence of human mannerisms and expressions on animals was disconcerting.

Capricorn began creating a cage for her, to encase her body.

He apparently deemed it better to contain her and risk that she wouldn’t be okay than to rush to give her medical care and risk other lives. We’d already tried the more merciful route.

“Okay,” Tattletale said. “I don’t think it matters at this stage. You don’t need Bamet’s beasts. I’ll tell you where you need to go, if you promise not to stir up shit with Cradle and his friend.”

I glanced at Capricorn, then back at Chris.

“Promise,” I said.

“That’s a lie. Whatever. I’d remind you this is me being nice again, but you don’t care. There’s a barn southwest of you. You overshot when you approached.”

I looked. A barn, in the middle of pen fields, with some stone-and-mortar fences separating fields from road, so no car would drive off the road and into the field without meeting an obstacle first.

The rain was only a trickle now.

Vista warped the space, to bring everyone closer. It only served to make my trip there even faster, as I flew.

The first thing I noticed was the blood and the bodies. Animals had been slaughtered, and their parts made for a macabre, eerie picture, with human and animal mixed and blended. The two Fallen bodyguards were dead, and there were a few others, besides.

The second thing I noticed was Cradle in the rafters. His robot was large enough that its hands could touch multiple walls, grip the rafters and touch the ground at the same time. Cradle was perched on the back of one hand, crouching as he stared down. Another parahuman, dressed in black with a red handprint on his mask, was gripping one finger, dangling. He had a cleaver in his hand.

And in the corner, almost impossible to see, Sveta was huddled. Her body was damaged, and tendrils snaked out, gripping herself, none long enough or positioned well enough to do more than snake around her shoulder and chest, twisting at cloth to reveal the painted shell beneath. She was glaring, hate, and in the moment she looked at me, the hate broke, and she looked like she might cry in relief, or in grief.

She held what remained of Rain in her arms, as he gasped out short breaths, like a fish out of water. The damage done- it hadn’t been her.

“Let’s not make this a thing,” Cradle said.

It was going to be a thing.

Pitch – 6.5

The weather had relaxed some, but the barn we were in had a corrugated metal roof, and each drop that hit it snapped against the hard, hollow surface. The sound was like dull static, punctuated by Rain’s gasps.

Nobody around. Most of the fighting had moved to the fringes and perimeters. Whether it was upside or downside to our secret plan to get behind the fighting and hit them somewhere vital, I couldn’t be sure.

Had to admit, after seeing Rain, I really would have liked to hit something. It might have been nice to have some regular bad guys around. Something told me Cradle wasn’t about to let himself get smacked around.

He was smiling slightly. Asshole.

I kept an eye on Cradle and his assistant as I got closer to Sveta. She adjusted as she could to put Rain closer to me and further from the crack in her shell where the tendrils were licking out.

I knew the rule that the badly wounded weren’t supposed to be moved, less because of any medical knowledge I’d picked up, and more because I’d seen an awful lot of people with injuries over the year.

Rain? The rule should have applied. It was the kind of badly hurt that made me worry that any further tampering would break him.

He had a cut on his face that parted his mask and the bridge of his nose, extended through his upper lip, through the lower lip, and down to his chin. His mouth was open as wide as it could go, bloodstained teeth showing, and the cut on his chin was open wider than his mouth. There wasn’t darkness beyond that wound- it was the opposite, with the white of bone showing.

Sveta cradled his head with one hand and arm, even after moving him some, and her hand pressed against the chin, blood getting into the gaps of the prosthetic, the fingers doing very little to hold the wound closed or staunch the bleeding.

I knelt at her side, felt Rain jerk his head as I moved her fingers. I pushed the wound closed, then moved her fingers with my hands, positioning them, holding them firm. I took my fingers away, and it was sticky enough I felt her fingers move as mine did. They didn’t move so much that the wound opened again. Better.

There was another cut at his eyes- eyelid, bridge of the nose again, and the orb of the other eye. Shallower, but the damage to the eye made for a lot of fluid. His good eye was closed, a mixture of blood diluted in damp settled into the creases and cracks. He pried it open, jaw chattering a bit with the effort, and stared at me with one eye that was shot through with blood, but not bloodshot.

More moisture.

“Come on,” I said. “Hang in there.”

“We should go,” I heard the man with the red handprint on his mask say.

“If you try to walk away from this, we’re going to have a problem,” I said.

“Don’t be unreasonable,” Cradle said.

“Thinker,” Sveta whispered. “Combat focused. Cradle hit me with something I couldn’t see. It might have been a laser not visible to the naked eye.”

I nodded, trying to divide my attention between the villains and Rain.

What was I even supposed to do? In any other situation, I would have picked up Rain and flown him to the nearest hospital. The reason I wasn’t was that I was genuinely worried that a firm shake would make what little blood he had in him fall out.

A mercy, maybe, that Capricorn, Vista, and Chris all turned up. Less a mercy that they had to see.

“What did you do?” Capricorn asked.

“And they all turn up,” Cradle said. “You swapped one member out.”

“Oh no,” Vista said, as she moved close enough to see Rain. She hurried to my side.

“There’s no point,” Cradle said.

I was undoing my belt, a faux-gold band that I’d used to add some color so my costume wasn’t too top-heavy. The process was hard, complicated by the fact that my left arm had a hole in it and my hand wasn’t cooperating as a consequence.

I needed to refresh myself on things- I’d learned about tourniquets from the patrol block, but in the moment it felt like half of what I’d learned was that tourniquets were a complicated, complicated thing. Compartment syndrome, damage from long-term use.

“You bastard,” Capricorn said.

“I’m not the bastard here,” Cradle said. “He is. Everyone we’ve told the story to has agreed it’s fair. When the bad guy is shitty enough, it stops being revenge and starts being justice.”

“That’s not right at all,” Sveta said.

Cradle sighed.

“Does ‘everyone’ include Tattletale?” I asked.

“I don’t see how that matters,” Cradle said. “This is done. He’s done. Things have come full circle, telling you would only…”

His machine’s hands moved. Everyone, myself included, tensed.

One hand moved, palm upward, elbow pointed down. A one-armed shrug.

“…Multiply the grudge,” Cradle finished his sentence.

Rain’s hand and one arm were my focus here, as I grit my teeth and tried not to be distracted. He was cut up pretty badly- defensive wounds, with the degree of damage hard to discern. The way cloth draped and the hand-coverings he wore obscured things. Like his teeth, the blood ran between the decorative elements of his glove.

His other hand had cuts, ones I might have called serious, if not for the fact that I was having to look at things in totality. If Crystal had cut her hand like that on an ordinary day, in some hypothetical universe where she tried and failed to use a real knife, I would be rushing her to the hospital. As it was? Low priority.

There were cuts on his chest- I’d look at those after. Vista was tending to his leg, which was as bad as the arm.

“Multiply the grudge?” Capricorn asked. He stood between us and Cradle.

“You’d walk away wanting to kill against me and against any co-conspirators I named. You go after me, after them, and assuming they have friends and contacts, assuming you succeeded, those contacts would go after you. Each time, it becomes something bigger, until one side gets wiped out. Let’s end it here.”

“What do you think is going to happen, Cradle?” Capricorn asked. He was incredulous as he asked, “You really think I’m going to walk away when you’ve done this to my friend?”

“What I want to happen, is for Operator Red and I to walk away. You walk away, and leave the Fallen asshole here. Your friend killed my friend and clustermate, the scales are even, we can resent each other and still never see each other again.”

Capricorn barked out a laugh.

“I hate that kind of life-death calculus,” Sveta murmured. Not loud enough to be heard by Cradle. Her focus was more on Rain and on herself. Her tendrils kept groping at the more ragged edges of her shell, then pulling away, sometimes bending them in or twisting them around.

I focused on Rain’s more damaged hand and arm as I attached the belt. He fought me, struggling as I tightened the belt, which made the pain in my left arm all the worse… but the fight wasn’t nearly as intense as I wanted it to be. A more intense fight in response to what had to be agonizing pain would mean there was more life in him.

This tourniquet would have to do. I was pretty sure I was good to go if the risk from blood loss -real and present-outweighed the damage from amputation.

“I don’t think they’re going to do that, boss. They look ticked,” Operator Red said. He was still holding on to one of the Cradle-machine’s fingers. He dropped, and fell about ten feet to land on his feet, legs bent. He straightened, and Chris moved forward a step.

Chris looked back with one bulbous, dark eye. He had no expression to read. There was only armor and coarse hair, and a long snout with eyes set on the side, the head more fishlike in dimension than mammal. His eye protruded and narrowed, more conelike than round as it pointed in Rain’s direction.

“Let me turn the question back on you, Capricorn,” Cradle said. “How do you want this to go? A fight? You all fight me and Operator Red, you get your vengeance on behalf of your murderer friend, and this makes it better?”

“Might help,” Chris hissed the words. Broad blades with a swirling damascus-style blend of white bone and steel were emerging from his various armor plates. Retractable weaponry, but not in a quick way.

The ‘Keen’ part of Keen Vigilance.

“It might,” Capricorn said. “But if you really think it was justice, how about we… leave? We arrest you, we go talk to authorities, and if you’re right, if it is justice, you’ll be free to go.”

“Free to go. I’m sure,” Cradle’s voice was quieter, not because he was quieter, but because he’d shifted position, turning his back to us as he straightened up. He turned back to us, and his voice was stronger, “You don’t see the hypocrisy? How wrong it would be for him to be free while we’re in custody? He killed people. He laughed about it, to my face, to Love Lost’s, to Snag’s.”

“He turned himself in,” Capricorn retorted. “He tried. At the first opportunity, he left the camp and went to confess. He was so twisted up about it he wasn’t coherent. They had him talk to people, but he couldn’t say much. I guess because of Mama Mathers.”

“He tell you that too? I was always fifty-fifty on it being a lie,” Cradle said. his tone was so casual and conversational, even pleased with himself. Maybe he was, with Rain bleeding out.

“It’s true,” Sveta said.

I focused on what I could do. Cuts marked Rain’s upper chest, shoulders, and stomach, until there wasn’t much of his top that wasn’t wet and shiny with blood. In one place where the cuts ran in horizontal parallel, the flesh had come away in a ribbon, the ribbon dangling toward the ground. I fixed it as best as I could, pressing a hand down on the wound.

It felt futile.

The wounds to his right leg were as bad as the defensive wounds to his hand. I could assume they were early wounds, intended to keep him from running. Vista was bandaging them with strips of cloth.

There was only so much I could do. I could go through two first aid kits and still run out of material to to bandage and tourniquet this. I staunched the wounds with my hands, as best as I was able.

“Capricorn,” I said. He turned his head. My voice was tense as I asked, “Can you use your power? A cast, or something to seal the wounds?”

The first orange lights appeared.

Cradle kept talking, like we weren’t trying to save a life. “He killed Love Lost’s daughter. The girl’s friend died too, and another one is devastated, even after a year.”

“He knows!” Capricorn said, raising his voice. “He went to the authorities! He wants punishment! He wanted jail, because it would at least get him away from this, except you all were coming after him, Mama Mathers had him locked down with her power.”

And because there wasn’t necessarily room, I presumed. If it was as serious as Cradle was saying, though…

“That way doesn’t work, this way does,” Cradle said. “Tidier.”

Operator Red clicked his tongue, “Tidy is high praise.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Capricorn said.

“This is a fucked up way to go about it,” I growled the words, adding my anger to Capricorn’s. “This is barbaric.”

Cradle, despite being younger than I was, managed to sound condescending. “The Fallen are barbaric, and your friend was right there with them. He locked us in a shopping mall and let us burn. Snag lost the last mementos he had of family and the old world. Snag was left with nothing, no escape, only his life… and your teammate got around to taking that from him too.”

“Move your hands,” Capricorn said, glancing back at me.

I took my hands away. The orange solidified into an encasement around Rain’s arm and hand. I put my hand to the edge, felt the gap- too much space. It wasn’t a tight enough fit to staunch the blood or keep things contained. I looked at Capricorn and shook my head.

“You suck at first aid,” Chris hissed. He cleaved at his sash, and the contents fell to the ground. The containers were like tupperware, but metal, with rubberized lids, apparently color coded. I reached for the nearest one.

“Careful what you touch,” Chris hissed. “Green lid. Open.”

I grabbed it, prying the lid off. It was a tight fit.

Syringes. There was colored tape around various syringes, no labels, no words. A foam insert had been carved at in a rough way, to give the needles places to fit in.

“Red band. Coagulant. Use little.”

“What are you doing?” Cradle asked.

“How little?” I asked.

“Maybe half inch.”

A half inch as a unit of measurement for a liquid?

“It won’t save him,” Chris hissed. “Might help.”

“Why do you have this?” Sveta asked.

“One day I change, come apart instead of changing back.”

I prepared the needle, holding it over Rain’s heart.

Chris nodded.

“Stop,” Cradle said.

“The man said stop,” Operator Red said.

“Didn’t want to use,” Chris was quiet. “I like him more than most of you.”

I plunged the syringe in.

“Operator,” Cradle said.

“Yeah,” Operator Red said.

Operator paced forward. Chris put himself in the guy’s way, the eye I could see opening wide, ears going back.

I pressed the plunger down. Half of an inch. I pulled it free before anything could happen to make me put in more than was necessary.

“Combat thinker!” Sveta called out.

“Aw fuck,” Capricorn swore.

“Cradle has invisible weapons!” I added.

“Fuck!” Capricorn said, as orange trails surrounded his hands. He gave Cradle a nervous glance.

Cradle, at least for right now, was hanging back, letting his hired assassin do the dirty work.

Operator reached behind his back, drawing another meat cleaver. He flicked it around, so it rolled off the back of his hand, and he caught the handle, with the blade beneath his fist.

Capricorn created his weapons. Two swords of the stone material. He thrust one in Operator’s direction, and was almost immediately disarmed of it.

He held the other out, to keep Operator more at bay. Orange lights danced around us without any seeming rhyme or reason. I left Rain behind and took flight, going high above Operator.

“Put the needle back,” Chris hissed, more insistent than before.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“I need it,” he said. He put his arm in Operator’s way. The cleaver bit deep into an armor plate. Operator ducked low, swinging under Chris’ arm.

A blade at Chris’ elbow extended as he clenched a large, brutish fist, and he drove his elbow back. The two cleaver blades caught the elbow-blade, and Operator was pushed back toward the door.

No sign that he’d lost his balance or been caught off guard in any way.

I reversed course, dropping to the ground. I placed the needle in the foam insert, and then started to replace the lid.

“Victoria!” Capricorn called out.

I looked to Operator first- the most immediate threat, and then I heard the crash. Metal fingers and hands reaching up to the roof, finding a grip where it had been bolted or hammered to a broader wooden beam, and then crumpling it.

Water poured unevenly throughout the barn as hands that could have wrapped around a small car brought down the roof. Beams cracked and split.

I flew for the largest, most pressing part of the roof, and the beam that was attached to it. The walls were shuddering in a way that made me think the entire barn could come down.

Cradle had apparently lost patience.

The Wretch and I hit the roof in Cradle’s machine hand with enough force that it would take a couple of minutes to walk to wherever it landed.

Sveta, Rain and Vista weren’t in the building anymore. Sveta had dragged them out through the open door. Capricorn and Chris were facing down Operator Red, and Cradle loomed in the hole in the roof he’d made, looking up at me.

He swiped a hand in my general direction, coming almost ten feet shy of connecting. I put the Wretch up anyway. I glanced at what was happening below- Vista was distorting space, keeping Operator Red in the building and giving Chris and Capricorn time to escape. Chris was delaying his escape.

Something hit me like a truck, knocking the Wretch out and knocking me almost twenty feet through the air, before I could right myself.

Cradle turned, his attention on those on the ground. A lot of strength in those mechanical hands. There had to be a good fifty feet of armspan when the two longest arms were extended, and he had a lot of arms. He hopped over to one of the shorter arms- almost just a wrist that connected to the central hub, and stepped onto the hand, where he crouched with the hand cupped around him.

I flew at him before he could do whatever he planned to do to the others, my aura down. A hand came up, intercepting me, and I hit it. The building creaked and crumbled as hands twisted and wrenched at wood to maintain his position. He turned his attention back to me.

Another swipe of the hands. I flew down, away from the direction of the swipe, and again, something collided with me, knocking me downward at an angle this time.

“Looksee,” I said,

“Mm?” was the response, small and emotional.

She’d seen Rain.

“Can your cameras see-”

I flew to evade as the hands moved. They weren’t moving my way, but to get him oriented, as he closed on the others. I changed course, flying more toward Cradle himself.

Two hands came up, one to either side of Cradle himself, as if they were going to slam together, catching me in the middle.

They didn’t. I hit something, a field or barrier between the hands. It didn’t hit the Wretch so much as it dashed the Wretch to pieces, with me bouncing fifteen or twenty feet back. The hands came after me, and I flew to evade.

“Can you see what he’s doing?” I asked.

“I think so,” Looksee said. “I need the projector disc, and you need to connect it to my camera, it’s easy to do, and I need to get it ready.”

Operator Red had exited out the far end of the building, and was circling around. I wondered if Capricorn’s power had given him pause. Chris was only just now going out the door that the others had left by. He had the cloth bundle with his boxes and things.

A… mess of emergency measures, it looked like, for a boy who thought he might fall apart with any transformation, but who had no choice but to transform.

I had to get past Cradle to get to him, and I had to get to him to get the projector.

Sveta hauled Rain a distance off to one side, his back to her chest as she used herself almost as a sled, for the easier ride. She pulled herself to a fence.

I could see Cradle’s thought process, as he considered going after her, as he turned his mind to the others- to Vista, to Capricorn, and more specifically, to Chris.

The hand came down, a good distance from Chris. Chris, a mound of armored, furred flesh, hopped, ducking and rolling, as the entire area around him was demolished. Dirt and soil became a cloud of particles and mud, as something smashed into it and sent the destroyed ground up ten feet in the air.

And as it settled, splattering against one outside corner of the barn, and everything around them, Chris was there, moving slower than an ordinary person might run, with short, heavy running steps.

Vista was using her power to create distance. Cradle crossed that distance by leaping, each hand pushing against ground or the edge of the barn, with one hand up and outstretched, ready to come down on top of them.

I flew after him, and it was easier to close the distance when Vista was using her power.

I reached him just as he’d almost reached them. Then his hand came down early, touched ground, and his entire form rotated, a second hand grazing the ground, turning the landing into a cartwheel, one of the longer arms coming around my way.

Whatever he hit me with caught me and knocked me down into muddy field. The landing reawakened the pain in my arm, to the point where I felt the sensation swell, my body telling me that passing out was a possibility.

Not a possibility, body.

Chris having run off to one side and Cradle being fixated on Capricorn and Vista meant I could reach Chris. I flew to him, landing.

“You can see what he’s doing?” I asked.

He gave me a single nod, and his eyes opened wide, ears twitching.

“Of course,” I said. “Projector disc?”

He tapped the sash he’d made with the cloth bundle. The disc was a belt buckle, as large as a dinner plate, as thick as a textbook.

“Looksee wants it,” I said.

Operator Red was on the approach, jogging our way with cleavers in hand. Cradle- fixated on the others. Vista was trying to keep both opponents at bay by increasing the distance between them and everyone else.

Chris managed to get the disc free. He passed it to me, then turned toward Operator Red.

The thing with Vista’s distance power was that the closer two people were to one another, the harder it was for her to utilize the distance that remained.

“Keep backing up,” I said.

I flew straight up.

“We have a teammate who needs help,” Looksee said, in my ear.

“I know,” I said. Sveta still had Rain. He wasn’t moving much. She could have left with him, but I wasn’t sure that kind of movement was any good for him. “But if I leave with him, I’m not sure I won’t come back to more of the same.”

It was already so dark out. The clouds were heavier, even though there was barely any precipitation anymore. In the gloom, Capricorn’s lights and the glowing points at the joints and knuckles of Cradle’s robot were eerily bright.

Equally as bright, Looksee’s camera flew to me. Football sized, with a round lens on the front.

“How do I do this?”

“Attach it on front. Press it on, rotate. Like a smoke detector.”

I wasn’t sure I’d used a smoke detector with that setup, but I could guess how it was intended to go.

The entire thing thrummed as the connection was made, the small, quarter-sized lens in the middle of the projector disc illuminating.

“Not much battery,” Looksee said. “You can let it go. There’s going to be a time delay. It’s not accurate.”

“Okay,” I said. I dropped it. It fell a short distance before taking flight on its own.

“Help- help everyone.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

“I wish I could do more,” Looksee said.

So did I.

I flew after Cradle.

I could see it now. Cords or cables, normally transparent, were illuminated in red light. There was lag, the light tracing one cord that extended from each fingertip, snapping to another position when it fell out of sync.

“Annoying,” Cradle said. “Doesn’t change anything.”

He raised a hand, bringing it down from overhead, in Capricorn’s direction.

I flew in, and I used the wretch to hit and deflect.

Again, that unreasonably intense force, exploding out and away, as the impact hit the Wretch and the aftershock cascaded out to thrust me away in the air.

The attack was off course- not so much it couldn’t have hit Capricorn, but he’d seen me coming and had moved away.

Vista was a short distance off, using her power. They’d decided being split up was better, and I knew her power was best when she was alone.

She wasn’t using her ability on Cradle’s robot. Was it immune?

He kept going after them, trusting his robot to deal with me. I didn’t have a lot of tools. Some ideas, now that I thought about it, but…

I’d try for the most basic, tried, and true option.

“Cradle!” I called out.

He glanced back at me, but he continued to ignore me.

I grit my teeth, scowling briefly, and flew in. His hand came out, and the red lights showed me the rough path of the cables. They moved like a flail would, delayed, swinging out in a lazy arc, the five cables fanning out as they cut through the air.

I could evade, draw closer- and the hand itself got in my way. As I moved, so did it, staying between Cradle and I.

I was quicker than the hand, and I could change my path and catch him off guard, but other hands moved, complicating things. It would be too easy for hands to close in around me.

Above me, cables were swung up, and they connected to another hand, extending from the fingertips of one hand to the fingertips of another.

That’d be the barrier I ran into, then.

As I flew around, they broke free, snapping out with more force than a swing would provide. They hit me- hit the Wretch, and knocked us off course.

I shouted at a volume that made my throat hurt, “You left yourself out, Cradle!”

Again, another glance my way, before he turned his focus to other things.

“He did all that to Love Lost and Snag, he didn’t do anything to you?”

I chose those words with some intent. Not just to ask what Rain did, but to imply there was nothing, and invite the retort.

“He took people and things from them!” Cradle roared out his response, so he could be heard. “He took me from me!”

With that last exclamation, it was an actual show of emotion- not that he hadn’t said emotional things, but it was the first time he’d put the emotion out there.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chris sit down rather heavily, clawed hands raised. He was bleeding in multiple places, and he didn’t have any fight left in him.

Operator Red turned toward the rest of us, and walked away from Chris, cleavers in hand.

Combat thinkers. Worse in a lot of ways than fighting someone like my mom, with her energy weapons. She could slice a grown man in half with her weapons. A combat thinker? There were ones who could hammer at you psychologically by mirroring mannerisms of people you knew or feared, ones who could hit your nerves or arteries any time, with any strike or weapon they had at hand, and there were ones who could win most fights without trying, because they had the fighting skills without working for those skills, combat precognition, or they saw the fight move at a hundredth the speed.

I was mentally slotting this asshole in that broader ‘win without trying’ category. There might have been some of the former, though, if Snag’s team been drawn to him. The awareness of biology and weak points could both help in combat and in torture.

“He took you from you?” I asked Cradle, keeping one eye on Operator. Cradle was looking up at me.

I did have his attention now. Objective achieved, I guessed.

“I was getting everything set up, finally living the life I wanted to live, and he fucked it all up. He pulled me into this, he infected me, and now I’m different!”

I opened my mouth to respond, to retort, bait out more and keep Cradle’s attention, so we could figure out a way to get Rain away. If Vista could get to Sveta and Rain- and it looked like she was heading that way-

“He violated my self!” Cradle’s words were more raw than any others I’d heard from him. Angrier.

My train of thought stopped where it was, as Cradle’s words entered my head and overrode everything else. In those four words, I got Cradle.

There were so many responses I wanted to give, about everything from the preceding events, the event, and everything that followed…

It was upbringing. Really questionable upbringing, sometimes or even a lot of the time.

He was in a bad place, desperate, with nobody to turn to.

He regrets it. He’s trying to do better. He was willing to turn himself in, even though that wasn’t what Cradle wanted or needed.

He didn’t want any of this any more than Cradle did.

It wasn’t him that screwed with Cradle like that. It was the power, acting according to some alien programming.

No.

There wasn’t one response I could give without feeling like I might be compromising my integral self.

Well, there was one response.

“Yeah,” I said. “I… yeah.”

He was too far away to properly hear me.

I nodded, instead.

“If you understand, let him die!”

This time, I shook my head.

“No,” I said, knowing he couldn’t hear.

That would violate my integral self too. Just as much. More.

He moved a hand, and the red-highlighted cables swung out, and connected to the ends of other cables, which separated from other fingertips. One hand now had cables of double the length.

He repeated the process again.

Arming himself for combat.

Chris was okay, it seemed, limping toward the fight. Operator was crawling toward Capricorn and Vista, who had reunited, and who were only a short distance from Sveta. Vista was more focused on making the way between Operator and them as steep as possible.

Operator’s cleavers periodically stabbed into the earth for handholds, as he trudged through muddy field at a forty degree incline.

Cradle swiped his cables at me. I flew back and away, evading. He swiped again, a backhand, and I barely needed to evade.

Not meant for me. He’d swiped at the camera.

The camera dodged.

The hand shook, and cables reconfigured. The one at the middle finger was longer.

One swipe, angled to connect with either me or the camera. I hit it with the Wretch, and saw the crimson highlighting twist and distort, as the camera struggled to keep up with the outline of the cable.

The cable hit the ground around the base of Cradle’s robot, and the soil exploded with the impact. Again, that surrounding force.

His version of Rain’s power. Or something he’d begged and borrowed for, maybe, another tinker’s tech, modified to work with his gear. That was a thing tinkers could do- a thing that drove them into tinker enclaves or the PRT. Past tense ‘drove’.

That effect meant I couldn’t catch it, but I could still deflect. Where things got harder was that I wasn’t sure of the fallout now. The cord was over a hundred feet long now, the arm was twenty five or so feet long, and even if I knocked the cord to one side, I couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t land in a way that put it near teammates.

I closed the distance. There were still other cables, and if I couldn’t control the whip-

The hand came up. I flew to intercept, and hit the back of the hand as hard as I could, before it reached the momentum necessary to flick the whip. The impact dented the surface of the hand, but didn’t stop it from raising up, catching me as it rose. The movement was too slow for the impact to hurt, but it was an impact, and that impact made my gunshot wound hurt more. Again, there was that suggestion that I could pass out if I let myself.

I maneuvered with more care, aura blasting to try to distract Cradle, for all the good it did.

A tinker who’d had a year to prepare, a team funneling him resources, and apparently a bit of talent to boot.

A hand moved to shield an attack from the side. Something crashed against the hand, and Cradle turned his head to look.

Capricorn’s power. Water had splashed against the hand and then turned to stone.

A moment later, there was another.

The hand closed, and the stone broke.

I flew back and up a little, to get a better vantage point.

Capricorn was with Vista and Sveta. Capricorn was creating a sphere somewhere between the size of a beachball and basketball, though spikier than either. Sveta grabbed it, used her power to fling it from fifty feet behind her to Cradle.

Stone became water, which became stone immediately after impact.

Operator’s advance had been stymied, as the top of the hill folded up and overhead, creating a ridge he couldn’t climb. He was going around, which only served to give them more time.

Cradle moved his whip hand. I smacked it down, then evaded the various cables that swung in my direction, while I waited for the Wretch to return.

Chris was closing the distance, slow as he was, approaching the hands. Capricorn unleashed another shot. The shot clipped the top of a finger, splashing well over Cradle’s head, and then the water became stone. Each bit of water was now a stone smaller than a fist, raining down on Cradle’s head.

Vista shouted something.

Good.

Good, this was the part I liked, that didn’t make me miserable. Having a team. Finding a way to work together and mesh, solving problems.

I just wished it wasn’t at the expense of time.

I struck an arm again- getting past the endless barriers was next to impossible, especially when the cables were whipping around and I was vulnerable right after any impact. This hit was aimed at destabilizing, putting him on tilt, so he had to adjust, shift weight, and move arms around.

Capricorn and Sveta had been delivering the projectiles at a fairly steady rate. Now there was a pause.

“Above,” I heard through my earphone.

I got out of dodge.

One shot, larger than the others, fired so high it had disappeared into the clouds. Now it came down, and the descent was guided by my favorite space warper.

Cradle put a hand over his head.

The stone became water at the last moment, but the impact was still enough that the hand came dangerously close to the top of Cradle’s head. Water filtered between the fingers in streams- and then froze, like the bars of a cage around him.

I flew in, straight for him.

He hurled himself at the bars, at the same moment hands moved apart and the stone shattered. The bars had broken just in time that he didn’t collide with them. A hand moved to provide footing below him as he descended, bobbed to absorb the impact of the fall.

Was that intuitive sense of how to stay steady on his contraption his mover power?

It had cost him time, and he was purely on the defensive. Chris was climbing up one arm- something Cradle could have easily dealt with, if he wasn’t dealing with all of us.

I glanced at Operator, thinker-one bird’s eye view at work, and saw that he was at the edge of Vista’s wave-shaped crest of earth. A few more steps and he’d be able to walk around it and charge them. Vista had been too distracted guiding the stone from above to keep tabs on the guy.

“Operator incoming!” I shouted.

An arm moved- not the hand or the arm itself, but the elbow that came at me. I deflected.

Every second we couldn’t end this was a second Rain was bleeding. I was worried at how long it had been already. I could have flown, but I would have been leaving the others at Cradle’s mercy.

I renewed my efforts, taking more risks, as I flew in closer.

“Don’t dodge,” I heard another report. Looksee.

Don’t dodge?

Capricorn and Sveta hurled another projectile. A hand blocked it, then shook off the stone. Other hands were warring with Chris, who was slowly climbing, stabbing, and doing a better job than I was at keeping tabs on everything immediately around him. It was another distraction for Cradle, but I doubted our changer would manage to get in close if I couldn’t, situational awareness or no.

Speaking of- what was I not supposed to dodge?

“Looksee?” I asked.

“One second, fiddling!”

Fiddling.

I got within ten feet of Cradle, only for a hand to block me. I flew around it- and he wasn’t there anymore.

He’d hopped down to another hand.

The whip hand moved, and I moved to counter. I struck it, closer to the elbow than the hand, and the hand slapped down toward the ground.

I went straight from that hit to flying for Cradle, to keep him on his toes and create room for a mistake.

A blur of red in my peripheral vision gave me pause.

The long whip? It was falling down on top of everything. Cradle saw it too, moved hands to provide a shield.

I trusted the Wretch, and used the opportunity to hammer him.

The red line passed through everything. Projection. A feint. Cradle had an intuitive sense of where things were, but seeing the red lines had preconditioned him, toyed with that perception as an optical illusion, and with that deception, I could get close enough to make contact.

I grabbed him by the fabric at his back and hauled him up and away.

“Victoria,” I heard Tattletale over the phone call.

“Stop breaking in, please,” I heard Looksee’s reply.

I flew Cradle away from his machine, and dropped him harder than was necessary, relatively close to the others.

Operator was still trying to navigate the Vista-modified battlefield. He’d managed to dodge some traps already, ground cupping over him like a dome, pitfalls.

“Call off Operator,” I said.

Cradle was silent.

“Call him off!”

“I need him intact and free,” Tattletale said, over the phone.

“Get bent,” I said.

“I’m willing to negotiate,” she said.

“Set him in stone,” I suggested, to Capricorn. “Leave him for the Fallen when they come back.”

Cradle tensed.

“You’re not going to do that,” Tattletale said. “You’re too righteous.”

“Wah!” was the distant shout.

I turned to look. It was Chris, and Cradle’s robot was still operating. The whip hand was moving-

I flew to intercept, as the whip came around. I knocked it away.

“Again… we can leave you for the Fallen,” I told Cradle. “Or you can call Operator off.”

“Red!” Cradle called out. “Enough.”

That meant the assassin wasn’t an immediate concern.

“How’s our guy?” I asked.

“Not good,” Sveta said. She pressed her forehead to Rain’s. “He’s not really breathing. He’s cold.”

“Advance Guard. They have a healer,” Tattletale said.

“I know,” I said, annoyed. “Go away. You led them right to him, didn’t you? Through our video and phones?”

“Yes, but not like that. It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters,” I said. I bent down by Rain. Capricorn gave me a hand in scooping him up. I checked to make sure the robot was being good.

“We can handle this now,” Capricorn said. “Get him help.”

I nodded.

I flew. Advance Guard had been to the northern end of everything, where a road exited the settlement. There were some sparse buildings in that direction, but it looked to be mainly for logging and maybe some quarrying as well.

“Victoria,” Tattletale said.

“I can kick her off,” Looksee said. “I think I figured it out now.”

“I’ll talk to her,” I said.

“The Crowleys came out ahead in this. I know they’ve got a reputation that makes people underestimate them, but their own people were just attacked. They’ll be out for blood, and the Fallen have far more reach than you’d imagine.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” I said. I checked my charge. Rain was limp. No fight, no response to anything.

“Let Cradle go. I’ll keep him and Love Lost out of your way. He promised to help me after I helped him here. Do that for me and I will help you.”

“You were talking about the Fallen.”

“I’ll coordinate. I can get you March and what’s left of Prancer’s band. The Crowleys are already on their way out, they’re hitting the road, we can hit them before they get where they’re going.”

“I don’t know what games you’re playing, Tattletale, but one of mine might be dead. Someone I pledged to help and keep alive. You pointed the killers to him. You were a cog in Snag and Prancer’s thing, and that turned out pretty shitty. How much of that was intentional?”

“That’s the kind of conspiracy thinking that gets you put in an institution,” Tattletale said.

“Either you’re incompetent or you’re malicious,” I said. “Neither lends themselves to us working together.

“Or I’m wrestling with bigger things, Victoria,” she sighed out the words, sounding exasperated, annoyed.

I spotted the first glimmer of color in the trees. I flew closer.

“I made my offer. Feel free to accept it,” she said.

“She’s gone,” Looksee said.

There was a pause.

“Is he really that bad?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. I wasn’t willing to spare the time to check, either. “But if this doesn’t work-”

I didn’t finish the sentence.

If this doesn’t work, thinking about all the responses I couldn’t give Cradle… would I be willing to try another route?

Another healer?

I dropped down the rest of the way, through the largest gap in the foliage.

Not Advance Guard. Prancer and his team- half the size it had been, and that was after the defection of Beast of Burden.

Prancer had no Velvet at his side, and he had no Moose. He did have a dark expression on his face, one that darkened further as he recognized me.

“Advance Guard?” I asked.

He pointed.

Northeast.

No fight, no resistance. I just hoped he hadn’t lied.

He hadn’t lied. Advance Guard was with the patrol block, and the patrol block was trying to corral a hero team and somewhat hostile evacuees who outnumbered them four to one.

I landed in the center of the camp.

I spotted Mayday with Gilpatrick.

“Healer?” I asked.

I saw the hesitation, and my heart sank. The sick feeling was worse.

“Is your healer hurt?” I asked.

“He’s- he’s here,” Mayday said. “Unhurt.”

“But?”

“But everything went to shit,” Mayday said. “Come.”

I followed, giving Gilpatrick a look over my shoulder. He was already talking to others, the moment Mayday was gone. Things to do, people to coordinate. It looked like other leaders of other patrols, that he was helping to coordinate.

One of the buses had the remnants of Advance Guard around it. Mayday hopped up and hauled on the lever to open the emergency door of the bus. Capes converged, ready to guard

The cape wore a goat mask, golden, and a black costume. He sat on one of the benches of the bus. There were others in the bus, men and women in cuffs.

Now that I looked, the cape had cuffs on as well.

“This is Scapegoat,” Mayday said. “He can heal. Sort of. It’s complicated.”

“It always is. What happened, Scapegoat?” I asked. I used flight to stead myself as I dropped low.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“He went Fallen,” someone supplied.

“He’s not the only one,” Mayday said. “We had one other, who died in the scrap. A lot of people were looking for answers after the end of the world, and the Fallen were promising them.”

Scapegoat shrugged.

Reach, as Tattletale had put it.

I wanted to ask him things, to shake him, to push for more than a shrug. I imagined a lot of people did.

But I needed his help.

I draped Rain out on the road. Scapegoat looked down at him.

“Hey,” I said. I pressed a finger to his pulse.

I couldn’t tell if there was something there or if it was my feeling my own pulse reverberating through.

But he moved. His head shifted slightly as he looked at me, eyes flickering as he tried to open them – but one was cut and the other was crusted with blood.

“I want someone to heal you,” I said. “Okay? Hey. I need your okay.”

I saw his head move a fraction, then again.

When he tried again, there was more of a nod.

I looked up at Scapegoat. He looked away, looked at Mayday.

“You want to play games, Scapegoat?” Mayday asked.

“Not games,” Scapegoat said, voice soft. “But I’ve helped you a lot already, and it doesn’t seem like my situation is any better. My power sucks to use.”

“I got a message from Tattletale,” Looksee reported, coming in over the phone. “Tell Scapegoat Tattletale says to, and that he needs the goodwill. He needs a lot of it.”

I didn’t hesitate. “Tattletale. She says to. You need goodwill, here.”

He paused.

A tense moment later, he nodded, crouched, and held his hands over Rain. He looked up at Mayday. “Can you get him warm?”

“We have blankets,” Mayday said. “Shortcut, grab some.”

I didn’t look for my would-be nemesis; my focus was on Rain and on Scapegoat, making sure Rain was safe, as flickering images overlapped with him.

“You’ll need help too?” Scapegoat asked.

My gunshot wound. He’d seen the bloody bandages.

“No,” I said. “I’ll heal it naturally.”

He seemed to take that in a matter of fact way.

There were more things to handle. Tattletale wanted to cooperate to wrap this up in a better way, and I was not ready to forget or forgive her role in this. I didn’t want to engage in life and death calculus, as Sveta had put it.

I pressed a hand to my ear, so it was clearer that I was talking to someone.

“Looksee, I’m not sure if you can see-”

“I can’t. My cameras are down or repurposed.”

“I think he’s getting the help he needs, okay?”

“Okay.”

The minutes passed as the injuries disappeared. Ashley joined us, with Gilpatrick standing behind her. Her power sparked a few times, and Scapegoat said something. She moved to situate herself further back, in a place where she could still watch.

I wasn’t sure what to say or do- a smile felt wrong, I couldn’t think of what to say that wouldn’t be too casual, too personal, or too confrontational.

I raised a hand in a bit of a wave. She did the same with her good hand.

For now, I could put everything out of mind for the moment. At the very least, I’d stand watch over Rain like nobody watched over me.

“Looksee,” I said, hand at my ear.

“Yeah?”

“Tell Tattletale I’m willing to consider it, but I want something else on the table.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re going to need more explanations. I want to know what the hell is going on.”

Pitch – 6.6

Narwhal faced down the Fallen, standing in the middle of the road. A crowd of patrol block soldiers stood behind her, with the buses lined up.

The soldiers with guns were only slightly less intimidating than the array of forcefields she’d conjured up, arranged above and to either side of her with the blades pointing forward, each one slightly tilted in angle compared to the one next to it, so they all pointed at the one point ahead of us.

I floated above her.

“It’s over,” Narwhal called out. “The Crowleys are running, the Mathers leadership is gone. Half of your town was leveled and legitimate authorities are going to be staying there to make sure everything’s healthy as people move back in.”

And we’ll provide some resources to anyone that wants out for good, I thought. I hope that pans out.

“Healthy,” the Fallen woman in the lead said. “Healthy food is stuff you have to choke down. Healthy body means doing grueling work. That’s you saying it’s going to fucking suck.”

Yeah, she didn’t look like someone who ate her vegetables.

“I’ve done this kind of thing before. I fought warlords,” Narwhal said. “I helped the villages after. I delivered supplies to isolated settlements. A lot of people want this to have a happy ending, and experience tells me that ending is possible.”

A guy called out, “The only happy ending I want is the kind you use your hand for, bitch!”

There was some raucous, tense laughter from the group.

I felt such disgust, looking at them. It wasn’t the joke- I could imagine Chris or Rain saying something like that and it being something that pushed the envelope. They wouldn’t have said ‘bitch’, though.

I couldn’t understand them.

My phone buzzed. I flew to the ground, off to the side of Narwhal, and brought my phone to my ear.

“Tattletale here. Can we talk?”

“Standoff with the remaining Mathers Fallen and Narwhal,” I said. I assessed the situation. “I think Narwhal has it handled.”

“I’d think so. I’ve found the Crowleys, they covered their retreat, and now they’re on the move. They borrowed a fleet of cars from a town north of here, and they’re heading east.”

“East? Boston? New Brockton?”

“I’m betting the Boston district of the Megalopolis,” she said. “They’re taking a route using roads that are barely roads, they’re so rustic. If you take the major highway, you could get ahead of them with time to spare. Give me what I need and we’ll help.”

“We being?”

“Undersiders. I can twist Prancer’s arm, promise to help him bounce back if he’ll lend me people. I could also give you the information for March. She’d help, but it would have to come from you, not me.”

“Do I want her help?”

“She’d do the job and she’d do it well, if she thought it would help Rain.”

“But?” I asked. I was still keeping an eye on the situation with Narwhal and the Fallen.

“You know the Graeae twins? They’re part of her group.”

“A bit. They helped Rain out.”

“They were two of three, originally. They had another brother, and they’re triplets and cluster-mates at the same time. Big bro went off the deep end. Kiss and kill are messy enough when you’ve got family bonds, but the brother went full kiss, full kill, at the same time, like where the venn diagram overlaps.”

I felt my skin crawl, and darker thoughts bubbled up, as I drew some parallels. I kept my voice level as I said, “I’ve read about that.”

“Whichever order that goes in, it’s… it’s not good, Victoria.”

“Thanks,” I said, my voice curt. “Let’s speed along to the explanation.”

“With my power, I can usually figure people out. With March, I can’t. When that happens, it’s because there is no answer, or I’m asking the wrong question.”

That was more information than I’d ever had about Tattletale’s power and its limitations.

“You should know I’m baring my throat and showing you some weaknesses as a gesture of good faith,” Tattletale said.

Or as a manipulation tactic.

I watched the Fallen advance a little, but kept up my end of the call. In a pinch, I would fly in and stall. I drew out the thrust of Tattletale’s explanation, something that I seemed to have to do with regularity. “You think you can’t figure out if March is one or the other because she’s both?”

“Or neither, but saying it’s neither would mean it’s so far afield it’s not sensible. Which would fit her. Either way, if she really likes someone, that isn’t a good thing.”

“You’re saying not to rely on her, then?”

“Know what you’re getting into. She’d be useful to have if you pick this fight. It’s a lot of Fallen and they’ll be going to somewhere there are friends.”

“Understood,” I said. I was distracted as I replied; the Fallen were more agitated now.

“We know they’re projections!” the Fallen woman jeered.

Narwhal looked at one of her team members. I imagined it was the kind of disappointed look that went with a sigh.

She looked at me, and I nodded.

My phone beeped, loud. I twisted my head around, burying my eyes in the crook of my elbow, bringing out the Wretch.

The flash was so bright I could briefly see my bones through my arm, with everything else being a mottled pink.

The Fallen were left partially or wholly blind. Some screamed, others opened fire. Narwhal already had her barrier up. The forcefields glowed as they absorbed the fire.

Our trap worked.

“Sounds like you’re busy. We’ll meet, and you can bring some of your people this time, if you want. You can glare at me, I’ll fill you in on the why and the what.”

“That’s only if we agree.”

“Let’s keep this simple, Victoria. I’m trying to play ball.”

“You were ops for an assassin that came after my teammate.”

“I’m trying to play ball with this. If you put him in jail, I might have to break him out, or he’s going to break out on his own. He’s a tinker, among other things. The places they’ve got aren’t that good, trust me.”

“If you or your people help him, we’re actually going to have a problem,” I said. “But whether we release him in exchange for your help isn’t up to me.”

“I’ll send you some stuff. Use it to convince others.”

⊙

Captain Marcial scrolled through my phone logs. Another captain, Gaymon, was standing next to her, arms folded, watching the screen.

“Using this phone is a hassle,” Gaymon said.

“I’d have given you better if I had better,” I said. “She texted all that to me, and I don’t know how to put texts on a laptop, or where I would even get a laptop out here.”

“Whatever,” Gaymon said.

I frowned a bit, but I didn’t want to make an issue of things. I knew some of the patrol blocks were more anti-cape than Gilpatrick’s, and Gaymon had given me that vibe and cemented it in place with his attitude.

Gilpatrick, Sveta and Chris were next to me. Ashley was a short distance away in the company of ‘Jester’, the both of them sitting on a rock by the ditch. Rain was lying across the long seat at the rear end of a bus, resting and avoiding any and all disturbances after the attention from Scapegoat.

Shortcut from Advance Guard was lurking around the periphery. Thankfully, he was staying quiet and sticking to the background.

“This Tattletale, you trust her?” Marcial asked. She was a slim woman, with a nose that had been broken at least twice, and a thin old scar that parted her eyebrow. Like Gilpatrick, she was ex-PRT. She wore a raincoat that was open in the front, because it couldn’t close around her body armor. The hood kept the drizzle off of her face.

“No,” I said. “I don’t really trust her.”

“Not so compelling, then,” she said, looking back down at the phone.

“It’s… not a point in her favor,” I said. “But I’d rather operate under the assumption that she’s telling the truth about where the Fallen are and what they’re doing. I’m going to go after them and, if she turns out to be right, put myself at risk. If she’s wrong, I’m flying for a few hours when all I want to do is get my gunshot wound looked at. Take that for what it’s worth.”

“So you do trust her.”

“I trust that the Fallen are dangerous. That trust means I’m willing to accept the hassle and the risk.”

“That Tattletale is yanking our dicks?” Captain Marcial asked, her voice about as uncaring and dry as was possible.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Children present,” Sveta said, quiet. Her arms were folded, and one finger moved, pointing at Chris.

“I don’t care,” Chris said.

“I don’t care either,” Marcial said. “If they can fight, they can hear some bad language. This feels like a wild goose chase or a trap. We’ve already been stung a few times.”

“We know they went somewhere. Our tinker thinks there’s reason to believe Tattletale is right. They used guns today, multiple witnesses can testify they put civilians in the line of fire to use as human shields, and tortured others. There’s a chance they bring that behavior to a settlement. I think it’s worth using the only lead we have, after they slipped our perimeter.”

“They being the Crowleys?”

“Yes,” I said. “Possibly with some scattered Mathers, and the Clans, and the remaining Bikers.”

I wasn’t sure how keen the Bikers would be when it came to playing along, but I wasn’t going to bring that up. Marcial’s approach wasn’t warming me to her, and I was reluctant to give her fuel for her suspicions and delaying tactics. It was her call when it came to her patrol group and what they were prepared to do. She had authority over her group in the field like Gilpatrick had for the Bridgeport patrol.

I was keenly aware of Captain Marcial’s geographical position, as well. She was in charge of the patrol block from New Haven. They were the closest neighbors to the Mathers camp of Fallen. The same town with the shop where I’d picked up the donuts, and with the people who’d been camped out watching for trouble, that Looksee had fooled and helped bring into custody.

If anyone was going to turn out to be a Fallen sympathizer, a thing that was happening with some frequency, I wouldn’t be shocked if that anyone was Captain Marcial.

“Crowleys aren’t on paper as being a big threat,” she said.

“Crowleys aren’t on paper as having gun toting soldiers either,” I said.

“We took the same road they did when we came here,” Chris said. “You can smell the gunpowder in the air, mixed with the smell of cigarettes, alcohol, gasoline and body odor.”

“You can, Chris,” Sveta said, stressing the ‘you’.

Gaymon’s superior approached. I’d caught the man being called Captain Bash, but I wasn’t sure if it was a nickname or real last name. He didn’t look like a Bash, with a shorter than average stature, skinny physique and a bit of a receding hairline- I could imagine it being the sort of thing where a tall muscular man was nicknamed Tiny. The PRT director in my hometown had confided in me at one point that she’d been nicknamed Lady, and from her lack of grace and finer manners, it might have been the same sort of thing.

Bash indicated the phone, “What’s this?”

“Villain says she knows where the Crowley bunch went, after Scapegoat helped them push past our perimeter. Gilpatrick’s cape says they want to follow up on it. If this is to be believed, the Fallen went north, to the Meridian stretch, and then they’ll go east.”

“To a populated part of the city,” I pointed out.

“And?” Bash asked.

“We’re trying to decide if it’s worth going after the jackasses,” Gaymon said.

“It’s more complicated than that. We can get better info, but it costs,” I said. “And I need the approval of my whole team on this, first. I want to make sure we have the other resources we need if we’re going to pay this cost or convince the rest of my team. If we can work with what we’ve got, though, that’d be ideal.”

“I’ll defer to Gilpatrick and Marcial,” Bash said. “You make the call, we’ll help, whatever happens.”

“Again,” I said, trying not to let the combination of Chris and Bash sidetrack things too much, “We have witnesses. They came armed and they fought hard. This wasn’t the prankster, pain in the ass, public nuisance Crowleys. This was something more vicious.”

“Because they were defending their home?” Marcial suggested.

“I trust her, Liz,” Gilpatrick said, speaking just a moment before I said something I would have regretted later. “If she says it was serious, I believe her.”

“This is your girl from the community center?”

I frowned.

“She is,” Gilpatrick said.

“The wrecking ball.”

Fuck me, was she trying to push me?

“She kept my people alive and safe. She protected civilians. Considering the fudge-cluster that was, I’m happy with how she handled it.”

“Disaster follows in your heroine’s wake, huh?” Marcial asked, still in that same dry tone.

I closed my eyes, then measured out my response, “It’s my feeling that when you have powers, it’s your responsibility to take action in the face of disaster. So yeah, you’re going to see me a lot on the scene of bad stuff going down.”

“Cluster fudge, bad stuff,” Chris said. “You don’t need to censor for my benefit. I promise you, I’ve heard worse. I’ve said worse.”

“Don’t interrupt,” Sveta told him.

“I understand that you’re defensive, Victoria. You put a lot on the line,” Marcial said.

“I’m not-” I started. I clenched my fist.

“It’s okay. This is how I function. Ask anyone who works under me. I’m asking the questions others are going to ask after we’re done. Why do this, are we sure, wasn’t there some indication it was a trap? Succeed or fail, they’re going to wonder, and I intend to have the right answers for them.”

“Okay,” I said, though I didn’t feel okay with it. The annoying thing with how she ‘functioned’ was that I had a hard time going back and finding the thread of the conversation again. Chris’ commentary didn’t help. “Defending their home, you said.”

“Mm hmm,” she said. She looked at Gaymon as he nudged her.

“The supporting images aren’t very clear,” Gaymon interrupted, holding up my phone. “Especially on a screen this small.”

“Yeah,” she acknowledged him. “I don’t think anyone has satellite footage that’s worth three fucks, yet.”

I pressed, “They were armed and ready for a small war. This isn’t limited to the guns people brought with them and the rifles they had for hunting. There were assault rifles and whole groups with a matching gun in each person’s hand.”

“I bet if you asked them, they’d say it was a good thing they were armed and ready, since a small war came to them,” she said. When she saw my expression, she added, “I’m anticipating the responses we’ll get, that’s all.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. Do you have any questions? Do you need anything?”

“Do you want your phone back?” she asked.

I started to approach, and she tossed the phone my way. I had to fly a bit to catch it one-handed.

“We’ll let you know what we decide,” Gaymon said.

I turned to walk away, and Gilpatrick told his peers, “I’ll be right back.”

He walked with me, as I walked up to Sveta and Chris, put a hand on Sveta’s shoulder, and had us all walk over to where Jester was talking to Ashley. From there, I indicated we should walk a little further away for our pow-wow.

“Sorry,” Gilpatrick said. “That is how she operates.”

“She make a lot of friends with that ‘function’ of hers?”

“No,” Gilpatrick said. “I’d never pretend she has many allies or friends. She was New York PRT, and if you ask the New York PRT, they’ll say- they would have said that they were the best in the country.

“A few PRT teams would have said that,” I replied, with a sigh. “Does she live up to her own hype?”

Gilpatrick gave me a one-shouldered shrug. “Her ass is so covered it’s bulletproof, and that’s a skill a lot of people overlook. People who matter trust her when she talks because she is very good at explaining things to people who know nothing. Again, a skill.”

“That definitely doesn’t make friends if she wins important people over to her side when multiple others try and fail,” I said.

“I won’t comment,” Gilpatrick said, in a conspiratorial way I wasn’t sure someone else would catch. I was right. It was something that had happened.

“That’s politics. Is she good at her job?”

“Depends on what you see as her job. I’d like to think I’m a better teacher and shaper of our youth. She’s better at going after the bad guys.”

“Worrying.”

We met with Ashley, where she’d found a rock to lean against. Jasper put the phone down beside her, then walked over to stand by Gilpatrick. I really wondered what he’d been talking to Ashley about, and why he’d even gone to talk to her in the first place.

“How’s everyone?” I asked.

“Patched up,” Sveta said, patting her prosthetic shell.

“Good,” Chris said. “Did what I wanted, mostly.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. He’d seemed slightly dissatisfied earlier. He only shrugged.

“I’ve been talking to Jester and Looksee, getting caught up,” Ashley said. “It’s a good distraction.”

“Ooh, she’s into archery,” Looksee said. The phone rested on the rock between Jasper and Ashley. “Badass.”

Ashley raised a hand, indicating the phone, “See? Distraction enough.”

“Wait,” I said. “Say again, Looksee. Who is into archery?”

“Marcial.”

“Why Marcial?”

“Because she’s our biggest obstacle, and I was looking for clues.”

“Looksee, you can’t spy on people,” I said.

“Please,” Sveta said.

“Is it really spying if the information is a mouseclick away?”

“Yes,” Chris said.

“Oh, hey, Creepy Kid. Tattletale was asking about you. I didn’t say anything, of course.”

“I’m apparently Creepy Kid now,” Chris said, to Sveta and I.

“I told you, you need to pick a name, or it’s going to get chosen for you,” I said.

“I don’t have good ideas,” Chris said. “The good names are taken. The shortlist is Dramaturge, Cryptid, Cryptozoo-”

Looksee snorted audibly over the phone.

“Don’t laugh, Looksee,” exaggerating her name.

“Looksee is good! Victoria said you can make any name work if you do good enough, and I did good today.”

“Well enough,” Chris said.

“Everyone did well,” I said. “You included, Looksee. I know that wasn’t as close to the frontline as you want, but the camera drop, outlining the cables-”

“Threads,” Looksee said. “With force around and to them.”

“Okay,” I said. “And the fake cable coming at Cradle. It was good.”

“She was telling me about it,” Ashley said.

“It was good,” I said.

“If you keep saying that, she’s going to blow a fuse,” Chris said.

“Oh, completely changing the subject, Capricorn is coming back with Vista. He’s a couple of minutes away.”

“I’ll go say hi in a second,” I said.

“This whole thing is dizzying,” Jester said. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“In a way, I grew up with it,” I said. “Was different, back then. I dealt with more known quantities. Or I thought I did. No Marcials. I never thought I’d miss having my mom as team leader once I flew the coop. I considered it a good day when my aunt was the one in charge, and I still found it stifling.”

“It’s not all people like Marcial,” Gilpatrick said.

“I know,” I said. I had to make a three-quarter turn to lightly punch him in the arm, because my injured arm was the one closer to him. “We’ve got people like you and Jester.”

“The fact that you’re using that name and you’re putting us in the same sentence pains me,” Gilpatrick didn’t move his lips as he murmured the words.

Jester cleared his throat, looking at Gilpatrick.

“I’ll give you one thing,” Chris was saying in the background, “The camera thing was a good play. Brutal.”

“Thank you, nice of you to say,” Looksee said.

“It was,” Sveta said, “But I don’t like how that was worded. Brutal and good shouldn’t be put together like that.”

Chris went on, “I wanted to make a joke before, but speaking takes concentration when you don’t have the mouth you’re used to. Now it sounds dumb, because I’d be saying it out of nowhere.”

“Say it. Say it,” Looksee said.

“Looksee? More like look out,” Chris said, and he chose the most deadpan tone of voice he could manage, in a way that sucked any of the residual humor out of the line.

Looksee laughed all the same.

“I hate to be a wet blanket,” Sveta said. “But, please, almost caving in someone’s skull was an emergency measure, not a thing to be encouraged.”

“Seconding that,” I said.

“You seem to have your hands full,” Gilpatrick said.

“Feels like it,” I said. Even if I had perfect control of the Wretch, every hand available would be full.

Ugh. I didn’t like thinking like that.

“You guys talk,” I said. “I’m going to go see Capricorn. He should be there soon.”

“He paused to rest,” Looksee reported. “He’s a minute away.”

“Good enough,” I said.

“I’ll come,” Ashley said.

I hesitated. I’d wanted to fly. “We’ll walk fast?”

She nodded.

We skirted the larger meeting, where Mayday had joined the discussion with Marcial, Bash, and Gaymon. Gilpatrick took my leaving as an excuse to go, too, but he took a separate path.

Only Ashley and me.

“What did you talk to Jester about?” I asked.

“We didn’t talk much. He brought the phone, and he managed it so I didn’t have to, asked how you were doing, we talked briefly about you. He was curious about powers. Looksee did most of the talking.”

“Talking about me?”

“Nothing bad,” she said.

I looked back over my shoulder. The group was still gathered. “They’re doing better than expected. Sveta’s quiet.”

“They’re relieved that Rain is okay,” Ashley said. “And they’re resilient.”

“And you?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

“You said everyone did a good job. I didn’t,” Ashley said. She walked with her hand clasped around the injured portion, but the posture looked defensive.

“I really liked how you handled things with Gilpatrick, turning yourself in, asking him if you could join the fight. They’re the right moves.”

“If I end up imprisoned and unable to see or call her, someone needs to look after Kenzie.”

I looked at Ashley. Her hair had dried somewhat, but it still had the wet hair look, where it webbed into thicker locks. She was wearing the new dress- the one she’d bought in Cedar Point, but it had been melted at the side, near where her wrist dangled by her leg. Since the capture the flag game, I’d thought of Kenzie looking after Ashley in a way, but I wasn’t so sure I’d seen Ashley looking after Kenzie. Defending her, maybe. Being there-

“Being there for her?” I asked.

“It’s part of it,” she said. “She doesn’t have anyone.”

“Doesn’t she?”

“I mean someone who will be there a year from now. The team is wobbly, none of her classmates want to be her friend, and very few people spend time with her without wanting something from her or having to be with her. When I get in trouble for blasting Beast of Burden, make sure she has someone. You or someone else.”

I nodded. “Her parents?”

“Go to that dinner at her house or ask the others if you want an answer to that question.”

I tilted my head a little, trying to see more of her face. “Usually I can count on you for straight answers.”

“Not about this. She’d be upset with me and things are hard enough. She’s upset with me and I’m upset with her. The talk on the phone, with a bystander there, we were dancing around being upset with each other.”

“Did I miss something?” I asked.

Ashley shook her head. She moved her injured hand, bouncing it up and down briefly, then clenched her other hand at her arm as a muffled use of her power erupted between her fingers. Agitation.

“I could have screamed at her. It’s why I wanted this talk.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure, but she was trying to reassure me. She said the situation was bad, there were lots of people hurt, Rain killed Snag, he was almost killed by Cradle, and even she almost killed Mama Mathers.”

Ashley gave that last bit some emphasis.

“You think it was intentional? To connect, or…”

“I don’t know. She said it and I can’t get it out of my head. If it was intentional, even if it was accidental, if she killed someone, if she ruined herself like that, for something so stupid, or because she was careless, if she’s even capable of making that kind of decision-”

She was getting agitated as she talked.

“I get it,” I said, interrupting the speech. “I get it. We’ll figure something out. I’ll talk to her.”

We walked for a short bit in silence. I heard Ashley whisper something, but it wasn’t aimed at me.

I chose to ignore the whisper, in the same way I hoped someone would ignore me communicating something to the Wretch.

“She needs someone to look after her,” Ashley said. “Now that someone can’t be me.”

I looked up. The sky was still overcast, the light of the sun fighting to shine through in a way that made it look more like the heavy clouds had faint energy glowing from within them, rather than a distant burning orb sending its light to us.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to the team,” I said. “I think people are more shaken than they’re saying.”

“They are.”

“There was a lot there that was rough. There’s still stuff out there- angry people with guns, who just saw their own get attacked, or who were forced to act by Mama Mathers. Good people got really hurt.”

“Bad people got really hurt too,” Ashley said.

I paused, feeling the weight of that short statement. “Yeah. We’ll see how that goes.”

Water pattered against my hood, and I thought the rain had started up again- it was only the wind stirring the droplets from the leaves above.

I saw the distorted space before I saw Capricorn, Vista, and Chasmal. Capricorn had one of his stone constructions over his shoulder, something that looked like a coffin, but was obviously made of Tristan’s power, with hooks and such. Interestingly, though it looked like the sort of heavy something that would have required Tristan’s attention, it was Byron in the blue armor who was hauling it, holding up the thicker, wider upper end, with the bottom end dragging in the path behind him.

Vista was shortening their path. Chasmal would be making the coffin and the person inside light enough for Byron to drag, while simultaneously phasing Mama Mathers partially out of reality.

He had a costume that sported Advance Guard’s geometric future aesthetic with a deep blue color scheme with orange trim. The aesthetic and design seemed to be intended at invoking the dark, vigilante style.

I was really hoping that a measure like that would sever her connection to others, for any point in time that she woke up.

“You got her?” I asked.

“Yeah. We also pointed Mayday’s cape and the patrol crew to the building we sealed up,” Byron said. “Hi, Damsel.”

“Hi.”

“She’s still unconscious or asleep in there?” I asked.

“Has to be. I’d have felt her struggling, or we would have heard her.”

“She could be dead,” Damsel said.

“Let’s hope,” Chasmal muttered.

“I’m hoping she isn’t,” I said. Damsel nodded her agreement with me.

“I used my power to sweep over the area,” Vista said. “I can get a general feel for when there are people somewhere and as far as I can tell, most of the town was evacuated. We sent some people to rescue and retrieve.”

“Armed, armored people,” Byron said.

“But I think we did it,” Vista said. She offered her fist out. After a moment’s hesitation, Byron bumped it. I was a little quicker to respond.

Vista offered her fist to Ashley, and Ashley shook her head, flashing a small smile instead.

Vista seemed to take it in stride. “There were two groups that left. One to the south-”

“Handled,” I said. “Projections stopped them, even though they knew they were projections. They lined up to face down our defending group, and we blinded them.”

“And the second one that tore through Advance Guard and the Hollow Point villains as they left by the north road.”

I wished I had a better answer for her. “We’re still figuring that one out.”

“I hear Prancer’s group skedaddled?” Vista asked.

“What’s left of it. They took a few bodies with them.”

“Eesh,” Byron said.

“Eesh is right,” I answered him. “They’ll go back to Hollow Point and they’ll probably find one of the Wardens’ teams waiting there. The Shepherds or Foresight. With luck, they’ll be so tired they won’t want to fight for the territory, or they’ll lose that fight if they pick it.”

“We’re not invited?” Byron asked.

I shook my head. “We weren’t invited, we’re battered and weary, and I think I’d rather deal with the Fallen, if we were going to do something.”

“Alright. That’s almost a relief. Come on,” Byron said. “Let’s get this creepy woman somewhere more secure.”

“Hardly a way to talk about me,” Vista said.

“Ha ha,” Byron said.

“We’ll take her to the patrol block leaders,” I said. “See if that sways them any.”

“I can take over dragging it if you want,” Vista said.

“I’m good,” Byron said. “I like getting to pretend I’m the one with enhanced strength.”

“What did you get, if he got that?” Vista asked.

“Resistance to temperature extremes,” Byron said. He grunted as he started dragging. “There was a time I made ice.”

“Really.”

“Uh huh. There have been other things.”

“Can you change back? Is that a thing you could do if you tried, or could you change to something new?”

“I could,” Byron said. “But I don’t want to go back, and I’m worried about how I’d get somewhere new.”

“I’m happy my power’s simple,” Vista said.

“Gross distortion of dimensions, simple,” I said.

She smiled and winked at me.

She was happy, it seemed.

I was- I was almost happy too.

I had my concerns. I had plenty of worries about what was going to unfold as authorities decided to go after the Fallen or to let them go, and even the simpler joy of being a heroine had been tainted by Wretch and the horribleness of the people I’d been dealing with. I could ask how everyone was doing, keep tabs on things, and help people out, and there wasn’t anyone who was positioned or invested enough to do the same for me.

A reminder to myself that I needed to call that therapist.

But I could put it all aside, put it out of mind.

We had Mama Mathers. We had Operator and we had Cradle. It was a win, and a win we’d thoroughly earned.

⊙

Son of a bitch, I should have known.

“Why?” I asked.

“We couldn’t come to a decision, so we talked to the administrators who coordinate the patrol blocks,” Captain Marcial answered me. “They said no.”

“We’re leaving the remaining Fallen?” I asked.

“We explained the guns,” Gilpatrick said. “The degree of violence here, the boundaries that were crossed. They’ll have people on the lookout for violence, if the Fallen lash out or try something, but the sentiment expressed was that they didn’t want to punish others for getting away from a violent situation and standing down.”

“They’re the Fallen,” I said. “They don’t back down.”

“They don’t back down, but they do get tired,” Marcial said. “We have problems today, occupying heroes and patrols. The Fallen are a problem for tomorrow.”

“That’s the word from above,” Gilpatrick said.

I retrieved my phone and checked the time.

According to Tattletale, the Fallen would get off the road in two hours and get into the Megalopolis again, somewhere on the east coast. They were obscuring their retreating convoy with powers, allegedly, and once they were in the city they’d connect with others. Again, allegedly.

Two hours.

We’d have to deal with Tattletale to know what location, or where they were if they did get to the city. We’d have to achieve something of a win, and we’d have to have a way to deal with the defeated Fallen. Here, we could put them on a bus in shackles, or dedicate whole teams to managing the powered ones. It helped that most of the powered had injuries that slowed them down.

It wasn’t doable.

“I’m sorry,” Gilpatrick said. “We mitigated the damage. We met most of the objectives, even in the face of much greater numbers than we expected. Today was a win.”

“That’s not much consolation,” Capricorn said. He was back to being Tristan. “We were there in the thick of it. We saw them and talked to them. Lives are going to be lost if we let this go. They’re pissed. They’re heading into a population center.”

“Our resources are exhausted,” Gaymon said. “We have limited personnel and that personnel has been tied up for the better part of the day. If they go there and stop, we intend to let them. Otherwise, it ends up as one prolonged engagement where both sides get tired and sloppy.”

“This was already sloppy enough,” Bash said. “Unexpected numbers, the violence.”

It was so maddening, that the desire for peace and a stop to conflict would provide the flammable material needed for the fires to spread.

I didn’t let that show on my face.

“You’re still standing,” Capricorn said, “There’s gas in your vehicles. These people are unreasonable, dangerous and desperate. You can’t let this go. Others can’t afford for you to let it go.”

I wished Narwhal was around. I wished Mayday would speak up.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d had an impression of Marcial almost right away, that she wasn’t on our side. She’d proven it. Gilpatrick- I wanted to imagine he’d tried and failed. In my time with the patrol block, I’d seen decisions from oversight that had definitely been this dumb.

“Thank you,” I said, as diplomatically as I could. “I understand your hands are tied, if your bosses are saying no.”

Capricorn’s head snapped around.

“They are,” Marcial said. Had it come from anyone else, I might have been more inclined to believe it.

Capricorn was giving me a hard look through the eyeholes of his helmet.

“There’s no changing your mind,” I said, for his benefit. “We’ll figure out what our course of action is in the next while.”

“It was a good collaboration. A good effort, even with everything that went wrong,” Gilpatrick said. “Be safe, take care of yourselves, and let me know if you need anything.”

I nodded.

I left the scene behind, feeling like I might have said something regrettable if I’d stayed a moment longer.

“This is where we part ways, I guess. We’ll meet, talk,” Vista said. “You have my number.”

I nodded. I clasped her hand in mine.

“Kick some ass,” she said.

“We’ll see,” I said.

We were a group as we walked away. Me, Capricorn, Sveta, Chris, Ashley, and Looksee had joined us, coming from New Haven to our powwow.

One more member to get.

We filed into the bus. Rain was awake, a phone that wasn’t his in his lap.

“Cradle?” he asked.

“In custody,” I said. “Which is something we need to talk about, because it’s you that makes the final call.”

Pitch – 6.7

Rain had been slouched across the back seat, a first aid blanket over him, a phone there to give him something to occupy himself with. As he worked his way to a position where he sat upright, Tristan worked his way past the seats to offer a gentler hand. I would have offered help, more to help reduce the stress on Rain’s body than because the strength was needed, but I wasn’t able-bodied.

Not many of us were really up to the task, now that I noticed. Sveta wasn’t weak but she wasn’t coordinated. Ashley had her screwed up arm that was misfiring. Chris was able but not inclined. Kenzie was eleven.

As for Rain- the worst damage had been healed, physically, but he’d come awfully close to dying. A serious impact in the next hour or two could phase out the healed body parts, with catastrophic consequences for both Rain and Scapegoat. When he moved, though, it was in a careful sort of way that went beyond someone reeling from physical injuries and going easy with the weird phased-in healing that Scapegoat did. We had to be ginger with the traumatized parts of him that weren’t physical.

I wanted to draw on my own experiences to empathize with him and better know what to do, but I didn’t have great experiences to draw on. I’d been badly hurt before, but the only comparable kind of harm had been followed with convalescence and a kind of sedation. That had been followed by Amy’s attentions and some erasure of memories.

A dark, heavy thought to go alongside how drained I felt in the moment.

My best comparison was being made normal, on the eve of Gold Morning. A kind of trauma that wasn’t physical, and that was definitely lasting. I could remember how I’d been in those early days and weeks, ginger in how I handled everything, including myself. It hadn’t helped that just about everyone had been reeling from the loss of Earth Bet, their homes, and loved ones.

“You comfortable?” Capricorn asked.

“As comfortable as I’m going to be the next few days,” Rain said.

“Sorry that we’re going to put more stuff on your plate so soon,” I said. “We’re trying to figure out what we’re doing.”

“I can take it,” Rain said. “I’ve learned to deal with shit.”

“Thank you for swearing,” Chris said. “One of the most annoying things about being a hero is all the goody-goody types who refuse to swear around me.”

“Well,” Rain said. He moved a bit, paused to wince, and then finished his sentence, “I think it’s firmly established that I’m not a goody-goody type. I do want to help, though.”

“It’s nice that they aren’t swearing,” Kenzie said. “They’re thinking of us.”

Chris scoffed audibly. With the seats of the bus being what they were, it was hard to see his face.

“The worst part about being a hero isn’t anything about swearing,” Ashley said. “It’s the untenable bureaucracy.”

I saw Chris’ hand pop up to scratch his head. He said, “You meant to say interminable or something, I think.”

“No,” Ashley said. “You meant to say yes, Damsel, you’re right.”

“The bureaucracy is definitely a wall we’ve run into,” I said, interrupting. “The patrol doesn’t want to pursue the remaining Fallen.”

“Who? Do you know?”

“The Fallen?” I asked. When he nodded, I followed up by outlining them. “Crowley brothers, their underlings. Bamet is out of action. The one who goes changer from a point in space is still out there, presumably. Valefor might be out there but I made sure he won’t be able to give any orders for a while. We got Mama.”

“Oh wow,” Rain said.

“I told you before, but I don’t think you were in a good state to process what I was saying,” Sveta said.

Rain nodded slowly. “You got Cradle. You got Mama. Snag’s dead- he’s dead, right?”

“He’s very dead,” Chris said. “You should know.”

“It all feels like it might break away and reality might hit if I move too fast or look into it too much,” Rain said.

I thought of the state I’d been in, at the end of twenty-thirteen, the start of year zero, after Gold Morning. “The way you described things, it’s as if you’re dreaming and things are less distinct than the very intense reality that came before the dream.”

“Yeah,” Rain said. “Exactly.”

“I get it,” I said. “I’ve been there. You want to watch out for the moments where you’re trying to reconcile the disconnect and make the now feel real again. It’s easy to get carried away.”

“In a fight, you mean?” Capricorn asked. “Throwing yourself at a situation to feel alive again?”

“Not like that, exactly,” I said.

“I don’t get it,” Looksee said.

I floundered for a moment, then said, “I guess, just as an example, I remember taking a shower and having a moment where it really woke me up and I felt grounded in reality again. There were a few days of painfully cold and hot showers, trying to wake up and stay fixed in the present.”

Sveta reached over to touch my arm.

There had been other moments, too. Scrubbing myself until my skin broke, among other things. Too personal and raw to really share.

“I’ll watch out for that,” Rain said.

“I would really, really advise talking to Mrs. Yamada the next chance you get,” I said, “because I don’t think it’s the kind of thing you can watch out for on your own.”

“I left a message for her,” he said. He touched the phone, which still sat in his lap.

Ashley’s power flickered in the background. She adjusted her position, acting like nothing had happened as she leaned against the edge of one seat, a death grip around her forearm.

“I’m going to remove my helmet,” Looksee said. “My breath keeps fogging up the screen.”

“Keep your back to the windows,” Tristan said.

“Okay.”

I wasn’t sure it mattered- the windows were in dire need of cleaning and dirt from the road covered them for extra measure. It was a good practice to be in, though, for our team members with secret identities.

There was some rummaging. Looksee wasn’t the only one to adjust her stuff. We settled in for a longer talk, with Tristan removing his helmet. He set it down on the faux-leather bench of the bus beside him, then blurred, becoming Byron.

Byron, too, removed his helmet, setting it down next to Tristan’s. Red and blue tinted metal, horns and ridges for the former, faint fins and distinct scales for the latter.

I pushed back my hood and pulled my gloves off, being more ginger with my left glove because of the injured arm it was attached to. I laid the gloves across my lap, and the metal decorations stabbed upward like a small crown. My hands were clammy.

“The patrol doesn’t want to go after the remaining Fallen?” Rain finally spoke. His voice was as careful as his movements had been, with a questioning, almost unsure lilt at the end.

“Tomorrow’s problem, they think. There’s enough to deal with today,” I said.

“That’s the bad news, then?” Rain asked. “Good news is we got some of the worst of them, the bad news is the Crowleys are going to riot?”

“That’s the gist of it,” Byron said. His reserved tone of voice was a good match for the quieter-than-usual Rain.

“You’re the resident expert, Rain,” I said. “How do the Crowleys react?”

“Oof,” Rain huffed out the word. “I know them mostly from visits and once a year events. We’d sometimes get people sent to us from their family, trading people between families, to cement ties. I was one of those people, once.”

Sveta spoke up, “Tattletale wants Cradle in exchange for helping us stop them. The patrol isn’t helping, so…”

“So it’s not even guaranteed we can make this work,” I finished the trailing sentence.

“Wants Cradle how?” Rain asked.

“To go free,” Sveta said. “The patrol is holding him and the assassin-”

“They’re annoyed about it,” Chris added.

“-And we wanted to ask for your input,” Sveta finished her statement.

Rain leaned back, his head lolling back until it rested on the top edge of the bench seat. He sighed.

“I thought I only had Love Lost to worry about now,” he said. “You want to let him go?”

“I don’t,” Kenzie said. “I want you to be safe.”

“We’re unsure. Trying to figure it out,” Sveta said. “It’s why we’re asking about the Crowleys.”

“Where were you originally?” I asked. I put the question out there in part to not make this too abrupt or intense for Rain. “Were you Crowley?”

“McVeay, kind of. My aunt and uncle were more into it than my parents, I think. We had irregular visits to or- or by some intense, religious people that everyone listened to. A lot changed as we moved around, sometimes we camped, sometimes it was trailers, but a few things were constant, like religious services, extended family being there, and those intense, scary people. Then I was sent to the Mathers, along with my aunt and uncle. A bunch of the original people I know from childhood were already there- or here. Are still here.”

“The community part of it sounds nice, at least,” Kenzie offered.

“It really wasn’t,” Rain said.

“Oh.”

“Sorry,” he said. He sighed. “Crowleys… we’ve been seeing them like I used to see the McVeay leaders when we’d go visit their compounds or when they checked on us. The rest of the family never respected them. That branch started because some university kids wanted attention, and then a bunch of brothers with powers jumped in, played along, and took over. They almost got killed by the other families before they figured out how to play the politics.”

“And somewhere along the way, they started buying what they were selling to keep the group together?” I asked.

Rain shook his head. “I don’t know. It never felt like they took this seriously, everyone says they capitalize on the reputation of the other families. But they had the guns today, didn’t they? They were for real.”

“Yeah,” Byron said.

“You don’t have a good sense of them, then?” I asked.

“I have a bit of a sense. The low level guys, there are some that call themselves jackasses. It’s a badge of honor. They vandalize, they do the stunts you might hear about on the news, interrupting serious events, getting people offended.”

“The people most people think about when they think of Fallen,” Byron said.

“Yeah,” Rain said. “Thing is, when we’d all get together so every family had enough people nearby to be an army in case something happened, we’d see the jackasses and they’d be some of the scariest people around.”

Chris leaned forward, “Stay away from those Jackass kids, Junior, they’re up to no good, I hear one of them was crazy enough to trim his pubes with a weed whacker. Be back before eight, because we’re decapitating a baby for the ritual tonight and we need you to hold it down.”

“Not the baby,” Kenzie gasped.

“That first part isn’t all that wrong,” Rain said. “We’d laugh about it, because parents would tell soldiers to stay away from these loons that have probably never seen a fight.”

“They’re all loons,” Kenzie said.

“Well, yeah,” Rain said. “These guys specifically were… not all super nuts. Some were like you or me.”

“You and me are pretty screwed up,” Kenzie said. “I don’t think that’s a good measure.”

“I think it’s right. The minor ones were almost normal, except for the part where they were Fallen and they’d each done something to earn their stripes, like playing death metal over speakers at a remembrance ceremony. But there are a lot of them who… I guess spent years getting celebrated for doing fucked up things. No empathy, no fear of death. Those are the ones to watch out for, and the ones I can definitely see hurting civilians. Shooting people. Shit.”

“Those are the little guys. What about the leaders?” I asked. “If they can order their guys around, what are they going to tell them?”

“I don’t know. I never really learned much about them specifically. I saw a few of their immediate family members. They thrive on being unpredictable, I guess. They seemed to go back and forth between a ton of infighting and hurting themselves and then suddenly being really good manipulators who would send relatives to other branches and isolated cells and try to get them to collaborate on something or they’d steer that ship.”

“If the patrol knows they’re that hard to figure out, they could be taking a wait and see approach,” Sveta said. She looked at me.

“The patrol is overlooking that we have some pretty good ideas about their current direction, with them using the guns like they did,” I pointed out.

“People are going to get hurt if someone doesn’t stop them,” Rain murmured.

“You think?” Byron asked.

“Oh yeah,” Rain said. “Yeah.”

I started to lean forward, because the backs of the bus seats obscured so much of the group, found I couldn’t comfortably do it without my arm hurting, and sat up straighter instead.

“We wanted to prevent this. A spy in Advance-”

A noise at the front of the bus interrupted me. The door was being pushed open. Kenzie and Byron reached for their helmets. Kenzie held the front half of her helmet up in front of her face with her hands.

They relaxed when the head popped up. Black haired, with jewelry.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Erin said. “I can go.”

“Stay,” Rain said.

Erin remained where she was. From the height she stood at, she had to be standing on the stair of the bus just before the level the driver’s chair was situated on. The flat barrier with the railing separated her from us.

“You’re okay now,” she said. “I saw you before, briefly, while you were bloody- I shouldn’t be mentioning that.”

She sounded so shaken.

“Do you guys want to be alone?” Sveta asked.

“Sure,” Rain said, at the same time Erin said, “No.”

The tension in the pause that followed was almost physical.

“Is your family okay?” Rain asked.

“Mom was really upset. She got angry, and tried to pick a fight with someone our age, one of the people in body armor. I was just talking with her, while she’s handcuffed to a rail in one of the buses now. Dad- he’s angry too but he’s holding it together so he can stick with Bryce.”

“I’m glad they’re alive,” Rain said.

“They’re shaken. When we were mind controlled, it shook them. There was a moment I was talking to my mom when she asked me for an explanation, and I thought- did she get it? Then she started making up these really thin reasons and getting really angry at me for no reason, when I wasn’t saying anything.”

Erin looked so disappointed.

She went on, and her eyes were damp as she said, “But I’m glad they’re alive too, Rain. You gave me something I didn’t think was possible. They’re away from all of that. Maybe there’s a chance.”

“I hope so,” Rain said.

“I’m sorry I was so horrible to you,” she said.

“That night was the kind of night that’s horrible no matter what,” Rain said. “Wasn’t you. Let’s pretend it never happened.”

“I’d like that,” she said. “Can we go back to being friends?”

“Friends,” Rain said. “Yeah, of course. Come sit? Keep us company? These guys are going to leave soon, and I’ll be bored like this.”

“I-” she started. “Bryce did get a little bit hurt. I was about to check up on him. I’ll visit properly later.”

“Okay.” The one word from Rain sounded anything but.

“You guys do your hero thing,” she spoke with a forced brightness. “Thank you, everyone. I know you helped. You’re amazing.”

“Except for Kenzie,” Chris said. “She’s just okay.”

“Aw.”

“Don’t listen to him. You’re especially amazing, critter,” Erin said. “Second only to Rain, and I’m biased.”

I snuck a glance at Rain, trying to read him.

“Do your hero thing, Rain,” Erin said. “Because- you are a hero. Thank you for helping to get us out.”

“Say hi to Bryce for me, yeah?” Rain asked.

“I will. I’ll visit soon,” she said. “I promise.”

And then she was gone, ducking her head down, exiting the bus. I twisted around and watched through the blurry, dusty window as she walked away, escorted by a patrol student in uniform.

When I looked back in Rain’s direction, his eyes were moist and getting moister.

I dropped my gaze, my eyes settled on the ‘crown’ of spikes from my gloves. Each spike was meant to run over the top of my knuckles and rest flat against the back of my hand, all in parallel. I rested a finger on one of the longer spikes.

Rain couldn’t be faulted for feeling vulnerable after his ordeal.

“Cradle would hurt them to get at me,” Rain said.

“It’s possible,” I said. I was put in mind of Cradle’s words, and the way his description of Rain had struck home for me. Had I been willing to look at Rain, I might have found it hard to maintain eye contact.

“That’s not what I thought you’d say,” Sveta said. Her eyes, like mine, were downcast.

“You want me to let him go,” Rain said.

“I’m in this to help people,” Sveta said. “I think we should all want this. Even if any of you are more selfish than that, think about where the team is.”

“Where’s the team?” Kenzie asked.

Sveta met my eyes. I glanced at Ashley, in turn, then at Byron.

“Kenzie, Ashley kind of killed someone,” Sveta said. “So did Rain.”

“You came very close to killing someone too,” I said.

“I had to,” Kenzie said.

“Wait, let me talk,” Sveta said. “I’ve been thinking about this. I talked about this in front of all of you at different times. In the group, and in the room with Victoria. My first clear memories, I was dropped into the middle of a populated area in Russia. I killed a lot of people accidentally. Civilians and army that came after me, and then people from the PRT. I didn’t stop because I found a way to stop. I stopped because they caught me.”

“You’ve talked about it,” Ashley said. “Deaths stay with us.”

“They’re supposed to stay with us!” Sveta sounded plaintive and outraged at the same time. “This is major. I got each and every one of those names of the people I killed. I learned about them. I know it wasn’t my fault, but…”

“Saving those people wouldn’t mitigate that,” Ashley said. “There aren’t scales that balance because you take one life and save another. If you take lives you’re a murderer and nothing wipes that slate clean.”

“That’s not true,” Kenzie said.

“I know that, Ashley,” Sveta said, upset, “That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“I think it would be really messed up if the deaths were glossed over because things were as bad as they were,” Sveta said. “And if the team stayed together. I don’t see a good way for things to end.”

“End?” Kenzie asked. “There doesn’t have to be an end.”

“Kenzie,” Sveta sounded apologetic as she said it. “How does this continue?”

“It continues when you accept that the people who died were…” Chris said, trailing off.

“Monstrous?” Sveta asked, archly.

“Assholes,” Chris said.

“Yeah. Let’s kill every asshole,” Sveta said. “That’d be great. We’re supposed to be a hero team. I wouldn’t feel very heroic if this was how we left this.”

“We don’t have to leave anything,” Kenzie said. Sveta moved her hand to reach over the top of the seat and touch Kenzie’s shoulder, and Kenzie pushed it away. “This is silly.”

“An awful lot of us have killed,” Rain said. “Consequences pending or interrupted.”

“You said, once, that you wanted to turn yourself in,” Sveta said. “You weren’t clear about what happened around that, but it led to your joining the group.”

“Time with Mrs. Yamada first, then the group,” he said. “I heard some of that discussion.”

“Mama Mathers kept you from confessing,” I concluded.

“Yes,” he replied. “I’ve always told myself that I’d face consequences for what I did. There’s no room in the jails, yet. But maybe one day I’ll face a sentence. A lot of people got hurt because I didn’t act. Maybe ten, twenty years, with time off because I cooperate. That doesn’t wipe the slate clean, like Ashley said, does it? But maybe it helps?”

“Ashley- you’re cooperating, aren’t you?” Sveta asked.

“Yes.”

“No,” Kenzie said.

“I think it would be a relief,” Ashley said. “Incarceration. I’ve been waiting a long time for it, I think, and there are people waiting for me on the other side.”

“I don’t want to be the bad guy. I just want due process,” Sveta said. “That’s all.”

“How does this relate to going after the Fallen?” I asked.

“I don’t want this to be all regrets,” she said. “You’re certain this is going to turn violent, Rain?”

“Completely,” he said. “It’s the mindset. The Crowleys are a bit of a mystery but Fallen as a group aren’t.”

“Then let’s get people to help,” Sveta said. “The patrol might not help, the Undersiders might refuse if we don’t give them Cradle, but we made other allies. If this is an emergency then let’s call in favors and do what we can.”

“Without getting involved,” Byron said.

“Yeah,” Sveta said. “Not us as a group. We’d be peripheral, coordinating. We all know people. We can do the right thing here, all of us working together. That’s what I want most- for this to have been a good thing.”

“You say that like it’s already over,” Kenzie said.

“This part of it’s almost over,” Ashley said.

“No,” Kenzie said. “Nuh uh.”

“Does not compute with K-z logic,” Chris said.

“Fuck off, Chris,” Kenzie said. “Dickhole.”

She grabbed her helmet as she stood up, putting it on as the two halves. She stopped walking as I put a hand out.

“Let me go,” she said.

“I will. One question though,” I said.

“What?”

“Are you going to regret not being here for this conversation? I can fill you in after, if you need to get away, or I could come with you, if you needed company or backup.”

“You agree with Sveta, don’t you?” she asked, accusatory.

“I like the idea of due process and fair justice,” I said. “I’m not as sure as Sveta that this machine has its cogs in place.”

She stood there. Even with the parts of her bodysuit that stood out to give it definition and decoration, it was very apparent how small and skinny she was. A couple of inches shy of being five feet tall. Fragile, in a completely different way than Rain was fragile, right now.

She pushed past my hand, walked down the aisle a bit, and then seated herself on a seat a few rows behind Ashley, her back to us.

“Outlining our options, Tattletale said she’d keep an eye on Cradle,” I said.

“She says a lot of things,” Chris said. “I’m a bit lost, in all of this. But she pointed Cradle and the cleaver assassin at Rain, right? She led them right to him.”

“It looks like it,” Sveta said.

“Then she pointed us at the assassin guy and Cradle.”

“Yeah,” Sveta said.

“And now she wants us to let Cradle go.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Contradictory,” Chris said.

“She promised an explanation,” I said.

“Damn this fragile healing effect,” Rain said. He sounded angrier than anything, now. “I really want that explanation, now, to my face.”

“I can help with that,” Kenzie said, from halfway down the bus, her back still to us.

I looked at Rain, and then I looked at the boy who had forecast so much of this. Tristan might have been the type for a victorious ‘I told you so’, had the roles been reversed. Byron, however, was quiet, his expression unreadable.

My hand moved, and the ‘crown’ moved with it. I’d exerted too much pressure, and the point of the spike had pierced the bed of my finger, with red blood welling up and a droplet tracing its way down the spike.

I donned the glove, the fabric serving to cover the small puncture wound.

⊙

I’d met with Tattletale before, in a place very similar to this. The city was close to one of the portals, and it was very likely that it was one of the cities that had been supplied with foreign material, and that material was concrete. Underfoot, the buildings, the supporting pillars that ran diagonally from the ground to the buildings.

Yellow paint marked the pillars, so cars wouldn’t drive into gray pillars against a backdrop of gray ground and gray buildings. More of the paint had been used to define the boundaries of the road. Perhaps because the yellow paint was so prevalent, some enterprising vandals had used a boatload of it to scrawl crude images and words along many surfaces- only some of which had been cleaned or partially cleaned. I suspected the cleanup crews were high school students working as part of a morning or afternoon block, because there seemed to be a bias in the graffiti that was partially removed versus the images that hadn’t been touched. Art was allowed to stay up as long as possible.

Again, I was guided to a food court, this one beside a complicated concrete edifice with extraneous pillars and supports, and a long overhang that kept things dry in the light rain. Again, the graffiti, I noted. Maybe it was something Tattletale liked or identified with the Undersiders.

This time, though, I wasn’t arriving alone.

It was an odd feeling, to have the team with me, when things stood where they did. Minus two members, but most of us were present. Yes, things were tense and uneasy, but there had been a moment back there where I’d been damn proud of all of them. Against Cradle in particular, we’d stood together.

Once we’d figured out where we were going, deciding on a route that avoided the settled areas and roads, Vista had shortened the distance as much as she could. We’d left Kenzie’s projector cube behind, in favor of the faster trip. Even with the shortcut, we’d had to hitch a ride to get ourselves here. Concord Station.

The Undersiders were waiting for us. They sat on tables and chairs, or lounged with stuffed animals and mutant dogs giving them something to lean on or sit on. Foil and Imp stood, while others sat or leaned back. Foil was stock still, on guard, and Imp was restless.

There were others. I recognized Snuff. There was the boy with the birds. Two people were dressed to match Rachel in general style, with heavy clothes that seemed more utilitarian, except for bits and pieces, like a collar here or a spiked belt wrapped around the arm there. The guy wore a bear trap decoration around his lower face.

Maybe those were utilitarian too, with ‘intimidation’ being the sought-after utility.

They would have outnumbered us without the mutant dogs and the giant stuffed animals with the black cloth. With them, though? Three to one.

Similar to Snag’s numbers, now that I thought about it.

“The Fallen reached the city a bit ago,” Tattletale said. “They didn’t go in with guns blazing, but they’re liable to come out that way.”

“I see your team made it out intact,” I observed. Off to my left, Chris walked away, traveling the perimeter of the area where the overhang kept the rain off. Foil changed position, ready to take a shot with her crossbow if she had to, and one of the dogs that had been lying down stood up.

“We get by,” Tattletale said. “We were playing it careful, we even tried to warn Prancer that something was wrong. He didn’t buy it. That’s the issue you run into when you surround yourself with villains and deceivers. You can’t be sure they’re for real when they tell you something important.”

“Is it isolating, Tattletale, sitting there surrounded with your deceivers and villains?” I asked.

“No. I’m pretty content right now, actually.”

“Weld says hi, Foil,” Sveta said. “He wishes he could have talked with you while you were there.”

Foil nodded, but she remained silent.

“This is kind of a favor, us stopping while we’re partway home, waiting for you, giving you the deets you’re so eager for.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I really do appreciate this. I know it’s a really difficult thing, acting halfway decent. Do make sure you keep pointing it out, any time you do it, and gloss over the parts where there’s tacit manipulation or something in it for you.”

Tristan leaned over and murmured, “Are you sure you’re good taking point on this?”

“Yeah,” I murmured back.

“She and I, we have a rapport, Capricorn,” Tattletale said. “It’s not a healthy rapport, but we are who we are. Oil and water.”

“Can we be the oil?” Imp asked. “Slick, dark, with wealth implied?”

Beside me, Looksee had her camera. She hefted it up and set it down on the table.

“No recordings, please,” Tattletale said. “Or this conversation is over.”

“It’s not a recording,” Looksee said.

“Strange tinker devices? Not a great way to open this discussion,” Tattletale said. “At least it’s interesting. I thought this would be the usual predictable thing with you sniping at me and then asking the questions. Why did I help you, why did I help Cradle, what are the Fallen doing, what are you missing?”

“No,” I said.

“If you’re not giving me Cradle, this is going to be a short meeting,” she said.

“Explanations before we give you anything,” I said.

“And we’re back to the script,” Tattletale sighed the words, barely audible. “Normally people pay me for my information. But for you, and for hometown pride…”

“Not me,” I said. “The explanations aren’t for me.”

I looked at Kenzie.

She hit a button on her camera. When it didn’t boot, she hammered it with her hand a few times.

The projector came on. The two missing members of our group appeared. Ashley was projected, her lower body a static black dress. She’d be sitting on a bus right now, a laptop beside her, to capture her face and anything she said.

And Rain. For the moment, he was intact, but frozen in place.

“Ah,” Tattletale said. “Your Fallen teammate.”

“It’s up to him whether we give you Cradle or not,” I said. “But we’re leaning toward not, just so you know.”

“Of course. Standard negotiation.”

Looksee hit the camera again.

Rain animated, the image glitching in the moment before it caught up. Now he appeared like he was in the plaza with us, the occasional scan line or glitch marking him for the projected image he was.

Looksee’s camera had captured the images of the wounds. The slashes, the cuts and cleaves, and the parts where skin peeled away. It simulated the blood.

She’d even captured the background sound. The ragged, rough breathing, like each inhalation and exhalation was an effort.

“I don’t need to ask you why you helped both Cradle and us,” I said. “I think I get it.”

“Do you now?” Tattletale asked. Her attention was on Rain’s spectre. Damsel’s spectre moved around the group, standing beside Looksee.

“I get it because you want the same thing I want. You were managing the battle and hoping and praying that people would see the light and play nice. You want the old rules and the old ‘game’, and you’re apparently not that stellar when it comes to reading multi-triggers like my teammate, Cradle, or March. You underestimated the bloodlust and you overestimated how much my teammate deserved it. He got the cleaver, and you felt so darn awful about it, you volunteered help.”

“Oh my god, Tattletale,” Parian said.

“There’s a good bit more to it,” Tattletale said, before turning to tell Parian, “so don’t buy too heavily into the theatrics. We’re capes. We should be used to this.”

“If you want to deal with people like Cradle, you should at least look at the consequences,” Sveta said.

“I’m aware of the consequences. I’m aware of a ton of stuff. The reality is, Garotte, there’s bigger picture stuff. There’re a half-dozen people who are only seeing one or two dimensions of the greater structure and we’re each trying to keep it from toppling without being able to talk to the others. I’m trying to hold up my end and simultaneously open the channels of communication. Kind of important.”

So she said, but she didn’t like looking at Rain as she said it.

I could work with that. Maybe I wouldn’t take point on this after all. I felt a grim kind of satisfaction.

“Great,” I said. “Elaborate. But don’t tell me. Tell him.”

“Please. Let’s talk,” the bloodied image of Rain said.

Pitch – 6.8

“Snuff?” Tattletale asked. She glanced back at the hooded brute. “Can you take Chicken Little for a walk?”

“Can do,” the man in the hood said.

“Chicken Little?” I asked.

“That’s a good name,” Looksee said. “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”

I could hear Chris sigh.

“I make it fall,” the boy with the birds said. His voice was small and far away. On a rooftop to our left, birds took off, flying through the light rain.

“Perfect,” Looksee said, giving him a thumbs up.

Chris sighed again.

The birds swooped down to settle at the foot of one of the blocky, concrete office buildings.

“Bye,” Chicken Little said.

“Bye,” Looksee said.

The birds took off, flying over and ahead of the kid.

The fact that everyone was waiting for the hooded executioner to lead the kid villain away gave me a chance to observe and think- he wasn’t good at projecting his voice. His frame was more similar to Kenzie, but he slouched some like Chris did. Chris, though, had a natural volume, possibly because of subtle changer effects. I felt an urge to coach him, and correct something that seemed so obvious, which might have been why I was fixated on it.

It was disconcerting to picture my giving him some tips, having him standing up straighter, having him put his hands in his back pockets as an example of how far back his shoulders should be, and having him speak. My mom had done it with me, once upon a time.

Rain pattered down beyond the lip of shelter that extended out over our portion of the plaza. The sound of pained breathing wheezed in and out in the background.

“Chicken Little,” I said, again.

“I was pushing for Hitchcock,” Tattletale said. “Cardinal was good too, but taken.”

“I was pushing for Unkindness,” Imp added. “It went over everyone’s heads.”

“Then it’s not a good cape name,” I said. “It’s going over my head.”

“High bar,” Imp retorted.

“I was a pretty good student, actually,” I said.

“Were you, though? I was a terrible student and I got it.”

“An unkindness of ravens,” Ashley said. Her voice came from Looksee’s camera, rather than from the projection.

“Thank you!” Imp said.

“It’s not very good,” Ashley said.

“Ugh!”

“He controls a swarm of birds?” I asked. I arched an eyebrow.

“It reminded me of a friend, believe it or not. He needed a mentor, and it seemed natural.”

“Naturally,” I said.

“Trying to do right by him,” Tattletale said, “Letting him pick his own name, which you should never let a pre-teen do-”

“Ahem,” Looksee said.

“Damn straight,” Chris said.

“-Teaching him what he needs to know to get by as a cape in this crazy world of ours, and, you know, not making him stand there while you parade around a projection of a horribly maimed teenager. The little things.”

“I’m his age and I put that projection together, you know,” Looksee said. “I had to look really closely at the images I was rendering. This is good work!”

“You appear to have mentors who are fine with exposing you to that kind of thing, Looksee,” Tattletale’s reply was as smooth as anything.

“Maybe I’m a badass,” Looksee said. “I took out Mama Mathers.”

“Speaking of,” Tattletale said, perking up and looking past Looksee to Capricorn. “She’s dead? No. Contained?”

“She’s contained with physical constraints and some power stuff,” Capricorn said.

“Partially phased into another reality,” Rain clarified. “I talked to the heroes. She’s kept an eye on the Crowley clan for years, twenty-four seven. She might not sleep.”

“Tranquilizers don’t work, she’ll fake it,” Tattletale said. “You figured that out. Good. Phasing her out should break the connection as long as it lasts, if it can be maintained. It might even force her to reset all the connections.”

“That was the line of thinking,” I said.

Rain spoke up, taking advantage of the fact he’d had an opening in the conversation again, “I’d really like to hear how you can know how she works, know how she keeps people under her thumb, and then sign off on hurting the innocents caught in the mix. Doing this to me.”

“I’d like to hear that too, Tattletale,” Foil said.

“Please,” Parian said.

“Please,” I said, echoing Parian’s word, but in my brightest, nicest tone of voice. I smiled at Tattletale.

Tattletale fixed me with her best ‘are you serious’ look.

“You said you’d help Cradle, but you didn’t want to know what happened to the kid,” I said. “We thought you needed to see the consequences of your actions.”

“That is pretty ripe, coming from the princess of damage and her troupe of walking disaster areas,” Tattletale said. “I have looked you guys up, read files, you know.”

“Deflecting?” Tristan asked.

“A bit, yeah. But I think it’s important for context, because you guys don’t get to act high and mighty here. The Fallen kid locked people inside a mall and let them die from trampling, fire and smoke. The junior half of Team Reach crashed and burned after you got up to your antics, Capricorn. Damsel of Distress had an invite to the Slaughterhouse Nine.”

“So did I,” Rachel said.

“Shh,” Tattletale said.

“Are you saying you’d do the same for any of us?” I asked.

“I’m saying you guys are really not the ones who should be throwing stones here. I know how you got together, even if I don’t have all the individual details. The institution that looks after Creepy Kid barely sees him and they’re scared enough of him when he’s there to let him do what he wants. There’s a story there.”

Something to look into, then.

Tattletale went on, “Garotte, honey, you had my team’s back at the Cauldron HQ. I don’t want to sling mud at you, but anyone who knows you knows you’re dangerous and you’ve hurt a lot of people.”

“Anyone who knows her wouldn’t fault her for it,” I said. “I can fault you for knowing full well what you were setting in motion.”

Sveta spoke, “I have never, not once, wanted anyone to die,” Sveta said, her voice firm, even tight.

“You and I both know that’s a lie,” Tattletale said.

“Death happened,” Sveta said. She was glowering. “If I’d had the choice, I would have spared even her. My body was wounded, I was as freaked out as I’ve ever been, and someone needed to die. I’ve made peace with the fact that I was able to make that someone be her.”

“Convenient,” Tattletale’s word was barely audible.

“Honey,” Sveta replied, and the word was only venom. “Don’t say you don’t want to sling mud at me and then go for the jugular. We’re not stupid. If you’re going to be vicious with someone who has saved the lives of several people here, don’t coat it in that ‘honey’.”

“Throwing everything you’ve got at the wall and seeing what sticks, Tattletale?” I asked. “Desperate.”

“I’m tired,” Tattletale said.

“You skipped me, by the way,” Looksee said.

“I skipped you because you’re prepubescent and I’m not that big of a bitch.”

“I can take it. I don’t want special treatment.”

“I’m tired, Victoria,” Tattletale said. “I’ve spent two years trying to do my part to keep the world standing upright. Parian, Foil, Imp, Rachel, you guys know the kind of thing I’ve been doing.”

“Ignoring me is bitchier than whatever you were going to say,” Looksee said.

“What if I told you there was nothing?” Tattletale asked, exasperated.

“I’d say you were being condescending, which is super bitchy.”

“Kiddo, you fucking raised the bar by not only blazing an accelerant-soaked trail of destruction through your cape life, but your civilian life too. You did more damage casually than some do intentionally. There’s a reason I ignored your calls. You proved me right when you bricked my good phone with the incessant attempts to get my attention.”

“Can confirm,” Imp remarked. “Tats went mute mid-mission while she scrambled to get a new phone. She was pissed. It was great.”

Looksee paused, digesting that, then answered Tattletale at a lower volume than before. “I automated it, so you know.”

“I figured. Point stands.”

“It’ll unbrick if you reply to one of the messages. That was the point, if you read any of the warnings or the last message sent.”

Tattletale shook her head. “Where was I?”

“You’re tired, so you took a shortcut by striking a deal with a guy who was really good with blades and the guy who really wanted me cut up,” Rain said.

I glanced at the Undersiders. They weren’t moving much. Foil was bending down so Parian could whisper something in her ear. Both of them were fixing their eyes on Tattletale, even while Parian whispered.

“Not a shortcut,” Tattletale said.

“He knew where to place the blades for maximum effect, drawing it out,” Rain said. His fingers touched one of the wounds. “That’s why they hired him, you know.”

“It wasn’t a shortcut, and it was never intended that they’d go through with it,” Tattletale said. “So please, off the high horses, stop crawling up my ass, and I’ll explain.”

“That you made a mistake,” I said.

“Oh my god,” she said. “If they didn’t hire me, they would have hired someone else. The benefit of them hiring me? I had every intention of steering them away. I offered Cradle something he wanted more than revenge, last minute, after I’d proven I could deliver what he wanted. Well, it wasn’t last minute. Last thirty seconds, because I had to take thirty to put my card in a new phone to repopen communication after someone bricked my good phone.”

Tattletale frowned at Looksee as she said that last part.

“A mistake, then,” I said. “You were tired and you made a mistake, is what you’re saying.”

“Someone else got to Cradle in the meantime, I think. If we had this conversation in five days, I could give you a definitive answer. For now, best I can do for explanations? I figured it out and someone steered him onto a more determined course. I didn’t make a mistake, and no, grab bags aren’t some inexplicable thing for me. I wasn’t shooting blind, thank you very much.”

“Are you saying that because you’re for real or because you’re trying to cover your weaknesses?”

“Gee, Victoria,” Tattletale said. “I could hardly be blamed if it was me covering my ass. The last time I gave you a hint about the strengths and weaknesses of my power, you went full offensive with this bit of theatrics. But no. March was and is an isolated, special case.”

“In so many ways,” Foil murmured.

“Theatrics are one of the best part of being a cape,” I said.

“One of them,” Capricorn said.

“Okay,” she said. “But you’re wrong that I’m covering my ass. No, sorry.”

I was right that Rain had her agitated though.

“What was the plan?” Rain asked.

“Had all gone as intended, you would have walked away. A lot depended on whether your three fellow grab-bags were there together, or which one or two were there, but there was no way I could make the offer earlier.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“How do you think that would go, Victoria? Hey, guys, I’ll give you this thing if you promise not to go after this member of the Fallen you have really good justification for hating. For no reason, I promise, I’m totally not on his side. Come on. They do have some humanity. For Snag, a few choice words at the moment he was about to pull the metaphorical trigger, as that tiny part of him screamed that it didn’t want to do it? Would’ve worked.”

“Love Lost?” Rain asked.

“Angrier. Hurting more. You would have needed to bleed first, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as bad. It’s why I told Cradle that if he and Operator went after you, she shouldn’t be there. She would have been too hard to hold back, and what I told him was that she would have snapped and killed you in a very unsatisfyingly quick way. I could have steered her away with the right words, right timing, but I didn’t want to gamble it. Cradle is pragmatic. He got it. She wasn’t invited along.”

“And Cradle? He was there and you couldn’t stop him.”

“Like I said, I needed to prove I could deliver, to maintain the professional relationship, but I didn’t have to deliver if I could make a better offer. I think someone beat me to it, offering him something.”

“Who? What were they offering? What were you?”

“I don’t know who or what. They exist in hypothetical. As for me, I was offering a way out.”

“A way out,” Rain said. “Of the- the rotation.”

“There’s a cape by the name of Goddess. Also the Blue Empress, Blue Lady, the Woman in Blue. Once situated on Earth Shin, she was brought here for the fight against Scion by a strange, unnamed player who has since been classified as a threat on par with any Endbringer. Or with Goddess, as it happens. Unfortunately, this anonymous figure didn’t put her back.”

“A strange, unnamed player?” I asked.

“So it happens,” Tattletale said, with a grin. “With only a select group of top Wardens and major players really tracking what really happened. But we were talking the woman in blue. She got powers and was relocated to Earth Shin before she could… grow to full potential. Relocated by a certain secretive agency.”

“Cauldron,” Sveta said.

“Yep. She proceeded to take over earth Shin, with all other parahumans acting as her lieutenants. All other parahumans on that world, mind. No exceptions. Which the organization deemed fine, because they got to keep her in their back pocket, even while they couldn’t control her. She is, or was, a grab-bag, she found a way to pull free of her cluster, and she came out of it with a set of powers that would each be world-class on their own.”

“What happened to the others?” Rain asked.

“Dead?” I guessed.

“Alive. Four of them, anyhow. A fifth killed themselves because they couldn’t fill the void where the power and feeling powerful once were. None of them were left with more than whispers of power after. But they had their lives and their particular dynamic was stopped in its tracks. Not all clusters have a schtick, but they did, like the mall group does, and Goddess taking all the power brought an end to it.”

“You were going to tell Cradle how to do it,” Rain said. “How to get all the power and leave the rest of us with nothing.”

“Can you fault me? He’s the most level headed, and out of the rest of the group, one was an raging asshole, my second choice of the bunch by the way, one can’t take her mask off because if she does she can’t help but scream, and the last member of the group kept the door locked while a mall full of people were trampled, burned, and-or suffocated.”

“He would have gotten all the power for himself?” I asked.

“The last time this worked, the parahuman was way more than the sum of the individual parts. I’ve tried to sell Foil on it, but she isn’t too keen.”

“I don’t want to tamper,” Foil said.

“I don’t either,” Parian said.

“She’s happy, see? Cradle, though? He was one hundred percent the type to go for it, all signs pointed to yes, and he said no.”

“Because he’s a cluster cape,” Chris said. “You had a bad read.”

Prodding her.

“No. Because then I would have had a capital-N-slash-capital-A, underlined, for my thinker read on him.”

Prodding her and it worked.

“There’s an issue with this,” Capricorn said.

“A few, actually,” Sveta said.

“The one that springs to mind is that you wanted to repeat the process that, the last time it worked, saw a whole Earth being taken over?” Capricorn asked.

“He would have owed me one,” Tattletale said. “I don’t think he would have been as strong. Four powersets baseline.”

“I think the last thing the world needs is more over-the-top parahumans,” I said.

“I think you’re situated on in your own little peninsula, with your own little team, while I’m the one who has spent the last two years trying to help the peace stay peaceful. Like I said, there are a lot of people trying to keep things upright, but they aren’t communicating, they can’t, and the guys on the far side of everything are pushing really frigging hard to keep things from toppling, and something’s going to give. Over here? We can’t push back. We don’t have muscle.”

“That’s why you want Cradle?” Rain asked. “To be your muscle?”

“No. That’s my last ditch move, believe me. For now, there’s another player who’s pushing on things. Someone we tried really frigging hard to kick down an metaphorical elevator shaft, as it happens.”

“Ha,” Imp said. “That asshole.”

“We broke his legs and we scared him away, and he’s good at hiding. He likes tinkers and he’s interested in complex powers. If I could have a tinker I can trust with the right emotion power for the task at hand?”

“Cradle,” Capricorn said.

“I’d need to have a conversation with him. A long one, so I can figure out what went wrong back there. If he wasn’t too compromised and my idea of giving him all the powers was tempting for him, he’d go run this errand for me, spend about a year in a completely different Earth with no access to your Fallen boy there. I’d figure out what to do with him by the conclusion of it.”

“If he was compromised?” Ashley asked.

“Cross that bridge when I come to it,” Tattletale said.

Ashley made a gun with the fingers and thumb of her good hand. A glitch manifested at a fingertip as she ‘fired’ it. The projected image flickered violently, presumably where her power was kicking in, the effect tracing around her hand as she lowered it, joined by a plume of more artifacting and glitches at the damaged spot of her arm. The sound was muted, and the camera whined. A dog barked.

“My dogs don’t like that sound,” Rachel said. “Stop.”

Looksee thumped the camera.

“Assuming you’re suggesting I kill him, it’s not out of the question,” Tattletale said. “I’m not as shy as you lot pretend to be. I can’t push that hard on things as a whole. I don’t have the muscle some of the major players do, and that’s just reality. I can try to open channels and hamstring the ones who aren’t helping. I need Cradle. Give me him, I can help you guys with the Fallen.”

We exchanged glances.

“I’m not happy you were keeping this secret,” Foil said.

“I’ve offered to rope you guys in. You’re making and distributing clothes and doing your mercenary thing,” Tattletale said. “If you only join for the big stuff, it gets hard to get you up to speed, especially if I don’t want to tip off someone like Cradle. If you insist this is my thing and that you want no part in it, don’t get so upset if I do it in a very Tattletale way.”

“She’s lonely,” Imp said.

“I’m irritated,” Tattletale said. “I’m tired. We’ve got the lady in blue trying to get up to full strength again, a guy who wears fucking sweaters is pulling at the threads that are holding everything together while maintaining and expanding the institution side of the old Cauldron. A handful of others are running the ideological end of Cauldron. Both of those groups are strong in their own way and yet they aren’t doing a tenth what Cauldron used to do in forestalling disasters and containing the most… unproductive capes and cape-related messes.”

“They’re rebuilding Cauldron?” Sveta asked, horrified.

“The day the Cauldron cracked, they were there moving in with what would be hundreds of employees. You were there at one point. You had to have seen the empty offices and rooms. Every last one of those offices have people now. Are they doing things on the level of what they did to you guys? No. But only because they lack the opportunity.”

“Oh my god,” Sveta said.

“And again, there used to be an awful lot of really fucked up parahumans, powers and power-related things that would have top tier capes moving in to relocate or destroy, before those things were even a problem. Those guys aren’t doing that clean-up anymore! I’ve taken some of that on my plate, in the course of my regular business. There’s a war starting sometime this week, a Machine Army that’s literally on the horizon if you can see between worlds, warlords, broken triggers, and yeah, the Fallen are a mess unto themselves.”

“They have reach,” I said. “They’re hooking people in.”

“I know they’re a thing. They’re a relatively manageable thing. Let’s not forget that, you know, if every single last one of these manageable and less manageable problems I’ve mentioned were magically handled, this city would not be in an especially good place. Okay? That’s what I’m doing. Could I have handled this particular thing better? Probably. But I’m not the bad guy.”

“Sounds major,” I said.

Tattletale shrugged. She shifted position where she sat on the table, crossing her legs. She grabbed her ankles with her hands.

“Thank you for doing what you’ve been doing,” I said.

“It’s nice to get that from someone,” she said.

“But I can’t help but notice that through all of this, explaining yourself, you haven’t actually apologized for your part in it.”

Rain was very still, to the point that I wasn’t sure if he’d glitched out and frozen again, with the camera needing more percussive maintenance.

But his hair moved. The breathing continued.

Tattletale replied, “Whatever I say, you find fault in it. Forget words. Look at my actions here.”

Capricorn answered her. “Your action is that you’re giving us help, but it’s help in exchange for this person you need, someone you’ve shown you can’t keep on top of. That person wants my friend dead. If the tables were turned, would you consider that gracious?”

“Tattletale,” Sveta said, adding her voice to his. “You have to know those Fallen are going to hurt people. You can’t want that. When everything went to shit and the world ended, there was an implicit trust. Can we take a step back toward that? Give us this. Then we’ll talk, we’ll bring others into the discussion.”

“Spies and moles. Some with thinker or changer powers,” Tattletale said. “Have to limit who we bring into the discussion. Look at what happened back outside New Haven. I’m deeming you guys, like, sixty percent safe, which I normally wouldn’t work with, but if I don’t deal with you then I might lose these guys.”

She jerked her thumb at the Undersiders.

“If you think you’re getting rid of me for good, you’re deluded,” Imp said. “Though I have to say I was pretty disappointed at the start there.”

“Have I redeemed myself in your eyes?” Tattletale asked, sarcastic.

“You’re okayish,” Imp said.

“I’m so glad.”

Tattletale answered Imp, but I could see that her attention was on Foil and Parian.

Rachel could apparently be assumed to be fine with things.

I could see the pair mulling things over. As they whispered, Tattletale’s focus still pointed in their direction, it became harder to say that she wasn’t waiting for a verdict from them.

“Can we trust her?” Capricorn asked. He’d drawn closer to me, and now spoke in my ear. Sveta was already situated near enough to me to hear the question.

I couldn’t give an immediate answer.

Looksee approached us. She brought the camera, which struggled to keep the projections stable as it bobbed, but it seemed to serve to allow Rain and Ashley to join our conversation. Chris was the last to catch up with us.

“I trust her,” Looksee said. “I asked her to dish dirt on me and she did.”

“That’s the worst way of telling,” Chris said.

“Being treated crummy is way better than being ignored,” Looksee said.

“That’s not right,” Ashley said. “Don’t ever let someone who should care about you treat you badly.”

“Yeah? Okay. Then don’t talk to me right now. I’m mad at you. I’m mad at mostly everyone but especially you.”

“Especially me?”

“Especially you.”

“Fair.”

“Everyone’s input is important here,” Capricorn said. “But Rain, you were the one who was hurt. Victoria, you know Tattletale best out of all of us.”

“We need to help those people,” Sveta said.

“I know,” Capricorn said. “But I think if Rain feels conflicted about releasing Cradle, even with this new information-”

“Which may or may not be true,” Chris interrupted.

“It’s understandable, isn’t it?” Capricorn asked.

“Conflicted is understandable,” Sveta said. “I had to face down the person who changed me in a life-altering way. I know you’re connected to them. You can’t get away from them. I see it’s similar in a way and I understand. I really do.”

“It’s a question of what you’d regret, I think,” I said.

“Meaning you think Rain should release Cradle to buy Tattletale’s help,” Chris said.

“I don’t think that at all,” I said. “I think… you can help the most people possible, and you can still end up with horrible regrets and serious consequences.”

“She got to you.”

It took me a second to connect to who had spoken. Sveta.

She was partially focused on Tattletale. Imp, Rachel, Parian and Foil were talking in an animated way, with some henchmen on the very periphery. Tattletale hadn’t budged from her seat, her attention focused on nothing in particular.

“Tattletale,” I finished the thought. “Maybe she did.”

“You trust her?” Capricorn asked, again.

“No,” I said. “But I think I believe her.”

“Fuck,” Rain said.

All heads turned to face his projection, except Looksee, who looked at the camera instead.

“If it comes down to regretting deaths five years from now or saving lives and maybe not living through the next five years, I guess I’ll save the lives,” Rain said.

“You’re sure?” Capricorn asked.

“No. But I spent my whole life as a believer. I’ll believe this is the right thing.”

“Come on,” Capricorn said.

As a group, we walked over to the Undersiders’ huddle. Tattletale rotated herself on her seat atop the concrete slab table with a push of her hand, to stay facing us.

The Undersiders broke away from their cluster to face us as we drew nearer. One of the dogs growled, and Rachel shushed it.

“Tattletale,” Parian said. “We think you should make amends here.”

Tattletale’s eyes roved over our group. She fixed them on Rain.

She knew. She knew what we came to say. That Rain had come to the conclusion he had.

“Amends,” she said. “I’ll point you at the Fallen. You don’t have to give me Cradle. If I really need him, I’ll discuss it with you and get permission first.”

⊙

Boston. New Boston, but all attempts to make that stick had failed, in a stark contrast to how Brockton Bay had been so ready to rechristen itself as New Brockton.

Boston wasn’t a city, really. It was more of an Über-neighborhood, one set of tiles in the vast, disappearing-into-the-horizon expanse of city that was the megalopolis. It wasn’t really Boston, either. Attempts had been made to make Boston resemble its former self, but materials were different, everything was new, and the golden patina remained.

Fenway Station. A transportation hub, surrounded by quickly thrown-together homes that attempted to stay hidden or camouflaged among the brownstone and brick fixtures with gold-tinted windows.

The Boston neighorhoods had heroes of their own. Independents, and small teams separate from the Wardens. With Tattletale making the calls, we had their help. There were others, but Tattletale felt they were a risk, with a chance of moles and troublemakers, and I believed her.

Everyone was finding a location. Looksee had one working camera doing sweeps, and the laptop beside her showed the figures. Some were highlighted in red. Strange body shapes, statures, or more muscle than the usual. When they clustered, we could know that the people on one floor or one set of floors of a building were likely capes.

People from the Clans were out on the street. Not many bikers. There would be Fallen too.

I sat on the edge of a roof, and Looksee sat with her back to the lip of the roof beside me, her laptop placed where the both of us could see it. Sveta sat beside me, and shifted position to rest her head on my shoulder. Like old times.

“Capricorn?” Looksee asked.

A pause.

“Red pickup, rust at left wheel. A bit ahead of you. It has guns in the back,” she said.

Another pause.

“Sounds good,” she said.

“How’re you managing your end of things?” Sveta asked.

“It’s pretty easy,” Looksee said, without turning around. “Facial recognition, tagging everyone that’s a possible problem.”

The cooperation of everyone we needed to cooperate. We had a secured perimeter, there were civilians inside that perimeter, but if we timed our attack just right, then there was a good chance we could evacuate them out. Sveta and I were in the wings. Capricorn could bar the path to bystanders.

The team was missing Rain, who was still recuperating. Ashley was waiting for proper transportation to a secure facility.

This was, in a way, a microcosm of the conflict we’d just weathered. We were tired, hurting, and pushing forward purely on the energy that came from this being something we really wanted to do.

Sveta, Kenzie, Tristan, Byron, myself. We wanted to be heroes. I liked to think we were heroes.

Chris- he was out there, at one of the distant corners of the perimeter, being Chris and keeping an eye on things. He’d told us that he could change twice a day, but he’d also implied it wouldn’t be a problem if trouble headed his way, that he’d be okay.

Hard to tell, sometimes, when parahumans could be so foolhardy.

Chris wanted- not to be a hero. He seemed to want something out of being a hero.

Rain and Ashley- I was pretty sure they needed to be heroes, but it wasn’t a need in the same way I needed to be a hero or I wasn’t living up to some fundamental part of myself. They needed to be heroes in the sense that someone who was freezing to death needed to start fires.

Rain had taken a giant step forward in that regard, and Ashley had fallen back.

I knew what I needed to do. I’d keep tabs on them. I’d go to dinner with Kenzie and ensure that she knew that if the team did in fact fall apart, it didn’t mean the relationships were gone. I’d check on Chris’ situation, because what Tattletale had said concerned me. I’d follow up on Tristan. I’d continue to visit Sveta at her place, and see Weld. I would check in on on Ashley and Rain, whatever path they had ahead of them. If that meant making sure they had visitors in jail, then I’d handle that.

“They want the go-ahead to attack,” Looksee said.

I had a bird’s eye view of everything. I surveyed the situation, checked the laptop.

“They want it soon. People are getting into cars in the parking garage. Some of those cars have guns.”

I gave her a thumbs up.

“Attacking,” she reported.

Cars pulled out of the parking garage. They skidded through puddles, and the puddles solidified. The first truck lost the rubber from three of its wheels, skidding forward on the rims and one corner of the front end. The one behind it stopped abruptly, with the vehicles behind it crashing into it, in a three-car pileup.

I saw the colors as capes descended on the scene. As more left the bottom floor of the building on foot, and yet others climbed out by way of the fire escape, it quickly became an all-out brawl.

It was weird to be removed from it, to not be leaping in. I was reminded of how I’d felt when I’d been on the patrol block. I’d handled the research, tutored the kids, gave presentations on key things about parahumans, and I’d handled the routine errands like taking water out to tent cities and out past the portals.

A part of me had wanted to leap into things, and that part of me had stopped because it had known that leaping in had meant using the wretch, and I hadn’t been ready to do that.

I’d gone from stark nightmare to vague, new reality and I’d struggled hard in the transition. I’d thought I was getting better, settling for the vague reality, no longer fighting it. Staying still and going easy had meant letting myself heal, hadn’t it?

Then the attack on the community center. The reality check. Then finding out that this world didn’t really have a place in it for me, if I really wanted to be me.

Then the therapy team.

Even that had felt indistinct somehow. When I’d introduced the topic of being heroes, hadn’t I talked about the kinds of hero? The ways money came in- we’d started to do that, but indistinctly. Heroes were ideological, or they were about money. They could be heroes for a cause or specific mission.

Indistinct because we’d been a mix of heroes at heart, heroes to serve ends, and those who needed to be heroes, but who, at the time, weren’t.

Looksee was struggling with saying goodbye to people. I was telling myself I could keep the people, but I struggled with saying goodbye to the idea.

“Fire,” Sveta said.

The jackasses were spreading out, and I saw the orange tint of flame, the black of smoke. They were setting fire to the trash that had been set out, to a dumpster, and to the contents of one ruined truck bed.

I heard Capricorn’s voice through my earphone, even though the earphone wasn’t plugged into my ear.

“He says he’s got it.”

I adjusted my earbud to bring the attached microphone closer to my mouth. “Careful of any explosives in the truck bed.”

“Got it,” I heard his reply.

“Group leaving the corner of the building,” Looksee said. “It might be major capes, using the big fight for a distraction.”

Sveta lifted her head from my shoulder.

“Who’s on it?” I asked.

“Nobody. There’s a perimeter that should catch them, they’ll get there in a few minutes.”

“And nobody stopping them from hurting anyone on the way?” Sveta asked.

“No, I guess not.”

I lifted off, floating away from the edge of the roof.

“Keep the camera close,” I said, putting my earphone in, before adjusting the flap at the base of my hood to hide the cord. “We delay them until others come. Looksee? Point those others our way.”

“On it.”

Best to include her. Things breaking apart would hit her hardest. It was just so hard to do without actually having her in the field.

Sveta grabbed something and hurled herself off the rooftop.

I could see the bright colors, as I drew closer. The exposed skin of arms sticking out of sleeveless shirts was heavily and brightly tattooed.

Jackasses, maybe. It was almost motley. I saw two of them ran with their hands tucked in their jackets. Holding something out of sight.

And among them, someone who wasn’t a twenty-something in bright color. A guy, long-limbed with long bleached hair with dark roots and a goatee, jogging and moving with languid ease that belied something else at play. He wore black.

Sveta grabbed onto the light pole near me and pulled herself to it. I floated next to her.

“Grab the tall one?” I asked. “If there’s trouble from others, I deflect. If it’s trouble from him, I hit him hard enough he stops doing it.”

She nodded.

Her hand grabbed at the guy’s arm as I got to the group. I went straight for the jackass with his hand in his jacket, knocking him into the ground with enough force that if he wasn’t unconscious, he was broken enough to not be a threat.

The other one whipped out a gun. His eyes widened as he saw me flying, and then he turned, pointing the gun down the street. There were people. Distant, but people.

I caught his arm and shoved it down as he pulled the trigger. I leveraged the wretch, used the strength, and snapped the bones of his arm.

The tall guy- Sveta had grabbed him, but now the other four jackasses were splitting into ghostly images- each was distorted, and each pulled away from the source jackass with an acrobatic leap or flip. They were massing on Sveta’s arm and glove, weighing it down.

She pulled and she drew the guy in, but it was slow and sluggish.

Instead, I grabbed the guy from behind, hauling him backward. She let go of him, and with her hand free of that grip, it began to pull and slip back through the group.

The duplicates. This was one of the Crowley leaders.

His eyes were wide and showing too much white as he turned my way.

His own faded duplicates swarmed me, hands and faces and the press of the physical. They came at me hard and fast, like they were propelled away from him by some motive force. When they made contact, they weren’t strong.

But I felt myself losing even though the strength wasn’t all that.

Where they overlapped.

I met them with the Wretch, pushing them off and away with some violence. I struck at the overlapping portions, where one swing could hit multiple.

He’d broken free of my grip in the midst of the storm he had created. Now he backed away. He moved his hands, and all around me, mailboxes, light posts, trash and individual pieces of a nearby car broke away, becoming a storm of shadowy projectiles.

Were it one projectile, I could have dodged. Were it a handful of meaningful ones, it would have been easier. As it was, it was a hundred inconsequential projectiles, and where they converged or overlapped, they were solid or more solid.

I was forced to fly at an odd course, up, back and away, so I wouldn’t fly into any of the incoming images. The stream changed course, everything flying toward my new location. I moved from point to point, to make getting a bead on me as hard as possible.

And between me and him, it was a veritable wall of flying images, concrete and glass peeling away from the sidewalk and nearby windows like paper from a stack that never ended. Only these papers crashed and shattered on impact.

“You think you’ve won,” the Crowley leader said.

Sveta was free of the jackasses, as she clung to the wall. She’d grabbed a gun from their midst and held it on one hand. She seemed to have found herself in a bind in the process. The gun couldn’t be dropped without delivering it to the same people she’d taken it from, couldn’t be thrown away because it was a gun, and she didn’t have the dexterity to put it in a pocket where it might stay for good. At the same time, while her hand held the weapon, she was limited in mobility.

I put my hands out.

She launched the gun.

“You haven’t won,” the Crowley brother said.

I smacked the gun with the Wretch hard enough to shatter it.

“We haven’t lost,” I said. “The Fallen aren’t going to have a lot going for them when most of you are in custody. Today was a pretty bad day for assholes.”

“You think we’re broken, bitch?”

Sveta reached out, seizing him by the neck.

He created shadow-selves, and they pulled away from his body in a way that broke her grip. The initial momentum still yanked him back and off his feet. He climbed to a standing position, shadow-selves appearing in crouching positions, forming people for him to lean on as he climbed up to his feet.

I’d known Eric to do the same kind of thing. Crystal’s brother had been good with forcefields.

This guy was more of a forcefield creator than a duplicator, if I thought about it. The forcefields were just very detailed simulacra of whatever he was spawning them from, and there was utility in how they emerged and flew out.

It was easier to fly and flow between them. Thinking about it all like that, I could fight him. A shift in mindset.

He still concentrated a lot of them near him. That was the barrier.

I could also wait for the reinforcements.

I wouldn’t. I’d take him with one hand.

“The fire’s handled, but they have friends in the neighborhood,” Capricorn said, over comms.

“Noted,” I murmured.

The jackasses were spreading out. Several made a run for it. Sveta snatched at them, holding and pulling long enough to break their stride and keep them from getting way.

The Crowley brother saw, and he smirked, showing teeth so white they had to be fake.

“If this comes down to a fight, you’re leaving on a stretcher,” I said. “I’m all out of patience.”

“Can you fight?” he asked.

I hit the ground hard enough to crack it. I’d pay the neighborhood back for that. But the impact was enough to upset his footing, and as his frame of reference changed, so did the angle and flow of the phantom images. He tipped back, and there was a clearance of a few feet off the ground in front of him where the images weren’t.

I dove, flying, and slid through that clearance. It was a maneuver that put me within a few feet of him. I reached out, striking with my good arm, and I felt the impact. No strength, but a smash to the nose.

A phantom’s nose. He’d projected one out from his face as I’d swung.

I followed up, hitting, kicking, and then doing the same thing but with the wretch, for the extra force and the ability to tear right past them. I could see him press back, until his jackasses were right behind him. Sveta yanked on the jackasses, hauling them away, and the Crowley brother tipped backward onto his back.

“Stretcher or surrender?” I asked, amping up the aura in a subtle way. Too big of a push could scare, but it also was a thing. Something people could push back against.

I could use it here to play it subtle, drive the moment home.

“Fine then,” he said. He smiled, and he dismissed the images. The transparent detritus, trash, objects and figures faded out.

I remained tense. What was the catch?

“Bro,” one Jackass said.

“We’ll surrender if you give us a seat to enjoy the show,” he said.

I didn’t respond, only glancing at Sveta.

She was as lost as I was.

“I’m not that faithful a man, that’s not a secret,” he said, still smiling with those too-white teeth amid the wiry goatee. “But I do believe this is going to be a hell of a thing, tonight.”

Pitch – 6.9

“Looksee,” I said. “Are you there?”

“Always,” came the reply.

“I have someone with me that I’m pretty sure is one of the Crowley brothers,” I said. I noted the slight nod, and the almost satisfied expression from the man. It wasn’t him faking me out, I was pretty sure. Instead, he seemed to like the recognition, even to the point that he was willing to give up information to bask in it. “He says something bad is up.”

“Capricorn and Sveta are dealing with people with guns. That’s bad.”

“Something big,” I said.

“I’ll call everyone.”

“Please. Start with authorities. Wardens. Then the team.”

The Crowley brother still had his hands up in surrender. It didn’t really mean a lot, a lot of the time. There was no position or way of being that would make a parahuman a non-threat.

This was where we needed the help of the patrol. I had one Crowley and a bunch of Jackasses that had surrendered, they apparently had guns, and… what? I had nowhere to take them, I couldn’t drag the leader off without the others causing trouble or hurting someone, and I couldn’t easily cuff them with one hand.

I was forced to wait if I didn’t want to let them go.

“Writing a text message to send to Wardens since their phone lines are garbage awful. I’ll have Capricorn on the line. The connection died when he switched. One sec.”

I could hear the background noise over Capricorn’s voice. Byron’s voice, against a backdrop of shouting. “Victoria?”

“Something big’s happening. I caught one of the leaders and he’s smug,” I said.

The Crowley brother smiled.

“Bait?” Chris asked. “What’s the context?”

Sveta approached, standing beside me where she could keep an eye on some of the Jackasses.

“I threatened to break his arms and legs. He surrendered, arms up, and said he’ll cooperate if he gets to see the show.”

“If you threaten to break someone’s arms and legs, I’m pretty sure they’ll say anything,” Chris said.

“I like how you say that like you have experience on the subject,” Looksee said.

“I’ve met some shitty people over the years. You can learn a lot from shitty people.”

“Focus, please,” Byron said. The shouting was louder. “One-”

“He cut out,” Looksee reported. “He changed and the connection didn’t translate. I thought I jiggered it right but this is really not my area of expertise. I think it’s because of my phone box…”

She went on, saying more, tinker talk. While she talked, one of the Jackasses turned to his boss. “We don’t have to put up with this, Vince.”

“It’s fine. Stay put,” Vince Crowley said.

Middle brother. It made sense that he was here. The other brothers were supposedly present, but this was the guy who was looped in with the Mathers. The Mathers family traded family members to and from other branches, connecting families and cementing ties. The Mathers had also kidnapped kids. Vince Crowley and his sister had been the ones handling the Crowley end of the deal. They were smugglers, thieves, and general assholes who had dodged the reaching arms of the heroes, while providing shelter to the real monsters, and implicitly accepting some really fucked up stuff.

The McVeays had been murderers and zealots, the Mathers were kidnappers, among other things, and Vince and Sabrina Crowley had been enablers. They were smugglers, they’d kept kidnapping victims and sheltered murderers while there was too much attention and heat on them, and they’d almost gotten away with it, despite being up against the whole PRT.

Sabrina had been caught, as were several sub-cells and supporters of that particular family unit. They’d disappeared, they’d reappeared after Gold Morning, Sabrina back with her brother, and I knew about them because the patrol blocks were keeping tabs on them.

“Capricorn’s back. I’m doing stuff,” Looksee said. “I’m checking- I don’t see news. No rise in phone activity. No posts online.”

“He said tonight,” I said.

“We’re getting closer to ‘night’,” Capricorn said. Tristan.

“Looksee,” I said. “You had something keeping an eye on the phones in Hollow Point. Your phone box?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you go backward? See who these guys have been talking to?”

The Jackass next to Vince whipped his head around. Vince didn’t react much, but it was telling. I added, “We know where they were in the building. Can you use that to place the calls?”

“Yup. Well, not to who. But I can figure out where.”

“Perfect,” I said. I met Vince’s eyes, trying to gauge what he thought. Too hard to read. “How hard will it be?”

“Not hard,” she said. “It’s already set up. I punch in the location data. Already half done.”

“Already half done,” I told Sveta, my thumb on the switch to the microphone on the earbud’s cord.

“Good job, Looksee,” Sveta murmured.

“And done. Gimme a minute.”

I smiled.

Part of the intent of my statement and the whole intent of the smile was to see what reaction it got from Vince Crowley. It was provocative, yes – I knew I might push them to do something. The real reason was to try and assess how serious of a thing this was.

I could see the agitation of a couple of the Jackasses’. Whatever they were, borderline sociopathic, brave to a fault, dangerous, they weren’t actors or bluffers. Vince tried, but I could see a faint frown line between his eyebrows that hadn’t been there before.

“Calls were made from the building they were in, just after they arrived.”

“To?” Chris asked.

“To… there was a flurry of them to a place that’s- it’s not far away. I’m trying to find a map online to overlay and the webpage is glaaaacial.”

The heroes who’d been at the perimeter were approaching now, jogging our way. They would’ve been the final line of defense had the Crowleys kept running. Three heroes local to Boston. All wore bright colors and impractical costumes with extra flaps, layers, and extraneous bits of cloth that made them very ‘costumey’, in a way that made me think of a superhero in a kid’s show.

Magic Knight Crash wore a high-collared top that hung off of him, leaving everything from armpit to pelvis exposed, while his front and back were covered. He had four belts, not including straps at his arm and thigh, and he had a spiked shield mounted on the side of an engine that had a handle at the back and other side. Seafoam and purple.

Mystic Magic Impaler was similar, but she wore an eyepatch with a smiley face on it, a drill bit running through the smiley’s head. The same icon was painted on the bare skin between cleavage and collarbone, and her outfit and hair were predominantly blue with some orange. The entire setup had far too many ribbons for someone with power drill lances mounted on her wrists, the bits columns, not cones. If the color scheme didn’t sell the image, the combination of power tools, long hair and loose clothing did.

Dynamite Warrior Dash Fantastic was the most sane of them. She at least avoided having twenty-plus things on her costume that her enemies could grab, and had some body armor, as paradoxical as it was to have her belly bare beneath a crop top with armor panels on it. She was curvy, with a round face, and war paint on her cheekbones. Her hair was short and pulled back in pigtails that were only an inch and a half long. She didn’t have a weapon, unless the assault to the senses from the orange and purple camo counted.

Yes, I had some loose clothing, and I had my hair out, but I also had the security of the wretch, and I’d made some effort to practicality, with the armor and coverage. These guys treated practicality like it was the enemy.

That wasn’t me jumping to conclusions. I knew of the M.K.C. and M.M.I. pairing from before Gold Morning. I’d been aware they’d made it through that, and their names had come up during the planning for this thing. They’d been a ‘we’ll call and see if they’ll help’. Despite appearances and past history, Tattletale had insisted they were trustworthy. I’d secretly hoped they flake out like they’d been known to in past crises, even at the same time I’d known we needed all the assistance we could get.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.

“Working, working,” Looksee could be heard in the background. “I’m finding more calls but Cap keeps blipping out and I’m trying to stay in touch with him. I think my phone box is too far away.”

“Sorry. Keep it up,” Capricorn said.

I closed my eyes. I had to focus on the immediate present, and helping where I could help.

“Who’s in charge?” I asked.

“Me,” Dynamite said.

“Who did you talk to before coming?”

“Imp. She called in a favor.”

I hesitated. Sveta nudged me.

“He says something else is up. We’re chasing it down. Can you keep them in custody? At least one has powers.”

“It’s why we’re here,” Magic Knight Crash said. He had colored lenses that masked his pupils and irises to make his eyes teal from corner to corner, and his mask covered his eyebrows, making it hard to read his expression. He sounded confident, but the problem with these guys was that their entire persona was over the top confidence.

“The guy with the beard is Vince Crowley. Duplication of self and objects. The duplications launch out, and he can put out a lot of them. They don’t have much substance unless they overlap. He’s usually not far from his sister, Sabrina, and we haven’t seen her. She’s a mover on a mass scale. Raider and getaway.”

“That’s Empusa,” Dynamite said.

“Yes,” I said.

“She’s been seen around here. She’s strong but she hasn’t done much. We can deal with her.”

“With a five hit drill punch combo,” Mystic Magic Impaler announced, floating off the ground. She stabbed at the air with her drills.

Fucking why was this a thing?

I felt embarrassed and it wasn’t even me saying it.

“You can deal with him?” I asked, indicating Vince. “Flood of projections?”

“Would firepower work? Cut or blast through it all?” Dynamite asked. At my nod, she asked, “Can we kill him if he’s too much of a problem?”

“Or maim?” Impaler asked.

I felt something inside of me die at the question. Yes, I’d threatened maiming, I even used maiming as a necessary tool, when there wasn’t a polite way to remove someone from a fight. Impaler was trying so hard to celebrate it and make it her thing.

“Leave him alive if possible,” I said. “He might be one of the only ones who knows about this thing that’s going on. If you get any inkling about what’s going on, call us, let us know.”

“The deal was that I surrender only if I get a view,” Vince said.

“A view of what?” Sveta asked.

“Take us up to any rooftop. I’ll sit, whistle, and wait,” he said.

“Any rooftop?”

“Ah,” he said. He looked around. “One with a view of the horizon.”

Of the horizon.

Shit, no. I really hoped this was a head game.

I exchanged looks with Dynamite.

From what little I knew of Sabrina Crowley, who I could remember a little more easily because she didn’t blend in so much with her brothers, she charged up and released a ‘wave’ effect, about as tall and as big around as a house. People in the original ‘cast’ could fly within the area of the slow-rolling wave, and there was some duplication trickery in there somewhere because she was from the Crowley family unit. She used it to hit a location with a whole squad of people who could fly on top of having other powers, or to get her entire team away.

And from what I knew of this team, they might have been just the right people to tackle that particular set of problems.

“It would make it harder for Empusa to rescue him with her power. We’d see her coming if she aimed at a rooftop,” Dynamite said.

“If you’re okay with it,” I said. “Okay. Give him what he wants.”

She put a hand out. I clasped it for a moment. She turned to her subordinates, and immediately began haranguing them in the manner of a no-nonsense prison guard that was used to dealing with unruly inmates.

I felt a bit better about these guys now.

“We should help Capricorn,” Sveta said.

I nodded, putting a hand on her shoulder as we jogged away. When we were a polite distance away, I took flight and Sveta grabbed my shoulder, using me for the first portion of her trip.

“Coming your way, Capricorn,” I said.

“He’s not on,” Looksee said. “I will as soon as I get a stable signal again.”

“Not on,” I repeated, for Sveta’s benefit. “Do you have a location for the call recipient?”

“Some. A bunch, ackshully,” Looksee said. “Fenway Station. Calls made mid-event, when the brothers left the camp, and when they got to your area.”

“We’re in Fenway station,” I said. “That’s the name of the neighborhood.”

“Fenway Station Station,” Looksee clarified.

The issues of nomenclature.

“Call the Wardens. Don’t brick their phones. Good work, Looksee”

Trains, stores, people, parahuman security, a portal to Bet.

Capricorn had Flechette -Foil- and Parian near him. Parian was trying to guard the other two, Foil was picking off the members of the Clans and the Fallen that were still lingering near the building, and the Clan were trying to set fire to Parian’s dolls with thrown bottles.

Capricorn, in turn, was extinguishing the fires with water, and working to trap the Fallen in stone, splashing them with water before turning it to stone.

The idea had been to stay clear of the fight, but I couldn’t imagine someone calling themselves a hero with a straight face and not wanting to help those in need.

Or needing to support those who were wanting help, maybe.

The lies we told ourselves, when need trumped reason.

Sveta went straight to Capricorn. I went straight to the Fallen.

There was one I recognized. He wore a latex demon mask with paint on it, but I’d seen him a while ago, and he had Fallen flowing out from around him in a way that drew the eye when I was up in the air. On the ground, he would have been one masked face in the shuffle. In the air, I could see people emerging from the crowd, ducking out from between people when they hadn’t been there before.

Maybe a small part of me had been looking for him. When I had talked to the Attendant about joining, he’d been there.

The latex mask being what it was, he didn’t seem to have the ability to see in the upper periphery of his field of vision. He didn’t see me. I had the wretch up on the descent, to protect myself, and I dropped it just before flying my knee into his jaw, the hit punctuated by a heavy dose of my aura.

Swearing erupted around me. His power was flaring up, visible now, with arcs of red-orange light dancing between the people in the crowd he’d been using to help form his gateways. People shrieked and cussed as they were burned.

Shouts overlapped. The mob with a focus became a scramble. Two people had one arc of portal energy, starting at one person’s foot, running up the side of his body, along his arm, and out to the other person’s hand, tracing down the body to the ground again. As they parted, the arc stretched and snapped, flailing out and striking the crowd or ground before dissipating. No serious damage done, to look at it, but the cracks and snaps were like whipcracks, driving the already retreating group to run more. Elsewhere, more portals were breaking. Some people were trying to stand still, fighting the tide of the crowd, because they had portals connected to them.

There. That was satisfying in a way I couldn’t put my finger on. I couldn’t even stop to contemplate it. I had to get to Capricorn, and we had to get to the station with the gateway to Earth Bet.

A flare of light caught my attention, but it wasn’t portal light. A molotov.

There were people beneath me. In the moment, not entirely sure if the bottle would break through my defenses and splatter me or hit the wretch and splatter it, I positioned myself and the Wretch between the bottle and the crowd.

In that moment of acceptance of the fact I might burn, the memory of Crawler’s venom and the pain that had followed felt so real I felt like I was already on fire. It hit me like a punch to the gut, and my breath caught in my throat.

Idiots, the word flashed through my mind, aimed at the Fallen and members of the Clans.

Idiot, the word flashed through my mind, the singular reserved for myself.

The flaming projectile changed direction in midair, almost disappearing. I could follow the path it took, the orange in the gloomy, overcast drizzle tracing a line through my vision like Capricorn’s power did. I saw the explosion, the bottle cast off to the side, landing in an inconsequential patch of road. Sveta had grabbed it.

Other heroes from the perimeter were collapsing in. I didn’t see anyone who might be the other Crowley brothers. Jake and Cutter.

I made two more quick strikes, targeting people who looked like they were giving orders or rallying the Fallen. I saw someone in passing who might have been Victor, from Brockton Bay, and in the moment I was trying to decide if it would be wise to try to go after him, I saw that this wasn’t close to over.

I flew to Capricorn, landing while still moving at a speed where I had to run a couple of steps and use a moment of flight to keep from stumbling.

“Thank you,” I said, to Sveta.

“Anytime.”

There was no need to ask what it was. She got it. That- this, I liked it. It would be nice to do the hero thing with her, even sometimes, even if the team fell through.

“Did you catch what Looksee said?” Capricorn-Byron asked.

Had I? No. I checked. The cord dangled. I popped it back in. “Sorry, Looksee, my earphone came unplugged.”

I could hear her, “I’m trying to figure this out. There are cameras at the station. I’ve notified security. I’m getting other stuff through the camera feeds. They’re in a restaurant, I think.”

Byron became Tristan. Tristan pointed, and we walked as a group.

I turned to Foil as we passed her. “Thanks.”

“I wish we could talk more,” she said.

“Soon.”

Capricorn stopped in his tracks. “We should tell Tattletale.”

“Looksee?” I asked. “She’s looped in, isn’t she?”

“I’m talking to her when I get a chance,” Looksee said. “She ignores half of what I say.”

“She’s running ops,” Parian said. “Besides, I think she’s worn out.”

“This is big,” I said. “The Fallen said he wanted to see the horizon when this hits.”

“I’ll call,” Foil said. “I’ll make the gravity clear.”

“Thanks,” Capricorn said.

“Good fighting beside you, Cap,” Foil said.

He gave her a nod.

The station wasn’t far.

“You could have gone without me,” Capricorn said.

We could have. Just as Tattletale was worn out, so was I. I was hurt and that hurt was a dull ache with a more intense pain at the center that made it feel like it had a core or something lodged in it. Apparently a phantom symptom, with my nerves trying to process the damage. My focus was slipping a bit.

But I needed to be here. This whole thing, others might have needed us to be here. People still needed us, if there was anything to this attack or event tonight.

“We…” I started, trying to voice my thoughts aloud. “I hit things. Sveta grabs things. We can do other things, but… against a bomb? Or whatever this is?”

“You wanted a toolbox,” Sveta said.

“I wanted more of a team,” I said. “Looksee, listening in?”

“Half listening. I’m tracking these calls still. If we can figure out who, we could figure out how or what.”

“Good,” Capricorn said.

“Can you defuse bombs, Looksee?”

“Maybe. I’d have to see the bomb.”

“If you can, can you come? Follow?”

“I’ll head there.”

“Chris?”

There was a wet sound over the phone.

“I think he ate the phone,” Looksee said. “I hope he un-eats it before he changes back, or he’s going to need either surgery or a slot shaped butthole. He’s near the station.”

“Can we get him?” I asked.

“We can try. I’ll have my computer ping him until he listens.”

“I’m running,” Capricorn said. I was close enough to him that I could hear him on both phone and in person, with a bit of an echo. “You guys move. The kids can follow behind. Keep an ear out for any calls to get away.”

“Yuh huh,” Looksee replied, in the rushed kind of way that suggested she was too active or enthused to even form full words. She’d been hurt and as close to sullen as Kenzie ever got, and that had faded into the background, almost forgotten.

Capricorn broke into a run. Sveta used her power to pull herself ahead. I took to the air.

“Hanging up for a sec,” I said. “Wave at me if you need me on the phone.”

“Got it,” Capricorn said.

I used my speed dial. I heard the phone ring twice.

Droplets of moisture touched my skin as I flew. Too far apart to be even a drizzle, it was moisture in the air. Half of the sky was dark. Too early for sunset, but the clouds were thick and the smoke and industry of the areas on the coast were contributing to the haze.

“Victoria?” was the response. Gilpatrick’s voice. I could hear the bus in the background. “What happened in Boston?”

“It’s happening. The Fallen have guns. They were ready to shoot people. Heroes are intervening. It’s not important-”

“It sounds important.”

“No. The Fallen have something big going on. Retaliatory, I think, or it’s someone who’s talking to them and using the attack today as a distraction for other things.”

“What kind of big?”

“There’s a possible attack hitting Fenway Station. We’re on our way there.”

“We’re too far away, Victoria.”

“The guy I’m hearing this from is saying he wants to see it. On the horizon. He said it while a few blocks away from the target location. That could be him trying to mislead, but it could be…”

“Other attacks?”

“Call, please? This is an all-hands on deck thing.”

The station. The building was made to look like an old building, even though it really wasn’t. It was shaped like a plus sign, with a squat domed tower in the center, a red stone exterior, and arching entrances set at below ground level, with broad stairs leading down into them. There was infrastructure around the building for refugee intake, but the buildings were locked down and shuttered.

“You guys are there?” Looksee asked. “I’ve got them on camera. Sitting and drinking coffee while eating raspberry pie. I’ve never had either of those things but that sounds like a bad combination.”

“Just so long as they’re not doing anything,” I said. Sveta caught up with me. I pointed at one entrance while walking to another. She nodded.

“We don’t want to scare them,” Capricorn said.

“We do want to be in a position to stop them,” I said.

“Go in, stay put.”

There were kids from the patrol in the building as I entered, more alert than they usually were. They looked alarmed at my appearance. Had word traveled this far in the past couple of minutes?

I pushed my hood back and held up my hands, approaching at a walk.

“Stop,” the junior captain said. She was black, a teenager Rain’s age, her hair shaved at the side and brushed back and away from her face at the top. She had the ‘cop’ look down one hundred percent. The technique too- she’d already had her gun in hand, out of sight, and she raised it to point it my way without hesitation. I could admire that kind of fluid confidence, as someone who’d once had the same position.

“We’re on your side,” I said. “You just got an alert, right?”

She nodded.

“I gave the info to Captain Gilpatrick at Bridgeport. I’ve worked with him. He passed it to others. Something big is up, and we think the culprits are in the restaurant with the pie.”

She didn’t ease up.

“You’ll want to evacuate,” I said. “Do it soft, we don’t want to tip those guys off. Don’t let people enter, encourage them to leave if you can do it quiet. Let the place naturally empty.”

A light flashed at the desk, at a point I couldn’t see- but I could see the green LED reflected on the glossy black body armor she wore. Nicer quality stuff than we’d had, but I supposed that came with the big city.

“Ben,” she said.

One of her squad members reached for the phone. There was a pause.

“Bosses and cops say there’s someone at the other door. Obvious parahuman. We’re supposed to send one or two that way for numbers.”

Bosses would mean captain. Cops would be the local authorities. One of the two should’ve been making the real decisions. There should have been one close by here.

“That’s Sveta,” I said. “She’s a case fifty-three. My friend and teammate. With the current emergency, we approached from two angles.”

“Yeah,” the Junior Captain said. Her voice was level. “Tell them we’ve got one too.”

“We’ve got one too,” the guy said, into the phone. “We’ve got two, actually.”

I looked where he was looking. It was Capricorn.

“Oh, I know you,” the junior captain said. “Capricorn, right?”

“Yeah,” Capricorn said.

“You’re a hero. You’ve been active out there. Somewhere near Fairfield?”

“Cedar Point. She’s a hero too.”

“And Sveta,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “If my word counts for anything.”

The suspicion wavered, and then it gave. She held the gun in one hand, and reached for the phone with the other.

So many hurdles. But the captain communicated the situation, and she communicated my suggestion about the people being evacuated. The patrol squad went for another patrol, and they talked to people.

“All stations are evacuating for now,” Junior Captain Eads said. She’d eased up considerably, after her superiors had gotten the okay. “Trains are stopped, emergency staff is being called in. Heroes are in.”

Looksee arrived almost ten minutes later. We were still lingering near the doors, so Looksee sat on the bottom stair, getting out her computer. Capricorn crouched by her in a position I would’ve been hard pressed to maintain before my legs started complaining, and I wasn’t wearing plated armor.

“No word from Tattletale?”

“Two words. She said ‘on it’. I don’t think she likes me much,” Looksee said.

“I did paint her as a pretty horrible person, didn’t I?”

“Ha,” Looksee said, without humor. “We’ve got our targets on camera, see?”

Capricorn spoke out of the side of his mouth, while crouched near Looksee. “Maybe don’t announce that we’re tapped into their security while their people with guns and cops are ten feet away.”

Two women and six men at two separate tables. No costumes. The restaurant was emptying. There was one member of the staff walking around, cleaning tables. Maybe a manager.

Keeping up the facade? Heroes came in all forms.

What the hell were they up to?

A private message window popped up in the corner. Tattletale.

Tattletale:
call logs. ur right. they r hitting every station with a portal
I let people know.

Every station. My heart skipped a beat.

I looked over at Captain Eads. She was staring at me, looking alarmed.

“They’re hitting all of the stations.”

“Every one with a portal,” I said.

“They’re shutting us down. Closing us off.”

“Capricorn,” Looksee said. “Victoria.”

She had our attention.

Tattletale:
tinkr devices. they all have one. under chairs in bags. hit them b4 they can use

It was a message to us, but from the reaction, I had the sense the message was going out to every team and station.

I adjusted my costume, flipping up my hood. Capricorn stood. Looksee drew her flash gun. Patrol soldiers had their weapons out. Older soldiers were jogging over from one of the other entrances. Leaders for this particular exercise.

“Their parahuman wants to be the one to make the first move,” one soldier said.

“Who?”

“The girl with the painted armor.”

“Sveta. Let me set up, and I’m all for it,” Capricorn said.

The minutes that followed were silence punctuated by bursts of movement so intense that it felt like the situation had just erupted. Boots on the ground, as patrol officers went to one wing or another. Then laughter, somewhere, eerily out of tune with the feeling we had near the entrance. Fake, to create a sense of normalcy, when the groups at the table might be noticing how quiet things were getting?

At every station, there had to be a situation like this unfolding.

We had no idea who these guys were. They might’ve been friends of the Fallen, but that was open-ended.

“Going,” Capricorn’s voice came over the phone, a whisper made loud.

I was looking around the corner as Sveta went around the corner across from me, entering the hallway, snapping over to the entrance to the restaurant, and disappearing inside.

Capricorn came back in from outside at a run. I flew in, and the officers were ready behind me.

I was just in time to see Sveta skidding on the floor. She spied the target and grabbed it where it apparently sat on the booth seat beside one of the people at the table, and hauled it to her with enough force that it produced a spatter of blood when it clipped the face of the guy sitting by it.

Then she was out, case in hand, and we were in. A restaurant with red, white, and black tile, black booths, and pretty looking tables. It was cold on the one side because windows were open, and noticeably warm on the other because heat radiated from the kitchen.

Sabrina was one, or another Fallen with Crowley genes was. When she used her power, she clarified the point- a shimmering bubble around herself, wet with waves rolling, overlapping and crashing around it. Energy shimmered and danced wherever two waves met.

Beside her, someone was using a changer power, manifesting bone armor and a long limb at their right hip. Possibly a whip.

Someone shot Sabrina. I carried right past her to the changer, and hit it hard enough to shatter the bone armor and send them sprawling. Capricorn used his power, and water came in through the open windows, flooding the restaurant and knocking just about everyone at the far end off their feet. All members of the other group.

It wasn’t a pretty fight. It wasn’t even an exciting fight. It was a trap closing, where I was the jaws of the mousetrap slamming down, Capricorn was the pitfall and the bucket of water they were unceremoniously forced to deal with. Sveta was the snare.

Even with a bullet in her, Sabrina used her power anew, surrounding herself and her teammates. Her teammates rose up, each one flying within the bubble, with double images forming around each. Other things were lifted as well- tables and chairs.

People took shots. Most hit the strategically placed and doubled furniture.

Sabrina fired a handgun from behind cover. One shot, and I heard four impacts as the shots landed. Passing through or traveling through the bubble, the bullets were multiplied.

I had the Wretch pick up a table as I flew. It was my shield, above and beyond what the Wretch offered. I rammed into the floating cover Sabrina had erected around her people and drove that cover into them. One flew back and away, stunned, and had a tentacle grab them from the window behind them.

It was my means of taking Sabrina’s booth that she was using as cover and, overturning the table that had been damaged by wretch and bullet alike, place it over her head, capping her in the booth.

She had to fly out, floating in her bubble, moving low to the ground. Anticipating her, I flew to meet her, diving and putting my foot where mirror images overlapped. I kicked her chest-first into the floor, and I could hear the clack of her teeth as her chin met the floor a fraction of a second later.

We’d left little room for counterplay. No room for proper reactions, beyond the wild and desperate attempt to fight back.

Just like that, it was over.

Nobody who knew anything relaxed. The captains called in that we’d succeeded. The confirmation came back. All looked good. All clear from Looksee and Tattletale. Sveta handed the tinker case to a professional.

Everyone who knew something about the situation remained ready, waiting for the next shoe to drop.

“Good work,” Junior Captain Eads said.

There was nowhere to go. Nothing to do. We’d done our job, the people with the know-how were interrogating who they could find, and answers would come soon.

But the answers had to wait. The other stations- well, they had to handle their own stuff. The closest portal to us was really Brockton Bay, and Brockton Bay wasn’t that close. Our station was busy with cleanup, with questions and no answers. We were in the way, and we couldn’t go elsewhere to help because things would be over before we arrived.

We had nowhere to go except- almost by silent agreement, we made our way outside.

As Vince Crowley had wanted to do, we found a vantage point to watch the horizon.

The messages began coming in on phones.

“Norwalk station,” Kenzie said.

“That’s your neighborhood,” Sveta replied.

Kenzie nodded. She was typing quickly. “My parents look okay. Reports are coming in. The sky- a slice of pink? I don’t get it. Things seem mostly fine. What happened?”

“Hey,” Capricorn said. He touched Sveta’s shoulder. “Look.”

Off to the north.

Brockton Bay couldn’t catch a break. It was like a shard of glass or a torn piece of painting. I could see the sky on the other side. The world beyond.

They were opening the portals wider. Taller. A portal that large- it had to have sliced Brockton Bay in half. What did that impact? What did it do?

We’d have to take off- where?

We had somewhere to go now, yet we were paralyzed. The phone had a list of portals, now, and one by one, the gray rectangles turned green with checkmarks, or were marked with red ‘x’s.

One by one, places were deemed okay or thrust into new crisis. The city had barely been holding up as it was.

Green. Green. Green. Red. Green. Red…

I stopped focusing on the successes and failures, and turned my attention to my contact list. Crystal. Gilpatrick. Dad. Mom.

I sent the messages and waited for the replies. In the times between waits, I typed out hurried explanations, as far as we had any. It seemed like hours were passing and it seemed like no time at all was passing and we were stuck in a horrible, unresolved moment for an eternity.

On the horizon, another slice of sky that wasn’t overcast, in the midst of sunset. A spear or blade of the wrong light, cast across a community.

A reply from Crystal. Her team would be out and helping, as soon as they knew what was going on. If this opened the doors wide for Earth C… what would we even do?

Fight.

Mom was okay. She told me that Amy was okay, and I let her. Dad was fine. Gilpatrick, Jasper, Ashley and Rain were okay.

No response from Weld.

New York was the central hub because it was the place with the densest cluster of portals. The phone noted several failures in that area.

No response from the Wardens. They would be getting bombarded. Maybe it was that.

Hard to convince myself of that, but I tried. If three portals failed, what happened? Did they open so wide that each intersected with the others? What happened to something caught in the middle?

No response from Fume Hood or Tempera.

Crystalclear was well. He’d been manning one station, and his group had succeeded in finding and catching the person who had brought the tinker device there. The portal widening device.

I stood, unable to keep sitting, my phone still in my in hand. Sveta sat with Kenzie, the two of them looking at the same phone. Capricorn was off to the side, sitting against a wall. Chris typed.

A response from Weld, brief, and Sveta burst into tears. I sat down next to her to hug her. When she stood up a minute later, pacing, I remained where I was, keeping an eye on Kenzie and an eye on my phone.

There was an agitation that was taking over. I could see it in everyone’s body language.

Phones here and there beeped, people scrolled.

Only the anxiety.

It wasn’t quite true, I knew, but I imagined it all the same. That we couldn’t bring ourselves to raise the subject, but we were all doing the same things at the same time anyway. We sat and we poked at our phones, and we convinced ourselves it wasn’t true, we stabbed fingers at the phone with more vigor, as if that could somehow get through and evoke a response. We searched, told ourselves it was a congested network, and held off on sending messages while hoping for one more. The realization settled in, and it wasn’t the good kind of settling.

Each and every one of us had one name in common, someone they cared about, and for some, one of the only responsible adult figures who cared about them in turn. She had every reason to be right at the epicenter, which didn’t make it better.

Today had proven more than anything that these guys still needed her. What the hell was this team going to do without its therapist?

Torch – 7.1

I gripped until my fingernails threatened to penetrate the skin, squeezing, strangling, until my hand hurt and my bullet wound hurt more. The pain in the bullet wound intensified, until the muscle started to cramp.

“Relax.”

Relaxing my grip was a thing I had to tell myself how to do, more than pushing on through the pain had been. I released the stress ball with the doofy character face on the front. Bloodshot eyes receded into sockets and the mouth closed to settle into the infuriating little grin. My handprint remained as an indent on the ball’s thin skin, slowly disappearing.

“Agh,” I made a sound. The cramping feeling in my arm wasn’t going away. It was like a charlie horse, but more intense than any I’d had.

“Are you okay? Was it too much?” She gingerly touched my arm, being shy of the wound, and felt out the muscle. “Let me know if this hurts.”

I nodded, because I couldn’t really talk. The massage helped. It did hurt, when the fingers pulled against skin closer to the bullet wound, but the massage soothed the cramp enough that the pain was worth enduring.

“I wasn’t sure if you were using super strength or if it was you,” she said.

Then ask, I thought, the pain sharpening thoughts that might not have been so sharp five minutes ago or five minutes from now.

“Well, it seems like you have good strength in your hands.”

“It doesn’t feel strong,” I said.

“Okay. Not to worry! That’s something we can work on.”

Anne Lynn was my physical therapist with a first and middle name that she’d insisted were to be used together because she was not an ‘Anne’ and she definitely wasn’t a ‘Lynn’. Okay, fine. Going by first impressions, she seemed to be a lovely, warm, caring person who was painfully new to what she was doing. She went to her mentor, who was in our mostly empty activity area, for things I didn’t imagine really needed clarification or reassurance. She did much the same for me, double-checking what I said in a way that made me think she wasn’t taking me at my word.

It seemed she also didn’t ask for clarification at times she needed it.

She was a hard person to really dislike or resent, though. She was shorter than average, cute and bubbly, and her smile seemed persistent and genuine. That was a hard thing to find, given recent events.

“No super strength, for the record,” I said. “I turned it off. It kind of defeats the point, doesn’t it?”

“We should make sure that works as you heal,” she said.

“It’s not a concern,” I said. “I could be the strongest or weakest person in the world and it won’t affect how my super strength works.”

“Oh? Okay, got it. If you’re sure.”

There it was. The vague impression she doubted me. Was I being unfair?

“If you keep me talking about this I’m going to go full powers geek on you,” I said.

She snorted. “That’s convincing. Oh no, please don’t tell me about your power or show me anything neat!”

“Ahhh,” I said. So she’d hoped to see something. I thought about how much she didn’t want to see my uncontrolled forcefield in action, and I smiled anyway. “Maybe sometime.”

“Sometime, if you’re comfortable doing it. But not today, our session is just about over. How’s your arm feeling?”

I tried moving it. The cramp had mostly subsided. “Better.”

She smiled, reaching for the shelf under the bench I was sitting on. Papers and plastic bags rustled. She put a pile of stuff beside me. “I have stuff for you.”

“Homework.”

“Some! Papers, this one has your instructions for your physiotherapy you can do at home. We want to keep up your hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder strength while letting your arm recover. This paper here has some recommended tips for recovery and pain. On the backside, we have some things to watch out for.”

“Neuromas, muscle cramps lasting for long periods of time, persistent fever, swelling that appears suddenly or doesn’t let up. Got it.”

“If any exercises are too painful for you to do, make a note. I’ll see you in two days and you can tell me then. We’ll figure out if there’s something wrong or if it’s something we want you to work through. If I don’t know for sure then I’ll talk to someone who does. We’ll meet two days after that session, then scale down to twice a week after that, and once a week toward the end.”

“My doctor told me I should expect two to four more weeks recovery.”

“That’s for the muscle damage. Longer with the bone healing, but my notes say that was minor. I printed this out for you. Bone fracture healing is explained on this sheet. I included a copy of the list your doctor gave for the supplements to take. Okay, that’s all the papers. We have some slings for you- various colors and styles.”

A sling. Ugh. “Great.”

“And finally, a bag of rubber bands for some of the hand exercises and-” she paused, raising a bag filled with colorful stress balls. “Stress helpers! We have a variety!”

There was a part of me that wanted to groan at the forced cheer, and at the even more forced use of ‘helper’. I went with it, maintaining a smile and peering at the bag. It wasn’t worth making her an adversary.

“We have the faces, Grimace Gus, Dopey Dan, Pinhead Pam, and a few others. I have a few of these myself. You can pick one to represent someone you hate and channel that emotion into getting better.”

No blonde Smug Susans. Too bad.

Hearing Anne Lynn get so excited over little toys helped me put my finger on her image and way of presenting herself. She made me think of a kindergarten teacher. I could imagine her hyping up a class of munchkins with the same attitude she’d shown around me.

I poked the bag. It was a resealable bag, but it was old enough that it had crinkled and scuffed to the point it was foggy. “You have a few of these, huh? Do you have a Grimace Gus in your life?”

“I do,” Anne Lynn said. “But it’s mostly the Dopey Dan and Pinhead Pam that give me grief. Family.”

“Ah. I hear you on that.” I liked her a little more than I had, hearing that. I peered at the bag.

“We have other things, like the animal balls. Let’s see… beetle, ick, the bird, the snake, the lion-”

“Lion,” I said.

“Do you want to check the bag? There are others.”

“The lion would be great, thank you,” I said. “I had a childhood toy that was a lion.”

“Perfect,” she proclaimed, while retrieving the lion. It was just a head, with two black dots for eyes, no mouth, and the mane taking up three quarters of it, with ears poking up on top. “Your therapy partner for when you’re not with me. Treat each other well.”

There was a part of me that felt like she was treating me like a kid, but that might have been her usual demeanor. I could have rankled at it or said something, and I didn’t. Another part of me that felt very tired, and that part of me welcomed having a stress doll that reminded me of the stuffed toy I’d loved to the point it had looked monstrous. That tired part of me almost welcomed the cheer and the being taken care of.

Picking my sling was a little less interesting than picking the stress ball. I tried on two and went with the most comfortable, holding it instead of putting it on. I said my farewell to Anne Lynn and walked past others who were in the midst of their own exercises at parallel bars, benches, and weight machines.

One woman with tan skin, black and gray exercise clothing and her hair in a bun was at the weight machines. She gave me a nasty look. I had no idea who she might be.

I dropped my stuff off at my locker, then made use of the shower that was adjacent to the therapy area. It wasn’t that I’d worked up a serious sweat, but I hadn’t slept well, and so I’d flown around before my appointment, checking that all was well.

All wasn’t well.

Rinsing off gave me a chance to refresh myself, resetting to zero, and it allowed me to change my clothes. What I wore for a doctor’s appointment and preliminary therapy session wasn’t going to serve for the rest of the day. Once I’d dried off, I put on a top with a collar that had a fine gold zipper instead of buttons, chosen because it was easy to put on with an injured arm. I pulled on a pair of olive slacks that served as good all-purpose pants. The pants proved to be less of a stellar choice with two stubborn buttons that needed doing up, but they were business casual and they’d survive if a fight broke out, which I wasn’t quite ruling out.

I stopped at the mirror to braid my damp hair as best as I could with the one hand, taking my time to do it, and then put a bit of makeup on around my eyes. I was mid-application when the woman with the bun who’d given me a dirty look passed through the shower room, walking behind me and into the locker room, eyeing me as she passed.

I almost said hi. Maybe I would in the future.

I got my things, put them in a bag, took a minute to situate my arm in the sling, and situated my bag on my other arm.

Leaving the building, I left the smell of sweat made muggy by showers behind me and ventured into the cool outdoors, closing my eyes against the cold sun. Opening those eyes, I saw the gold-tinted city and a mostly blue sky that would have been pleasant in any other circumstance.

Pleasant if the horizon hadn’t been shattered like a dropped mirror. The sky was divided, with vague shapes stabbing up into it, the sky on the far side taking on different tints and weather.

The portals hadn’t been flat doors that things could pass through, but three dimensional objects, transition points with rules that we’d simplified by driving trains straight through them. Nothing about it was simple now.

Four portals in this area of the city had been drawn out to a height taller than our tallest buildings, and expanded out to encompass multiple city blocks. The fourth had been a surprise by a parahuman that had used a power to hide until the heat had died down. The worst expansion covered twelve blocks, and it would have covered more if it hadn’t been close to the water.

At the edges of those portals, buildings and one bridge had collapsed. Within the areas encompassed? We still didn’t know. The portals had expanded out, bled into one another to surround one of the more critical areas of the city, because that area had been centered to be symbolically near the largest cluster of portals, and they’d scrambled. They didn’t point to where they once had.

I checked the coast was clear enough that I wouldn’t scare anyone, and I took flight.

The bugs in the city were bad, stubborn even as the weather was cooling down. It had been that way for a while, but the spring and fall seemed worst. They hadn’t gotten the message yet, that the city was here and wildlife and insect life needed to move elsewhere. Now, though, we had wind. Different earths had different weather and we had gaping holes in our city with starkly different pressures on one side than we had on the other. Flying, I could feel it.

I could feel it more as I flew over the portals, to the point that I was course correcting more than I was flying forward. Crosswinds. If my hair hadn’t been in a braid, it would have been all over me.

In the center of the portals, three separate doors sloshed together. The Wardens headquarters had been there. Key members and staff of the three sub-teams and the Wardens themselves had been stationed there when it had all gone to hell. Jessica had been working late.

Option one suggested that they’d been torn to shreds, caught by three portals that were clashing together and switching what world they were connected to moment by moment, until they finally stopped expanding and settled.

Option two might have been worse. The Wardens’ head office had been serving as a place to sequester dangerous capes. Slaughterhouse Nine, ex-Birdcage capes, international enemies, and Class-S threats like Nilbog. Even the ones who had been cooperating had been kept under close guard because cooperation didn’t necessarily equate trust.

If Jessica and the other late-evening staff at the Wardens’ HQ were out there, stranded somewhere after the portals swallowed the area up, then they weren’t in good company. I imagined it ending up something like the Lord of the Flies, if the talking severed pig’s head was the least fucked up around.

It wasn’t a good imagining.

Construction crews were working to mend the damage. Building hadn’t even begun on the structures that might contain the portal. It was a herculean undertaking, even with powers helping.

Even after I returned to the streets, the wind was something I noticed, a constant gust that was either coming or going from the direction of the disaster.

Life moved on like normal but the cold wind blew hard. People on the street kept their heads down and walked briskly, even less likely to make eye contact or offer a kind word than they had been before this. Businesses were the same, when they were open. That was saying something, considering this area was the closest thing we had to New York.

Brockton Bay, when I’d paid a visit, had been similar enough. It had been more of a slice, cutting the city and its industry in two, leaving one half without power or internet. The attitude shift had been felt there too.

All of the affected areas. The affected areas of the city felt like ghost towns that weren’t empty nor were they towns. The warmth wasn’t there, there wasn’t a soul or community, and everything felt eerie. Too new, too worn out for how new they were, insects clustered on warm surfaces, and too many businesses were closed with all lights off, despite their posted hours.

It was no surprise that I arrived early at the meeting place and yet Kenzie had beaten me there. She was at the table with her laptop, hair immaculate, and what looked like a set of two individual hair pins that were each one part of a heart, the heart split down the middle by a crack. She wore both halves, the pins set in her hair so the cracks meshed. I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a ‘BFF’ style thing where each friend wore one, or if she was supposed to wear each pin on one side of her head. She wore a maroon dress with a pattern of black scribbled hearts, and black tights.

Her dad stood by. He wore a long peacoat, one side of the collar turned up against the wind. His hair had pulled away in strands that swayed with the wind.

The patio area was otherwise empty. The business it served was closed. There weren’t that many people on the street.

“Victoria is here,” he said.

Kenzie sat up to peer over the top of the screen, her eyes large.

“You’re early,” I said. I sat in the chair across from her, scooting it over so I could see past the laptop to her, and see Julien standing behind her. Considering we were nearly as close as we could get to the city center without being able to see the base of the portals, there weren’t many people around.

“I like seeing people arrive places. When they arrive and where they sit tells you things.”

“Does it?”

“Yep. People sit closer to people they have an affinity with. It’s not always people they like, but it’s usually people they relate to. And whether you’re a boy or girl matters. Girls tend to sit next to others or across from others, but guys sit diagonally across. Once you start noticing it, you’ll see it all over the place. It’s a puzzle.”

“You like that kind of thing, huh?”

She nodded.

I leaned back into the back corner of my chair, the armrest and the wall beside me supporting me as much as the chair back did.

“How’s your arm?” she asked. She closed her laptop and turned it over, pressing her hands down on the warm underside.

“Doctor said it’s healing well. I’ll spare you the gorier details. Physio started today.”

“What happened?” Julien asked.

“I told you this stuff, dad,” Kenzie said.

“When you tell me things it comes in a stream. I pick out what I can.”

“I got shot,” I said. “In and out. I had to have two fragments of bone removed.”

“I’ve been shot,” Julien said. “Twice. Except I didn’t get physio or doctor’s appointments after.”

“I only know about the once,” Kenzie said.

“Both before she was born,” Julien told me. “I grew up in a neighborhood where you either went to a gang or the gang came for you. I went to them when I was twelve, they raised me. I got shot once while working for them, and once when I left and didn’t keep it secret enough.”

“I only heard about the second one,” Kenzie said.

“Why did you leave?” I asked.

“If you asked me then, I would have said there were different middle managers. Now? Wasn’t me.”

“You said you were good at it,” Kenzie said. “Sales.”

“Mm hmm,” Julien said. “It wasn’t good for me.”

“I can respect that,” I said. “Leaving. That can’t have been easy.”

“Thank you,” he said. He looked down at Kenzie. “Was she at any risk?”

“Dad.”

“Minimal to no risk,” I said. “Given how everything went last week, it might have been riskier for her to stay home.”

“My wife invited you over, but with everything that happened and the station exploding near our home, you’ll need to give us a few days to get organized.”

“It’s a mess,” I said.

Julien nodded. His hand rose to his chin as he stroked his beard. His eyes were on the distance, first on the shattered horizon, and then on the street. “I can’t tell which one that is.”

I turned to look, wincing as my elbow banged the chair back.

I couldn’t tell who it was either. He walked with confidence, head high, but his hair had no paint or dye, and it was combed neat. He wore a vest over a button-up top. A lot about that image seemed to convey ‘Tristan’, but the lack of color and the more serious expression didn’t. He seemed to have Tristan’s build, but the cut of the outfit could have created that illusion. It was a nice suit, minus the suit jacket.

“Victoria. Kenzie. Good to see you two. Mister Martin,” he said, as he arrived at the table. By voice and manner of speaking? That was Tristan.

“Tristan,” Julien Martin replied. He put a hand on Kenzie’s chair back. “Kenzie. You wanted me to stay until people came?”

“You can go, dad. Thank you for sticking around.”

He gave us a nod, and with hands in the pocket of his coat, he walked to his car, which was in what should have been a heavily contested parking spot.

Kenzie smiled, giving me a shrug. “Sorry.”

“Why sorry?” I asked.

“He’s embarrassing.”

“You pick the weirdest words,” Tristan said.

“Embarrassing doesn’t feel like the most accurate fit.”

“What do you think about him, then?” she asked. She leaned forward, hands still on her laptop.

“I-” I started. “Is it undiplomatic to say he gives me a weird vibe?”

“No,” Tristan said, settling into his chair.

“No,” Kenzie said. The smile fell from her face. “I give off a weird vibe, too. I had to get it from somewhere, so obviously I overachieved and got a full share from each of my parents.”

“Speaking of overachieving and casual segues away from uncomfortable topics,” Tristan said. “I like the saintly laying-on-hands you’re doing for your laptop there. That’s a new thing.”

“It’s warm and my hands are cold, duh.”

“Of course. Too bad, I liked the image of you as technology Jesus.”

She closed her eyes, leaning back, and hummed. She kept her eyes closed as she stopped humming, and said, “I wish I actually got to go to Church enough that I could know something fancy to say.”

“I’m not much of a memorizer,” Tristan said. “Most of what I could tell you is what I remember from choir. I could give you Byron, but I don’t know how he’d feel about that.”

“No, it’s okay. Not a big deal,” Kenzie said.

Chris was making his way down the street. Where Tristan had been confident and well dressed, Chris wore a sweatshirt and ducked his head. He had the headphones on, but not the braces. He looked very much like a thirteen year old boy, down to the sullen look in his eyes.

“What the hell, Tristan? I feel underdressed,” Chris said.

“You dressed up a little,” Kenzie said. “No braces. It’s nice.”

“No braces because I have back to back dentist appointments,” Chris said. He put one finger at the corner of his mouth, yanking it back to show his teeth. The mounts for the braces were still on the teeth, and two of the teeth were missing. A canine and the molar behind it, at the top.

“You changed too much,” Tristan made it a statement and not a question.

“And I got dry socket. I’m fucking miserable.”

“You shouldn’t change too much.”

“Oh yes, thank you Tristan. I completely forgot. I need and want to change, in case you forgot. Like right now, I want to get back home and change into a puddle of flesh with no nerve endings or teeth. But we’re doing this instead.”

“We’re just missing Sveta,” I said.

“The only person without a phone. Great,” Chris said.

“The trains are down so getting here is tough. I know it sucks, but stick it out,” I said.

“Do you have any fun painkillers your doctor prescribed you?”

“I have some. I’m not going to give them to a minor who didn’t have them prescribed to him. Do you want a boring over-the-counter painkiller instead?”

Chris nodded, and I got a bottle from my bag, passing it across the table to him.

He tipped four or five pills into his hand and before I could get an accurate count or realize what he was doing, tossed them back into his mouth, swallowing them dry.

“Chris!”

“Fuck off,” he said. “I know my physiology and I know what I’m doing.”

“You keep saying that,” I said. “It sounds less convincing each time.”

“Chris!” Kenzie said. “Do you know any good prayers I could say over my laptop? It’s a thing we were talking about.”

“Do I strike you as the churchgoing type?”

“Nothing?”

“Some random latin. Ex nihilo nihil fit, I think is a good phrase for you.”

“Why do I feel like you just insulted me?” Kenzie asked.

“It’s not insulting, nimrod. It’s actually a compliment.”

“Aww!”

“Which I’m regretting now.”

“I’m struck between the fact that you know that, first of all,” I said.

“I spend a lot of time reading when I’m waiting out a form.”

“And the fact you’re doubling down on the moody teenage boy thing. Most just get into nihilism, but you fit two ‘nihil’ in one sentence there. What is that? Word, nothing, nothing, word?”

“Why do I even talk?” Chris asked, leaning back. He pulled his hood down over his eyes.

Sveta arrived, spotting us before jogging to us in an ungainly way that made me worry she might fall. She didn’t crash to the ground, but she did teeter, and stopped, her hand resting against a window to catch her balance.

She wore long sleeves, a new wig, and her body was scrubbed of paint. Her dress was long, layered in stages of darkening green from layer to layer, with shapes cut out of each lower portion. Fish or leaves, it looked like.

“I love the dress,” I said.

“Oh, this? It was a gift from Chief Armstrong,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I don’t think we’re all late.”

She smiled. “I’m weirdly nervous.”

“It’s a weird thing,” Tristan said.

It was a weird thing. In timing and place, in atmosphere, and in aim and objective.

The wind whipped around us as the five of us walked as a group. There weren’t any crowds, and the building was largely empty as we made our way inside. The interior of the building was dim, but it was mostly because the lights were off and illumination came from the windows to the outside.

“No word on Mrs. Yamada?” Tristan asked.

“No,” Sveta said. “Not according to Weld.”

“And we don’t know who was behind it?”

“Not yet,” I said.

There were some simple folding chairs lined up down the wide hallway. Either end of the building had large windows, which let the light come in, casting its long, vague shadows. Some people were already in the hallway, clustered in groups.

There was a man sitting alone who gave me a curious look as we looked for a spot to situate the five of us. He was the kind of guy I might have imagined as a kid’s baseball coach, with a bit of a belly, short hair, and a soft expression with lines in the forehead. As easygoing as he looked in the moment, I could imagine him getting really intense in the right occasion.

He stood when he saw me, and that got my attention.

I left the group to approach him.

“Do I know you?”

“Not yet,” he said. Before he continued, I was already placing his voice from the phone. “We had an appointment today. I’m Dr. Darnall.”

“Oh,” I said. I felt momentarily awkward and weirded out both. “I’m sorry to reschedule on you.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “Both reschedules were for very good reasons.”

Outpatient surgery and this.

“You’re here, though.”

“I was asked to consult,” he said. “When you rescheduled to attend, I realized the connection to this. I thought I’d look in and see how he made out, and get our first meeting out of the way, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

“I’m not worried,” I said. “I’m just trying to work out a lot of things, and timing gets awkward.”

“Absolutely,” he said. He had an easygoing tone. “Is that the team you’re looking after?”

“Kind of. They’re not so much a team anymore, but I do want to look after them.”

The group was all together, talking, with Sveta being the one to look momentarily exasperated. Each one of them was glancing my way now and again, checking on me. When the door opened, they would look, waiting to see if we’d see Rain or Ashley.

“Understood,” he said.

“They’re catching up after a week of everyone going their own way.”

“You don’t need to justify or explain, Victoria. These things are complicated. If you want to talk about it someday, we can. If you don’t want to talk, that’s fine too.”

“I’d rather they had therapists than I had one,” I said.

“I’d like it if they had therapists too, but I don’t have the room in my schedule. When the plane is going down, it’s important to put your own oxygen mask on first. If we can’t address all of their issues, we can at least help you enough that you can help them. If you want.”

“Mrs. Yamada- you know her, right?”

“I do. We were friends. I attended her cousin’s wedding with her. As a friend of hers.”

Weird to think about. I’d never heard mention of a cousin.

“She thought something really bad was going on with this group. It could be really serious.”

“Yeah,” he said. He glanced at the window, where the shattered skyline was visible in the distance. A damaged building still stood, but with a chunk missing. The girders and beams stabbed out into the gap left by the missing chunk. Black bones and a tinted yellow exterior. “She seemed very worried about something. She didn’t confide in me about it. I can’t think of many others she would have talked to.”

“It’s on my mind,” I said.

The door opened. I glanced at it, checking to see if it was Rain or Ashley. It wasn’t. It was a middle-aged woman with glasses.

“Rain Frazier,” she said.

People began filing in. The others made way for others to pass while looking in my direction.

“I won’t get in your way,” he said. “I’ll be in the back, seeing how I’ll have to leave. I have an appointment with a patient in ten minutes.”

“It was nice to meet you,” I said. “Sorry for rescheduling.”

“I work with superheroes and supervillains. Some stay up all night, others run off to manage crises partway through most sessions. A couple of reschedules isn’t a blip on my radar.”

“You still came to find me.”

He shrugged. “My clients rub off on me. Sometimes you can’t limit yourself to chasing after or staking out and waiting.”

“Getting out ahead of the problem,” I said.

“If you want to put it that way,” he said.

I nodded.

The others were waiting for me, so I ducked my head in a quick farewell and went to join them.

It wasn’t a courtroom, but there was a layout that echoed one. A series of tables had people behind them. A woman from the Wardens that had been there when we’d pitched our response to the Fallen hit, then others I didn’t know. An old man, another.

Ashley was sitting in one of the chairs off to one side, and so we all joined her, filing in to sit around her.

Rain sat past the divider, facing down the tribunal. He’d cut his hair.

With us, Ashley looked the same. Kenzie sat beside her, her head leaning on Ashley’s shoulder.

What did it say, when I had no idea what outcome we wanted? He wanted consequence. Whether he was found responsible or somehow allowed to go free, the resolutions felt right and wrong both.

Torch – 7.2

“Rain, would you please stand?”

Rain stood, his chair scraping, the man beside him remained seated, attention and pen on a pad of lined paper in front of him. Two women and three men sat at the end of the room. It was a fairly handsome, clean-shaven twenty-something year old in a suit and tie who was doing the formal stuff, it seemed. The guy put more attention into his grooming and styling his longer blond hair than anyone else at the table had put into theirs, the woman from the Wardens possibly excepted.

“Today we’ll be addressing the case of Rain F, that’s R-A-I-N, full name redacted, case number seven-seven-one-one-two to pass our desks here at the Meadows-Corona office. Rain is a minor at seventeen years of age, and his middle and last names will be redacted and abbreviated, respectively.”

Fat lot of good it would do to trim his name when it was as unique as it was.

“Our intention today is not to sentence, but to assess if the case is worthy of the court’s attention. Spoiler, there are charges of manslaughter, so it probably is. Our secondary duty today is to decide what we’ll do with the person or people in question in the time between now and when the courts can see them. Have you sought or been provided with counsel, Rain?”

“I was provided with counsel, yes.”

There was a pause. The stenographer shifted her keyboard on her desk at the side of the table and it squeaked as it moved.

“To summarize, Rain was one of many to submit himself to the custody of the patrol block when the independent farming settlement outside of New Haven was raided. Both heroes and villains were on the scene, with members of the patrol block supporting the heroes.”

Rain hesitated, then bent down to whisper to the lawyer that sat beside him. The men and women at the table at the far end of the room waited until Rain straightened and raised his hand.

“Yes?” The response came from a man with a gruff voice, a nice suit and white facial hair and hair in need of a bit of a trim.

“Can I clarify something?”

“Yes.”

“If we’re summarizing, I think it’s important to note that the compound was run by the Fallen. It was a cult.”

“Your statement will be noted, Rain,” was the gruff response.

“Yes, sir.”

There were two women at the table: one was from the Wardens. The woman that wasn’t was Hispanic, slightly overweight, and dressed a little more casually than I’d expected for a court proctor. She offered a more gentle elaboration, “This office has more than a hundred people from that settlement to process. To avoid bias and to be as fair as possible, we’re not going to make any early conclusions about what it was or wasn’t. As we address you and your situation, we’ll hold to this idea, but we won’t hold you to it. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am. I can say things as I saw it.”

“Exactly,” she said.

The second of the men went on with the formalities. “On that note, to continue the summary, Rain is one of many that this office will be sorting through in the coming days and weeks. For easier processing, most are being addressed as groups, where the circumstances are similar. Rain is a unique case.”

Hard to deny.

“Rain is unique because, point one, he has turned himself in to the authorities with respect to a case of multiple manslaughters. He expressed the intention of pleading guilty. Some of those affected are here at the office today, and will provide testimony.”

As Rain looked over his shoulder to glance at the people in the room, I followed his gaze. There were others seated, and any number of them could have been people from the mall.

“Point two, Rain admitted to the authorities that he killed a costumed villain with his own hands, known to this office as a Jonathan Seiter, in what Rain states was self defense.”

Snag. How that particular thing was addressed would impact Ashley quite a bit. Ashley wasn’t conveying much. She sat with Kenzie.

“Point three, Rain admitted to the authorities that he committed, quote, more crimes than he could count, with crimes including theft, grand theft, auto theft, vandalism, and arson. Much of this occurred before the end of the last calendar era, at what the individual claims was the behest of a villainous group.”

He’d done stuff with the Fallen between the time he was a child and the incident at the mall.

“Point four, Rain provided information and assistance during the attack on the farming settlement outside New Haven, and this information and assistance was instrumental in mitigating damage and saving lives.”

That was our contribution, in part. I’d spent the better part of a day trying to figure out how to word my letter to the court proctors. It had been a distraction from the surgery I’d had looming.

“Point five, not unique to Rain himself, but necessary to state for the record, is the fact that he and others were under varying degrees of… how did you put it, Kimberly? We didn’t write it down in the notes.”

“Soft mental compulsion,” the woman from the Wardens said. “Those affected weren’t controlled like a puppet, but they were under threat, much as if there was a gun to their heads or the heads of a loved one.”

“Thank you. The Wardens, corroborating witnesses and others have given us their input on this. It’s a thing, this compulsion, but it’s not a thing we can prove was in place.”

Rain raised his hand again.

“Rain?” the woman with the frumpier clothes asked.

“I don’t want her power to be a mitigating factor. I do want to make sure that woman goes to jail and stays there for a long time, that’s the only reason I brought it up.”

“Have a seat, Rain,” the woman said. “Let’s have a conversation.”

“A conversation?” he asked. He took his seat.

“I do think we want to talk about that, but let me start off by saying what our goal is here. When a case crosses our desk, it’s our job to decide if it’s worth the time of a proper court. If we say yes or no, that doesn’t mean it’s a for-sure yes or no.”

Rain nodded.

“My personal view is to imagine four cases. If I put yours with them, is yours going to be the standout case? Manslaughter, murder, arson, and grand theft are serious things. I think yours might stand out.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“You’re turning yourself in. I imagine your lawyer advised you that if you kept to yourself, you might fly under the radar. It’s a lot easier to recommend your case to the courts for processing if it’s a plea.”

“He did tell me that.”

“Why turn yourself in?” she asked.

“Because-” Rain started. “Before that thing at the mall happened, I was a kid, it felt like a long, unpleasant dream. I was raised with these people, they chose what I read and what I watched for most of my life, and I was raised in compounds like the one that was attacked last week, or in small towns, or cabins. Nobody really questioned, nobody said any different. But then the mall happened and for the first time I had to make a choice.”

“Elaborate,” the man with the nice hair said.

“I was told to guard the door of the mall. It was left so I could open it if I had to. I knew… I knew it was a trap. I was threatened, told not to open it no matter what, but I realized that if I didn’t open it then I’d be in trouble too. I still didn’t open it, even when I realized people were hurt and scared. That’s not okay, and I deserve to be punished.”

“Were you compelled?” Kimberly asked.

“Um. By Mama Mathers, you mean?”

“The soft compulsion,” she said. “Mama Mathers, yes.”

“She was there in the back of my head. You see visions of her if you think about her, and I thought about her and what she’d do. She was there, then.”

“She can make people lose their minds if they don’t do what she wants,” Kimberly said.

Someone in the back stood up.

“Sit,” the gruff man said, annoyed.

“You can’t go easy on him,” a man said.

“Sit. We will ask you to speak when your turn comes. If you do not take your seat and remain silent, you will be removed.”

There was a pause as people got settled. There was murmuring, and a bald man at the end of the court proctor’s table banged his cup against the table a few times, in lieu of a gavel.

When all had nearly settled, Rain said, “I don’t want you to go easy on me.”

“We want a full understanding of the situation,” Kimberly said. “She could have made you lose your mind, yes?”

“Not as much as some did back at the attack on the camp. I hadn’t talked to her recently, so it wouldn’t have been as strong.”

“Still. She could have.”

“Yes,” Rain said. “But people died and were hurt. I see and hear them every night in my dreams. I should have made the call and opened that door.”

“Do you think turning yourself in will make that better?” the frumpy woman asked. “Seeing them in your dreams?”

“No,” Rain said. “I don’t see how that matters.”

In the back, Dr. Darnall stood and left the room.

⊙

I set down on the rooftop as Dr. Darnall erected a blue patio umbrella.

“That was quick,” he remarked. “I thought you would take a few minutes to spot it.”

“There aren’t that many rooftops that are that easy to lounge on,” I said. “A lot of them are in pretty scary shape, actually. Flying over, I see cracks and water that’s been there long enough to have algae or something form.”

“That would explain the mosquito-like flies we’ve been getting,” he said. “I’m glad to have you here. Is Victoria okay, or do you prefer a cape name?”

“Victoria,” I said.

“Victoria,” he said. He reached over for a handshake, and I shook his hand. It was cool- probably from the recent work with the umbrella. “I’m Dr. Darnall. You can call me doctor, Wayne, or whatever you prefer.”

It was hard to imagine calling him Wayne and taking him seriously. “Doctor,” I said.

“Very well,” he replied.

He worked with the umbrella for a bit, and I offered my assistance with my one good hand, pulling the fabric of the patio umbrella around one of the prongs.

We each settled into chairs. The metal was cold- even though it was only September, the weather was turning. There was a gravity to the seasonal change that I couldn’t remember ever experiencing back home on Bet.

“Did your friends have their turns in front of the tribunal?”

“No. Rain had his. Ashley will have hers soon. I’m helping her pack up her apartment tomorrow.”

“With one arm?”

“It’s for emotional support, as much as anything.”

“Drink?” he asked. He reached down and pulled a small cooler out from beneath his chair.

“Please,” I said. “Whatever you have would be great.”

He had an assortment of sodas, water, lemonade and iced tea. I took the iced tea, set it down, and got the papers out of my bag.

“The stuff you asked me to fill out.”

He took it, leaning back in his seat. It was disconcerting to deal with the silence, when I was used to one person guiding and leading conversation, steering things and making the most out of the hour and a half or however much time was set aside.

That had been back at the hospital, though, and maybe the need to fill the silence had been because I’d been something less human.

He read through the paperwork, and put it down on the table with the last page on top.

My ‘homework’. I’d submitted the critical information back when I’d made my first appointment, which I’d had to cancel for surgery. I’d walked away with some information on therapy and what to expect, and this. Questions.

The page he’d left on top had been the unusual exercise in the batch. The bottom half of the page had been left empty, but for a circle with a thick bold line. The instruction had been to draw, not write, how I was feeling, and to leave the paper and pen in arm’s reach for a while before and after using the space.

I’d settled on a face, drawing it like I might a sighing emoji, eyebrows slightly turned up in worry. I wasn’t much of an artist.

In letting it sit, though, I’d drawn around the perimeter of the face, lines circling the bold circle that framed the face.

I felt self-conscious about it. Now it sat on the table, between the two of us, the page facing nobody in particular.

“Anything you want to get off your chest before we start?” he asked. “Some people come to a session with something in mind.”

“Uh,” I said. I leaned back, holding my iced tea. “No, no I guess not. This feels pretty different from what I’ve experienced in the past.”

“The therapy you got at the hospital?”

“And what I saw of the session with the group,” I said.

With Jessica. The rooftop seat gave me a view of the broken skyline, and the place where Jessica might have died. It made me uneasy. Powers had taken my body from me, they’d briefly taken my heart, and they’d almost taken my mind. They’d taken my forcefield and strength and given it over to something else.

Now they’d taken the sky, and with it, they’d taken the one person that I’d known in my life who could make things better without betraying me.

Maybe that was unfair to Crystal and Gilpatrick, to give them the unfair label of people who had helped me but who didn’t help, in that way that I couldn’t put words to.

“Thinking of Jessica?” he asked.

“Yeah. I don’t want to dwell on it too much,” I said. I put my iced tea down. “I’m here for therapy.”

“The therapy I provide is going to be different because I’m new to working with capes. My background is in cognitive-behavioral therapy, and in the past I worked with police officers, paramedics, firemen, doctors, and other rescue personnel.”

“It seems pretty relevant,” I said.

“I think so,” he said. “But powers are complicated and you might have to talk me through some things you take for granted. If you can be patient with me, I’d like to work with you on identifying problems and goals, then addressing your patterns of thought and action to change your emotional landscape, fix the problems, and reach the goals.”

“You might have a bit of an uphill battle, doctor.”

“Which part?” he asked.

“Thought, action, emotional landscape, problems and goals. All of the fucking above.”

“Do you want to try explaining it?” he asked. “A big part of what we would be doing is setting goals. A starting point in figuring out what to address or explaining yourself in totality could be starting off with where you’re coming from, where you are currently, and where you’re going.”

“I-” I started. It was hard to put things into words. “Currently I’m bothered. Because I feel like ambushing me at the courthouse, having me draw the image instead of writing out my feelings, leaving that image out where I can see it, and having this meeting on the rooftop, it’s… confrontational.”

“Confrontational,” he said. His eyebrows went up briefly. “Can you elaborate?”

“Pushing me, or testing my boundaries, trying to catch me off balance. It feels like little plays I’ve had to deal with for a long time. I don’t know if you’re doing it intentionally because you want to get past my guard or if it’s unintentional and you’re doing it because you’re insecure. Because I have experience dealing with people who do that.”

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get back to that in a minute.”

“Fine. Where am I from? I was raised by capes to be a cape, and after finally getting powers I lived a lifetime in three years. I was reborn, I rushed through my education, I made mistakes, I started working, I found someone who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, I… started losing people. I went to the funerals. I gave my dad showers, because he needed the care. Then it was my turn, except… worse than death. I ended up in a hospital and a care center, broken and kind of forgotten or ignored. I can’t leave that hospital room or that feeling.”

“I’ve heard the general story. We will touch on that. I think I can help you if you want that help. I’ve dealt with a lot of people who had rooms or scenes they couldn’t put behind them.”

I shrugged. “I don’t think it’s that easy. It was two years that I was like that. Every moment was a scene unto itself.”

“Understood. Just do me a favor and don’t dismiss the idea of it being fixable right away.”

“Okay,” I said.

“That’s where you’re coming from, then. A lifetime of crisis is hard enough to deal with, and you didn’t have the tools to deal with it.”

“I had some,” I said, annoyed. Annoyed because he wasn’t jumping to the right conclusion and because he wasn’t Jessica. There couldn’t be a Jessica because Jessica was gone. “I was raised to be a heroine. I didn’t do it all right, I cringe at who I used to be, and how I used to hurt people, but I was given more tools than most people my age, I think.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Yeah. I’m getting sidetracked. Where am I now? I’m trying to make sure that a whole lot of people, some of Jessica’s old patients foremost among them, don’t end up like I did, because there’s nothing I’m willing to do to undo that or unlive those years, but I can at least save other people from it.”

I stabbed the table a few times with my finger to punctuate the last few words.

“You feel what you had to deal with with could have been averted, and you want to avert it for others.”

“One thousand percent,” I said, with emotion. “One thousand fucking percent, it could have been averted.”

“By an outsider? Or by someone close to the situation?”

“Both. By- by any of us paying more attention or communicating more, or paying more attention to powers and how powers work, or being a little bit more of an actual family. It could have been better if I’d fought better or harder and torn through some mutant dogs and gotten home sooner, if I’d dodged that one acid spittle or follow-up hit and avoided being taken out of commission, or if one less person had died maybe those of us who were grieving might have been clearer headed and we could have steered things away.”

He gave me a sympathetic look. When he answered me, I couldn’t hear him that well in the physical feeling of how agitated I was and how uncomfortable I was in my own skin. I hadn’t nosedived into panic or feeling off, but I’d walked here and I’d gotten out of breath walking. Now I couldn’t get back into breathing regularly.

I wasn’t making sense, because he didn’t have the context for all of that.

I didn’t want to make sense.

I wanted to put him off balance, to shake him and get more of a sign than a sorry look and kind, quiet assurance that he could put me on the right track.

I wanted to gut him. Not to impale him or tear his stomach out, but to make him feel a fraction of what I felt, emotionally.

“Breathe,” he said.

“I’ve become pretty-” I started. I stumbled on the word.

“Breathe.”

“Pretty accustomed to the breathing, thank you very much.”

“Okay,” he said. “Good. Come back to here. This rooftop. Cool weather, your drink. Have a taste.”

“I’m not not here,” I said. “Okay?”

“Got it,” he said. “Do you want to take a minute to catch your breath? What works for you?”

“I don’t-” I said. I stopped. “I’m fine.”

“Do you want to carry on with that thread of conversation, or would you like to change topics?”

“I don’t see the point in carrying on, I guess,” I said. “I don’t want to sound like I’m resistant to therapy or anything, but I’m kind of frustrated.”

“Okay,” he said. “You don’t see the point- are you frustrated because you think this is insurmountable? Or is it because you don’t feel heard?”

“Both,” I said. “No. Actually, neither.”

He nodded slowly. “Neither, then.”

“I think there are skills I can learn and ways I can deal better. I think this is doable. But I think the way we’re going about it is wrong. Because you hear a good bit of what I’m saying, not all, and you don’t understand.”

“Fair,” he said. “I can’t know your experience. I do think I can come to understand it.”

“That feels like a canned answer,” I said. “Like the kind of thing someone says when they can’t come up with a good response.”

“Victoria,” he said. “I am on your side here.”

“I know,” I said. “Absolutely.”

“Okay?” he asked. “Yes, maybe the response was a little trite, but I don’t think it’s wrong. I can’t know where you’re coming from. From what you describe, that could be a good thing. From what you describe and from what I was told, the experience was legitimately horrifying. Sometimes when you’re in a bad place you need someone who isn’t in that place to lead the way out.”

I drew in a breath. He held up a hand.

“Canned, I know. Bear with me, please.”

“Bearing,” I said.

“If it reassures you, I have a lot of experience helping people through trauma. I’ve spent twelve years with people, with heroes, who were traumatized on and off the job. I’ve dealt with people who were scarred head to toe, and their experiences after were not too dissimilar to what you most likely experienced in that hospital room. Others have been through what you’ve been through and they found their way through it. I have confidence that I can help you do the same.”

I drew in a deep breath.

“You are not alone,” he said.

“You spent a lot of time with heroes, you say, but you don’t mean capes when you say hero. You’re new to helping caped heroes, you said.”

“Yes,” he responded. “I get it. You came from a background that celebrates capes, that puts a lot of importance on costumed heroics. You value that and it matters that I admitted I’m not that experienced.”

“I celebrated capes, yeah, but you know my aura is all about awe and fear, right? I put my awe of capes behind me a good while ago,” I said. “So that background? It’s not that I’m elitist. It’s that I’m worried. I’m worried you don’t understand because the normal rules do not apply. Every cape you deal with is alone and unique. They have their own rules and neuroses. They have their unique, personal powers and challenges.”

“Everyone’s unique, Victoria. I don’t think that’s exclusive to capes. We can look to common ground.”

I shook my head. I was getting annoyed again. I couldn’t put words to what I was trying to encapsulate for him. Something I felt Jessica Yamada got. The consequences. “Capes magnify, okay? They exaggerate. The personalities, the issues, the disorders. Everything gets bigger or more distorted. It’s why, if you really truly understood what I’m trying to convey, you’d hear what I said back at the courthouse, and you’d find those kids someone. Because Jessica was worried and Jessica got it. If you understood, you wouldn’t be here with me, you’d be running to get these kids some attention.”

“There aren’t resources. I’m sorry.”

I drew in a breath, then huffed it out, because I couldn’t quite get enough oxygen. I was too agitated to be still, even to the point of keeping my lungs in a state of equilibrium.

I hadn’t responded, so he carried on. “If you were to work with me, we’d work on outlining goals. What I would work on you with would be fundamentals. Fundamentals work because they apply whether you’re a five year old, a police officer, a surgeon, or a person with powers. You are human. Most of the rules still apply.”

Hosting this first meeting on a rooftop was a mistake, because I felt the very real impulse to just stand from my chair, put down my iced tea, and fly away.

I felt other impulses too. To break the table, to try to drive some point home by scaring him through a display of power.

The Warrior Monk wouldn’t have approved of that, though.

My voice was small. “I don’t know if I’m human.”

“I beg your pardon? Is this a case of arguing the idea of ‘parahuman’?”

“No,” I said. My voice sounded very automatic, as I found the words. “When my- when the incident happened. I was mutated, changed into a tangle of limbs, heads, torsos, pelvises and connecting tissue. I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t eat without assistance. I could barely move under my own power.”

“That was outlined for me,” he said. “I can’t even imagine.”

“I had my emotions twisted around. To make me fall in love with the person who did that to me, and to experience unending heartbreak over the fact that she couldn’t be with me and I couldn’t be with her. My- she was family, I always saw her as family. I didn’t exactly leave that behind or stop seeing her that way, so it felt wrong, twisted, even as I felt it in full.”

“You would argue, then, that this is beyond the usual human experience?”

“I don’t think I’m human, doctor, because when Gold Morning happened, she put me back together. She fixed the feelings and she stripped away the excess flesh. She made me the way I had been on the day I’d been when I was turned into a monster. People came and wrapped blankets around me, and I was numb from shock and trying to remember how to move again when she talked to me.”

“She talked to you?”

“She rambled. She was never good in a crisis and me being fixed was a crisis, I guess. She told me, um-”

I scratched at my arm, then stopped myself.

“There’s no rush,” Doctor Wayne said.

I met his eyes. “She told me that when she made that body, larger than mine, the sprawling, broken, wretched thing, raw materials were harvested from stray cats, dogs, and rodents. Birds, bugs, other things. People’s household pets that were left behind after Leviathan attacked. She said, um, she said-”

I felt like I’d get caught up in a loop of ‘ums’ if I let myself continue talking. I stopped to drink some of the iced tea I’d barely touched.

“Um,” I said, defeating the point of the pause. “Just, you know, I should be careful about giving or getting transplants. There’s a chance it wouldn’t be compatible with humans. Understand?”

He didn’t respond. Good.

“Because she didn’t want to get carried away, she wanted to get me as close to normal as she could get me and stop herself there. Then she said- she’d ask if I wanted more fixes, and I couldn’t talk so I shook my head no. She asked if I wanted my memories of things erased and I couldn’t let myself have that because there’s nobody left in the world I trust enough to protect me from her, except me. So I told her no, and I told her never to show her face in front of me again. So I’m- I’m-”

I blinked away tears.

“I am very alone, doctor,” I said. “My maybe-not-one-hundred-percent-human self is going to fight like hell to save people from… from that-”

I indicated the horizon. The portals speared and lurched up into the sky, frozen where they were, the sky on the far side a different shade.

“-And from other horrors. I’m not going to win every fight. I would really appreciate some help to keep me in the fight. Because we have a brief moment of calm, and history suggests the periods of calm before the crises get shorter and shorter.”

Again, there wasn’t an immediate response. He fixed his gaze on the broken horizon because it meant he didn’t have to make eye contact with me.

I’d gutted him. It was wholly satisfying and far from being a good feeling. He’d felt something, been shaken, he was forced to reassess his perspective, and now maybe there was a chance he’d understand.

These things weren’t easy. They required a little baring of the naked and vulnerable soul. Revealing who and what we were.

⊙

“Freak. Monster.”

“Enough, thank you. Please.”

The formalities of a courtroom were looking pretty darn sweet, now that things had reached this point. Rain’s accusers were noisy, and the officers in the room were fighting an uphill battle to keep the peace.

They’d been given a chance to speak and make their arguments, and every one was as angry and vicious as the last.

I felt uncomfortable. I was only on the periphery of it. I couldn’t imagine what Rain felt, being the focus.

“That should be enough. Thank you. Your feelings have been made abundantly clear, and I and the other court proctors, I’m sure, agree that the pain and loss are real, profound, and very much present.”

There were more noises from that part of the room.

“May I speak?” someone asked.

“If you have something to add, that hasn’t already been stated.”

“I do, sir.”

It was a young girl, twelve or so. She had thick, straight dark hair with severe bangs and an ankle-length dress.

“Hi, Rain,” she said. Her voice was steady, but she held a paper or a letter, and it fluttered in her hands.

“Hi,” Rain said, his voice faint.

“My name is Staci. I was at the mall, the day the Fallen attacked it, but I was not inside when the attack happened. I really do not hope that people get upset because they think I have no place to speak. Two of my friends died that day and I think because I saw the aftermath and how the school and the families dealt with it, my perspective is valid.”

Her speaking style was stilted, as she read from the page.

“Two people died and three families were left devastated. Many of their friends were anguished to hear about what happened. School has not felt the same.”

“I’m so sorry,” Rain said.

The girl nodded, an intense motion that betrayed nervousness.

“I can not imagine what it was like to come from where you did. I wrote another letter that I planned to read here or give to you and I changed my mind while I sat here listening. I wrote this down over the last hour. I don’t think you should blame yourself. You were a teenager and teenagers don’t always make the best decisions. I have a big sister, so I know.”

It was an attempt at a joke, as she turned to her sister in the seat beside her. Nobody really laughed, though, and the silent disapproval of the people sitting around her seemed to drive things home, because her nervousness amplified tenfold. Her mom reached over to rub at her arm and shoulder.

“I don’t speak for everyone. I definitely don’t. But I’ve hurt and cried a lot over the past year and I’m glad you came here and you did this. Thank you. I don’t expect others to but I forgive you.”

There were noises of discontent. People couldn’t shout down a child, but they could make it clear they didn’t agree.

“Thank you,” the court proctor said.

“Everly?” Rain asked. “That was your friend? With the red hair?”

“Yes. And Sarah was the other. How do you know that?”

“I see and hear them every night, in my dreams,” he said. “Sarah had the blonde hair then.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve memorized the faces,” Rain said. “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t blame you for them dying,” Staci said. “The people who set the fires were the ones to blame.”

“I didn’t save them.”

“You were scared.”

Rain had wet eyes. “I was so stupid.”

“You didn’t have a chance to know better.”

The noises from Rain’s detractors grew louder. Things dissolved from there, with the officers trying to keep order. Staci ducked out, her parents providing a bit of a shield. They left through the door.

The man with the nice hair announced, “The court would like to take a brief recess. We’ll give Staci and her family a minute, and then we’ll leave. There are refreshments out in the hall. Rain’s acquaintances can stay, as they wanted to provide their testimony regarding his character in private, without giving up identifying details.”

The room emptied. The court personnel, minus some guards that went to the hall, Rain, Rain’s lawyer, and our group remained.

“This is hard,” the gruff man with the white, messy hair and beard said. “We’re short on heroes.”

“I know,” Rain said. He wiped at his eyes. “I’m not much of a hero. But I’ll be one in the future, given a chance.”

“But you’ve expressed a desire to go to prison,” the gruff man said.

“This kind of thing can’t be something where nothing happens,” Rain said. Sveta’s sentiment.

“Prison isn’t there solely for your absolution, Rain,” the frumpy woman said.

“I know.”

“You reported one attempt on your life. Do you think you’ll be safer if you’re in custody?”

“No,” Rain said. “Probably the opposite.”

“We’ll do what we can. Your friends. We will have some questions for the record, but to start us off, do we have any arguments against a stay in the juvenile prison while we wait for the courts to process the young man?”

“Yes,” Kenzie said. Heads turned her way. “No. I just think it isn’t right.”

“These things rarely are,” Kimberly, the woman from the Wardens said. “Then to get this out of the way, we note no strong arguments against a stay in our custody. The crimes are severe enough to warrant one. You have a few months of wait before the courts will even begin to address your case, but it should be quick once you reach that point. Time served will count against any sentence. There will be no remuneration if no sentence is doled out.”

“I understand,” Rain said.

“Then when the recess concludes, we’ll note the verdict and seal the paperwork. Until then, if my colleagues don’t mind, I’d like to get as much information as possible from you and your group, for the court record and the Wardens.”

“I will help however I can,” Rain said.

“Then, to go back to the timing of when you provided information about the Mathers, why the time provided?”

“I was sedated for a surgery, swapping my eyes and ears out. I started to provide information as soon as I was able. Before then, Mama Mathers was in effect.”

“Tell us about the timing of your interactions with her. We would welcome input from the rest of the group as well.”

Rain continued, and I added my own comment.

In the moment, though, I was mostly just taking in how Rain seemed to be. He sat straighter, and he spoke with more conviction. Something in him that had been bound up was free. In the face of his sentence and an interrogation from a staff member of the Wardens, Rain looked at ease for the first time I’d ever seen him. He still wasn’t one to smile, but I imagined he could come close.

If only we could all have a Staci.

Torch – 7.3

Chris cackled as we jerked to an abrupt stop.

“Ease up, Chris,” Tristan said.

“Ignore him,” I suggested.

“Look,” Tristan said, leaning forward to peer over the steering wheel. “I can admit it when I’m not good at something. It’s different when you have someone looking over your shoulder and acting as your laugh track.”

“You’re doing fine,” Kenzie said.

“Compliments are a supply and demand thing,” Chris said. “If you give them out for nothing, they aren’t worth anything.”

“Thanks, Chris,” Tristan said, sarcastic. Traffic started moving again. He started the van moving again, then made another abrupt stop. My head smacked back against the headrest.

“How do you not know how to drive?” Chris asked.

“I know how to drive, Chris. I got my license before the raid on the Fallen, in case we needed to drive a bus or something. I needed something to do when I wasn’t at the hideout.”

“I can imagine how that would have gone. Not to worry, fellow heroes, I learned how to drive just in case this happened! Then you drive us straight into a ditch.”

“I can drive straight, Chris, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I did notice, but it was easier to word it that way than to try to describe what you’re doing now, with the stop, start, stop, start thing.”

“Traffic is stop-start.”

“Traffic is stop, coast, and start. I was thinking you were wearing the boots from your costume, because your foot is so heavy.”

“He’s new, Chris. Ease up,” I said.

“Okay,” Chris said, before immediately betraying his word by saying,”Isn’t it a rule that every self respecting teenager has to be in line to get their license the moment the DMV opens on their sixteenth birthday?”

“The DMV wasn’t open the day I turned sixteen,” Tristan said. “On account of the world having ended the year before.”

“Excuses,” Chris said.

“I didn’t get my license when I turned sixteen,” Sveta said. “But I don’t have hands, feet, or a definitive birthday.”

“Excuses,” Chris said, again.

I offered my own input, “I can fly, so it was never a priority. I can drive, I had my license, but the only practice I really got in the last four or five years was driving the Patrol buses from parking space to parking space so we could shovel the whole lot. Tristan is a better driver than I am.”

“Why are you guys so lame?” Chris groaned. “Not being able to drive sucks, and I’ve got to wait three years.”

The road was fairly busy. The timing of our trip meant we were traveling down the main East-West highway that ran through the city, and it seemed like a lot of the farming settlements were transporting stock out to the east, traveling in the direction of the Brockton Bay and Boston areas of the sprawl. That procession was compounded by the stream of construction vehicles heading toward the city center.

In the van, we had Tristan in the driver’s seat, me in the passenger seat, and Kenzie wedged between Sveta and Chris in the back.

Tristan stopped again, but there was more than enough clearance between himself and the car ahead of him, and the stop was premature. A car behind us honked, long and loud.

“Why did you stop just now?” Chris asked.

“I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.”

“There wasn’t any movement,” I said.

Tristan crept forward until he could stop at a more reasonable distance behind the car ahead of us. “I know that now. It was a shadow. I’m in battle mentality, I think. I’ve spent years as a cape and I’ve only been behind the wheel for a few hours now, I’m stressed, and my brain is going for what it knows.”

“That might make sense,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work on fixing it.”

“I know, I know. I can get past this,” he said. He was frowning, staring at the road, even though the van wasn’t moving. “If I’m reactive and defensive, I need to make that work with something that’s either stop or go.”

“It’s a pretty crummy battle mode if you’re reacting to things that aren’t there,” Chris said.

“Hey Kenzie,” Tristan said. “Do me a favor?”

“Any time.”

“Get him. Shut him up by any means necessary.”

Chris was directly behind me, so I couldn’t see anything more than the periodic glimpse of a flailing limb I got in the window’s reflection.

Tristan continued driving, a little more confident now that he wasn’t being heckled and cackled at. He seemed oblivious to Chris’s noises and curses of protest.

No, not oblivious. He smiled wide without looking back as Chris protested with, “No tinker tech!”

Outside the van, the city was in a weird place. There were a lot of businesses with signs left dark, and a lot of people out on the sidewalks and stairs. People weren’t going to work, or they couldn’t.

Something was simmering.

I could understand it. The sky had been taken from us. There might have been an undercurrent of hope, the idea that if we tried hard enough and waited long enough, we could do things right this time. Every last person had lost someone or something they cared about. We’d all had to work hard to get through the first winter and contribute.

There had been an implicit hope, I imagined, that if we made those sacrifices and threw ourselves at the problem, we’d be rewarded with a city that had learned from the mistakes of the past. We’d experienced a paralysis in terms of leadership and even the name we gave the city, and the conflicting desires from the various groups who had very different ideas of what that perfection looked like might have played a role.

That hope had been leveled. There wasn’t a point in the city where one of the portals wasn’t visible at the horizon. There were several points in the city where the portals loomed overhead, dense areas where the main infrastructure of the city had been positioned close to the portals.

“Tristan,” Sveta said. “There’s something I wanted to bring up, but it’s awkward to, and I don’t know if it’s going to be any easier to fit things in when we get to Ashley’s.”

“Oh geez, you’ve got to drop this on me today?” Tristan groaned.

“Sorry.”

“My friend goes to jail, we’re anticipating another friend doing the same, and I have to drive through this mess, and now you’re bracing me for something.”

“Sorry. It’s not a huge thing, but I thought you’d want to know.”

“Is it the sort of thing where I’m wearing my pants backwards and nobody’s had the courage to tell me, or-”

Kenzie snorted.

“Help,” Chris eked out the word.

“-Yeah, yuk yuk, Kenz,” Tristan said. “Or is it bad news, Sveta?”

“It’s bad news, I guess.”

“Great.”

“I know you have issues with Moonsong. The Shepherds lost some members, and she impressed people enough that she’s getting promoted.”

Tristan didn’t immediately reply.

“Sorry again. I thought you should know before you ran into them,” Sveta said.

“A promotion. She wasn’t my favorite person, but I always respected her talent. Reach- we had a lot of good capes. It doesn’t surprise me.”

“What kind of promotion, do you know?” I asked Sveta. I could see her over my shoulder. “To a specific function, like team liaision, or a captain of a sub-team?”

“Second in command of their first team. Which Weld said puts her third in command overall, somehow.”

“Damn it,” Tristan muttered.

“That’s because the Shepherds folded into the Attendant, bringing their name and logo,” I said. “The people who worked together stayed together as they merged, making them two teams under one name. If something happens to the leader of their A-team, the leader of the B team takes over the leadership of the whole group.”

“I know Weld is busy,” Sveta said. “I barely saw him before but now I only see him for an hour a day, sometimes. Maybe Moonsong will be too busy to pay attention to you.”

“I don’t know,” Tristan said. “Damn it. Thank you for telling me, that really does help.”

“Are you sure?” Sveta asked.

“Yeah. I’ve gotta figure out what I’m doing. Now I know to stay a solid distance away from them.”

“I hope I’m not prying,” I said. “You never really told me what happened.”

“I lost it,” Tristan said, his eyes fixed on the road even though traffic crawled. “I’m not trying to deflect blame or anything, but I was dealing with the C-seventy bullcrap, three-point-four GPA, kicking ass as a hero on a kick-ass team, made friends and hung out with those friends. I did it while living half a life… and something gave.”

“That happens,” I said, trying to sound neutral.

“It happens, yeah. I got desperate and I stopped thinking straight. I did some impulsive stuff, dug myself into a hole, and then kept digging. I look back and I don’t even recognize the person I became.”

“We all deal with that to some degree,” I said. “It comes with powers.”

“Yeah. Dug myself into a hole and kept digging down, and the power situation didn’t help. I’ve always been good at what I do. Sometimes it takes time to learn, but if I have the chance to practice, I’ll practice like hell, and I’ll be kicking ass in no time. It’s why I’m grinding my teeth over the driving. Nobody’s around to teach me and I don’t have a car I can use to practice. I’m really worried I’m going to break Kenzie’s parents van, here.”

“It’s okay,” Kenzie said. “It’s not a big deal. The van was kind of a present to me, to help move my tinker stuff around. I really appreciate you taking us.”

“It’s your family’s van,” Tristan said. “You’re the one that’s being a big help.”

“What about your parents? They can’t help with the driving?” Kenzie asked.

“It goes back to what happened with Reach. I tried to do it all and when I couldn’t do it anymore I let something slip, I became a villain and didn’t even realize it. I got arrested, I lost most of my friends from back then, my team, my academic record, and I lost my family. My dad doesn’t want to do dad things with me. My mom is really careful around me, like it’s all forced. They don’t call me, it’s always me calling them.”

“You go to church with them,” Sveta said.

“It’s bittersweet,” Tristan said. “They’re almost normal when we’re at the church, but I think it’s because they think I need redemption.”

“Rain and Ashley are looking for their redemption by turning themselves in,” I said. “Would you do the same thing, or am I missing something?”

“Rain is,” Tristan said. “You’re right on that one. Ashley?”

He made a creaky sound, moving his hand.

“Not redemption?” I asked.

“I don’t think that’s so on the nose for her. I could be…”

Traffic was moving, and Tristan was going a decent speed, and this time, as something moved across the road, it was real, and not a phantom shadow. Tristan hit the brakes, and I could immediately tell it wasn’t going to be enough.

I flew, rising up in my seat, and activated my defenses for a moment, pushing back against my seat. I could hear the metal where it attached to the rest of the car protesting, and the entire van lurched. A sharp sound to my right marked the Wretch whacking at the door.

We stopped with a few inches to spare. A group of people were running across the road. Many had masks on, of the mundane sort.

“Thanks, Vic,” Tristan said. “Good move.”

I checked the coast was clear, opened my car door, and flew out, closing it below me before giving chase.

With a higher vantage point, I could see the line of traffic, stretching out down the road, avoiding the area where a portal’s expansion cut through the highway, forcing a detour onto smaller streets.

I could see the stores and the people clustered around broken windows.

Cause and effect. People couldn’t get around, which meant they couldn’t get to work easily and they couldn’t go to stores to make their purchases. Power, water, and the delivery of other resources had been interrupted in places. Stores, restaurants, and services closed or reduced their hours, because they lacked employees, customers, and resources. More people were dicking around with no or temporarily interrupted employment, frustrated at the backslide in progress and the overall hopelessness of things…

People wanted what they were owed, maybe. Or they wanted to feel like they were making some headway in things, when it felt so hard to obtain. They saw the unmanned stores and they noted the lack of proper law enforcement.

Looters. These weren’t the first I’d seen, and they weren’t the only symptom of the city’s current ails.

Will these unpowered people look back and think that they can’t recognize who they were? Or is it easier to justify and massage past events and past wrongs committed, if you don’t have powers to punctuate, exaggerate, and highlight it?

I didn’t have my costume, and I still had my jacket threaded through the triangle of upper arm, forearm, and sling strap, so it rested across my forearm.

Their getaway vehicle was on the other side of the highway, and there was less traffic going toward the city center. They’d drive off and disappear into the side roads somewhere. The ones at the front of the pack were loading up the trucks with bags of stuff, on the road just beyond the highway. The middle of the pack was already over the concrete barrier that separated the westbound traffic from the eastbound, and the stragglers were just behind them, hesitating because traffic was incoming.

I intercepted the people who were climbing into the first of the trucks. I used my aura to spook the first guy and to try to get his grip to ease up where he was holding onto the door and the side-grip at the chair back. He twisted around, hands up to defend himself, and I simply tugged him back, letting him fall to the ground. No strength needed.

I used my toe to nudge the keys from his grip to the ground, and he didn’t fight me. Then I stomped on them, forcefield up, with enough force to drive the metal into the concrete.

I pointed at him, and I ordered him, “Stay.”

He nodded.

I believed him. Marching toward the other truck, where people were rushing to load electronics into the back, I spotted orange lights at the base of the truck.

No need to bother, then. I ignored them, walking casually, and the fact I ignored them seemed to throw them off.

I chose the largest group that had assembled off to the side. Six individuals, all together. I let my aura burn and I watched the effect it had on them. My eyes searched for weapons and saw none.

This wasn’t a planned thing, a raid or a rush.

It was impulse. I could even imagine it was desperation, like how people stole for a loaf of bread. The difference was that this wasn’t to fulfill such a basic need.

Probably, anyhow. The cold season was sneaking up on us, and they might have felt they weren’t ready. Maybe this was borne of that.

Except I felt they’d probably be more organized if they were thinking that far ahead. There were bags of what looked like clothes, and they weren’t winter clothes. Not needs in the sense that those clothes would help survive the winter.

“Bad luck, guys,” I said. “You pulled this just as my friends and I happened to pass by. Let’s make this easy. Surrender.”

A woman hucked a brick-sized package of batteries at my head. My forcefield caught it, knocking it aside. Heads turned to look at her.

I could remember the movie scenes where the mob of criminals went after the cape or hero, shot, saw they were invincible, and then kept shooting despite the futility of it. I was suspicious the PRT had used leverage over the media to encourage those scenes, with the follow-up of the mob getting taken to pieces. A way of affecting the public’s approach to capes and the willingness to go all-out.

“Oh. I am really, really sorry,” she said.

There it was.

“Get down on the ground,” I said. “Hands on your heads.”

Some started to obey, the woman foremost among them. A group of others at the periphery and around the first truck dropped their stuff and bolted. They all ran as a group at first, and then, as I took off and one saw me on the approach, the idea went out. They scattered.

The car door behind me slammed. The driver had climbed into the second truck, and others were piling into the back with the stolen merchandise. The truck peeled out, making it about half a foot before the spike of stone that Tristan had made popped the tires.

“Stay,” I told the ones who were already on the ground or partway there. “The way things are now, if you cooperate and own up, you’ll get off with a slap on the wrist. Okay?”

I saw a few nods.

I went after the ones who were running. I started at the far left.

No forcefield, no super strength. I flew to catch up and I caught the first one mid-run. Because I could maneuver in the air at the same time I caught up, it was relatively trivial to get in a position to stick my leg between his knees and trip him.

I left him behind, relatively sure I could catch a second one before he picked himself up and got far enough away.

The second went roughly the same way.

The third one I caught up to had a knife that was made for the kitchen, not for fighting. She disarmed herself swiping at my forcefield, and promptly surrendered.

By the time I checked on the first and caught him limping away, Sveta had rounded up the others, including the second and third I’d stopped.

She was fast, she had reach, and she was mobile. This was very much her thing. She hadn’t left any marks more serious than a palm with road rash.

We herded the ones who had bolted in the direction of the disabled getaway vehicles. The ones I’d told to stay had stayed. The van had pulled off the highway, and Looksee was standing on the top, watching over things. She’d have projected her costume. Capricorn had his costume on with no armor but the helmet, and was standing guard by the store with the broken windows.

I flew closer to them to get a status update, and as I passed the van, I could see Chris still in the backseat, gagged and ensnared by Looksee’s eyehook, the prehensile tendril with the camera and claw at the end.

“Lucky that we happened to be passing by,” Looksee said.

I smiled.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her. This kind of low-level dissent was happening all over the megalopolis. I could see it whenever I flew over. When I’d told Ashley that we intended to arrive at two thirty, I’d plotted for a detour like this, because it was next to inevitable.

It would get worse; the shock was wearing off.

⊙

An armed Patrol soldier greeted us at the door. His was a face I’d seen from the Stratford patrol, not far from Bridgeport.

“We sent our information ahead,” I said.

“You did. You’re the girl from the community center thing, right?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

“Okay.” It wasn’t a smiling, accepting okay. “She’s inside. Be good.”

Sveta raised her eyebrows at me the moment we were past the guard and inside the apartment. Some things were already set aside, lining one side of the hallway, making the fit through fairly tight. Sveta had once described the apartment as being an unusual mix. I could see it in place now- cardboard boxes and plastic totes in places, and then furniture in other places that definitely hadn’t come from a box store.

The table by the kitchen door was wrought iron with curled-up feet, meeting and melding at knee height and then separating out to grip the edges of dark-tinted glass top. There were some bills on top, unopened. A mirror with a wrought-iron frame loomed ominously above the table.

I really hoped the mirror was fastened securely, because it had to weigh fifty pounds with all the iron curls and thorns, and the tinted glass below it would not survive an impact.

The kitchen had a similar theme, but the appliances were red, and the clear glass electric kettle, table, and stool were glass with a red tint. There wasn’t much wall space, and narrow scroll-like strips of cloth ran down the available spaces between cabinets. Calligraphy-like strokes of red paint suggested a male’s head, broad shoulders and buttocks, and the woman standing in profile. A flick of the brush suggested the nipple for the woman and a knot-like flourish indicated that which was visible between his legs. The electric kettle was on, burbling.

The dining room was the most conventional of the rooms, with dark, stately furniture, a rug, and an ornate gold-painted picture frame behind the head of the table. A massive brown horse with the whites of its eyes showing had its teeth around a man’s head, while its hoof held the man’s body down. It was partway through tearing the man’s head off, ribbons of gory flesh still connecting the head and neck, and the man’s fingers were slipping from the horse’s reins.

It was such an odd thing to see that I paused mid-stride to confirm it wasn’t my mind playing tricks on me. Had she found it or commissioned it? If it was the former, who painted that kind of work and put it out into the world? If it was the latter, why that, specifically?

I glanced at the candlesticks without candles, and an empty picture frame on the wall behind the length of the dining table, just as ornate as the horse one. There were boxes in the corner, too.

The apartment was narrow, and it looked like sets of stairs allowed what I assumed were the bathroom and bedroom to be right above the living room.

The living room had a reclining couch and a series of chairs, none of which matched but all of which seemed to follow a theme. There were bookcases along the wall, all of the same make, with a unique design element that really came into its own with the bookcase closest to the window. Starting with the middle of the five bookshelves, getting progressively more intense, the wood had been burned, and clear resin had been molded in a shape to emulate the unburned bookshelves. Flakes of something red and metallic had been set in the burned parts of the wood, so they caught the light from the window and made it look like the wood was still hot from recent fire.

Ashley was perched in a narrow chair with long legs and a high seat, hands clasped together. Jester was there too, reclining on the couch. A large black and white picture of a lithe, bare-chested or naked man was on the wall above Jester, the head and lower body out of frame, his arms twisted up behind his back in a tortured position with ribbons loosely binding them.

“Hi Ashley,” I said. Others offered their greetings. “Hi Jester.”

Jester smiled.

“Why’d you come?”

“The others either didn’t want to or didn’t care, and I wanted to. I still probably owe you something from when you carried the slack back at work.”

“Nothing’s owed,” I said.

He just shrugged in response.

“This place really came along since my last visit,” Sveta said.

“I would hope so,” Ashley said. “It’s been a little while.”

“It’s a shame to pack it up,” Kenzie said. She hopped into a chair.

“Yes,” Ashley said. “Yes it is.”

“I love the bookshelves, especially the one at the end,” I said.

Ashley smiled. “I do too.”

“There were three the last time I came,” Sveta said. “The one at the end had to have taken the longest to put together.”

“It did,” Ashley said. “It came out well. I’m pleased.”

“I’d be worried about the resin refracting light at the wrong angle and starting a fire,” Chris said.

“You are just dead set on being a stick in the mud today, aren’t you?” Tristan asked.

“It’s fine,” Ashley said. “I was warned about that, and I was careful.”

“If we’re admiring decor, I like this ribbon dancer dude,” Tristan said, indicating the picture above the couch.

Chris snorted.

“I wish I had the artistic sense to figure out what it’s saying,” Tristan added.

“If you have theories, keep them to yourself,” Ashley said. “I’d hate to have it ruined.”

“Lips sealed,” Sveta said.

“We got in a fight on the way here,” Kenzie said. “I barely got to do anything, there were looters, and they raided a store, so I got most of their pictures before they could run, so I could track them down later if I had to. Then I did a sweep of the crowd to see if any looters were trying to hide among the bystanders, but I didn’t find anything.”

“That’s too bad. It would have been a nice little victory.”

“I wish I knew if it didn’t find anything because there wasn’t anything or if it was because it didn’t work.”

“You’ll figure it out. You’re clever,” Ashley said.

“How are you doing, Ashley?” Sveta asked. “Is there anything we can do?”

“I’ve committed a cardinal sin,” Ashley said. “I asked you to help me move, and I don’t have things packed. I put most of my books away, and some of my clothes, but…”

She moved her hand in her lap. Her fingers moved slowly, and they seemed to hit a limit where they wouldn’t go completely straight.

“Have you had that looked at?” I asked.

“Rain did. He did what he could to fix things, but my usual tinker is gone. If these hands fail, then I won’t have hands unless they allow me to meet with Rain again,” Ashley said. “I haven’t been able to pack, as I said, and I’m being a poor hostess, because I have food but can’t serve it.”

“I can grab it,” Jester said.

“The water for tea should be boiled. Pour it in the pot and bring it straight down. There’s a shutter by the stove. Inside you’ll find nuts, chocolate and cookies. The serving tray and sugar bowl are above the shutter. There are cold drinks in the door of the fridge for those who don’t want tea, and a little pitcher of milk.”

“That sounds like a lot,” Tristan said. “I’ll come with.”

“I normally allow myself one treat a day, with the same for any guests- I don’t have many,” Ashley said. “But we should treat ourselves.”

“Are you okay?” Sveta asked, again. “In the heat of everything last week, I said some harsh things. I feel guilty now that we’re here.”

“If I’d refused or if I had tried to get away with it, you would have resented me for it. Most of you would have. You were right,” Ashley said. “Don’t feel guilty.”

“If you changed your mind, I’d have your back,” Kenzie said.

Chris swatted her over the head. “No. Bad.”

Kenzie stuck her elbow out toward his middle, digging it into softer flesh. He grunted.

“What would be the point, Kenzie?” Ashley asked. She brought her hand up to her hair to tuck it behind her ear. It looked harder than it should have been, with her fingers not cooperating. “What would motivate me to stay? I like some of you, I wouldn’t be able to stay with you. I like my place, I’d have to leave it behind and run.”

“If the tables were turned, and I had to choose between going to jail or staying, getting in trouble, and spending ten percent of the time I do with you guys, I’d stay,” Kenzie said.

“I know,” Ashley said. “That’s who you are.”

“I think there’s a better chance that you guys can stay in some form of communication if she sticks to the rules, than if she runs and periodically makes contact,” I told Kenzie. “We can ask them to make sure something’s allowed.”

Kenzie smiled a little.

“I will make it up to you someday,” Ashley said. “I promise that.”

“Okay,” Kenzie said. She offered more of a smile.

Ashley dropped her eyes to her hands, flexing her fingers.

“You’re going to miss out on a lot,” Chris said. “Shit is slowly and steadily going down, and after this stuff with the portal, it’s pretty clear the major players are starting to act. We still don’t know who did it.”

“The Birdcage was emptied for Gold Morning,” Ashley said. “If something serious happens, I hope they’ll release us. I could join you then, even prove myself.”

“You might not go to prison, you know,” Kenzie said.

I felt so sorry for that kid. She didn’t deserve this.

“They gave me a short leash, given my history and the people I’m connected to, and they told me what to expect,” Ashley said.

Jasper and Tristan appeared, each carrying a tray. The chocolate looked like shards of dark chocolate with chunks of salt embedded in it. The cookies were wafers partially dipped in more dark chocolate.

“We’re going to end up eating and not doing any packing,” Tristan remarked.

“You don’t need to worry about the furniture. If the girls could look after my clothes, and if you could put away my books and pictures, that would be enough for today. I’ll help where I can.”

“You’re sure?” Tristan asked.

“Ashley said the van would be enough,” Kenzie said.

“I did.”

The tea was doled out to those who were drinking tea. Others poured their drinks. There weren’t enough chairs for everyone present, so I sat on the ground around the crates that were gathered together to act as an impromptu coffee table.

“Ashley,” Tristan said. “I talked to Rain about this, it might be worth talking to you. Do you have a plan of action if anyone comes after you?”

“You were thinking Love Lost might go for Rain where he is,” Ashley said. “And the past allies of Beast of Burden might come for me.”

“It’s not out of the question.”

“I won’t be alone,” Ashley said. “I have friends waiting for me.”

“Still.”

“Still,” she replied.

“Okay.”

As people finished their drinks or got restless, they stepped away to start investigating what needed to be put away. I licked chocolate from my fingers and cleaned them off with a damp napkin.

Ashley stood, stretching as she walked to the window. The unnamed Patrol member who stood at the top of the stairwell cleared his throat loudly.

“I’m not doing anything,” Ashley said.

“Away from the window,” he said. “You’re on paper as a low-rated mover.”

“Harry,” Jester said. “I think we’re okay.”

“Away from the window,” Harry said.

I tensed, seeing Ashley bristle, standing a little taller, her pupils disappearing.

I thought about intervening, and I had no idea how I was supposed to go about it. Maybe getting Harry to safety.

Ashley stepped away from the window. “I’m going to have to get used to this, I think. It’s going to be hard.”

“You promised me there’d be a someday we’d meet again,” Kenzie said. “And you’ve already broken one promise.”

“I know,” Ashley said.

I’d been told to do the clothes, but it felt weird to go through Ashley’s bedroom and things without her there, so I started on the bookshelf.

The team wasn’t technically a team anymore, but we couldn’t break away clean.

The moment Ashley was on her own retreating to the stairs to look down at the rest of us, it was Chris who went straight to her. The two of them walked into the dining room. Ashley rubbed at her arm as the two of them talked, and the patrol officer stood a ways back, watching them closely.

That was interesting. Were there commonalities, in the physical breakdown?

I noticed Kenzie was off on her own, fidgeting, and made a concerted effort to rope her into helping me. I made it something of a game, filling the box as quickly as I could with one hand while being kind to the books, with Kenzie holding the box, and then taking turns, as she pulled books off the lower shelves.

“Victoria,” Ashley said. “Can we talk?”

The moment Ashley had been free, Chris had gone to her. The moment she was free, she chose me?

I was caught off guard, but I nodded.

She led me up to her bedroom. There were pictures by the wall that hadn’t yet been hung up, judging by the lack of marks on the walls. The bed was a four-poster with black silk cloth.

“Who are you keeping an eye on?” she asked.

“Everyone,” I said. “I’m making plans to check on members of the team.”

“Don’t neglect Sveta,” Ashley said. “Her teams are her families. She’s not so different from Kenzie. The only people who stick by her are the same kinds of people who get caught up in helping other people. It’s a very lonely thing when you’re not anybody’s first priority.”

“There’s Weld,” I said.

“Make sure he remembers, then.”

“These feel like the final instructions of someone who expects to die soon,” I said. “Do I need to worry? Do we need to worry?”

“If Death comes for me I’ll shred him with my power,” Ashley said. “I beat him once, and I hardly expect to kneel before him now.”

“You’re sure?”

She shrugged. “Death doesn’t worry me. Destruction does.”

“Destruction of?”

“Of me,” she said.

I glanced around the room, then indicated the wardrobe. She nodded.

I began packing up the clothes as best as I could, when I couldn’t fold very effectively. She didn’t seem to mind.

“Destruction of you? How is that different from death?”

“Before you all came, I nearly destroyed those bookcases, and the artwork. I almost destroyed that man, Harry, from the patrol. I could have shredded him, and it would have been easy.”

She said it so casually.

“The girl from the train, Presley, she looks up to you in a way, I think. She thinks you’re awesome.”

“I am awe inspiring in my own right. It’s not a surprise, Victoria. I don’t need a gimmick to do it.”

“Hey,” I said.

She smiled.

“Alright, but- does that not give you a reason to hold back from those impulses? For this girl who really wants to know how to get her hair as white as you have yours, because she wants to emulate you? For Kenzie?”

“It’s hard to explain. Today, I knew you were all coming, and your friend Jester was there, talking to me about nothing. I don’t know what the reasons for holding myself back will be next time, or if I’ll look for reasons and find nothing there.”

I nodded. I focused on folding a dress.

She went on, “I’ve been told a sentence is inevitable. I’ll be confined, and people will bark orders at me and expect me to comply. I’ll be destroyed or I’ll come through it with a better idea of what I need to do to manage it.”

“You made a promise to Kenzie,” I said. “You can’t betray that. Don’t give yourself any other choice except to manage it.”

“You look after her in the meantime, then?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Then that leaves only three more things,” she said.

“Three things?”

“The clothes. Pack them, please, but keep anything you like.”

The clothes were black, black, and more black. More to the point, she was a different build than I was, almost narrow, while I considered myself more of an athletic slim. There might be issues with fit.

“Thank you,” I said.

“The other two things, hm. I could offer it as a trade.”

“A trade of what?”

“I’m stealing Rain’s thunder, maybe, but… a haircut?”

“I’m working with one hand. I can use the other some, but… how much of a haircut?”

“The haircut we thought would work for Swansong,” Ashley said.

I paused. “I think I could manage something.”

“In exchange… take my keys. Take over the rent for the apartment.”

My eyebrows went up.

“You’re staying with your cousin, you said. If you haven’t found a place, then stay here instead. Keep the things you like and store the things you don’t.”

“You planned this.”

“I never had a place, Victoria. My life is vague dreams and clear destruction. Again and again, life tells me I can’t do this, I can’t do that. It goes wrong or I can’t think of it as being right… and I’m not talking about right as good. The thoughts loop through my head, that nobody can be trusted, everyone is out to get me, and… dying is a really good reality check. I’m trying to take that to heart. I was trying.”

“What happened? There were so many moments that seemed so cool, the photo on the train, Swansong, seeing how you were in the sparring…”

“All punctuated by fits of pique, madness. It’s not something that goes away or gets better.”

Those words were uncomfortable. There were already some parallels. The idea that there could never be a fix to this side of me that I couldn’t control…

She continued, “Some things are starting to make sense, about the group members, my memories, and how this all works, and I can’t even figure those things out because getting to tomorrow is already so hard. It’s been hard for too many days.”

“It doesn’t get easier when you’re in prison. I’m not saying you shouldn’t go, but…”

“When I make a mistake now, I kill Beast of Burden. If they incarcerate me? I can let myself be someone else’s concern. I think I know what it’s going to be like, and I’m ready for it.”

I nodded. I struggled to voice a response, because I was pretty sure she was wrong.

She was trying to build a new self like someone built a house of cards. It was a precarious thing, and if she slipped up once- destruction of the self. Something completely different from death. If she had a last chance then this would be it.

She tried to sound confident in tone, and she wasn’t convincing me.

It was a long, long walk along a razor’s edge.

Torch – 7.4

Powers had a way of impacting the individual in general terms, beyond the way the Wretch affected me or Kenzie’s situation affected her. In the classes I’d taken and watched about parahumans, it had been painted out in broad strokes, partially but not wholly based on the PRT classifications. The generalized thinker mindset. Masters and sociology. Changers and identity.

When one could fly, it was easy to feel disconnected. Movers in general had issues when it came to feeling or being rooted in things. Being someone who had to run, walk, drive, and navigate the city on a day to day basis meant being in the city. It meant being on the roads and cooperating with others, watching out for them, and paying attention.

To fly was to be like the celebrity that was chauffeured everywhere. It meant not getting that daily dose of social give-and-take, good and bad. When I’d caught a ride to Ashley’s just a day ago, I’d suggested flying while everyone else rode. I’d told myself I could do stuff to help out while waiting for them, like we’d done with our detour. In the end, though, Kenzie was probably the only person in the world who would have been so happy to sit wedged in between Sveta’s hard prosthetic body and Chris, and I’d sided with the option that helped me stay connected and in tune with the group.

Now I felt the disconnect as profoundly as I had since flying over a flooded Brockton Bay. I navigated the air above a gridlock, a sea of red brake lights on a gloomy morning muting the color of much of the city.

I couldn’t stop for every incident I saw. More disconnection, that I had to see wrongs in progress and ignore them, because there were other priorities, or because I needed to look after myself and things immediate to me.

Once upon a time, in a land a universe away, I’d told Amy that she couldn’t be Scion. I’d had to tell myself much the same, in those hectic days after dad’s head injury and the devastation of my hometown.

Traffic being outright stopped for ten minutes of me flying was a bad sign. Normally I would take my time, zig-zagging, looking for fire and even mundane situations where I could touch down and ask a question or two before taking off again. With this and the unrest it was causing, I wanted to get to whatever the source was.

People had headlights on in the fog, and it made for a stark image, with a crowd of people that had abandoned running vehicles now collecting in a mass. Some cars were pulling away, driving across fields to circumvent the situation, but they were mired, stopping because-

I had to fly closer to get a look.

A group of people were blocking the road. Students. It reminded me of the situation we’d expected with the construction workers planning the demonstration, but this… it was a little more insane. The students were blocking the highway and interrupting movement across the city, and people were pissed. Capes were already on scene, guarding the narrow no-man’s land between the groups.

The shouting between the two groups drowned even the howling of car horns as I got closer to the scene. I chose one place where the divide was especially narrow to set down. No cape-erected barriers here to keep the peace, no Master pets, no effects. The mob was held at bay by people in costume who couldn’t or wouldn’t use their power on civilians, and by police who were stretched too thin. Stretched thinner, I could see, because they were trying to get the student protesters to break up. Too few, and the students too stubborn.

Some cars had left the road and were trying to drive around, but students were putting themselves in front of the vehicles. Some of those vehicles inched forward, students sitting or sprawling on the hoods, and others had been stopped from running through the crowd by capes.

Capes, combative already, flinched as I descended, even though I’d cut my speed to a crawl. They relaxed slightly as I raised my good hand.

It was a dangerous position, because the gap between the students and the mob was only a matter of ten or so feet. The Wretch could extend out far enough that I was liable to clip one side or the other. I couldn’t keep my forcefield up, and I was wearing nice clothes.

It was hard to breathe here, between the thin line of students -roughly three deep, locked elbow to elbow- and the mob of over a hundred people that I couldn’t see around or past. I couldn’t see everything of importance at the same time, and I couldn’t hear because protester and irate bystanders shouted at each other with neither group showing any inclination to listen.

In a lot of places, here in particular, it was only costume and uniform that kept people at bay. Fear, and the threat of the unknown- just about every cape present serving as that unknown, with powers or capabilities the crowd couldn’t know. Some of the ex-drivers were close enough for me to touch with my fingertips, had I extended my arm fully. I stood with my body twisted, injured arm turned away from them, my arm half-raised, and they backed off some, men and women studying me and figuring out if they could get past me to get what they wanted.

Fog meant humidity and humidity meant I could smell the chemicals of shampoos, mouthwashes and soaps, the sweat and the breath of people pressed in close to one another. There was a faint warmth, even, as if they were so heated that it had become manifest.

Through it all was the noise of them. I was pretty sure a megaphone was blaring but I couldn’t make out words in the chaos.

Someone pushed in close to the cape nearest me, a guy with a costume I didn’t recognize. That gave others the courage to join in. Every cape had been ready to act, and powers flared out. Some people stopped, and some pressed on.

I was young, I was wearing nice clothes rather than a costume, and I had my arm in a sling. People weighed their options and they pressed on, pushing in close, one grabbing my good arm. Someone else reached past me, arm brushing past my chest so they could grab the strap of my sling, which was a dickish, dickish move.

I didn’t flinch, using flight to stay upright. I made eye contact with the guy, someone with glasses, a mustache, and a khaki jacket, and saw the moment of hesitation.

I set off my aura, and drove that moment home.

Both he and the other guy let go, backing off, and others reacted as well. It got the attention of people who were trying to squeeze past a cape who had his cape draping down from wrists to ground, transformed into a fence-like barrier, and past a self-duplicator with a luminescent filament webbing connecting each copy of themselves that they’d made. It bought a moment and a moment mattered. People continued to struggle and deal, but nobody tried to grab me or press past me again.

A cape sent their minion trotting between capes and the road ragers. People backed off, seeing it coming, and in its wake, the five to ten feet of gap remained.

The crowd was cowed by the failure to push through, and with that came a lowering of volume, just enough that the megaphone could be heard. A new voice. “The situation is resolving. Return to your cars or they will be rolled off the roads!”

Some people left right away. Others lingered. They wanted to stay for the same reason the students were here, I imagined. It was for the same reasons the construction union had wanted to act.

“You okay?” someone asked me. He was tall, broad shouldered and narrow waisted, with white armor that seemed to exaggerate the facts, his shoulders flaring out into sweeping points. His helmet had the same sweep worked into the top, a man’s face worked into the front, hyper-realistic but for the lack of eyebrows and lashes, the eyes closed. The costume served to exaggerate proportions and joints in a way that made him look like he was put together wrong.

Nice quality, though. Ornate, with an artistry that suggested a craftsman had helped to put it together.

“I’m fine,” I said. I brushed at my outfit. “Thank you.”

“Emotion powers are volatile,” the cape said.

“I’m well aware,” I said.

“You have to be careful with them in situations like that. Even if the effect is something you think you understand, it isn’t always simple. Two people can have different reactions to the exact same feeling.”

“Yes. I do know that. I assessed the moment.”

“She’s aware, Ambrosius,” I heard a woman say.

Ah.

I turned to look at my mother. She’d been no more than fifty feet away from me and I hadn’t even seen her. She was wearing her costume, modified since I’d last seen it. There was some shoulder decoration, decoration around the gloves, and the emblem at her chest, brass tracery decorating and elaborating on the seams and the divisions between colors. Light from car headlights flickered as it found gaps in the retreating crowd to dart through, illuminating diagonal lines and ‘x’ marks that broke up the plain white of the costume.

“She’s been a cape for three times as long as you,” Brandish said. “She’s a good cape.”

“Three times?” he asked.

“Well, not really,” she said. She smiled. “It’s something I tell myself, that she was a born heroine. The powers and the costume came later.”

“That’s your daughter, Brandish?” the filament duplicator asked.

“One of them,” she replied.

The duplicator turned to the big guy in armor. “Ambro, her group helped save some of the stations from the portal fuckery.”

The big guy in armor turned his molded face with the closed eyes my way. There was a pause, and then he said, “Thanks.”

“Yeah. I wish we could have done more,” I said.

“I know that feeling,” he said. He turned to Brandish. “I’m going to go. Watch things?”

“Yeah. Of course,” she replied, smiling like there was a joke in there.

Maybe the decade or two of seniority.

“You look nice,” Brandish said. “Not in costume?”

“I’ve got somewhere to be,” I said.

“Your friend’s appointment at the court?” she asked. When I raised my eyebrows, she said, “I do pay attention, Victoria.”

“I’m running late,” I said. “She needs backup, and if this traffic thing keeps anyone, she might not have many people on her side.”

“Don’t run,” she said. She reached out to touch my arm. “Talk for a minute. We can talk about little things that don’t matter, if you want. I miss my daughter.”

I sighed. I took in the scene. A field of weeds had been turned into mud and uprooted plants by the passage of a few hundred road ragers. Behind us, students were resisting the ones who were telling them that it was time to pack up, that they’d gotten their message across and there was no reason to stay.

“You’re in costume,” I noted. “An updated costume.”

“I dabble,” she said. “A little while after I started working, I saw an article about the refugees and how children were getting lost in transition. It struck a chord with me. Because of what happened to your aunt Sarah and me, and because I’d lost my own children, in a way, in transition.”

I shifted my stance, giving her a warning look.

“I’ll be good, don’t fret. I haven’t joined a team, but I have connections. I get out and do what I can when I’m not working, and right now I’m only working half-days, four days a week.”

“What happened to the missing refugee kids?”

“That’s not the kind of cape work I excel at, I’m afraid. I relieve some capes and watch their neighborhoods so they can investigate it more. They give me updates, and I try to keep track and collect information.”

“Which is what you’re good at.”

She smiled. She touched my sling. “You got hurt.”

“Power nullifier in the mix.”

“Of course,” she replied, in conjunction with the same smile she’d given Ambrosius earlier.

She seemed so much more like herself here, in costume.

“You did good work, Victoria, doing what you did at Fenway Station, and tipping people off about the other stations. We’ve been so stunned in the wake of it all that I think we’re all still processing it. Still, as people come to grips with it, I’ve tried to let them know about the role you and your team played in controlling the damage.”

“Thank you,” I said, quiet. “You made it out okay?”

“Some of my coworkers were working late. It’s part of the reason for me working half-days. We’ll put pieces together and find a way forward, but it’s going to take a week or two at a minimum.”

I nodded.

“Did you make it out okay, Victoria?” she asked. “Your team?”

“More or less. We’re not really a team. We’re mostly going our separate ways.”

“Your two friends with the court appointments. The others are attending court? Sitting together again?”

“Yes. Probably. Are your colleagues going to be the ones prosecuting them, down the road?”

“I’m a lawmaker more than a prosecutor these days. But no, nobody I know directly, I’m fairly sure. That wasn’t what I was driving at. For a team that’s going its separate ways, you seem to be traveling in the same direction with regularity.”

I raised my hand, my thumb hooking on my sling in my best folded-arms posture. I gave her a frown to match.

“I don’t know the reasons for the group breaking up, Victoria, and I’m not going to pry, but I get the impression you want to stay together. We need heroes and we need heroes that work together. Really.”

Great. The mom lecture.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me, Victoria.”

“I wasn’t,” I said.

“You wanted to. Am I right? Does the group have gravity that pulls you all together?”

“To some extent,” I said.

“Most groups naturally fall apart despite the work they put in to stay together. To some extent, your group wants to stay together despite the work it’s putting in to fall apart. It’s rare to have ties or bonds like that, and that’s something I’ve missed every day for the past four years.”

I nodded.

“I can tell you that the Victoria I had a heated conversation with a few weeks ago wouldn’t have held her own in that crowd just now.”

“It’s not really progress,” I said.

“I’ve noticed it,” she said. “Two steps forward and one step back is infinitely better than standing still. I know you and I think you know deep down what you need to do to truly take off.”

“Speaking of,” I said. I saw her smile change. “I should go. I don’t want everyone to be late for her. The motherly pep talk was… nice.”

“I’ll settle for nice. I’m working with limited information, you know.”

“It was nice,” I said, stressing the was, and I actually meant it. “It’s just hard to find the words for it.”

Hard to articulate, really, when we walked a razor’s edge. She’d toed or tested the waters. I had no idea whether it was inadvertent or not. I didn’t feel like I could have another conversation with her and know it could be this… inoffensive?

“You are strong, brilliant, capable and beautiful, Victoria. You know what you need and want to do. For reasons you haven’t shared with me, or for reasons you have shared that I’ve apparently failed to understand, you’re holding yourself back from that.”

“This is getting out of the territory of the pep talk and into the realm of criticism.”

“Take care of your team, Victoria. Just… take care of yourself too, you deserve it. Work to make sure it carries on being a positive thing, and don’t make the mistakes I did.”

My mom, admitting to mistakes?

“Don’t let this stuff interrupt or override you and what you need to be focusing on. I can tell you, that leads to disaster and regret. Okay? Don’t ignore what you need and want, like this team of yours, and don’t lose sight of what matters, of you. Promise me that?”

I raised up off the ground, because I really did need to be going. “It’s not a team, really.”

“If you insist. Still, Take care of yourself, prioritize yourself. Promise?” Her tone was pointed.

“Sure. I promise,” I said.

⊙

Eclipse – x.1

She saw her own expression in the mirror, her hair freshly cut, pupils absent in white eyes with modest amounts of mascara and shadow around them. Something in the image startled her, and the pill slipped between her stubborn fingers, falling into the sink with the running water. She watched the little white pill circle precariously around the spiral of the drain, never slipping down.

Years of lessons taught her to be still and not to act on reflex, that it would be futile and make things worse. Before, the wrong movement of her hands would make her power flicker to life, and then there would be no pill, no sink, no adjoining section of wall. It had been the case for so long that it had been ingrained into her, a new instinct that pressed on past death and resurrection.

Now it was pointless for different reasons. Her hands wouldn’t listen to her.

From one set of shackles to another, with more waiting to overlap and compound the current set. It was frustrating and frustration was dangerous. The wrong thing threatened to push her over the edge; she could hear a song that she remembered from back in the day, someone could say the wrong thing, or a thought could cross her mind, and her mood would careen away from her. Like a car losing its brakes while parked on a hill, it would gain momentum and either end in a crash or a collision with others. Failure, harm, or death would result.

She watched the pill swirl and dance in the tumult of water, and she did what she could to keep focused. She touched base by reaching for the reassuring. She was going to be locked up and this precarious her was going to be someone else’s problem. Partially. Reassuring.

She could kill everyone here if she wanted. Reassuring. She didn’t want to, but it was an option of last resort.

The others were going to be here. Kenzie would be here early, because she was always early. Reassuring.

My hair looks good, she thought. She used the fingers of her more functional left hand to adjust it at the brow. Reassuring.

It helped to center her. All of those things helped.

All of those things terrified her, in very different ways. It was enough that she took what scraps she could from it and turned her mind away, her eyes focusing on the little white pill that still circled the drain, defying the plunge. She wanted to see it somehow survive despite odds. She wanted to see it fall at the same time, to see if she could spot what finally doomed it.

“Hey,” a man said, behind her.

Ashley stared at the pill, watching it circle, dipping, rising. Would it disintegrate before it fell?

“Don’t make me draw my weapon.”

Ashley turned away from the sink. The man in the patrol uniform stood in the doorway of the women’s restroom, one hand on the pistol at his hip, the other at his belt, thumb reaching up to scratch at his belly. He was twenty-five or so, brutish. He was big with a combination of height, fat, and muscle that would have intimidated her if she didn’t already know how little ‘big’ mattered.

“I can’t let you have that.”

She had to check to see what the man was referring to. The bottle of pills with the prescription? No. The glass bottle with the wire that flipped around to lock the rubber cork in the neck. The outside had black rubber bands around it, making it easier to grip and hold.

“That’s a weapon, if you had a mind to use it as one.”

Ashley was nettled. She gave the officer her best cold smile. “I’m a weapon, if I wanted to be one.”

“Not funny.”

“No,” Ashley replied, holding the smile.

He took the hand off his weapon to point, as if he somehow believed it was more threatening. “Lose the bottle.”

Ashley backhanded the bottle, sending it off the edge of the sink, into a plastic bucket with a toilet brush that lay beneath. It rattled violently within its new confines, threatening to tip the bucket over.

“That wasn’t necessary,” the officer said. A woman standing in the hallway behind him said something, and he held up a finger, saying something back that Ashley didn’t care to hear.

I don’t like people who try to throw their weight around, Ashley thought. It wasn’t the wrong piece of music, the wrong phrase, and it wasn’t a thought crossing her mind, but it was a similar sort of thing.

It was as if an invisible hand was flipping a coin. Heads, good to go. Statement made.

Tails, she would say something like what she had intended, except it would be wrong in a way that only seemed clear to her in the aftermath. There would be another invisible coin flip after that, to see if she could stop herself there.

The invisible coin flipped over through the air, as her head moved and agitation made the movement stiff, her neck and jaw tense.

The pill in the sink was gone. She’d missed its descent. The pills were supposed to help with these things, with the flipping of coins, but it was only a negative thing now, altering the coin’s trajectory in a bad way.

She heard Kenzie out in the hallway, talking someone’s ear off, and she smiled.

The coin settled. The officer finished his statement to the woman who wanted into the bathroom. The tap shuddered as she forced the lever down, stopping the water. Her jaw was so tense that it clicked as she worked it open into a yawn-like movement. She raised the bottle of prescription pills to her mouth and tipped it back.

“Hey!” the officer at the door barked the word.

She lowered the jar, turning back his way. She’d caught one pill between her lips and held it there. The remainder settled back in the bottle.

“No games,” he said.

She shook her head.

“Hurry it up.”

She nodded, her tongue catching the pill. She worked saliva into her mouth and then swallowed it dry. Easier than using her hands. She replaced the cap and dropped the pills into a pocket.

“I’ll need a bottle of water,” she said, running the back of one hand along the front of her dress. “That’s fine, isn’t it? I would have to be very creative to kill someone with a plastic bottle.”

“You’re acting like you think this is funny? You can do without. Come on. Out.”

She made her way out of the washroom. The officer in charge of her made sure that people gave her a very wide berth, fifteen feet of clearance. She clasped her hands in front of her as she walked. Back straight, she entered the hallway.

Kenzie was sitting on a bench by the wall, next to the lawyer that had been assigned to Ashley. Ashley hadn’t bothered to learn the man’s name. The other members of the team weren’t present.

The conversation between the lawyer and Kenzie stopped as they saw Ashley.

“Ash!” Kenzie greeted her. “I still love the hair. I love the dress, too, you went with black? You didn’t take Victoria up on her offer to wear something of hers?”

“Hm. It seems it’s easier to handle moments like this when I’m my usual self.” The statement could have served as a response to both the question about the dress and the statement about her hair.

“You look awesome, don’t worry,” Kenzie said. “And I think you’ll do great. I have a good feeling.”

She said it without a smile on her face, eyes large and wide with sincerity. Ashley reached out to put her hand on Kenzie’s head. Stiff as it was, more like a doll’s hand than like her own, only the fingertips and heel of the hand touched.

“Hey,” the officer said. He stood a distance away. “No contact.”

“Hey yourself,” Kenzie said. “It’s fine and we’re fine. There’s no rules and I’ve seen a bunch of people have their turns here and none of them had to wait anywhere.”

The officer frowned. “Prisoner Stillons, move. That’s enough socializing, and we should wait somewhere away from any people.”

“I-” Ashley’s lawyer started. He glanced at Ashley. “I would like a moment with my client and her character witness.”

The officer drew in a breath, puffing up.

Big men could be so small.

“Please,” the lawyer said.

The officer turned his back, walking to the other side of the hallway. He was probably still close enough to overhear if he had a mind to.

Kenzie put her hand on Ashley’s, which was still on her head. The weight and pressure of Kenzie’s hand helped Ashley’s to go flat.

Ashley looked at the lawyer, and he broke eye contact.

She didn’t look away as she spoke, “Kenz. Help me out with something?”

“Whatever you need,” Kenzie said, her head moving under Ashley’s hand as she looked up.

“Can you get me a bottle of water from the vending machine?”

“Dry mouth?” Kenzie asked, hopping up.

“I’ll have it later. I want something for while I’m in court.”

“No problem,” Kenzie said, eyes lighting up. She turned to go.

“Here,” the lawyer said, change jingling in his pocket as he fished it out. Kenzie was already three paces away, and had to reverse course to get the change, then reverse course again.

“Get yourself a treat,” the man said.

Kenzie didn’t turn around, but bounced mid-stride instead.

Ashley took a seat on the bench.

“Any questions before we go in?” her lawyer asked. “We’ve got… five minutes. We can cover whatever you need.”

“Did she say something or give you something?”

The lawyer looked shocked, and he didn’t give an immediate answer.

“Show me. Tell me.”

“I don’t know.”

“Now. There isn’t much time before she gets back.”

The man reached beside him, and he pulled out a tablet computer. The video was already up, having been the last thing viewed.

The view was slanted, like the ones that had been projected onto the walls of their apartment headquarters. Beast of Burden, Damsel, Nailbiter, Love Lost…

The scene with all the same characters, at the edge of the Fallen compound.

When the events diverged, even though she expected them to, Beast of Burden pressing the attack, being more aggressive, the blast happening midway through an assault, she found herself doubting her own experiences first, logic and expectations settling in a moment later.

It didn’t help that she’d been off when the event had happened. Reality was so ephemeral.

“Delete it. It’s not the events as they happened.”

“She said you’d say that. That you want to go to prison for some reason, but it’s not in your best interests.”

“I don’t want to,” she said. “But I might need to, and it might be in my best interests. We’ll see. Delete it, or I’m going to take that tablet from you and then you won’t have a tablet anymore. And don’t let her show the copy she has on her computer.”

“I’ll delete it.”

Ashley let her head go back until it rested against the wall.

Kenzie was audible before she was visible. She returned with Victoria walking beside her, both of the girls carrying something from the vending machine in each free hand. Victoria had dressed up more than she had for Rain’s event, more care given to her hair, which was left unbraided, a top with a band of lace that covered the breasts, black pants without any side pockets, and nice boots- the same boots Victoria wore with her costume, the gold bits left off.

Who would I have been, if I’d never had powers? If I was born into a different situation? Would I have resembled Victoria?

“There was a situation with traffic, a staged event stalled all traffic across the city for a half hour,” Victoria said. “The others are on their way, but they’re going to have to duck in when things are already in session.”

“Thank you for letting me know,” Ashley said. She took the bottle that Kenzie offered her.

“I loosened the cap,” Kenzie said.

The door opened.

“Armstrong is coming, but he has other obligations he couldn’t avoid. He’ll show up around or after the recess partway through. The court knows.”

The brute in uniform approached, looking smug. Ashley clenched stiff fingers around the plastic water bottle, and plastic crackled.

☽

Ashley’s hands gripped her upper arms.

There were no good days, anymore. There were the bad days, and there were the days she dreaded the bad days.

This was a bad day.

“Bitch. Making me look stupid in front of my friends!?”

His fist went out. He grabbed Ashley’s mother by the hair, and she quailed, hands curling up at her chest.

“Come on! Say it again. Aren’t you brave enough now that we’re alone? Say it!”

“Please,” Ashley’s mother said. “I’m sorry.”

“Come on!” he shouted the words in Ashley’s mom’s ear, twisting hair in his hands. Ashley’s own hands twisted around her upper arms, gripping.

“Okay, okay,” Ashley’s mother said. “Will, let’s- we’ll put Ashley to bed, okay? She doesn’t need to be here, she’s scared. Then, we can talk, okay? We can talk about anything you want. I’ll say anything you want.”

“Anything you want, anything you want! Okay! Okay!” Ashley’s dad mocked, still so loud that Ashley winced with every utterance. It had to be worse for her mom- his mouth was almost pressed against her ear.

“Please,” her mom said.

“Please. You can’t even sound normal. You sit there and act like you’re smart. You sat there as they laughed at me, smiling that stupid fucking constipated cow smile of yours!”

Her dad pushed her mom, and she fell against the bookshelf. There were more papers and folders on the shelf than books, and everything went flying into the air.

“Stop,” Ashley said, quiet.

“I’ve got to go into work tomorrow, you know that? You know they’re going to bring it up.”

Ashley’s mother stood, swayed, then went straight to Ashley. Her dad’s back was turned.

She ushered Ashley toward the back door, and with the way she shielded Ashley with her body, Ashley could only feel what was coming, not see.

More violence. More hits. More things knocked over, in the dining room now. Ashley made a noise of the sort that little kids made. She was thirteen- she wasn’t supposed to make that kind of sound.

“Shut up,” her dad said, pointing at her. “Don’t move. You need to know this too. Respect matters.”

He kicked her mom, once, twice, again.

“Over the name of a fucking book,” he said.

He aimed a fourth kick for the face. He didn’t usually hit the face.

“Stop,” Ashley said, without realizing she was saying it.

“You can be quiet,” he said. He kicked again. “You don’t get a say until you bring something to this household. I go to work, I earn, I do most things around this house because this twit-”

Kick. Ashley flinched as her mom did.

“-is too incompetent to do any of it properly.”

The kicks kept coming, and Ashley felt a feeling of horror creep over her.

Ashley looked, then scrambled off to the side. She reached the fireplace in the living room where things had been scattered everywhere, and grabbed the first handle she could. It was the shovel, for the ashes. She pushed it aside, heard her dad coming, and grabbed the poker, an L-shaped bit of metal with a spike on the end.

She spun around, holding it up and ready. She set her jaw, trying to sound tough and sounding anything but. “Stop it.”

He approached, stopping just out of reach of the poker. “Don’t be stupid.”

He took a step forward, and she was reactive enough that she swung. But he’d faked her out, stopping mid-motion. She tried to swing back the other way, but it was too slow, too late. She hit him, but it didn’t do anything.

Then he had his hands on the poker. He tore it out of her hands.

His hands gripped her by the hair. She fought, scratching, kicking, pulling away until it felt like her hair would tear free of her scalp. She did everything and it felt like doing nothing at all. She punched, and he caught her hand, squeezing her fist inside his hand until her knees buckled.

He was taller, all the people on his side of the family were. He was stronger.

Ashley had nothing.

He moved her head into position and then let go of her hand to strike her across the face. She made another little-kid sound as she fell against the couch and she hated it, she hated that she wanted to curl up into a ball and make only those sounds. She hated that it wouldn’t do anything either way.

He bent down and picked up the poker. She watched, trying to swallow and find the breath to speak.

“First time I’ve had to lay a hand on you, Ash,” he said, and he sounded so sad. “You pissed me off, scratching me like this.”

She clenched her teeth. She tried to stand and she wobbled.

“You pissed me off!”

Again, with the painful shout. She dropped back down to the ground.

“Are you going to smarten up, make this a one-time thing?” he asked. “Answer me! Don’t go mute on me like she does.”

“I don’t know,” she said. Her head hurt where he’d pulled at her hair. Her mom wasn’t moving much, and seeing that hurt more.

“That’s not an answer, Ash,” he said. “Come on. If I’m going to hit someone with this, is it going to be you, or is it going to be her?”

The poker smacked against his palm.

She hadn’t made things better.

“Come on!” he shouted.

She squeezed her eyes shut, and everything went cold.

She opened her eyes, and they opened beyond the edges of her eyes and they kept going.

She saw emptiness, desolation, destruction, a… bowl of cereal floating in milk, without any milk. The ‘cereal’ was shapes she couldn’t wrap her head around, because they seemed to go on forever.

She could pull back, and she realized she was thinking on too small a scale.

She was thinking like a person and to wrap her head around this, she needed to look down on something far larger.

A sphere, cracked like an egg and cracking further, all in slow motion, with energy glowing through the cracks. Her awareness loomed above it all.

As slow as it had been, the moment she realized it was a planet, time caught up and everything moved in fast motion. The planet became dust and debris and there was nothing left behind.

She closed her eyes until they fit inside her eye sockets again. All went away, except for- for that energy that she’d seen and felt.

Ashley could almost hold it in her hands.

She raised her head and she faced him much as she had with the poker. He had the weapon now, and he approached. He said something and she didn’t hear anything at all.

He shouted something and, before she could register it, she lashed out, hand going out, the energy releasing from her arms, traveling down to her hands.

The hand he’d crushed spasmed as the energy ran through every damaged part, until she thought her hand might come apart in pieces. The darkness escaped, loud and chaotic, and with the pain in her hand, some went wide, striking the fireplace. The force of it knocked her off her feet, into the table beside the couch.

But enough struck him. It caught her father’s lower chest, his pelvis, his legs, the floor, the hand that held the poker and the poker. It twisted away everything that it touched, and flecks of her father were scattered across the living room and into the dining room. Bits of her dad splattered her mother. Bits splattered herself.

His upper body fell. His jaw moved, but the eyes didn’t.

She stared over at him.

She felt so cold inside. None of it seemed real. Meaty bits of her dad were flowing out of his chest cavity. Floorboards had been ripped up and splintered and lots of the bloody bits were sloughing off into the holes.

Bloody bits were sloughing off of her. She wiped at one with her hand, and something snapped across her hand, pinky to thumb. The energy slapped her across the head, loud and blinding.

Hair whipped around and settled. A white lock lay across her face, and she didn’t dare touch it in case it happened again.

“Ashley,” her mother said. “Don’t look. Please. Don’t look, just come to me, okay honey?”

Ashley felt like she was going to pee herself. She had a moment where she felt horribly off balance, like she couldn’t stand straight. In the following moments, she had to convince herself she was sprawled against the table by the couch. Not even standing.

“I’m hurt, honey. Help me, and we’ll help you.”

Ashley started to move. She felt tension in her arms with every movement of her hands, like rubber bands being drawn tight. She stopped.

“Ashlet,” her mother said. Something she’d called Ashley when Ashley had been little.

With renewed effort, Ashley worked her way to a standing position. She felt the pain in the side of her face, her hand, her scalp. She moved as best as she could without moving her hands a lot, balling them up into fists. Her forearm rested against the arm of the couch.

She had to navigate the long way around as she circled the hole in the floor and the pieces of dad.

She nearly slipped on a bloody smear, and then the feeling of that underfoot made everything feel very real. Her knees went out under her, and she fell to the ground. Tension danced across her hands and through her arms as her hands pressed against the ground.

“It’s okay,” her mother said.

Ashley nodded, mute. She was grateful for those two and a half words.

“Come here,” her mother said. “Look at you.”

Ashley crawled to get nearer. Her mother’s face was barely recognizable, but the expression on it was very much her mom.

“How special is that?” her mother said, touching Ashley’s hair where it was white.

“Mom,” Ashley said. She sounded like a little kid again and she didn’t even care, now.

“Shhh, Ashlet. It’s okay. Okay?”

Her dad’s mockery from earlier rang in her ears, so vivid she had to check to see that he was there.

Seeing the mess was- it wasn’t better than seeing him looming behind her would have been.

“Shhh,” her mom said. “You’re going to get a phone, okay? We’re going to call for help.”

Ashley shook her head.

“We’re going to call me an ambulance, okay, because I don’t think I can stand up. My leg hurts. Then we’re going to call the police, and we’re going to explain-”

“No,” Ashley said. “No!”

“It’s okay, Ashlet. This is not your fault. We’ll explain and we’ll get everything figured out.”

“No,” Ashley said, plaintive. “Cops only mean trouble. They’re out to get you. Dad says.”

“Ashlet, Ashley, shhh. It’s okay,” her mother said, reaching for Ashley’s hands.

Her mom’s fingers worked their way into Ashley’s palms. One of her fingers moved, and she felt the snapping. The flood of twisting nothingness came out with enough force that Ashley was flung backward. She landed in an awkward position, her hurt hand under her, and her power came out again, brushing against her body like a breeze and tearing up the floor under her.

Minutes passed where she was afraid to move, afraid to look. A car passed on the road outside. Then there was silence.

One breath after another, she used elbows and forearms to work her way up the part of the floor that had broken under her. She kept her back to the dining room.

The only noises in the house was of broken things breaking down more, and the noises she made herself.

Her room was in the back corner of the house. It felt like it wasn’t really her room, everything a fake replica of things she’d owned. Carefully, slowly, and insistently, she gathered the things she’d need. Clothes for warm and cold weather. An extra set of shoes. Socks. Personal things. Everything went into her school bag.

Here and there, darkness crackled around and through her fingers. Sometimes it danced back to her elbow. Other times it gathered in shapes in front of her fingers, inches away or arcing out to ten feet away. Here and there, parts of her room were grazed and destroyed. It only made it feel more false.

She went to the bathroom. Soap, acne cream, tampon, toothbrush, hairbr-

Her power ripped out as her hand closed around the hairbrush. It cut into the medicine cabinet, the wall, and into part of her bedroom. It annihilated a segment of pipe that ran through the wall, and it tore into wiring. Water flowed out and electricity flashed and the two made for a scary combination.

The electricity wasn’t visibly going for long, but she wasn’t sure.

She wasn’t sure about anything. Everything was scary. Some of the collected toiletries had fallen into the basin of the sink. She didn’t dare go after it. She would find another way to get a toothbrush and soap.

She went back to her room. Her bag. Favorite clothes. Essentials.

As she brought the strap around her shoulder, the power flickered. The strap broke.

She stared down at it, where it lay on the ground, her heart pounding.

She tried again, putting the one remaining strap over her shoulder. She couldn’t go out the front door. That was dangerous. People would see her.

Ashley could smell smoke as she passed through the house. Into the back room. Past the dining room, where the remains of the dining room table had been cast away.

Past what was left of mom, and into the grass behind the house. She didn’t dare try shoes, so she ran barefoot.

The further she got from the house, the less light there was to go by.

☽

The room was dark, as she opened her eyes.

“How are you doing?” Jessica asked.

Ashley’s mouth was dry. She reached for her water bottle, initially moving her hands in a careful way, then realizing she didn’t have to.

She drank before answering. Jessica stood and attended to the light switch and the blinds.

“Do you want more water?”

Ashley nodded.

Jessica took the water bottle and went to the sink in the corner of the office. “Is the thirst because of what you experienced in the dream? Stress?”

“The medication.”

“Of course. It’s only been a short while, so we’ll give it time.”

Jessica returned with the bottle. Ashley drank more, then put the bottle aside.

“I’m… out of order,” Ashley answered the question from earlier. “Right now, everything feels incoherent and it’s hard to get it sorted in my head. Memory and present day. What came when and what’s…”

She trailed off. She felt tired and she didn’t like feeling and acting tired in front of someone.

Jessica didn’t finish the sentence or prod her. She took her time, instead, to sit up, to fix her hair, and to compose her thoughts.

“What came when and what’s mine and what isn’t mine,” Ashley said.

“This was an experiment. Some people with powers report success, some struggle with it. It’s unique to the individual and the powers, and does not reflect on you. I thought it was worth a try.”

Ashley nodded.

Jessica went on. “This is not my field of expertise, and if you wanted to pursue it further, I would recommend we turn to someone else as a resource. If you weren’t comfortable doing anything further, that would be wholly understandable. Disorientation doesn’t sound positive.”

“It felt more real than this room, here.”

“Parahumans have unusual relationships with things like drugs, legitimate or otherwise, which we talked about before starting you on your regimen-”

“Yes.”

“And they also have unusual reactions to dreams and things like dreams. In this case, walking you through a near-sleep state where your mind can wander, it’s possible you’re tapping into the kind of thing others have experienced.”

“Who are these others?”

“I can’t name names, of course, but in scientific literature, there are people with powers who don’t sleep, ever, but they dream while awake, because the mind still wants to sort things out. That sorting is important. People with perception powers sometimes need to dream to refresh themselves and get what they see separated from what their power sees. Occasionally tinkers sometimes need to tap into dreams to get inspiration. Virtually every parahuman reports dreams that are different than what they experienced before their triggers, if they can remember their dreams at all. Dreams are often reported as clearer, more exciting, having meanings, or, commonly, having a strong emphasis on memories.”

Ashley leaned back. “This is something people know about?”

“In some circles, yes. It’s hotly contested and it isn’t made easier by the pseudoscience and just how complicated and different parahumans can be.”

“Complicated,” Ashley said. “That’s the kindest way I can think of phrasing it.”

Jessica smiled before going on, “Dreams are something the unpowered use to sort out the unconscious mind, and we believe it’s a space and a tool that the powered use, sometimes, to sort out the unconscious end of powers. I personally wonder if the emphasis on life and memory are a way for people with both a parahuman and civilian identity to sort out the identity they’re neglecting.”

“I’ve talked to too many imbeciles over the years. Why does the world have to end before I can find anyone who makes any sense?”

“If that’s a compliment, then I’m flattered. I could tell you that the PRT wanted to bring you on board for a long time, and had you accepted, you might have found more discussions like this. Answers, company, things like your hands.”

‘Your’ hands, Ashley thought. They weren’t her hands.

“I do want to point out, however, you need to be careful of that wording, bringing up the end of the world. It’s only been a year, Ashley, and people are still hurting.”

“It’s awfully hard to ignore that it happened.”

“People are going to try,” Jessica said. “And it’s okay that they’re trying and finding ways to deal with it, however flimsy those reasons might seem on the surface. People would lose their minds if they took it at face value.”

“Because they’re weak.”

“Let’s not get caught up in retreads of things we discussed our first and second sessions,” Jessica said.

Ashley shrugged. “Fair.”

“Going back to the topic of this approach, you can decide if you want to explore this, in part or in full, even choosing key things to focus on, saving it for a rainy day when you’re not up for a regular session.”

Ashley looked at the pad of paper beside Jessica. Jessica turned it around to make it easier to read.

Shorthand, but it was the scene. The house, dad, her mother, running away. Ashley looked away.

“I want to keep doing it. It clarifies things,” Ashley said.

“You do? Okay. I’ll look deeper into this, do reading myself or see if I can find someone who specializes in it. I can’t make promises in either area.”

“Please,” Ashley said. The word sounded alien, uncomfortably echoing memories that were too sharp in her head.

“Is there anything particular you want to focus on, moving forward? You talked about clarity.”

Ashley reached beneath long hair to rub at her neck. “That. I also want to dig out the moments I was proud of. The successes.”

“That’s a good direction to take. Happy memories?”

“Not happy, no. Not unhappy. When Riley put me together, she chose a time and place to go back to.”

“She did, yes.”

Ashley stood, pacing. Jessica was faintly wary, sitting back for a wider view of Ashley’s field of movement as Ashley moved in front of, then behind the couch.

“Articulate what you’re thinking,” Jessica said. “We can outline the goals you want to set and if it’s constructive, we can pursue those goals.”

“Not me, as I was when I died, but me when I was at my best. Too much of it’s lost in the fog for something that’s supposed to be my starting point.”

Ashley held her tongue on the rest of it. There was more to it, but if she told Jessica, then Jessica wouldn’t help.

☽

Edict knocked on glass, and gave a small wave to Shandra, who sat at the reception desk, nose in paperwork. Shandra smiled and waved back, before mouthing words. Complaining about the lack of coffee or donuts. It was her turn.

Edict walked backward, tapping her wrist where her watch would normally be.

She walked past men and women, aged twenty-five to sixty. People glanced at her, some smiled. There were some who liked to joke or poke fun, but she might have looked serious, because they were quiet today. She really hoped they weren’t being quiet because they knew what was happening.

It was uncomfortable, being in costume in a place like this, where just about everyone else was a mundane government employee. She’d argued for toning down her costume when everything had been under revision, but the PRT had balked at just how much she’d aimed to tone it down. They’d struck an uneasy compromise, with her wearing a costume with a hooded jacket, a visor, and a top with her icon on it, a stylized exclamation point. The same icon marked the shoulders and back of her jacket.

This wasn’t a place that welcomed capes, but she was still here every morning. It was the routine, but none of it felt routine. Edict dropped off Shiloh at daycare, changed to her costume, then headed to the town hall, with treats and coffee to share with Shandra every second day. Half the time, Licit would be around. The other half of the time, he would already be out, doing his thing so he could take more of the afternoon off. They’d get their marching orders, usually they would trade with one another to favor the kinds of jobs they each preferred, and then they’d go their separate ways.

No time this morning. She walked at a brisk pace, double checking her phone. No new replies. One-handed, she typed out a message to the neighbor’s daughter. In case of trouble, the girl could pick up Shiloh on the way home from school and babysit after.

In the worst case scenario, she’d tap her aunt for an overnight babysit. She winced at the idea, and the thought of the questions that might invite. One day, her aunt would put two and two together.

Licit was standing in the hallway outside the office. The city had twenty-five thousand people and three capes. The PRT had a presence, but that presence could be summed up with two of the three capes in the city having the winged shield of the PRT on their sleeves, alongside their own icons, a similar icon on the glass of the door, and a lone employee in a one-desk office that worked to coordinate with them. Aaron.

Licit pressed a finger to his lips as Edict drew closer.

Edict drew her phone from her belt, and she texted him.

Edict: What is it?

The reply came back.

Licit: Boston on the phone.

Not too surprising. Boston had been cracking down on things. A lot of arrests. They’d anticipated a call with a request to go into the city and help with any of the tougher jobs.

Aaron wasn’t acting like this was that. He sounded stressed.

Licit typed more.

Licit: Shit is going down. Outsiders, itinerants, new players, old players. Blasto & Rotten, Orchard, some mastermind asshole, that militant villain group. Almost everyone.

Edict’s eyebrows went up over her visor.

Licit paused, frowning. He checked on Aaron, then led Edict a distance away.

“You checked on our local troublemaker last night?” he whispered.

“Last thing,” Edict said. “I put in a suggestion, we could do another wrong-address grocery delivery. Make sure she has something to eat, get her in a better mood. She’s been restless.”

“I saw that note, yeah,” Licit said. He paused.

“We gotta get her somewhere better. Armstrong was making noises about wanting to make overtures again. Seeing if she’s receptive.”

“Armstrong is way too fucking busy with Boston turning itself upside down right now. Whatever they were doing backfired hard.”

“Shit. I really don’t want to get pulled into Boston to relieve their capes. What do I do with my kid?”

“You’ll figure it out. Reason I asked about Damsel is it’d be real nice to know where she is if and when we have to leave town.”

“She disappeared?”

“I patrolled last night, trying to do the polyphasic sleep schedule, she wasn’t at home. I couldn’t find her.”

“Shit. Who would even tell her, though?”

The office door opened. Aaron emerged.

“We’re going to Boston?” Licit asked.

“Afraid so,” Aaron said. “Edict, what was the last time you saw Damsel?”

“Last night, nine thirty, ten? It’s in my notes.”

“That’s the last sighting,” Aaron said. “Someone of her likeness was seen on a bus. It means the station wasn’t paying attention. We don’t know for sure.”

“Who would tell her?” Edict asked, again.

“I spotted Kidney Stan, Fappy and the rest of that group not all that far from her neighborhood,” Licit said. “I grilled them, didn’t get anything.”

“Are those the meth-heads or the stoner teens?” Aaron asked.

Licit was all business as he explained. He’d always been better at the cape stuff, the mission. “These are the stoners. The only meth-head around here that has a fun name is scared shitless of Damsel. Kidney Stan and Fappy are the same idiot kids who thought they could hire themselves out to our local villain as henchmen. They realized they bit off more than they could chew when she tried to rob a bank- you were there for that.”

“I was,” Aaron said. “I was more focused on the bank and the coordination with Boston than I was on the inciting factors.”

“We told them to steer clear, because they’re enablers,” Edict added. “They might have told her.”

“It’s looking more and more like she found out somehow,” Aaron said. “Edict, figure out your babysitting. The office will cover the cost, so pick someone you’re comfortable with.”

“Thank you.”

“Licit, you’ll have a chaperone for the next bit.”

“Sure.”

“But get yourselves to Boston. Get in touch with the PRT team there, and keep an eye out for our local would-be warlord. Whatever she gets up to over there, it’s not going to help things.”

Eclipse – x.2

Ashley stepped off the bus and the first thing she saw were the officers at the door. Every time she left home, they were on her. Usually they stopped her before she even got on the bus.

She’d planned ahead. When her supplies ran out, she usually hit a store after hours. She’d pulled a run through a pharmacy a month ago, and on impulse she’d grabbed some hair dye.

On her last failed excursion, she’d overheard the cop giving her appearance. This time around, with the stakes being what they were, she had kept that in mind and changed up her look.

Her hair was gross now, two days without washing, but it was a yellowy sort of blonde. Instead of her usual clothes, she wore a red sweatshirt and a pre-faded shirt with an American flag on it, faded jeans, and sneakers without socks. Sunglasses she’d grabbed from one of the racks in the drug store were on her nose, another thing to change up her look.

The creases of her pits and her eyes stung with fresh sweat, and the clothes had a chemical feel, like some brands got when fresh from the factory. The bus ride had been so uncomfortable she’d nearly lost her mind. She hadn’t been able to move her hands, she couldn’t sleep, and she’d been so restless she could have paced up and down the aisle a thousand times before she got here. She’d said something out loud, a few somethings, and she couldn’t even remember now, but the bus driver had told her to shut it. Now some passengers glared at her.

She smiled. If they only knew.

She loved this. The game of it. She took her time waiting for people to get their bags from the compartment at the side of the bus, one of her legs jiggling. The cops were there and they hadn’t reacted to her yet.

All around her were people, tourists and people going to work. A gaggle of college twits with matching outfits were talking about school. At the end of the station, a group of teens with spraypainted scrawls on dark clothes were pushing and shoving some others. The others included kids as young as ten or so, and the oldest looked maybe eighteen. The group didn’t match like the ones in the spray-painted clothes did.

The scuffle drew the attention of some of the police officers who were watching things. As they departed, she reached down to hook her arm around the bag, reaching over her head to let the strap slide down to her shoulder.

She walked past the lone remaining cop as he stood up straighter, looking over the heads of people to see that things were going okay.

In this game of hers, her against all of the local law enforcement and PRT, with their annoying-as-shit capes that they sicced on her, she could count this as a win.

One point for me.

How long had those police been working there? How much money were they paid, for that amount of time? How much coordination had gone into it? They would be frustrated, realizing that for all their vast resources, they had been trumped by a sixteen year old girl. It would ruin their days, like they had tried to ruin hers so many times.

The restlesness of the bus fled her as she picked up her pace. She walked everywhere, so she was good at it, brisk. She could have chosen another exit, but she chose the one the officers had gone to. They were busy herding the kids out of the station, directing them to different ends of the parking lot. There were more spray painted teenagers outside, with a makeshift booth, and that booth got one of the officer’s attention.

Ashley took a bit of pleasure in walking past the oblivious officers.

Another point for me.

No. She wouldn’t be greedy. Half a point.

She stretched as she walked out into the parking lot. She thought about where to go and who to ask, and she flirted with the idea of trying to talk to an officer. How many points would that be, to pass right under their noses?

No. It didn’t make sense. She was sorely tempted, but there were more wins to be had later. Bigger risks to take, bigger dragons to slay.

Not the spray painted teens. The clothes reeked of a uniform, and conformity disgusted her. If they belonged to a group or if they were serving a gang, then there would be people at the top who weren’t so beholden to a uniform. It made them subservient and it made them already bought and paid for. She couldn’t use that.

They were already packing up their table as she walked away, as if they’d been expecting to be shut down. She had a glimpse of the contents of the table- shitty art of the city on a third of the table, and another two thirds had shitty art of the heroes and villains of the area.

She’d get her information elsewhere.

The other group didn’t have stuff, so they’d moved under a tree in the shade. The older ones were sitting on the backs of cars, or leaning against the bumpers. The youngest were at the noses of the parked cars, picking at the grass and dirt by the concrete separator. One had an ant running up his arm.

The oldest was liable to be the leader, and he looked fit.

“Hey,” she said, making eye contact with him.

“What’s up?” another asked. Skinny, Hispanic, with an earring.

She could remember a rule she’d heard in school, that guy with an earring in their left ear meant they were gay. Or was it the right?

It had been three years since she’d been in school, now that she thought about it. Grade seven felt so long ago.

Whatever. If that was his thing, that was his thing.

“What was that?” she asked, her head jerking in the direction of the other group.

“Shit, I don’t know,” the earring guy said. “Randoms have been showing up all over. This used to be a hangout spot, there’s an ice cream place inside, but since they showed up and started causing trouble and trying to make money off of tourists, it’s different.”

They were locals, then, and the teens with the spray-painted clothes were visitors or recruits of the newbies. Good to know.

“Only two kids allowed in the ice cream place at a time,” one of the younger members of the group said. “So fucking stupid.”

“I heard something’s going down,” Ashley said.

“Has been for the last few weeks,” a girl said. Her hair was plaited into a braid that ran from the center-front of her hairline over her head. Two more plaits were at the side of her head. Ashley liked the makeup. “They went after the criminals, but they didn’t do anything about the gangs. They went after the ones with powers.”

The guy with the earring added, “The local gangs are running scared, new gangs are showing up, cops are cracking down.”

“You can’t even keep track of it all,” the oldest boy said. He was the one she’d first talked to and he was answering for the first time. The first thing he said was to admit a weakness like that? She was less interested in him now. Not so useful.

“What places are trouble?” she asked.

“First time in Boston? You alone?”

“Not my first time,” she said. She ignored the second question. “I know neighborhoods, but not where to go or not to go.”

“Dorchester, Mattapan, Mission Hill.” the guy with the earring said. “Places to stay away from.”

The girl standing next to him said “Deathchester, Murderpan, Mission Hell.”

Ashley smiled.

The guy with the earring said, “I hear Hyde Park is a warzone, and there’s the dead stop near Boylston, you can’t go there without someone starting shit.”

The girl said, “You hear bad things about East Boston, but only from people who think brown or black skin is a reason to be scared.”

“I don’t scare easy,” Ashley said.

“If you’re looking for a place to stay, you’re going to be shit out of luck. Most places are booked,” the girl said.

“I’ll manage,” she said.

“You don’t scare easy, you’ll manage,” the guy with the earring said. “You’re tough, huh?”

“Been on my own for three years now. Ran away. Fending for myself,” she said, smiling.

“That’s so sad,” the girl with the braids said.

The smile fell from Ashley’s face. Another member of the group who hadn’t won her over, now.

“I manage,” Ashley said. “I like the sound of Deathchester. Rubs me the right way.”

“Huh?” the oldest boy almost grunted the word. “You want to go to these places?”

“One of them,” she said. She raised her foot without bending over, and reached for her shoe, being careful with how she moved her hand. Some movements were safer than others, and some minimized movement. In a similar way, she was careful with how she stowed her money. Some in every pocket, some in between her sneaker and her foot. It made it harder to destroy too much of it if her power was in a mood. She caught a bill between index and middle finger, then held it out. “For the info. Buy some ice cream, I guess.”

“Yes!” one of the younger kids hooted.

Earring boy reached out. Ashley pulled her hand back at the last second.

He kept his hand out.

“Can any of you drive? I’ll give you this and what I’d pay a cab driver.”

A few glanced at the oldest boy.

“Ed,” Earring boy said. When Ed looked at him, Earring boy gave a little nod.

“Sure,” Ed said. “Doesn’t seem smart, getting in cars with boys you don’t know.”

“I’m smarter than most,” Ashley said. The negative comments were annoying her now. They didn’t know anything. Things were going right so far, and she didn’t need people dragging her down. “Which car?”

“It’s parked across the street. You pay to park here.”

She didn’t tend to make a point of learning the names of people without powers, but there was a chance she could keep these people on. Earring boy was Matias. Braid girl was Xi, short for Ximena, and Ed was Ed.

This was going to be the time it all came together. Ashley smiled as the door was held for her, happy she didn’t have to open it. She settled in, bag at her feet, and stared out the window, studying the city.

There were times she struggled, her power worked against her, and nothing went right. Those were the times she worked on surviving. She took up residence in abandoned apartments or vacant apartments that were looking for rent, and she waited out the days, keeping an ear out for the radio and an eye on the news. The overlapping sounds of each were constant from the time she woke up until the time she fell asleep, playing throughout any naps she took. The radio she’d been using for the last few months had a stiff set of knobs, and it was dangerous to try to work them and risk destroying the thing. The television was an old style that she could turn off and on with her toes, but she tended to leave it on. When she got tired of being cooped up, she went for walks, usually at night, or she raided stores for things.

Then there were these times. She was in the zone. It was so rare that she’d be both in the zone and have an actual opportunity. Just about every time, she was thwarted. Thwarted. It was such a good word. Heroes got in the way, something critical went wrong at the last moment, and it all went to pieces.

They tried to watch her. The cops at the bus were only one instance. Each time, though, she learned.

This time would be something special.

Her eyes scanned the city, looking at stores, at the houses, at the bigger buildings of obscure purpose. She studied the people, who acted like nothing was happening, and she looked at the graffiti, reading it like the zig-zagging letters and scrawls were the guts of a bird splayed out for augury.

She’d always liked that image. The Romans had done a lot of really neat things. The documentary channel was one of the only interesting things that were on between one and two in the afternoon, and she’d seen the three parts of the Roman documentary six times each.

The one about myth and the one about Caligula had been the drop-everything, skip napping sorts.

“Ashley?” Xi asked, from the front seat.

“Mm?” Ashley was stirred from her thoughts. She turned her eyes away from the window. Matias was at the other end of the back seat, watching her.

“You want to come over for dinner? My mama always makes too much, and she loves it when people like her food. It wouldn’t take much convincing for me to have you over, and we’re not far from Dorchester.”

“I’m busy tonight,” Ashley said.

“Sure,” Xi said. “I thought I’d ask.”

Ashley shrugged. She looked at the city, trying to strategize. Run-down buildings were good. Areas without cars. There were stores she could target, too, if she needed to raid some place at night. If she got hungry, or if she wound up with no clothes. Things disappeared so easily, when the wrong movement of her hands could destroy it all.

The thought was dark, and it darkened further when she thought- no, not even thought. The idea that she could destroy the car and everyone in it in an instant passed through her mind.

The idea of the press of family and a dinner table with a lot of food bothered her. She didn’t know how to handle that sort of thing anymore.

“What are you doing for food?” Matias asked.

She was annoyed at the question, annoyed that her observation of the city was being interrupted, and annoyed that she hadn’t been observing the city, and that she’d been thinking about useless stuff. It was this kind of thing that dragged her down when she was in the zone.

“I’ve got stuff to do,” she said. “I don’t waste time with sleep or food until I’m set.”

“Sure,” he said.

Spidery red scrawls covered surfaces on a couple of blocks, with some paint on a door.

A little while after, she saw a group of people that weren’t wearing any red, but who were all sitting outside, trying to be intimidating.

The houses in the area they passed into were more and more run down, here. It reminded her of home. Not the home she’d been born in, but the home she had now. Stafford. The apartment with the radio and television, with the holes in the walls, her clothes hanging up to dry, and the little modifications she’d made to make life easier.

The thoughts bothered her. She wanted to slap her cheeks, wake herself up. This was the sort of thinking that had gnawed at her on the bus. It dragged her down, and she wanted out of the car, now, so she could do something, haul herself up, salvage her focus and stay in the zone.

She would thrive here, she would succeed, gather allies, make and defeat enemies, and she would make a new home.

She had to. Stafford would be a dim memory.

“This is Dorchester,” Ed said.

Her focus narrowed, her eyes tracking the surroundings. Red brick buildings, not a lot of grass, a bridge with a wooden bottom and rusty rails on the sides, only wide enough for one car to cross over. There were row houses in one area. Past the buildings to the east, she could see the water.

“Deathchester, you called it?”

“Yeah,” Xi said. “It doesn’t feel right, dropping you off here.”

She had an idea. Lifting her mood. “I’ll be fine. Come with, and I’ll show you.”

Xi made eye contact with Matias. They tried to communicate without speaking, with one or two gestures. Ashley didn’t care enough to follow. She looked out the window and said, “Anywhere near here is good.”

Ed pulled to a stop. Ashley felt tension in her hands as she pulled on the door handle, but nothing broke. She dragged her bag behind her, jerking her arm to bounce the strap to her shoulder.

“You’re just going to pick a place?” Matias asked.

“A place for now, where I can put my things. I don’t need much, but running water is good. Power.”

There were places with boarded up windows. A last resort. She walked down the block until she saw a sign in a window. Black, with orange letters spelling out, ‘For Rent’. There was another sign for an open house the next weekend.

Good.

Her pace quickened as she circled the property. The others lagged behind, talking among one another.

She used her power to destroy the doorknob.

“What was that?” Matias asked. The three hadn’t rounded the corner.

Ashley smiled, pushing her way inside.

Everything was clean, swept. There was a fridge, appliances, shitty cheap things, but they would do.

She opened the fridge, and found it dark and warm.

She went to the tap, opening it with her wrist, and turned on the water.

Running water, at least.

“Changing,” she said, dropping her bag and kicking it across the floor as she entered the bathroom that was adjacent to the kitchen. It skidded to a stop at the base of the toilet. She still smiled. “I’ll be back.”

“You said you’d pay us for the ride,” Xi said. Ashley leaned around the door, and saw Xi standing with her back to the kitchen.

Ashley pulled off her sweatshirt, glad her power hadn’t destroyed it. She dropped it and kicked it across the floor. “In the pockets. You can come in if you want. We’re both girls.”

“Uh,” Xi said. She picked up the sweatshirt and looked up just in time to see Ashley with her back to her, undoing her jeans. She turned around again. “How do I put it? That doesn’t rule anything out.”

Ashley scoffed.

“You’ve got like, forty dollars and change in the pockets.”

The last of the pharmacy raid. “Take it all. I’ll make way more than that tonight.”

“Oh. You have other options,” Xi said.

“I don’t want other options,” Ashley said. “Believe me.”

She pulled her gritty American flag shirt up, and her power flickered. It tore apart the shirt, the noise of it joining Xi’s yelp of surprise.

A loss. It had been a nice shirt, and it felt wrong to destroy a depiction of the flag, but… Ashley ripped the remains off her upper body. If such a time came that she had a flag of her own, she would want it treated with respect. Still, the damage had been done.

She used her power, aiming at her own body. The shirt, still in her hand, was destroyed in the curls and waves of energy. As her power bucked and kicked, hurling her arm one way and the other, she was jerked into the sink. She didn’t have much padding, so the impact was sharp.

She hid the pain, which wasn’t hard, because she she was caught up in the moment. Her power washed over her body, destroying everything that wasn’t her. Sweat, dirt, lint, dust.

It washed over her face and her head, and she thought and saw white.

The hair that fell across her face was no longer dyed. The hair had been preserved, and the dye hadn’t.

The boys had come, and Xi kept them from entering or rounding the corner. The girl’s eyes were wide, and she clutched the sweatshirt with both hands, and then she was gone, out of the room and around behind the door.

To preserve the moment, Ashley reached for black fabric near the top of her bag. A dress. She pulled it over her head.

There were other things in the bag. Twisted bits of black matter, not dissimilar to charcoal.

Her power twisted, it annihilated. There was more to it, though. It made things swell and burst into nothing, and it made them wither. It decayed by making paint peel and wood fade and splinter. The passage of time. Halting time.

Her mask was a twist of what had been part of an engine block. She’d used her power on it, to erase it from existence, and all her power had done was to kick it around and warp it slightly.

The leftovers were rare to show up, needing a good combination of condensing of already dense material and some time-warping to make them work, but she collected them every time she spotted one. Many were so small she could close her hand around them, and now they littered the bottom of her bag. Two more were like stakes or knives without edges. A third find had been used and twisted around her mask to actually make it fit around her eyes, instead of leaving one eyebrow uncovered. A triple-loop of wire served as a belt, with the two spikes dangling off of Ashley’s left hip.

Ashley stepped out of the room, facing the three teenagers. She liked the looks on their faces. The realization. They’d looked down on her and now they knew.

“Like I said,” she told them. “I manage. Now tell me. Are you interested in making more money?”

Wide eyes. Ed offered a shake of his head.

☽

With wide eyes and a shaken head, Kenzie smiled.

Ashley felt uncomfortable. She didn’t have much experience with people, and her experiences with the kinds of people who could be around someone like her and smile like that hadn’t been good ones.

Kenzie looked between the members of the group. “No response. I hope I didn’t overshare.”

She looked at Jessica. Jessica answered the look, “That’s not for me to say. I’d encourage the group to share its feelings on oversharing, sharing, or how you feel about Kenzie’s background.”

“I think it’s partially up to you to define whether you overshared,” Sveta said. “Don’t feel you have to share if you don’t want to.”

“Oh. If you’re talking about boundaries, I don’t think I have any,” Kenzie said. “I’m broken. Tell me to stop when I feel like it? I’m going to put my foot on the gas and vreeeeeee. That’s my thing, it’s what I’m working on.”

“Byron and I have a similar background, actually. But… kind of not. That was your life. Okay. I had one incident and that was my trigger,” Tristan said. “It wasn’t an easy story to hear.”

Kenzie nodded. “Sorry. I like to put myself out there one hundred percent. If people like me then they can have me.”

“Wording,” Chris said. He leaned back. One of his eyes was black from corner to corner, and he had a set of medieval braces on, wire and clamps. The eyepatch he’d worn on his way to the session dangled from his fingers, swinging as his hand moved.

He was interesting. Ashley was paying close attention to him. She’d almost marked him as the only person of interest in this group, but… now she was paying attention to Kenzie.

She could understand Kenzie. She already had suspicions about what was going on there.

“Keep in mind, being too forward will scare people off,” Sveta said.

“Oh, shucks,” Kenzie said. She smiled and joked, “Guess I’m going to die alone.”

“Don’t say that,” Sveta said. “I found someone, and I never thought that would be possible.”

“Even the worst scumbags have someone who gravitates toward them,” Ashley said. “If they have any decency, they turn those people away and stay alone.”

“Gee, awesome,” Kenzie said.

“I don’t like how close that statement was to me saying how I found someone,” Sveta said.

“I didn’t mean you,” Ashley said, to Sveta. And to Kenzie, she said, “and I don’t think you’re a scumbag. I’m saying- people find people. Sometimes they shouldn’t, but I don’t think you shouldn’t. You should find someone. A lot of someones, from what I’ve seen and heard.”

Kenzie digested that. Then she smiled and said, “Thanks, but I’ve done some scumbag stuff. I wasn’t considerate, I hurt a lot of people along the way.”

Ashley nodded.

“You’re eleven,” Chris said. “Hate to break it to you, but you get a pass.”

“Actually no,” Kenzie said. “I don’t think the people who I hurt would look me in the eye or give me a hug or let me into their homes, if I showed up in front of them. They don’t give me any pass.”

“The amnesty is supposed to give everyone a pass,” Tristan said.

“It doesn’t work that way in practice,” Ashley said. She looked down at her hands. “There are people being kept on short leashes, staying in places that are prisons in everything but name.”

“Do you want a pass, Kenzie?” Jessica asked. “Do you want the past to be the past? Do you want forgiveness?”

“A good question,” Tristan said. “I do, for sure.”

“Yeah,” Rain said. “Yeah.”

“Our inaugural session is winding down,” Jessica said. “I’ve talked to each of you about goals. We outlined some goals and expectations before and after you decided to try this group. It would be good to think about where you stand on that.”

Ashley thought of all the people she had killed.

The idea of asking, begging for absolution, it bothered her.

“When we discuss goals,” Jessica said. “We think about change. What do we need or want to change? Very commonly, in my experience, it’s something we raise during first sessions or something we leave as homework. Let me build on that, though. Change. Do you want to change?”

“That’s not such a hard question,” Rain said.

Ashley was silent.

“Do you want change or do you want to change,” Tristan said. “Those are very different things. But yeah, I do want to change. It’s part of wanting to move past my past mistakes.”

“My power makes me change,” Chris said. “Super easy question, I get it whether I want to or not. I answer with an N-slash-A.”

“Ha ha,” Tristan said.

“I want to change,” Kenzie said. “That’s pretty obvious, I guess.”

“I’m in a good place,” Sveta said. “Change isn’t what I’m after, exactly. I want to make sure I don’t lose this place I’m at.”

“Okay,” Jessica said. “These are all good answers. It’s interesting to hear the immediate responses. Think on it. Come to the next session with your thoughts. If you find the answer is easy, then explain it. Think of a way to say what that change looks like.”

The group session wrapped up. Ashley stood from her seat. Tristan talked to Sveta- they were both familiar with Weld, and Weld had dropped Sveta off. Kenzie talked to Chris.

Ashley remained lost in thought. She couldn’t begin to answer the the second question, what the change might look like, when the first was so far beyond her.

☽

She had no recruits from among the locals. Matias, Ximena and Ed weren’t the kind to be henchmen.

She was alone as she made her approach to the moot. A bonfire blazed on the beach, with some pieces of furniture as part of the wood stack. Villains ringed it, divided into their individual groups. Everything was painted in reds and oranges, and the effect- she loved the effect.

Fire, smoke, the dark sky. The assembled factions. This was only the groups from the South-End, South Boston, Roxbury and part of the Dorchester area.

She’d asked the three teenagers, offering future payment. They had named some of the players here, declining the payment when payment would have meant interactions at a later date.

The Four. Two men and two women with white clothes trimmed in black. Their clothes had odd cuts, like a shirt that cut from the left hip to the right shoulder, where it became a collar so wide and draping it was almost a cape, folding over one shoulder. Their masks were horizontal white bars at the eyebrow, across their eyeline, and across the cheekbones. One of the men was displaying his power, holding onto a weapon that had the general shape of a rifle, if the pieces were formed of bits from a coral reef. The barrel was flexible and floppy. The entire thing was covered in brightly colored pustules, with the densest concentration hiding his hands. A woman had similar pustules across the side of her face, neck, and ear.

There were three capes with a plant theme. A guy with frizzy brown hair sticking out over the top and sides of a mask that looked like it was made of the softest rubber, all in oval-shaped nodules. More mushroom-like nodules stood out diagonally from his shoulders. A man sat on a rock beside him, foot propped up on a creature that looked like it was made of driftwood, a snake with two forelimbs and no rear legs. A woman stood in the shadows behind them. She had no name for them.

There were the Mullen Brothers. Both wore armor that looked like it had been made from scrap metal. They weren’t tinkers- they were just strong, tough, and tenacious enough that they could make really shitty armor that any ordinary man would have struggled with, razor edges cutting in flesh, ungainly and heavy, and they endured it. Each had a glow that emanated from their chest and heated up the metal closest to their hearts. In the dark, the metal was a faint pink-orange.

The Clockwork Dogs were a partnership. Masterminds, apparently. The pair were a man of average height, skinny but for a protruding belly, and a short man, both with fine masks that looked tinker-made, glinting as they moved and adjusted in the firelight. Men and women that looked anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five stood behind them. Four people in clothes that looked more suited for a cocktail party with the rich and famous.

There were bikers, obvious enough. There were others who stood too far into shadow to be seen- and they probably stood in the shadow because they weren’t tough enough to stand among those in the light.

Orchard was one named group, but they seemed to be absent. Slave peddlers, they were a pair who used the ability to mutate others and the ability to alter others’ minds to turn mundane slaves into custom orders. Their ‘fruit’. Ashley surmised they stayed away because that kind of behavior drew the attention of the authorities in an unforgiving way.

There were others who walked finer lines. Heroes were out there, their teams flocking to the city.

This was only one area of the city. There would be other meetings like this in the center-north area, and there would be more to the south and southwest. They would happen at villain bars, or where trucks and cars pulled together into a ring, the masked individuals gathering in the center.

Her heart was pounding, and she couldn’t stop smiling as she walked on the beach, sand worming its way between her toes. She paced around the perimeter, taking stock.

If the heroes came for her, she would make them regret it.

She wouldn’t concern herself with other areas. She liked the sound of ‘Deathchester’. She wanted it.

It meant she needed allies. There were lone villains at the periphery. There would be others. She would have her henchmen within a day or two. She kept an eye out for anyone who might serve. People who looked strong or put together.

For now, she wasn’t so insane as to step into the light. Better to stay with the faceless, the nondescript, so she could surprise her enemies. To put herself on the map, and to take her place at that inner ring, where she had that respect, she would have to unseat one of the major players.

She would remove them from the picture.

A flicker of power crackled at her hand at the thought.

Eclipse – x.3

“…would be the terms of war. Boilerplate.”

“That’s only if we go to war,” the Clockwork Dog with the potbelly said. “We have a proposal.”

“We’ve heard your proposals before, Detente,” Digger said.

“Hear us out one more time. We calculated how much of the city we need. We want an area of the city with a total population of thirty thousand. We have a few areas noted down that we would take. We would not interfere with your business, we would not upset the heroes, and all we would want in return was for you to respect our territory borders.”

“No,” Digger said.

“We’re being very reasonable,” Accord said. The second leader of the Clockwork Dogs.

“I don’t care. No,” Digger said. The biker dug fingers into his beard, scratching.

“Why not?” Accord asked.

“Because fuck you. You two think you’re so smart, and you probably are. It’s a trap.”

“We could do this in a civilized way,” Detente said. “We choose the areas we want. We know what kind of business we each want to do. Let’s divide up the city. If you want to run drugs, take some of the harbor, take the roads. Blastgerm wants to sell drugs and they want some space. You could enter into a business relationship with them, they would take their slice of the city and set up shop. The Brothers can have a headquarters, and our alliance would pay them to be enforcers for the area. They get a big area to run around in, they can go after the PRT, they get money… hm?”

The last sound was an inquiry.

“Could do,” one of the Mullen Brothers said.

“As for Four…” Detente said, trailing off.

“Do you know what we want, Detente?” the question came from the woman with the cysts all down one side of her face.

“We know,” Detente said. Accord nodded.

“We need more than a slice of the city.”

“Whatever path you choose, whatever location, you’ll end up fighting. You need more than a slice of a city or part of a neighborhood to raise an army. What we offer is help. We form an alliance across four districts, seven teams. You give up on these areas here, we give you another area.”

The woman frowned. Damsel could see the shadows deepen as creases formed around the mouth, the eyebrows drawing together.

“Not saying yes, but what area are you thinking?”

“Hyde Park is the biggest problem and warzone right now. We don’t like the groups fighting for it. Most of you don’t either.”

“We were vying for Hyde Park,” Rotten Apple said.

“You’re here and not there,” Accord said. “You’re willing to walk away and consider other options. You’re… messy, but you’re a mess we can live with.”

“We’re messy?” Blasto asked.

“You lost control of one of your creations. It caused a stir.”

“My dog ran away,” Blasto said.

“It was only part dog, and it caused a stir. You deal drugs, and people who are under the influence create messes.”

“He’s only willing to tolerate us until everything else is out of the way,” Rotten Apple said. The cape that was sitting on the rock in front of her nodded.

“If one were to assume that was true, isn’t that better than us deciding we want you out of the way in the next twelve hours?” Accord asked.

“Is that a threat?” Rotten Apple asked.

“Put your feelings aside and look at this logically,” Accord said. “Do you cooperate or not? If you cooperate, we either leave you alone or we eliminate you from consideration. If you don’t-”

“Eliminate. So it’s a threat.”

“Please don’t interrupt me. All of this could devolve into petty squabbling so very easily. Let’s keep this civilized. Cooperate and you have a way forward. Be stubborn and refuse me, and you will have nothing. It’s common sense.”

“Common sense?” Rotten Apple asked. “I have a tattoo on my asshole.”

“She does,” Blasto said.

“You’re using the wrong argument,” Rotten Apple said.

Accord stepped closer to the fire. Detente put a hand on his arm, and Accord stopped.

“We’ll pay,” Detente said. “Clean money, not forged. Give us six hours to talk to some people. You can walk away from this moot and go to sleep, and we can hand you cold money within fifteen minutes of you waking up. We’ll buy your alliance.”

“And the rest of us?” Damsel’s voice carried.

Detente had to pause to consider before answering. He looked at Accord for input, then decided, “Same idea we proposed for the Four. We’ll give you money, resources and assistance to match the impact you could make, if you respect our claim to territory and the alliance.”

They hadn’t even considered the ones who were in the background.

They didn’t think she was a threat?

She smiled, and Detente seemed to take the smile in the wrong way, because his mechanical mask shifted to create a smile to match.

He addressed others in the back, “If you’re unknown, then make yourself known, or band together. If you want to come straight to us, we will give you a job for pay and a chance to prove yourselves.”

“What are your credentials? Have you proven yourselves?” Rotten Apple asked.

“We have money, and we have powered soldiers,” Detente said.

“I bet we have more capes than you do,” Rotten said.

“They posted online,” the leader of the Four said. “Reaching out to anyone with a fondness for ‘green’. They didn’t clarify.”

“Vague,” Detente said.

“Themes work. We’ve got capes who like gardening and we’ve got stoners. We’ve got hero…ish types who want to save the planet, and we’ve got mercenaries.”

“It’s thin,” Detente said. “Your group will implode.”

“It’ll be messy, I’m sure,” Rotten said. “What do you think, Blasto?”

“I think we say no.”

“No,” Rotten said, to the Clockwork Dogs.

“No from me too. Fuck your alliance,” Digger said.

Detente nodded. “Four?”

“What do you think about Orchard?”

“We have a tenuous business relationship with them. Nothing that can’t be broken.”

“Break it. Give us Hyde Park.”

“Yes. We’ll talk,” Detente said. “Brothers?”

“We’ll get back to you.”

He turned to the people at the fringes. To Damsel. He even looked at her. “The rest of you know where to find us.”

He thought that it was a good thing that he’d been reminded they existed. With two of the major groups that were vying for the area saying no, another giving a ‘maybe’, and only one sounding interested, he must have been disappointed.

Damsel was now the salvation of the Clockwork Dogs- she’d helped them and she had given them a path that kept this from being a complete loss.

She would give them a helping hand, lifting them up from the cliff they were holding on to, and then she would cast them out and away, for the dramatic fall and her own triumph.

The meeting was wrapping up. It wasn’t the first of its kind, it wouldn’t be the last. The same things had to be covered now and again, as new players showed up. Terms of war, the formation of alliances, and agreements on who and what couldn’t be tolerated. If someone was designated as a problem that threatened everyone, then that someone was… how had he put it?

Eliminated from consideration.

A villain reached into the bonfire, grabbing the remnants of a drawer that had been near the top of the pile. He held the burning wood with one hand and walked off to one side, where he unceremoniously dropped it in a ring of stones that had been dragged from the base of the hill.

The major players were leaving. They were major because they’d done something, and that meant they had things to do.

Damsel, too, had things to do. Others were staying.

The second meeting.

“The big dogs have finished barking,” she said, as she approached the fire.

“You’re new,” Someone said. He was older, and he had prison tattoos, a wispy goatee, and greasy hair.

“To Boston, yes,” she said.

“You’ve been active elsewhere?”

“My last big job was a bank robbery. Singlehanded, more or less. I’ve been active for three years.”

“I’m Marrow. I’m here with some boys.”

“You don’t have a mask. No powers?”

“No powers. We come to keep an eye on things, sometimes people are hiring.”

There was a quirk of the eyebrow as he said it. An invitation.

“Who did you work for last?” she asked.

“Soldat. They’re still around, north end.”

“They left you behind?”

“They’re hiring outsiders. Professional soldiers or some shit. They’re trying for quality, but you miss out something when you hire from a catalogue. Hire me and my boys, you get a close-knit group where we know how the rest of us operate.”

“Uh huh,” she said, considering. She studied Marrow. “Close knit. Which means if I try hiring someone else, you’re going to complain.”

“If you want to try hiring someone else, I can make recommendations,” he said.

She paced around the fire. She glanced at the people who’d hung back. Mostly white, they ranged from teenagers to thirty. Older ones had left. Others were setting up around the other, larger bonfire.

“I’ve run into that before,” she said. “I hire four people, and they twist it around. Trying to make it so it’s their group and I’m tacked on. Then they come to realize that I’m a lot more dangerous than four people put together.”

“You do you, I guess,” Marrow said.

“How much did they pay you?” she asked.

“Depended on the job. What are you thinking?”

“Break into a place, rough some people up, loot.”

“A raid? Two thousand each or five percent each, whichever’s more.”

“Bullshit,” Damsel said. “Don’t try to pull one on me.”

“That kind of thing, we’re risking our lives. People pull guns.”

“Don’t look down on me,” she said. “Two thousand? No.”

“Your loss,” he said.

Did he sound sullen? He’d tried to fake her out and now he couldn’t lower his price without sounding like an idiot. Stupid. Not the kind of person she wanted.

She was in a good place. Things were going well. She just needed the right people, the right information, and opportunity.

There were younger people following her with more interest. She was one of… four, maybe, who wore costumes and who’d stuck behind. The guy who was now tending the fire was one. The other two were at the larger bonfire.

“What are you here for?” she asked one of the teenagers.

“I’m an innocent bystander,” he said, sarcastic. “I went for a run and I ended up here.”

“What do you do?” she asked.

“I run,” he said, with emphasis. “If you’re looking to buy anything, I know some people who had stock they wanted to sell that they couldn’t, what with how key people got arrested or scared off in the first raids. But we want fair market value.”

“Market’s oversaturated, dumbass,” another teenager said.

“Fair market value. We can sit on it forever. There’s other stuff to do in the meantime.”

Drug runner. Usually that meant running drugs into the country, but she supposed it could mean getting drugs across the city, or making deliveries.

Drugs didn’t interest her. That was a slow play, and she needed wins now.

“If I offered the kind of money Marrow was asking for, who would jump?” she asked.

“You have something in mind?” another boy from the group asked. He had freckles across his face, and his brown hair was styled.

She didn’t. Instead of answering, she asked, “Yes or no?”

“I might,” he said.

A taller boy asked, “Are you looking to get into that alliance thing?”

She shook her head. She started to reply, and her hand sparked. People jumped, some stumbling or reaching for weapons.

Her power crackled again, as she stood bent over with one hand on her knee.

No.

No, no, no.

This was how it went wrong. This was how it all started spiraling down. One little failure, entirely out of her control, and she lost everything she was working toward.

She needed this.

She couldn’t bring herself to talk at first, as she found her balance and straightened. As she raised her head so they could see her face again, she put a smile on, teeth bared. “Not the alliance.”

She moved her fingers slowly, and her power crackled audibly around her hand.

Her heart was pounding. Her jaw hurt because she’d been clenching it so much, and her stomach was a knot. She hadn’t eaten since… yesterday, was it? Now she felt it catching up with her.

A feeling like falling.

“Join me now,” she said. “You’ll be in a good position when I rise to the top.”

“Stiff competition,” the boy with the freckles said. The taller boy off to the side that had been more interested in joining was staring her down now. She couldn’t read him.

“I’ll show you,” she said.

☽

“How are you managing that?”

“I can never follow your trains of thought,” Ashley said. “Try harder to make sense.”

“You get snippy when you’re insecure. I’m asking about the apartment. You’re making some money? From talking about what you remember?”

Ah. Now Ashley understood the train of thought. She opened her eyes and saw only darkness.

“Yes,” Ashley said. “They think it’s relevant.”

“You mentioned those talks last week. It’s good if they’re paying attention.”

“Mm,” Ashley made a sound. She sat up, and plastic crinkled. “Mask off.”

“We’ve still got more work to do. These hands aren’t going to be as intricate for using the power, but they’ll be consistent.”

“Consistent is good. Take my mask off,” Ashley said. “And something to drink. My mouth is dry.”

The sleep mask was lifted up to her forehead. Long strands of hair still fell down around the front of her face.

A thin plastic sheet was draped across her lap now, with blood settling into the creases. Her arms were short, ending in stumps with raw flesh at the ends. Instead of bones of the forearm, there were metal tubes extending a few inches past the flesh.

She studied it all before blinking a few times. It really bothered her how the sleep mask had folded back her eyelashes, making them feel sticky and weird.

Riley practically hummed as she moved across the room, moving things as she searched. A heart in a jar here, a jar marked ‘bile’ there. “I don’t think I have any cups I’m not using for something already.”

“Figure something out.”

“So bossy!”

“Your disorganization shouldn’t be my problem. You pledged to give me working hands.”

“Don’t move those arms so much. You’ll bleed more, and they get weird if I ask for too much blood. Oh. I have an idea.”

Ashley waited as patiently as she could as Riley reached into a glass jar, pulling out a sphere the size of a softball, pale and crusty. She pressed her thumbs into one side until it caved in, then worked it with her hands to mold it. It ended up as a shallow bowl. She practically skipped in her momentary jog to the sink, where she filled it with water. She reached into the cupboard, and came out with a neon pink bendy straw.

Ashley drank as the straw was placed into her mouth.

“More?”

“No. This is fine for now.”

The bowl was dropped unceremoniously in the solution it had been in just two minutes prior.

“I’m jealous of the apartment. I don’t have much, and they don’t let me out to shop unchaperoned. I have to list all the places I want to go, they vet it before I can go in, making sure people are clear, and having chaperones means there’s a schedule. I can’t be spontaneous.”

“You didn’t have your fill of spontaneousness before Gold Morning?” Ashley asked.

“Apparently not,” Riley said. She picked up Ashley’s dismembered arm, bringing it over to Ashley and holding it against her upper arm. Comparing skin.

“Oh, that’s the feeling that keeps waking me up from my naps,” Ashley said.

“Stick your lip out? Pouty like?”

Ashley stared at Riley, lips pressed in a firm line.

“I’m not trying to poke fun. I want to color match some other tissue to the inside of your mouth.”

“You don’t need other tissue. It’s skin wrapped around machine hands.”

“There’s living matter worked in there, and the flesh immediately under the skin will affect the color of the skin over it.”

Ashley stared Riley down.

“Indulge me,” Riley said. “So few do, nowadays. Let me get the data I need to make your arms the best I can give you.”

Ashley reached up with her stump, stuck the metal tube into the side of her mouth, and pulled her cheek back.

“Don’t cut yourself. The ends of the tubes are sharp,” Riley said, leaning in. “Okay.”

“Why are they sharp?”

Riley stopped in her tracks.

The sink dripped. Not completely turned off, after the water had been placed in the bowl. The silence that followed was uncomfortable, so Ashley moved, the plastic rustling. Blood escaped folds to drip to the floor below, not nearly as loud as the sink.

“Why sharp? I want to know what you’re doing with my hands.”

“I’m not keeping secrets from you,” Riley said. She turned around. “I didn’t think about it. Old habits die hard, you know.”

“You weaponized me?” Ashley asked.

“Only a little. Don’t get upset. I left it so that if something went wrong, you could tear off your arm and stab someone with the tube. Small, tiny weapon.”

Ashley raised her arm, studying the blood-slick metal tube.

She used the cleaner part of her arm to wipe at the corner of her mouth.

“It’s the equivalent of putting a rifle bayonet on a tank barrel,” Riley said.

Ashley didn’t respond. Her mouth wasn’t dry, but her throat was locked up.

Riley continued her work, using a variety of tools to stretch the skin away from the metal arms. Strands of muscle and tubes of fluid ran through the machinery.

Ashley felt a panicky feeling settling into her chest, threatening to paralyze her. Before it could, she slid her legs around, the plastic sheet rustling, and dropped down to the floor. A rubber mat with ridges made it easier to walk without slipping.

“Don’t move too much or you’ll lose blood,” Riley said, sounding as happy as she ever did. Her back was to Ashley.

Ashley reached out. The sharp edge of the tube grazed Riley’ s neck. Riley reacted, twisting, hand slapping out onto the top of the cart with wheels. Ashley kicked it, but not before the girl could grab a scalpel.

Riley backed away from the contact with the tube and its sharp edge. She stuck the scalpel out toward Ashley’s stomach, and the two of them stopped there.

The amused look dropped away from Riley’s face.

A drop of water smacked against the metal bottom of the sink once again.

“I was going to ask you if you wanted tea after,” Riley said.

“I don’t like you enough to have tea with you,” Ashley responded.

“Do you remember having tea before? Is that one of your memories?”

Ashley nodded.

“I wasn’t thinking we’d have a tea party. I was thinking just… tea. I have cake from a shop.”

Ashley shook her head slowly. The water in the sink dripped again. “I remember after the tea party we had.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“We’re not friends. Give me working hands and powers and maybe we can get there. That won’t be soon.”

“Something about this standoff tells me we’re not moving in that direction.”

“We’re not.”

“Mmm,” Riley said. Slowly, she pulled her hand back, still holding the scalpel. She held her hand off to the side, and let the scalpel fall. “I won’t know what I did wrong until you tell me. Some people can put those pieces together, but I can’t.”

“Pay more attention to what you’re doing to my body and why.”

“Ah. That.”

“I’m not your weapon,” Ashley said. She pulled the tube away.

“You’re a weapon. We all are.”

“I’m a weapon, but I belong to me. My triumphs are my own.”

“Wonderful,” Riley said. She paused. “More water?”

“Yes.”

The door opened.

Amy Dallon. The woman had her hair tied back, and she wore a sleeveless tee that showed the tattoos that ran down her arms. She studied the room, reached out for the wheeled cart and moved it back into position.

“You’re up, Ashley,” she said. “That’s not usual.”

“I wanted water,” Ashley said.

“Sit. Minimize activity or have Riley do more to control the bleeding if you’re going to be up.”

Ashley hopped back up onto the table.

Riley fished out the bowl. Amy watched her go to the sink, followed her, and took the bowl from her. She found a glass and set to washing it, her finger swishing in the water to help with the cleaning.

“Work on the hands and I’ll get the water. I’ll check your work in a second.”

☽

If this works, it’s a point for me. A win in the game of capes.

If I don’t do this, I won’t be able to take Boston. If I can’t take Boston, there’s no point.

It was only a question of timing. She had to use her power right.

Her power was unpredictable whenever she used it. Using the blasts was easy when she could push out, the power would rip out, and it would kink and twist through the air, a mix of overlapping effects that worked very well together when it came to destroying whatever they touched. They didn’t, however, work well with her.

There were ways to shape the effect, but that was less easy. Every movement of her fingers threatened to make her power erupt, and over time, she’d learned that many common movements would lead to an eruption of power, unless she was very careful. Using her hands was slow, with any number of movements or variations of pressure threatening to make her power spill out.

There had been a time, sitting in her apartment for days on end, that she had worked to try and figure out the patterns. Before she’d fabricated a costumed identity for herself, she had fancied the idea of being a dark sorceress. Through training, she would have control.

The image had stayed, but the idea… no. She could do the same thing twice, and the power wouldn’t express in the same way.

Still. There were nuances. Open hand, moving while she blasted, the power would splash out. More area, less range. She could press her hands together and blast with both to increase concentration and consistency.

Nuances.

She walked out into traffic. Headlights illuminated her. A car passing in the lane beside her made her dress and hair fly around her. Her eyes were wide, to take in as much of the scene as possible.

It was a four-lane road, and as she stopped in her tracks, an eighteen wheeler barreled toward her. It tried to move into another lane, steering away, and brakes squealed in futility.

She put her hand behind her, and she blasted. Open hand, wide area, short blast. The recoil pushed her up and forward at an angle. A slightly different angle and her shoulder would have clipped the truck’s right headlight. She passed within a few inches of it, her other hand whipping around.

Fingers and thumb all together, pointing at the same thing. Concentrated blast. Little breadth, and a foot or two of extra range.

The blast tore into the wheels at the side of the truck, while propelling her away. She caught herself, one foot touching ground, and stumbled back.

The truck tipped, and there was still enough length at the rear of the truck that she faced the risk of it toppling on top of her.

She could have thrown herself back, it was safer to throw herself back, but that meant stumbling.

Raising her hands overhead, thumbs locked together, Damsel blasted skyward. Her legs buckled, straining to keep her upright as the overhead blast tried to push her down.

She let her thumbs come apart, and brought her arms down to either side, painting a rainbow of annihilation and ruin above her. It caught the top rear corner of the truck’s cargo container and it shredded metal exterior and framing. Pieces pelted her, and the truck collapsed onto its side.

Horns blared and people were already stopping. Others stared at her.

Her leg ached like something had sprained in it as she walked away. She did her best to keep her back straight, her attention forward. She would topple the truck and then walk casually away. People would see and they would get it.

A car stopped at the side of the road. The door opened, and a cape climbed out. What little of his face that was visible behind the mask was painted with mottled black smears. His outfit was layers of urban camouflage, and the armor at his chest had something resembling a fist marked out in the camouflage. Visible only with a squint.

There were others getting out of the same car, and out of the truck.

Soldat.

He had a hollow metal tube in one hand. He turned it around, pointing it at her-

She used her power, hurling herself forward, and stumbled as her feet touched ground again, now running instead of walking.

There was a time for grace, but this wasn’t that time.

He slapped his hand against the hollow end of the tube. His power ripped through it and hit the ground just behind her. It detonated, and the shockwave made her feet leave the ground.

Surprise aside, this wasn’t unfamiliar territory. She stumbled as she landed and saw another of Soldat’s capes appear to intercept her.

She blasted, ducking low, and crashed into his knees, bowling him over. She raised up from the crouch on one leg, hands out to either side to blast and right her if she tipped over, and she already had one foot raised by the time she was upright. She drove her heel toward the teleporter’s face, and he disappeared before her foot could make contact.

Another blast to push, except this one kicked right. It threw her off her stride, forcing her to make one leg cross over the other mid-run. She found her balance and changed direction, running for an alley.

The cape with the metal tube fired. The detonation was off to her side, this one catching her in a way that threw her further off, when she had so recently stumbled and changed direction. She dropped, landing with her hands touching the sidewalk, her power flickering at the unexpected contact of the surface, then popping, cracking the solid surface under her hand.

It threw her off, cost her a fraction of a second. She put both hands behind her and blasted again. Moving fast was essential. She’d just upset a paramilitary villain group that was a contender to take over the East Boston area.

If it was down to individual group strength alone, then that area would already be theirs. They were that good.

Marrow was an ex-employee of Soldat. He’d been eager to part with information and a share of what she claimed, if she got anything at all. She would lean heavily on the last part of that statement. It had been Marrow that had said it as he implied she would fail. Bitter implications from someone bitter that she hadn’t hired him.

She didn’t want the goods in the truck. Marrow would get fifteen percent of nothing.

The alley was cover from gunfire. It didn’t stop the teleporter from appearing again. As he materialized, she could see the four eyes that peered through the round lenses that were part of his military-aesthetic costume. He had a combat knife in each hand.

This would be the one who switched randomly between mutation sets every time he teleported. Most of those mutations would be weak, but there were some to watch out for.

He was one of two.

She used her power, leaping, blasting, and soaring well over the teleporter’s head. She landed in a crouch, felt her legs protest as she stood, and broke into another run.

He appeared in front of her again. This time he had four arms. The two other arms drew combat knives.

Same maneuver. She blasted, sailing over-

The other teleporter made his appearance. A woman in a stylized modern camouflage uniform, mask strapped on with a bandage wrapped around her head to help keep the mask in place. Long black hair escaped from the bandage and straps of the mask to billow in the wind.

First thing to notice- the woman had a handgun. She pulled the top back with one hand while holding the gun with the other.

Second thing to notice was that the woman had materialized in such a way that she stood on the wall, her body horizontal. She didn’t seem bothered by it.

Damsel used her power to change her course in the air, then used it again to propel herself forward. She heard a gunshot above her, roughly coinciding with the second blast. A miss.

She would feel this in her shoulders tomorrow, but she was winning.

The mutant cape appeared further down the alley. This would be one of the more bizarre end results. The rough shape was similar to one of the childhood toys Damsel had had. A giant head, where she could plug body parts into holes. No neck, no body. A massive head, stunted hands and feet. The mouth extended around the side and nearly to the back, and yawned open as she drew nearer.

The woman with the gun appeared again.

This was their tactic. To use the teleportation and positioning, one hemming in, stalling, and forcing reactions, the other cool, calm, collected, ready to snipe the target.

This casual use of guns was why Soldat didn’t already have East Boston locked down and firmly in their grasp. Capes using guns became a target. People were paying more attention to Soldat than to Orchard, and most seemed to despise Orchard.

Part of it was that they wanted to keep this fight over Boston from getting too lethal.

Damsel was cornered, with one teleporter ahead of her, large enough to block the exit, one above her, and the cape with the tube looming at the mouth of the alley, ready to shoot the moment the coast was clear.

She spotted what she was looking for. She’d carved out an escape route in anticipation. The trick had been placing it somewhere she could use, which meant placing it this far down.

This distance hadn’t seemed quite so long before she’d had to run it with parahuman soldiers nipping at her heels.

She used her power. Two blasts in quick succession. One to throw herself that way, and then one to fling herself at it at an angle. The hole was wide enough she could have passed through with her arms stretched out to either side, but the angle was steep enough her right shoulder grazed one side of the hole, and her left shoulder hit the left. She tumbled, and she felt the sting in her left shoulder that told her she would be bleeding.

The space on the other side was dark and cool. An industrial refrigerator hummed at the far end.

She used her power one last time, launching herself upward. She caught a shelf and felt it sway with her weight.

It steadied, and she waited.

“Trap?” one of the soldiers asked.

The woman soldier answered in a language Damsel didn’t recognize. Dutch or German.

Flashlights flicked on, and swept through the space. One beam passed beneath Damsel as she hugged the metal shelf. The metal was cold.

If that beam centered on her, somehow, then she would need to act. She would knock over all the shelves and scatter them, and then she would run.

The beam didn’t center on her. One found the hole she’d made in the far wall, leading into a dark hallway. Her escape route, if she knocked over the shelves. A red herring if she didn’t.

One of the parahumans moved further into the dark space. It was the mutating teleporter. He had four arms again. The one with the tube spoke up, his voice low, “No. We have other priorities.”

Then they were gone.

They would be focused on the truck.

Damsel smiled and dropped from the shelf. Her legs and shoulders hurt, but she felt good. Another win. This- this was far more of a thrill and far more productive than going to talk to a police officer that was looking for her, while in disguise.

All that was left was to wait. Soldat had to drive through another part of the city to drop off their things. She had interrupted that casual drive. Soldat’s convoy had stopped in the middle of hostile territory. One of two or three of the groups or players located in the area would hear or notice the truck being where it was.

She had no need to fight if she could manipulate her enemies into fighting each other.

She heard the confrontation begin. A boom from the one with the tube.

Imbeciles.

Damsel fully intended to leverage this. One side would limp away. She could go after them. If they sought shelter, she would threaten to collapse it around them.

She would break them.

“Damage in the alley,” someone said, far away.

A figure appeared in the hole in the wall. Damsel remained still as the person leaned in, looking around. A woman, with a mostly white costume with bands of blue running vertically from armpit to waist. An emblem of a feather diagonally crossed her chest.

It didn’t look like one of the local villains. Too polished and too soft a look.

Tempted, she stepped out of the hole in the wall, glancing around to make sure the coast was clear before looking down the length of the alley to where the truck had crashed.

Whatever was happening, most of it was happening out of sight.

Not all of it. She had glimpses, enough to put a smile on her face.

This was Boston right now? One little car accident and villain was fighting villain. Before that could even wrap up, heroes were appearing on the scene. A three-way fight.

Would there be others? If she had an opportunity, yeah. She would be the fourth, picking off anyone who seemed any combination of weak, hurt, and exposed.

She would reposition first, and tend to her shoulder. Gouged enough it would need a bandage, but she could do without stitches. That was good, considering her difficulty in self-administering stitches.

She had a bounce in her step as she exited the alley, walking away from the end where the truck had crashed.

She had to talk to her new underlings.

“Damsel. Stop.”

She could feel her entire body react to the word ‘stop’. In another way, her entire body reacted to the recognition of the voice.

Edict.

Her good mood boiled away into irritation in a moment.

She turned her head, and she looked at Edict. There was another, younger cape in tow. Not Licit.

No. Fuck her, no.

Not when things were going well. Not when she was on such a good course, fully in the zone, where things were working.

“You,” Damsel said.

“This isn’t going to turn out well, Damsel.”

“You keep getting in my way,” Damsel said.

“We’re trying to keep the peace. It’s pretty clear you’re not.”

“Peace?” Damsel asked. She turned around, careful not to move from her position. “Peace? You haven’t heard these people talk. Peace? No. We’ll go after each other and we’ll go after you if you get in our way. You think throwing yourselves at this situation is going to calm things down?”

“I think you very deliberately set off that fight over the contents of that truck,” Edict said. “That isn’t calming things down.”

“I’m going to take my piece of this city, Edict. I’m going to be in charge. I’ll do business here, make it my home. I will fight you if you… I don’t even know what you do, you stalker lunatic. Will you move to Boston if I do? Just to nettle me with your power and preach at me?”

Edict had a pitying look on her face. It only irritated Damsel more.

“I wouldn’t move to Boston if you moved,” Edict said. “I was assigned to keep an eye out for you and that’s what I do. We’re not your enemy.”

“You’re not my ally, either,” Ashley said. She stood a little straighter. “They’re my allies.”

Edict turned around. The cape she was with raised his hands.

Ashley had asked names, but she didn’t remember most. The unpowered were hard to keep distinct. The boy with the freckles was J. The tall one was Bar. There was a girl called Angel, but she wasn’t a teenager. Just a girl who knew how to throw a punch.

Bar had two friends. Angel had a younger brother.

And Ashley had proven herself to the point that they had her back.

“Does your friend there have a power that can deal with all of us?” Ashley asked. “I know your power affects one person at a time.”

“Don’t go. We can talk. There is a place for you in Boston if you want it.”

“Same old story. Lies, to get me into custody. No. And no more talking. No more using your voice. If she talks again, knock her teeth out. If she gives someone an order, that person should obey. The rest? Knock her teeth out.”

Ashley took a step, disobeying the ‘stop’ order she’d been given. Pain exploded through her head, and as it dissipated, some of the peripheral vision in her left eye was gone.

Sometimes it was as minor as a tingle in the fingertips, blindness to the color blue, or a verbal tic. Sometimes it was more severe. Partial or total loss of a sense, or loss of the use of a limb. Hallucinations. Emotional changes. Sometimes an effect lasted a few minutes, sometimes it lasted days or weeks.

“I’ll see you soon, I’m sure,” Ashley said, as she walked past Edict.

Over the years, Ashley had learned it made sense to just obey, to avoid the annoying or the crippling. She’d learned to avoid giving Edict the chance to say something.

But this order had been to stop, and she had no intention of slowing down or stopping anytime soon.

Eclipse – x.4

She regretted sleeping. There were businessmen and entertainers who could be up for seventy-two hours without sleeping, and she was pretty sure she understood why. She chased that. She liked to think of it as hibernating and storing energy for the days she needed to do more.

Sleeping was dangerous when every second counted.

Sleeping was a soft reset, and when things were working, a reset was the last thing she wanted.

But the body had its demands, and as she felt the aches and pains of the skirmish the night prior, a skirmish where she hadn’t even touched anyone, she had rationalized that she needed rest to let her body repair itself. She didn’t even remember the act of lying down.

Damsel didn’t feel any less sharp than she had the day before, but her mood felt like it rested at a different angle. She still had momentum, she had the ability to do this if she could keep her power under control, but her thoughts kept looping back on themselves.

Not second guessing. No, she was confident. She was also very aware of how any one person, situation, or even bad luck could pull the rug out from under her.

Very, very aware.

The others were standing around their car. Stocky brick buildings lined this street, and a path between two buildings led to a narrow strip of grass and sidewalk at the edge of a little river. She couldn’t stand still, so she walked around the block, traveling the line of the river. She paid attention to rooftops, and to the residential buildings with signs of being lived in.

Sleep was dangerous because she couldn’t know what it would take away. She had rolled the dice, and she counted herself lucky that she had woken up ready to safeguard her accomplishments.

She had minions, and she had an objective. Her triumphs from the night prior were stacking up with other recent wins. Evading the PRT, dodging the cops at the station, an intimidating show as she revealed her cape self to the local teens. They weren’t important, she hadn’t even bothered to remember their names or which one it had been that had invited her to dinner. The show had been the important thing.

Damsel knew she needed to eliminate someone important to make room for herself to step into the scene. She didn’t want a big neighborhood, not to start.

The Brothers were sounding like they wanted to cooperate with the Clockwork Dogs. That took them out of the picture. The Four might go elsewhere.

There were people in other areas, but she wanted Deathchester. That left two opponents, and they were in the area to look into one of them.

A little wooden bridge with railings that looked like they were made entirely of rust gave the residents of these row-houses and blocky apartments a way to get past the river and approach the water. Damsel approached the bridge and stood up on the middle bar of the railing, the top bar pressing into her shins.

With the higher vantage point, she could see a man by the water. He wore a costume that was predominantly an armor of interwoven branches in a Celtic knot pattern. Black and green cloth beneath covered most of the rest of him, with what might have been hints of black skin visible at the back of his neck and between where his sleeve stopped and his woven-branch gauntlet began.

He had his back to her, reaching up to trees and gathering leafless branches, or stooping down to pick things up off the ground. Now and then, he put a branch into a gap in his armor, so it stuck up and away. Some still had dry leaves on them.

One of Blastgerm’s capes. She turned away.

Even the simple act of pulling her hood down was something she had to calculate. It required use of her hands, which meant she had to calculate the risk against the reward. What was the chance she was seen and her white hair was recognized? Adjusting her hood to hide her hair and face reduced that chance, but it introduced the chance her power would activate.

What would happen if she accidentally used her power? People would notice the sound, and she could find herself in a fight.

If it came to that, she could deal with him.

Destroy the bridge, if he was slow. It would force him to jump over. If he was faster, she could go to the building.

If she could make enough noise and cause enough damage while getting away, it would draw the attention of the heroes. That, in turn, would make the Blastgerm group’s life harder.

She adjusted her hood, tense, and tucked her hair behind her ear.

The villain with the wooden armor continued to gather branches, stopping to pick up a dandelion, placing it in the pile.

J had arrived in the time it had taken her to walk around the block of buildings. Bar, Bar’s friends, and Angel were already there. Angel’s brother was absent.

J had brought food. Breakfast sandwiches and coffees.

“Help yourself,” J said.

Eating was risky like sleeping was risky. Eating was supposed to be a social thing, but for her it was a gamble, with the odds badly tilted against her. A loss meant embarrassment. A win meant ‘normal’.

“Why?” Damsel asked, instead of taking the offer.

“Hm?”

“Why this? What’s your angle?”

“Angle?” J asked.

“Not everyone and everything has an angle,” Angel said.

Naive girl. Still, naivety was something Damsel could live with, if Angel remained competent elsewhere.

Damsel ignored the statement and stared at J, waiting for her answer.

J gave. “You’re paying me, hopefully. Them? They’ll probably have my back if we end up doing something risky.”

“Yeah,” Damsel said. It made sense. She could even respect it. Looking around, she asked, “See anyone or anything on your way in?”

“Sorry, I wasn’t looking,”

“Look next time,” she said. “This entire city is enemy territory. Everything matters.”

“Yes ma’am,” J said.

She turned her gaze toward him. There wasn’t any hint of sarcasm or irony in the ‘ma’am’.

The others looked serious. For now, at least, she had their respect. There’d be the one who questioned her- there always was in the movies and television shows. It was human nature, to push against authority. It stood to reason, then, that someone in the group was harboring seditious thoughts.

She would have to make an example of them, the moment they revealed themselves. For now she would work with her new subordinates.

“One of Blastgerm’s capes is on the other side of the building. There will be more,” Damsel said. “Are we expecting anyone else from last night to show up?”

“No,” Bar said. “I could call others if you want.”

Damsel shook her head. “Let’s get in the cars.”

Bar had one car, and J had another. Damsel got into the passenger seat of Bar’s car, and he started it up. Angel and one of his friends were in the back seat.

They made it a block before they saw more. A woman, tall and slender, had pointed ears and black hair that was ankle length even when braided. Her mask was a rounded plane with grooves etched into it, black beady eyes built in. Her costume was a skintight suit with lines on it in the same pattern as the grooves, running vertically and crossing into flourishes at the top and bottom. She had two other capes with her- a man in a skintight top and heavy pants with a pillar that he rested one hand on. His weapon. Rotten Apple was with them, talking or telling them something.

On a rooftop nearby, a cape with a green hood covering their head, stylized horns protruding, had wings or a cape that draped around them in a loose spiral or wrap, sufficient to cover ten people.

Blastgerm hadn’t been lying. They’d put out a call and they had more capes actively guarding or patrolling in their general territory than a lot of teams had in their whole roster.

Angel whistled, long and low.

“No need to whistle. This is nothing,” Damsel said.

People were hanging around in the general vicinity of the capes. It wasn’t a lot- one here, one there. But they were entirely too comfortable with the presence of villains to not be affiliated with them.

Not soldiers, at a glance, but people who ran errands and handled things beyond fighting, like J seemed to want to do for her faction.

“Blastgerm was always small,” Angel said. “Dealers you heard about in the news once a year. Sometimes it’d be just Blasto or just Poison Apple.”

“Poison Apple?”

“Or Rotten Apple. She changes it around sometimes.”

Ashley nodded. “They’re not small now. It’s fine.”

She spotted another one. There was a crowd of a type she recognized. Back in Stafford, there had been Kidney Stan’s group. Useless fuckheads, stoners, imbeciles. They’d been the point of failure for one of her jobs. She had her suspicions that they were the ones responsible for tipping off the heroes about her trip to Boston. The cops at the station, Edict at the truck raid.

The group was surrounding the cape that had been in the company of Blasto and Rotten Apple the night before. The half-lizard, half-snake creation with the wooden head had climbed up him, and was perched on his shoulder.

“See that?” she asked.

“Geez. Out of the woodwork,” Bar said.

“The names are so disappointing,” Ashley said. “Blastgerm? Blasto? Rotten Apple? Woodwork would have been better, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” Bar said.

“I like Damsel of Distress,” Angel said.

“Sucking up?” Bar asked. “I’m joking.”

Jokes? Ashley wondered. Where did she draw the line in a subordinate testing her limits of authority?

“No. I like the name, is all,” Angel said.

“That’s because you have good taste,” Ashley said. “Clockwork Dogs? Why not the Cogs of War?”

“They have names that mean peace and cooperation,” Bar said.

Ashley snorted. Her eyes scanned the surrounding area for more. A few minutes passed. When she didn’t see more, she indicated for Bar to stop.

The other car caught up with them as they climbed out of the vehicle.

Ashley paced a little, thinking. She was annoyed. They were so small, and all they had to do was send a message online to get that many people? How was that right or fair?

“That’s a lot,” one of Bar’s friends said. “Too much?”

“No,” Ashley said, stopping. “No. I could handle that, given a chance. I’ll have to. I will take over this area.”

“Blasto’s a tinker, you know,” Bar said. “He’s working on something big. He keeps pulling in resources.”

“You hear about that sort of thing,” J said. “Tinker keeps a low profile for a while, keeping busy, and then they do something big. Building penthouse folds away to reveal the death laser with city-wide range.”

“The building mounted death laser only ever happened one time,” Bar said.

J snickered.

Ashley wasn’t laughing. “Talk to me about Detente’s group. He’s established?”

“Newly,” Bar said. “He and Accord have a bunch of people with powers. They’ve put up a good showing. Smart, efficient, rich.”

“Where is he from? Where is Accord from?”

Bar shrugged.

“They come out of nowhere and they’re this prepared? They have this much money to throw around?”

“That’s them having mastermind powers, maybe,” Bar said.

“They’re strong?”

Bar shrugged.

“They’re small fish,” J said.

“Nobody’s a small fish when they have powers,” Damsel said. “Everyone’s a threat. Everyone has to be dealt with.”

“Sure,” Bar said.

“What about Digger? The biker.”

“Less of a good showing.”

“The Four?”

“They’re around. They haven’t done much,” Bar said.

“They were active in New York for a bit,” Angel said. “They’re freaky.”

“I’m scary too,” Ashley said. “I’m not worried.”

“If they didn’t have any powers at all, I’d be scared of them,” Angel said. “They’re into bioweapons. Their mindset is to poison everyone, and have their guys recover faster. They use healing powers and equipment to reduce the damage to their side.”

J spoke up, “They’re weirdly popular, I think it’s the style. There are galleries of art online with them surrounded by their colorful plague clouds.”

The idea nettled Ashley. It made her want to go right after the Four.

It wasn’t a good impulse. She shoved it down deep inside her, and she looked in the direction of Blastgerm’s claimed neighborhood. Blasto and Rotten Apple.

“You have a plan?” Bar asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “For now, hang around Blastgerm’s area. Figure out where they’re going and where they hang out. If they’re selling anything, figure out where things come from and where they go.”

“How long?” Bar asked.

“Until evening. I don’t want to waste time.”

Bar nodded slowly. “I guess this is where I bring up money, then.”

Damsel stood up straighter. Her eyes narrowed.

“You haven’t paid us anything yet. You said you’d pay what Marrow was asking for. Two thousand or five percent.”

“This is part of that.”

“This is a full day of our time,” Bar said. “For promises?”

“I showed you what I can do last night. I’ll show you something tonight, and you’ll be glad you helped when it comes together.”

“I don’t get it,” he said. “This plan, the long-term goal.”

“You don’t need to get it. You need to listen,” she made her voice cold.

She watched as his expression rotated between three different emotions.

She couldn’t put a name to each emotion, but she could imagine what sort they’d be.

“Yeah,” Bar said. “Two thousand or five percent of the take?”

“And a better position when I take power and territory for myself.”

Bar’s eyes moved as he seemed to engage in some mental calculations. “Yeah. Okay, fine, we’ll go take a look around.”

He signaled his friends.

Damsel thought about making an example of him. She couldn’t be sure if he was leaving and not coming back or if he was going to go through the motions while putting little effort in.

She looked at the two who remained. J and Angel.

“Are you going to run too?” she asked. “You’ll regret it later.”

“I’m not going to run,” Angel said. She rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m not good at anything except punching people and being punched. I heard we can hang around the beach or the fighting pit at the south end, and sometimes people will round up helping hands for work. I’ll put on a stupid costume and be a henchman if it pays.”

“No need for a stupid costume,” Damsel said. She reconsidered. “Maybe a costume later on, but it won’t be stupid. I don’t do stupid.”

Angel shrugged. “I’ll do this, ‘cuz I don’t lose anything. I can learn stuff, seeing how they operate. You need me for a job later, I’ll do that too.”

“You’ll be rewarded,” Ashley said. She smiled. “Go. We meet at the same place as this morning.”

“I’ll pick you up if you want,” J told Angel. Angel smiled at him.

“Sure. But I’ll walk in,” Angel said. “We’ll cover more ground if we stay separated.”

“Good,” Damsel said.

Angel walked away. J remained, walking around his car. He held out the remaining sandwich for her. She took it.

“This needs to count,” he said. “Even for Angel, and Angel has low expectations.”

“How it counts is my business, not yours,” she said.

J nodded. “Sure.”

“It will count. Loyalty will be rewarded,” she said. “I think I understand what Angel wants. She makes sense to me.”

J nodded. “I’ve seen her around. She’s cool. Just don’t make her mad.”

“I don’t intend to. I think I know what will speak to Bar’s type. To others. Money.”

J nodded.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Money,” he said, without hesitation.

She met his eyes, studying him. Brown eyes, a face covered in freckles, brown hair, and an expression with a measure of determination.

“Go earn it then. Gather information.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Things threatened to crumble. One partial night’s sleep, and people had forgotten her triumph, doubted her power, doubted her. Her own doubts seeped in.

It was her against what seemed like a dozen people with powers.

This was what I was meant for, she thought. Excitement swelled in her chest as she considered the options, the idea of coming out the other side victorious.

Pyrokinetics thrived when there were nearby fires. Capes who could manipulate water could operate at peak efficiency when near a body of water.

So it went.

She wielded annihilation and chaos. If that was so, then she would do the equivalent of the pyrokinetic setting fire to the building they were in.

That she was doing this with no other powers on her side, against so many enemies?

Not a concern, she told herself, a cold sort of excitement setting up shop in her chest as she worked to banish the doubts. Not a concern. Everything has been preparation for this.

Even the fact that I’ve been completely alone for three years.

☽

Ashley stretched as she left the court office. The patrol guard cleared his throat.

She didn’t stop stretching at the throat clearing.

The court office was in recess. People stood, stretched, and headed in the direction of the vending machines.

“That could have gone better,” Tristan said. “Rain got an easier set of proctors.”

“I didn’t expect to get it easy,” Ashley said.

Kenzie was fidgeting, distressed. Ashley put a hand on Kenzie’s shoulder, and her little friend looked up at her with a smile. The fidgeting stopped.

That fidgeting would be because of the video. Kenzie would want it to be shown and be anxious about it being shown at the same time. The group wouldn’t like it if the video came out, Kenzie would be dreading both the idea of the video coming out and the video not coming out.

“I don’t think they were being fair,” Sveta said. “You weren’t uncooperative.”

“She wasn’t,” Victoria said. “I’m really hoping they’re open to giving us a chance to talk at the end. I want to hammer that in. I had a letter from Gilpatrick, but they haven’t mentioned it.”

Ashley didn’t think it was fair either, but she kept it to herself. Going down that line of thinking was the kind of thing that set herself off.

Tristan added, “I took my letter for Ashley in after Rain’s tribunal, handed it to the one guy who looks like a mortician. He was pretty dismissive.”

“Could it have been process? Not wanting to seem biased?” Sveta asked, almost hopefully.

“No excuse to be rude,” Tristan said.

“Maybe he didn’t like your face,” Chris said.

“Then they have no taste,” Kenzie said. “I think Tristan and Byron have very nice faces.”

“I’m really not sure how to take that,” Tristan said.

“Is there a process, if this tribunal doesn’t handle things appropriately?” Sveta asked. “Higher court we can go to?”

“No,” Victoria said. “The purpose of this is to handle stuff without getting tied up in more complicated procedures. Weeding out the obvious cases before it gets put in front of the proper court.”

“There should be some process. Some emergency go-to,” Sveta said.

Ashley felt agitation creep over her. It was fear and conviction with an energy to it, and the anxiety, impulses, and restlessness could in of themselves generate more anxiety, impulse, restlessness and energy.

Left to run rampant, these feelings and experiences that multiplied themselves would grow in ways that formed constructions and ideas, like how a cloud could resemble a face or a dog.

Some of the therapy she’d had helped her to recognize it for what it was. Actually dealing with it was the harder thing.

“If it’s okay,” Ashley said, with more force than necessary, aiming the statement at nobody in particular. “I’d rather not talk or think about the tribunal right now.”

“Sure, sorry,” Sveta said.

“We can talk about anything you want,” Victoria said.

“Talk about anything,” Ashley said. “The noise of talking would be nice, so long as it isn’t about this.”

“I’m making a camera that takes pictures and video of the past,” Kenzie said. “It’s only twenty five pounds, and I’m slimming it down.”

There were overlapping responses. People sounded impressed, enthused.

“That actually sounds awesome,” Chris said.

“Kenzie is awesome,” Ashley said. “It’s about time you caught up with the rest of us, Chris.”

Kenzie looked up to her, then tipped over, head smacking into Ashley’s shoulder. She put her arm behind Ashley’s back in a one-armed hug.

“There are catches,” Kenzie said.

“Of course,” Chris responded. He made no mention of the hug.

“It takes a while to spin up. I’m still working on that. And it reads particles that don’t move in straight lines, so it gets fuzzy fast.”

“Fuzzy can be workable,” Victoria said. “In forensics alone, that kind of camera could be a lifesaver.”

“I’m still figuring out balances. Time is something I usually work around if I can,” Kenzie said. Her legs kicked below the bench. “I stole some tech.”

“Stole?” Chris asked.

“Tinkers can read powers and people and get data that they can then use for their tinkering stuff. A tinker who makes flamethrowers can use my blueprints and figure out how to do some targeting tech. Or, like, even if it’s not powers, I could do deep scans of a thinker and I could get power data I could use for my cameras. Which is where right now I wish I could talk to a really good precog or postcog, and see how their power works.”

“Don’t we all,” Victoria said.

“Anyway,” Kenzie said, “We saw some of this with Snag and the others, remember?”

“The Speedrunners,” Tristan said. “Yeah.”

“Yeah. Every tinker is different so it’s not every tinker that does it, but it’s most, I think. We all want our data and inspiration. When I went to pick up my big projector box, I sent some flying cameras in. Which was safe to do since Mama Mathers was gone, right?”

Ashley imagined that was the same time Kenzie had collected the image of the landscape where she’d killed Beast of Burden, for the falsified video.

“So I searched around to see if there was anything interesting. Some of the tinker throwing stars and junk were lying around. I had my camera grab that. Now I’m reverse engineering it.”

“That’s great,” Ashley said.

“Except the team’s falling apart, and I don’t have anyone to do this with. You might not be there to see it.”

“I might not,” Ashley said. She felt a pang.

She didn’t want this. Rain did, but for her, it was something she had to do, a necessary evil.

“But you didn’t want to talk about that. I’m sorry,” Kenzie said.

Ashley shook her head.

Victoria took the empty space on the bench beside Ashley. She showed her her phone.

It was a picture of Presley, hair dyed an inconsistent color that was more gray-white than pure white.

The freckles reminded her of Amy, which would have been a tricky topic to raise.

It reminded her of J, a memory from a past life. Trickier still to bring up or raise.

☽

There was a low, deep rumble as her power did its work. She had to run to get away from the cloud of dust that exploded out in every direction.

She was already moving to the next point. She lashed out with a sweep of her warped darkness, targeting one corner of a building. Her arm raked out, trying to cover as much area as possible, to destroy as much brick and beam, insulation and strut. A blast of her power provided the kick to get her clear of the area as the wall came down.

She did the same to the other corner of the building. Where bricks were stacked atop one another, they started cascading down in sheets, crashing to the ground. Other things fell down, and the sound of the impacts and cracks had a beautiful sound to them, with the water magnifying some of the acoustics.

J’s car was a lawn and a sidewalk away from her, moving at a slow but steady clip as he tried to stay close to her and keep away from the rolling cloud of debris.

This was the distraction. They were near the water, not that far from where the bridge and the cape with the Celtic-knot wooden armor had been. Her power was taking down segments of old buildings with no lights on. A glance inside had verified they were empty.

Now- she felt the strain in her legs as she ran, catching up with the car. She didn’t hop in, but hopped on, standing at the edge and bracing her forearm against the door and the top of the car. Her power flickered but touched only the air.

On impulse, as they passed a large tree, she blasted it. It toppled behind her, and it made a hell of a lot of noise.

J stepped on the gas. The car peeled out.

This would help draw capes away from the center of operations. Others were out there- only some of Bar’s group, the ones that had been most curious about what they were doing, and Angel was out there, keeping watch.

The trick was to get enough speed that they could circle around and hit the target from the side or behind. Going straight there wouldn’t work, because it would mean running headlong into anyone coming to see what was happening.

One empty building toppled, another two with one exterior wall partially or wholly collapsed. One tree brought down to block a road.

They passed through an intersection, and she had the briefest of glimpses of the capes on the next road over. A larger group than she’d expected were on their way to investigate.

J stopped the vehicle. She hopped off, kicking the door closed, then broke into a run.

Lights streaked across the sky.

That would be phase two of the distraction.

Damsel had made Angel notify the heroes that Blastgerm were up to no good.

At worst, what? She was outnumbered thirty to one instead of twelve to one? Past a point, it didn’t matter.

At best? They were out of position and tied up with outside concerns.

Her power blasted the door open. A heavy thud behind her marked the arrival of a cape, a moment after she disappeared inside. A big guy- not one of the ones she’d seen during the day’s patrols. He had a metal helmet and painted skin, and walked with a hunched back.

Angel and J had independently come to the conclusion that this was Blasto’s headquarters. It was where the capes kept entering and leaving. Those who sold drugs apparently came and went from here as well.

Not bright, to shit where one ate, but he might have told himself that he had more than enough powered bodyguards.

The big guy was stampeding his way inside. She hit the stairs and she went up. The big guy followed, charging his way after her.

Time to burn this building down, she thought.

She blasted behind her, and she took out a chunk from the floor of the hallway. The angle meant she was thrown up and back, and it wasn’t her usual style. With the usual sort of blast, she could at least try to keep her balance. Here, she toppled and slid on the smooth laminate floor.

The big guy, catching up, had to stop to avoid falling in. He gathered himself together on the most solid ground, muscles standing out, and he leaped.

She wasn’t even fully to her feet as she stuck her hands out. A wide area blast, concentrated to get as much of the floor as possible, where he was due to land. It gave him less chance of finding some footing, and it kept pieces from raining down on the unsuspecting below.

He crashed into the edge of it, and he fell through.

She used her power with wanton abandon. Doors? Gone. Walls? Gone. One blast knocked out the power on her floor.

Empty rooms, offices, a room with bunk-beds and storage crates.

Nothing on this floor.

She blasted a hole in the floor and dropped down.

The big guy was on the floor below, in the midst of trying to scrabble up to the floor above. He slipped, fell, and spotted her.

Her power flared involuntarily, costing her a moment. She tried to make it look intentional by blasting the nearest wall, as if it was a prelude to the full maneuver.

The big guy barreled toward her, and she had to find traction amid dust before jumping into the hole she’d just made. Another hole in the floor made it hard for him to follow her.

Walls and doors were nothing. They were a gesture away from being an opening. She used that opening, navigating the floor, while the big guy gave chase. Somewhere along the line, he stopped running after her.

She cleared the floor, found nothing, and dropped down.

On this floor, she could smell the drugs. She followed the smell and found a conference room turned to nefarious purpose. Packaging, plastic bags, and mounds of green leaves were set out.

She didn’t have to go far to find the office with some of the money. She was careful with her hands as she picked up a stack of bills.

Something detonated just to the left of her. A cloud of noxious green gas surrounded her, and she stumbled away.

“That’s not yours.”

Rotten Apple.

Damsel smiled, walking around the room to avoid the expanding cloud of gas.

“This was a decent headquarters,” Rotten Apple said. A green sphere appeared in her hand, then levitated above it. “Now look at it.”

The ceiling in the hallway sagged in tatters. There were holes in quite a few walls, large enough for a person to walk through. The gas was thinning out at its periphery, giving the room a general green haze.

A second orb appeared, joining the first one that still orbited Rotten Apple’s hand. The costumed woman gripped it, drawing her arm back to throw.

Damsel brought her arm around, pointing at the money. “Do anything and I obliterate it.”

“You don’t want to do that.”

“You don’t want me to do it either. But I will if I think it weakens your group.”

Rotten Apple’s eyes narrowed.

“Surr-” Damsel started, before being interrupted with coughing. The gas.

“Surrender,” she said, succeeding on the second attempt at speaking. “Believe me, you don’t want me to keep going. You might have an army, but they have to get here first, and they’ll need to watch their footing. I can bring this whole building down, and I’m betting I can be the one that survives if we’re both inside when I do it.”

“Sure,” Rotten Apple said. She looked at the money. She flicked the ball and it flew through a hole in the wall to explode in another room. “There. I’m unarmed.”

“Hands up,” Damsel said.

“That doesn’t matter when it comes to parahumans.”

“Call it a token thing. I like my gestures of respect.”

Rotten Apple slowly raised her hands, until both were visible.

She’d had another orb, before. Where was it now?

Damsel looked, and she spotted it at the last second, almost invisible with the haze of gas in the room. It was on the ground, and it had rolled past her.

The orb detonated with some force, and the money was scattered into the air throughout the room. Damsel was forced to back away from it as the miasma visibly colored the air.

Rotten Apple was already preparing for another shot.

Damsel could have used her power to shoot the money, but it was so scattered that she would have hit a relatively small fraction.

Instead, she ducked through the doorway and blasted the floor of the hallway.

Down. Down to safer territory.

Rotten Apple followed. Another orb was thrown, and Damsel wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way. The detonation knocked her over, and the resulting fall was unexpected and hard. Gas swept over her as she worked to find her feet.

It felt like standing up took a lot of effort. Was that the gas?

As the gas burned at her nostrils and tickled her throat, threatening to force her into a coughing fit that would have her inhale more gas, she raised a hand.

The use of her power knocked her over and did force a resulting, involuntary intake of breath, but it also destroyed the gas that was touched, and it annihilated the very air.

Gas flowed into the resulting vacuum, where it could be blasted again.

It didn’t eliminate everything, but it thinned the gas, and it gave her a way to hold things off until she could find her feet properly again.

She saw Rotten Apple lob another sphere, and blasted, hoping to get the gas before it could expand too far. Instead, the power connected with the sphere. It was wiped out of existence, with no gas resulting.

Damsel made her way down to the floor below, putting another hole in the ground and jumping through before Rotten Apple could do anything.

The ceiling of the floor below, as it turned out, was a little higher than average. She had to use her darkness blast to break the velocity of her fall. Her landing was a hard one, all the same, knees banging on the floor.

A lab. Improvised, dirty, panes of plexiglas with whatever glue or caulk had been used to connect them together running in dribbles and gobs. Metal bands helped keep them from coming apart- which was good, because each seemed to be under pressure.

Damsel straightened, aware that Rotten Apple would be coming after her as soon as she could access the stairs.

Vats. A row of them against one wall, dirty and smeared enough that the contents weren’t immediately obvious.

Humanoid figures, each one different from the others.

Blastgerm’s large roster of villains from this online ad they’d put out. They weren’t real people.

Damsel smiled, looking at it all.

They’d cheated.

There was something else at the far end of the room. It looked like a boiler, but it had the same rushed, improvised feel that the vats did. Metal, welding, tubes winding around it, and a glass aperture, showing a sea of what looked like green moss on the other side.

“Step away from that,” Rotten Apple said. She was breathing hard.

Ashley extended a hand out toward a vat. The intention was to threat, but her power sparked out. It cut into thick glass, into water, and into the figure on the other side. She flinched back, holding her arm against her chest as she stumbled away.

She stood up straight, forcing a smile she didn’t feel. The remains of the body were tipping forward as the fluids emptied from the vat, and they were breaking apart like wet toilet paper as they brushed against the edges of the broken glass.

Rotten Apple wasn’t acting like Damsel had just killed someone.

“Of course Blasto isn’t around, at a time like this,” Rotten Apple said. “The asshole is probably doing something stupid like sleeping.”

“Can’t afford to sleep if you want to claim your piece of Boston,” Damsel said.

“You realize we’re going to come after you. If you fuck us on this Boston thing, we’ll make it a lifelong goal to come after you.”

“Don’t bother with threats,” Damsel said. “I don’t scare easy, and I hold the cards right now. I can do more damage to all of this than you can do anything to me.”

Rotten Apple shook her head. “The soldiers we sent out are due back soon. Blasto could wake up any time, and he could wake these guys up.”

“Or,” Damsel said. “You could give me a share of that room for the money, along with a pledge that you won’t take Deathchester, and I’ll keep silent about what you’re doing with these legions of false capes that are joining you.”

☽

“Armsmaster against Bastion, who wins?”

The replies overlapped. People were amused, happy. Angel and her brother were here. There were a few scattered others that J had invited. Ashley wasn’t sure how to label the scene, even, where J and Angel both wore bathrobes, like they were some kind of honor. Drink was being passed around freely among the teenagers.

They’d opted for slightly less money and roughly equivalent value in the drugs. Ashley didn’t care about the drugs, didn’t want to be intoxicated, but she was content to let her immediate underlings take what made them happy.

Now they were being celebrated, if that was the right word. They were teenagers or men and women in their early twenties, and they’d wanted an excuse to party. Thin justification, but she wasn’t going to say no. They had provided the information, she had conducted the raid, and money had been collected and doled out. It helped that the excuse for the partying was that she’d succeeded. People were paying attention to her triumph.

It felt like a dream. She felt important, she felt good, and it wasn’t being poisoned or undercut in any way.

“Armsmaster has discipline,” Ashley said. “He has more tools.”

“The rules are important,” Angel’s brother said. “What location? How far apart are they to start?”

“Wait, wait,” someone said. “Who benefits from more distance?”

More replies overlapped.

She didn’t know how to deal with this. Her power had flickered a few times, even kicked once, and people were mostly ignoring it. There had been one question from a newcomer, and then there had been nothing.

She couldn’t bring people to her empty lair, so she had consulted J. J had provided some ideas, and she’d picked this. With some of the money, she had rented some hotel rooms. It was an easy way to have comfort, food, and a bit of luxury for Angel, who needed or wanted that. For some of these people, people in this age range who did this kind of work who hadn’t been around the other night, this was luxury, something that could draw them into her fold.

She’d tried and tried again. Sooner or later, she’d taken a risk and it had failed. She’d been sabotaged, by people or by her power.

Somehow… not this time. There had been a moment where Angel’s brother had walked past her, reeking of alcohol, and her eyes had watered very easily.

Fatigue threatened to catch up with her, and she couldn’t afford to sleep.

Instead, as the discussion got sillier, she took the opportunity to stand.

“Make sure you can work tomorrow night, because we have more to do,” she said. She smiled. “Enjoy yourselves. That’s an order.”

There were cheers. She felt like she was drunk, just from the emotional reaction to the cheer.

It wasn’t a far cry from this to being worshiped.

It felt like every thing she could do was the wrong thing. She had spent three years alone and now she finally had allies. They were people who understood her, and as she rode the emotional high, she retreated to her room to be alone again.

She felt like she could sleep for two straight days, and sleeping terrified her, because unlike the cliche, it was a very real possibility that she could wake up and the spell would be broken. She’d wake up from the dream. She could move her hands the wrong way, and the dream would be broken, as surely as anything was broken by her power.

She couldn’t even trust the success. It felt like a pressure, closing in on her, and the solitude of her room wasn’t enough. The room was almost too much, too white, too clean, the towels too fuzzy, the sheets too soft. All too easy to break and ruin, like so many other things in life.

She stepped outside. There was a danger she would destroy her key card, but she could always knock on the window of the others.

Ashley hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but she couldn’t be inside.

She might have spent a full hour of that cool summer night just outside the side door of the hotel, looking at nothing in particular, far from sleep and yet too tired to think.

The door opened, and J stepped outside.

“Need anything?” he asked.

“No.”

“Want company?” he asked.

She shrugged.

He walked over, and he leaned against the wall beside her.

His arm touched hers as he stood there. He did nothing else.

She’d been right. He’d lied- it hadn’t been the money that had motivated him.

Eclipse – x.5

Ashley and her group walked slowly through the house. She had the lead, J right behind her with bags in each hand, and the others followed as a loose group.

It was already furnished. Plush white carpets, black leather furniture, artwork already on the walls. The placemats on the table had lace at the edges. The corners of each room had a little statue, a piece of furniture, or a plant. Lilies.

J put the bags on the bench in the hallway, while Ashley continued into the house.

“Will it serve?” J asked.

Would it serve? It was nicer than the hotel, and she had honestly thought the hotel was as nice as things got. Mansions on TV were like the hotel rooms, just writ large, but this… she could do without the paintings, they were too bright and colorful, she would want to change things around, but…

“Yes.”

Angel whistled. She’d smeared eyeshadow around her eyes and tied her hair back. The girl wore a black tank top over a gray tee, loose black exercise pants, and black sneakers. Her handwraps were black.

Others in the group had trended that way, picking up the style on their own without Ashley needing to say anything. Bar was back, and even though it didn’t fit his character, he’d started wearing black eyeliner. That he was sleeping with Angel had probably played a role in that.

She wondered if J had suggested it to them.

“We could have wicked parties here,” one of Bar’s brothers said.

“No,” Ashley said. “Not here. If this serves as my headquarters, it’s a place that will demand respect. I’ve seen how you cretins get when you party.”

Someone in the group snorted. She turned her head to look, saw the others glancing at O’Brien, and gave O’Brien a sharp look.

“Yes ma’am. Entirely right,” the boy said.

“Downstairs, maybe, or in the backyard,” she conceded.

“It’s a good backyard for parties,” J said. “Have a look.”

Ashley walked to the window, looking down. There was a small pool, with a garden and places to sit all around the pool. The second smaller pool off in the corner might have been a hot tub.

J approached. He stood beside her, looking down. The others collapsed onto the couches and chairs, or ran downstairs.

“Four jobs. One was- not a success, not a failure,” she said. “I didn’t make this much money.”

“You did. We made out like bandits when we raided the pit. You can afford first and last month’s rent. Not much else, but you can earn enough to keep paying for this place.”

“Not much else is a problem,” she said.

Angel had reached the pool below them. She pulled her shoe off and stuck her foot in, before kicking water at Bar.

“What do you want to spend money on?” J asked.

“Things. Clothes. Status. I need to look the part. We need money to make money.”

“Based on what I’ve seen and the work I’ve done,” he said. “I think this matters more than you’re implying.”

Oh, it mattered.

J’s brother was a marketing guy, working with DJs and new bands to craft an image and generate hype. J had helped out enough to learn things, and he’d done a few small events on his own.

“Other things matter more. I have enemies to deal with.”

“I get it,” J said. “Looking like a contender, hiring more people.”

Ashley nodded.

“But look at our guys. They see this and it says something to them. They’re down for it. Your headquarters is as much a part of your status as the dresses you wear. Same for a musician.”

She wanted it. She wanted it so badly it made her chest hurt.

“Money opens doors. I can’t tie up my funds. The Clockwork Dogs are too dangerous,” she said. “I can’t throw all of you at them and expect it to be fine. We’ll need the money to hire mercenaries. ”

“You attacked Blastgerm when we thought he had twenty capes. Why the doubt now?”

She didn’t immediately reply.

She wasn’t in the zone, not laser focused, confident, and dangerous all at once. The past few days had been too many steps into unfamiliar territory. The last job hadn’t been a definitive win. Her underlings had grumbled, but they’d seemed to accept it as a fact of life. She had a harder time convincing herself of the same.

It was there, if she reached for it. The focus, the energy. Over the past day, she had gone back and forth, almost tapped into it, then shied away. She’d teetered on the brink.

Something told her that she could indulge herself, and it might even help rectify things in that department.

It would hurt other things, but it would help there. The thrill, that excitement and joie de vivre.

“You’re the boss. You make the final call,” J said, breaking the silence.

“Not now,” she said. “I want to do this right. We have other priorities.”

“Alright. I respect that,” J said.

“You’d better,” she answered him.

He smiled, and then he chuckled as he looked. Down in the pool area, below the window, both Angel and Bar had stripped down to their underwear and jumped in the water.

There was a side of her that wanted to snap at them, but Angel had done fine so far. If Angel was happy, Ashley could be happy for her. She had seen enough people of her age group while growing up and watching television to know that sometimes they acted this way.

Ashley had decided not to hire the older ex-cons like Marrow’s group, not to hire the more race-focused gangs, and opted for the young people. She’d known she would get less experience, more impulsiveness, and this kind of goofiness. She’d calculated it, and she would accept it.

“Knock,” she said.

J knocked on the window. Angel had Bar in a headlock under the water, so it was only her that looked up.

“They should get ready to go. We won’t stay long.”

J beckoned for them to come in. Angel nodded, freeing Bar. Bar, in turn, plunged Angel into the water. The squeal was audible through the second floor window.

“Nick,” Ashley said, “Tell Bar and Angel to go around the side to the front of the house and wait for us there.”

Nick was silent as he got off the couch to obey. One of his friends went with.

“They won’t hold the house for long,” J said.

“How did you even manage this?”

“Friend of someone my brother knows. I mean, not to boast, but this is what I’m good at.”

“Boast. Own your strength.”

“I can drive, I do okay in a fight, nothing special. I’m… kiiinda street wise?”

“What you are is a complete and utter failure at boasting,” Ashley said. Someone in the room sniggered.

“But I know this,” J said.

He walked over to the bench where he had left the bags. He began pulling things out. Women’s clothes, all black. Boxes.

“The things you showed me online,” she said.

Ashley remained still as he held one black dress against her front. Strapless, there were black feathers at the far left and far right of the upper portion, so they swept back off each shoulder.

“Yes,” she said.

He held up another. Lacy, partially transparent, with patches that were opaque, strategically placed for modesty.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. I kind of hoped, though,” he said.

“Save your hope for things with a better chance of happening,” she said.

He stepped around behind her, placing a classy feather boa around her neck. All of the other boas she’d seen like this had been Halloween things, joke things. This was glossy, elegant.

“Maybe,” she said. She turned to the others, seeing that Nick had returned. “Everyone should get ready to go. We have things to do tonight.”

“It would need to match with more of an ensemble,” he said.

“It would, yes.” She remained still as he held out another dress. Simpler. Too simple. There was nothing to it. “And no.”

“Can we save it?” J asked. “I think it could work with other pieces. It’s a good base.”

“If you insist,” she said.

“What do you think about this jacket, then?” J asked.

She waited as he pulled it out and shook it to get it unfolded. The jacket was the sort that stopped partway down her back. The sleeves were narrow, and the collar was heavily decorated with bits of plastic.

She liked it, and there was no way she could wear it. Putting her arms through the sleeves would be tricky.

“No,” she said.

“Anyone else want it?” J asked. “I don’t think it would fit Angel, but… hm. Would your girlfriend want it, Nick?”

“Nah,” Nick said.

“I’ll take it,” O’Brien said.

J threw it to the boy. It was a woman’s jacket, but O’Brien didn’t seem to care. He wore jeans and tops that were too tight, and he wore them with confidence. He’d also been one of the first to wear the eye makeup, decorating one eye more than the other. What had they called it? Clockwork Orange style. She’d made a mental note to see it.

It would annoy her, because she liked the jacket, and he would be the one wearing it, but… she liked him well enough. She liked his confidence, even if he was weird.

She was doing that a lot, over the past few days. Giving these guys leeway, slack. Tolerating things she wouldn’t have two weeks ago, just because she liked them.

It worried her, the idea that she was compromising something, or showing a weakness that someone would see.

“I also got two pairs of shoes,” J said. “If you want to sit on the bench, I can get a pair out for you to try on, while we wait for A and B.”

“Geez, J,” Nick said.

J looked over at Nick. “What?”

“It’s weird,” Nick said.

“It’s convenient,” Ashley said, voice sharp. “Having him as an assistant leaves me free to focus on other things.”

“Right,” Nick said. “Got it.”

“Good,” she said. “Help J pick this stuff up. We’re going.”

“Yes, boss,” Nick said.

Good.

The front door was still ajar. She flicked it open with a sideways motion of her foot. She was just through the door when she heard it. She only caught the one word.

“Bitch.” A word said with an anger she had long been acquainted with.

She turned, her eyes going wide. Her hand moved and her power crackled.

It was J who dropped a bag, lunging forward, to put himself between her and the others.

“It’s okay!” J said, “Please!”

“Insubordination!”

“It was aimed at me,” he said. “They said I’m your bitch. Its fine!”

She calmed down slightly at that, but her heart was racing, and the anger didn’t so much dissipate as it unraveled, the threads of it going everywhere, reaching and grasping.

“That’s not fine,” she said.

“I am, kind of. I don’t mind it. It’s whatever.”

“I mind it,” she said.

The group looked scared. She liked the fear. It made more sense than anything, and it was more familiar ground than the unsteady new territory of the past several days.

Much as she’d identified O’Brien when he’d snorted earlier, and when he’d cracked the joke in the car on the way here, seeing where people looked and who looked most guilty, she could identify the culprit as one of Bar’s friends.

He wasn’t a small guy, and he looked like he might wet himself.

It helped her to calm down more. She waited, staring, as she tried to find the words. Nobody spoke before she did. There was a long, hanging moment where her thoughts didn’t seem to progress, and she couldn’t formulate the sentence in her head.

Had she been more focused, it might have been easier.

“Many of you are teenagers,” she said. “But this isn’t your high school. I pay you to work under me, to fight for me, and sometimes you’ll bleed for me. The person standing next to you could be the person who saves you from bleeding one drop too many. Show each other some fucking respect.”

That earned her nods and noises of acknowledgement. As she locked eyes with the culprit, he nodded faster than others.

She turned and walked away.

A short set of stairs led down to the front of the house. Her group’s cars were parked out in front. Bar and Angel stood by Bar’s car. Both were dressed, but still soaking wet.

“Everything okay?” Bar asked.

“Mm hmm,” Ashley responded. She took stock of the pair. Angel was still visibly dripping, trying to keep a straight face. “Did you enjoy yourselves?”

“Yeah,” Bar said.

Angel’s straight face slipped. Ashley bent down, bringing her face closer, and Angel had to fight harder to keep her composure.

Finally, Angel failed to hold herself together, and started giggling.

Ashley smiled, turning to the group that was still making their way down the stairs. J was at the very rear, locking the house. “Someone go back inside. Steal a few towels.”

Angel’s giggles intensified.

“I guess I can pay them back for the towels,” J said.

“Please,” Ashley said.

☽

Angel slugged the heroine. Fist to face. She backed off, shaking her hand. It wasn’t because the heroine was tough, it seemed. Only because delivering a punch that solid hurt.

The woman backed off, hand reaching up to her hand and mouth.

It was chaos and the chaos was something Damsel could well and truly embrace. It was simple and it was easy.

Well, not easy. Four capes against her and her crew.

“Hey, kid,” the big guy of the group said. “You want to try that with me?”

“No way,” Angel responded.

“Rhetorical question,” the big guy replied. “You just punched my wife.”

“She shot my boyfriend with a laser, so fuck you!”

He advanced on Angel, shoulders alternating back and forth as he walked. There was a lightness to his step that suggested super strength. Angel’s head was constantly in motion as she retreated, checking where the clothing racks and shelving units were and weaving between them without really slowing down. There was a lightness to her step, too, but it was more of the sort of lightness that came with a boxer’s training.

The woman Angel punched looked up, peering over her hand, and a forcefield materialized in the middle of the storefront. Angel continued retreating, and her back and head smacked into the wall that had appeared.

“Big guy,” Damsel said. “Don’t pick on a girl half your age and a third your mass.”

The man turned her way. It was weird to see a cape without a mask. He was older, thirty-five or forty, and his blond hair was styled, slicked into position with something that hadn’t faltered in the heat of this skirmish.

“What do you think I should do then?”

“Given the prospect of having to deal with me? Surrender,” she said, with a smile.

“You’re proposing I stop picking on her, half my age and a third my weight, and I pick on you, half my age and, what, a quarter of my weight?”

“I’m proposing you surrender,” she said. She flicked her hand out to the side, and her power activated, crackling at her right.

“I’m tough to hurt,” he said.

“Do you really want to test it?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Why the hell not?”

She spared a momentary glance toward Angel, who ran off to the side, parallel with the forcefield. The others were already vacating. They had some stuff, but the looting of the registers and the safe in the manager’s office had been interrupted.

A forcefield appeared at knee-level, an obstacle.

She had some experience with that, having dealt with Licit. She had experience with constantly fighting to catch and maintain her balance, as external factors worked on her.

She stumbled, and when it looked like she wasn’t going to catch her balance, she used her power, blasting herself in the opposite direction.

Another forcefield had materialized in front of where she’d been about to stumble, positioned to make her landing an uncomfortable one. The blast that she fired tore the forcefield to shreds. She stumbled back into a shelf near the registers, loaded with impulse buy items, including a ridiculous number and variety of protein bars.

She hurled herself forward.

“Neil!” the forcefield woman shouted, her voice nasal with her hand still at her nose. “Get back!”

Damsel blasted. The big guy was already getting out of the way, throwing himself into the ground in a roll. He collided with another shelf, and energy arced out, connecting with the metal shelves.

“That went through my field like it was nothing,” the woman said. “You can’t take that hit.”

Damsel smiled, as the man’s expression went cold. She walked a few steps, then blasted the long forcefield that had cut their battlefield in half. The forcefield bent, distorted, and a good two thirds of it dissolved into nothing. Like plastic crinkling at the touch of fire.

In the background, Angel used the opening to get to the other side of the store and make a break in the direction the others had run.

He twisted his hand around, and the shelf snapped over, the thicker midsection of the shelf slapping into the palm of his hands, fingers gripping it.

He hurled it, and it wasn’t just that he was strong enough to treat it like it weighed nothing- he used his power to thrust it out. Damsel aimed to shoot it out of the air, but with the speed it flew, it connected with her hand a moment before the power annihilated it. Flecks of shelf struck Damsel’s face and shoulders.

Her hand stung where the shelf had hit it. She shook it at her side, and each shake made her power activate, spitting out bursts and licks of space-warping darkness.

The woman shot her with a laser. The same kind that had burned Bar. Damsel stumbled, felt the burn a second later, and then she blasted, hurling herself up, away. Her foot touched on the top of one of the short, shoulder-height shelves, and then she used her power to rocket in their direction.

The woman flew, and the man jumped back. The directions they moved made it hard to pursue both- and it seemed instinctual.

They knew how to fight as a team, and they didn’t even have the sense to avoid using their civilian names?

She went after the big electric guy, who was busy trying to duck through the aisle between the cashier’s stations. He couldn’t fly, for one thing, so he was easier to catch, and he was momentarily slower as he tried to avoid demolishing too much of the store’s property.

She stayed low to the ground as she bolted for him, and it paid off as the first laser raked past her, hitting one of the cash stations.

The second laser, though, it hit her. A glancing hit, but the beam was continuous, not a single shot. It traced an uneven course along the side of her body, cutting her dress and burning her stomach, and in her haste to get out of the way, she fell.

No.

No!

She screamed her rage. A blast of her power sent her rocketing forward, at the big one. A forcefield appeared in front of her, and she shot it- with the effect that it wasn’t a planned shot, and it twisted her shoulder. It also moved her away from the guy she wanted to hit.

A flicker of light to her left drew her attention.

Another one of the heroes. This guy had been outside. He had red-blond hair and a beard, and his costume had black sleeves and legs, with a star at the front. Two glowing spheres hung over his head, and another hung at elbow height on either side of him.

The first of the spheres kicked off, lunging in her direction. They weren’t fast, as cape-generated firepower went.

She lunged toward it, and saw the man’s expression change. Surprise. He didn’t usually have people go toward his ominous light orbs.

Damsel shot the orb as it drew closer, and her power tore it to shreds. She closed the distance, and as she ran she could feel the big guy making his approach. The woman would be getting in position to shoot or use a forcefield to block her movement.

The second orb was drawing close. She raised a hand to shoot it, and it detonated an instant before her power could make contact.

Annihilation met energy. Her power didn’t simply erase things in its path, however. It grew, it shrunk, it bent, twisted, stopped, and accelerated. As the detonated energy surged into her power, some of it was magnified, and that same energy escaped the mangling that was supposed to immediately follow.

The effect was that the explosion ripped out inconsistently in every direction. Shelves were knocked over, clothes were scattered, floor and ceiling came to pieces. The sound of it made her temporarily deaf, leaving her ears to absorb and echo the last thing she’d heard- a whipcrack noise coupled with a buzzing that made her teeth hurt. The echo leveled out into a high pitched whine.

She picked herself up. The man with the beard was slower to do the same, and that gave her the opportunity to escape the venue. Past the hole in the wall, out to the city at night.

The city was brighter than it should have been. It wasn’t that her senses were rattled, but that there was another of the damned heroes out here. More energy orbs. These ones clung to the road, rolling and folding into themselves.

A young lady walked through the loose minefield she’d created. Black haired, she had a flower symbol in black on her chest, petals stretching up from a bar or hilt.

One of the orbs erupted. It became a column, a wall, an unfolding wave of rippling energy that danced along the road in an unpreditable path. Damsel only narrowly evaded it.

There were more lights behind her. The man with the beard.

She couldn’t look at every threat at once. Every time she blinked, the bright lights lingered in dots and trails in her vision. The lights the bearded man made weren’t so distinct from the ones the woman made, when they were dormant. It made it hard to focus, and her focus wasn’t all there.

Another of the ones on the ground erupted. It unfolded in a different way, pillars of light that raced in four different directions. Easier to avoid, but they were coordinating their timing. He’d lobbed one of his lights at her. It wasn’t fast, but it wasn’t so slow she could outrun it, and with her vision already struggling amid so much brightness, it was hard to use depth perception to get a sense of how fast it was traveling.

She blasted it, stumbling back, and light at one corner of her field of vision suggested another of the orbs the flower woman had made was exploding.

“Hold off on the explosions until we know what happened in the store!” a woman shouted. The laser woman. The sound of her voice was rounded off at the edges, as if Damsel was hearing her from just beneath the surface of water.

“Roger,” the man with the beard said.

They were all here now.

Damsel turned to leave, and saw another. A woman with an orange symbol at her breast and a glowing energy weapon clasped in both hands. The energy formed a wedge shape toward the top, almost but not quite an axe.

Damsel slowed down, wary.

“Brandish!” the laser woman shouted. “She’s dangerous! Her power goes right through forcefields!”

Brandish didn’t flinch. “We’re all dangerous, aren’t we?”

Her voice wasn’t of sufficient volume to be heard by her companions. Only by Damsel.

“Yeah,” Damsel said.

“You’re done. Your underlings are scattered, they abandoned their car. You get nothing today.”

“Maybe,” Damsel said.

“This isn’t ambiguous,” Brandish said. “You’re done. You had your fun, now we’re bringing you in.”

Damsel looked back at the other heroes. They were drawing in closer.

“You said I get nothing today. I thought I’d get something this time.”

“Damsel of Distress,” Brandish said. “This thing? You and I talking, trying to find something profound to say? Mutual therapy during the pause in the battlefield? We’re not going to do that.”

“Thinking aloud,” Damsel said.

“That’s how it always is. Sorry, but I had my fill of talking about my problems a long, long time ago, and I’m not going to talk about or shoulder yours.”

Damsel nodded. The laser burns hurt like a motherfucker, and her shoulder was throbbing.

She could go after Brandish. One person to get past.

But that weapon had reach. She couldn’t blast it like she’d blasted the orbs, without hitting her opponent.

“Some people want to talk to you. You’re not necessarily in trouble.”

Damsel snorted. “We’re all in trouble, aren’t we? We’re all dangerous and we’re all in trouble. Just… sometimes more obvious.”

Brandish didn’t respond.

A car was coming down the road. Traffic must have been cut off for the area to have so few cars and people around. Still, this old sedan had slipped that perimeter. Not J’s car. Not Bar’s.

“Go around!” the big guy shouted. “Situation in progress, there’s danger!”

The car started its halting, three-point turn..

Was it the distraction she needed?

Brandish wasn’t taking her eyes off of Damsel. It meant Damsel couldn’t run past. Running to the sides didn’t give her any immediate escape routes, and it would see laser fire, exploding energy flowers and slow moving energy balls hurtling her way.

But, by the flip side of that same coin, it meant that when an object was cast out the window, Brandish was the last person to react. Her focus was on Ashley.

Damsel twisted her head around, eyes shut, her arm going up to her ear to shield it.

At the same time she turned away, she ran toward.

Not a flashbang, but a flash. The light was blinding.

Damsel hurried toward the car. Not her underlings, exactly, but they were hers. The mercenaries she’d bought with the money she hadn’t spent on the house. People with equipment, some training, some background.

But in the midst of the light, a shadow loomed. Brandish hurried her way, weapon held high.

To an extent, it made sense. A person who manipulated fire often had protections from fire. This woman created weapons out of light- and she’d bounced back faster than some.

Damsel was left with a moment to decide.

Her power lanced out, twisting, reaching, pointed at the woman with the weapon who threatened to take everything from her. Aimed with the intent-

No, not the intent.

But the willingness to kill.

The woman reacted. She condensed down into a sphere, and the dark, rending energy lanced out, swiping and grasping through the air.

Damsel couldn’t be sure if it grazed the orb or just barely missed it, but by chance more than anything else, the lunges and surges of Damsel’s power missed their target.

Brandish didn’t give further chase. Ashley reached the car, glancing back at the other blinded heroes, the scene with the money she hadn’t been able to claim.

It had been the right decision after all.

The energy and restlessness she’d missed was back. It had been with her as she stepped off the bus. It had helped propel her forward as she made her initial moves in Boston.

This was closer to the feeling she had on the bus, but it was a darker feeling.

☽

It was an unfamiliar feeling.

It had been a long, long time since anything but her fingers or her power had run through her hair. One or the other was usually sufficient to deal with tangles and keep it neat.

When she had been little, her mother had counted the brush strokes out loud, but there were no words. and there were more than fifty brush strokes.

Her hair was moved aside, and a warm hand touched her shoulder. It might have been moisturizer that was rubbed into her skin. There were no childhood memories to touch on for that. This would be a first.

There was a rhythm to this, like there had been for the brush. Almost a minute of rubbing, avoiding the burns, giving attention to knots. There would be a pause, and there would be a soft sound as he rubbed his hands together. She surmised it was so the moisturizer wouldn’t be cold or cool on application.

Everything careful, everything measured out. It would be so easy for this same situation to feel like the inverse of what it was. Her in his power.

As he walked around in front of her, applying moisturizer to her collarbone, his gaze was averted. Even that was careful and measured out. His expression betrayed a few moments of indecision, hesitation that anyone would have in a scenario like this, but that indecision didn’t interfere with his ministrations.

It had, before. She couldn’t even remember how that conversation had gone. He had handled some of her requests for food, and that had led to him ordering an outfit, bringing it up online and getting her confirmation before having it delivered. Talk of the outfit had led to mention of her hair.

It was clean, her power cleaned it more thoroughly than anything. But it wasn’t- anything. He had offered to buy and apply the conditioner. He had washed her hair like her mother’s hairdresser had used to.

When he said something, or if he hesitated to long, she had walked way or started doing it herself. It had happened twice. Now he seemed to have figured it out.

No words. If he was going to do something, he would do it in a way that showed respect and no hesitation.

Her injuries were disinfected, cream applied, bandages taped on. She moved her arm to test that the tape wouldn’t pull, then nodded. The burn at her side required that her towel be adjusted to reveal just the side of her stomach and her hip, which he did, and she pinned it at the side of her body like that until he was done.

He applied her makeup, with attention to redness and scrapes from past skirmishes. She kept her eyes closed while he applied makeup around her eyes, then to her lashes.

Her eyes were open as the lipstick kissed her lips. It moved slowly, pulling at the surface of the lip. He was ever so careful to avoid a mistake there.

His face was very close to hers for this part.

When he was done with her makeup, he went to the table where her dress was laid out. He brought it down to the ground, and she stepped into it. He raised it, his head turned away, and she let the towel fall before the zipper was raised, pulling the dress tight around her midsection and her chest. Not corset tight, but tight. He attended to the straps at the neck, and he first buckled on and then adjusted the layers of cloth that went over her one shoulder, covering the bandaged wound.

He brought the shoes, and held them out for her to put her feet into, and she did, and he attended to the straps that secured them to her feet. He remained kneeling for a few seconds longer than necessary as she turned away from him, taking a few steps to make sure that the fit was right, and that the shoes wouldn’t be uncomfortable. The dress swished against her legs.

He stood, and turned to go clean up the makeup and other bottles. The first aid stuff and the packaging needed discarding, this time. It was much as he had before, though each time they found themselves in this situation, things were a little more involved, with more steps and things being done.

She raised one foot, and she touched the toe of her shoe to his hip. She pushed it to the side and back., turning him so his rear end was against the table with the things on it, and he faced her, her toes still touching the side of his pelvis.

For all that he pretended to know things about marketing and connections, for his maturity and his way of doing things as he assisted her, he was very much a young guy. His like for her was as clear as day.

She dropped her foot to the ground, studying him.

This was weird. He was weird.

So was she.

She studied him until his fondness for her was less… outstanding. When her eyes went up to his face, she saw a smile. He was amused.

Impudent.

She’d been distracted. She had things to do.

Armored and administered to by her squire, she left the hotel room, with him a step behind. The assistance her assistant provided her was abnormal, perhaps, but… she felt more human than she had in a long, long time.

She had hands again- they just weren’t her own.

☽

She rubbed her fingertips up and down the skirt portion of her dress, testing the sensations.

The hands weren’t new, but there were still times they didn’t feel like hers. Especially when her appointments with Riley concluded.

Hands removed, cleaned, tested, tweaked, and given back. It never felt exactly the same as it had beforehand, and with the way her appointments were scheduled, they ran together, one after another, leaving her annoyed with one adjustment as the next set of people started on the next.

She sat and waited for the men and women in lab coats, with their Wardens’ ID badges around their necks, and she tried to discern just what it was that made her hands not feel quite right.

Here and there, people walked by. The area was large, and the testing equipment sat without much room to navigate between one piece and the next.

It was Jessica who approached her first, rather than any of the parahuman sciences people.

“They want to do something different today,” Jessica said. “Digging into one of the weird edge cases.”

“Should I worry?”

“The other way around, maybe,” Jessica said. “I told them they should be more concerned, and that we shouldn’t surprise you. I’m here to break the news and ask permission.”

“Okay.”

“Edict. Do you harbor any strong feelings?”

“Some feelings, but not strong ones. Nothing that should matter.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Ashley said, with sincerity so grave it could have been mocking, even though it wasn’t.

“Do you want me to stay?” Jessica asked. “I can referee.”

“You have things to do, I’m sure.”

“Then I will see you in… one hour and twenty-three minutes.”

“I look forward to it,” Ashley said.

Then Jessica was gone, and Ashley was alone again. People walked past her and they avoided looking her way. She was a nonentity, periodically touching things or touching finger to finger with hands that weren’t real.

“Ashley, thank you for coming in again,” a scientist said. He appeared out of nowhere, clipboard in hand, and he said the words so automatically that they didn’t have any meaning at all. “Have you started on any new medicine?”

“I have not, but I would refer you to my personal doctor for a more accurate answer,” she said.

She didn’t miss the slight changes in expression that went with that. They were scared of Riley.

“Did you log your dreams in your diary?” he asked.

“I did. Same as always.”

Her bag was beside her on the doctor’s bench, and the diary was on top. Writing was a chore, but she was supposed to do it and filling out the diary meant she could do both things at once.

“Any changes?”

“No changes.”

“Alright. That’s good. Your therapist told you that we’re bringing someone in, I hope.”

“Yes. It’s fine.”

“I’ll be back shortly, then.”

It was bizarre that she was in a room with so many electronic devices, with special cameras and scanners, testing machines, exercise machines and everything else they might need to study a given, and yet she was only here to sit on a doctor’s bench. The only tool or recording device that was being used here was the diary.

She saw Edict approach. The woman wore the same costume now that she had three years prior.

“Long time no see,” Edict said. “You don’t mind my coming in?”

“No.”

The rest of the scientists that Ashley saw with any regularity were now arriving. A few unfamiliar faces stood off to the side, with one of the senior scientists whispering to them. It didn’t look like a secret from her so much as an attempt to catch them up. Too efficient, too measured, and too great in quantity to be deception.

“Are you well?” Ashley asked.

“As well as anyone is these days,” Edict said. “People in my area had a hard time with winter. I did too.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ashley said. “I was more fortunate than some. I was close to resources.”

“I’m glad,” Edict said. “We’re here about dreams, was it?”

“No,” a scientist said, at the same time Ashley answered, “Not dreams.”

“Dreams came up,” Edict said.

“They’re related, and I track mine, but this is memory,” Ashley said.

“You’ve seen things relevant to me?”

Ashley looked at the various scientists. “Yes. I remember things relevant to you.”

“We were hoping to confirm and verify.”

“Okay,” Edict said.

“Your son’s name,” Ashley said. She reached out for her diary, and a scientist handed it to her. She found her pen and wrote the name out.

The grip on the pen was hard to maintain, the movements stiff.

It was a good thing the word was short: Shiloh.

It was better to write it than to say it out loud, because Edict wore a costume, and her identity deserved preserving. Ashley showed Edict.

“I can confirm. You know my little boy’s name. That bothers me, if I’m honest.”

Ashley nodded. “I know that you had a routine with the woman who worked the reception in Stafford. Shandra.”

She could have gone on, she was even tempted to, to outline all the things she knew and easily get them confirmed. She bit her tongue.

“I can confirm,” Edict said.

“I know you had your neighbor as the go-to babysitter for your son, when work intruded. She was a high school student, and would pick up your son on her way back.”

“Confirm,” Edict said. Her forehead creased with a worry line.

“For overnight stays, you’d use your aunt. You didn’t like doing it because she didn’t know or approve about your cape life.”

“Confirm. How do you know this? What’s going on?”

“I have memories that aren’t mine,” Ashley said. “The memories are as clear as any of my own. I know a lot of things, but I’m trying to think of things that only you would know, so they can confirm.”

“Yeah, well, you’re thinking of good ones,” Edict said. “I’m not comfortable with this. I’m concerned, actually.”

“I mean no harm, now,” Ashley said, but scientists were already talking over her, asking Edict things. Shouting the statement would defeat the point.

“Has anyone reported anything like this to you?” one scientist asked.

“No.”

“Edict. On a scale of one to ten, how likely would you say it is that your power, used on any person, could establish a permanent link to that someone?”

“I don’t know,” Edict said. “Two. But I do know that I’m very, very tired of my power having hidden facets to it. I can’t rule anything out.”

“Ashley, on a scale of one to ten, with your extensive background being on the recipient side of Edict’s power, how likely would you say it is that a connection or link was established when she used her power on you?”

“One. I don’t think it’s likely.”

“It upsets me,” Edict said. “My memories are mine.”

“They are,” Ashley responded. “I’m not especially happy about it either.”

“On that note,” one scientist asked. “Do you feel any less like yourself, Ashley?”

“Yes,” Ashley said. She thought about leaving it at that, but these people were the same ones who had agreed to pay her for her time and her trouble. “But this memory being in the mix and Edict’s power don’t have anything to do with that. Maybe this an avenue to pursue, on why this memory bleed happened, but I haven’t had the opportunity to be one hundred percent me for a long, long, long time.”

Eclipse – x.6

Damsel’s power broke through the silence, the scream and the crackle of it so abrupt in how it came on and dissipated that she could imagine it was a continuous sound that was only audible when her power opened the door.

In the break between the use of her blasts, her toes scrabbled for footing on the brick.

Another blast, driving her up and at an angle. The darkness rippled behind and below her like her dress flapped and whipped around in the disturbed air. She had to work against the push, so she wouldn’t simply be pressed against the wall. Instead, her leg extended out, some isolated muscles she wasn’t used to exercising straining, her foot dragged down, and she made her way up.

She was three stories above the ground, only a drop with nothing to grab below her.

The blasts alternated, to provide that recoil push that could drive her skyward, while her feet worked to give her traction and keep her positioned.

This blast sputtered after she tried to extinguish it; a movement of her hand she hadn’t intended, or just the power being its moody self, it continued to output power, pushing her off course. She was flung sideways, toward the corner of the building, and beyond that- only the fifty foot drop to pavement and sidewalk.

She compensated, a use of her power to send her in the opposite direction. So wild and reflexive a move saved her from the immediate threat, bought her a second, and threatened another crisis, her entire body out of position, her frame of reference spinning around her.

She could see the fat, rust-stained concrete lip at the bottom of a window, and she stomped on it more than step on it, in her rush to find footing.

It was another half second of time, and it gave her the ability to establish her frame of reference, reminding herself what was up, what was down, and where she wanted to be.

Up. She blasted, both hands, and her knee almost struck her chest as she rushed to get her footing in advance of her body getting that high.

Up, another burst, another noise, another shudder through her arms and shoulders to her chest, the feeling around her heart and chest reminding her that she hadn’t breathed in twenty or thirty seconds.

Then- no footing. She was moving upward, her shoulders tense, her chest locked with no breath passing through her throat or mouth, dress and hair moving with the air, and her arms out and behind her. The building was below her.

A short blast moved her horizontally. She landed on a broad tarred shingle that wasn’t fully attached to the roof. The shingle moved under her as she came to a stop.

She stepped up to and then stood on the corner of the rooftop. Her group was in the lot below her, with twenty-five of her people rushing to fill up the trucks they’d haphazardly parked around the building. People were shouting orders, trying to harangue a disorganized mob of teenagers and twenty-somethings into order.

The building below her was a warehouse. Televisions, computers, laptops and printers. She had been informed that most were the kind that flooded stores before all the students arrived for university, cheaper, with brand names nobody had heard of.

The teenagers were nervous, and a heavy rumble had almost made them shit themselves. It had been followed by another, and then another. She had had J call the mercenaries she had stationed at either end of the warehouse lot to see if they’d seen the cause. They hadn’t.

Now she had her vantage point, and her eyes scanned the area.

A helicopter made its way through the night sky above them. She could see her people stop in their tracks at the noise, heads turning to see the helicopter-mounted spotlight roving over buildings a block away.

Not for them.

The spotlight of the helicopter illuminated the source of the rumbling, a ways off to the north, past the water.

It was taller than some four-story buildings, hunchbacked, without much of a head. It walked on two legs, using one of its arms when its balance failed it and it tipped too far forward. Its other arm wasn’t the kind that supported weight, consisting of a morass of tentacles.

As the helicopter drew nearer, the tentacles began to unfurl, expanding out to fill the area around the giant. It turned, standing straighter, clearly hostile.

The helicopter pulled back, the spotlight covering more of the giant with a lower intensity.

It made its way out into the water, and the tentacles from its arm spread out, plunging into the water around it. It stood with its back to the area.

Damsel crossed the roof, found the ladder for the fire escape, and slid down, one hand on the side, another ready to grab the rungs if something went wrong, her feet stopping her periodically.

She hopped down the last five feet, and dusted off her hands. Grime, paint chips and rust, with some abrasions. A use of her power cleared away the rust.

“Did you see what it was?” J asked her.

“Giant monster,” she said. “How are we doing?”

“Giant monster?” J asked. People nearby looked curious too.

“I asked you a question,” she said, her voice sharp.

“Uh, we’re fine. We should plan more before we do this again, teach our people to load things efficiently. Giant monster? How giant?”

“Seventy-five feet? I don’t know. Big doesn’t matter.”

“We’re not concerned?”

“I am concerned that we have a convenient distraction and we might waste it. Will we be done in five minutes?”

“Last load, people!” J shouted. “We’re out in four!”

“Alright,” Damsel said.

People who’d been inside made their way out, carrying large boxes. A few had flat boxes stacked three or four high, each stack carried by two people.

“Careful about tipping them over!” a man called out. It was Marrow, at one of the trucks. “You can mess with the internal hardware or some shit like that.”

Damsel walked over to him. “Any complaints?”

“Nah, this is good,” Marrow said. “What was the rumble?”

“Giant monster. But it’s not here and it’s not threatening the city. We can ignore it.”

“You’re sure?” he asked. At her nod, he asked, “We part ways after this, then? Your convoy goes one way, me and my brothers go another?”

“We’ll touch base soon. If you can’t offload your take, we might have an offer,” Damsel said.

“You’re pretty confident you’ll be able to sell all this,” he observed.

It was four trucks that were partially filled- three smaller moving vans and one eighteen wheeler. Marrow’s ex-cons had one large moving van.

“We’ll see,” she said.

“Get in and buckle up!” Bar called out. “Don’t let any of those boxes fall on you!”

People filed into the eighteen wheeler. The shutter at the back was closed.

The other trucks were loaded up, her people inside, and the doors shut.

“Bring my trucks back whenever,” Marrow said.

“Yeah,” she said. She walked away.

It was one of her underling’s cousin’s tips that had given them the location of the stocked warehouse. That cousin was in their security uniform, at the far end of the lot with a broken leg, a shiner, and two of the four mercenaries she’d hired standing guard over them.

By choice, as strange as it seemed. Cape insurance was paying out the nose while Boston was being turned upside-down, and they weren’t vetting a lot of the reports, or so this cousin thought. For enduring a broken leg and a bruise, they had a disability payout, an excuse to claim mental distress, and the ability to coast for six months to a year before they had to go back to work. That was their estimation, reportedly. She didn’t really care if it worked out or not.

She got what she’d wanted. Trucks loaded with stolen goods. J’s suggestion had been to basically sell some of the computers and TVs to her people for ten percent of their label prices. From the buzz she’d heard, some seemed excited about the idea. Less profit, but it made for happier underlings and less stock to offload.

Some of her people were prepared to drive to major cities and towns nearby to offload to groups and connections there. Bar had family who wanted to buy some of the stock to sell on the down-low.

J and Bar seemed pretty confident that they’d already made arrangements to get rid of two truckloads. Part of one truck would go to her people -that was fine- and the rest? It couldn’t be too difficult. The trick was that her people would be selling it themselves, rather than distributing to people who would sell it. That involved risks.

“Ready to go?” J asked.

She nodded.

J signaled with a wave of his hand.

His car was parked between two buildings. Damsel took the passenger seat, and J shut the door for her.

“Want me to drive ahead or behind?” J asked.

“Behind.”

J leaned out of the window and waved his arm in a forward motion.

The trucks rolled out.

They pulled out of the broad concrete lot that bounded the warehouse and other buildings in the same broader complex, and Damsel raised a hand to signal the mercenaries.

“Is Marrow happy?” J asked.

“Happy enough,” she responded. They’d allowed Marrow to bring a single truck in exchange for loaning them the vehicles to move the stock. It built relations, which was handy. Marrow had ignored her or claimed to be unavailable the last four times she had reached out. She’d stung his pride.

Forming working relationships would be good.

“My heart is pounding like crazy,” J said. “It has been since we first got into the trucks to drive here.”

“Wuss,” she said.

“Isn’t yours?” he asked. “How are you calm at a time like this?”

“I’m not, I suppose,” she said. She wasn’t calm, but it made her uncomfortable to try to explore that simple question of how she felt or where her ‘normal’ was. There were times her heart raced, and her heart was racing now, but that wasn’t unusual. It was almost normal. Whenever it wasn’t like this… she couldn’t say she was calm. If she wasn’t actively doing something then she generally had other concerns.

It was a rare, rare time that she was still, things were mundane, and she found a moment to consider to how she felt or how her body was doing.

She moved her hand with care, because an incautious movement could destroy the car door, wheel, or engine. She didn’t recognize her own hand.

For the last little while, she had been eating more. Thanks to J. Her fingers were still thin, but the bones and the tendons at the back weren’t quite as defined as they had been.

The window was open, and she put her hand outside. Dangerous, to let the wind push and pull at her hand, but she was careful to keep it rigid.

She felt good and she didn’t trust the feeling. She’d felt good when she’d robbed the bank with Kidney Stan’s group. She’d felt good when she’d looted the clothing store in Stafford at four in the morning and made off with bags of clothes. The bank robbery had gone wrong and the ‘good’ had become something else, and the good feeling from the looting of the clothing store had soured with a quickness that suggested the feeling hadn’t been real.

No good days. There were the bad days and there were the days she dreaded the bad days. Right now, she was caught between a low-key excitement that wouldn’t quit and the dread.

Almost, almost, she was tempted to do something stupid just to get it out of the way and alleviate that dread.

Hm. Maybe not so almost. She couldn’t quite recall the train of thought that had led to her scaling the side of the building with her power. There hadn’t even been thought, when she tried to remember the sequence of events. The noise had demanded her attention, and somewhere between the point where she had rationalized that she needed to get up higher to see what was going on, needed to do it fast, and couldn’t climb up the ladder without her power getting in the way… had she felt a kernel of that desire to alleviate the dread? Had she pushed it out of mind and acted on it, in her hurry?

That spooked her more than the electronics robbery or the rumble had.

“Holy shit, there it is,” J said.

Damsel tilted her head to see through the side window, and she saw the giant. It hadn’t moved. More helicopters with lights were circling it. Nobody was fighting the thing, and the thing wasn’t fighting anyone.

“Blasto’s, probably,” she said. “He was making something big.”

“You’re not bothered?”

“Not as long as he keeps it out of Deathchester.”

“Half the city must be shitting itself right now,” J said.

“Because they’re weak,” she said.

She’d wanted to say something clever, to elaborate on the thought, but she heard the way she said ‘weak’, the harshness of it, and it surprised her enough that the rest of the statement caught her off guard.

I would fight past ten of Soldat’s soldiers, a hundred of Blasto’s plant heroes, or disobey a thousand of Edict’s orders, if it meant not feeling like this.

A collision ahead of them snapped her to reality. Tires squealed as J hit the brakes, then steered to avoid the trucks that were simultaneously braking and swerving to avoid what was ahead of them.

Her power destroyed the door handle as she opened the car door. The eighteen-wheeler’s long body provided some cover as she jogged ahead, trying to get to a point where she could see what was going on.

Latent emotion boiled up. The dread became something manifest and tangible that ran in her veins. There was a desperate edge to her feelings

She saw a ghostly prism floating in the air, rotating slowly.

“Licit!” she screamed the word.

Her people were climbing out of the back of a truck.

“Boss,” one said.

“Licit!” she screamed, again. Her power flared.

She saw the heroes further down the street. Licit wasn’t alone. He walked toward her, filling the air around him with more ghostly shapes, ranging from a few feet across to the size of a car. Spheres, cubes, diamond prisms, cones. His backup didn’t advance with him.

“What do we do?” someone asked.

She stared at Licit, breathing hard.

“We need two trucks, minimum,” she said. She had to catch a breath to get the final two words out. “Get out.”

“Bar!” the person shouted. “We gotta leave with two trucks!”

Other names were called. O’Neil- he’d been driving one truck. She glanced back and saw him being extricated from the cab of a truck. The airbag had trapped him and someone was now hacking at it with a knife to try to get the air out sooner.

Licit raised a hand, extending it their way. She saw more shapes appear in the air. Between her and Licit, behind her, and-

One truck reversed. It ran into the sphere that had been created behind it.

She reversed direction, walking away from Licit. A wall appeared in front of her- the face of a cube- she destroyed it with her power.

More. One after another, obstacle, frustration, stalling.

She snarled.

He created them almost as fast as she destroyed them. Her progress was measured in single paces.

She reached the back of the truck and destroyed the cube there.

“Back!” she called out, hopping up and grabbing a dent for a handhold. Her power crackled, tearing a hole in sheet metal, and her fingers caught on the sheet metal, gripping the edge.

She expected the shape to appear, and she blasted it before it could have an effect.

The truck got turned around, and she hopped off as it sped off.

Another shape -a tall spike- appeared in the truck’s way. The driver avoided it, but it hit the side view mirror and cracked the passenger side window.

The other truck hung back. J was hanging onto the driver’s side door, watching things while communicating with the driver. The people from the other truck were hurrying to get inside so they could get a ride away from the scene.

Rather than go to the truck, she went after Licit. She knew how he operated. He had a hard-on for her, like Edict did. He’d been a big city cape once, and he’d transferred to her town because he got his jollies making her miserable.

He rode around with police and did talks at schools, according to the stoners she talked to.

Oh, and he got in her fucking way.

“Licit!” she screamed.

“I don’t want to fight, Ashley!”

“Have the decency to call me Damsel of Distress, you genital wart!”

“Damsel of Distress,” he said. He was shaking his head.

A cone appeared at knee height, point touching the ground. She almost walked into it, avoided it only because she’d had this encounter far too many times already.

“Digging your grave every time you try that, petty man,” she said.

“Why don’t you stop right where you are, and we talk. I’m not looking to arrest you.”

He indicated the giant in the background, his head turning.

She used the opportunity to run toward him.

He created a barrier. She blasted it, stumbling off to the left, then resumed running. He created another barrier.

“Just stop, let’s chat. We have bigger concerns tonight, believe it or not.”

“No you don’t,” she said, her eyes going wide. “You got in my way, so you’d better believe I’m your biggest concern.”

“We’ll let you go with the trucks that can still move,” he said. “If you’re willing to talk.”

“Do you like having legs, Licit? I’ll let you keep them if you start begging for mercy now.”

“You’ve never hurt anyone that badly, Damsel. You’re not about to start now. Stop.”

More barriers. She blasted through each, changed the direction she moved as she tried to guess where each would appear and evade pre-emptively, and she drew nearer to him.

He began walking backward, keeping the same general distance from her.

As her second truck pulled away, he raised an arm for his buddies. Two took flight, flying toward the truck, leaving only two on the ground.

“Less witnesses?” she asked. She shook her head. “Your bosses are going-”

She blasted at another barrier.

“-To need at least three if they’re going to make sense of exactly what it is I did to you and your remains.”

“Did you or do you know about that giant?” he asked.

She blasted another cube to pieces, stalking toward him. He was walking through his shapes while they were solid for her. He was relying on the shapes he’d made in advance to help keep the distance.

“…Your robbery was suspiciously timed,” he said.

“I have some idea. How about I whisper it in your ear?”

“We flew over, our thinker gave us the take on you being in the car, stolen goods being in the truck. We- if you stop and talk to me, I’ll call back the Boston fliers that just left. You can walk away.”

She glared, blasting again. Then, to break up the rhythm, she shot with the hand that hung limp at her side, her arm going rigid to provide some strength for the blast. She sent herself upward, over the field, and then blasted again to rocket toward him.

Shapes went up. He leaped to one side and skidded on one hip and leg, moving along a smooth, shallow slope he’d made with his power. She gave chase, rocketing toward him with her power, and more shapes went up between them.

This time- cones and diamond-shaped spires that might as well have been spears. Points aimed her way.

She stopped.

She reached out, touching one of the points. She smiled. “Got scared?”

“Director of the Boston PRT wants to talk to you,” he said.

“Again.”

“We bring you in or have you make a phone call. We’re supposed to take the stolen goods back, according to the police, but we’re getting conflicting orders, because we’re supposed to be ready in case that giant ends up being a threat. Given our past relationship-”

Damsel snorted. “You stalk me and get in my way.”

“-I’ll let the stolen goods slide. We won’t arrest your guys. If you talk.”

“Does describing your unfortunate and imminent demise count? Fuck you, Licit. You’ll promise that and betray me the moment you have what you want.”

“I’ve never once done anything like that.”

“Everyone does things like that. You’re not special.”

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’m going to reach slowly for my belt. I’m going to pull my phone out, and I’m going to call my guys off. Just… stay where you are.”

She stared at him.

His hand moved. She watched as he reached down, drawing the phone out. There was a pause as he typed, his eyes moving back and forth between the phone and her.

Furtive. Cowardly.

“Dovetail, Aerobat. Can you let the trucks go?”

There was a pause.

“Please,” he said. Pause. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“You’re lying. Secret code. Cops and capes can lie, and I’m not going to be fooled.”

“Just… wait?” he asked.

“If you are lying, how about I put you down? I might not have maimed anyone, you’re right about that, but I’ve killed people, you know.”

“I know, Ashley,” he said. “I’m sorry that happened.”

Her expression twitched. Irritation, anger. Her voice was hard. “What did I say about my name?”

“I wasn’t saying it to you,” he said it in a quiet voice. “I was saying it to her. Is that okay?”

“No,” she said. “That’s the kind of thing that makes me throw myself past these spikes of yours and take your head from your shoulders.”

“Then I won’t do it again, Damsel of Distress,” he said. “Sorry.”

A moment passed. She wanted to pace, but she worried that would be the trap, a bit of forcefield created at a level to trip her up, create a weakness that he could use.

The idea nettled her. She remained where she was, imagining what she might do if an opportunity came up.

“You’ve never beat me,” she said. “You never found me. And I’m your full-time job?”

“Well, I help the police and things. Ah, there they are. See?”

Dovetail and Aerobat. The pair dropped down from the sky, rejoining the two in the background. They were looking more at the giant in the water than at Damsel.

“They could have already caught my friends. Doesn’t Dovetail make forcefields? This is clearly a trap. You wouldn’t call them back for nothing.”

“I called them back because I promised that I would if you stopped and talked. Which you effectively did.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“How about this? You can use my phone or you can take a burner phone. Call your group, confirm they’re fine. But also call Director Armstrong. If you take the burner phone, you call him at your leisure,” he said, tapping his belt. “I brought it for that express purpose.”

“With a tracer in it? No. Stop acting like I’m stupid, Licit.”

“We don’t think you’re stupid, Damsel of Distress. We do worry about you.”

“As you should. I’m dangerous.”

He sighed.

His phone illuminated, buzzing silently in his hand.

She stared him down.

“Can I answer, Damsel? It’s… the team back there.”

She didn’t answer. She would give her team a bit longer to get away, then she would act. She would have to deal with two fliers. That would be a pain.

There was a building nearby. She could blast a hole in the wall and force them to maneuver in an area they couldn’t fly up.

If need be, she would bring parts of the building down behind her.

He pressed the button on his phone without raising it from where he held it to his side. He glanced down and hit another button.

“Licit,” a female voice came over the phone’s speaker.

“Dovetail,” Licit said, looking at Damsel. “That’s Dovetail. What do you need?”

“Do you need us to stick around? We’re wondering if we should go after the giant. Just in case.”

“Go,” he said. “I think I’m fine. De-escalating might be good.”

In the background, the two fliers took off. The other one ran toward the water, in the general direction of the giant. It had to be a mile and a half away.

“No witnesses,” Damsel said.

Licit hung up the phone.

“Your raid happened when the giant appeared. Did you know it would appear?”

She remained silent.

He looked over his shoulder at the giant, and then without looking back to her, he said, “Director Armstrong has information about the Clockwork Dogs. It’s why he wanted to talk to you. Give us any info you have, agree to play reasonably nice, and…”

He drew in a breath and sighed.

“…We’re not especially invested in stopping you. This situation in Boston is going to wind down in the next month, we’re hoping, as the major players lock down their territories or get their business underway. If you’re one of them, then it’s not our first choice for outcomes, but at least you seem reasonably healthy and you’re not as bad as some.”

“I’m pretty darn bad, Licit. You got scared enough to put spikes in my way.”

She touched a spike. It fizzled out of existence- because of him, not her.

“You’re not shipping in prisoners from overseas and turning them into half-cow people to sell to fans of some asinine children’s show. You cause property damage and you legitimately scare me because I can’t ever know for sure how far you’re willing to go, but I’ve been keeping an eye on your activities in Stafford-”

“Stalking me.”

“Keeping an eye on you, Damsel of Distress,” he said. “I’ve been doing it long enough to get some sense of who you could be. I’d rather have you around than nine out of ten of these assholes. Edict would too, for the record. Given a chance she’d cook you a warm meal, probably. At least once a week, every week for the two years we’ve been keeping an eye on you, she’s said she would drop a box of eclairs off on your doorstep if she- if she knew where you were. Or things like that.”

Damsel didn’t respond.

“I’ve joked it’s a Stockholm syndrome thing,” he said. “We’d take you in and have you be a hero. We’d pay you well, give you clothes, see what we could do to get your power under control, give you foster guardians…”

“You’ve told me this before. Deceptions. You’ll get me into custody and then drag me off to jail.”

“I don’t think we could keep you in jail,” he said. “We do this song and dance instead. I’m glad I got to spell it all out like this, instead of frantically shouting bits and pieces of it while you’re up to something. I’ll rest easier knowing I got to make the full pitch once.”

“This shark isn’t going to bite that baited hook,” she said. “It’s still not ruling out taking your head off.”

“Yeah,” Licit said. “You’re doing this instead. I really hope it works out, weird as it sounds.”

“It’s going to work out,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. If that’s the case, then we’re going to be around another month or so. That’s when we’re expecting it to come to a close. Obviously, if you’re robbing a bank and we’re patrolling, we’ll be on the scene, but that’s it, we won’t come after you in any dedicated way. After that, we’ll be gone, assigned to another small town somewhere. You’ll be rid of us.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“We’ll be gone sooner if you tell us anything you know about the giant.”

She considered.

“You could even tell me you don’t know anything.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s Blasto’s,” she said. “He was brewing something big. There was talk he had a big weapon, like the death ray building scale of thing. This fits for time, it fits for what people were saying and thinking.”

“Good to know,” he said.

“His team of capes isn’t real. They’re vat grown.”

“Are they?” he asked.

She almost elaborated. She didn’t. “You should have heroes that know this. Like the one who knew our trucks had stolen goods in them.”

Licit nodded, but he didn’t reply.

“Don’t treat me like I’m stupid,” she said. “I’m corroborating what you already knew. Or you didn’t need corroboration, but me saying this lets you check off some box for some reason.”

“Something like that,” he said. “Alright. I’ve done my duty, I’m probably not going to get a wink of sleep tonight while we figure out what to do about the giant, so… I’ll leave you to it, like my name says.”

He smiled.

She stared him down, glaring.

“Call the Director. If nothing else… you’ll have to negotiate with the good guys sometimes if you’re going to do business in Boston. Open that line of communication. You need to know what you’re up against.”

He reached into his belt, drew out the black flip-phone, and threw it her way.

She caught it.

After a moment’s consideration, she destroyed the phone with her power.

“Good luck, I guess,” he said.

☽

“I had a question,” Ashley said.

“Sure,” Riley answered. She held one of Ashley’s hands in her hands, and held it up, poking at the raw end to make the fingers move. It was idle, and not for any particular purpose.

It annoyed Ashley enough that she almost lost her train of thought.

“Nail polish. What would it take?”

“I’ve replaced your nails with different colored ones before,” Riley said. “Well… ‘color’.”

“If I wanted to apply actual nail polish.”

“That wouldn’t be destroyed by your power? That’s hard. Is it important?”

“I was out, a few days ago. New area. There was a shop with a sign in the window. Superhero styled nail polish. A friend of mine thought she might be able to do it.”

“That’s neat,” Amy said. She had one hand on one of Ashley’s other arms. She looked back at Ashley. “The idea of something fancy like that, and that you have a friend willing to do it.”

“I don’t know if she would be able to. But… it might be nice to have that freedom.”

“Here,” Riley said, “Amy, give me the arm. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” Ashley said.

“Have tea and cake with me again or something, in exchange for me going to the trouble,” Riley said. “Sometimes I think I’m going to lose my mind again, cooped up in here like this.”

“We can’t have that,” Ashley said.

“I’m going to my room. I have nail polish there I can use for tests,” Riley said.

Then she was gone.

Amy leaned against the counter by the sink. She pursed her lips, her eyebrows going up momentarily. Nothing to say.

Ashley looked down at the stumps. The hollow metal rods had been replaced by ones with blunt ends, rather than the sharp ones of a year ago.

“I heard, um, you talked to my sister at one point?” Amy asked.

Ashley looked up, staring.

“I don’t want to pry or anything, but I worry about her. I-”

“Then don’t pry,” Ashley said, her voice cold.

There was a pause.

“Okay.”

☽

Ashley exhaled slowly, her eyes closed.

When her eyes opened, her head was still tilted back, staring up at the ceiling.

She was tired. She would have to sleep, and she was worried about where that would take her. Her nerves were frayed.

There were things to do. She would need to make sure she looked her part. She’d had more successes than failures overall, though the loss of the trucks would be something she would have to bring up with Marrow.

She walked on her knees to get to the point where she could climb off the bed, then fixed her dress. She smoothed it down, because it was better to do that now when there was time to replace it. The wrinkles in the dress persisted. She frowned.

That could be fixed. She tended to her hair, which was less of a risk than the dress. It had been styled, and she hadn’t had cause to use her power on it.

She would have to soon, though. She could see the start of the faint blonde roots.

“Get ready,” she said.

J sat up, rubbing his jaw. “Any plans?”

“You’re my assistant. You should know full well what we’re doing tonight.”

“Tonight’s moot. I meant the specifics.”

“Get ready.”

“Yes ma’am.”

He went into the bathroom.

She elected to change clothes herself, because his way of doing it would take too long. Her second nicest dress hung in the closet, and she was careful as she put it on. She left the zipper alone.

He emerged from the bathroom, face freshly washed, hair fixed, and did the zipper up for her.

“I’m going to get the paperwork in case we end up doing any business.”

“Good.”

She was ready before he was. When she stepped into the hallway of the hotel, the others were there. Angel leaned against the wall, smiling.

“Stop being so happy,” Ashley told her. “There’s only so much to go around.”

“There’s more going around than there was a week ago,” Angel said. Bar elbowed her.

“Yeah. Maybe there is,” Ashley said.

The door of the hotel room was open, and she could see J at the other end, gathering papers and putting them into a messenger bag. He approached.

“Sorry for the wait.”

“Then be faster next time,” Ashley said.

J smiled.

They walked as a group to the parking lot, and loaded up into cars. There was bickering about who sat where, but she ignored it.

“We should take another car,” J said.

The handle on the passenger side door was broken. She stared at it for a moment, then nodded.

The drive was quiet, but quiet was good.

The giant was still in the water. Over the day since its arrival, the giant had moved some, letting people know it was still a potential threat, but it hadn’t attacked anyone or done anything, and nobody had picked a fight with it. She imagined it would be a topic tonight.

Numbers had swelled and changed over the past several moots. As they reached the crest of the hill that looked over the beach, there were multiple fires visible. The bonfire remained as its own construction, bigger than any of the others.

They stopped on the road overlooking the beach, and then they began their walk.

Ashley had been content to stick to the shadows over the past several moots, but the shadows had shrunk over the past few visits, with the individual fires.

Her heart raced, and she felt the kernel of- of a tentative feeling that she pushed out of mind before it could trip her up. Composure mattered. Image was everything, as she had her people behind her and her enemies in front of her.

There was no room for error.

She approached, and she took her spot at the inner ring by the fire for the first time.

Eclipse – x.7

“It’s drawing attention to the city.”

“Everyone here was doing that already,” Rotten Apple said. “They sent everyone they could spare, you think they’re going to send more.”

“There’s more nuance than that,” Detente said. “It’s taller than any of the Endbringers. People will stop what they’re doing to respond.”

“That’s my concern, not yours,” Blasto said. “If they aren’t here already, then they’re going to kill my giant and leave. You’re fine, it’s chill.”

“It is not ‘chill’,” Accord said. “That phrasing makes me want to kill something.”

“You’re imagining shit,” Blasto said. “Making up hypothetical situations, then treating them like they’re real. Not many new people have showed up, and a lot of people have actually left, since some of the worst elements were weeded out. They haven’t brought out the big guns and none of those nonexistent guns have been pointed at any of you. So chillax.”

Accord made a noise. “I know why they haven’t gone on the offensive. You haven’t acted yet-”

“And I won’t act without cause,” Blasto interrupted.

“-And they have thinkers. You worked the genetic material of people with powers into your giant, to give it the strength to stand despite its own weight. It’s tougher than it would appear.”

Blasto smiled. “Yeah.”

“What do you intend to do with it?” Damsel asked.

“Hm?” Blasto asked. He looked surprised that she’d spoken up. “It’s there as a threat and a symbol. Some of the villains and vigilantes I recruited are going to stick around, others are leaving or they’ll rotate in. They’re all there in case someone comes after us. The territory is on lock. South Boston is ours, with some office space given to some other villains.”

“What if we wanted to challenge that?” Burning Sensation asked. One of the small-timers. Punks.

“If you want to challenge our claim, talk to the giant first,” Rotten Apple said. “You’ll have to deal with him one way or another.”

“Yeah,” Burning Sensation replied. “No thanks.”

“You’re keeping it out of Deathchester?” Damsel asked.

“Sure, why not?” Blasto asked.

“Then I’m not going to take issue with it,” she said. “Carry on.”

“Sure,” Blasto said.

“There will be opposition,” Accord said. “I hope that when it happens, there won’t be too much damage. If it reaches us or makes doing business harder, then we’ll be forced to act.”

“I’m sure a smart pair of guys like you think you have a way to answer this.”

“We do,” Detente said, “But our current plans don’t require it. We’re leaving.”

“You’re leaving Boston?” Taper asked. Another one of the small timers.

“We’re leaving the south-end, south-Boston, Roxbury areas,” Detente said. “This is not the only moot that we’ve been attending. We’ve been talking to other groups and we arranged a compromise.”

“What did you assholes do?” Burning Sensation asked.

“We’ve traded territory. Much as the Four moved to Hyde Park, we will take Charlestown. Our numbers have swelled, and in the interest of building connections and ensuring that we can take Charlestown without any incident, we’ll be loaning out our capes to other factions.”

“What the fuck is that about?” Burning Sensation asked. “Who?”

“The Mystic’s Mass, Morning Glory, the Unmasked, who do wear masks, and perhaps most notably, Dark Society,” Detente said.

Ashely tensed. That last one was a name that had come up in the noise of the television and the radio that had always been playing in her place in Stafford. She’d heard of the others since coming to Boston, but she hadn’t imagined she would have to deal with them.

That time felt so long ago.

“What the fuck?” Burning Sensation asked.

“They’ll be arriving soon,” Detente said. “Our powered soldiers will be unpaid liaisons or ambassadors for these four groups, helping against any group or force that isn’t already receiving our aid.”

“Make your plans quickly with this information in mind,” Accord said.

“Against any force that isn’t receiving your aid. You mean us,” Ashley said.

“Clearly,” Detente said.

Was this what the Director had wanted to tell her? That this was coming?

“The plan had been for each of the four groups to take one of the four territories up for consideration here,” Detente said. “But with Blastgerm having made the play it did, adjustments may be in order.”

Ashley clenched her fist, power crackling, as she saw the headlights on the road that looked over the beach.

Lots of lights.

They were professional, organized teams like the ones she’d been whittling at for the past three weeks. People who had been active in the background, that she had told herself she wouldn’t need to deal with.

Mystic’s Mass, with a vague and dark religious theme, thorny halos mounted on their costumes, pointed hoods, and swords with cross iconography worked into their handles. Eight of them, with more, presumably unpowered individuals by the cars.

Morning Glory, less stylish. Angel had mentioned them, which was what tipped Ashley off to the fact that they were mostly or wholly Irish. There wasn’t much in the way of ‘morning’ or ‘glory’ about them, from an aesthetic standpoint. Their leader reminded her of her dad, in the way he held himself and his stature, but he had red hair, he had a mask on, and he had bright blue floral tattoos up his arms, in stark contrast to his masculine image. Five capes. More by the cars.

The Unmasked wore masks with little in the way of eyeholes or airholes for breathing. Self-harm seemed to be the theme. One had a noose around his neck, the excess length wound tight enough that flesh bulged between the coarse rope. There was one with nails driven between every joint of their hands. The leader, or the one who the rest seemed to be deferring to, had nails driven through the hard surface of the mask and into his eye sockets. Hands had strips of flesh peeled away, scars, or a combination of both where the damage from flaying had been clearly cauterized. Sometimes there were designs, sometimes it looked like they’d just cut and pulled away as much flesh as they could. Five capes.

And then there was Dark Society. White bandages hid their heads and faces, their hands or arms. The rest of them was covered in fine clothing in maroons, forest greens, royal purples and midnight blues. The bandages were marred- not with blood or anything from being hurt, but with what looked like ink applied with thumbs and fingers. A smear for each eye, making each one blurry, inconsistent and vague in the light of the fire.

Three members of Dark Society approached the fire, but more of the bandaged heads stared down from the road above the beach, peering with the black ink eyes. One had a smiley face of the same ink fingerpainting, and something told her that he was the leader, not even attending this meeting in person, but watching.

“A bonfire?” the leader of Morning Glory asked. “We’re going to have to change venues.”

“The last venue burned down,” Detente said. “The culprit was dealt with, but the groups couldn’t decide on a neutral territory.”

Damsel was tense as she watched the groups make their way down the slope. Burning Sensation and his group backed away- they hadn’t been that close to the fire, but they still ceded ground. Taper followed suit.

They were lesser.

The Mullen Brothers were next to walk away. They’d had a voice at previous moots, but they weren’t contenders.

Damsel remained where she was as the villains filled the space around the fire.

“She is?” one of the members of the Mass asked.

“I’m-”

“Damsel of Distress,” Detente said. “Dorchester.”

“I can speak for myself,” Damsel said.

“I wouldn’t,” Rotten Apple said.

“Those of us who have been here for the past two weeks know the state of your common sense, Rotten Apple,” Damsel said.

Rotten Apple smiled. “You’re such a pain in the ass.”

“I’m more than a pain in the ass,” Damsel said. “Rest assured.”

Her words were confident, but she was very aware of the maimed Maskless capes to her left, close enough that they could have seized her by the neck, using a hand with nails through it. Morning Glory stood to her right, a man in a blue tunic with a blue mask over three-quarters of his face stood with his arm almost touching hers.

She clasped her hands in front of her, telling herself it wasn’t defensive- it was her moving her arm so an errant burst of power wouldn’t take a chunk out of the man.

“Enough,” Accord said. “Let’s keep to the rules of order. The night is only so long and we don’t have time to waste on the bickering of children.”

“I’m assuming our first priority is standing out in the water there,” the leader of the Mass said.

“You would assume correctly,” Accord said. “Blastgerm claims South Boston so long as the giant stands. They engage in the low-level drug trade, some robbery, and if their claims about their subordinate capes are to be believed, they’ll maintain some ideological commitments as well.”

“Protecting nature and all that shit,” Blasto said.

“Are we going to war, Blastgerm?” the leader of Morning Glory asked.

“If we have to. That big guy is strong, you know. If you fight him, you won’t come out unscathed. If you have some injured and others don’t, then that could be the point where the other people standing around this fire come after you.”

“Would you compromise?” Detente asked.

“Blastgerm gives up a fifth of South Boston, they share the rest?” Blasto asked. “No fighting, loose alliance, we all defend our borders from the outside?”

“We could discuss that,” the leader of Morning Glory said. “Speaking for my group, we had our hearts set on getting one quarter. Now it’s twenty percent? Give us a share of your revenue.”

“Say please,” Rotten Apple said.

“Please, Blastgerm,” the red-headed man said, and his accent was stronger as he injected a joking tone into his voice. “Might we have five percent of your territory and a five percent cut of proceeds?”

Rotten Apple smiled. “Five percent is a lot.”

“It’s a nice even number, isn’t it?”

“One point two five percent,” she said. “If we give you five percent, they’ll want five percent, and so will they, and so will they. All of a sudden we’re making twenty percent less. We’ll give you guys five percent of our revenue, but you split it between you.”

Damsel made eye contact with Rotten Apple. Rotten Apple shook her head.

She was being cut out. Treated like she wasn’t there.

To lose it all like this? Not a grandiose loss, no challenge, but to be reduced to nothing with no ceremony or tact? She had arrived at this fire tonight with every intention of taking and holding her place.

She shivered, and it wasn’t because it was cold. Over the two, three seconds of her mind racing, recalibrating, trying to see the way forward, her thoughts were noise.

“Be aware, I will not be giving up Deathchester so easily,” Damsel announced.

“Are you legitimately insane?” Blasto asked.

“She’s referring to Dorchester,” Accord said.

“We know the slang names,” Morning Glory’s leader said.

“I prefer to use proper names wherever possible,” Accord said. “Slang is crass.”

“We’re well aware of how peculiar you are, little man,” the tattooed man from Morning Glory said.

“Damsel,” Rotten Apple said. “I don’t like you, but I don’t want to see you do this. Your buddies behind you look like they just shit buckets.”

“I claimed Deathchester. I drove out the groups there. We’ve been doing business there uncontested for a week, even with the city being a contested location. I have forty-seven employees under me, and I have connections to other groups.”

“You have forty-one employees,” Accord said. “You exist because of luck, and because you are so insignificant that nobody will be bothered to chase you down.”

“Rationalize your fear however you like,” Damsel said.

“You have no power,” Accord said. “No political connections, no meaningful income, no headquarters, and no information to broker. You’ve not only evidenced no education, little girl, but you’ve made several irritating word substitutions in the past week that lead me to believe that you haven’t attended high school or even read a book in recent memory.”

“I have power,” she said. Her chin raised. She moved her hand and her power crackled. The words sounded hollow, when her chest felt like claws had dug into her heart and her lungs and clawed them down and out of her chest. “If you disregard something like this or someone like me, then you don’t deserve to call yourself a mastermind.”

“No,” Accord said. “No. You are trivial. The only impact you have made is that you’ve wasted far more time than you’re worth, tonight.”

“You’re making dangerous enemies, Accord,” she said.

“I move to remove her from the meeting.”

“Yes,” Detente said. “I would have been kinder about this, but- yes.”

No. She tried to think of something that would wound him. “You’ve lied to others, setting up deals you betrayed, and now you’re trying to set these people up too. You’ve been dealing with the local PRT, handing them others on a silver platter.”

“Jesus,” Rotten Apple said. “Stop.”

The light of the fire danced around everyone present, making shadows shift and masked faces become even more macabre than they were.

“You’re pathetic, Clockwork Dogs! You cling to order and being proper because you’re scared, deep down inside. Like a furtive little pair of rodents, you make deals and you betray and you narc to the heroes, and all you do is spin in place.”

He wasn’t even looking at her.

He was checking with the other groups. A nod here, a nod there.

Her voice rose, and she made it imperious, proud, convicted. It was the voice of a queen, and in a world that was right and just, it would slap them in the faces and they would kneel.

A hand touched her shoulder.

“Don’t touch me!” she slapped. Her power flared out.

It crackled, and it roared into the air- but that air was cool, and it was empty. No heat from the fire, no smoke, no light. A wave crashed against her legs and soaked the bottom portion of her dress.

She was standing in the water, so far down the beach that she could raise one hand and block out her view of the fire and the figures that surrounded it.

☽

“Three or four times, she asked for permission. She was mindful, she was careful, she was smart. I gave you all the written testimony of the Patrol leader in charge and of the witnesses, and I’m pretty sure they agree with me on this. If every parahuman acted the way she did then, then we would not have a tenth the problems we do now.”

Victoria spoke with passion, with no paper to read from. She knew how to speak and how to hold herself.

Her mother was a lawyer. Ashley had heard that from Amy.

She could see it.

“With all due respect, Ms. Dallon,” the proctor that looked like a mortician said, “If all parahumans acted the way she did when she killed another parahuman, we would have half the number of parahumans. Some people out there might say that would be a good thing, I don’t know, but in my eyes and the eyes of my colleagues?”

“If this were a proper court and if the framework of these proceedings let us draw a thread through things, then any decent lawyer would be able to illustrate a long list of extenuating factors. Beast of Burden led a group of people that maim and kill as a matter of routine. We were in a situation with fire, more hostile powers than I could list, and bullets flying. This man, who has an established history of violence well past Gold Morning, threatened her, ground her into the dirt, and then struck her using enhanced strength. Anyone would be rattled.”

“Rattled would not be the word I would use for what written testimony spelled out here. A calm response, a pause that indicated consideration, and then the lethal blow.”

“To be a cape is theater,” Victoria said. “In that situation, she was threatened not just by Beast of Burden, but by the proximity of several violent capes. If she were surrounded by wolves, with one intending to tear her throat out, killing that one would not be enough. She would need to scare off or intimidate the others. To preserve her own well being on multiple fronts, she needed the theater. She needed to maintain her undercover role.”

“Wasn’t it a mistake to put her in that dangerous a position?” the woman with chin-hairs asked.

“Look at the field reports from the incidents. Mr. Troth can probably give you some comments on the matter, sharing what he knows about the Wardens’ response, but I can tell you that everyone thought that the situation would be smaller scale and easier to steer.”

“It was a clusterfuck,” the man in the Wardens uniform said.

“Yes, thank you,” Victoria said. She was so into the argument. “Top heroes, top law enforcement, lesser heroes, sole individuals, and the villains from Cedar Point that attacked the compound and set off the whole scenario. We didn’t think it would be that bad. Is some of that on my shoulders? Yes. Yes, and I would take a share of her punishment for my role in things.”

“I would too,” Tristan said. “I’m the de-facto leader of the team.”

“Co-leader,” Ashley whispered.

“That’s not how we operate,” the woman with the chin-hairs said.

“It bears repeating that this is not a proper court, Ms. Dallon. Capricorn. Our job is to handle her case and decide if it warrants the court’s attention. You paint a compelling argument, but the courts are the ones who should hear it and make the appropriate judgment.”

“They are, absolutely,” Victoria said, the words punctuated like she was using the span of the word ‘absolutely’ to give herself the time to construct a complete argument. She wasn’t letting up. It made Ashley almost want to laugh, to see it. “But you do have the responsibility of deciding the terms of her confinement while she awaits her turn at the court. She has cooperated at every turn, mitigating factors abound, and she is dependent on a tinker for the use of her hands. I would plead with you-”

Victoria paused, clasping her hands in front of her. She looked so serious.

“-Assign her house arrest. The same means and mechanisms that would keep her in an ordinary jail cell can be applied to a stay in her apartment in Stratford. She has a number of friends who would be more than happy to bring her groceries and see to it that she was comfortable. It would be a lower burden on the system with resources being as constrained as they are, and-”

Ashley looked down at her hands, clenching them together as much as their limited functionality allowed.

Victoria was such a simpleton. An imbecile. Such a feeble minded girl.

Ashley had given her that apartment. Now Victoria was trying to give it back.

“-and frankly, the options you’re considering would only increase the chance of conflict. I know her therapist would argue the same, if she were with us. It just makes sense.”

“Thank you, Ms. Dallon. To hear your impassioned arguments, I’d imagine you were Ms. Stillons’ counsel.”

Ashley glanced at her counsel. If only he’d been quite so impassioned. He’d been one to file the paperwork and smooth things along, dotting the ‘i’s and slashing the ‘Q’s

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Thank you, sir.”

“However, there are other people to hear. Mr… Chief Armstrong?”

Ashley saw Mr. Armstrong stand from the bench. He was a funny man, his head too wide at the top, his chin narrow. The beard he’d grown out helped.

Victoria, meanwhile, retreated to her seat behind Ashley, flashing an easy and almost convincing reassuring smile.

She got it, Ashley knew. Victoria understood it all, just as well as Ashley did. The there were monsters out there, and that the dark could get so dark that there was no hope of being able to see.

It was clear from the way Victoria held herself, how she made her arguments and picked her clothes: she understood the image and the theater, too. She understood that without both of those things, they had nothing at all.

☽

Forty-seven or forty-eight underlings. Ages sixteen to twenty-five, for the most part, and a mix of cultural backgrounds. Many of them were streetwise, with knowledge of the underworld or the things to watch for. There were connections, and there was a buzz of gossip and slivers of rumor that could expand into something greater.

There were others with other skills. Something as simple as the confidence to drive a large truck could open doors and create opportunities. Even among young criminals, the ability to get in a fight in a hairy situation and not loose one’s cool was rare. To be able to throw a punch? It was essential.

The morning after the moot, eighteen remained, and four of those eighteen were mercenaries she was paying a premium for. Bar was gone, again, the cowardly fuck was content to help when all was going well and he disappeared the moment it wasn’t.

Angel being one of the people who didn’t arrive this morning hurt more.

She was sitting on the steps that led from the side door of the hotel to the parking lot. It wasn’t much of a distance, with only two stairs.

She didn’t like being out here like this, where people could see her be mundane and less than fully confident, but she liked the idea of being in the hotel room less. She didn’t like what it represented, or that her people were inside, giving her wary looks.

J hung back, leaning against the wall by the door, his phone out. O’Brien was also here, out by his car in the parking lot, his arm on the leg of a boy his age that was sitting on the hood of the car.

J being loyal made a degree of sense, but O’Brien staying was a surprise in much the same way that Angel’s departure was.

She would rise triumphant and she would claim Boston. She would remove underlings from beneath the leaders of each group, set them against each other, and then she would go after each one in turn. She would make them piss themselves and then sit in the piss. She would have them lick the undersides of her boots after she had walked through gravel, and use their tongues to work the gravel free where it was wedged into the lines of the sole.

And, as part of that plan, she would reward the loyalty. She would have to spend more time with O’Brien, to know the kinds of things he liked so she could bestow the right gift. She knew the kinds of things J liked, but it would be tricky to get those things when J was the person she would usually send to make purchases.

“We could hire more mercenaries. We pull a few jobs, it would draw people in,” J said.

She shook her head.

“Taking a few days off could be healthy,” he said. “Rest, recoup, let people remember that they want to earn money, let them come crawling back.”

“Crawling back is a good turn of phrase, but no,” Ashley said. She stood from the stair and brushed herself off. O’Brien perked up, dropping his hand from the boy’s leg. Ready to join her and take orders.

She raised her hand, motioning for-

Her power flickered.

-for him to stay. He relaxed, leaning against the car and the boy that sat on the car.

“We could make an example of one of those cretins that left,” J said.

“No we couldn’t,” Ashley said. “And you’re trying to cheer me up by talking like that.”

“Is it working?” he asked.

“No, but try again later. Let me pretend I’m corrupting you. I’m going to go for a short walk. I have an idea of what I need to do.”

“Plans are good.”

“Look after things. Tidy up. If this goes well, I want to be ready to have people gather and give them a job.”

“On it,” J said.

“Give me your phone,” she said.

“You don’t use phones,” he said.

“Not often. Your phone.”

He handed it over. He used the keycard to let himself into the hotel, where he would do his tidying and get ready for a potential job.

Though she had no idea what that job would be. There was a good chance that there wasn’t one. She would have to improvise if there wasn’t.

She handled the phone with care. It would be too easy for her power to destroy it.

The hotel wasn’t far from the water, and a band of trees and grass separated the hotel’s parking lot from the water below. She made her way into the trees and toward the nearest spot she could find to sit down.

She kicked off one shoe, and she sat with her hands at her side, the phone on the slope of a rock with its long side against one of her feet. Her other foot crossed over, second toe pulled under the big toe.

Speaker.

Zero.

“Operator speaking. How many I help you?”

“Could you connect me to the Boston PRT?”

There was a pause.

“Front desk at the first Boston PRT Department building. How may I help you?”

“I would like to speak to Director Armstrong. It’s- Ashley. He’s expecting my call.”

“One moment, please.”

Ashley stared up at the branches of the trees.

“Would this be Ms. Stillons?”

“Don’t get your hopes up or anything. I’m calling because of business.”

“I heard what happened at the moot. There are dangerous individuals edging into your territory.”

“I’m more dangerous than they are, Armstrong. Don’t try to scare me or manipulate me.”

“There are a lot of things I would like to talk to you about, Ashley, now that I have you on the phone. Licit raised some of them, but-”

“Licit can eat fecal matter for all I care,” Ashley said. “And Edict can lick the plate. Or the other way around, for all I care. They’re oversized maggots and you’re the bloated fly that put them in front of me.”

“Evocative. I won’t bring them up, then. How about that?”

“Licit said you had information about the Clockwork Dogs. It’s clear that they’re taking a lot of power and pulling strings.”

“Yes,” Armstrong said. There was a noticeable change in tone. He was guarded. Was he going to change his mind now? “Yes. They’re one of three major players who are pulling the strings.”

“We have a mutual interest in removing them from the picture.”

“I wouldn’t phrase it quite that way.”

“They’re dangerous and they’re deranged. If you wimp out on me now I will find you and I will find heretofore undiscovered ways to end your existence.”

“If only I could recruit you, what a shame,” he said. Then his tone changed, more serious. “I could tell you things, but they’re not the sort of thing that would help you against them.”

“Then why do you exist? You’re useless.”

“Listen,” he said. He was serious. “Damsel of Distress. Accord has and is leveraging some very, very powerful help.”

“What help?”

“How do I put this? Some of this is classified, and there’s information I can’t give you. Accord’s power made him very valuable to people who are playing on a level on par with the PRT, understand? I can’t tell you who they are, but Detente is one of them. He’s a powerful individual from halfway across the planet, and as far as we can tell, someone sent this guy to Accord to help establish him in Boston. Detente is liable to disappear or fake his own death. He’s been going back and forth between his roles.”

Ashley shifted position. She sat on the soil, sand, and the scattered leaves and leaned back against the rock. The phone sat on the rock, near her ear.

“You cannot touch that man. You will end up face to face with those people who were this eager to establish a working relationship with him and powerful enough”

“I’m not scared,” she said.

“You have other reasons to be concerned. There’s more to it- I would want to talk to you face to face to explain it.”

“Ah, there’s the trap. You craven, sad man. So predictable.”

“Damsel,” he said. “Damn it. Do you want revenge?”

“Yes. You are on that list, Director Armstrong, just so you know.”

“Do you want revenge against Accord?”

She stared up at the branches. Her hand reached, positioned as if it could grab a branch two dozen feet away, and closed around air. Her power crackled, and the phone crackled in response.

“Are you there?”

“I want revenge against Accord.”

“Join my Wards program. You would have powered allies, some really genuinely great people. You’d be in Boston, where you could work against Accord, and as part of the PRT, you would have some insulation against Accord’s backers.”

She brought her knees up, and she pressed her forehead against them.

“We could send him to prison. Maybe even the Birdcage. He would be so miserable there. That would be the ultimate revenge, I think.”

“You have very little imagination, then. No dismemberment? No glass or fun uses of household chemicals?”

“You’re in danger, Damsel,” Armstrong said, his voice very serious as it came through the speaker.

“Tell me something I don’t know. I’m always in danger, because danger breeds more danger and I’m dangerous. That’s being a cape.”

“Are you alone? I hear water and rustling leaves.”

“I’m alone,” she said. She didn’t hear water and rustling leaves.

Maybe he was tracking the phone’s location. Such a worm of a man.

“Accord is tracking you with powers. Maybe you could take it as a compliment, that he is and was concerned about you, but you’re unpredictable and he hates the unpredictable.”

“Let him come. I’ll destroy him or whoever he sends.”

“My concern, Damsel, is that he knows you could be dangerous if you’re given a chance and he won’t give you that chance. It will be a bullet from a rooftop you can’t see. He’s a problem solver and he can coordinate attacks with great precision.”

“Thank you for the warning,” she said. “I’ll keep an eye out for trouble.”

“Dam-”

She mashed her fingers on the phone’s keypad to hit the ‘disconnect’ button. It was fifty-fifty odds as to whether her touch would destroy the phone.

Did she believe him?

Yeah. If she read between the lines, it made a great deal of sense. He lied and he twisted the truth, and he probably convinced himself it was for her own good.

But she wasn’t stupid.

She picked up the phone with care, and she made her way up the slope to the parking lot. O’Brien wasn’t by the car, but his friend was.

Do your best, Accord, she thought. I’m not that easy to deal with.

She had to walk around to the front of the hotel. She wondered if they were paid by Accord. It was hardly discreet, and she was easy to recognize.

She wanted to go cold, to crush her feelings and press them deep down inside. What she’d feared had come to pass.

The door was unlocked and left ajar. She pushed it open with her toe.

J was at his computer, looking at websites. As he changed windows, a map of Boston with the territories appeared on it. Useful stuff.

“Welcome back,” he said. “Mission success?”

“Kind of. I know how to get him.”

“You do? Just like that?” J asked.

“Yeah,” she said. She walked around the bed, and she gave J his phone.

She watched as his expression changed. To an extent, he knew her as much as anyone could know someone after nearly three weeks together. But he didn’t live with having the hands she did. For him, the consideration of where her hands went and why wasn’t something he had to work out every moment.

When she pressed the phone into his hand, her hand lingered, a dangerously close distance to his.

He pulled away, and she caught his hand, holding it and the phone both. Her power flickered along her knuckles, but it didn’t touch him. He froze, seeing it.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Accord is using powers to watch me? He could kill me at any time, I’m told. But if I’m a problem and Accord is capable, why hasn’t he done it already?”

J stared at her, a hint of fear in his eyes.

“Because he thinks he can manipulate me,” she spoke in a low whisper. “He can make the unpredictable predictable, this way.”

He tried to pull away, and she held on. She whispered, “Don’t. I might involuntarily use my power. We’ve been so careful, it would be a shame if something happened to you now.”

He spoke, “They’re manipulating you. They know how you work and think and they’re using it to fuck with you.”

She reached out and she touched his face. He flinched, and the fear in his eyes was real.

It was her first time touching him with her hands, instead of being touched.

“What’s the power?” she asked. “Figuring me out? Something else?”

J shook his head.

“What’s your real name? How long have you been doing this?”

“It’s J. I’m on your side, Ashley,” J said.

“What do they call you? Do you have a cape name?”

He pulled his hand and phone away from her hand. Her power arced out, a band only a foot long, stretching and wiggling through the air.

“Hnnnnng!” He grabbed the ruined stump of an arm.

“I did warn you not to pull. What was your goal!? What were you going to manipulate me to do!?”

“I’m not- I wasn’t-”

“Stop lying!” she shouted.

O’Brien appeared in the doorway.

“Help,” J said, but it sounded more like ‘hep’, with his voice being strained as it was. He tried to stand, and she pushed him down, and her power took the top corner off of his shoulder, where it was attached to his still-intact arm.

She grabbed his arm and she used her power, clinging to the cold and the agitation that had snuck up on her amid the rush of adrenaline and the crush of emotions she wasn’t ready to feel or embrace.

“Just run, O’Brien,” she said. “Go. Be happy and treat your boyfriend right, and don’t mention this to anyone.”

She looked, and he was gone. She wasn’t sure he’d heard.

She hoped he would be okay. She hoped he would keep his mouth shut, for his sake.

“Talk to me, J,” she said. Her eyes widened, a smile touching her face. Agitation thrummed through her and made her feel just a little bit drunk. “That’s an order, and I’m supposed to be the boss.”

J shook his head. He was sweating so much that it looked like there was more sweat than blood. Except there really wasn’t. The shadows of the desk and the bed hid some of the growing puddle.

“Armstrong didn’t want to tell me because he was worried this would happen,” Ashley whispered. “Eliminating you will upset Accord. That’s as good as I’m going to get for now. I can’t go after him.”

J opened his mouth, but no sound came out except a squeal.

“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t have the fight in me. I’m a warlord at heart, but things never go according to plan.”

“You will never,” J said. His expression twisted with pain, and he bent forward.

She heard the tone of his voice. The words. She told herself that the J she’d known was too kind and too cool to say that, even with grievous wounds.

One point for me, she thought.

No, she deserved to be greedy. Ten points.

“Never… Another… Me. Never. This.”

“You’re not making sense anymore, J,” she said, even though she fully understood his meaning.

It was all she could do not to wipe him from existence. She had to hold back, because- because it would be too easy to destroy him.

She took his legs with a sweep of twisted darkness.

Then she watched, and she waited.

Not fast, like her dad had been. Her mother.

Fast was too kind, if he deserved it. If that five percent of her that doubted this was right, then he deserved the chance to say something that would hurt her and stay with her.

He was silent, but for pained breaths and grunts.

When she was sure it was done, she used her power on the hotel room. She was aggressive, and she was thorough, and coldness became something desperate and mad as she eliminated every trace of evidence, turning blood pools into splinters. She picked her way through it, blasting anything that was recognizable.

In the midst of it, she found one oblong bit of condensed matter. Dense, twisted in space and time until only a kernel remained, while the kernel in her breast had unfolded into something that scared her and fluttered in her chest.

And then, because she was sure police or heroes would be on the way, she ran. No things but what she wore. No bag, no books.

Her thoughts were a blur and her feelings were worse, too smeared and stained to be make sense of.

She was ready to leave Boston.

She was ready to go until she saw the giant wading through the water, as it had done the day prior.

Ashley changed direction.

Judgment was hard and judging time was harder. The giant was like a building in the distance that she kept closing the distance to, where she could have told herself she would be there in five minutes. Five minutes later, she would be saying much the same thing.

Forty-seven or forty-eight employees had worked under her. Then there had been eighteen. Fourteen if she didn’t count the mercenaries.

Then thirteen, because O’Brien had run.

Then twelve. Of those twelve, some had likely arrived, heard the news, and they wouldn’t have turned up tomorrow.

O’Brien would communicate to the ones who remained. They wouldn’t show up to look for her. As the decisions were made, the imaginary ticker of people in her employ would dwindle to nothing. It might have been inevitable.

Eight, and then seven.

Six, and then five, four employees. They left. Had they been hers or had it been convenience?

She got close enough to the giant to see its scale.

She scaled the side of it like she’d scaled the building face, on the evening the giant had first appeared. With reckless, haphazard blasts, feet scrambling for footing and legs working to keep her more or less upright.

The tentacles unfolded. They didn’t move fast, but as they slapped against the upper body of the giant, they shook the mossy skin and a shower of dust and debris rained down on her. It stuck to the spatters and gobbets of blood that her power hadn’t erased from her hands and arms.

Her emotions were twisted, now. As she climbed, working her way to a height well above the building face she had scaled, a false, excited joy swelled in her breast, at odds with where her heart was.

Three, then two. Who would be among the last to truly abandon her and lose faith? Had there been any faces in that crowd who had liked everything about her, who would hold out a hope that she would turn up and that things could resume? One person that she hadn’t talked to enough?

This was as close as she’d ever gotten and J might well have been right in suggesting she would never get there again.

She wanted to feel something and she felt no connection to the feelings in her chest. They didn’t count at all.

She reached the neck and the head, and she blasted. The blast sent her skidding along the stone-like, mossy hide of the giant. The blast tore, ripped, cracked, and annihilated, but of all the things she had blasted, it was the most durable. Remnants remained, condensed and twisted. More than she had ever seen. She found a ridge and stuck her foot out, stopping herself.

Tentacles reached up and the sky seemed to darken as they loomed above her.

They came down atop the beast, as if it had no regard for its own well being. The thing’s hide was tough enough that the wood-like tentacles didn’t hurt anything, but where she had cracked and destroyed, the impacts broke things further.

It struck again, tentacles scraping, and she vaulted herself into the air with another shot. The thing lurched- no longer under her, and she used another shot to reorient. She crashed in the ragged, ruined section of neck.

Here, she had footing. Here, she could blast without worrying about sliding off.

She blasted. Again and again, condensing, destroying, thinning out. She tore apart a mountain one shot at a time. Tentacles reached overhead, and swept over the exterior, but only one reached into the crevice. She blasted at it until it was no longer there.

The material around her creaked, wood that was so stone-like it might have been petrified, and she saw the cracks widen as the thing’s own weight worked against it.

Tentacles stopped reaching for her. She heard water splash.

Slowly but steadily, the damage she’d done began to fill in. The thing was healing moment by moment.

She could have escaped, gone up, gotten out and then down.

She threw herself further down with a furious, intense despair, suffocated with emotion that didn’t feel like it was hers.

The way out closed up above her.

She carved her way deeper into the monster, giving chase to a heart that wasn’t there. There was only structure.

One. One remained, she told herself.

At her peak she had forty-seven or forty-eight. Now… one.

Again, material creaked and cracked. The structural damage spread to the area around her, to the front and back chest walls of the giant, and then, with a deafening sound, it soared skyward, up to the giant’s shoulder, where she had made her entrance. What had healed wasn’t as strong as the rest, and a certain amount of strength was needed to hold it all together.

There was something deeply wrong with her. She knew that.

But she couldn’t go to the heroes. Not now, even if she’d allowed herself to consider it for a moment.

The giant split, stumbling, and the crack in the wall became a gap.

She hurled herself out in the opposite way the giant was falling. It crashed into buildings by the water and into the water itself, the water it had been drinking to reinforce its own body. She-

She soared through the air. She fell, bloodied arms out to either side, her hair flew around her, her dress was partially in tatters because the use of her powers had caught the bottom edge a few too many times.

One. One last person in her group.

Herself.

She’d needed to reaffirm that faith. To leave some impact.

A use of her power interrupted and slowed her downward velocity, but saw her spin through the air, blasting once, then twice, in an attempt to correct her angle and cancel out her velocity.

She landed, and she landed hard, tumbling. Something popped in her hand with a jolt that she felt in her belly, and pain followed.

In the background, the giant was stumbling, the structural damage cascading. Much of it dropped into the water.

The pain in her hand expanded with every heartbeat.

“Ow,” she mewled the word, and she hated the sound. A sixteen year old shouldn’t sound that young and small, she knew. Moisture welled in her eyes, and she tried to blink it away. She hadn’t cried three years ago. She wasn’t supposed to start now.

One hand gently holding the injured one, she limped away from the scene.

There was, at least, a grim satisfaction to it.

She’d told Blasto to keep it out of Deathchester, and it was her territory until she left it.

This would have to do, for the leaving end of things.

Eclipse – x.8

She could see the group of kids at their usual hangout spot. It was her habit to go out in the late evening, when the rest of the town was asleep, and to keep out of the way the rest of the time, but her cupboards had been bare and she’d felt her sanity fraying even more around the edges.

She held a spike of twisted, condensed metal, which was hooked through the straps of bags. The length of the spike rested across her shoulders. It was heavy and painful, but it beat destroying the stuff she’d grabbed.

She left the bags by the corner of a building, and she approached the group of kids. Some of the younger teenagers stood up and backed away. The oldest of them didn’t budge. What was he called? Fappy?

“Heya, Damsel,” Fappy said.

“Corrupting the youngest generation?” she asked.

“That’s my nephew, Connor, he’s only six years younger than me, though,” Fappy said. “And that’s his stepsister Holly. They’re staying with my parents because of family stuff. Connor, Holly, this is Damsel of Distress. Our local supervillain.”

At least they looked scared of her.

“I’m moving away to find work,” Fappy said. “Retail stuff in a camera store. Holly is going to get my room.”

“Work, huh?” Ashley asked.

“My parents lost patience with me and gave me thirty days to move out,” Fappy said, to her. “I guess I’m taking Stan’s cue.”

“What did Stan do?”

“Oh, you don’t know? I guess we haven’t seen you around.”

“I went to Mirelles, another town. I caught something. I was thinking about going to Brockton Bay, after Leviathan, decided to rest instead.”

“Aw, that sucks,” Fappy said. “You okay now?”

“Yeah. I’m tough,” she said.

She wasn’t, and she hadn’t really ‘caught’ anything. A mundane scratch on her leg had become red and inflamed, and a use of her power hadn’t scoured away whatever was going on. In a fit of frantic energy, she had taken one of the scraps of matter that had been left after a use of her power and cut into the scratch. She had wanted to open it up enough that she could try to get her power inside and clear away the infection, but it hadn’t worked. The infection had persisted and the leg wound had refused to heal.

Somewhere in the weeks of sweating it out and not being able to go out, the PRT had started looking for her. She’d had to scare them off when she could barely stand. Even now, grabbing food to fill her kitchen, she wasn’t at her best.

“Well,” Fappy said, “You know Stan, right?”

“Of course.”

“He got Amber pregnant. I don’t think you’ve met her? No. Stan did the stand up thing and is getting his life together. He’s got a job washing sheets and stuff in the hospital. Which is great because he’s close to Amber. She had to go in for a pregnancy related hip thing, and she’s not leaving until she has the kid so her leg doesn’t come off. I don’t know how that works. Am I boring you, talking about this stuff?”

She shook her head.

“The rest of us are getting around to it too, mostly. We’re eighteen, nineteen, it’s about time we figure stuff out.”

“Well,” Ashley said. She was a bit lost for words. The stoner kids had been a fixture here for most of her life. “Good for you.”

“It’s not all great. Pete, you know Pete?”

She shook her head.

“He was there for the bank. He’s been hanging out with Popcap since Stan took off. They hopped on a bus to go down and join some messed up gang, talking about endless parties. Stuff’s been pretty messed up since Leviathan hit.”

“It is. Sorry about your friend,” she said. Popcap was the most notorious meth dealer in the area. She didn’t like him and he didn’t like her, and Pete spending time with the guy didn’t bode well for Pete.

Fappy shrugged. He looked at his two relatives. “Connor, Holly, don’t ever, ever spend time with Popcap or Pete. Not even if they offer to buy you drinks or give you anything.”

“You said something about a bank?” Connor asked.

“Oh man. That. That was ages ago. We tried to rob a bank with Damsel of Distress. That did not go well.”

“You cracked under the pressure,” Ashley said.

“I guess. We tried, right?”

“Mm,” she made a noncommittal sound.

“You guys were legendary at school,” one of the other guys said.

“We had so much detention.”

“Detention, for robbing a bank?” Connor asked.

“Because he talked about it at school,” the other guy said. “Dumbass. He had to go to court, but they ducked it. School wasn’t as nice.”

“Don’t follow my example. You don’t want to risk it, you two,” Fappy said.

A blue sedan with a tattered flag mounted on one of the windows passed down the road about a block away. It slowed, and then honked the horn.

“Oh shit!” Holly said.

The car honked again. It was an angry honk.

“Go,” Fappy said, and the two younger teenagers ran off. Then, to Damsel, he said, “My mom. She’s cool about most things, you know, she lets us cut school, but talking to you might push it.”

“I’ll go,” Ashley said.

“Actually, I, uh,” Fappy said. He pointed. “You mind?”

His intention was to walk with her. They walked in the direction of where she’d stowed the bags. Just the two of them.

“So, I know you disappear now and then. Pete used to always look you up and try to see what you were doing. Hometown cape pride, you know?”

She nodded.

“You keep coming back here.”

She didn’t immediately respond. Familiar faces and places mattered in a way she couldn’t put to words, even if some of those places closed down or faces left, like the stoners were doing. More practical was the fact that here, at least, she knew where to go. Food, clothing, places she could head to if the PRT started acting like it knew where she was.

She wasn’t about to admit that, though. The stoner kids were feckless and useless, but they looked up to her.

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“It’s home, right?”

She shrugged. It was home, she just wished it wasn’t.

“Right. What I’m wondering is, you going to be around? I’m thinking about my nephew and his stepsis.”

“I don’t know. No plans right now.”

“Can you make sure Connor and Holly are left alone? I don’t want them getting caught up in anything too shady, and Connor’s dad’s one of those guys who’ll take anything. Connor’s got the DNA for that stuff, and Pete or Popcap might try when they get back.”

“I’m not in a position to see him or tell him what to do. If he wants to do it, he’s going to do it when I’m not in town.”

“Fuck,” Fappy said. “It’s fucked up, you know? The guys that grow up seeing the worst side of that stuff still end up doing it.”

“It’s the way it is,” she said.

“I guess. And I guess, um, hmm,” he didn’t seem to be able to find the words.

“I won’t take them out to rob any banks,” she said. Seeing Fappy’s surprised expression, she said, “I noticed the subtext, when you said you wanted them left alone.”

“I don’t even know what subtext is,” he said. He smiled. “You and Stan were always the ones with brains.”

“It’s fine. I don’t rob banks anymore,” she said.

“You’ve been quiet, the last long while.”

That, too, was hard to respond to. It had been weeks dealing with being sick, no human contact except the voices on the television and radio, and communicating was hard.

“Good luck, doing whatever you end up doing,” she said.

“You too,” he said.

She bent down to pick up her hook and bags, pausing to clench her right hand. She’d broken it after killing the giant four years prior, and it hadn’t healed quite right, despite her best efforts.

She grabbed the hook with her other hand, and her power kicked out, almost pushing it from her grasp. It missed the bags but it damaged the corner of the wall. Nothing more serious than what might happen if a car bumped into the siding. That was fine.

“Hey,” Fappy called out. “Damsel?”

She straightened, holding just the hook without the bags.

“I might never see you again. It’s bugging me. Should we have done anything different?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Fappy pulled off his hat and scratched at his hair. “Should we have invited you to hang out or had a cigarette with you? When Stan had the room setup in the garage, we watched videos. Should we have had you over? Would that have been weird?”

Having been sick, her defenses weren’t what they were supposed to be. The questions were hard to hear.

“It would have been weird,” she said. “The only thing you should have done differently was not fuck up the bank job.”

Fappy snorted and smiled. “Yeah. Sorry.”

She put the hook through the straps of the bags, then lifted it, shrugging her shoulders to make it comfortable.

She didn’t know Fappy’s real name. She wondered if he had stopped using it, and if he had, when?

The town wasn’t a thriving one, and there wasn’t much traffic at ten o’clock at night. She made her way down the street. She was cold. Another case of her defenses being down. She hadn’t grabbed a lot of blankets, sheets, or towels, and now she regretted it.

There were streets that were okay, with houses in decent condition, but most were struggling. Many had peeling paint, or siding that had come partially free in a bit of bad weather and never been fixed. She walked past a car that had been left there for so long that the windshield was opaque with the effects of weather and bird shit.

Wind blew, and some junk mail from a recycling bin at the corner of the road danced across the road. There was a paper bag on the top of a dusty car, however, that didn’t budge.

Ashley investigated – a poke with her hook showed that there were things inside, which helped keep the bag upright. A drink of something blue, and a plastic bag.

She looked around. Not a soul in sight. A few places had lights on, and she saw one man that sat at his computer. He hadn’t seen her and wasn’t watching her.

She moved the bags she was carrying to her hand, and then adjusted the hook, positioning it carefully before impaling the bag and the box of baked goods.

She hefted it, and carried things the rest of the way to her apartment.

The radio and television were on as she entered. She walked around the hole in the floor- she had dropped one of the living room chairs into it to ensure she didn’t fall in. Her bags went to the kitchen counter, which was missing a segment.

The largest bag was full of clothes that had been dropped off at the back of the thrift shop- she would take what she could wear and then take the bags back. Wouldn’t do to have the place close down. Other stuff she’d claimed from the pharmacy, with an eye to medication and personal needs. She spiked the pharmacy stuff, then tossed it through the hole in the bathroom wall, so it sailed over the tub and to the base of the sink.

The last thing was food, also from the pharmacy, which was convenient because it tended to have the staples. Peanut butter, tuna, bread, canned veg. Everything went onto the counter, because the cupboards were a ruin and the fridge was something she tried to avoid damaging, because there were perishables like milk inside.

Once she had her bags sorted out, she investigated the paper bag, tipping it out.

The blue drink was, according to the label, a ‘Legendberry Electrolyte Sports Drink’. There was a red drink below it. The plastic bag that had been put in the paper bag was stuff from the drug store. Pills for fever, lozenges, stuff for indigestion.

At the bottom of the paper bag was a box of eclaires. The contents had been thrown around the box by her manhandling, the white cream smearing everything.

She left it there, walking over to the television. Her routine had been thrown off by the early excursion, but the time was right.

Changing the channel was difficult, but she managed it, switching the television across thirty channels of static to the studying channel.

At this time, it was repeats of the homework help that was on at three in the afternoon and on. People ages ten to eighteen could call in to ask questions. Later, it would be the taped university courses. Most of that went over her head, but she tried to watch all of the courses all the way through, with exceptions for when the courses were really, really dull or incomprehensible.

The sound of the television and the radio overlapped, but the radio was positioned on the floor. A gentle kick sent it skidding into the next room.

She blasted off the top of the Legendberry drink and took a swig. She winced, coughing, and put it down.

She grabbed an eclair, spearing it with her hook and then eating it off of the spike.

There was a part of her that wished Edict had given it to her in person. She understood why she hadn’t- Ashley had been in a bad place when she’d run into them two months ago.

Still… getting sick enough that she had been worried for her own life had given her pause.

She wasn’t even sure what she would say or do, had Edict turned up. To say ‘you win’? No. To ask questions? No.

If nothing else, she could question Edict’s taste, sensibilities, parentage and mental state, for putting this Legendberry drink in the same bag with eclairs.

She left the eclairs alone, and focused on finishing the drink, wincing as she did so.

It was a gift. It was supposed to help. It wouldn’t be right to not finish it.

The sound of sirens made her head turn, the bottle still at her mouth.

Not coming for her.

She finished chugging the bottle, then gave the plastic its due punishment for existing by annihilating it with her power.

She would have to eat something before having her eclairs, or the aftertaste would ruin them.

More sirens. That meant something had happened. If something had happened- Edict or Licit would be there. Maybe both.

What would she say or do? Why did that matter?

She found herself pacing, and in the midway point between feeling just how weak she was after her spell of illness and the sound of the next siren, she found herself moving toward the door.

She would see what was going on. This was her territory, technically, so it was important. She would handle things, maybe talk to the pair, and she would tell Edict off for the combination of Legendberry and eclairs.

Maybe.

She grabbed her mask, recently fixed up, and put it on.

She stalked her way through the streets, avoiding the people who were stepping outside to see what was going on.

Fire trucks, ambulances, and police. She could hear the differences in the patterns and sounds of the sirens. For the first ten minutes, she was able to hear things and head toward the endpoint. Here and there, an emergency vehicle would go down her street or a nearby street.

After that, there was nothing. Whatever the emergency, there were no more sirens or easy indicators.

She wondered how the heroes did it, to get to scenes on time.

She explored, trying to find it, looking for any clues, and found nothing. Her legs were tired, lacking stamina after her long period of illness, and she’d already gone for a walk earlier in the evening. She took her time going back.

The headlights of a passing van illuminated her, and unlike the others, they didn’t stop illuminating her. She stared through the light, shielding her eyes with her hand, and felt the pang and the click where that hand hadn’t healed right.

When it didn’t let up, she picked up her pace.

The van pulled into reverse, then drove away.

She made her way back, and by the last block, her weariness had been driven home. Her calves were like stones, and every step was an effort.

Maybe a bath, to relax her legs. It was important to find ways to treat herself. It was a good day, to have a treat to go back to. A bad day, to know that the stoners were leaving and the replacements would be so young and untouchable. A good day, to be healthier again. A bad day, to have this interruption to her homework advice show.

She reached her street, and she saw a van that might have been the same one she’d seen earlier. Adrenaline helped her to push through the pain in her legs.

Nobody inside, with a lot of general garbage on the seats and floor.

If she had been able to drive, she told herself, her car would be immaculate. Cars were expensive, and to have something nice and not take care of it?

She was tempted to destroy the thing.

She reached the side of the building and let herself inside.

There was the partially eaten eclair. She could have that before starting dinner.

The radio, still faint in the other room, went quiet.

She grabbed the twist of condensed metal with the hook-shaped bend at the end.

“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.”

A man’s voice.

Ashley walked around to see who was standing in her bedroom.

She recognized the man. The beard, the hair that was greasy and pulled back away from his face. The collared shirt that was only tucked in on the one side, the tuck apparently intended to hide the bloodstain on the corner of the shirt, failing because it had come partially untucked.

He had a tool belt on, but the belt only had knives in it.

Jack Slash.

“It’s been a crazy few weeks,” he said.

She considered her options. She wasn’t well enough to fight.

She would have to be subtle, then. If she could draw him in, get close enough that she could blast him before he could draw a knife-

She threw the hook back in the direction of the kitchen. It wouldn’t matter anyway.

“I’m… honored,” she said.

“Are you?” he asked.

“You’re among the strongest, aren’t you? There aren’t a lot who are as active as you for as long as you.”

She wasn’t used to flattering. It felt off, coming out of her mouth, and from his smirk, she was left worrying that it was obvious to him.

“We have a high turnover,” he said.

“You’re royalty among parahumans.”

He chuckled. “My predecessor was called King, believe it or not. Don’t parents tell their children to behave and to clean by saying, ‘what if the Queen of England came to visit’? Our unannounced visit could be like that, couldn’t it?”

Our. He’d said ‘we’ earlier too.

Sure enough, there was another. Bonesaw ducked under Jack’s arm to enter her hallway and approach the living room.

Ashley remained very still as she watched Bonesaw. The girl walked over to the kitchen, passing Ashley.

She considered her options. To blast Bonesaw out of existence.

She would die, doing that, and she didn’t want to die.

Bonesaw stood on her tiptoes for a moment before seeing the box of eclairs amid the other food. She grabbed it, then collapsed into the armchair that had been pushed into the hole in the floor. Her feet were on the floor above her and her face almost pointed up to the ceiling.

“You should ask before taking, Bonesaw,” Jack said. “If all goes well, you want to have a good working relationship.”

“Can I, please?” Bonesaw asked.

“Yes,” Ashley said. “Go ahead. Leave me one.”

“Oh, of course.” Bonesaw had to work to get out of the chair and reach the counter. She set the eclair down.

Working relationship, Jack had said.

“Someone who puts this many holes in walls has to be angry,” Jack said. “Are you angry?”

Ashley shook her head. She was, but years had dulled it. She wasn’t about to admit to weakness, either way.

“It’s no way to live,” Jack said. He touched the edge of the hole in the wall that led into the bathroom.

“You said working relationship.”

“I did. Interested?”

“I’ve heard stories. If I said yes, then… it could be a monkey’s paw wish, couldn’t it?”

“Go on,” Jack said.

“You would say you want to work with me. I would say yes, and then Bonesaw could then turn me into a gun made of meat. A living tool, working with you every time you pull the trigger. Technically there is a working relationship.”

“A bit forced,” Jack said.

“The only real critic for your interpretation would be a gun made of meat.”

Jack smiled. “We’re our own critics. It’s a fact when you’re an artist or a… very violent, long-term performance artist. We put the effort in, even if the one member of the audience isn’t in a place to tell the world.”

“Mm!” Bonesaw made a sound. She held up a finger, while she finished chewing. “Mm. Sorry. You know, I’ve only done that sort of thing once, making someone into something like a gun.”

Was it a mistake to give her ideas?

“I like that you thought of that,” Bonesaw said. “You came up with something I haven’t done much. Creative!”

“The theater matters,” Ashley said. “Sometimes it’s all we have.”

“No,” Jack said. “Oh no, I don’t agree at all. We are so, so much more than that. You realize that once you’ve seen a good number of people lose next to everything, theater included. There’s something else that boils to the surface, once you’ve applied enough pressure.”

“Do you have an audience?” Bonesaw asked.

It was so hard to track all of this, the back and forth, the dialogue, and the subject-matter changes.

She focused on her end-goal. To get Jack to let own his guard. To blast him and then either get away or get Bonesaw too.

“I had one. Small. But I’m not as active as I once was.”

“If you joined us, the entire civilized world would pay attention to you,” Jack said.

She thought about agreeing. The end-goal remained the focus. Get close, destroy him.

But even in this scenario… she couldn’t.

“I don’t join. I don’t serve under anyone. I’m the one who leads, or I walk alone.”

“If you joined with the intention of taking my position as leader, you wouldn’t be the first, fifth, or even tenth,” Jack said.

Ashley shook her head. “No.”

“A lot of people tell me no,” Jack said. “It’s usually repeated over and over again, followed by a death rattle.”

Bonesaw snorted. She was eating yet another of Ashley’s eclairs.

Ashley consoled herself by focusing on how Bonesaw could die.

The thought crossed her mind. If she did this- if she found a way to get this kill, she would be celebrated. Wasn’t there a cash payout for anyone who killed these people? No questions asked?

“No,” Ashley said. “If you want your performance…”

“Performance art. The message.”

“Give me an order,” she said. “A task. I’ll do it, or I’ll try to do it. In exchange, you leave me alone. I don’t join, you get your murder and mayhem. I could be your distraction.”

“Hi, Siberian!” Bonesaw said.

Ashley turned to look. The front door. The Siberian was there. No costume, no clothes, no theater, words, or even posture, not in this moment. Just the woman and an imposing presence.

“I’d offer you one of these eclairs, but I know you prefer lady fingers,” Bonesaw said. She tittered.

“Any trouble?” Jack asked.

The Siberian shook her head.

“Then we have a little while,” he said. He looked at the Siberian. “We’ll talk details later, after the others catch up.”

“I thought she didn’t talk,” Ashley said.

Jack smiled.

“If you want mayhem, I’ll give you mayhem. It’s something I’m good at. If you want violence, I can give you violence,” Ashley said. “I’ve taken a boy’s arms and legs and I watched him bleed out. Name a target and I can do that. I’ve killed.”

“I don’t want mayhem,” Jack said. “I don’t want violence. I don’t want killing.”

“Oh, shoot!” Bonesaw said. “We’ve reaaaaaaally been messing up, then.”

“I want to change people,” Jack said. “I want to show what’s beneath the surface when things are taken away. We see it in the public when they’re scared or outraged. We see it in the individual when we take away everything they have.”

Ashley’s eyes narrowed.

“You don’t have much at all,” Jack said, he looked at Ashley’s apartment. “What lies beneath must be so close to boiling up when there’s so… so very little surface.”

Ashley had a hard time responding. She was tempted to do something suicidal and she only barely held herself back. “You’re not convincing me, Jack.”

“What would we have to offer you, for you to agree to give up that very little you have? I would be interested in seeing the inversion.”

Ashley thought back to earlier, when she’d considered talking to Edict and Licit.

“Her hand is injured,” Bonesaw said. “I could fix your hand.”

“I doubt it,” Ashley said. Her power crackled as she moved her fingers.

“Wonky powers? Not to worry, I think I can fix that. As thanks for the eclairs.”

Ashley was given pause.

“An audience, a fix, and again, I must remark on how the defining feature of your decor is the holes in the wall. There’s an anger to that.”

“I’m not angry,” Ashley said.

“Not angry at all? Living like this, when you clearly have so much pride? There’s nobody you find time to spend hating or resenting, every day? We would give you resolution for that.”

She thought of Accord. Of Boston.

“Someone,” Jack said. He smiled, walking closer. “Multiple someones?”

“I made my offer,” she said.

“I’m refusing,” Jack said. “My counteroffer: I’ll give you everything you want, with the exception of this one thing you cling to. This… construction of rules and limits, that you will not bend the knee to anyone.”

“You can’t give me everything I want. I want the world,” Ashley said. “I want territory of my own that I rule, and once I have it, I’ll expand it. I will want more.”

“Believe it or not,” Jack said. “I want the world too. I expect to have it in two year’s time, and when I do, you can take it from me.”

“He’s not lying,” Bonesaw said. “It’s supposed to be a prophecy.”

“They’re trying to kill me as if it’s true,” Jack said. He smiled.

“Bam,” Bonesaw said. “Clear path for you. You want the world and here’s a nice, obvious way to take it. It won’t be easy, but hey! Woohoo!”

Ashley shook her head slowly.

The goal. She needed to keep it in mind.

Her emotions were getting away from her.

“You don’t have many options,” Jack said.

“I don’t know,” she said, even though the answer was closer to a ‘no’. If she could convince them she could be swayed… to gradually change her mind…

Her heart pounded.

“Here,” Bonesaw said. “I have an idea. Because you gave me permission to have the treats, I’ll fix your arms. You can try it out, and you can see how it feels. This is super easy.”

“Maybe,” she said, to continue her narrative of being convinced.

“It’s really, really easy,” Bonesaw said. “I have most of what we’d need, since I did work on my own hands recently.”

Bonesaw approached. Ashley hesitated, backing away a bit.

“Come on. This way,” Bonesaw said. She approached the kitchen counter, while Ashley remained where she was.

Bonesaw picked up the twist of metal with the hook. “This is neat.”

“Leftovers from my power.”

“That’s great, that’s something I can use for the infrastructure! Here, come, come. Put your hands down on the counter. I’ll show you. It’s so simple it’s elegant!”

The Siberian moved, approaching. Ashley wheeled around.

“The Siberian lives by the principle of taking everything she wants, with no regard for civilization’s niceties,” Jack said. “Bonesaw pursues her art as inspiration demands. They are nobility as much as I am, with long track records. The entire point is to have whatever you desire. If at any point you see something you want or don’t want, you say the word.”

“Come on,” Bonesaw said. She gave Ashley a push. She reached into her bag and pulled out a metal tube. “This is the first thing. I’ll show you how this works. We can channel your power. Just put your hands on the counter there.”

There was an imminent threat, with the Siberian so near. What was her route. Jack was too far away to blast.

To hit Bonesaw and use the recoil from that to throw herself at Jack?

Would the Siberian intercept her, tackling her in the air? The woman was supposed to be fast.

She let Bonesaw move her arm, putting it down on the table. She would cooperate until there was an opening.

A heavy impact at her arm made her legs buckle, sharp pain shooting up to her shoulder and neck. A cleaver. Bonesaw had brought down a cleaver on her forearm. It had sunken into the bone.

Ashley reached around with her other hand, and didn’t make it the full distance. Jack moved his hand, and the skin of Ashley’s arm split.

A razor blade gleamed in the dimly lit living room. Jack had been holding it between two fingers.

Bonesaw hauled the cleaver out, and Ashley dropped to her knees from the pain. The cleaver came down again, and cut the rest of the way through the bone.

She’d hesitated, and it had cost her. When dealing with people like this, like Accord, she couldn’t afford any weakness, and yet the weakness was built-in.

Jack drew and swung a cleaver of his own.

Ashley was aware of Bonesaw saying ‘thank you’, and of the fact that there were words that followed that statement. She didn’t register them.

Her consciousness slipped away, in shock, the lingering exhaustion of her recent ailment, and the long exhaustion of the past several years.

She’d hesitated. She’d gone too long between the start and the end of this encounter without considering the task she needed to accomplish. She’d wanted what Jack was selling to her, and now she would have it.

☽

Dreams. Incoherence.

Too much was still vague.

There had been a time when there were the bad days and the days she dreaded the bad days.

Then… just bad days.

Ashley stared at her mangled hands as she sat in the car. Her fingers were blades, long enough that she could stand up and have her fingertips touch the ground. Her power was wholly under her control and yet she still couldn’t reach out to touch anything.

Jack, as far as she could tell, was keeping to his promise. He’d told her that if she had something she wanted or didn’t want, she only had to ask.

That they’d taken away her ability to speak was the monkey’s paw part of it. Jack had made a comment about her tendency to rant and rave, and he’d said that had to go, with all the other parts of her act.

In exchange, though it wasn’t an exchange she’d asked for, they’d let her communicate their destination. She climbed out of the car.

Her emotions flailed through her like taut steel cables that had been cut, whipping out in every direction, but nothing changed.

The building was nice.

“After you,” Jack told her.

She moved her hand, her fingers flexing. The components locked up before she could position to blast Jack.

“You wanted this,” he said.

She had.

Her claws flexed as she blasted.

Perfect control. She could even manage the recoil.

She took the door in entirety, then stepped into the building.

She saw artwork, likely expensive, and she demolished it with a slash of her claws.

There was a kind of catharsis in this. Jack, perhaps, would get what he wanted, at this rate.

The other Nine moved through the house, checking rooms, getting ahead. Damsel only walked in a measured pace.

There were capes defending the area. Accord’s people that he whored out to other teams.

She kicked at the door that one held behind, denying her cover, and stabbed her in the shoulder. She walked forward, her steps measured, and the woman backed away, trying to keep the blades from penetrating deeper.

When the woman retreated through the doorway and stopped because a railing above a staircase stopped her, Damsel blasted her, focusing the recoil by controlling the strength of the blast, pushing the woman out and over the railing.

There was a large muscular man with a mask ducking low beside the door, using the stairs to be especially low profile. As she saw him, he lunged.

She slashed him with the power dancing around the blades. He tumbled down the stairs.

A laboratory. Blasto worked within.

He was in Accord’s house, with a proper lab. Had he been working with Accord, even back in her first proper visit to Boston?

The anger made her almost nauseous.

Bonesaw came skipping down the stairs. winking at Ashley as she took the stairs two at a time.

“I know you!” Bonesaw proclaimed.

“I know you too, Bonesaw” Blasto said.

“Nice lab.”

“It’s not mine.”

“Man, it’s… this is nice stuff. Being constantly on the move, you miss out on stuff like this.”

“My old lab wasn’t this good,” he said. Then he turned to look at Ashley.

“Who’s that?”

The words chilled her.

“Damsel of Distress, with some modifications by yours truly. Damsel for short. Better at controlling her power now.”

“Hi Damsel,” Blasto said.

Damsel looked at him, and she tried to speak, to comment. The sounds were strangled.

He didn’t remember her. She’d killed his giant and- what? Had someone else claimed credit? Was one of her crowning achievements a forgettable moment for another?

She was a nonentity. Even here, Bonesaw was the focus.

Other memories.

To be in the tank, gel-like fluid flowing into her nose and mouth. Drugged, paralyzed, her body was slow to listen to the instructions her brain tried to convey, to hold her breath, to fight this. Her power had already been locked out. It had never been hers, but now it wasn’t hers at all. The switch was in Bonesaw’s hands.

The fluid reached her lungs and she didn’t drown, but she couldn’t breathe either. Her heart kept beating, the drug kept increasing its hold on her.

Floating in the tank, she remembered things that hadn’t occurred in the one hour this version of herself had been awake.

Then the fluid began to heat up.

Chaos, incoherence, death and destruction.

There were other things.

The horizon glowed gold. Jack’s end of the world was coming to pass.

She had surrendered when Riley had. The surrender was because a switch had been flicked, but that was the external control. Internally, even though every memory in her head was an unpleasant one, she was relieved. She was glad to stop.

The relief had been short lived.

She had died in Blasto’s lab. A hero she didn’t even know had cut her in half.

She had metaphorically died when her core identity had been taken from her. Her hands, her voice. The theater had been all she’d had and she’d lost that.

She had died in Bonesaw’s lab. Over and over again, she had died. Many times, she had been boiled alive. Her head had been cut open, the brain poked at while she was awake.

Seven times, she had died, since leaving the lab.

Now she reached out, and bladed fingers closed around bladed fingers. They watched the world end.

She turned to her companion.

☽

She saw her expression, her hair long, pupils absent in eyes surrounded by heavy and roughly applied decoration. It was startling to see, and her water bottle slipped from stiff fingers.

“What did you do to your hair?” the other Ashley asked.

“I felt the need for a change,” Ashley responded.

Her counterpart reached up.

“Hands down,” the Patrol guard said.

“It’s fine,” Ashley said. “She won’t hurt me.”

Bladed fingers settled on either side of her face, enough pressure applied that a strong wind might have been enough to push the threshold and see blood drawn.

It was reassuring to see the only other person left in existence that understood, that she couldn’t hurt with her power, should a freak accident happen. It was terrifying.

Her other self had the long hair, had wanted to keep the bladed fingers. The girl wore a long black dress and Ashley wore clothes that, while predominantly black, were more fit for the tribunal.

Riley had given them both the same options. Ashley didn’t know what had led to her other self responding a fraction before she did. Little decisions and situations cascaded. They’d been together at first. Her other self had carried on with their old ways.

She had a voice, the claw-hands gave her the ability to master her power, with no misfires. She’d lost control all the same.

Ashley had seen the video where her other self had been arrested. Every road led to death or ruin, it seemed. She’d known she needed to find another way.

She’d made a decision, then. Finally, finally, she had put herself at the mercy of others. That had led to the diagnosis.

Now she was here and… somehow she wasn’t upset.

“Come in,” her other self said. “I can’t believe you did that to your hair.”

“It’s so much lighter,” Ashley said.

She stepped into the apartment. The device at her ankle beeped.

Supposedly, even if she used her power to blast it, the charge would take off her foot. The same would happen if she tried to run.

She turned to look at her keepers, the men from the patrol. The goofy boy in uniform that wanted to impress Victoria.

Past them was the complex. With so much of the world empty, their wardens had decided to build a small contained facility in the middle of nowhere, with no civilization for a long, long way in every direction. Powers helped to close the gaps.

“Good luck,” Jester said.

“Take care, Jester,” she said.

She watched them walk away before shutting the door. Her hand was stiff as she pushed the door shut.

She carried her box through the apartment to the kitchen.

“We have so much catching up to do,” her other self said. “Tea?”

“Oh, you have tea. That’s good.”

“Sit. Put your things down. You do know we can share clothes, you didn’t have to bring your own.”

Ashley sat, setting the box on the table. She could hear the television. It had been left on in the background.

She hadn’t even had a television at her own apartment.

“I brought some favorites. You can wear them too, if you don’t cut them with those fingers of yours.”

“Criticize me when you can move your hands properly,” her other self said. Long bladed fingers plucked a teapot from the top of the cabinet. “I don’t use my teapot much. I put the teabags in a mug.”

“I did the same thing.”

“I take it you lost your trial?”

“The pre-trial proceedings,” Ashley said. “Lose is the wrong word. They sent me here because we get along, and because space is limited. Too many parahumans were arrested recently. One of them should be joining this complex.”

“Ah, you have a friend.”

“I have a lot of friends,” Ashley said. “I’ve had… a lot of good days, with bad days I can manage because I know more good days are coming.”

The other Ashley made an amused sound.

“I’ve wondered,” Ashley said. “Did the scientists reach out to you too?”

“They tried. I wouldn’t cooperate with them.”

“Then… you got what I was doing just now. Is that only because you come from the same place I do?”

“You want to know if we share anything.”

“Do we?”

Her other self ignored the question at first, but it didn’t feel like an insult. Ashley knew what it was to digest, to consider.

“I have memories that sharpen,” her other self said. “A small few are memories from the files.”

“The files,” Ashley said. “Edict and Licit.”

“Bonesaw implanted us with memories, using a framework she got from the books. The ‘inciting incident’ for our powers. The paperwork surrounding our trips to other cities.”

“The gaps filled in. Some things, it reached for other available, familiar sources.”

“It’s vague,” her other self said. “But I didn’t dig too hard.”

There. Answers.

Hardly worth being imprisoned, but interesting.

“Do you have a recollection of… the fields?” her other self asked, as she prepared the tea. She had no need to ask Ashley’s preferences. Her back was to Ashley. “A memory that doesn’t belong to anyone- not any person. A thing.”

Ashley met her other self’s eyes. The questions that she was being asked were the same questions she had planned to ask. She nodded, and she studied her other self’s face. She couldn’t tell if she was relieved or not to have the answer.

She took the tea that was given to her, being careful with her uncooperative hands and the hot drink. “A great plain of red-black crystal, one facet cracking and then mending in the span of a few seconds? The creaking sound and the dull static? It’s a recollection that isn’t exclusive to us.”

Torch – 7.5

⊙

I don’t know how I’m going to help these guys, Jessica.

I found myself actually hesitating before approaching Sveta, Tristan and Chris. The group had lost two of its members and its mentor in a matter of nine days.

Kenzie was missing, I noted. She was always early, barring extraordinary event. Worrying, when she was first or tied for first place among those I was most concerned about- she had just lost her friend, or whatever it was that Ashley was to her. Hard to pin down. That was the first half of it. The second half was the underlying threat within this group that Jessica had been so concerned about.

What do I even do?

The big question mark shaped space where Kenzie was supposed to be was enough for me to get over my hesitation.

They were standing at the top of a set of concrete stairs. The stairs were supposed to lead up to a shopping center, the sort of building that had a mall on the ground floor and in the basement and offices for the second floor and above. It had been looted on a prior occasion, and now the doors and display windows were boarded up, shutters closed where the shutters were intact.

Sveta had started painting her body again, now that the court proceedings were done. Forest green, again, with teal blues for the select details and animals. It was only partial, and she used the negative, unpainted space in a neat way, with a mandala or kaleidoscope pattern to what was painted and what wasn’t. Her top was another of the simple tops with knots at each shoulder and below each armpit; there was a navy blue base to the cloth and more teal for the lettering around an anchor design. Her pants looked like sweats. Her feet were ‘bare’, being only the prosthetic feet, and I could see where the tops of the feet were painted, the toes left alone.

Tristan had a white jacket on over a crimson top, jeans so faded they were almost white, and white sneakers. He hadn’t found the time to apply more paint to his hair, it seemed, and he hadn’t shaved. I could see the faint shadow, even from a distance.

And Chris was… very much Chris. His hood was up and his hoodie zipped up all the way. He had dark circles under red eyes, his braces were on and looped around his head, and he had a different set of headphones on, with a forward-sweeping bar that clipped to the front of his hood. It looked a bit like he’d done it himself, and I was left to wonder just why he’d wanted to keep his head that securely covered.

The pressure differential between portals was responsible for strong wind on a good day, these days. Clouds and weather came rolling through with little warning beyond what the scientists on the far side could figure out. Today wasn’t such a good day- there were two portals in reasonably close proximity here and the two played off each other to make the wind issue twice as bad as it might otherwise be.

The tallest buildings were swaying. It was bad enough of a gale that there wasn’t much traffic on the road or sidewalks. I was forced to fly close to the ground.

“Heya,” Sveta said, as I flew over to join the group, staying near to the ground. She reached out for my good arm and gave it a squeeze. I shifted position and gave her a better one-armed hug.

“Where’s Kenzie?” I asked.

“She’s running late,” Tristan said. “And this is her neighborhood.”

“And it’s her project we’re here to see,” Chris said.

“Did you guys call her?” I asked.

“Moment I arrived and she wasn’t here,” Tristan said. “No response.”

“It’s ominous,” Chris said. “I would say something about the sky falling, but there’s already a Chicken Little out there. I’d say something about the world coming to an end, but that joke got tired a year ago.”

“Not really a joke, that last one,” Tristan said.

“Meh. There’s a warlord out there with the fire-to-ice shtick and a demon mask, and I’d bet money he did it so he could make the reference every chance he got. I can’t use ‘hell freezing over’ because it’s tainted with that guy’s suck.”

“He sounds Fallen,” Sveta said.

“No,” I said. “Just a douche.”

“We ran out of good names and now all the good themes and ideas are being taken or spoiled,” Chris complained. “I have no fancy way of saying ‘that kid is never late’.”

“Kid?” Tristan asked. “You’re only two years older than her.”

“She’s way more of a kid than I am,” Chris said.

“I don’t know, Chris,” I said. “I think she has the edge when it comes to certain kinds of maturity. Work ethic, maintaining the relationship pillars…”

“What the hokey garbage fuck is a relationship pillar?” Chris asked.

“…and she’s more polite,” I said, teasing. “The pillars are honesty, trust, respect, caring, sharing…”

Chris withered like he was in physical pain, a vampire exposed to the cross, hissing through his teeth and braces.

“She’s pretty on the ball with that stuff,” I said. I craned my head and flew up until my feet were just above the others’ heads, so I could try to spot Kenzie. Chris continued hissing.

He was very good at his inhuman sounds.

He stopped hissing to say, “I regret asking. I miss Ashley and Rain already. Without them to balance out the group, we’re going to end up getting back together as team Caramel Friendship with tramp stamps like the Love Bugs have.”

“I hate that term,” Tristan said. “‘Tramp stamp’.”

“It’s a label for a reason,” Chris said.

“I had a crush on a guy in high school who had a lower back tattoo, and he wasn’t a ‘tramp’,” Tristan said. “It gets me when I think of that term getting thrown around and an awesome guy getting shit because of it.”

“He should have paid more attention, then,” Chris said. “His fault.”

“Let’s not fight,” I said. “Kenzie. At what point do we spread out and hunt for her?” I asked.

“Soon,” Tristan said. “I thought we’d give her ten minutes, and that was four minutes ago.”

There was a pause. The wind whipped past us.

I was hoping they’d put up a nice structure around each portal, to control the pressures and block the wind. I wasn’t sure of the logistics of it, but it would be really nice to fly again without it being the effort it was now.

“I’ve never seen Love Bugs,” Sveta commented.

Chris snorted, “Count yourself lucky. The younger kids at the institution are always watching that kind of crap. It’s so high pitched it sets my nerves on edge when my senses aren’t heightened.”

“Are the Love Bugs the ones with sayings and puns around their symbols, like scrollwork on a coat of arms?” Tristan asked. “I wonder if there’s a good goat pun I could do for my Caramel Friendship team lower back tattoo.”

“That’s a different show,” Chris said. “I can’t tell you how much I hate that I know that.”

Tristan’s watch beeped. He sighed.

“Time to swap?” I asked.

He nodded. “Better go look for Kenz. Make sure she didn’t get mugged or blown away in this wind.”

Chris snorted.

“Hey Byron,” Tristan said. “I’ll give you three hours later if you give me an hour now.”

He changed, blurring. Byron appeared, and immediately had the wind blow his hair into his face. He fixed it. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, only a thin sweatshirt that was more for the hood and graphic than for the warmth, black skater pants, and sneakers. Between the dip in temperature and the wind, he should have reacted more to the chill. I supposed his temperature resistance helped.

“Nah,” Byron said. “Feels weird, Trist, you coming out this way when you had almost no time left. I know it’s not far, but…”

He shrugged. “Going to play it safe and stick to the routine.”

“It’s good to have you with us, Byron,” I said. “We don’t talk enough.”

“I’m here when Tristan is.”

“You have us at a disadvantage, then,” I said. “You know us and we don’t know you.”

“Guess so.”

“Are you leaving or will you stay?” Sveta asked.

Byron made a face.

“Stay,” she said, punching him lightly in the arm.

“Okay. Sure. I’ll help look, and compromise for Tristan.”

“Which way is her house?” I asked.

Nobody knew, so we had to get phones out. All three of us looked.

“Got it,” Chris said.

“Damn it,” I said. He’d won the race.

At a glance, Byron didn’t seem to care one way or the other, but he was a hard guy to read.

Chris turned on the spot, then pointed.

“You guys go straight, Sveta go more left, I’ll go right?” I asked.

That got multiple nods of affirmation.

As I got ready to take off, checking for traffic, since I didn’t want to fly high, I heard Byron in the background. “Tristan, was your crush Jhett Marion? Wasn’t it a roleplaying game tattoo? He had back hair when he was fourteen.”

Chris cackled.

I shook my head. Poor Tristan.

The areas where the portals had opened up were in worse shape than the others. People had reacted, and the violent reaction was only a small part of things. Some had realized their close call and moved away from the portals that could potentially expand again. Abandoned property, harsher weather, and the fact that a lot of the constructions had been rushed meant that there was a kind of decrepitude setting in. Debris, trash, broken windows, and the occasional door left open.

I imagined there were people out there who would have happily claimed the empty houses, even with the proximity to the portal, but it was the same kind of dynamic as in Hollow Point. In a lot of places, the people that had abandoned properties hadn’t gone through official channels or put up listings to let others know the properties were available.

One street, a bus parked to block off the road, with another two vehicles parked further down that same road. It was there, it seemed, to break the wind that would have blown straight into the main road through Norwalk Station.

I did one loop, seeing only crowds and countermeasures. There were signs warning that the main road was blocked by the portal, with instructions for detours and flow. The signs had been hastily put together.

A flash in the distance got my attention.

That would be her.

Four people were blinded and sitting on their asses, backs to the wall. Kenzie was there, uncostumed, her face blurred.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

The blur faded away and Kenzie smiled. “I’m good! Except I’ve been waiting way too long.”

“We’ll talk about that in a second. Who are these guys?”

“I’m blind!” one shouted. “New person, help!”

“They wanted what I was carrying, and I said no. They insisted, I shot ’em. I set it to a two.”

“There are settings?”

“They’ll be blind for two hours. Where were you all? I was lonely, geez.”

“We were waiting at the stairs of the financial building, where the mall closed up.”

Kenzie smiled. “What? No. I sent a new location.”

“Check again.”

She did, fishing out her phone. “Don’t try running just because I’m not looking or aiming at you.”

She fiddled with her phone. She wore a blue polo top with heart-shaped buttons down the collar and a pink stripe across the chest. She had a pink skirt, blue leggings, and an hourglass hairpin. Her eyehook extended out from her belt, and she had her flash gun dangling from her pinky.

The box she’d brought for the day was sitting beside her. It was just large enough that I imagined it had to be inconvenient. Larger than a backpack, just broad and tall enough that holding it by the handles on either side had to be a pain. Kenzie wasn’t fully grown, either.

The box had been painted to match her outfit, it seemed. Two triangles with one point touching formed an hourglass shape, and that shape repeated across the box, from a predominantly pink hue at one corner to a deeper blue at the opposite corner.

“I like the color matching,” I said.

“My outfit?” she asked, typing at her phone. She smiled. “They were my back to school clothes. I like them.”

I tried my phone, sending a message to the others, to let them know where we were. I saw the tiny red warning icon on each text message I sent. “My messages aren’t going through.”

“That’s what’s going on,” Kenzie said.

One of the thugs who’d tried to rob Kenzie lurched to his feet, then ran, blind, down the street.

“Cell towers might be struggling,” I said, while I kept an eye on the guy.

Kenzie didn’t look up from her phone, but her eyehook turned to track the runner.

The guy didn’t run in a straight line, and as he veered, he ran straight into a pile of trash, tripping heads over heels.

The others who remained looked alarmed at the noise that caused.

“What the hell are you guys doing, mugging a kid?”

“We weren’t mugging her. We were questioning her.”

“And demanding my box,” Kenzie said.

“There’s so much going wrong, you mentioned the cell towers. That’s been breaking as fast as we fix it. The power’s fucked and we’re getting blackouts, and some food that was supposed to be delivered wasn’t. Now some kid turns up with suspicious stuff?”

I looked at Kenzie. She shrugged, saying, “The power outages aren’t that bad. I dunno about the other stuff. Looks like the cell towers are off. I connected online, though. I’m stealing someone’s internet.”

“Their story doesn’t jar with what they said to you?” I asked.

“No, but if they were telling the truth then they were major jerkasses about it.”

“We heard the portal was broken by a group of people. We’re keeping an eye out. Neighborhood watch thing.”

“You ignored a bunch of other people and came after me instead,” Kenzie said. “Is it because I’m a kid?”

“You were carrying a weird colorful thing!”

“Weird thing aside,” I said. “I mean, come on, guys. She’s gotta be the least threatening person you’ll run into in the next while. She’s, what, five feet tall and ninety pounds?”

“Close! Eighty-one and a quarter pounds,” Kenzie whispered. “Four feet ten and a half inches. But thank you for thinking I’m bigger and taller. I’m flattered.”

“You can’t know,” the guy said. “Maybe they got away with it because they were kids. Parahumans are dangerous, they could be anywhere.”

Another of the guys said, “Young ones are more dangerous if anything. They don’t have the impulse control.”

“Even if that was eerily accurate and true, you guys were nasty about it,” Kenzie said. “That wasn’t okay.”

“Fuck,” one said, under his breath.

The guy who’d tripped over the trash hadn’t quite found his feet. He tripped over the trash he’d knocked off of the pile, falling again.

I walked over to him, grabbed him by the scruff, and dragged him back to the others. Kenzie had approached too, but it wasn’t to help the guy. She used her eyehook to pick up the trash.

“We were the ones who helped stop the portal thing from being worse, you dingbats,” I said. “Do you want to make this a thing, Looksee? We could arrest them.”

“Nah. I think they learned not to mug potential capes. And to be nicer, right? Don’t call people names or go straight to being rough.”

“Not mugging,” the guy I’d just brought back to his friends said. “We were investigating and looking out for trouble.”

“I’m trying to be nice,” she said. “You keep arguing points or swearing instead of saying sorry. Maybe we should call the police after all.”

For all the good that’ll do.

The men gave their apologies in near-unison.

Kenzie nodded, satisfied.

Her face and hair briefly went blurry again as someone drove past.

“Do you guys have a number I can try calling?” I asked. “Or an email we can send? We’ll call someone to pick you up. You’ll get your eyes back in two hours.”

They gave me an email. Kenzie sent the message to the families of the blinded men.

“I asked before,” I said, my voice quiet. “Are you okay? With Ashley’s pre-court proceeding not going well, same for Rain, the group being in a weird place, how are you holding up?”

“I’m holding,” Kenzie said, smiling. “Ashley told me to be tough, so I’m being tough. I’m focusing more on my stuff, but it’s a good distraction.”

“You’re sleeping okay? Eating okay?”

“Not sleeping, but nothing too bad. I’m staying up until midnight, sometimes one or two in the morning. Working on stuff like my box here. I was working on Tristan and Byron’s thing too, I have some stuff that has a one percent chance of working, max, and it would be video only if it worked, but it would maybe let us see Byron while Tristan is out and vice versa.”

“Eating?”

“Eating! That reminds me. Do you want to come over sometime soon?”

“I’ll answer your question if you answer mine.”

“I eat. Three regulars. My parents were always very big on sitting down and eating as a family. Unless it’s an emergency, I don’t miss dinner.”

I’d told myself I wanted to check on them. This worked. I could remember how horrified the others had been at the prospect of my going over to her place for dinner, but this seemed important.

“Then yes, I’ll come over.”

“Tonight or tomorrow? Do you have a preference for what to eat?”

“Sure, and no preference for day or food. Just let me know, and double check that the message got through. I don’t want to miss this because of a missed message.”

“Will do,” she replied, with all the seriousness she would have shown if she were receiving a field order.

“I’ve got to say, it’s concerning, if people are reading this failure of infrastructure as sabotage.”

“For sure.”

Our guys showed up around the same time the vigilante’s backup did. We left them to their backup with a brief explanation, then walked in the direction of Sveta, Chris, and Byron. Because the box was heavy-ish and I only had the one hand, I took one handle and Kenzie took the other.

We explained in brief.

“Your dad didn’t give you a ride?” Byron asked.

“He’s busy with stuff. His work isn’t doing so great right now,” she said. “My mom wants to move but can’t find a good place to go. I’m not too bothered.”

“You brought a thing?” Chris asked.

Kenzie gave her box a pat. “We don’t have far to go. At first I thought we’d use the abandoned shopping center, but I think we’ll get better results at this place. It’s managed by a real estate company that’s rivals with my dad’s. We kind of have to break in.”

“Sweet,” Chris said.

“Not sweet,” Byron said. “Concerning.”

“Concerning on multiple fronts,” I agreed.

“Can you go with me on this?” she asked. “It’s a good location, not too much noise, I think, and I’m super-duper eighty, seventy, mayyybe sixty percent sure this is going to be totally worth it.”

“What are you up to?” I asked.

“Nothing! Nothing. Field test. It’s hard to get optimal conditions, targets, and stuff. I still need to fine tune.”

“She’s up to something,” Byron said.

“No! Yes! But not in a bad way!”

“Kenzie,” Sveta said. “What are you doing?”

“Please? I’ve worked so hard on this project, and the idea of this moment with the flashy reveal and everything has been keeping my mood up since one of my favorite people got sent to a cape gulag.”

“It’s a block of buildings in an isolated area, with heavy supervision, limited time outdoors, and explosive trans-dimensional ankle monitors,” I said. “It’s not that uncomfortable.”

“Has to have slave labor to be a gulag,” Chris said.

Kenzie tried her best puppy dog eyes.

“If we caved to this, what kind of precedent would we be setting?” Sveta asked.

“It’s not even good puppy dog eyes, compared to what you could really do,” I said. “At least step up your game. Give us a quivering lip. Change your posture, here, like this…”

I adjusted her stance, having her draw her shoulders together, hands clasped in front of her. I changed the angle of her chin. Kenzie made her lip quiver, then said, “This could be the last thing we do as a team.”

I shook my head. “Too much.”

“B.S., by the way, because we’re more likely to fizzle out than just stop today. Unless this is a huge fuckup,” Chris said. “Try harder.”

“It’s illegal,” Byron said.

Her composure broke. “Come on! It’s too much and it’s not enough and it’s illegal? Cut me some slack! You know I’d do something quasi-illegal for any and all of you, any time.”

“That’s not a good thing!” Sveta said.

“It’s also fully illegal, not quasi-illegal,” Byron pointed out. “Breaking and entering, criminal trespass.”

“But it is a good thing, right?” Kenzie asked. “Actually, it’s very much a good thing because you’re good guys. You wouldn’t ask me unless you thought it was for the greater good. And I’m asking you because I think this is for the greater good. I’m asking for the benefit of a doubt.”

“I have so many doubts when it comes to you,” Chris said.

“Ha ha,” Kenzie said, smirking. “Keep teasing. I bet I can shoot you at least three times and give you a wedgie with my eyehook before you can transform.”

“You’re only proving my point.”

“Kenzie,” I said. “You can’t hold back on this for the dramatic potential when it’s illegal. Dish.”

She fidgeted.

“I think I found something. I want to see with my cameras, and I want you guys to be a part of it. If you aren’t, then I might not be able to explain it after.”

I looked at the others.

“It might be big,” Kenzie said.

“You’re, how did you put it? Mostly sixty percent sure it’s maybe totally worth it?” I asked.

“Something like that. Fifty…seven percent sure.”

“Alright,” I said. “I’ll try this. If the others don’t want to, I’m willing to risk it, since I have people I can ask for help.”

“I’ll come,” Sveta said.

“I was good to go at the start,” Chris said. “I was less convinced the more you talked, Kenz.”

“Ha ha.”

“I’ll hang back,” Byron said.

He was the only one to duck out. He followed us, up until we reached the destination, and then went for a walk around the block.

The building was a nice place, with brass capped white pillars at the outside. It looked like a hotel, stately, but there was no sign of any occupancy and the wear and tear of age that I’d noted earlier seemed to have caught the outside, leaving it dusty and plastered with a few pieces of trash that had blown up against the building face and then stuck there with residual grime, dust, and rain.

“This place has a keypad lock,” Kenzie said. “I was thinking of the shopping center, that would work too, but getting inside would be hard. Instead…”

She slapped a box the size of a smartphone onto the side of the front door keypad, tapped it once, and then pushed the door open.

“It’s concerning just how naturally you did that,” I said.

“Pshh.”

I helped her lift the box.

“What’s concerning is that she probably spent four hours building that, instead of looking up one of the thousands of tutorials online on how to break a keypad lock,” Chris said.

“One and a half hours, thank you very much. Except it was closer to three because I was splitting my attention between watching television, homework, and building that.”

“So pretty close to four hours, then? Or are you doing that thing where you took three hours to get it technically finished, and another half an hour to build a nice case that matched the outfit you were going to wear today?”

Kenzie sighed.

“Or was it forty five minutes? Was it an actual hour? Was I actually right on the nose with my guess about it taking four hours total?”

“It was twenty minutes to build the case, you booger. I made resin and glassworking machines since I like my work to look nice and I make a lot of lenses. It cut down on the time, even if it wastes material if I’m not paying attention.”

“I was close,” he gloated.

“You were sorta close, you booger.”

Sveta let her hand drop to the floor. She brought it back up, a cigarette butt clasped between two fingers.

“People have been here,” I said.

“They might still be here,” Sveta said.

“Hmmm,” Kenzie said. She consulted her phone. “This way.”

‘This way’ was to the penthouse, which took up the entirety of the fourth floor. The stately, crimson-carpet, white-pillar look was in full force for the open concept room.

The window was open and the fierce wind blew the sheer curtains into the room. Even the heavier crimson velvet curtains were moving.

Cigarettes littered the floor by the window. The wind had blown them and the ash across the floor, and moisture or humidity had given the cigarettes and their ash enough dampness to run and stain the tiled floor beneath them.

Kenzie indicated for the box to go down. We eased it to the floor.

“I hope this works,” she said.

She traced her finger along the pattern at the top of the box, zig-zagging across the surface.

Colored particles, each spherical and about an inch across, began to fill the room. It was seemingly random at first, but slowly, patterns began to emerge.

“So. My focus is on space, not time, and this is wonky,” she said. “So, initial capture is going to be all impressions since the date I specified.”

Each figure was a smear that filled the room to the point things got dark. Skin-tone spheres began to cluster into groupings that looked like faces, but where one person walked across the room, every space that their face had occupied began to get the dots.

The room filled to the point that it began to get dark. The faint ambient glow of each dot became more apparent.

“This is messy,” Chris said.

“Yep.”

Finer dots began to appear, piercing the larger ones and replacing them in clusters. It took minutes, and I was reminded of using the internet in recent months, when the servers were first going online. Each image load had taken twelve passes, each pass taking a minute or two.

It wasn’t only resolution that mattered, though. Each person had been in the room for extended periods of time, and each one was a smear of every action and movement they’d taken while in the space.

I folded my arms, walking around and through images, looking for ones where a face stuck out without smearing one way or the other.

“Color isn’t accurate, by the way,” Kenzie said.

“Good to know,” I said.

One face, a woman, strawberry blonde, with one tattooed arm. I could see the impression she’d left where she had slept on the edge of the bed, but had climbed off the bed on the opposite side.

I could see other activity, with a lot of flesh tones.

Going by profile, there were two men, and there was another woman who wasn’t present much.

“And… resolution is as good as it’s going to get,” Kenzie said. “But some are sharper than others, where one person or thing was still for a very long time. Sleeping faces and stuff.”

I peered down at the sleeping face of the woman.

“Who are these guys?” I asked.

“Give me… five, ten minutes. Maybe fifteen or twenty. I want to sweep and see what we can pick up.”

Thin lines that formed cubes began to dance around the room, seemingly at random. Where each cube touched a face, they began to roll along the track formed by each blurry caterpillar of merged images, pausing now and again.

There was one, however, that wasn’t looking for faces. It moved along the chest of dressers, pausing on the bible that lay on one shelf. It went over to the television, then the VCR. The longer it wandered, the more frantic and jerky it seemed to get.

It settled on the box Kenzie and I had hauled into the room.

“Oh my god, you stupid box,” Kenzie said. “No, I do not need you to find yourself.”

She kicked the box.

The cube-frame continued to dance around the room.

“You know you’re absolutely terrifying, right?” Chris asked.

“You can turn into a spider-face. You can turn into a blob of brain tissue and tentacles. You have a rage form,” Kenzie said.

“And yet you’re way scarier than I am.”

“Who are these people?” Sveta asked.

I continued to walk around the room, studying the men. The other woman was too blurry to make out, her visits too fleeting. From the way one man danced around the door, he might have repeatedly gone out with her.

Dark hair, dark clothes, pale face, dark eyes or sunglasses, for her.

One man had a red hat, it looked like. The other was bald.

While I stared, the door opened. Byron came in.

“Change your mind?” Chris asked.

“I saw the dots outside. I came to see what you were doing,” Byron said.

“I’ll clean that up before anyone else notices,” Kenzie said. “Probably picking up birds.”

She fiddled for a bit.

“No, stupid box!” Kenzie said. The cube-frame had settled on the box again. She kicked the box twice.

“Watch. You’re going to destroy that thing through your percussive maintenance,” Chris said.

“Am not. I know how it works. Aha! Thank you, box.”

The cube-frame had settled on the table by the window. A silver and black smear covered most of the table. Now the cube danced through the smear.

“Aaaand isolating,” she said. “I’m going to pull out the best images, going by what seems to be the most accurate. Medians and modes.”

The woman’s image at the edge of the bed remained, while the rest of her disappeared.

There was another image of her on the bed. She was in the middle of coitus with the bald man.

Sveta made a sound as she saw it, and moved to block Kenzie’s eyes. When the eyehook looked over Sveta’s head, she pulled it down.

“I need to see to take it down. There. We don’t need that, thank you,” Kenzie said. She tapped the top of the box. The image disappeared.

“You’re going to be so much scarier when you’re older,” Chris said.

“Well,” Kenzie said. “Probably. I’m hoping to get a handle on things before then.”

“Breaking and entering and getting footage of people in bed isn’t progress,” Byron said.

“This is important,” Kenzie said. Her expression was serious.

We had our images. Kenzie had saved three to four images of each person, as they stood in the room.

The strawberry blonde with tattoos down her arm wore a cat mask and a bodysuit, as she leaned against the wall. The bald man wore war paint.

The man with the dyed red hair was someone I’d met before, if only briefly. He was the smoker, and he’d slept sitting up in the armchair.

“Kingdom Come,” I said. “I ran into him at the community center.”

“Yep,” Sveta said. “Might explain why Norwalk went south.”

I nodded.

There was no ID or good resolution on the woman at the door. Too much movement, not enough of a stay.

The images weren’t a snapshot. The woman and Kingdom Come had been captured sleeping. The bald man had tossed and turned too much to be captured at any one point while he slept, so the best resolution was when he’d sat eating. Even though the images froze in time, they were out of sync, each one at a different moment.

“You knew who they were already,” I said.

“I had some idea. This place and the mall were the big locations where they made calls to and from, in the big network of call locations for this group,” Kenzie said.

On the table by the window, the blur had solidified into a concrete image. It was clearest of them all, to the point it looked real. Human faces moved and adjusted, but the rectangle was static in shape, inflexible.

It was the tinker device that had blown up the portal. This would presumably be the one that had successfully been used on the Norwalk portal.

“You wanted to rope us into this by showing us this scene,” I said. “It’s a lead. A big lead.”

“Yeah,” Kenzie said.

“You’re not pulling our legs?” Chris asked.

“This was really tedious to do,” she said. “If I was going to pull your legs or try to get you all on board as a team, I’d have done something easier and more fun. More convincing, probably.”

“Don’t be dishonest to get us to stay together,” I said.

“Okay. I wasn’t dishonest this time. This is real.”

We walked around the room, looking at the culprits.

“Um. Did it work?”

“Yes,” Sveta said.

“Yep,” Chris said.

“Fuck yeah, this worked,” I said. “I want to get these assholes.”

I glanced at Byron and I saw him nod.

Kenzie didn’t smile or cheer. Her expression was intense and unmoving, with something like a blue fire in her eyes as the box glowed before her. “Perfect.”

Torch – 7.6

The shopping floor of the financial building gradually illuminated as the adjustable lights and shutters were replicated by the time camera. It made for an unusual picture, where the shutters and the covers for the lights were closed but the light that passed through was painted as especially intense.

Meanwhile, on the floor of the center, the shadows of people passing through streaked the area, darkening it. The yellow of construction vests and hats cut through the darkness of clothing, some skin, and equipment being rolled through as the building was used as a shortcut.

The other members of the group were standing at higher vantage points- on the stair-like ledges at the edges of the shopping floor’s main concourse, and on the stone edge around the simple fountain. Having the higher ground let them see over the heads of the blurs. Next to me, Kenzie had the best vantage point in the place, sitting on Byron’s shoulders. The silent unfolding of the scene was punctuated by Byron telling her to stop wiggling so she wouldn’t fall.

I took the easier route and floated, trying to see the areas the camera covered that the others couldn’t. There were people leaning in nooks and crannies, people sitting with papers beside them.

Most of the covert leaning was done by one construction employee, who carried an empty container and smoked, the ashes being tapped off into the container. Multiple instances of smoke became a gossamer haze that hid their face.

The papers littered the places where people grabbed lunch and did some reading. I flew past, noting the papers, and I saw ads for apartments, newspapers, and some kind of legal documentation that scanned as hazy with the way the time camera worked.

“A lot of people pass through this supposedly abandoned area,” Sveta said. “I’m glad we called to ask for permission before breaking in this time, because this kind of traffic would have made it really dumb to try to sneak in.”

“They would notice the sea of blurry images before they noticed us,” Chris said. “Especially if any of those images have the same height and general shape as them. That’s gotta be weird.”

“This is over a few weeks,” Kenzie said. “It’s not actually that many people. Wait until I run facial identification and thin it out.”

“I can picture one of these guys showing up. Hey, Leon the security guy, sorry to surprise you, we’re just replaying footage of every single thing you did in this building since the start of September. Is that you scratching your butt there? Then their jaws drop.”

“That wouldn’t happen, Chris,” I said.

“Do you think they’d shoot the scary parahumans first and ask questions later?” Chris asked.

“I think you wouldn’t say sorry,” I said.

“Ha!”

“Why did this place close down?” Sveta asked. She was peering into a store that still had a banner down the window, featuring some game character. I wasn’t sure if it was a board game or video game. “It looks like it closed down before the portal.”

“It wasn’t built to fill a need,” Chris said. “It was put here to make things feel like the home we lost. It’s a lot of upkeep and money to prop up something symbolic.”

“It’s close to the station, stores look decent,” I said, looking at the remnants of what used to be. A solid sign with plexiglass on it showed the stores the place had once had. “It’s fine for location, a little grocery store and pharmacy for the people in nearby apartment complexes, or anyone working upstairs coming down… I don’t think that’s it.”

“It’s already going to pieces,” Byron said. He kicked at the stone boundary of the fountain he was standing on. A stone or two were missing. “Problems, maybe.”

“That makes more sense to me,” I said. A safety issue and forced evacuation. It would be easier to get established somewhere else than to try to fix anything expensive.

As the blurs stretched out like so many misshapen caterpillars, many of them yellow-striped from the hard hats and vests, I saw one blur in one of the stores.

I flew down to investigate.

Dark clothes, dark hair, and a consistent slash of darkness at eye level. Blurs intersected with her.

“Can you focus your facial recognition program on any area?” I called out.

“Ummmm… I have to finish first! Which is soon!”

“When you’re finished?” I asked.

“I can choose a place as a starting point, I can start it over there,” Kenzie called out. Her voice echoed through the large space. “I’ll scan all of this before we’re done, though.”

“Sure,” I said. “I think I found the woman with the sunglasses in… I think this was a computer store.”

“Woo!”

I folded my arm over the arm I still had in the sling as I walked around the perimeter of the computer store. I tried to assess what the woman with the sunglasses was doing. Something with computers and phones. There were enough points where papers and a laptop rested on one of the long wooden tables that the table was now a blur of her work material. No chair- she’d worked from a standing position.

Was there a point where she stayed still for a long period?

“Done!” Kenzie called out. “Facial recognition one, live! Siccing it on the sunglasses woman for you, Victoria!”

The cube-frame began dancing across the sunglasses woman’s head, flowing around the room as it tracked her pacing around the computer store.

“Facial recognition two, live! Chris’ man, Leon the security guy! Facial recognition three is a go! And because it’s bratty, let’s change priority, give it a headstart annnnd… our fourth scan is live, looking for curious boxes.”

“Wait,” I could hear Chris say. “The reason it kept finding itself is because you told it to look for boxes?”

“Under a certain size, with certain internal properties, yeah. I told the compiler and the face and person searches to ignore you guys, but I forgot to make the box searcher ignore itself. Fifth scan live.”

I stepped out of the store, glancing around. As the cubes danced through the streams and waves of people, some were eliminated, cutting up the caterpillars.

“That answers one question and leaves me with so many more. These things see inside people?”

“They can,” Kenzie said. “There isn’t much point though. There is a point when I’m looking for tinkertech portal bombs.”

“If we identify any of our targets, do you think we could get a look inside them?”

“You just want to see their underwear, I bet. So gross.”

There was a pause. I could imagine Chris sighing. I wasn’t close enough to hear, and my attention was focused elsewhere.

“What are you looking for, Chris?” Byron asked.

“The way people are put together is interesting,” Chris said. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

“Can you do that, Kenz?” I asked. “Give us a view of their insides?”

“Sure. I guess. We’ll try it when this part is done. The resolution might suck for things that aren’t normally visible, and I have to concentrate it on one area.”

“While you’re at it,” Chris said. “Can you draw a line through everyone? Keep the… however many images of people you want. But show the paths they traveled by giving each person a certain color of line that runs through their hearts or whatever?”

“Belt buckle, maybe. People don’t change belts that often and they’re nice and unique, yeah, I can,” Kenzie said. She motioned for Byron to put her down, and then went to get her computer out. She was wholly focused on what she was doing, now.

“You’re surprising me with how into this you are,” Byron said, to Chris. Byron rubbed at his own shoulders, where Kenzie had been sitting.

“It’s interesting. This is neat,” Chris said. Kenzie made a pleased sound, and Chris said. “Don’t go getting a big head just because I gave you a compliment.”

“It’s neat that you think it’s neat,” Kenzie said.

“Why the focus on the way they’re put together and where they are, Chris?” Sveta asked. “Are you looking for a shapeshifter or someone in disguise?”

“Nah,” Chris said, as he walked toward us, studying the security guy in passing. “I’m thinking outside the box, plus she shuts up when she’s working hard on stuff.”

Kenzie snorted.

As the images started reducing down to a small enough number that people could walk between them without being blinded by the projections in their faces, the others stepped down from their vantage points, getting a look at our players in this scene.

“How are you these days, By?” Sveta asked.

“Dealing. Some days I’m fine, some days it catches up with me and I’m the furthest thing from ‘fine’. It’s times like that where I think a lot about-” He lowered his voice. “-how there’s not a lot of case seventies left. Even before Gold Morning, most were dead or they had totally gone off the deep end.”

“From one name in a numbered casefile to another, there are answers,” Sveta said. “It’s the upside of things being as messy and complicated as they are. There’s a lot of weirdness out there, there are a lot of capes, and there’s tinkertech. There has to be a key to things out there.”

I was left to wonder about that. Sveta maintained a kind of optimism I wasn’t sure I held. When I thought about my own issues, which might have been smaller than the problems of the members of this team, I didn’t generally think of fixes.

I held my tongue.

Byron spoke in a way that made it sound like he had to work to bring himself to say it, “It was easier when I could tell myself that we were researching it and reaching out to people who might be able to help or answer. Progress is slow lately, with less people to reach out to, communication being slower and more awkward…”

“I’m working on your thing,” Kenzie said. She didn’t look up from her computer as she talked. “I know it’s not a fix, but it’ll give you options.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, Kenz,” Byron said. “You’ve been working on that for a while, though. If it’s too hard-”

“It’s not too hard! It’s just weird. If I had more scans of some specific cross-dimensional, intersectional sort of things, it would feel less weird. I’ve had other things over the past few weeks, like this bratty time box, and then the cameras we used at the Fallen camp, for Rain, and Ashley’s eye camera, and a bunch of other stuff. But I work on it every day.”

“Alright,” Byron said. “Thanks, Kenz. Don’t agonize on it- if it’s too hard, leave it.”

Kenzie had to raise her voice to be heard from the other end of the concourse, “It’s fine. I could finish it in a day or two if I did nothing else. Do you want me to do that? It would mean postponing other stuff, but I’d do it for… if you’d take me out for a treat. Thank me by taking me to get something nice at a restaurant or pastry shop.”

“It’s a trap,” Chris whispered.

“Shut it, Chris,” Kenzie said, her voice echoing.

I could see Byron’s expression change. It was interesting just how distinct he was from Tristan. Tristan had a way of moving his arms and shoulders and showing his emotions in a whole-body kind of way. Byron contained it to his eyes and eyebrows, with the slightest of changes to his mouth, lips pressing together, eyebrows drawing together, while his eyes looked at nothing in particular.

He was tempted to say yes, I was ninety percent sure.

“No,” Byron said. “Do what you need to. This is more important.”

I couldn’t hold my tongue. “If you’re actually thinking about death or losing it, Byron, that might warrant other people doing something.”

“I’m not,” he said. “That’s the bad moments, and in those moments, I can see how things might end up that way.”

“So you are thinking about those things.”

“Not directly. Besides, I’d feel worse knowing you guys could be helping others and you weren’t because you were trying to make me feel better. I’m used to handling stuff myself, I’ve gotten this far, I can keep going.”

“Introverts unite,” Chris said.

“You know you can always reach out to us,” Sveta said.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

All around us, the images were condensing into an isolated few. There were some passing visits from other figures, I saw. the scans of the woman with the sunglasses had finished, and now that cube was searching out the infrequent visitors.

Kids snuck in, going straight to the stores.

Then Kingdom Come, the bald man, and the strawberry blonde woman with the sleeve tattoo.

I glanced at Byron. Sveta was investigating the group of the people we’d seen in the penthouse apartment, Chris was looking over Kenzie’s shoulder.

“You were saying something about… you didn’t want to dwell on your problem,” I said. “You see other things as more important?”

Byron gave me a one-shouldered shrug.

“I have some experience with that,” I said. “Not me, specifically. My- my sister. She was like that. She did the introverted thing, doing stuff on her own. Dealing on her own.”

“You don’t like talking about her.”

“I-” I started, then I laughed, and the one-note laugh came out with a hitch, making it sound awkward. “I really don’t. Um- yeah. It’s easy to make that call, and then to make it again, and again, and again. I imagine you tell yourself that you can deal, like you said. You’ve dealt so far, right?”

“Right.”

“There will be bad days, Byron. Then something happens, and when you’re in a position like you are, like my sister was, it doesn’t take much to leave you unable to deal anymore. And where you could have asked for help before… you can’t after you get to that point.”

Byron nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

I looked away, and I could see that the others were listening in. No conversation between them. Whatever. It was fine.

“Just, you know, be careful,” I said. “We’re parahumans, the casualties are more numerous and grislier.”

“Yeah,” he said. “No, I get it, believe me. I have some experience with that already.”

I nodded.

My awareness of once having been a ‘casualty’ made me feel uncomfortable. I’d said my piece, and I tried to look casual as I checked the surroundings and flew off in the direction of the store with the woman withw the sunglasses.

She stood over a laptop on the desk, gripping the edge of the table as her weight rested on the heels of her hands. Straight black hair in a utilitarian cut with straight-cut bangs and her hair tied back. She wore sunglasses, a black long-sleeved shirt, jeans, and black boots. Her shirt was pulled over a bulge that had to be a gun. The image was fuzzy, but I could see the straps beneath her shirt.

That was her casual wear, as she was in this room… when? Sometime between the passage of construction and the security patrols.

Another her was by the door of the computer store. She stood there, staring down at her phone, looking like she’d settled in to stand there for a while. A different outfit. Nothing suggested she stayed here. Which made this, what? It was her office? A meeting place, with very few meetings?

The refinement process had isolated the papers that had sat untouched on the desk the longest. Because they were the least necessary, they also had the least information. Envelopes had been torn open, left beneath stacks of other things that remained blurry or indistinct, with only company names or logos in the corner to set them apart.

I noted the wires that extended off the table to the wall. There were bags under the table.

“We have our fourth target, I see,” Sveta said.

“Seems like,” I said. “I thought there was one laptop she moved around… but this is three laptops. The store was set up to have internet, power, and other things. There might have been leftover stock. She came here for the hookup.”

The others caught up with us.

“She hooked into this place’s security,” Kenzie said. “The cameras moved to watch the entrances.”

“She made this a base of operations,” I said. “Computers, supplies, internet, power, entrances watched so she could bolt if she needed to.”

“The papers aren’t readable,” Chris said.

I investigated them.

Construction company, agriculture supply, more agriculture, which might have been the same company- I couldn’t be sure. The name Mortari stood out to me.

Kenzie had her laptop tucked under one arm. She put it on the table, then typed a bit.

A pulsing pastel-purple line threaded its way through the room. The woman’s course, or the snake reduced down to a simple line.

Not an easy to follow line, but it gave us a sense of things.

“A lot of time at the door,” Byron said.

“Do you think we can do that deep scan?” Chris asked.

“Yeah,” Kenzie said.

The scan was localized into an area about four feet by two feet by two feet across. It was localized around the woman, and it took almost as long as the entire mall had. We all did our patrols, studying the images, came back, wandered off again.

From a pure curiosity standpoint, it was interesting to see the woman. People were dark inside, so Kenzie was forced to cast the image in black and white. From there, it was like seeing slices of an MRI scan or X-ray.

I’d been right about the gun, I noted.

As the image filled in from the back forward, flickering violently at points, Chris got up onto the table, bending over. I flew to get a better look.

The front of the brain. The mind’s eye.

“Corona Pollentia,” I said. “She has powers.”

“We could have guessed that,” Chris said.

“They take different forms. There aren’t hard and fast rules. But I’ve heard that if you trigger young, it takes more of a hold, with more… it’s called dimpling. Like a hand is actually pressing it down into the brain. That right there looks like dimpling.”

“Creepy, ” Kenzie said.

“You get more cloudiness in some kinds of scans where it expands out into the webbing around the brain, but we’re not getting that. It’s been way too long since I studied this,” I said. “The corona starts as a single marker, like a quarter-sized knot in wood, or a ball the size of a golf ball, pushed between the two lobes. Then when we trigger, it surges into life. It’s part of the reason we black out. It expands slightly, veins swell. But most of the time an unactivated corona is hard to tell apart from an activated one, and a surprising number of people have unactivated ones. Sometimes you look at them and the larger veins or structures suggest what the power is linked to.”

“What does this tell us?” Chris asked.

“She triggered young. It’s deeper set. People who had a corona for a long time don’t get dimpling, I’m pretty sure. Looking at the veins, where it seems to have reached out… can you rewind? Slowly go back, show us slices further back?”

“Sure,” Kenzie said.

We went further back.

“Resolution’s too blurry in parts,” I said. “Couldn’t begin to guess. But going further back…”

“Going,” Kenzie said.

There. That didn’t look right.

I searched on my phone, waited for a minute as it loaded, then held up the phone, comparing.

Veins or vein-like solid structures ran through one portion of the brain like the roots of a tree had been seeking nutrients.

“The cerebellum,” Chris said.

“Right,” I said. “You apparently know more than I do on this.”

“I’ve had to pay attention to it. If you go to a doctor and they say your pancreas almost tore itself in half, then it’s a great mnemonic for remembering the pancreas and what it’s for. Cerebellum is senses, seeing, hearing, coordination of movement.”

“That makes me think of Mama Mathers,” Sveta said.

“If thinkers had an emphasis, I think it leans more toward frontal lobe. This could be a perception power, I guess.”

“I think we’re pretty far into the weeds,” Byron said.

“Yeah,” I said. I still considered for a moment longer. “What if she’s a master, and that’s… whatever control system she needs to manage her minions? See, hear, coordinate?”

“Could be,” Chris said. “Okay, I didn’t want to say it, because it was my idea-”

“Good idea,” Byron said.

“-Yeah. But it took forever, and I’m bored, I gotta piss, and I’m hungry,” Chris said. He walked over the top of the table, stepping through things that weren’t really there.

“We can wrap up soon,” I said. “The trails- the image of her standing at the door. Is it possible to find the time she was waiting and see if anyone was there around that time?”

“Um. This is awkward,” Kenzie said.

“Awkward how?” I asked.

“So, as you know, I work primarily with space. I can’t really know if any images are related in proximity in time because I didn’t gather any of that data.”

“You made a camera that can look through time,” Chris was incredulous. “How did you not implement timestamps?”

“I bulk collected!”

“It’s fine,” I said. “No stress.”

“It’s a little stressful when he’s giving me a hard time,” Kenzie said.

“Hypothetically speaking, is it possible to narrow down times of day? Cut out every image that came up between two past midnight and four in the afternoon?”

“No.”

“Or… days? Limiting things to just the day before the attack?”

“Maybe, but there might not be many good images.”

“We could simplify,” Byron said. “The lines. She was waiting here a lot. There’s a scribbly sort of collection of lines here.”

We stepped away from the image of the woman. Chris jumped down from the table he was standing on.

“And the only other line that’s really clustered here…”

“Leon the security guard,” Chris said.

“Whose name,” Kenzie observed, before running over a few feet to where an image of Leon was stuffing a bag into the trash. “Was… Durbin, according to the nametag.”

⊙

Taz Durbin fidgeted.

He was outnumbered. A nineteen year old guy with a very dense growth of facial hair that had been short and the edges cut in exacting straight lines, creating an effect where it looked like it was fake. The hair around his temples and hairline was overly meticulous in the same way. He sat alone and he looked tired as hell. He worked nights, and this was firmly in the later hours of his sleep schedule. The cops had already questioned him, adding to how frazzled he was.

Sveta, Capricorn, and I were there, facing him down, with Chris and Looksee sitting by a table in the corner, sitting with Natalie. Capricorn was in goat-mode. Tristan.

Two of Foresight’s members were also present. Effervescent was the cape with the unreliable emotion read who had helped scupper my interview for the team. Anelace was the dashing rogue who had tried to be nice about things.

The group was rounded out with three officers. Two stood in the corner by the door. The third was behind Durbin, an older guy who stood near the kids and Natalie.

“You met the woman who was using the shopping center for a base of operations,” Capricorn said. “You knew she was there.”

“It was an office, I thought,” Durbin said. “I didn’t think it was doing any harm. She brought gas for the generator, she didn’t leave any mess.”

“She had access to security,” Capricorn said.

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“You didn’t notice the cameras moved? There was no part in your patrol where you’d go to the security office, look at the monitors, and realize they weren’t pointed where they should be?”

The guy looked so scared. “I did my job.”

“Answer the question,” an officer said.

“She paid me to look the other way. I looked the other way. I already admitted this.”

“She was one of the terrorists who blew up the Norwalk portal,” Anelace cut in.

It wasn’t the first time he’d heard that, but the fear intensified as it was hammered in. I’d seen that expression so many times when I’d used my power, something with presence and magnitude taking hold of everything from heart to muscle to the dilation of the eyes.

I wouldn’t have gone straight for that. From the glance Capricorn shot me, he wouldn’t have either.

Still. Connections mattered. Information was currency, and we’d decided it was essential to buy cooperation. Bringing Foresight in would help more in the long run. I hoped.

“Taz,” I said. “You weren’t sympathetic with them, were you? You weren’t happy about this portal thing?”

“No! God no!”

“Then help us. Anything you can tell us about her,” Capricorn said.

“I don’t- I really don’t know. Jesus, I can’t think.”

“Can I talk to you guys outside?” Effervescent asked the cops. After a nod, she led them to the door.

Though Durbin turned to look at the reflective glass, aware that there were even more eyes on him, of a number he couldn’t know, the people leaving the interrogation room served to lower the pressure.

I chose to back off, myself. Anelace and Capricorn could take point. I stepped off to the side. If needed, I’d try to play nice.

“Did she give you a name?” Capricorn asked.

Durbin shook his head.

“How did she approach you?” Anelace asked.

“She caught me on my way through the door by the elevators,” Durbin said. “Other entrances are boarded up. She asked if there was a place she could set up, and I thought she meant the offices above. I told her about having to talk to people upstairs, I didn’t know anything, you know. She clarified, she wanted to be more discreet, do something less expensive than buying office space. Said it was to get her company up and running.”

“And she raised the subject of the gas?”

“That was after. The power shuts off after a certain time. I do my patrol with my flashlight. After a few times when she lost her work, she said she’d bring in gas for the emergency generator, she knew people. I thought it was great for both of us.”

“She offered you cash at first, then.”

Durbin nodded. “Yeah. Not a lot. Not worth this. I bought myself sneakers with the money, after a few weeks. It’s hard to get good shoes these days.”

“A few weeks? How long total?” Capricorn asked.

“Since… June, I guess. It was hot out when I first saw her, and it was late. I remember thinking about the fact that she was wearing black on such a warm evening.”

“Were you aware she was a parahuman?” Anelace asked.

“No, no idea. Who is she?”

Anelace didn’t answer, instead glancing at Capricorn and I.

I wasn’t sure I was a fan of how he kept giving up information on how much we knew, but I wasn’t about to stop him or ask him to leave. Durbin wasn’t a mastermind. He wasn’t going to break or stop being able to testify. It was more a question of getting him to realize and parse just how much he knew.

“What did you talk about?” Capricorn asked.

“Weather, stuff I’d seen on television, recent events. She’d wait for me, hand me my cash, we’d say one or two things. Sometimes she’d ask when my relief was coming because she was planning on staying late.”

“You seem awfully cool with this arrangement,” Anelace said. “Nameless woman, random approach, gas from nowhere?”

“I was happy to have my lights on while I did my route, a bit of pocket money,” Durbin said. “I thought it was a good thing, being able to see things and make sure nobody was hiding in the shadows, spot any vandalism, which there wasn’t much.”

“It kind of defeats the purpose of having security if the security lets people into the building, doesn’t it?” Anelace asked.

Taz Durbin looked miserable. He nodded.

“She didn’t tell you her name, she didn’t tell you where she was from, or anything about the business? Was there any kind of marking on the can or barrel she used for the gas?” Capricorn asked.

“Barrel. No. No mark that I saw. I think it was the same barrel every time.”

“What color was the barrel?” Anelace asked.

“Uh. No idea. It was dark, and… light green? Or gray?”

Witness testimony was bad when it came to things like that.

“You never met her friends?” Capricorn asked. When Durbin shook his head, Capricorn pressed, “You never saw anyone go in with her, or go in to see her?”

“No.”

“Did you ever see her with her sunglasses off?” I asked.

Durbin looked startled at the question. He shook his head. “No. She said she had a vision problem. Is that useful?”

“Maybe. Could have been a lie. Some physical mutations might be hidden with sunglasses.”

“Could be,” Sveta said.

“Holy,” Durbin said. “Holy. I didn’t think she was dangerous.”

“Focus, okay?” Capricorn told the shell-shocked guy. “Were there any moments you had doubts? Anything peculiar that put you off?”

“She did her thing, I did mine,” Durbin said. “We talked for a minute a night, or not even. I didn’t want to interrupt her too much. She really did that with the portal?”

“She was in contact with two other groups,” Looksee said. Durbin had to twist around in the chair that was bolted to the ground in order to see her. “I think she was coordinating three of the attacks.”

“Oh,” Durbin said. Color leeched from his face. “Yeah, that’s… God.”

Capricorn tapped the table, and Durbin’s head whipped around like Capricorn had slammed his hand down.

Capricorn’s voice was gentle. “Focus. You talked for a minute every night, right? There could be clues in that.”

“We talked about weather,” Durbin said.

“Any mention of travel?” Capricorn asked. “Having to drive in the rain?”

Durbin shook his head. “Was, like, aw, the weather’s getting cooler. Nothing big.”

“What else, then? What did you talk about?”

“TV.”

“What shows?” Capricorn pressed, insistent.

“Uh. Shit, I don’t think she talked about much. I mostly blathered. I’d recommend stuff, she’d say she would get to it when she wasn’t so busy with getting her business started.”

“What shows did you talk to her about?” Capricorn asked.

“Is this so important?” Anelace asked.

“What shows?” Capricorn asked, more firmly.

The competitive streak might have been coming out. He very naturally took the lead in this questioning, when we had invited Foresight to the table.

On a level, I couldn’t blame him. I had issues with Anelace’s approach to the interrogation. With Capricorn, there seemed to be a thrust to it. He had something in mind.

“TVA, it’s Earth Aleph stuff. I’d complain because they don’t always have all the episodes at the station, and it’s not like we can get more. Sometimes I’d watch a show and it would skip episodes, and it got really confusing with this one modern supernatural show, because it actually skipped an episode on purpose, because of time magic-”

“Focus.”

“Um. Yeah. Some trashy television. Reality stuff, I tried to pitch it to her but she seemed repulsed.”

“That’s good. That’s the sort of small detail that might be useful,” Capricorn said.

Taz nodded, seemingly eager to be giving us anything that might help. “Uh, I’d bring up sports, when there was a match. Parahuman brawling- she wasn’t a fan.”

“Repulsed again?” I asked.

“Nah. Just not a fan. I brought up basketball a lot. The high school teams have a league this year, with a lot of the athletic students focusing on sports during their half-days. She said she missed watching.”

“Which means she had some interest. Who did she root for?” Capricorn asked.

“Oh, huh. The Heralds.”

“She liked them?”

“She really liked them,” Durbin said.

“That’s not Earth Gimel,” Anelace said. “That’d be the school in Wailings, Earth N.”

“Lord of Loss’s territory,” I said.

“You don’t think he’s responsible, do you?” Anelace asked.

I shook my head. “No idea. But it says something if they’re maybe coming from a place that’s not a part of the megalopolis and they attacked it in the way they did. It also explains why they set up shop here.”

“They’re not connected to us,” Anelace said. “For internet, information, cell… they had to come here.”

“It’s thin,” Capricorn said. “It’s a place to look, though.”

“Durbin,” I said. When he didn’t snap his attention to me, I said, “Taz.”

“Yeah?”

“When she paid you. What did she give you?”

“Forty a night. Twenty if she brought gas.”

“No, I mean what type of currency?”

“New Dollars,” Durbin said. “In my pocket. I still have some, it’s hard to exchange.”

I remained where I was and let Anelace be the one to fish in Durbin’s pocket, drawing out the wallet. He opened it up and fished out a bill. “Tracking number might help us trace it back.”

“Ooh,” Looksee said. “Wait, hold it flat.”

She approached the table. Anelace held the bill flat, and Looksee took a picture of it.

“Fingerprints,” she said.

“I wasn’t happy about it being New Dollars,” Durbin volunteered. “She was nice about giving me more when the value dropped.”

Anelace nodded, looking at me. Unconventional currency for the unconventional settlement of Wailings. The Trading Dollar was the dominant currency across the Megalopolis. Other currencies were tied to natural resources, to other Earth currencies, but they had their issues. The New Dollar had its issues, but it was still used in places, on the fringes.

The hypothesis is getting less thin, now.

There was a knock on the window. We’d asked for a turn at questioning, in exchange for giving them this info. It seemed our time was up.

We filed out, and the room that had been a dozen people facing down Durbin became just a room with only a miserable, tired Durbin sitting in his metal chair, elbows on the metal table.

The door shut, and the cop locked it.

Others were already out in the hallway. Effervescent stepped out of the room with the one-way window.

“Effy?” Anelace asked.

“He’s telling the truth. He has a drug habit he hasn’t mentioned, but it’s minor. He was scared of her. No indication powers screwed with his head or mind.”

“If she is a master, it’s not necessarily that?” I asked. “Could it be subtle? You had a hard time getting a read on me.”

‘Effy’ looked annoyed at that. “I don’t think it’s subtle. I don’t think there are any blocks or scrambles, either.”

“It was a very mundane infiltration, then,” Anelace said.

“It would be interesting to know if he was being watched,” I said. “If I were them, I wouldn’t let something I saw as critical be reliant on one stranger’s conscience.”

“I can check stuff,” Looksee said.

“Don’t overwork,” I said.

“I won’t. This is easy and fun.”

I glanced at Natalie, who was silent, and then at the oldest cop in the room.

“This is good to know,” he said.

“I know we’ve been reeling,” I said. “Stuff’s… all over the place, with the Wardens gone and key people gone, missing, or being moved around. We could have gone this alone, but we decided it’s key to share information. The greatest strength the good guys have is that we work together.”

“What do you want?” the cop asked.

“The people who were arrested when we stopped some from getting the portals. Interrogation logs, information, anything that could point us in the right direction. Whatever we get, we’ll share with you. Whatever you have… give us access.”

“I’ll talk to people, see about cutting away the red tape.”

“Same with us?” Anelace asked.

“And the other teams,” Capricorn said.

“There’s really only one other,” Anelace said. “Advance Guard’s having trouble bouncing back. They got hurt badly by the injuries and loss of infrastructure.”

“Maybe a mission will help,” Capricorn said.

“Maybe,” Anelace conceded.

“Can you ask around, see if anyone has a good enough relationship with Lord of Loss to open communication?” Capricorn asked. “Don’t tip him off, but ask if some heroes could visit Wailings?”

“I’ll ask, see if anyone knows. You should know that a lot of the Hollow Point guys that didn’t get offed fell back to the border territories.”

“We’ll be careful,” Capricorn said.

A younger officer approached, a stack of print-outs in his arms the size of a phone book. Capricorn took half. Chris and Sveta each took the remainder. Our files.

There was a brief exchange of numbers and cards. We shook hands with the cops, and then we shook hands with Anelace.

He held my hand a touch longer than was necessary, looking me in the eyes, and said, “This was good.”

“I’m glad,” I said.

He freed my hand. The groups split up, with Durbin left in the care of the police.

“The G-N portal was one of the data points,” Looksee said. “Calls made to and from that area.”

“There’s no cell signal from the other side,” Capricorn said.

“They come through and make calls as soon as they have signals,” Looksee said. “Give me a bit of time to get the wheels spinning and I can start on facial recognition, license plates, and start checking on people around there. It’s even close-ish to my place.”

“After you get permission from the authorities for that kind of surveillance, you mean,” Natalie said.

“Of course,” Looksee said.

The last time I’d faced Lord of Loss, we’d fought Brute to Breaker. It hadn’t been pretty, but… he’d played by the rules.

The people he seemed to be hosting in his territory were very much not playing by those rules. There was a chance that he knew, which meant another Earth, however small a set of settlements, that was aligned against Gimel.

A chance he didn’t know. Which would mean Earth N faced the same kind of subversive attack that we’d weathered in Gimel.

I mentally revised my schedule, trying to keep key duties and events straight in my head. Visit the orphanage where Chris was staying, and make sure all was well. Make time for Sveta. Make time for Crystal, and get her something nice. Call Rain and Ashley, and catch them up, see if they had input. Move. Ugh. Have dinner with Kenzie’s family. Have a conversation with the Villain Warlord of Earth N, potentially with the fate of whole Earths on the line.

Torch – 7.7

I flew down and at an angle, to try to break away, and I felt the near-miss, a rush of air that made my hood flap and my hair fly out in disarray.

That rush was cause for me to change direction. Evasive maneuvers.

Driving required an expanded awareness of the world. It was a mode that I presumed could be switched on, and it was a mode that I’d never really mastered. I’d read that the reason cell phones were so bad for driving was that they pulled the driver out of that mode, into the five by three inch world of the glowing screen.

Flying was another mode-shift, especially when it came to aerial encounters. To be aware of the above, the below, left, right, forward, back. Flying typically saw a person flying with their body parallel to the ground, because the ground was worth paying attention to, and because the shape of a human body meant either the ground or sky were faced. To fly facing forward with the body upright meant flying against the air resistance.

I was too slow to flip over and look up. I felt contact on my back, pressing against the bag I wore. My breastplate was in two pieces in the bag, and I felt one piece slide against the other, catching me in one shoulderblade.

Then the pressure, the steady push downward. If I were a plane, it would have been forcing me into a nosedive.

I flipped around, grabbed Crystal’s ankle, and used the rotation of my body with a yank of my arm to fling her off. She created a forcefield to ‘land’ on, her back, hands and feet pressing against it, then launched herself at me, breaking the field in the process of the launch.

Experience told me that she’d go for something she could grab, and I hauled my knees in toward my chest to pull my ankles out of the way of her grip. She passed close behind me, while I somersaulted once in the air.

The weight of my bag meant I had to be careful about getting back to a proper flying posture.

“You’re playing rough today,” I called out.

“I’ve always had to play rough to make a dent,” she said. “Did that change somehow?”

“Somehow,” I said. “Catch my bag?”

She held out her hands. I let my bag slide down my arm and caught the strap, then slung it at her. She caught it.

“Oof. That’s heavy. Somehow? Bullet in the arm somehow?”

I tried to use my fingers to get my hair sorted out, but it was caught in clothing and tangled around my costume top, hood, and neck.

No, Crystal, not bullet in the arm somehow.

“Yeah,” was all I said. I flipped upside down, using gravity to help get my hair to a better position, leaving me to just pluck at it where it had looped around things and let it fall ‘up’.

“Remember when my mom would make us do the flying in formation thing? You, me, Eric, sometimes her?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that was my mom’s idea.”

“Really? Damn it, Aunt Carol.”

“It made flying so boring,” I said. “Maintain course, fly in parallel, people on the ground might be taking pictures.”

“We had to match speed to Eric, and he was the slowest. Flying can be so boring even when you don’t have to do that stuff.”

I didn’t feel that way at all. I’d had issues with flying before, when a panicky feeling would start to set in and the nearest real thing was four hundred feet below me, but flying was totally amazing.

I flipped back around the other way, my hand up at my hair to help guide it. Crystal was flying in a lazy circle around me while I floated in place. “Having to fly to match Eric was worse for you than it was for me.”

“Little brothers are a pain,” she said. She smiled, but it was a little melancholy.

“I meant because you’re fast.”

“But you can do that, see? You just did this thing, you can turn upside-down and right-side up without getting dizzy.”

“I get dizzy.”

“But you can do that,” she said. “I have to be careful about any serious flipping, or I’ll be green around the gills for five minutes.”

“I’ll remember that for next time,” I teased.

“Ha ha. Don’t, or I’ll hurl and I’ll ruin someone’s day down there on the ground.”

“Over water then.”

“Or never.”

“Never? Come on, you stepped on me.”

“Surfed! I used you as a surfboard.”

“Yeah, that’s so much better.”

“It kind of is. Besides, no dirt on these feet.”

I fixed my hair and adjusted my outfit. It was my costume, minus the metal bits, which wound up being somewhat dark, but the white trim, my belt, and the bag helped to break it up.

I reached for my bag, and she handed it over.

“Thank you.”

“You mentioned you didn’t have long before we had to go in separate directions,” Crystal said.

I pulled out my phone. The map was the first thing that came up.

“I overshot,” I said. “I have to fly back the way we came.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help with the move.”

I shook my head. “Duties. I get it. I don’t have much anyway, and I can call dad.”

“It might be a little while before we cross paths. Stuff’s going on.”

“I know.”

“I wish I could tell you more.”

“I know.”

“If you changed your mind and wanted to stay, you’d have my place all to yourself.”

“It’s your place,” I said. “It’s you. I need a place for me. I need to do something for me.”

“That sounds good,” she said.

“Though it is technically someone else’s place.”

“Take care of yourself until I get back,” she said. She flew a quarter-circle around me, as if flitting around and fretting were the same thing. “I worry.”

“I worry about you,” I said. “This classified mission to places unmentioned.”

“It’s not classified, I’m just… not supposed to talk about it. Because of orders.”

“It’s classified.”

“They haven’t used that word.”

“Be safe,” I said.

“I’ll try.”

She gave me a hug, coming in from the side so as not to jostle or bump the sling.

We parted, and I flew backward, watching as she flew away, until she was just a speck in the distance.

I put my phone away. Now that I wasn’t being bullied mid-flight by my big cousin, I was free to keep an eye on where I was going. The portal slashing through Norfair was one thing – I termed it a ‘slash’ because it was thinner than some of the others. There were more clouds in the sky on the far side. I flew over it, giving it a wide berth to be safe.

Past the portal, the endless sea of city was harder to navigate. I looked for landmarks. The financial buildings with the shopping center we’d been in yesterday was a new one for me. Kenzie’s area was a bit to the north of it. Norwalk.

I kept an eye out for and found the Norfair community center. I knew the location, and the yellow tarps that were still around the damaged portions of the building were very visible from the air, especially given its relative proximity to the water. It had been one thing I’d kept an eye on on my prior flights across the Megalopolis.

The Norfair community center was the middle ground between Norwalk and Fairfield. Play structures of painted wood and bars were a good clue I was in the right place. The building from above resembled what I’d seen with a check online.

I landed a few blocks away and walked the rest of the way.

Kids were out and playing, many wearing hooded sweatshirts or jackets. A handful of adults were out, spread out to see more of the play area.

I approached the fence. Kids saw me, and an adult took notice. An older woman, with gray hair and clothes of the super comfortable, easy sort that fit a barely mobile ninety year old, rather than what I presumed was a seventy year old.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m here about Chris Elman.”

She pointed, “Talk to her. She knows him.”

I walked along the fence until I reached a woman who was handling some of the five to eleven year olds at the edge of the sandbox. They looked like a pretty vicious bunch.

She was of Middle-eastern descent, with makeup I might have deemed ‘evening’ makeup for going to a club if I’d worn it – very distinct eyeliner, eyeshadow, and bold lipstick that would have stood out in dim lighting. She made it work. Her clothes were nice- a red dress with a leaf pattern at the hem, on the folded collar with the decorative edge, and her sleeves.

At a glance, she seemed to be the youngest adult in the yard.

“Yes?” she asked. However young she was, by the stern tone alone I could imagine she was the one I would have wanted to cross least if I were ten years younger.

“I’m looking for a kid I volunteer with. Chris Elman?”

Her expression changed. She pointed at one of the kids. “Skye, don’t be a brat. Play on your own for a bit.”

That order given, she approached the chain-link fence.

“Chris Elman?”

“He lives here, right?”

“You don’t sound sure.” She was roughly my age and it was the kind of voice that made me think ‘mama bear’.

“He’s… kind of the kind of kid who doesn’t leave you feeling very sure about anything,” I said.

She paused, then smiled. “Yes. He is.”

“I tried to call him, but there wasn’t a response. I know some of the cell towers have been down, so I thought I’d check in.”

“We’ve had outages. Not as bad as some areas. That could be it, but you could have waited and tried again, instead of coming from…?”

“Bridgeport, for now. I kind of wanted to-” I hesitated. “-make sure everything was okay.”

“It’s hard to say anything that wouldn’t be construed as a breach of his trust,” she said. “I’m one of the few adults he seems to be willing to tolerate.”

Maybe because you’re pretty, I thought. Then I thought again. Chris seemed like the type to prefer a hard-nosed adult he could predict and rely on over the friendly sort. Maybe it was both. “It’s a sensitive boundary, apparently. I don’t want either of us to cross it. Also, behind you.”

One of the girls was holding a boy down and spitting repeatedly in his face. Both kids seemed to be seven or so.

“Skye!” the woman barked the word, and the kids froze, eyes going wide, with only the culprit ignoring the order, continuing to spit. She strode over, hauled the little girl off, and pulled her away by one arm. The little girl fought as well as she was able, not giving an inch.

All fight. This stern teacher didn’t slow her down or make her hesitate a second. The yard monitor wrapped the child’s own arms around the child’s stomach, forming an ‘x’, like a straightjacket without the jacket, and knelt, hugging her to secure her in that position. The kid kicked and threw her weight around.

I had instincts that made me want to hop over the fence and help. Still, outing myself as a cape at Chris’ home would do more harm than any good I could do here.

“Sorry,” the woman said.

“Not a problem,” I said.

Skye shrieked.

The little girl gradually stopped kicking, as she didn’t get much of a response. I waited.

“I can send somebody to get Chris, if you like. He should be in his room, if he didn’t go for a walk.”

“Chris?” Skye asked.

“Yes,” the woman said. “Why don’t you go, Skye? You’ll burn off some energy if you run.”

Skye looked between us. “I don’t want to.”

“Well, you have to, now. Spitting isn’t allowed, this can be your time out. You know where his room is?”

“Everyone knows,” the girl said. She was still breathing hard from the struggle.

“Great. Katie? Go with Skye. Hold her hand tight. Tell Chris his friend is here.”

One of the older girls approached, an eleven-year old. Skye was released from the hold, and, after hesitating, took Katie’s hand.

“Scoot!” the yard monitor said, and she might as well have cracked a whip, because the kids picked up the pace.

I watched them go into the building. The yard monitor wiped away most of the dirt that the kneeling and kicking had deposited onto her knees and upper shins.

“They’ll be a minute. He’s on the top floor and he’s probably in bed.”

“Got it,” I said. “I’m Victoria, by the way.”

“Val. We can talk until he arrives.”

“Sure,” I said. I frowned slightly as I tried to think of how to phrase it.

“Worries, questions, or warnings?” she asked.

“Well, it’s telling that the kids are scared of him, and of the three possible topics you just mentioned, worries were one and warnings were another.”

Val smiled. “He’s unique.”

“That’s- yeah. He’s okay? He’s managing?”

“I only know what I see when he’s here, and he’s mostly here to sleep. He spends some of his time, ahem, volunteering,” Val said. Her sharply penciled eyebrow went up.

So she knew about the cape stuff.

I nodded.

“A lot of time is spent on ‘walks’,” she added.

“You’ve brought that up twice. The walks.”

“We talk about it, among the staff. It’s been more of an issue lately, and it’s on my mind. We would call his therapist, but-”

I saw her expression change.

I shook my head.

She nodded. The fence bent slightly with her weight as she leaned back against it, her back to me while she watched the children.

“I liked her,” Val said.

“She was terrific. I’m kind of holding out hope, but it’s a horrible mess either way,” I replied. My voice was a bit hollow as I tried to keep from letting any emotion into it. “I dunno. Why is it a big deal?”

“He turned up last night at two-thirty in the morning. That was the latest he’s ever come in. We took away privileges, but if we take away one thing he finds other things to do. We’re divided on whether to be stricter about curfew or to let him be. I’m one of the only people who gets along with him in some form, which means they keep asking me for my input. I never know what to say.”

“That’s a tough spot to be in.”

“Was he volunteering?”

“I don’t want to say anything he wouldn’t want me to say,” I said.

“Okay. Fair. I didn’t get the impression he was volunteering. Should we stop the walks? Let me know if you’re not comfortable saying.”

I wondered if he was going out to change. “Given his situation, he might need it. It’s hard to say- it would depend on how he’s doing here.”

Her head turned, and she looked at me with one eye. “How do you think he’s doing?”

“The kids are scared of him, apparently.”

“He’s odd. He celebrates being odd.”

It seemed like a tepid response, a half-answer. “Is that it? Or is there more?”

“A number of the other teachers and the admin are scared of him,” she admitted. “I am, sometimes.”

“Why?”

“Because when you see him with any regularity, you notice changes day to day. He’s had two roommates, and one asked to be moved to another room. The second was made of sterner stuff, but he gave up after sharing a room with Chris over the late winter and spring.”

“Chris can be tough to get along with,” I said.

“He was scared,” Val said. “He wasn’t and isn’t comfortable being in the same room as Chris. He’s been uneasy even when Chris wasn’t present and it has been that way for two months.”

“And now he’s in a room with two beds and no roommate?”

“We’ve had lengthy debates about that too. We decided it was best to leave him be and let him have his room, at least for now.”

“Makes sense.”

We watched the kids playing for a little bit. Things were calmer with the spitter on her errand. The boy had wiped his face and was now carrying on making a dirt pile like nothing had happened.

“There was something else. We had a theft issue,” Val said.

“With Chris?”

“If this was explicitly Chris, I wouldn’t be comfortable telling you,” she said. “We had several thefts. Chris was cleared of wrongdoing for the biggest one. Some of the children said they had seen him out for a walk at the time it happened. Chris’ former roommate was one of them.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m not sure I follow, then. He was under suspicion?”

“He was the first many of us thought of. Some-” she said, and she paused. She met my eyes and continued talking at a lower volume, “-feel that he is clever enough to get away with it, and they don’t want to clear him of suspicion so easily.”

“A theft of what?” I asked.

“Things from the nurse’s office.”

I winced.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about that, knowing what little I did about Chris. If it were anything else, I could feel upset about it, but if it was stuff he was trying to keep on hand for his own benefit…

Damn it, Chris.

“Mm hmm,” Val made a noise, as if my silence had confirmed something. “He leaves you unsure about things.”

Not unsure in the way she might have been picturing. I was pretty sure he was the culprit. When it came to blaming him, though… yeah, unsure was a good word.

“You mentioned that you get along with him,” I said.

“As much as anyone does, which isn’t a lot.”

“Some others actually get along with him in a normal-ish way, I think,” I said. Rain, specifically. Tristan and Byron, in a way. Ashley, in a way. Kenzie, in a love-hate, reaching kind of way. I hadn’t known him to connect with Sveta.

“Do you?” she asked.

I hesitated, then said, “No.”

“I wish I could give you advice,” she said. “I don’t think I can without betraying his trust. There are some things I’ve picked up on that I’ve only ever mentioned to his therapist.”

“No need,” I said. “I’m trying to find my footing and figure out where things stand before I push or do anything substantial. Not just with Chris. This has already been pretty helpful, I think.”

“We have three hundred children here, with some in a partial or daycare-like capacity. I don’t see him much, I don’t want you to get me wrong. He’s only here to sleep, play games or get things. Others take up our attention.”

“It’s understandable. It sounds like you’re doing the best you can. The roommate thing is a bit of a worry, though.”

“Yes.”

“And this theft he was cleared of.”

“Yes,” she said. “With three hundred children here, I have seen a number of types. Angry children-”

“Skye,” I said.

“The desperate, the scared,” she said. “I can’t give him a type. He’s uncanny. I wish you could solve this riddle for me.”

Uncanny was a really good word, capturing what I’d noticed about Chris when I’d first seen him in Yamada’s group therapy session. Uncanny in every way.

“I wish I could solve this riddle for me,” I said. “But when it comes to the volunteer work, he’s helping. He’s doing good. That’s something, isn’t it?”

She gave me a curious look. “Yeah. Can I pass that along to the staff?”

“Yeah.”

The front door of the building slammed. Chris stood just beyond the doors, looking for me, finally spotting me.

Oh, he looked pissed.

“I don’t know if it helps with the riddle,” she said. “But out of all the desperate, and all of the scared, I’ve never had a kid who was so desperate for something, where I couldn’t figure out what they really wanted.”

“I might have ideas,” I said.

“It’s not the obvious answer. It’s not his health. That’s the weirder thing.”

I shifted my stance, leaning against the fence, in my best attempt to get a good look at her face.

Chris was stalking toward us, his bag in his hand. Other kids stared.

“I’ve never had a child to look after who had so many reasons to be scared, who wasn’t.”

“You don’t think he’s scared?” I murmured.

“I used to. It was camouflaged desperation I saw.”

The talk of feelings and emotions and the tie-in to Chris as a cape made me wonder what that form would look like. Camouflaged desperation.

Nothing camouflaged at the moment. Chris marched his way toward us. He had to dodge around two playing kids who got in his way. Other kids got out of his way, seemingly by dint of his reputation alone.

“He really is doing good?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “In his grouchy, surly way.”

Chris caught up to us. He huffed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“You didn’t answer your phone.”

“My battery died. Email is a thing.”

“Internet dropped for this area,” I said.

“You came without being invited. Not fucking okay!”

“Language,” Val said. “Keep it clean with the littles around.”

“I hate that word. Littles.”

“I won’t use it if you stop being bad.”

“You say that like I’m a dog and I crapped in the house. ‘Bad’. I’m trying to explain why this isn’t cool. It’s about respect and boundaries.”

“I’m trying to respect your boundaries,” I said.

“You came here. From another area entirely. Without telling me first.”

“No phone, no internet. There is, as far as I know, no telegraph or established way of transmitting smoke signals,” I said.

“You wanted an excuse to snoop,” he said, “Because you can talk about relationship pillars and trust and respect and caring and boning-”

“Chris,” Val said.

“Or whatever, and you don’t live up to your own freaking hype, Vic! You want me to show respect and you show me none if you freaking surprise me like this.”

“Something came up. I came to let you know.”

“Don’t lie to me!” he said. If he were any angrier, he might have a vein standing out on his forehead. “You wanted to snoop! You quizzed Val! You came to my place and you poked your nose in where it doesn’t belong!”

There were times he seemed so adult, and there were times he seemed so young. This was the latter.

“Victoria told me you were doing a good job with volunteering-”

“Why tell Val anything!?” Chris asked, voice raised. “It’s none of your business.”

“She also,” Val said, staying calm, her voice quieter, “Said your breaking curfew shouldn’t be a big deal. I can tell the other teachers that.”

“I don’t give a shit! She shouldn’t say anything and you shouldn’t have brought it up!”

“Language,” Val said. “Break the rules and I’ll go into your room and take the save cards for your consoles. If you really push it I won’t give them back.”

“I need those.”

“I need you to calm down and be a good example for the little ones.”

I saw as Chris worked to suppress the anger. Seemingly only now becoming aware that the other kids existed, he looked around before identifying one. “You.”

“That’s Sam, Chris. His room is two doors from yours.”

“Whatever. How long were they talking before I got here?”

“Um,” a boy of about twelve gave the answer. Sam. “A while?”

“A while,” Chris said, locking eyes with me. “Yeah, that’s great.”

“Everyone’s getting together this afternoon,” I said. “If we waited for the internet to come back or for you to turn your phone on, you might have missed it. If you don’t like it, keep your phone charged.”

“Okay. I’m going out, Val,” Chris said. He stormed past her and toward the gates. “Don’t go in my room.”

“You don’t get to set rules, Chris,” Val said.

“Don’t,” he said, giving her the evil eye. “I’ll do my own laundry for now.”

Then he walked away. It seemed like he expected me to have to follow.

“It was nice talking to you, Victoria,” Val said. “Maybe we could meet for a friendly coffee sometime.”

Chis wheeled around, ready to jump right into the fray with more incensed words.

Val put her hands up in mock surrender.

It didn’t necessarily help me, but I could almost see why she’d done that. The push, the pull, letting Chris know she could fight back.

I matched Chris’ pace, which wasn’t hard. His legs were shorter than mine.

The area was a little spartan, the buildings either the quickly put together sort, of the type that had been most common just after Gold Morning, or the big brick edifices with zero personality.

“What did you talk about?”

“General things. She hinted that she knows about the cape stuff.”

“Yeah, all the staff do. It’s a pain.”

“She needed help telling what was you being a troublemaker and what was you being a cape. I honestly wasn’t sure. I said I figured it was more the second one.”

“It’s not your job and it’s not your place,” he said. “You don’t need to check on me.”

“I need to check up on everyone, at least a little,” I said. “I was too slow with Rain and Ashley. I worry about you, I’m concerned about Sveta, Byron’s going through a tough time, and Kenzie-”

“You’re skipping Tristan?”

“I’m trying not to skip anyone,” I said.

“You need to focus on people other than me. Figure out your priorities. I’m stable. I’m dealing with my shit myself, I haven’t asked for help, and I’m doing my share. Compare that to Kenzie, the living personification of a cry for help, in so many ways.”

“I’m having dinner with Kenzie’s family tonight, her place isn’t far from the G-N portal.”

Chris snorted.

“What?”

“Good luck,” he said. “Have fun. Come back from that and tell me again how I’m a priority on your watch list.”

“That is not what I said,” I told him. “I’m trying to keep an eye out for everyone, because that’s what Jessica would have wanted.”

“Yeah, well, what I want is for people to leave me the fuck be. I’m sticking to the rules-”

“Mostly,” I said.

I could see his expression change, his shoulders rising like steam was building up inside him and it was all he could do to keep it contained.

“Chris,” I said. “I didn’t go beyond the gates. Neither she nor I shared anything that you would have wanted kept in confidence.”

“I want everything kept in confidence,” he said. Steam still building.

“It doesn’t work that way. I’ve heard from multiple people now that people are scared of you and you’re bending rules. That warrants someone asking a few mild questions to figure out if everything’s handled.”

“You literally make people afraid of you with your power,” Chris’s words could only be described as a resentful growl. “Does that warrant someone asking some questions or making sure you’re handled?”

“That’s different.”

“Or did your sister handle you when she tightened-”

I grabbed him by the shoulder, hard, stopping him from walking.

“-the screws?” he finished, locking his eyes to mine.

Cold anger, resentment. A twist of something that might have been triumph in his eyes.

“You don’t go there,” I whispered.

“You don’t come here!” he said, and a fleck of spit left his mouth as he shouted, to land somewhere on my top. “I have to fucking balance everything. I lose my heart or I lose my body. I’ve gone to the fucking bathroom in the morning and there was blood and meat in the bowl when I was done, and there’s two people I can trust to handle the clog or leave me alone so I can handle it. She was one of them. You can’t fuck with that!”

“I didn’t!”

“You did! You said stuff and you might have changed her mind about stuff and I can’t know how to balance it if I don’t know what was said! She changes my sheets when there’s fluids on the bed that aren’t blood, semen, piss or shit, no questions asked, because Jessica said it’s under control. Now Jessica isn’t here and you’re putting ideas in her head and she might change her mind about things!”

“What the hell is going on, Chris, that you’re dealing with stuff like that? Powers don’t usually tear you up like that.”

I saw a flicker of something in his expression, between the outrage and the reckless madness I’d seen as he talked about fluids and Jessica.

Not his powers?

“None of your business!”

“Is it not your powers?” I asked. “Someone else’s? Someone did this to you?”

“None of your business and fuck you!”

“Have you shared about this with the others?”

“No! Of course not! Because I don’t fucking want any fucking people fucking with me!”

“Chris,” I said. “We can’t help you if you don’t share. I know power stuff, I studied it, I saw a lot of it at the Asylum.”

“Read my lips,” he said, panting as he said it. Now he had the vein in his forehead. “I. Don’t. Want. Help. Not from you. I want to be left alone and I’m willing to do the hero thing because it works for me. I’m fine.”

I’m fine, he said.

He stared me down and there was no waver in his eyes, no sign of anything in his face or posture besides repressed outrage.

No fear.

“Are you fine because you’re striking that balance, emotionally?” I asked. “With the forms?”

“If I want help,” he said. “If my body starts going screwy and there’s no way to salvage it, I’ll go down to the seven-seven building, near where the Wardens headquarters used to be.”

I shook my head. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s housing the Wardens used. Odds are pretty good it’s where your sister’s living.”

My heart sank to roughly where my knees were, but the place it had been wasn’t left intact. It was cold and empty and sick and painful all at once.

My heart didn’t feel like it was beating right, and my breathing wasn’t right either.

I let go of his shoulder.

I hadn’t wanted to know where she was.

“I’ll go to her for help before I go to you. I’d go to Bonesaw, if she was still around.”

I shook my head, walking away.

He raised his voice. “You want to push me!? I’ll push back!”

I stopped in my tracks.

“That kind of pushing gets you killed,” I said. “Or worse.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got a handle on ‘worse’,” he said. “I have for a while. Dying? Meh.”

The ‘meh’ was both dismissive and an epithet at the same time.

“Fine,” I said. “You want this? Go for it.”

“That’s all I ever asked for.”

“But where I draw the line is scaring or hurting others. Make nice. Don’t give people a reason to ask questions.”

“Yeah, whatev,” he said.

“And don’t give the other members of the team a reason to grieve. I don’t want to see Kenzie or Sveta crying over you.”

“I like how you say ‘other’. I’m off your grieving list?” Chris asked.

“Keep mentioning my sister and you’ll get there.”

He snorted.

Man. I could have slapped him.

“Train station’s this way,” he said.

“Walk fast. G-N portal. The meeting with Lord of Loss is at two.”

I left him to hike it. I flew.

For his benefit, really.

⊙

I landed where the others had assembled. There was a blown-up image of Tempera and two capes I didn’t recognize printed on the wall of the station.

When we’d passed out the word that the other stations were potentially being targeted, G-N had been one of the stations that had been saved. I was heartened to see just who had managed it.

I needed a bit of heartening.

It was good to see the other members of the group happy. Sveta was smiling, and Kenzie was bouncing around while talking to Tristan.

“Chris is on his way. He caught the twelve-thirty train, it’ll be thirty minutes,” I said.

“Awesome,” Tristan said. “Listen, because this just came up, and it’s a good opportunity-”

“We were talking back hair,” Kenzie said.

“Yeah,” Tristan said.

“I think if I liked anyone I could like someone with back hair,” Kenzie said.

“No, Kenzie, that’s not okay,” Sveta said.

“But you said you could be okay with it.”

“I said I feel obligated to say I’d be okay with it because my boyfriend has back forks. And back wires. He keeps it tidy but it is a place he sometimes has to position loose material.”

“I feel obligated because some of my favorite people in the world had back hair,” Kenzie said.

“Again, please, not okay,” Sveta said.

“Why not!?”

“Because back hair means older, and that’s skeevy.”

“Didn’t the boy Tristan liked have back hair at fourteen? Fourteen isn’t old. Well, it is to me, but that’s because it’s-”

“I did not like Jhett Marion!” Tristan said. “Please. Let me get a word in edgewise. I can see where Byron got it wrong, but I liked Tyler Redmond. He was a senior, he was tall, he had long hair, and he was good at art. He had a lower back tattoo and no back hair. I’m not down for that.”

“I’m not down for that,” I said. “Wax, shave, deal with it somehow.”

“Thank you,” Tristan said. “I value and appreciate your sanity.”

“I’m not changing my answer,” Kenzie said.

Kenzie and Tristan bickered. Sveta approached me, leaning into my good arm. “You okay?”

I shook my head. I murmured my answer. “Spat with Chris.”

She nodded. No commentary.

“Can we get some fresh air?” I asked. “Wait on the other side of the portal? At least until Chris’ train arrives?”

“I can keep an eye out,” Kenzie said, holding up her phone. “Oh! We need to talk about dinner. I hope this doesn’t run late and we don’t get a mob of assassins or zombies coming after us, because my mom’s making this pasta dish- is pasta okay?”

“Pasta’s great,” I said. “Keeping an eye out is great. Just-”

I motioned toward the station and the portal within.

We made our way through. There wasn’t much traffic, but there was a lot of security. Patrol block was out in force, checking our ID twice. I had to hand over my bag. Kenzie unloaded all of her trinkets and things, which ended up taking a few minutes.

The pressure of the city and of accumulated stresses were weighing on me. It was hard to breathe.

When we finally got through, it got easier. It was a question of walking down a hallway, past a blurry area, and up a half-flight of stairs, passing through doors.

Earth N. Fresh air, trees, birds, fields. There wasn’t much civilization at all, beyond the standard buildings that surrounded portals in foreign worlds. Supplies, basic needs, a small hospital, administration. Not even a small town.

Enemy territory.

Torch – 7.8

The arrival of Chris’ train at the G-N portal station had Kenzie running off to go get him. The initial wave of trucks and cargo from the train began to flow from the station and out into Earth N. I’d seen the process before, but it had been as part of the Patrol block, and I’d usually had duties, or I’d been a part of the convoy.

Sveta sat on the hill, while Tristan stood near me. There were other people sitting around the slope or hanging around in the shade of the station, but we were mostly clear of eavesdroppers. It was a question of waiting for a few people to walk away before speaking.

“Chris and I had a disagreement,” I said. I watched the trucks go.

“I was wondering why you looked pissed,” Tristan said. “I didn’t want to say anything.”

“He didn’t like that I showed up unannounced.”

“I’ve run into that,” Tristan said. “He complains if we turn up unannounced, he complains if we don’t invite him to stuff like our group’s visit to the Wardens’ headquarters, when we were asking about hiring a lawyer and sounding people out on Hollow Point. I think he likes complaining.”

It bummed me out a bit that Cedar Point’s name hadn’t survived, with all we’d done.

“It wasn’t complaining. He was pissed,” I said. “I’m telling you guys so you know. He might be bothered enough to bring it up.”

“How pissed was he?” Tristan asked. “Scale of one to ten?”

“Pissed enough to weaponize things I told the group in confidence. Seven?”

“Okay,” Tristan said. “Did you get the rage vibe from him? Do we need to disinvite him from the meeting with Lord of Loss?”

“That’s- no,” I said. “My first instinct is no, we don’t, but I don’t want to go by first instincts only. The situation made it hard to tell if it was lingering rage, and… the more I try to find words, the less sure I am about disinviting him.”

Sveta was quiet, “It sets a bad precedent.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Shutting people out, and I don’t think he’d forgive it very easily. I could have handled it better, but Chris isn’t the sort of person I really ‘get’. I feel like every time I find out something more, I just have more questions.”

“I think if you asked him,” Sveta said. “He’d say you don’t need to get him or get answers. You should just respect his boundaries and let him do what he wants.”

“People in his day to day are scared of him,” I said. “Teachers, kids. I need some answers, just to make sure I’m not standing around doing nothing while missing something important or dangerous.”

“Yeah,” Sveta said. She looked up at me, and said with grave sincerity, “I totally, one hundred percent get that.”

“You’re thinking about the Irregulars?” Tristan asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “It gives me the worst feeling, when I look back on things in retrospect. So many stupid things we should have paid attention to. So many. We let a lot of things slide because we were worried about how it would change the tone of things, and because of friendship, or what we thought was friendship. I’d rather see people get upset now than have it all go wrong later.”

“Yeah. We’ve talked about that,” Tristan said. Then, like he was remembering I was there, he turned to me. “Both of our teams capsized. We’ve done the whole thing before, where you go out, get drunk, and rant about the past-”

“No we didn’t,” Sveta said.

“Let me finish. We did it without the drinking part, I mean.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Sveta said. “I guess.”

“Yeah,” I said. “A good rant can be healthy. Get it out.”

“We’ve done that. The drunken bemoaning of existence, without being drunk,” she said.

“I wasn’t able to talk,” I said.

“Still. You worked that keyboard.”

I shrugged.

“I’m trying to be balanced about this,” she said. “I made this mistake once, and I don’t want to be blind, but I feel like pushing too hard or prying might make things break down, and that doesn’t make it better. I’m not going to say you’re doing it wrong, Victoria.”

“I don’t know if I’m doing it right.”

“Yeah. But… you do what feels right, because I don’t know if I’m doing it right either. I want to help people stay together. That means protecting each other, being supportive, that’s my priority. We have to know each other, that’s part of it, and it’s the part where I don’t necessarily sympathize with Chris.”

“I don’t want to repeat my error from earlier and pry,” I said, checking to see if Kenzie and Chris were coming. “But… has he talked about his background? His deal?”

“No,” Tristan said, at the same time Sveta shook her head.

“Some,” Sveta said, “But hypotheticals. He’s real about the stuff like the center he’s living at now, and his health issues, his power, but even that’s…”

“Yeah,” Tristan said.

“He doesn’t leave you very sure about it,” I said.

Sveta nodded. “I’m not going to pry or dig, but I am going to pay attention. Not just talking about Chris, for the record.”

“I’m not good at that,” Tristan said. “I hear you two. I get it, we made a mistake with Ashley. That hard conversation with Rain took far too long, he left, and he didn’t really reconnect until the whole thing with the Fallen camp ended… and he went straight from there to jail, pretty much. Ashley… I felt like utter shit, sitting there in the pre-court thing, knowing we put her in that position.”

“Yeah,” Sveta said. “Definitely. Especially when I helped set her up to do it and then made her turn herself in, too.”

“She turned herself in herself,” I said. “She went to the patrol block.”

Sveta shrugged.

“I get it,” Tristan said, repeating himself. “We have to watch out that it doesn’t happen again- that’s why you’re talking about this stuff, right, Victoria?”

“Yeah,” I said. “A part of it. I think it’s what Jessica wanted from me.”

“So I’m not good at that,” Tristan said, repeating himself. His fist smacked down into the flat of his palm. “I want to chase the parts where we click as a team. We had a few of those good moments. If we have more, that could be where the walls come down, or where the team members who don’t click.”

“You’re reminding me of Kenzie’s seating chart,” Sveta said.

“Seating?” I asked.

“Figuring out the group relationships,” Sveta said, smiling. “It started out normal, having to do with who sat where in the group therapy session, but she kept working on it.”

“It looked like a tinker blueprint at one point. Mrs. Yamada ended up banning the chart and the topic of the chart from the room,” Tristan said. “If you ever need to distract her from something, you can mention the chart. She’ll talk about it until someone stops her.”

“She’s not a dog you distract with a toy,” I said.

“No, but-” Tristan said. His head turned. “Ey! Taking your time!”

Chris and Kenzie were approaching, as part of a loose crowd of sixty or so people. Most of those people wore work clothes.

“We had to wait for trucks and stuff to unload,” Kenzie said. She wore a navy gingham dress with a folded white collar, and a heart hairpin I’d seen before.

“If you wanted me to show up sooner, you should have sent your messenger sooner,” Chris said. “You were talking about me?”

“I mentioned we’d argued,” I said. “That led to talks about group dynamics.”

“What?” Kenzie asked. “Argue?”

“Did you mention that you threatened to kill me, or do worse?” Chris asked.

“What?” Kenzie asked.

“No,” I said. “Because I didn’t. I said the kind of thing you were talking about-”

I stopped myself.

“Go on,” he said.

“Can I bring this up here? Do you want to rehash this with these guys here, or do you want to let this be?”

“Go on. I really want to hear how you justify it,” he said.

“Going to Bonesaw for help before you went to me, out of spite? That’s the kind of thing that gets you killed or worse.”

He stared at me.

“I can’t remember how I worded it, but that was not what I meant. I’m sorry, if it came across that way. I’ve hurt people badly enough to risk killing them, like Valefor, but I don’t set out to kill. I- I definitely don’t set out to do worse than kill people. That’s not me.”

He continued to stare, until Kenzie elbowed him.

“Don’t do that,” he told her.

“Say something to her.”

“I’m not cool with you showing up.”

“Chrisss,” Kenzie said.

He glared at me. She elbowed him again.

“Stop, Kenz. And I believe you,” he told me. “I buy it. That in no way is me being okay with you showing up. I’m still ticked.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

“You and I can talk about it after,” Tristan said. “You’ve had a few times where you were incommunicado. We had to do something.”

“I could do a phone thing,” Kenzie said.

“You’re doing too many things,” I told Kenzie.

“It’s important that we can stay in touch, though,” she said.

“There’s got to be a simpler answer or policy than you going the extra mile every time,” Tristan said. “Chris, your phone isn’t working at all? Was it an outage?”

Chris shrugged. “It wasn’t charged. I was stressed, so I went out last night, went to the middle of nowhere, changed to Quiet Awe. I put on some music and lounged, tried to shut out the world. I spent too long like that, changed back by accident, went straight back to that form. Came back at one in the morning, probably, power was off, I couldn’t charge it.”

I met Sveta’s eyes. Quiet Awe didn’t sound like a derivation of anger.

“We’ll figure something out,” Tristan said.

“Alright. Are we changing here?” Chris asked.

“We’ll go down into the town, find a spot, and then change out,” Tristan said. “We’ll stand out less, and there won’t be as many cameras as there are here at the station.”

I turned my head to look. Kenzie pointed at two.

“Don’t point at them,” Chris admonished her.

“They’re so shoddy it’s barely worth calling them cameras. I’m scrambling our faces so they can’t track our secret identities.”

“We’ve got two team members without secret identities,” Chris said, looking at Sveta and I. “And Tristan looks so much like a hero out of costume that it doesn’t fool anyone.”

“No I don’t,” Tristan said.

“You look like Legend probably did when he was a teen, except light brown with a modern haircut.”

“I don’t-” Tristan started. He stopped as the last few passengers of the train and the people who were picking them up emerged. As the crowd fanned out, they approached the point they might be in earshot.

“You know it’s true,” Chris said.

“Whatever. Let’s disappear into this crowd and find a place to change.”

“I’ll try to scramble recording devices pointed our way,” Kenzie said.

The road down to the settlement proper was a bit sloped, so I gave Sveta my good arm to help her keep her footing.

Earth N was not a very populated Earth. This settlement and the surrounding area were more or less it, with a few stations at key points around the globe, harvesting the most accessible resources that lined up with what we knew about from other Earths.

But with roughly one hundred and fifty thousand people settled on this world, ninety percent of them within twenty-five miles of the portal, it didn’t take much clout to control it. Lord of Loss and his clique managed that.

Things weren’t as nice as they were in the megalopolis. Roofs were often corrugated steel. I saw houses with additions that were plywood with plastic tacked to them. Others were best described as cabins. It marked a stark contrast from a city where vast quantities of materials had apparently been arranged and even brought to key locations before Gold Morning.

The stores were basic, and any design beyond the bare bones had clearly been tacked on after the fact. A long lineup outside of a larger building made me think of a soup kitchen or other kind of rationing.

There were two people with visible injuries in the loose crowd that we’d joined. People from the train station. They were young, they might have been friends, and one sported a black eye, while the other had a cut on his cheek that extended to his ear. The injuries hadn’t seen enough attention- left to heal with the weight of the skin pulling the injury open, it would scar into an open line.

Both those two and roughly half of the remainder looked like they were denizens of Earth N. Their clothes and hair reflected the same standards and ideas that the buildings did. A lot was being done with very little, and that little was already a bit worn around the edges, strained by hard living and a lack of infrastructure. I saw clothes which were clearly less than two years old, yet worn. I imagined they had been washed with hard scrubbing in water outdoors.

“Fresh air,” Kenzie said. She drew in a deep breath. “It’s so nice.”

“It’s not like we don’t have fresh air in our neighborhoods,” Chris said. “There’s barely been an opportunity to screw anything up.”

“It’s still nice.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed. I’d been here before, but it had been in the winter, and I barely recognized the place now. I’d seen other places like it, and it had always felt strained and desperate.

Sveta squeezed my arm. I looked past her to Tristan, and I saw that he was indicating a route. Off the road, into the midst of houses and high fences.

We found a spot where the fences met in a broad ‘v’ shape, not really in full view of anyone standing at the main road looking down our way. Tristan and I put down our bags. Kenzie began unrolling the sleeves of her costume from beneath her dress to her ankles, kicking off the shoes she wore over her costume footies.

“I’ll wait,” Chris said. “I’ll use this spot when you’ve vacated.”

“I can leave you a cloaking thing, if you’re worried about dropping trou in public,” Kenzie said. She messed with her phone, and the cloaking dropped away from the bag she wore at her back. Her helmet hung from the outside of the bag, her gloves stuffed inside it.

“Sure,” Chris said. “So long as you can’t watch me through it.”

“Stop saying that! I wouldn’t!”

I put my breastplate on, strapping the two individual halves, which were curved out so I could bend over without it being too rigid. The upper twenty-five percent of the armor was already attached to the upper half, needing only to be pressed against my collarbones and the inside of each shoulder. The front corner of my hood that might have clipped up beneath my chin hung over most of that band of armor.

The spiked attachments on hood, sleeve, the center-front of the breastplate, and at either side of my boots were last.

I had only one good arm, which meant that I was only about as fast as Tristan putting on his whole set of armor, and I was only doing my armor and decorations over top of the costume-ish outfit.

“What form are you doing, Chris?” Kenzie asked.

“Strained Peace,” Chris said.

“Strained peas? As in baby food?” Kenzie asked.

“You know how blind people can train their minds to emphasize their hearing?” Chris asked. “Well, you’ve done the opposite. You’ve stared so much at your cameras and screens that your ears stopped working.”

“Ha ha,” she said.

“Made worse by you being a dolt.”

Kenzie smiled. “So harsh. Is peace on the awe or happiness line?”

“Happiness,” Chris said.

“Why ‘strained’?” I asked.

Chris shot me a hostile look.

I didn’t press, leaving him be. I finished sorting out the straps of my sling and thought about getting a cape that would cover the one arm.

I hadn’t ever really loved full capes, though.

“Strained is a modifier for forms, it goes around the circle with Repressed Anger, Tense Acceptance, Paralyzed Fear, Stifled Disgust, yadda yadda,” Chris said. He took Kenzie’s cloaking device. “All of which are the bases but with faster reactions and movements in a pinch, like I’m made of elastic bands that are all taut, ready to release, or I’m a gun with a trigger that needs only a light touch to fire.”

“That’s not a good thing,” Capricorn said.

“It’s fine. Faster action, lower stamina, lower strength, more durability. Changes the abilities that manifest. Strained Peace doesn’t really have much in the way of special features, so there isn’t a trigger to pull.”

“Why choose it then?” Sveta asked. She’d attached the last of her stylized additions to her exterior. They’d been painted, much as she had, but it was the same mandala-style effect, where some hadn’t been filled it, and the absence looked like a conscious choice.

“Because we don’t want a fight and peace works for that,” he said, and the easygoing tone from before was gone. “I need to get it out of the way, it works. Trust me when I say it works out.”

Sveta put up her hands in surrender.

“We’ll give you a minute,” Capricorn said. He stuffed everyone’s bags into the big gym bag.

“I’ll hold that,” Chris said.

“Sure,” Tristan said.

Chris held up the tinker device Kenzie had given him, and hit the button. The camouflage effect crept over him.

The guy with the black eye from the crowd was hanging out at the front of a store, talking to two others, and he saw us as we emerged from the residential side road. He wasn’t the only one who seemed to notice, but he was the most blatant about his reaction. Instant hostility. A glare.

Even the low-level hubbub of the street and the workers on the street changed, conversations dropping in volume, others stopping talking to see why.

“Wow,” I said, under my breath. I kept my back straight, my apparent confidence up. It would not be a good look if we gave the wrong impression and Lord of Loss’ town picked a fight with us before our meeting.

“I remember times like this with the Irregulars,” Sveta said. “Especially when we turned up without warning. Except you guys aren’t Case Fifty-Threes.”

“Bit of a gut punch,” Capricorn said.

“Yeah,” Sveta said.

“I’d say we get out of here, but we can’t bail on C,” Capricorn murmured. “I feel like this is going to become something.”

“Anyone noticing the injuries?” I asked.

The one with the shiner was the most obvious and the closest to us. The silence on the main street had drawn a few people outside, and it had brought others from side areas and streets. A dozen of them had their wounds. Arms and face more than legs. Some skinned knees.

Defensive wounds.

Looksee raised her hand, giving the crowd of stone-faced glares a little wave.

“Easy does it,” Sveta said.

Looksee dropped her hand.

Then, because the last thing we needed was a monster showing up, Chris materialized, dropping the cloak.

The indulgence form had apparently been derived from the happiness line, as far as I understood things. There were similarities. The form was tall, but where the other one had been broad in the gut, shaped like a teardrop with a tiny head and thick elephantine limbs, this one was… shrouded. What I thought was a shawl at first was loose skin with no pigment, draped in a fashion that resembled a hooded robe. Hair and a whisp of what should have been a beard hung down, long and growing as I watched, the length of hair and the hood hiding his face, even though he loomed a foot or two above the tallest person present. The long, narrow limbs and frame within that shroud were gaunt, and stood tense with muscles strained and tendons standing out. By the way the joints came together and the weight of the skin shroud, it was forced into a permanent crouch, hands bent in and back toward the body, head bent and turned toward the ground.

The teardrop shape remained, but it was well hidden.

“Looks good,” Looksee said.

It was something. But Chris’ ‘peace’ form had raised the local tensions to a palpable degree.

A long finger with a raw nail bed instead of a fingernail reached down into the dirt of the road, scratching out two words. The red nail bed had grit caked in it when the finger came away.

Where to?

“We’re supposed to head east from the camp,” I said.

“He said it was a ten minute walk away, past a hill,” Capricorn said.

‘Peace’ Chris turned his head slowly, until he looked down on Capricorn.

I could imagine his expression, were he normal. The unimpressed glare. This form lacked in stamina, he’d said.

“What were you going to do?” Capricorn asked. “Not change?”

The ‘peace’ form turned to look in the direction we were supposed to go.

The robe billowed out slightly, puffing. The form’s head seemed to lack a mouth, or even any clear features besides maybe eyes and the waves of brown hair that hung in front, but something in the midst of the shroud had served for the exhalation.

I could have flown, but as I’d observed a few days ago, flying had a way of disconnecting me from things. I floated alongside the group.

“You saw the injuries?” Capricorn asked, when we were a little ways away, walking along dirt and grass with rocks at irregular intervals. Up to a point, trees had been cut down to use for the building of the settlement on this side of the G-N portal. Past that point, the woods were dense. From the looks of it, we wouldn’t necessarily get that far out.

“Defensive,” I said.

“Soldiers?” he asked.

“Soldiers would have run off to tell their bosses,” I said. “Made a phone call, even texted. They didn’t. They didn’t run, they didn’t care enough to challenge or confront us.”

“Are they not locals then?” Sveta asked.

“They’re local. The clothes,” I said. “They fight, but they’re not soldiers.”

“Lord of Loss might have a situation going on,” Capricorn said. “It could be tied to our suspicions. Another faction in his territory.”

“If it is tied to it, he can’t not know about it,” I said.

“It’s times like this that I feel really dumb,” Looksee said. “I don’t pay much attention to any of that stuff. Um. But someone did make a call, though.”

“What call?” Capricorn asked.

“Uh, from the city to one of the local towers,” Looksee said. She pointed off into the distance, where something I’d thought was a tree stood out against the sky. “This is unfamiliar ground so I don’t know where call went after the tower got it.”

“Probably someone calling Lord of Loss to let us know we turned up,” I said.

“Or, if the portal attackers are really here, they’re passing on word,” Sveta murmured.

“Looksee, You mentioned the cameras at the station,” I said. “Did you tap into them?”

“I did, but it wasn’t me being sneaky, I swear. I was bored, because Mr. Peaceful here was being so slow and we were waiting so long.“

Chris moved, skin billowing around him as he dropped into a crouch with a jerky snap, then moved forward with another, until his face was a few feet from Looksee’s.

She barely flinched. “Yeah. You were slowwww.”

He straightened, standing taller than he had been before turning away.

Looksee reached out to pat his leg.

“The cameras?” I asked.

“I was curious about them because they looked analog and low rez, and I was wondering if they were trying to be clever and hiding something fancier. Nope. They’re just crummy cameras that were out of date when I was in diapers.”

Chris turned her way.

“Can’t talk, huh? Bet you had a line,” she said. To me, she said, “Four-eighty-p, black and white, record to tapes in the station that have zero security. They write over the old tape after an hour and a half.”

“Can you use them?” I asked. “Keep an eye out for anyone running for it while our backs are turned?”

Looksee nodded.

“Good,” I said.

We reached the top of the hill. The wind was cool as it blew past us. The sky above was blue, the sun shining, but it didn’t penetrate the ambient cold air. At most, I just felt cooler when we were in areas of shadow, like the side street and beneath the buildings.

The area was a dozen buildings framing a kind of cul-de-sac, where a lot of people had gathered on the road. More uniformity to the materials and construction than we’d seen in the last spot. No road ran from it to elsewhere- there was only the road to it, as if it was a defined endpoint.

There was a nicer house at the far end. I could guess who lived there.

The response to our arrival at Lord of Loss’ site was as cold as the send-off from the portal station had been. Every step of the way, things caught my attention.

A lot more injuries. More defensive wounds. The injured were corralled, kept in groups with capes or intact soldiers in front of, behind, and to either side of each group. They kept their eyes down.

We walked down the hill.

Nursery and Lord of Loss were standing at the path leading between the manor and the dirt road. Lord of Loss was in his human form, massive. There were a lot of people standing to either side of the path we had to travel to reach them, and he wasn’t walking forward to meet us halfway.

“Be careful,” Sveta murmured.

Capes aplenty. I recognized a few. Bitter Pill was one. No Prancer, and none of the hyperviolent capes I’d come to think of as being the red-tagged, like the old capes on the parahuman online site who’d had the ‘do not approach’ banners across their profile.

Not that anyone here looked friendly.

Several in dark clothes with loose threads and designs bleached into them, like fishbones and snakes. Teenagers, at a guess. They stood opposite a couple in white armor with crisp black designs painted on them. That armor hadn’t seen a fight in recent memory. Moons and astrological symbols.

Three men were staring us down. They wore simpler costumes with maximized utility between the belts, pouches, and bandoleers they’d strapped on. As I walked past, I realized that they weren’t focused on me, on Chris, or Looksee.

Sveta was between me and Capricorn. They were looking at her or him.

Not her, I realized, as I saw past the eye-slit in Capricorn’s helmet and saw his sharp focus on those same men. Sveta didn’t seem to notice them.

Okay.

We walked further. We were effectively surrounded, because the people we’d left behind us were free to come at us from behind, and there were plenty to either side of us.

Lord of Loss raised his hand, indicating for us to stop. We stopped, and Chris immediately dropped into a sitting position, hunching over.

A hundred feet still separated us. A man stepped out of the crowd to our right, bearded, with parted hair, a hard mask and crisp clothing- a button-up shirt that was rolled up to the elbows, and a vest. He walked with his hands clasped behind his back.

“Any guns?” he asked.

“Flash gun,” Looksee said. “Nonlethal.”

“Would you set it down on the ground?” he asked. “It’s symbolic.”

She looked at us for confirmation, got a nod from Capricorn, and then drew the gun and set it down on the dirt road. A little too fast a draw- in another situation, that kind of recklessness might have provoked a reaction.

“I’d like to use my power to search you,” he said. He held up his hand, and a shape manifested in his palm, swelling to take the form of something that looked like an origami onion, the layers folding back and into themselves. “I would sweep it over you and become aware of anything on your persons.”

“No effect?” Capricorn asked.

“No,” the man said.

“I’m fine,” Capricorn said.

“No objection,” I said.

“I’m pretty much all armor,” Sveta said. “It contains me.”

“That’s fine. Can I look?”

She nodded.

“I’ve got more stuff,” Looksee said. “I can put it on the ground.”

“Please.”

She began unloading. The heart hairpin, phone, batteries, the eyehook, the projector disc.

“And you?” the bearded cape asked Chris.

Chris shook his head.

Kenzie put a pair of the little boxes like the ones she’d used to hack the keypad lock on the ground.

“I must insist. I could do a physical, full body search if you wanted,” the bearded man said. “You would have to adjust your robe.”

“It’s skin,” Capricorn said.

“Ah. So it is.”

Lord of Loss and the parahumans of Earth N were patiently waiting while we were investigated by this man.

Dangerous territory indeed. If they took issue with us, we wouldn’t have a great shot. We’d been promised safety, but promises were thin, and at least a few people here could have grudges against us.

“I must insist I be allowed to search you. I’m circumspect. I’ll only tell Lord of Loss what he needs to know. What I want is for this to go smoothly.”

Chris hesitated.

What the hell were you doing, Chris?

Chris nodded, giving his assent. He stooped down lower, head bent.

The origami onion unfolded into a whirling frame of lines and flat planes. Where it passed over Chris’ leg, the leg on dirt, the dirt settled, flatting down, like there was a gravity or space warping effect in play.

Meanwhile, Looksee was putting a pair of pens, a few marble-sized metal spheres, and a glass case with what looked like three memory cards inside it down on the ground.

The man with the beard and parted hair walked behind Chris, the effect sweeping up and down Chris’ back. He searched Chris’ midsection.

“There we are. I see the shape of things, now,” the man with the parted hair murmured. His eyes were alive behind the hard ivory-white mask. “I can extend you a measure of trust, I think. Do us a favor and stay still. Give us no reason to be concerned.”

Chris was still for a moment, before nodding slowly.

The man moved from Chris to Looksee. The process was faster- a quick up and down.

From Looksee to me. I felt my costume rustle against my skin as it swept over me, my hood moved. The effect passed.

Then Sveta. He made no remark or comment before moving on to Capricorn.

Capricorn barely paid attention to the power that was sweeping over him. He was focused wholly on the three men that had been staring at him earlier. They’d moved from their position, approaching Lord of Loss, and were now leaning close, exchanging words at a low volume. Nursery had stepped away to give the three and Lord of Loss some measure of privacy.

“Good. Leave your things where they are and remain still,” the man said. “Do you have a name?”

“Beg pardon?” Capricorn asked. He tore his eyes away from the three men and Lord of Loss, all of whom were looking at us.

“A name. So I can announce you.”

The three men stepped back and walked away, in the direction of the side of the largest house.

“Oh, um, oh Jesus,” Capricorn said. “No. We’ve been putting it off for forever, it’d be easier if you asked us to go pick a fight with Goddess or something.”

“We’re not asking for that,” the man said.

“You want our cape names, or group, or-”

“All of the above,” the man with the parted hair said. “It matters. This is a place where formality, titles, and roles matter. The name you choose is important.”

“Can you give us a moment?” Capricorn asked.

“I can,” the man said. He glanced back at Lord of Loss, then over at the crowd. No statement to any grand effect, but the point was clear. This was a large crowd and it would be poor form to keep them waiting. “I’ll be waiting. Signal me when you’re ready, and then announce yourselves.”

“Talk to me,” Capricorn said, before the man was even gone. “Fast.”

“We have you and Looksee hammered out,” Sveta said.

“No,” Looksee said. “Um. I’ll be Lookout. Change me to Lookout, as an inside joke, because of what he said, after the Fallen thing.”

“Lookout?” Capricorn asked.

Beside Lookout, Chris was clasping his hands together, head tilting high with hair falling across his face, like he was praying. He reached out and gave Lookout a pat on the helmet.

“A bit dark but I’m not going to complain with the time constraint,” Capricorn said. “Lookout. Right. Me, you. Sveta?”

Sveta said a single word in Russian. “It wasn’t my first choice, but Weld told me if I didn’t choose, someone would choose for me. I guess our hands are being forced. Tress. Because it sounds pretty, at least. But call me Sveta when it’s not official.”

Capricorn turned to Chris.

The word was already on the dirt, scratched out. Cryptid.

No surprise. It had been the last thing I’d seen on the whiteboard in the hideout, before we’d moved everything out.

They looked at me.

“I’m breaking every single rule,” I said. “Because it’s a name that needs an explanation, and you’re not supposed to do that. There’s no time to spell it out.”

“I don’t care,” Capricorn said. “Out with it.”

“Antares,” I said.

“The heart of the scorpion?” he asked. When I arched an eyebrow, he said, “I pay attention to stars, and I looked up some when you mentioned you were thinking in that direction. That wasn’t on my top twenty.”

I nodded. I had reasons and explanations, but we didn’t have the time, as I’d said.

“I’m not about to complain,” he said. “Team name.”

“We talked about Defense Mechanism,” Lookout said.

“We said it was too tinkery,” Sveta said.

“I’m not complaining,” Lookout said. “But I get it.”

“And we’re not very ‘defense’ oriented,” Capricorn said. “Calling us ‘defense’ when I’m the only defender is like going with mechanism when you’re the only tinker.”

“It’s a little on the nose, by the way,” I said.

“Anything else?” Capricorn asked.

“When we were talking about names in that conversation where Defense Mechanism came up, we mentioned one, and it might be too on the nose, but Swansong liked it,” Lookout said. “She’s not here right now, but it might be nice if she got a say, and it suits Rain, which would be nice.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“Breakthrough.”

There was a silence. Capricorn had his arms folded. The others were quiet.

“At this point, it’s better than no name,” Capricorn said.

“It works with the original focus of cracking the tougher nuts,” I said.

Sveta nodded.

“Let’s do that,” Capricorn said. He drew in a deep breath and sighed, before turning to face Lord of Loss. Capricorn gave a nod to the man.

Lord of Loss extended a hand, palm up. An invitation.

“Team Breakthrough. Capricorn, Tress, Antares, Lookout, and Cryptid. We’re here to talk about the state of things, and to see about sharing information.”

Technically, we came to find out about the attack on the portals, but we can’t say that outright.

“Lord of Loss, leader of Earth N,” the man with the parted hair said. “We welcome you.”

Lord of Loss’ body language was magnanimous, hands spread. He seemed warm, even, for a giant in ragged armor. He approached at a walk. “I’m sorry for the mess. Things have been chaotic. I recognize the heroine from the community center. Antares?”

“Yes.”

“We did that to try and get ahead of what we’re seeing today, serving up a scapegoat. We had a riot two days ago, because we weren’t able to get out ahead of things or give the masses another sacrifice.”

“It shouldn’t be about sacrifices,” I said.

“It all comes down to blood and bread,” he said. “With snowfall only fifty or so days from now, we don’t have the bread. Will the community center and its outcome be a problem?”

I shook my head. “Not especially.”

“Good,” he said. “What brought you here, Breakthrough?”

“Can we talk about that alone? Our team and you?” Capricorn asked.

“I don’t know all of your powers, and I won’t call in any of the expensive favors needed to get that information. You keep your five. I’ll keep four I trust. Fair?”

Capricorn glanced at Sveta, then me. He gave Lord of Loss a nod.

Lord of Loss selected his people. The others were dismissed with a wave of the hand.

Nursery had an updated costume, I noted. It was fitted to her slender frame, a curved golden band at her belly highlighting the slight bump. She stayed.

Oddly, it wasn’t the professional looking man or woman in the white armor with the sharp designs that were tapped for his retinue here. He turned to the group of teenagers with the bleached animal designs. One was asked to stay, a boy with fangs bleached into the black fabric of the bandanna that covered his lower face.

The man with the parted hair, too, stayed. I thought it might be because he was Lord of Loss’ lieutenant.

He wasn’t. Lord of Loss turned toward the house behind him, paused, then beckoned. Another cape stepped out, walking down the dirt path, and joined us. Most of the others in the area were gone by the time he reached us. The one with the parted hair stood just behind him, as Nursery and the fang kid stood at either side of Lord of Loss.

Tall, with long brown hair that passed his shoulders, carefully cultivated facial hair, and reading glasses that he looked over most of the time. He had a billowing shirt that ninety nine percent of people wouldn’t be able to pull off, and tight black jeans tucked into boots. His fingers had a lot of rings, and another ring hung from a simple leather cord at his neck.

Marquis. Amy’s bio-dad. He met my eyes and smiled.

Torch – 7.9

“Capricorn, Antares, Tress, Cryptid, and Lookout,” Lord of Loss made the introductions. “This is Nursery, Marquis, Spruce, and Carnassial.”

“Or Carn,” the guy with the toothy bandanna said. “Not Carnie.”

“Ah, name pronunciations,” Marquis said. “I admire those that can reinvent themselves.”

He met my eyes again. Capricorn, too, gave me a glance.

What was I supposed to say or do? Was it better to walk away? Could I afford that weakness?

I hated doubting myself. I hated when the questions and anxiety seeped in. What was supposed to be me moving away from being the overconfident, violent heroine and toward something more measured was twisted by the doubts. It took the same dynamic and same decisions but made them into a loss of confidence and strength, in favor of self-compromise and hesitation.

“Is there a bit of history or something here?” Carn asked.

My head turned, eyes widening. How was I supposed to answer that? How did I frame in one answer something I couldn’t frame in hours of wrestling with my interpretation of things, alone?

“A minor conflict of interest,” Lord of Loss said, “It’s handled.”

The ‘handled’ thing was a point I tripped on.

He wasn’t talking about Marquis and I. The focus was on Capricorn and the three men who had walked away.

“You invited me into your inner circle,” Carn said. “I get that, I’m glad . I think we’ve rewarded your trust with good work.”

“You have,” Lord of Loss said.

“Is there a past history between you and this group? How does that impact the Ferrymen?”

“The only immediate conflict of interest with this team is to do with the community center attack that Nursery and I participated in. Antares. She and I both feel this isn’t a problem. We can do business.”

I was very aware of the way Marquis was watching me. He’d seen how I’d reacted when I thought our relationship had come up. Damn it.

Capricorn spoke up, “There isn’t any connection between me and Lord of Loss, aside from us knowing some of the same people.”

“Our community of powers is a small world,” Nursery said. “Incestuous.”

“I feel the need to speak up,” Marquis said.

No. You asshole.

“Another conflict of interest. I don’t think it should change anything, but I also have something of a connection to Antares.”

“What kind?” Nursery asked.

“A family connection,” Marquis said.

My mouth opened, but the words took a second longer. Lord of Loss took the opportunity to talk over my nonexistent words, “I didn’t know that.”

I used the words I hadn’t been able to find, trying to stay measured when I felt anything but. “I wouldn’t say family. We’re related, and even that is a forced use of the term.”

“Panacea is my daughter. She is also your sister. The distinction between relations and family is one of weight. Good or bad, she has an important place in our hearts.”

“Shit,” I heard Capricorn, barely audible.

“She’s my adopted sister,” I said. I was one hundred percent aware of how petty it seemed to seize on ‘adopted’, and how I was doing the exact same thing that had left me utterly enraged in the past when others had done it. “I’m not focusing on the adoption because she wasn’t family. I’m trying to make it clear that you and I aren’t that connected. There’s an additional half-step of separation.”

“We’re connected through shared association with one meaningful person. I don’t want to mislead my colleagues.”

I grit my teeth for a second. More and more, it felt like I was having to measure out or calculate my words. It was the handling of something volatile in the same way the building of a sensitive bomb might be. One mistake, and things would get messy.

Careful, avoid the disaster, keep it simple with your eye on the objective. “No disrespect intended, Marquis, but you weren’t in our lives when she-”

Don’t fuck it up now, Victoria, I thought, as emotions got in the way of words. Don’t show weakness, don’t snap.

“-and I grew up together. I haven’t been a part of her life since you entered the picture. You and I aren’t connected in any… what did you say? Impactful way?”

“Important,” Marquis said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’ll concede the point.”

“Thank you,” I said. I was proud, but not of winning the argument, because it was a petty argument in a way. I was proud of getting through it. It was the kind of pride I couldn’t really explain to anyone, even Sveta.

Maybe Dr. Darnall.

Marquis turned to Lord of Loss. “Her family was the group that put me in the Birdcage for thirteen years, four months. No hard feelings- that was the risk I took. They took it on themselves to raise my daughter, part of that being my suggestion. I do have hard feelings, it’s to do with how they raised her. She wasn’t happy.”

Pride was gone. Heavy feelings seeped in and swelled inside me.

“No,” I said. I wanted this conversation to be done with. “She wasn’t.”

“But,” Marquis said. “She sang your praises, Antares, as much as she was able to speak of any of it. She loved you and she felt loved.”

“I don’t… disagree,” I said, my voice tight, “But is this relevant?”

“It’s relevant,” Marquis said it with an assured confidence. “You were or are her family and that mattered. I feel I owe you a debt, especially considering the nightmarish way things ended.”

It was a gut punch to hear that. There was no armor or means of really defending against it. I couldn’t come up with words, and as I stood there, taking that in, I thought I might fly away.

Sveta touched my arm, and I hesitated in flying. Through that moment of hesitation, the flying became harder to do because I couldn’t explain why I was leaving now, instead of a moment ago.

The team was hearing this.

I stayed put, brought my arm up to the arm in the sling to a position where I was effectively folding my arms, and nodded.

“I mention this,” Marquis said, and he was facing Lord of Loss as he said it, “Because I am biased. I might not have a vote or anything resembling one in this arrangement of convenience we have, but I would consider it a favor if we could extend every courtesy to Antares and her team.”

“Your soft favors are more effective than the hard promises and oaths, Marquis,” Lord of Loss said.

“I have no idea what you mean,” Marquis said. “I always keep my promises and oaths.”

“It’s when there are unclear words and rules that are open to interpretation that you’re most comfortable and most dangerous,” Lord of Loss said. “We don’t know Breakthrough or what they want. You want to ask for this kind of favor now?”

Marquis offered a half-smile, the point of mustache at one corner of his mouth rising. “Yes.”

“Annoyingly open ended,” Lord of Loss said. “Fine. Talk to me, Breakthrough.”

Capricorn glanced at me, then asked, “How well do you know the people in your territory?”

“It depends on who and where,” Lord of Loss said.

“Is every cape or criminal here working for you?” Tristan asked.

“No,” Lord of Loss said. “Why?”

“We heard you controlled Earth N. It’s common knowledge.”

“I do control it. We have three medium-sized towns and several small areas we’re occupying. I know the people there. These satellite areas are focused on a combination of farming, fishing, foraging, and lumber, with strictly temporary accommodation. When the seasons are inappropriate for the work being done, or the resource industries falter because there are greener pastures elsewhere, we rent out the cabins.”

“To capes and criminals?” Capricorn asked.

“It would be a very brave and adventurous person who used the money they could spend on an apartment in Norwalk or Fairfield to rent a small cabin here instead. We’re a whole other world away, and the retreats put the people staying there a good distance from conveniences and necessities.”

“People come here to hide,” Capricorn said. “You facilitate that.”

“Some people want their privacy. In the late fall, winter, and early spring, these cabins serve no purpose and offer little connection to society. We tapped a market that wanted that isolation.”

“Stuff like tinkers building things?” Lookout asked.

“Perhaps. Are you here about errant tinkers?” Lord of Loss asked.

“We’re here because people may be using Earth N as a staging ground for their activities,” Capricorn said.

“That would be the nature of the arrangement,” Lord of Loss said. “We keep an eye out for anything that would bring too much trouble down on Earth N. We intervene in cases of serious weapons, intent to do harm to members of Earth N, kidnap victims being taken to one of the retreats for holding.”

“What about intent to do harm to anyone outside of Earth N?” I asked. “Would you catch that?”

“We have powers available to us that could see that kind of intent, if in the right time and place.”

“What about other times and places?” Capricorn asked. “How much of an eye are you keeping on them?”

“Very little,” Lord of Loss said. “I’m going to be honest, as part of Marquis’ open-ended request. We have other things we do. The retreats? They aren’t valuable, it’s not worth excessive time, it’s not worth excessive manpower, and being too careful would ruin the point of those retreats.”

“The fact that a hero team is knocking on our door and asking about things suggests it might be important,” Marquis said.

He looked so much like her. The eyes, the hair, the mouth. The shoulders.

“True,” Lord of Loss admitted. He seated his large armored form on the ground, one hand behind him to prop himself up. “It’s not an everyday thing.”

Sveta, Capricorn, Lookout and I exchanged looks. Cryptid was being very still and tense, his clothes occasionally moving a fraction when the wind blew strong.

I thought of the sports team. Was the woman’s inability to work because she was busy or was it something else? “These retreats, they have internet? Is there cell service?”

“It’s out more often than not. It’s easier to travel into the Norfair span and use facilities there than it is to rely on what the cabins offer. The service is up for one or two hours a day, and it’s restricted at those times.”

“It was better, but that was before,” Nursery said. “The attacks have been knocking out services. The city has had outages.”

“Amen,” Lookout said.

Cryptid nodded.

“You said attacks?” I asked. “These aren’t accidents or poorly laid groundwork breaking down?”

Sveta added, “Some people were suggesting the outages were malicious, but the people in charge have been quiet. If there are any arrests, they aren’t telling anyone about them.”

“It’s very malicious,” Nursery said. “Enemies of Gimel know they can’t pick a fight. Our population is small, but the number of capes scares them off. They know where Gimel is vulnerable.”

I had some idea, too. I’d thought about how much damage the outages, communication loss and disruption of both work and supply had done, especially with the timing.

The colder months were coming. We were already in a bad spot, but if infrastructure was stressed or disabled… the costs and loss of labor would have an immense impact.

“This is the war. We’re being attacked,” I said.

“Undermined,” Nursery said.

They were going after the weak points, hitting them again and again, so the cracks would fan out. Something would give.

“Can you give us the details on these attacks so we can confirm that ourselves?” Capricorn asked. “There might be a lead we can chase.”

“Possibly, but not now,” Nursery said. “I have to talk to people before I share our sources, and some don’t like your team very much. It may take convincing.”

Capricorn nodded.

Nursery had been tied into Prancer’s group by some fashion. There would be some upset people.

“Are these the same people we’re after?” Sveta asked me. “It’s similar M.O.s. They’re hurting us by attacking the city.”

“Maybe,” I said. “If so, they have an uncanny ability to hide their activities and hit the city where it hurts.”

“These people,” Lord of Loss said. “Am I right in guessing you’re after the culprits of the portal attacks?”

Damn it. It wasn’t a hard conclusion to draw, but it put us in an awkward spot.

“Yes,” Capricorn said. “Yeah, you’re right.”

I really hoped Lord of Loss and his trusted people weren’t on the enemy’s side, or we’d tipped them off, and they were now covering every base.

Capricorn nodded. “We have reasons to believe you weren’t directly involved. One of those reasons is that we have pictures with their faces.”

“You’ll recognize one,” I said.

He held out his hand in Lookout’s direction. She gave him a phone, the screen glowing.

Capricorn found what he was looking for. “These are the ones we have so far.”

The others approached Marquis, who took the phone and held it in a position where most of the others could see it. I hung back a bit.

It was unnerving. I didn’t trust myself like this.

“That looks like Kingdom Come,” Nursery observed. “That’s the one I’m meant to recognize?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That was my thought. You’ve worked with him. Can you point us in his general direction?”

“No. He didn’t share much. Not location, not what he’s doing now that the community center is done. I saw him four times at one place where villains meet, and he turned down five jobs in that span of time. He’s picky about picking jobs that don’t weigh on his sense of morality.”

One thing that I’d picked up from familial osmosis was that routines were a trap. If Kingdom Come spent long periods of time in a place like a drinking establishment, and if he always attended the same church on set dates, then that was something we could use to track him down.

Knowing his routine was a win. I wished we had more.

“You have no idea where he lived?” I asked.

“No. I had the impression it was outside of Gimel, but not Earth N. He attended church daily.”

“He wasn’t Fallen?” Capricorn asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. He didn’t give me that impression. No tattoos, no drugs, no vulgarity. His faith seemed genuine, and I’ve known a lot of faithful over the years. I think I could tell if he was Fallen.”

If it was only that easy, I thought. Some broadcast what they were, but others, like Scapegoat? It was a surprise.

That made me think.

“Do you think,” I said, “That he could sympathize with the Fallen? Not being a member, but helping and communicating with them?”

“He likes leading people to good things or the right path. He could have done that with the Fallen, thinking they needed saving and shepherding.”

“And he would then work with them, share information?”

“I don’t know,” Nursery said. “He was decent.”

“Aside from taking over crowds and attacking community centers,” I said.

“He did it because he thought it was just and right.”

“And because of the money,” Lord of Loss said. “He asked for pay in New Dollars, if that helps.”

“Anything else?” Capricorn asked. “Any information about him could help us.”

Lord of Loss shook his head. “I’ll pass on anything I think of. I can find you online?”

“I’m easy to find,” Capricorn said. “Email or phone.”

Lord of Loss nodded. He reached down for the phone that Marquis held, and then gestured with a finger as long as my forearm, the digit wrapped in the same bands of metal as the rest of him.

“I can’t help but notice the lack of costumes on these images,” Carn said. “These are civilian identities.”

“Composites,” Lookout said. “Three dimensional models pulled from other places. They’re best-guesses.”

I was so glad she didn’t elaborate. I glanced at Cryptid, and saw his hand move slightly. It was as if he’d read my mind; he was ready to shut Lookout up if need be.

“These images are all we have. These guys will strike again,” Capricorn said. “We need to stop that from happening. Some bending of the rules against people willing to act on this major a scale makes sense.”

“The civilian identities matter. You can’t go after people in their civilian guises,” Carn said.

“No matter what they’ve done?” Capricorn asked. “That’s dangerous and ridiculous. They tore holes in reality. A lot of people died.”

“Find another way if you want my help,” Carn said. “Sorry, Lord of Loss, Marquis, I can’t support this.”

“Step away, then,” Lord of Loss said. “Stay in sight. No phone calls.”

“I’ve lost your trust so easily?” Carn asked.

“My trust isn’t the question,” Lord of Loss said. “Theirs is. I trust you enough, but I can’t have their mistrust for you or yours for them disturb business.”

Carn hesitated. Narrowed eyes swept over all of us. He walked off a distance, to one of the large rocks in a front lawn that served as a roost. He sat on it, not facing us.

“I know this woman with the glasses and black hair,” Lord of Loss said. “She was popular with several of the people who had cabins in the same area. Usually they kept to themselves and wanted their isolation, but she ran poker games twice a week and most attended.”

“That’s a potential list of people who could have ties to her and the greater operation,” I said.

“One that exists entirely in my head. I won’t give you that list. I’ll call and inquire myself,” Lord of Loss said.

“That would help,” Capricorn said.

It helped, but it left me less sure of Lord of Loss and of this stage in things.

“The investigation hasn’t moved forward, has it?” Marquis asked.

“We made some significant progress sharing information just now,” Capricorn said.

“I didn’t mean here. I meant media, government, and courts,” Marquis said. “Any progress? Answers from those in power?”

I shook my head. “No news. They aren’t naming culprits, which is weird. People need that closure.”

“Pay attention to that,” Marquis said.

He said that, and I felt a chill as the sound of his voice echoed with memory.

On the battlefield after Gold Morning. Amy. My traitorous, mutilated heart had soared on recognizing her.

She’d veered between cultivated confidence and being distraught. I hadn’t recognized any of the faces she’d shown me. I didn’t recognize the voices.

Here, I could match Amy’s voice from back then. I recognized the cadence, and the confidence.

She’d picked it up from being around Marquis.

I’d claimed there was no real connection and now it was harder to defend that claim. It was a stupid, mindless link between past and present, and I still felt chilled.

I couldn’t even remember what he’d said just now, or the conversation before it.

I was saved from embarrassing myself only by Lord of Loss stating, “That one arrived last night and hasn’t left today. They’ve been here for a little while.”

He was indicating the phone with the pictures, which Marquis was holding up for him to look down on.

Capricorn took a step forward. “Which? May I approach?”

He got a wave of the hand, giving the permission, and approached, finding a position to see between Marquis and Lord of Loss. For our benefit, he said, “The woman with black hair. She was a leader for this particular cell.”

“She rented one of the retreats,” Lord of Loss said. “We take note when capes and people with money enter or leave the station. She was one.”

“That would be my focus,” Spruce said. “If you have questions, I can answer them.”

“You set up and manage the security cameras?” Lookout asked.

“Among other things.”

“I see. Hmm, um,” Lookout said. “It’s good you’re trying. I’ve got your footage, and my computers back home are looking it over. It looks like she left yesterday at the usual time, but her bag looks bigger. She might have packed up.”

“She might not have packed up everything,” Sveta said.

I imagined my imminent move to Ashley’s apartment. “Yeah. It’s hard to get everything. The other possibility is that she’s up to something.”

“More use of Earth N as a staging ground,” Capricorn said.

It was an unnecessary dig, but one I could sympathize with. In exchange for a small profit, the warlord of Earth N had given some horrendous people even more horrendous elbow room to do their work.

I frowned. “Lord of Loss, do you have any idea what her powers are?”

“Powers? No. We paid attention to her because she had money.”

“She might have a minor mutation,” Sveta said. “She always wears sunglasses. It’s a good clue someone has powers, if they’re covering something up.”

“It also applies to the power-affected,” Marquis said.

Was that a dig? I had no idea, and I hated that I was even asking myself, instead of ignoring it. Fuck me.

“The problem is, whoever or whatever she is, powers we don’t know are dangerous,” Sveta said. “We risk tipping them off. There’s a chance she could come back.”

“If we ignore it, she might find out we visited through rumors,” Capricorn said. “That could be enough for her to run for it. I say we go now. It gives us a chance to be on her heels.”

“I agree with Capricorn. But only if Lord of Loss is willing to let us step in,” I said.

“Good answer,” Lord of Loss said. His tone had changed slightly. More serious.

“It impacts your business, having us there and poking around” I said. “I understand that, but they attacked all of us, when they did what they did.”

“Back at the community center. When the gun went off and Miss Fume Hood was shot, I struck a deal with you,” Lord of Loss said.

“We let each other go, so I could help her,” I said. “You asked me to tell people you weren’t responsible.”

“Our goal was to capture, hold, and release. Killing wasn’t the intent. You held up your end of the deal, you made that clear.”

“I tried my best. I didn’t have as much clout as I would have liked, being the person who was hiding her powers. I told my boss it was important, and he handled it.”

“It was enough,” he said. “Thank you. And in thanks, continuing this trend of cooperation, in exchange for information and images you’ve shared, and because of Marquis’ goodwill, you can investigate. I have trucks.”

It didn’t take long for us to get moving, after Lookout picked up her stuff. Lord of Loss had cars and trucks. Capricorn ended up in the driver’s seat again. Marquis had Spruce as a chauffeur. Lord of Loss changed into a flier.

I thought about flying myself, but I defaulted once again to sticking with the group.

I took a seat in the back. The truck had a trailer attached at the back, and Cryptid seated himself in it. The little window at the rear of the truck was left open, so Cryptid’s head wasn’t that far from us.

The first minute or so of driving was painful. The silence dragged.

I didn’t know what to say.

No, maybe I did.

“Marquis gives me the impression he’s the real person in charge, here,” I said. “With Lord of Loss as the decoy king.”

“I kind of got that vibe too,” Sveta said.

“Aw, I keep missing stuff,” Lookout said.

Capricorn was silent, but he was more focused on driving.

“It’s little things you learn to watch out for,” Sveta said. “This is more of a feeling thing than it is logic. We don’t have any evidence.”

“Ah huh,” Lookout said.

Sveta was sitting in the front seat. She turned her head around one-hundred and eighty degrees, tilting her body to one side so she could look past the headrest. I gave her my most convincing smile.

Her arm released, forearm and hand dropping between the two front seats. Tendrils bent, and her hand moved up to the seat beside me, reaching for my hand.

I took it and gave it a bit of a waggle.

Twenty minutes of driving through nowhere, with only a bit of flattened grass where cars had passed over. Cryptid reverted back to being Chris, relying on his cloaking and the fact we were facing forward and he was behind us to maintain his modesty. Were the roads busier or if Marquis was driving behind us, it might have been more awkward.

“If you don’t want to do the thing tonight because you’re tired or upset or something, it’s okay,” Lookout said. “It’s not that important.”

I didn’t want to. I was exhausted.

“I’ll come,” I said. “Unless something happens in the next hour. It’s important.”

Marquis’ car slowed down. We came to a stop on a hill with the cars leaning at almost a forty-five degree angle. It felt like they would roll down the hill with one good push.

Not that I was thinking of petty, stupid violence as a way of releasing pent-up stress.

Marquis. He stepped out of his car, Spruce at the other side. Marquis was disheveled in a way that looked very calculated, and it was made all the more pointed by Spruce’s neatness.

The hill had woods on the other side, and the woods served as a barrier to give us a view of the cabin, while not letting anyone in the cabin get a view of us.

No guarantee it was empty.

“Lookout, can you give us a scan?” Capricorn asked.

“Not really a scan. I can do a camera shot aimed at some special kinds of interpretation.”

“That works. Whatever you got.”

She rummaged for a bit. She had her bag at her back, cloaked, and she had stuff in her belt, with all its little pouches. She found what she was looking for, aimed it, and took some pictures, adjusting various dials.

Her phone had the images. Capricorn looked at them first, Sveta looking over his shoulder. Then he showed Chris and I, starting with the better pictures. Dark, with blurs where the grass caught the light, a vaguely human-shaped blur within the building. Low to the ground, as if the person was sleeping on the floor.

Another shot, with more darkness, the grass wasn’t even visible, with only some faint striations running through it. The power line that ran along the forest floor and up to the cabins glowed, and the electronics within. There was a computer on the desk. There was more on the wall and a great deal hooked up to the door.

Several came out all white.

“What are these?” Sveta asked.

“Tests. Ignore them. It’s the kind of thing I’m trying to figure out for secret project six-dash-nine, for our teammates.”

“Heat and electric resolutions are good,” I said, looking at the last few images. One looked hyper-detailed, many more were fuzzy. Another had fog rolling through it, that didn’t exist in reality.

“Can we get another heat pic, Lookout?” Capricorn asked.

“One second. Lots of dials to adjust.”

I was very conscious of Marquis’ presence nearby. It was as bad as seeing Presley on the train had been. Someone reminiscent of Amy lurking in the corner of my vision.

He’d been fair, he’d been fine. He’d explained my background without asking, but he’d also offered a favor. Did I trust him? No.

Did that list of pluses and minuses account for a net negative, to warrant how much I hated him? Could I explain why I hated him?

He was, in a way, reminiscent of everything that had gone wrong with Amy. Duplicity, villainy, the fact he breached my boundaries simply by being here when I didn’t want him to be, and that he’d stayed despite the conflict of interest, when the Ferrymen had left.

The others had some sense of what had happened now. I’d shared hints, but I hadn’t spelled it out.

I would have to explain the Wretch.

Maybe if I went to Dr. Darnall.

“Victoria,” Capricorn called out. There was a note of urgency. “Sveta!”

“What?”

“Go! He’s dying!”

“Door’s electrified!” Lookout shouted.

I flew. Sveta was right behind me, struggling for a lack of good things to grab beyond the field of green.

I offered her my hand.

Just the force of her pulling made my sling wound hurt. I could have asked Marquis for help, and yet there was no way I would.

I broke through the electrified door. Sveta was right behind me, launching through the gap between myself and the top of the door.

A man, bloody, bearded, with a mullet and glasses. He had a tattoo on his arm and I couldn’t see it because he was bleeding so much.

There were liters of blood on the ground and he didn’t have many to spare. His head moved as I flew over to him, and his eyes were unfocused.

“My name is Kingdom Come,” he said. “Help this man and help me.”

“What’s going on?” Sveta asked.

“He’s controlled,” I said. “We’re going to help you, okay, Kingdom. Stop struggling, you’re making it worse.”

“Can’t hear you,” he said. “Can’t really see. If I’d known you were coming, I wouldn’t have done this.”

“Help,” I said. “Towels, by the bed.”

There were towels in the corner of the cabin. Sveta grabbed them and I began using them to staunch the bleeding. It wasn’t enough.

“They left the body like this, punishing me because I wasn’t being fast enough. I couldn’t bear to sit here and feel a body starve to death, can’t disconnect my power from victims like this. They won’t let me. I pulled until the wires did enough damage. If I’d just waited twenty minutes…”

“Stay strong,” I said. “Stick this out.”

“Can’t hear you,” he said, sounding far away. “I feel like I lose a little piece of me every time one of these bodies gets discarded.”

The wires were in the way. I reached out, activating my forcefield for just a moment, so I could wrench them, tearing them from where they’d been lashed. A floorboard broke to my right.

It was easier when the wires were removed, but there were some that were acting as tourniquets. It was hard to know which was which, so I focused on the ones that were scraping bone.

The others arrived. Marquis, Cryptid in camouflaged human form, Lookout and Capricorn. No Lord of Loss- he was too big for the room.

It was Marquis who rushed to the dying man’s side. I felt an anxious stab in my chest as I saw the angle of his head, the way he tied his hair back and secured it with a loop of bone. His expression, which looked entirely as serious as the situation warranted, yet seemed lacking in something- in light.

I saw her in it.

His tools were cruder, but they were tools. He helped Sveta cut the wires, and then began to work on the open wounds, sealing them in complex bone encasements.

“They’re using me,” the bleeding man said. “They got me. I’m a way of passing messages between dimensions, and a tool, a weapon.”

Marquis redoubled his efforts.

I looked away, acutely uncomfortable, then stood, because looking away wasn’t enough.

I’d done what I could, and my presence by the man only made it harder to give care. I kept an eye out for where I could jump in, grabbed one or two things to hand them over- like the scissors on the desk.

The man went on, and I tried to focus on the words. “The war is a distraction. It pulls us away from the city and away from things that matter. They’re after all the groupings of capes. The big teams, the places capes rally. They want Goddess, and they’re going to go after her when they’re strong enough.”

“Who are they?” I asked. “Is it the same people who attacked the portal? Earth Cheit?”

“Can’t hear.”

“Cheit!” I raised my voice.

“Not Cheit. That’s- distraction. Ah.”

There was a pause so long I thought the man had died and Kingdom Come had gone.

Cryptid was now giving his assistance on the medical front. He seemed to know more than I do when it came to that.

I glanced at the desk. Everything was missing, shredded.

I opened drawers, found nothing.

When we left with our victim, I doubted I’d get to come back and investigate. Not tomorrow. Stuff would change. Lord of Loss or Marquis would do their own investigation, or use someone like Spruce.

Between the cabin wall and the board at the far right of the desk, was a shitton of dust, with some discarded tissues and food particles.

I used the wretch and shoved the desk away from the wall by a foot. Nothing hidden in the debris. I moved the desk back.

“Let me know if you need help,” I said.

“No need. He might just live,” Marquis said. “We’ll need to get him to a hospital soon.”

“Do you need me to fly him?” I asked.

“Better to have him in a truck with me and one of our doctors beside him,” Marquis said. “If he springs a leak mid-flight, he’ll be gone.”

It was hard to focus on him. I was glad he was helping and I dreaded that he was here. He was one step removed from her, and my head wasn’t in a rational place.

Books. My bookshelf had been my refuge, and this place had some of its own.

Most of the books had been damaged or abused by the the transition from Bet to Gimel to N, presumably. They showed age in the same way a heavy smoker might be forty but look sixty.

There were empty shelves on the far left bookshelf, but no dust on the shelf. I checked, and I found something similar to what I’d seen by the desk at the back. Dust, garbage… and papers. I seized papers.

Some financial things. Some medical.

And one that the woman probably would have wanted to bring with her. I read the banner at the top of the paper. I was discreet in folding it and pocketing it without Marquis noticing, before continuing my search.

“We’re here with the truck!” a man shouted from outside.

I offered my one-handed assistance in helping Marquis, Spruce, Cryptid and Capricorn get the man outside without jostling him too much. We got him into the back of the truck, and Marquis’ people piled in.

The chaos of the moment meant chaos in the moments that followed. Lord of Loss was sterner than he had been, ordering his own people inside. It was blood shed on his territory, and the man that had been captured, controlled as a Kingdom Come proxy and left to die had apparently been a citizen.

For our efforts to save him, we got a thank you and an implied suggestion that we make our way back to the station.

Sveta was using a small brush to get blood out of the joints of her costume. Lookout was with Capricorn and Cryptid.

She hadn’t been inside the cabin, but she must have been at an angle to see what was going on. A lot of blood and a lot of open wounds and ugliness. Even with the Fallen camp, we’d kept her clear of a lot of it.

I put my hand on her shoulder. She looked up at me, solemn.

“You good?”

She smiled and nodded.

“Found this,” I said. I showed her the paper I’d saved.

She processed it, then realized its meaning. I saw her eyes widen.

I handed it to the others in turn.

It was my only prize, really. The other things had been receipts, that I’d left for the others to find.

The name on the banner along the top of the page was the same name as the remote prison for capes that they’d sent Ashley and Rain to. On the sheet itself, it had been patient numbers, a few months out of date. Some had been highlighted.

The prison was an area of focus for this clandestine group, and we had people already there.

Torch – 7.10

I stepped out of the bathroom at the Gimel-side G-N station, doing my best to manage two bags. One bag had my armor, and the other had some of Kenzie’s stuff. It took some hunting to find her.

There were plenty of trees around the station, a side effect of the city being put down as fast as trees and rock could be cleared away. To have a very green look, all that needed to be done was to leave a slice of land and root structures intact. Kenzie had situated herself at the base of the tree nearest the entrance. She had her phone out, held in front of her.

She waved as I approached, her phone still held out.

“She’s back,” she said, to the phone. “We’re going to catch our train soon, so I might have to lose the phone or we might drop the connection because the cell networks are bad lately.”

“You said the bad networks might be because of enemy action,” I heard a male voice through the tinny speaker.

“Yeah,” she said. She patted the grass beside her. I set the bags down and sat.

Ashley and Rain were on the other end of the video call. Ashley was offscreen, but her hands were onscreen.

“How are you?” Rain asked me.

“I’ve had better days, but we got info. This call is secure?”

“Oh yeah,” Kenzie said.

“Our resident, full-time tinker said you’d be better to explain the paper you found, Victoria,” Rain said.

“If it’s no trouble,” Kenzie said.

“I had a look at the paper. The prison is a focus. From what Kingdom Come said, they’re paying close attention to places where capes gather in large numbers. The prison where you guys are is one focus. Goddess is another, maybe because she has a lot of capes in her immediate orbit. The other big teams are another one.”

“Not us, because we’re not big or important,” Kenzie said.

“…Yeah,” I said. “I would be interested in seeing how that changed or their angle for approaching us, if things reached a different point.”

“Feeling ambitious? Is Capricorn rubbing off on you?” Rain asked. “Or-”

“Did I?” Ashley’s voice came across the phone, closer to the microphone on their end.

“Don’t say did,” Kenzie said. “Not like it’s over with. You’re not gone, you’re just there. You could even help us.”

“We’ll help however we can,” Rain said. There was a pause, and the camera shifted as someone moved. It might have been Ashley holding the phone on the far end, or it could have been a movement that jostled the table the phone sat on. Rain added a quieter, “Yeah. I think we’d be glad to help. It’s the boredom that’s worst, and this sounds good.”

“We’ll get back to you with more information and direction, then,” I said. Kenzie nodded. “You guys are okay?”

“As okay as I could be,” Rain said. “The talk at the tribunal helped a bit. They’re letting me have some basic tools, Ashley can come, and I get a chance to work on her hands.”

“I appreciate it,” Ashley said.

“Four of us live in my building,” Rain said. “We each have exits on a different face of the building, so we don’t cross paths as much, but walls are thin and people are bored. There’s a lot of talk.”

“I have a roommate,” Ashley said. “You could call her family. Having her around helps some, but it also hurts some.”

“That’s family,” I said.

“Yup,” Kenzie said.

“I suppose so,” Rain added.

“If these updates to my hands work at all, I shouldn’t be so reliant on her,” Ashley said. “Patience has a way of wearing thin.”

“Yours or hers?” I asked.

“Same thing,” she said.

“Uh, right,” Rain said. “Hey, if we’re helping out, what is it we’re doing?”

“Watch out for anything suspicious,” I said. “Anyone who seems to show too much interest in the way things work.”

“That could be anyone,” Rain said. “Us, even. It’s an odd setup, everyone wants to know more as soon as they’re here.”

“Odd how?” I asked.

“That would be us, right now,” Rain said. “It’s a town, almost. Every building is its own set of cells. Wide roads separating things, longer walks between facilities that matter.”

Ashley added, “They spread us out so that if one person blows something up or uses a power, they can’t affect more than a building or two at a time. Eight parahumans at most.”

“And they have the countermeasures. The ankle attachment,” I said.

“Yeah,” Rain said. “A lot of security is offsite. Everything is scheduled, so we don’t have too many of us in one place at one time. Officers have guns, remotes for the bombs we’re wearing and access to security cameras stationed at irregular intervals with irregular schedules.”

“I hear security cameras and my imagination goes wild,” Kenzie said.

“Be careful about fooling around,” Ashley’s voice was almost that of a parent. Warning, guiding. “If you make a mistake, it reflects on us.”

“Yeah,” Kenzie said. Her expression was serious. “I don’t want that. I want you out of there already. Both of you.”

“It will take time. You can call in the meantime,” Ashley said.

Kenzie smiled.

“Any thoughts, Victoria?” Rain asked.

“What I’m hearing,” I spoke slowly as I thought things through mid-sentence, “Is that for any dangerous person or group to influence the prison population, it would be hard to reach enough people.”

“They would have to be staff,” Rain said.

I nodded slowly. “It’s possible, and it fits better with the picture we have. It’s also pretty worrying, if true.”

“We’ll look,” Ashley said. “It’s easier, because we see staff more often than we see other prisoners.”

“Let me know if you need anything,” Kenzie said. “I’m at your disposal.”

“I need you to not do too much,” Ashley said.

“I’m not. School is handled, I’m ahead in most of my classes, which is easy since it’s only half days, and I’m more or less getting enough sleep.”

“Take it easy. Step away from the tinkering, be a kid. Run in circles in a field or whatever it is kids do,” Ashley said.

“Running in circles in a field? How long was it since you were a kid, Ashley?” I asked.

“A long time,” she said. “I didn’t get to enjoy my childhood as much as I wanted, and I can’t remember those days very easily. I don’t want one of my favorite people to make the same mistake I did.”

“You’re one of my favorite people too,” Kenzie said.

“Powers have a way of taking over, and tinker powers like yours, Kenzie, they’re especially bad for it.”

Rain’s voice was a touch testy as he said, “I like how you’re saying that while I’m on hour… holy, it’s been two and a half hours that I’ve been working on your hands here.”

“Shh,” Ashley said.

“Rubbing that salt into the wound. I’m kidding. It’s nice to do something practical.”

He sounded so easygoing, considering his incarceration. Ashley, meanwhile, seemed a bit subdued.

“And familiar faces,” Ashley said. She looked at the phone’s camera, locking eyes with us. “I’m glad you called, Kenzie.”

“Just so you know, I am going to take a break from the tinkering tonight. Victoria’s coming over for dinner. We’re having pasta, we’ll talk with my parents, who seem to really like her, my mom especially, and I can show her my workshop with everything I’ve been doing.”

I didn’t miss the pause after, or the looks exchanged between Rain and Ashley on the tiny phone screen.

Bells chimed in the distance as the gates closed in anticipation of the train coming in.

“Keep your expectations low,” Ashley said.

Kenzie heaved out a sigh. “Okay.”

“It’s good if Victoria is visiting,” Ashley said. “More of us should have been doing that. I would have come over before, if it was doable.”

“You intimidate my parents and they don’t want you over, so yeah, not doable. Really really, it doesn’t need to be a ‘should’ thing,” Kenzie said. “And you all have your own expectations and ideas going in that makes it awkward.”

“Is there anything I need to worry about?” I asked Ashley and Rain. I picked up the bags, slinging them over the one shoulder.

“Seee?” Kenzie cut in, bringing the phone closer to her face. “You two are making it awkward. She’s worried.”

“Wondering if I need to be worried, actually.”

“You’re fine if it’s you, Victoria,” Rain said.

“Yeah, she’s fine,” Kenzie said. She shook her head and smiled. “I’m having a friend over. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s a big deal to you, for one thing,” Ashley said.

“Because I never used to get to have friends over, not because there’s any need to be worried, geez! My mom’s a good cook, I have stuff I want to show off, and-”

“She’s not your mom, and that’s not your dad.”

We’d been making our way to the front door of the train station when Ashley said it. Kenzie stopped in her tracks.

“Ah man,” Rain said, in the background.

People walked past us to enter the station. While Kenzie and I stood still, the crowd moved on. The train pulled into the station, noisy as it approached, muffled somewhat as it passed indoors. It drowned out everything and brought all conversation to a halt.

Kenzie hit a button on her phone, and held it to her ear, her back to me.

There were a dozen things I wanted to say or do, and I held my tongue. There was still the train ride, and it would only frustrate if I interrupted a conversation now.

“Ashley-” she said. “Ashley, ugh, let me talk, okay? Because I have a train to catch. You’re wrong, you’re lying, and I’m really bothered you’re lying. I’m really tired of this. That was rude.”

A pause.

“Yeah, well, I love you a lot but I don’t like you a lot right now. I’m going to hang up. Hm? Yeah. Okay. Fine.”

She hung up, spun in a half circle to face me, and smiled. “Sorry. She wants you to call her at the end of the night, if possible. She says she spent some time in Earth N at one point, getting the lay of the land, she can give tips on who’s there.”

“I will. Kenzie, I have a lot of questions,” I said.

“Can we not make a big deal of this?” she asked. “There’s the train to catch, and I meant what I said about not wanting you to be prejudiced or anything.”

“Catching the train? Sure,” I said. “We can do that, and I can come over. I won’t break my word like that. I just… want to make sure I’m not missing anything vital.”

“I’m safe, you’re safe. My parents are safe, and they are my parents, just to make that clear. I have pictures of them holding me while I’m a baby. I don’t have any runaway tinkerings, there won’t be any captives in the basement, nobody’s going to die or get maimed. There’s nothing ‘vital’. Can we just go?”

I nodded.

We walked to the train, joining the tail end of the short line of people that still hadn’t boarded.

“We all have weird or broken families,” Kenzie said. “Rain doesn’t have any family he gets along with. Ashley doesn’t have anyone except her twin.”

“Twin?”

“Kind of. Her roommate, now. Sveta only has Weld, Chris doesn’t have anyone, Tristan and his parents don’t talk and he only gets to see them because he goes to Church with them. Byron has it easier but it’s still awkward. You’ve got family business I’m not going to poke my nose in.”

“Thank you.”

“So it leaves Byron and me with mostly normal families. I can say the word ‘family’ and half the people in the group get a teeny-tiny surly or sad look on their face and the other half get an ‘oh no’ look.”

“Which one am I?” I asked.

“Depends on the day, but you’re a tie-breaker a lot of the time, so that’s fine. What I’m saying is everyone has these ideas going in, some of which are outright wrong, like Ashley’s, and something as simple and basic as dinner with family and it becomes this big thing.”

We boarded the train.

“What am I even supposed to do in this situation, Kenz?”

“Do what you were going to do. I know you checked up on Chris and he didn’t like that, and this is you checking up on me. Difference is, I’m okay with that, I’m even happy you care. Just don’t- don’t go in with the wrong ideas. Because that’s not fair.”

I considered that for a moment. I saw her looking up at me with large eyes, kinky, glossy hair in two balls close to the base of her neck.

No judgment. I gave her a nod, and she practically skipped at the confirmation, like the moment gave her a boost that accelerated her, saw her moving ahead in the aisle to a possible seating location.

We took up one set of four chairs, each of us taking two seats, depositing our bags and things in the empty seats. Kenzie looked around a few times before putting down her helmet and cloaking device, the visuals distorting as the cloaking adjusted to the change in orientation. The seat-bottom briefly disappeared as the camouflage took hold, Kenzie tapped the cloaked cloaking device, and it returned to normal.

“It’s not a long trip,” she said. “We’re going to the next station.”

“I know,” I said. “Then, in the interest of finding something to talk about that won’t take too long, how’s school?”

Maybe not the right subject for a short conversation. The reality was that Kenzie was a teacher’s pet, and I actually really liked school and studying, with some hope of studying in the future, if I could get into classes. Despite the ten year age difference between us, it was a pretty decent back and forth.

“What kind of projects?” she asked, as the train came to a stop. The station beyond the window was a temporary one.

“With parahuman studies? A lot of it is theory and extrapolating from what little we know. I’m really eager to see how the classes change in the future, since we know different things than we did four years ago.”

“I don’t think I’d want to study that stuff,” Kenzie said. “I think it’s super cool, don’t think I’m a jerk for pooh-poohing what you like.”

“Not at all.”

“But I don’t know what I’d want to do. It seems very far off.”

“You’re in fifth grade. You’ve got seven years before you have to make any decisions.”

“Seven years. There’s part of me that wants to be an adult already and there’s another part of me that really, really doesn’t.”

We were stepping off the train. Not many got off at the temporary station in Norwalk, and we had some privacy.

“Why don’t you?” I asked. “Is it the idea of having romantic feelings being uncomfortable? You mentioned that once.”

“See, it’s funny you ask that, because I mentioned it in group once. Ashley asked the opposite question. She asked why I would want to. Chris asked something similar to you. He wanted to know why I wouldn’t want to grow up.”

“And?”

“And I don’t know,” she said. She smiled. “Both have issues, being here, being grown up. I think I’d like to fix things and figure myself out, and get most of the way to being better over the next few years.”

“It’s a good goal.”

The conversation carried on for a bit, Kenzie walking on the concrete barrier between lawns and road, heel touching toe, arms out to the side. Periodically, she’d poke me in my uninjured arm as she used me to catch her balance again.

The wind was the prime culprit in her losing her balance. The portal loomed above us, the sky on the far side now overcast, with clouds seeping in through like they might through a crack in glass.

Many houses had been vacated, or had signs on the lawns. There weren’t many cars on the road or in driveways for what should have been a settled residential area.

A nice residential area. When so many houses across the city and especially in Earth N were prefabricated or rushed out, the houses here were three stories, with built-in garages. Driveways were often brick laid out in patterns. Things marked it as different from the Earth I’d grown up in. Lawns were transplanted from the landscape that had been here prior to the houses going up, or the existing material hadn’t been removed. The ground was uneven, rough, with dense weeds often overtaking or replacing grass. Where trees stood on many lawns, the trees were older, less cultivated, with stubborn and jumbled root systems and gnarled branches. Many had burls.

The veins of gold and yellow ran through much of it, too. The middle and sides of the road were marked with serrated lines of yellow triangles. The area didn’t have a dense assortment of streetlights, and I imagined the triangles were meant to catch headlights in the dark, so drivers would see three dotted yellow lines marking the bounds of the road.

Fences, trees near the road, rocks at the corners of property and other potential obstacles had their own dashes of yellow paint, stickers, or ribbons.

Kenzie’s house was steel gray, consisting of three sections, with only the rightmost having a third story- and it had a garage below that taller section. The roof was peaked over the front door but sloped toward the front, everywhere else. The windows were large, modern, with stained glass in frames hanging in between many of the windows and the curtains. Clear glass, gray-black tinted glass, and rose pink. Two cars in the driveway, with one being the van that Kenzie had used in the past to transport her tinker stuff.

She had a key hanging from a chain at her neck, and used it to let us in.

The walls were eggplant, and it somehow didn’t look terrible. Monochrome art and art that was mostly monochrome with really bold yellows and oranges to catch the eye ran through the entire foyer, with more pictures going up the wall in parallel with the stairs. I could smell Italian spices and I could hear a volatile hiss of steam from the kitchen as meat cooked.

“I’m home!”

Her mother appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, apron on, color matched to the slate walls and blue decor of the kitchen I could see behind her. She used a tea towel to dry her hands.

“Victoria. It’s so nice to have a guest. We don’t get the opportunity that often, because we have a tinker in the house, who doesn’t always clean up after herself.”

“Mommmmm.”

Irene pursed her lips together, before giving me a bit of a smile. “Everything went well today?”

“Reasonably well,” I said. I pulled my bag around. “I wanted to bring wine, but it wasn’t doable since we thought we might get into a fight. I brought chocolate.”

“Chocolate is always welcome,” Irene said. She took the box. “Ooh, very nice, thank you. It’s good to hear it went well. I’m curious about who our neighbors just past that portal are.”

“I’ve met them and I’m still not sure who they are,” I said. “I could tell you later.”

“At dinner, maybe,” She said, smiling. “How are you, Kenzie?”

“I’m good, thank you for asking,” Kenzie said. “Dinner smells amazing.”

“Which reminds me! Victoria, are you hungry? I’m trying to decide how much pasta and garlic bread to make.”

“I’m ravenous, actually. Errands took a while today and I didn’t get the chance to eat lunch.”

“Perfect.”

Kenzie spoke up. “I don’t eat a lot, and I’m pretty regular about not eating a lot. My mom got fed up with asking me because the answer was always the same-”

Kenzie’s hands squeezed her middle, pressing her shirt against it, showing how narrow she was. She looked at me, then saw the bags I was holding. “Oh! Put that down somewhere.”

“You can put things down in the corner of the living room,” Irene Martin said.

The living room was more a lavender than an eggplant,with dense white carpet and nice looking furniture. The lighter shade of the room worked with the way the light flowed into it. At one corner of the room, a tarp had been laid out. An easel was on the tarp, a wooden rack of paints set beside it.

A collection of gears and bits of glass were arranged on one half of the coffee table, on a newspaper. The paper, gears and glass were dusty.

“Mom’s art,” Kenzie said, indicating the easel. “She’s terrible at a lot of the artsy stuff until she gets practice in, and then she’s really talented.”

“That’s not nice to say, that I’m terrible,” Irene said, from behind us.

“It’s true, though! You’re really, really good at stuff when you learn it. You’re an amazing cook, you had some awesome stained glass art, before, I remember it. It was better than what you have in the windows now.”

“That was a long, long time ago,” Irene said. “I’m surprised you remember it.”

Kenzie nodded, energetic.

“I’m not a proper artist,” her mom said, as she looked past us to the painting. “I don’t have my own ideas, I spin off on other people’s. Besides, I have no patience to stick it out.”

The painting was in shades of indigo to midnight blues, three old women clawing at each other in efforts to reach for the sky, expressions contorted. It wasn’t complete, with one old woman with a shawl over her head left undone, face left as only a midnight blue oval, hands left similarly undefined.

“You painted that?”

“I was. It’s not done.”

“It’s really good.”

“Thank you,” she said. She put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll get back to it someday. Do you need anything?”

I shook my head at the offer.

“Julien is out to pick up some ingredients I forgot. He’ll be back in a few minutes. Why don’t you give Victoria a tour, Kenzie? We’ll talk over dinner. I’m interested to pick your brain and learn more about what you’re doing.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

Kenzie led me up the stairs to the top floor. Black and white photos showed Julien and Irene together. Here and there, there would be one of Kenzie.

“I’ll show you my room!”

Irene was an interior decorator, if I remembered right. I was left with the feeling that the house was being presented as a kind of showcase, more than it was a lived-in place. The wall colors were striking, the artwork eye-catching to a distracting degree, with bright reds and yellows in otherwise muted rooms, and the style was unerringly consistent across the rooms I’d seen. I felt like being in this house for too long might give me a headache.

“Bathroom, if you need it,” Kenzie said. “My dad’s study. He sometimes goes in there to smoke with the fan blowing it out the window, but it stinks so we keep the door closed. My parent’s room is at the end of the hall, and this is my room.”

Every room thus far had been cool blues and purples with monochrome flooring, artwork, and tiles, a few points of colorful definition aside. Kenzie’s room was unpainted, the walls plastered with art. Her bed was made in a way that made me think she’d done it herself, rather than have either parent do it, and there were two desks and one bookshelf, all strewn with papers and pieces of things. Plastic bins held a few dozen random pieces of electronics each.

I could smell the food cooking downstairs. I was ravenous.

“You said you moved around a lot. Is it nice to have a place to stay and make your own?” I asked.

“It so is,” she said, bouncing on the spot. “Team poster. There I am.”

It was a poster of the Baltimore PRT. Mayday was on it, though he wasn’t in the leader position; he took the second position of the line that formed where each adult member of the team stood behind the right shoulder of the person in front. The Wards were a numerous bunch, not as organized as the Protectorate, with some sitting or crouching in front of the lined-up heroes, others gathered on perches behind the members of the group at the rear and far right of the line.

I could see Kenzie. She looked tiny, a singular lens dominating her mask. Her arms were very skinny, and her hands were buried in gauntlets that made each hand look the size of her head, each with a lens on the back. “There you are, as Optics. With camera hands?”

“I called them mugshots. They weren’t very good and they never let me use them outside of training. If you squint, you can see my flash gun.”

“I can. That’s really cool,” I said. “The old team.”

“I miss them. There’s Avian, Stungun, Keychain, Blush, and there’s Houndstooth. And that’s Mayday, you see, and Turtleshell, Aerobat… and some I never even got to have conversations with. They were always busy.”

“I recognize a lot of those names,” I said. “It’s a good poster. You managed to find it after everything happened?”

“My mom and dad paid to have people get stuff from the house, but the poster didn’t make it. There was a picture in a magazine they kept, though. I took it and blew it up. It’s not as sharp and details are misplaced where I enhanced the quality a bunch of times and the computer guessed wrong, but it’s pretty good.”

“There are a few things I wish I’d been able to salvage,” I said. “Others I managed to get. A poster.”

“I got this, too. It’s not the original, but it was in the background of a picture on a memory card, and the program kept the lettering from on the frame.”

I had to walk around her shelf of plastic tubs to see. Alone on one empty space of wall was a picture frame with a very thick frame, the actual picture so small I could have put my hand flat against the glass and covered it. It was Irene, not as expertly put together, but very tired, with a swaddled Kenzie in her arms. The picture wasn’t black and white, like so many family and individual pictures in the house, and thick letters spelled out the name ‘KANZI’ below the image.

“Kanzi?”

“My name. I never liked having to explain it. I’d always have to spell it out.”

“I like it,” I said. “But I like Kenzie too.”

She nodded in a very aggressive, overly done way, before leading me around the room. “More old team stuff, see? I had an Optics trading card.”

“A swipe card,” I said.

“Yes! You know about swipe cards! That’s cool.”

“Can I?”

“Yes, for sure.”

She seemed happy, enthusiastic. The card was framed, but the frame was attached to the wall with a string, and it could be flipped around to show the back. The stats were on it, along with the ability. People who played on console would have the cards at hand, being able to swipe the card like one might a credit or debit card, summoning an ally or generating an effect.

“I was a support card. Not a lot of people used me because I couldn’t be summoned into a fight,” Kenzie said. “Kind of a bummer.”

Amy had been a support card for that game, I was pretty sure. The effect had been downplayed a lot, but her card had still been popular, because there weren’t that many heals. Most of what I knew had come from Dean, Chris, and Dennis talking. Gallant, Kid Win, and Clockblocker.

“I have one too,” I said. “Mine wasn’t anything special, despite my being popular-ish at the time.”

“That’s so cool. Let me see, I think I have other stuff. Old merch that I found. It’s so hard, with the world ending and everything.”

She rummaged. I looked at the other wall decoration.

Group therapy seating chart. Kenzie connected to Sveta and Chris. Chris to Damsel, Damsel to Rain, Rain to Tristan, Tristan to Sveta, forming a circle.

There were notes. Between Ashley and Rain was ‘hands’ and ‘not rich’. Between Rain and Tristan were ‘regret’ and ‘teenage boys’. Between Tristan and Sveta was ‘Weld’ and ‘hero’, and so it went. Other notes cluttered margins, seemingly more about groups of three or group therapy in general, with topics of past discussions in tiny scribbled font and hatch marks or symbols here and there.

The note that caught my eye was Chris and Ashley. There was ‘dark’, ‘switch places?’ and then a question mark by note I couldn’t make out without bringing my face closer to the paper.

Yamada said they have a lot they can talk about but what? Doesn’t say.

“My seating chart!” Kenzie said, with an energy and suddenness that made me jump. “Don’t get me started. Really truly don’t, because I could talk forever about the group, and I want to talk about other stuff.”

“I won’t, don’t worry.”

“I have other merch that was from a bag of plastic things that was the size of my head. They were selling each bag for twenty bucks, when before it would have been, like, four. I wanted Baltimore PRT stuff. I found mine!”

It was a plastic disc with an image embossed onto it, the kind of thing that might have dropped out of one of the glass cases with a quarter and a crank from outside grocery stores and mall entrances. Optics. There was one for Houndstooth, and one for a cape I didn’t recognize in the slightest.

“It’s great that you were able to find mementos like that,” I said. I held up Optics to tilt the disc and let the light and shadow hit it in a way that made the lines clearer. “I wish I had more of these sorts of things.”

“They were good days?” Kenzie asked.

I nodded. “I have regrets about things I didn’t pay enough attention to, but they were good days.”

“I think it’s pretty important to hold onto the memories. Oh! That’s a great reason for me to show you this!”

And then she was off, through the door with only a half-second glance to check I was following. When I wasn’t fast enough behind her, she reappeared in the door, all excitement.

“Lead the way,” I said.

So far, not too bad. She was a kid.

I glanced back at the room, which didn’t match the rest of the house at all, and closed the door behind me before following.

Kenzie waited at a door that led from the front hall to the garage.

“My workshop,” she said. “Don’t trip on any wires or things could get messy. Too many things you could knock over if you were stumbling around in the dark.”

It was, as garages went, pretty standard. Concrete floor, wood, exposed wiring. Tinkertech was spaced out through the garage, with a table housing most of the completed works, another with tools and what looked like the project of the now, and two large cubes, one of which I recognized as the projector box.

“Teleportation project, discontinued,” she said. She had her phone out and in hand, screen illuminated, and waved it in the general direction of one box which looked like a cube shaped egg had cracked, revealing the internals, which featured a vague, foot-long approximation of a human skeleton in it, if the skeleton was made of metal boxes and electronics. “There’s the time camera, you know that one.”

“I do,” I said. I noted that it was open and in pieces. “You’re updating it?”

“Fixing. Maintaining. Stuff breaks down constantly so it takes more time.”

I had to ask. “You’re not working too hard?”

“Bed by eleven,” she said, confidently. “I don’t always sleep when I’m in bed, but I’m still in bed by eleven.”

“The sleeping is the important part,” I said.

“Catching the bad guys and kicking enough ass that we get famous and everyone loves us is important,” she said. “Nobody says, gee Kenzie, you went to bed so nicely two months ago. They say wow, you built a camera that can see someone’s innermost desires. How much do I have to pay you to keep mine quiet?”

There was a gleam of mischief in her eyes when I looked her way. She looked down, checking her phone.

“What’s your usual asking price for staying quiet?”

“Oh, it depends on how horrendous it is, but it’s not usually about money. Big burly guy has a secret dream of being a ballerina? I’ll go easy. I’ll tell him he needs to give me a hug and go take a dancing lesson, pursue that beautiful dream. If he’s stubborn or scared then I’ll make him take me out for a frozen treat once a week instead, use those opportunities to turn the screws on him.”

“Is that how it works?” I asked.

She played at being serious as she looked down at her phone, tapping some keys. “Yep. If it’s a less beautiful innermost desire, like, I don’t know, skinning people, then I’d set the price at ten million dollars or something. Then I’d turn them in anyway.”

“Eminently reasonable,” I said. I bent down by the table, noting the various lenses and segments of metal with holes in them. There were computer chips that had been cannibalized, and others that had been rebuilt into Frankenstein abominations. “Where do you get the money for these parts?”

“Parents,” she said. “Some scavenging. There was a while where people were getting really bad computers that had been scavenged from Earth Bet and cleaned up, except a lot of those computers were total garbage. Every garbage day I could go out with a wagon and get at least two.”

I nodded. I couldn’t really parse the logic of some of the layout, organization, or what had actually been built. At a certain point, stuff ceased to become computer chips and became three dimensional arrangements of pins. There was one that used magnets to suspend a part in between three other chips.

“I’m joking, by the way, about the desire camera. I tried that and it didn’t really work. I’d need a ton of scans to even know where to start.”

“I figured,” I said.

“This is the camera I’m working on for Tristan and Byron,” she said. She gave a box a pat. Whatever was inside, it was a pale energy that licked the clear lens. “It’s missing stuff. ”

“Out of curiosity, what sort of thing would that see, besides them?”

“No idea. But if I can figure it out, I think I can leap from it to other things. It might open doors, if i can just figure out how to see into the keyhole. What those doors look like really depends on what Byron and Tristan are.”

“At my apartment, I have papers on stuff like where the physical bodies of breakers go when they’re in breaker mode, or offloaded consciousnesses in nonstandard brains. I’m not sure if any of it would help in terms of inspiring tech, but maybe it could help you make some educated guesses.”

“That’d be amazing. I don’t know if I’d understand it all. Could you explain what I don’t get?”

“I’d love to,” I said. “Really, I enjoy the heck out of that stuff, and I’d love to try teaching it.”

“Awesome,” she said. She nodded, all energy and hasty nods as she was ready to jump straight to the next thing. She had her phone out, setting it on the table next to her, and she gave it a spin, so it twirled in a circle for a moment. “I want to help them.”

“Me too. I want to help a lot of people.”

The phone stopped. Kenzie angled her head, staring at the screen.

“Something up?” I asked. How awkward would it be to come all the way here, only for us to get pulled away for cape duties or to help one of the others? Kenzie’s family seemed strict, and they might look poorly on a change in plans.

Still staring down at the screen, she said, “Upstairs, I said something about memories and mementos. This…”

She gave a box beside her a pat. It was as tall as she was, but narrow. A pillar, more than anything.

“Is my diary.”

“Your diary?”

She looked away from the phone, giving me another hurried nod, her eyes wide. “Basically.”

“That’s bigger than your time camera.”

“It’s kind of like the projector box, but it’s more purposeful,” she said. She pulled a shoebox from the shelf and put it on the table. The thing was half-filled with what looked like the kind of memory stick that was plugged into a computer to give it more random access memory. She fished around and pulled one out.

“See? I take this, and stick it in, make sure it’s on, and…”

The box lit up. Images filled the room.

The group therapy meeting. Rain’s hair was a bit shorter than it had been when I’d met him.

My gaze lingered on Jessica, who stood at the edge of the scene. I felt a pang, seeing her face.

“Each card has notches, see?” she asked. She held up a card, showing me where there were dabs of paint at regular intervals. Pink, purple, pink, red, black, pink. Baby blue, yellow, red, yellow, blank, baby blue, yellow, red, purple. “Each is a scene.”

She cycled through the group therapy session. Much of the focus seemed to be on Kenzie and Sveta.

“That’s a lot of diary entries,” I observed. A shoebox half filled with cards, each card only a little longer and thinner than a lighter.

“Well, I’m cheating, kind of,” she said. “Some of it’s the past, but some is the future. Stuff I dream of or fantasize. It’s nicer to have it visual like this than to just have it be random, thoughts-racing wonderings, you know?”

“Dreams?” I asked.

“Um. So like this one, if I click forward a few times…”

Sveta and Kenzie talking, hanging out, more talks, Sveta looking upset, Kenzie giving Sveta a hug. Then Kenzie, Weld, and Sveta together in a domestic scene, Kenzie sitting on a couch with a blanket around her.

“Those last few didn’t actually happen,” she said.

“How do you keep track?” I asked.

“Color codes. It’s pretty intuitive for me, but I came up with it, so I don’t know. Hmm…”

She plugged another in, and hit the button on the top a few times before the first images had even snapped into existence.

Her and Mayday, Mayday’s hand on her shoulder.

Kenzie stood beside her projected image and looked up at Mayday. I walked around to look.

“Realistic.”

“Yup.”

“Did you tell Mrs. Yamada about this?”

“Oh,” Kenzie said, looking surprised. “Um.”

“You didn’t.”

“I mentioned that I was keeping a diary, and I was trying to put my dreams and hopes down in a more tangible way. I just… didn’t mention that it was visual.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“I worried she might make me stop, and I don’t want to. This is a nice thing to do when I’m feeling down.”

I walked past her, looking at more of the scene. She clicked through it, stopping at an image of herself as Optics, the lenses on the gauntlets glowing bright. Her costume was torn, the lens on her mask broken, and she was bleeding.

“It’s kind of stupid, isn’t it?” she asked. “I save everyone, and then things are finally okay. The weirdness between me and others stops.”

“I don’t think that’s stupid,” I said. “You don’t have to show me, you know. If you want to keep it private-”

“I don’t really believe in privacy,” she said. “There’s a lot in that box, if you want to look at any.”

I walked over to the shoebox, peering inside.

“Um, maybe skip the ones with hot pink, unless you really, really want to. I’m still figuring that stuff out.”

“No hot pink, got it,” I said. I looked, trying to think of how to put my thoughts into words. She was showing me this for a reason.

I pulled out a card. “Red?”

“Hurt.”

“Purple?”

“Action scene. Put it in.”

“I’d feel awkward. If this is your diary, it’s too personal.”

“I’m an open book,” she said. “Put it in. I can’t remember what that one is.”

I popped out the one that was slotted into the top of the machine, and put the other in.

Kenzie crashing onto pavement, heels of her hands scraping, face distorted. An older boy stood behind her, black with a a shaved head and a school uniform on.

“The lighter side of this is, I had to make a lot of funny faces before I got some expressions right.”

“Bully?” I asked.

“Yep. I had a hard time with other students in Baltimore. Mostly because I’m weird and kind of really broken.”

I clicked through. Kenzie fighting back.

“Didn’t happen. I wondered what would happen if I did that.”

Another scene. Kenzie at the office, in front of school administrators.

“That did happen. I got in so much trouble even when I didn’t do anything except try not to get shoved around. I didn’t hit back that often.”

Another scene.

Kenzie and the boy hugging, while a school administrator stood by with arms folded, looking grim.

“I saw that happen on TV, and I wondered. Best case scenario, if that happened? We hug, we make up, find common ground, and they protect me. I like that one. It’s simple, almost maybe kind of believable, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But someone who’d push around a girl a year or two younger than them can’t be very nice. I feel like you deserve better than that.”

She shrugged. “Thank you for saying so. It feels… like a relief, almost, to see these and go back to them now and then. Like I can make sense of everything if I can recreate it and look back on it.”

“Does it feel like things don’t make sense?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “Put another one in?”

“It feels invasive,” I said.

“I’m okay with that,” she said. “All’s fair, when I do it to others. Quid pro pro.”

I picked out one card, turning it over. “I asked earlier about resources, and it looks like you ran out at some point.”

“Huh?”

“I might be reading this label wrong, but it looks like you have a lot of cards where there are gaps or breaks between the color dabs, so you have two sets of scenes on one card.”

“That’s not right,” she said. She approached, reaching for the card. She took it. “Yeah, no, you got it wrong. White’s a color, it’s just easy to miss against the white label background.”

“Ahh,” I said.

“You can figure it out if you know what the labels mean. Yellow, purple, red, red, white, baby blue, green. Purple is action, red is pain, right? I went over that. White is an ending, baby blue is me being younger. Green is happy. So in this scene, I probably get in a fight, I get hurt, and then I die. Then I’m reborn or reincarnated. There’s a lot of colors, so it gets confusing.”

I blinked a few times, taking that in, rereading the colors to verify the meaning.

She smiled, pushing the card into my hand. “Put it in. We’ll see if I’m right.”

I closed my hand around both the card and her hand. “Did Jessica know about that, too?”

“We talked about it. Not that I made realistic images or anything, but that I was exploring that stuff.”

I nodded. “Are you okay now?”

“I’m happy about the Lookout thing, and the team is mostly together. I miss Ashley and Rain.”

“Are you putting white dabs of paint on chips these days?”

“No, and even if I felt like it, there’s no time,” she said. “There’s other, exciting things to do. It’s really okay.”

“What if…” I said. “-what if I told you to tell me the kinds of things you’re working on, when you’re doing projects like this? You could tell me if you made anything with white dabs on the label.”

“Maybe,” she said. “What about pink paint?”

I saw that light of mischief in her eyes.

I scrunched up my nose. “Hand holding?”

“Kissing,” she whispered.

“Yeah. I’ll give you advice when you get there,” I said.

“Sometime between a few years from now and never,” she said. She ran a hand along the top of her projector box. “Okay. I can tell you stuff.”

“Perfect,” I said. I put the chip back in the box, then poked through it. “It’s a lot. How long do these take to put together?”

“Fifteen minutes, maybe,” she said. “Half an hour if I’m doing something like watching television while I work on it.”

“Fifteen minutes per chip, or fifteen minutes per-”

“Per scene,” she said. “It’s meditative. I have other stuff, like some chat bots that put out friendly messages in response to the right trigger phrases, and I’ve been trying to befriend some birds and things in the neighborhood, but that’s been less satisfying lately.”

“Seems like it’s all variations on the same theme,” I said.

“It’s-”

She stopped talking at the sound of a knock on the door.

It was Julien.

“Can you set the table?” he asked.

“Yeah, for sure,” she said. She turned back to me, “I want to show you preliminary stuff after dinner.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” I said. I followed her out of the garage and into the hallway. “Hi, Mr. Martin.”

“It’s good you could come,” he said. “How’s the arm?”

“Sore, but I’d put up with the pain just to have it out of a sling and be able to use my arm. The only reason I don’t is that I’m pretty sure it would cause long term damage and slow the healing.”

“Follow those doctor’s orders,” Irene said.

“That’s the plan,” I said.

In Julien’s face, I could very much see what I sometimes described as a solemn expression on Kenzie, but it was his default expression, and it read more like the dignified and not-cheerful part of being solemn, while I tended to interpret Kenzie’s expression as a deep sincerity.

Was that unfair? Maybe it was a bad read, one way or the other, and father and daughter were more similar than that.

She’s not your mom, and that’s not your dad. I remembered Ashley’s words. I’d promised to set aside judgment, and give Kenzie’s family a fair shake. There were things that were weird, but sometimes people were weird.

Weird, that the only pictures I’d seen of her were of her being held as a baby and her in the last year or so. Weird but not unheard of, when so many people had lost homes or possessions on Gold Morning and in the months following.

“How’s the work, Mr. Martin?” I asked. “Things must be hectic.”

“Things are a nightmare,” he said. “Vacancies, a shift in population, trying to sell properties only for the power to be off when people are visiting. Has there been any news about who did it or how?”

“We know how. When it comes to the who, we’ve been closing in a bit.”

“How ‘we’ is this?” Irene asked, stirring red sauce with a spatula.

“Actually, it’s very ‘we’. Our team has been making headway. Kenzie has been a massive part of that.”

“Thank you,” Kenzie said, perfunctory. She offered me a tight smile as she set out napkins, forks and knives.

“I’m not surprised,” Julien said. “She’s something.”

“Penne with spicy Italian sausage and tomato-basil pasta sauce,” Irene announced. “Julien?”

Julien took the plate. “You’ll have to tell us what happened with this- what do they call them? Corner worlds?”

“Corner worlds. We went out this afternoon. We had a chat with Lord of Loss, Marquis, and a few others. It was, as those things go, pretty friendly.”

“Some unfriendliness, but that was mostly from locals,” Kenzie said.

“Definitely,” I said. “Anti-cape sentiment. It’s bubbling beneath the surface.”

“I’ve heard it,” Julien said. He took another plate, setting it on the table. “I don’t join in. It would backfire if I did and it came out I have one for a daughter.”

“And, you know, it’s kind of wrong, huh?” Kenzie asked.

“Sit,” Julien said.

“Huh? Huh?”

“Don’t be a pest. Sit. Table’s almost set.”

I sat. Kenzie went to get a jug of water and a jug of something else, bringing them to the table.

“It smells amazing,” I said. “Can’t wait.”

“My mom’s a great cook,” Kenzie said.

“Now, if I remember right…” Irene said. “You’re from a family of parahumans?”

“Tough topic, no-go,” Kenzie said, as she put salt and pepper shakers on the table.

“No-go,” Irene said. “School? Work?”

“Between both, but I studied Parahumans before Gold Morning.”

“And she worked on Patrol block,” Kenzie said. “Capes and portal stuff.”

Irene laughed a bit. “It starts and ends with the powers with you.”

“It does. I’ll admit that.”

“It’s all so dangerous, isn’t it?” Julien asked.

“Dad.”

“Sorry. I said I wouldn’t, and then I brought it up,” he said.

I took one chair. Irene sat across from me, with Julien beside her.

Kenzie didn’t sit, instead picking up her plate.

“Kenzie?” I asked.

“Do me a favor? Don’t make a big deal of it?”

“Of-?”

She took her dad’s plate, and set it where hers had been. Her own plate went in front of her dad.

His expression changed. Solemn and grim both.

“Eat your own dinner,” her mother said.

Kenzie marched around her dad, situating herself between both parents, and picked up her dad’s plate. She deposited most of the contents on her mom’s plate, with pasta, sausage, and red sauce spilling over onto her mother’s lap.

Her mom pulled her hands away, her face screwing up for a moment before she forced it back to something almost normal. She didn’t touch or wipe at the food.

“Kenzie,” I said, standing.

“Sit. Please. It’s just family weirdness, okay?”

“This doesn’t seem okay at all. What’s going on?”

The fork scraped against the plate as she distributed food and stirred it up. Her meal was mixed into her mom’s, some of her mom’s meal shoveled onto her father’s plate. There was a fair bit of mess.

Irene started to stand, getting in my way of getting to Kenzie in the process. Kenzie almost yipped out out a, “No.” There wasn’t a better word for the tone.

“You shouldn’t tell us what to do,” Irene said. She grew more incensed, impassioned. Her fingers gripped the table’s edge. “You need to eat your own dinner.”

“It’s done. It’s not worth fighting, ‘rene,” Julien said. He looked almost defeated. He touched his wife’s arm, and she stopped. He stroked it, and she sat down, still clearly seething.

Not that Julien was calm. His jaw was tense.

Kenzie scraped more, metal on ceramic, before setting the plates in position.

I rounded the table. I took hold of Kenzie’s wrist before she could do more. “Stop.”

Kenzie looked at me and shot me a grin, “Just- they weren’t supposed to embarrass me tonight. They were supposed to be normal and this was supposed to be nice.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

She reached into her pocket for her phone, hitting a button before tossing it to me. “Caught ’em. Always do.”

It was a camera feed. It showed kitchen. I walked into the camera’s zone, where pasta and sauce had been prepared, then looked for the camera’s source.

The face of one cabinet, painted blue, no bumps, no dots, no markings. It was smooth to the touch.

“Then eat what you were going to serve me,” Kenzie said. “You can get up from the table when you’ve eaten it or when Victoria’s left.”

Neither of her parents moved or touched their utensils.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Kenzie said.

“What did they do?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter. Our food’s fine,” she said. She picked up a fork and stabbed a piece of pasta on my plate. “We should eat.”

“No, Kenz,” I said. “We need to talk about this.”

“You said you were hungry, and she really is a good cook,” she said.

“I lost my appetite,” I said, my voice soft. I wasn’t lying, either. The gnawing of hunger had become a pit in my gut instead.

She set her fork down with force. “Okay.”

“Can I get more of an explanation? This isn’t okay at all.”

“In the garage?” she asked.

I nodded. “Okay.”

She pushed her chair away from the table in a way that pushed the table toward her parents. She started to walk toward the garage, my hand on her shoulder to guide her and support her, and then she stopped. She turned toward the two, who were stone still, eyes downcast.

“This was supposed to be a nice dinner, and it was just, what, you invited her here because you thought I’d be distracted?” she laughed, one note, smiled wide. “I’m never going to be distracted. I’m always watching, okay? So stop. Be better.”

Neither adult moved or spoke. Irene visibly seethed, nostrils flaring.

Kenzie stepped into the garage, me right behind her. She kicked a plastic bin of nails, and sent the contents flying across the garage.

“I’m sorry my parents are such fucking embarrassments,” she said, before slamming the garage door.

Torch – Interlude 7.x

This could be fixed. This wasn’t as bad as it could have gone.

What was she supposed to say?

It made her heart hurt. It bothered her, because they were stupid and shortsighted and it threatened to ruin everything.

That, and what they’d done to the food.

She had to calm down. Being upset only made things worse. She was angry, even pissed, but as that feeling faded, a door between her and her stupid-ass idiot parents, it left her with an ugly, all-too-familiar feeling in her middle. That didn’t help either.

“Kenzie,” Victoria said, behind her.

Kenzie turned around. Victoria hung back, near the door of the workshop. Kenzie stood in the middle of everything.

This could be fixed.

“What’s going on?” Victoria asked. She made her voice so gentle, so caring, that it made all the anger and hurt from elsewhere feel worse.

“I can explain.”

“Okay. Before you do, I have to ask… are you okay?” Victoria asked.

Kenzie smiled and nodded.

Victoria was a threat. Not an enemy threat, but a problem and a danger. If she talked to others, said the wrong things, then everything could blow up out of control.

“Are they okay?” Victoria asked. She put a hand on the doorknob, opening the door a crack.

Mom and dad were still at the table. Kenzie saw only a glimpse of them, and her phone burned a hole in her pocket, promising a clearer, more immediate view of them. She was so used to checking, and she had to work to convince herself there wasn’t a need right now.

They weren’t important now that the damage had been done.

She needed to fix the Victoria problem her parents had made, first.

“They’re okay?” Victoria asked, again.

“That’s a really easy question with a hard answer,” Kenzie said.

Victoria didn’t move.

“They’re not going to get hurt or anything, they’re okay like that,” Kenzie elaborated. Her heart was racing. “But um, if I was going to start explaining, I’d start by saying they’re not okay. There was this time, um, I was talking to Jessica and I said they’re bad people. It’s not that they do bad things, because, duh, they do… it’s more that they’re bad at being people. I said that to Mrs. Yamada once and she liked it.”

“Bad at being people how?”

“Stuff’s missing, I guess. Like it is with me, but different stuff. Um-”

Kenzie’s instinct was to reach for something. This could be fixed, but fixing couldn’t happen on its own. Left on their own, things broke down and one problem became a hundred million problems.

Fixing needed tools. She had lots of tools. It was enough that considering the possibilities made her thoughts a mess. What camera? What perspective or images? What data? What combination came together and made everything mostly okay again?

“I’m on your side,” Victoria said. The statement interrupted Kenzie’s thoughts.

“I know,” Kenzie said. “I wouldn’t have invited you over if you weren’t.”

“Would it help to step away? Go for a walk, maybe?”

Kenzie shook her head. Her workshop was hers. Her tools were close by, and it made her feel more secure.

Tools.

Kenzie jammed her hand into her pocket. Victoria stepped away from the door, toward more open space, like she did any time she wanted to be able to use her wonky forcefield.

She was spooked and weirded out, which was totally, one-hundred percent okay. Kenzie knew as well as anyone that her parents could be spooky and that the whole thing could be weird.

“It’s okay,” Kenzie said. “Nothing bad. It’s cards.”

“Cards?”

Kenzie drew the case from her pocket. It had held a chepa sewing kit once, but it was the perfect size to hold three of the memory cards with a foam backing.

“You had that earlier today.”

“Yup,” Kenzie said. She held it out, giving Victoria her best reassuring smile. “Here.”

Victoria took the clear case with the three long cards within. “For the diary?”

Kenzie nodded.

“There’s no paint on these.”

“That’s because I know how it all goes,” Kenzie said.

⊙

Pencil scratched on paper. Her headphones were on with music playing and the tiny television on the corner of her desk had a show on that was probably meant for older kids. There was violence and fighting, so she tried to not pay attention to it.

“Love me, love me, you know you wanna love me…” the music on her headphones pumped, the tune happy and poppy. The girls in her class had been talking about it. She liked most things so she used that sort of thing to decide what she listened to, on the off chance she could talk to them about it.

It was good. Normally she would have sang along to it, but she was distracted.

There was safety in numbers. The pencil scratched on paper, finishing another long division problem. She moved on to the next, because as long as she was doing this, she wasn’t being a pain, and she could mostly ignore the feeling in her belly.

She could smell dinner.

It was harder to not be a pain and stay out of the way when she had to go to the dinner table.

Pencil to paper, tongue pressed between her lips. The seven didn’t go into the one, but it went into the fourteen… she counted, eyes going to the ceiling. Her head bobbed with the sound of the music, even though she wasn’t paying attention to the words.

Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. The seven went into fourteen twice.

The door to her room opened. Dad leaned in and said something, and she hurried to pull her headphones down, hands wrapped around them, with fingers covering the parts where the sound came out.

Dad looked annoyed.

“Dinner is in a few minutes,” he said.

She nodded.

“You’re doing homework?”

She nodded again.

He stepped into the room, and she looked down, sliding the book across her desk.

“Division. Do I need to check your work?”

She shook her head.

“Speak up, Kanzi. You have a voice. Use it.”

“No. I did today’s homework already. I was doing some work from later in the book.”

“Wash your hands and get ready for dinner.”

She nodded.

He went back toward the kitchen, and his movement was marked by a waft of cigarette smoke, pungent. It smelled better than dinner.

More bad feelings squirmed through her belly.

She tore the notebook paper out of the pad, then popped open her binder, slotting it in at the end. It was easier to stay in her room and be quiet, and better still if she was doing homework, because it was hard for anyone to complain about her doing her homework. There wasn’t enough work to do to fill whole afternoons after school and before bed, so she’d started to work ahead. A lot of it was dull or confusing, but after a while, she’d started to make a game of it. It was her hope that she could finish the entire third grade math textbook before Christmas.

Binder closed. Books put away in her bag for school tomorrow. She turned her music and television off, then turned off the light in her room.

The bathroom was empty, the coast clear. She closed and locked the door, then got one of the metal wicker baskets from the shelf, moving the hand towels inside to the edge of the counter before putting the basket down upside-down on the bathroom floor. It worked like a stepping stool, giving her the height she needed to reach the taps, which was harder to do since the new counter and sink mom and dad had put in.

Sleeves pushed up, hands thoroughly washed and dried, sleeves rolled down. Towels went back in the basket, which was dusted off before it went back on the shelf.

Then, because she was looking for reasons to delay sitting down to dinner, she gave the bathroom what mom called a once-over. She saw the glint of drops of water on the counter, hurried over to the basket to get one of the hand towels, and dabbed them up before folding the towel back up and putting it in the basket.

Her nose wrinkled as she walked down the hall, past the kitchen, and through the corner of the living room to the dining room. She made sure nobody saw.

The table was one that could seat six, mom had been proud of that when she picked it. It was old and gleaming and nice, but there were only three of them for the very big table. Her dad had chair at one end, her mom had a chair at the other, and she had a chair in the middle, each of them off to either side, where she had to turn her head to see them. She took her seat, fingers clutching the end of her skirt, toying with the pleat.

“Creamy Parmesan Chicken Gratin,” her mom announced, as she set down the plate.

Despite her best efforts, Kanzi couldn’t keep her nose from scrunching up as she gave the dish her best dubious look. It looked like vomit with a crust on top.

It smelled like vomit with a crust on top.

She stared down at it while mom set down the plates for dad and then herself, before returning to the kitchen to get something.

“Eat,” dad said.

She got her knife and fork and held each clenched in one fist, waiting until her mom returned.

“Eat while it’s hot,” her mom said, before sitting down. She began to pour drinks, while Kanzi set to working on her dinner.

It was like when nachos were overcooked in the microwave, and the cheese boiled and got super hard. The difference was that she still wanted the nachos when they were overdone. The dinner knife refused to cut the hard crust. Pressing down on the hard portion made the runny goop in the middle ooze out onto the plate right in front of her chin, and the smell was worse.

Her dad was having trouble cutting up the food too. She opened her mouth to say something, and between the smell and the feeling that had been worming through her belly for the past hour, a barfy feeling surged up. She stopped herself before it became actual leaving-the-mouth barf.

“Hurk,” she couldn’t stop herself from making the sound.

Her mom’s chair scraped on the floor. Kanzi’s shoulders drew forward her head down, while she tried to breathe as little as possible.

“I worked really hard on dinner,” her mom said. One hand rested on the back of Kanzi’s chair, the other on the table by her plate.

“Just eat, Kanzi,” her dad said. “You don’t have to eat it all, but eat.”

“I would like her to eat it all,” her mother said. “I slaved away in the kitchen for hours, with the expectation that my daughter would appreciate my work.”

“Alright, Irene.”

Kanzi gripped her utensils. She made a renewed effort to cut her food. Her knife slipped and scraped against the plate, producing a screech. She was startled enough that she dropped the utensils. The knife clattered to the plate, while her fork fell, clattering to the floor.

“There’s no gratitude.”

“I’m sorry,” Kanzi told her mom.

“We give you everything. Nice clothes, nice food, a hairstylist, a nice big house, and there’s no appreciation.”

She looked to her dad for help.

“Listen to your mom. We need you to try harder when it comes to these things.”

She moved her chair back, so she could go down and get her fork off the ground. Her mom reversed the course, pushing the chair in, hard.

“Where are you going? What did your dad just say, Kanzi?”

She froze.

“He told you you need to try and your first thought was to get up from the table?”

She’d wanted to get her fork. That was all.

She was cornered. There was nothing she could say or do when mom got like this. She could only try to listen.

“Eat the dinner I made for you,” her mom said, and her tone was dangerous.

She didn’t have a fork to eat with. She couldn’t cut it, and she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to eat it if she did cut it.

She-

Her mom’s hand found the back of her neck. Her face was pushed down onto the plate, into the creamy chicken whatever.

“We said we wouldn’t discipline her physically, Irene.”

Her grip tightened at the back of Kanzi’s neck. “What do you want me to do, Julien? It wasn’t a cheap or easy dinner to put together.”

“I know,” he said.

Kanzi’s shoulders drew further together, and she huffed out a breath, the breath forming a briefly-lived trough in the runny cream at the bottom of the plate.

“My mother never cooked for me,” mom said. “I had an au pair. I would have loved- loved- for my mom to put in that effort!”

With the second utterance of ‘loved’, her hand moved, moving Kanzi’s face with it. The movement brought face against the raised lip of the plate, making the far end of the plate come up. Food moved.

“Ungrateful.”

Another movement, face sliding against slick plate, another push against the lip at the edge of the plate, bringing the other end up.

This time, though, it came down sharply, striking the table. It cracked, and Kanzi felt a shock of pain at one side of her face.

Her mom released her.

“I can’t. I just can’t! I can’t!” her mother proclaimed.

“It’s fine. Plates can be replaced. If she doesn’t want to eat it hot she can eat it cold.”

“I didn’t work hard at it with the idea it would be eaten cold, Julien! What’s the point of introducing our daughter to a variety of cuisines if she’s going to throw it back in our faces like this?”

Kanzi’s face hurt. She pulled her face away from the broken plate, and looked down in bewilderment, because the dish had changed. It wasn’t just the fact that the plate had broken and the placemat below was visible. The dish had been a beige-yellow-brown before and now there was a shock of crimson running through it.

“Oh my god, Julien,” her mother said. “She’s bleeding all over the table.”

Kanzi flinched as her dad’s chair scraped. Her mom flopped down into her chair while her dad approached. With a brusque movement, he turned her face up so he could see. With her napkin, he wiped away what she figured was the worst of the vomit-food. The napkin was crimson when he pulled it away, which made her heart leap in her chest.

She’d never bled before. She’d been grabbed hard enough that she’d had bruises, but mostly it had been shouting.

“Take care of it,” her mom said.

“Just seeing how deep the cut is.”

Kanzi’s mother started trying to cut the food on her own plate. She gave up, throwing knife and fork down with enough force that they traveled a third of the way down the table. “If you’re going to do that, don’t do it at the dinner table.”

“Press your hand down there,” he said, moving her hand into place. Kanzi did, and felt the sting of pain at her cheekbone.

His hand was firm, grabbing Kanzi by the arm, taking her into the living room, down the hallway, and into the bathroom.

“I don’t know, Julien,” her mother said, from the hallway. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to do.”

“I don’t know about you,” he said, voice pitched to be heard, “But her antics and this mess has caused me to thoroughly lose my appetite.”

“Yes,” Kanzi’s mother said.

“Let’s step away. I’ll take you to Screwball, we’ll have burgers and shake, like way back when.”

Kanzi’s eyes widened. Screwball was a place with the best burgers. They had ice cream floats that were Kanzi’s favorite thing.

“And you’ll stay,” he said, his voice quiet, just for Kanzi, and stern.

She felt a kind of outrage well in her chest at that. Stay?

“You’ll only agitate her if you’re there, and you really, really could have done better tonight.”

The outrage faded to about half of what it had been, mixed with confused, choked guilt.

“Keep that there,” he said, pressing a wad of white bandage down to the part that hurt. “Hold it until the bleeding stops. Then I want you to clean up and put yourself to bed.”

She didn’t dare reply. Her heart was pounding, the bright crimson of blood she kept seeing in places startled her in a way that stabbed right to the middle of her heart, and tonight felt like one of those nights where there was nothing she could do that was right.

She only nodded.

Julien huffed out a sigh, going back to the hallway.

Kanzi remained where she was, seated on the lid of the toilet, a bandage pressed to her cheekbone. Still, inoffensive, quiet, up until the door slammed.

If they came back to mess, they might get mad.

One hand pressed to the bandage, she started to clean up. The smell of dinner still made her want to hurl, as she cleaned up the plate and began to clear the table, so she grabbed one of the towels from by the oven, holding it so it pressed against the bandage and covered her nose and mouth, keeping the smell from being so strong.

It was slow, with one hand keeping the bandage and towel in place, but she cleared the table. All the food went together, and she put it in tupperware, before putting the tupperware in the fridge. She cleaned up the pots and bowls as best as she could with everything stuck on.

The sound of a car outside made her stop, frozen in worry.

Not them. She carried on. Everything put away, but the sink was hard to clean things. She took things to the bathroom, so she could use the bath and shower spray on really hot. It worked, even though it meant a lot of trips.

Everything she washed went on the drying rack. More things went away, as best as she could figure. She’d had to do this before, though it hadn’t been quite this messy or even a hundred millionth as smelly.

On one of her trips, she stopped, and she stared down at the trail of dots on the floor. She checked, and saw that even with the towel and bandage pressed down, the blood had run down her arm to her elbow, dripping off the point. There was some on her clothes.

The blood was scary- almost worse to have to face than the dinner.

She made herself fix it. Wet towels from the basket in the bathroom. The blood didn’t get soaked up so much as it streaked, and more kept dripping down. She used a new towel to stop it.

It was a feeling like drowning. First being cornered, now drowning.

She cleaned everything up as best as she could, her heart pounding, head swimming, and then went to her room to get herself ready for bed.

She changed into the pyjamas with the ducks, brushed her hair twenty times on each side with the brush, and retreated to bed, every light off, covers pulled tight around her.

The house was quiet. The only sounds were inexplicable creaks and grunts from the house itself, a drip of water from one of the sinks.

Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding. Her face wouldn’t stop hurting, even as she pressed the towel hard against it.

Sleep wasn’t a possibility. Her normal bedtime was nine, and it was only eight, according to the clock on the wall. She watched the hands of the clock.

When the clock was close to nine, she heard another car. She tensed.

This car pulled into the driveway. It was them.

Her heartbeat raced. She pulled tight at the covers, paralyzed, and closed her eyes. If she pretended to be asleep-

Her mother’s voice was faint. Something about the mess on the floors.

The volume rose, as if one thing after another was being found, each making things worse. Each made her draw tighter and tighter into herself.

“The towels!” her mother’s voice wasn’t that far way. The bathroom was only a few steps from Kanzi’s bedroom door.

The door opened, and her dad was there, and as she squinted, pretending that her eyes were closed, he didn’t even look normal. His face was cold and scary as he marched toward her.

He grabbed her by the arm, hard enough it would bruise, and hauled her out of bed, out of the bed that was sleepless but warm and safe, into the hallway, the noise, and madness.

⊙

Kenzie looked between the still scene and Victoria.

“That’s them,” she said. “I might have gotten some details wrong.”

“I’m so sorry you had to deal with that,” Victoria said.

“Isn’t it funny?” Kenzie asked. She smiled. “We’re supposed to get powers when stuff like that happens, but I couldn’t even get that right.”

“You did nothing wrong. You didn’t deserve any of that,” Victoria said.

Kenzie shook her head. “I guess not. Not all of it.”

“Do the others know about this? You’ve told Mrs. Yamada?”

Kenzie drew in a breath, then sighed. “Yes and no.”

“What’s yes and what’s no?”

“They know what my parents were like. They haven’t seen these diary dioramas, you’re the first. But I’ve told them the stories. Ashley started being nice to me, after I did. I did tell them that things are better now, because I have powers and my parents are scared. Which I guess is true.”

“I feel like you’re telling people a lot of things that are only technically true.”

“Real truths are hard if they’re all-the-time truths,” Kenzie said. “Sometimes it’s nice to pretend things are better than they are, you know?”

“Yeah. I know.”

Kenzie hesitated, then she reached up to her hairpin, with the hearts. “I haven’t shown anyone this except Mrs. Yamada, and a few others who had to see because of circumstances.”

She double-tapped the hairpin. There was a faint tingle as things shifted. The projection at her face dropped away.

Victoria approached, bending down. “Kenzie-”

Kenzie shrugged.

“-Really truly, I hope you don’t mind my saying it, but the scar is barely visible.”

The projection was down. The hairpins had one job, to cast a projection on one area of Kenzie’s face. Her hand moved up to her cheekbone, and found the groove. It was about an inch long.

“I wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t shown me,” Victoria said.

“I notice,” Kenzie said.

“Okay. You do what you have to do, but I want you to know I don’t think that’s bad at all.”

Kenzie fidgeted, messing with the remote control.

“Before, when the power was cut off to your devices, you told me there wasn’t anything.”

“I looked over my shoulder so you only saw half my face. I didn’t want you to see it and think differently of me.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“I know that now. I didn’t know for sure then.”

“Okay,” Victoria said. She paused. “What happened between then and now, with your parents? Can I ask?”

“A lot happened,” Kenzie said. “Can I show you? It’s a lot extra.”

“You can show me.”

Kenzie fidgeted with the remote, before switching the diary diorama to the next scene over.

School.

⊙

The boys kept talking to each other, looking her way and laughing.

Twice now, they’d sent someone over to talk to her and ask her questions. The first time, she’d ignored it. The second, she’d given a fake answer, but the fake answer only seemed to egg them on.

Lunch was almost over, and she wasn’t sure what to do. So many other kids acted like school sucked, oh, school was awful. Even the television shows acted that way. But it wasn’t. School was nice.

Except when the boys were bothering her.

Oh, no. Janesha was talking to the boys now, and where Janesha went, other girls followed.

It sucked because Janesha was super stylish with new clothes every week, and Emily was really, really pretty with super black skin- not just brown, but so black it looked unreal. She mixed it up with electric blue braces, and her mom let her wear makeup, and she always looked freaking amazing, even though her clothes weren’t all that.

Kanzi would have liked to be their friends, but instead they were hanging over there with the boys, looking over at her every once in a while and laughing.

She was really tired, her face still hurt when she touched it, her arm hurt where her dad had grabbed her, and she was hungry because neither her mom or her dad had made her breakfast before sending her to school. They were still mad at her.

She wanted it all to be over with and she didn’t want it to be over, because once the school day was over she had to go back home.

It was Emily’s little sister that the group sent over.

“Kenzie, right?” the little girl asked. She was barely out of kindergarten, and she had beads in bright primary colors worked into her hair at regular intervals.

Kenzie nodded. “And you’re Lizzie?”

“Liz. Um. What happened to your face?”

Kanzi forced a smile onto her face. “A bear.”

The little girl looked skeptical. “A bear?”

“My mom and dad told me to go put the garbage out, and I did, and there was a bear on the street, going through trash cans. Bam, slash, it got me. I ran and went inside.”

“You told Leon it was an axe murderer.”

“Because I didn’t think he’d believe me about the bear.”

“There aren’t any bears in the city, though.”

“Exactly,” Kenzie said.

The little girl looked confused. She turned to go report to the others.

“Liz,” Kanzi said. “I really like your hair.”

Liz gave her a weird look.

“You and your sister are always super stylish and cool. I wanted to let you know that.”

“You’re weird.”

Liz had been walking, but now she ran back to the others.

Today sucked. It really, really sucked.

The teacher called for everyone to go in for afternoon classes before Liz made it back to the group. Kenzie joined the crowd that was re-entering the building.

Liz reached the others, and there was a pause.

Then laughs. There were a lot of things Kanzi couldn’t seem to figure out, like making friends, or how to deal with her mom, or even why saying something nice could lead to her being called weird, but she got this, at least. She could tell the difference between people laughing at her, instead of with her.

Her hand went up to her cheekbone, covering the rectangle of bandage there, and she ducked her head down, walking along the wall so nobody was walking to her left.

She’d gone the entire morning without any teachers noticing, but her behavior as she made her way into the classroom had Mrs. Johnson notice. Before she could duck into the classroom, a finger tapped her on the head a few times, before pointing.

She waited in the hall.

“Everyone settle down! I’ll be with you in a moment!” Mrs. Johnson ordered.

The door shut.

“Kanzi, honey,” Mrs. Johnson said. “What happened to your face?”

It was the fourth time she’d been asked. She tried to find the words, like the jokes she’d told the other kids. She tried to find the white lies she’d had to come up with when she’d had the bruises or when she’d been super tired and cranky, or when she’d had homework she hadn’t done despite being a super good student, because she hadn’t had the chance at home.

It didn’t even have to be a convincing lie. She could tell the teacher anything, even the bear story, and because the teachers didn’t care enough to press her, they had other kids to look after. They’d accept it and go on with their day. Then she could go on with her day, and things would keep on being normal.

Even the axe murderer story would work.

She could probably even make up an even sillier story. A silly animal, like an elephant. And a funny weapon, like a… lawn dart. She could tell Mrs. Johnson and laugh, and Mrs. Johnson would roll her eyes and take her back into class with a smile on her face.

All words failed Kanzi, and she broke into tears instead.

⊙

The chair was too big for her, and the blanket was scratchy. It was the wooly sort that could be used to scrub dishes, warm but not nice. Someone had given her their jacket, earlier, a shiny badge on the front breast, and it bunched up in an awkward way behind her. She would have sat forward to try and rearrange it or fix it, but then the blanket on her lap might have fallen to the ground.

She’d talked about a lot of things, sometimes telling the same story over and over again, until she’d gotten annoyed with how forgetful they pretended to be. Then she’d gotten to the point where she had started to doze off, and they’d left her alone. The problem was, she’d started to doze but she hadn’t made it all the way there. Now she was just tired and half-asleep without really being able to be full asleep.

Adults milled around her, and every time someone showed up, she was nervous it would be one of her parents, and that she would be in trouble.

When the superhero showed up, she thought it was a dream, because she was half asleep and it was a man with wings built into his blue and red costume, connecting wrist to ankle. He had a weird cape thing, too, and a mask with a headband built in.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she responded.

“Can I sit?” he asked.

She nodded with a fierce sharpness.

He took the seat next to her. She shifted position, grimaced, and he seemed to notice. He helped with the bump at the small of her back, and then he took the blanket, refolding it, draping it across her lap in a way so most of it wasn’t on the ground.

“Snack?” he offered. He produced an assortment that were probably from the vending machine.

She touched and then took the bag of chocolate covered pretzels.

“I’m Aerobat,” he said.

“I’m Kanzi.” She opened the bag.

“You know, superheroes like me go out in costume every night. A big part of what we do is try to help people in trouble. So as part of that, we’ll visit police stations like this or we’ll go to hospitals.”

“I’m not that important,” she said.

“You never know,” he replied. “Can I try one?”

She held the bag out for him. He took a chocolate covered pretzel.

“Mm, that’s good,” he said.

She took one herself, tried it, and nodded. “Very good. Thank you.”

“Part of what we do when we reach out to people who need help is we try to let them know that if they ever need help, they can call us. Especially if it’s because of powers or weirdness.”

He had a resealable baggie. Inside, there was a business card with a propeller icon, like the one on Aerobat’s chest, there was a sheet of stickers, temporary tattoos, a white pen with a logo on it, and a trading card.

She held it against her chest with both hands.

“The other thing we try to do,” he said, “Is we ask people if there’s anything we can do to help. Is there anything you need, Kanzi?”

She had to think about it.

“Could I have a hug?” she asked.

“Oh, kid,” Aerobat said. “I would really love to give you one, but there’s a whole thing going on elsewhere, and we’re being told to limit physical contact until it blows over.”

“Okay.”

He hesitated before venturing, “What do you say I hold your hand, instead?”

She nodded again.

His hand was huge and warm. There was a bit of gravel in the fabric somehow, but he didn’t seem to notice. It dug into her finger a bit, but she didn’t want to point it out, in case the guy let go and left.

A little while passed before a woman approached. She was white, short, and not especially thin.

“Hi, Mrs. Yaris.”

“Hi, Aerobat.”

“June’s a friend,” Aerobat said. “It’s her job to make sure you’re safe and happy. You and a lot of other kids. She’s gotten good at it.”

“I wish,” Mrs. Yaris said. Her tone softened as she looked at Kanzi. “I manage.”

“I don’t really get it,” Kanzi said.

“What do you think happens next?”

Kanzi shrugged. “The police had a lot of questions for me. I think my parents are going to get a ticket, like when my dad speeds, then I’ll go back.”

“Part of what I do, Kanzi, is I make sure that the young people assigned to me are comfortable and safe. When we don’t know for sure if the situation is a good one, we temporarily assign people to homes.”

Kanzi digested that.

“What do you think?” Aerobat asked.

“Please,” Kanzi said, barely audible.

⊙

“Her teachers sing her praises, she hasn’t been in any trouble, and her grades are stellar.”

Mrs. Yaris was doing most of the talking. Kanzi hid behind the woman, looking up at the men.

One was bearded, thick black hair in a topknot. His chest was barrel-shaped, with the hooded t-shirt he wore straining across it. A tattoo, black ink on black skin, was only barely visible. Letters. She only saw ‘wall’ at the end.

The other man was skinny, with a button-up shirt done up all the way. He had a receding hairline, a line of beard going from lower lip to chin, and lips that didn’t quite meet, just a bit of teeth showing when his expression was normal.

“Kanzi,” Mrs. Yaris said. “This is Keith and Antonio.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Kanzi said.

“Go on in. Make yourself at home,” Mrs. Yaris said. “Keith, Antonio, you have my number. It’s emergencies only, or else my phone would be ringing off the hook.”

“We have your number, we have the number for child services, the hospital, if we need it, we should have everything,” the big guy said.

“I know this wasn’t quite the timeframe you were hoping for.”

“I’ll manage,” the skinny guy said. “Thank you for everything.”

Kanzi was wide eyed as the adults carried the bags. There were three big black garbage bags with her stuff inside. Clothes, old school stuff, projects, and art she liked. She had her toothbrush and all the other bathroom stuff.

The house was smaller than hers, but it was nice enough. The outside walls were plastic and the plastic had been bent back in one place, and the garden was a bit messy, but there weren’t any super-major issues.

On the fridge was a grid that looked kind of like a Calendar, but there were three rows of about ten spaces. A pocket on the bottom had a bunch of laminated symbols and faces inside.

She picked out one. It was an angry face, like the sort that sometimes appeared on phones, red faced with flame rising around it.

“That,” the big guy said, “Is our mood tracker. It’s to help us figure out how the others are doing. I can reach in and I can take… let me find it. Here we are. Excited. And I put it by my name up top.”

The big guy was Keith, then.

The other guy was talking to Mrs. Yaris.

Kanzi fished around in the pocket. She found one with ‘z’s floating around its head.

Tired. She was tired, after everything.

“Perfect,” Keith said. “Maybe we’ll do something easy and simple tonight, and if you’re tired you can go rest. That way you being tired won’t be so much of a problem. See how it works?”

Kanzi nodded.

“Anything you need, you can talk to us, okay? Antonio is busy with a project for work, so he’ll have days he has to focus on that, but outside of those times, we’re here to help you.”

“Okay,” she said. “What do I do, then?”

“You… do your best at school, and you’ll help out here and there around the house. We have a chore wheel, by the mood chart here, see? Every day we’ll turn it one notch clockwise, and everyone has a new different chore by their name.”

“Goodbye, Keith!” Mrs. Yaris called out.

“Goodbye!” Keith boomed out the reply. He was loud in a way only big people could be, and he smiled as he lowered his hand from the wave.

Antonio returned. “Do you want to see your room?”

She nodded.

It was a room. The garbage bags went onto the end of the bed, and aside from them, there wasn’t much at all.

“We were thinking,” Keith said. “Sometime today or in the next few days, we could go shopping. You can buy whatever decorations you want for your room, even paint, and we’ll make this space yours.”

“I’d like something for the fridge and living room too,” Antonio said.

“Ooh, good idea,” Keith said. He looked like some of the boys in class when they were excited over a favorite game, but he was being really nice about things.

“I might not be here for long,” she said. “If my parents get out of trouble, I might go straight back to them. Maybe you shouldn’t buy me things.”

“It’s worth it,” Keith said. “Anything that helps, anything you need, just let us know.”

She could tell. Mrs. Yaris had told them something.

It wouldn’t be that her parents were getting out of trouble anytime soon. If it was, she wouldn’t be put here like this and these two men wouldn’t be talking about things so far in the future.

It would be a while before she saw her parents again? If she saw her parents again?

A light, fluttery feeling settled in her chest, and she almost didn’t recognize it. She wasn’t sure there would be a smiley sticker in the pouch to represent it.

A careful, uneasy relief.

⊙

She was worried, fidgeting.

The shopping bags were unloaded. She’d carried a big one. Keith was the chef, but Antonio had managed the shopping list. He was bossy but Keith seemed to like it so that was okay. He wasn’t nearly as bossy with her and that was one hundred percent okay with her.

Cheeses and vegetables and fruits and meats.

“Do you want to help?” Keith asked her.

“Okay.”

“Here, take this, put it in that cabinet over there.”

She did. Onions, in the lower cabinet by the fridge.

“Give this to Anton-”

Meat, taken to Anton. Anton put some in the fridge and some in the freezer.

She wrung her hands together.

“Did your hands get sticky?”

She shook her head.

“Can you put this cereal in that cabinet over there?” Keith asked. “Excellent. We’re getting this done lightning fast.”

She resumed wringing her hands. She fetched a few more things, and then came face to face with Keith, who was kneeling on the floor.

“Antonio,” Keith said. “Can you hand me the mood tracker?”

Antonio pulled the thing from the fridge; grid and pouch and all.

“The day before yesterday, you seemed upset. Then we went out to eat, and everything was good, wasn’t it?”

She nodded.

“The day after, we had spaghetti, and you were quiet. We watched a movie, which you seemed to like.”

“I did.”

“And today, it feels similar. You’re quiet and you’re bothered.”

She shrugged.

“You don’t have to say what, but maybe if you dug around in this pouch, you could find a good face to represent the feeling you’re dealing with right now.”

She hesitated. Then she dug. She found the face- one of the ones she had almost convinced herself she wouldn’t ever use. It was an ordinary face, coffee brown, with a blue tint around the top that faded away by the halfway point. Sweat drops, eyes open wide with no pupils, and two tiny hands at the sides pulling at the cheeks.

She saw the looks on their faces, and she regretted her choice. Concern and something bigger. Something that made them pull away.

“Thank you for letting us know,” Keith said. “It’s usually around dinner, huh?”

She shrugged. “Usually. Dinner was always a big thing.”

“Well, we can’t eat out all the time, you know,” Keith said.

“I know. My mom always suspected people of spitting in her food, if she didn’t make it herself or see it being made.”

“I don’t think that happens very often,” Keith said. “I wouldn’t worry about it. But this stresses you out big time, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“What if,” Keith said, “You decide dinner?”

“Isn’t that more stress, having to make choices?” Antonio asked.

“We’ll have something that is almost always delicious, that we can’t do wrong,” Keith said. “We have the ingredients for cast iron pizza, right?”

“We do,” Antonio said.

“We have pepperoni, we have peppers, we have mushrooms, ham, chicken, pickles, and everything under the sun,” Keith said. “What do you say, Kanzi? You can decide what we put on the pizza, we’ll make it as crispy or as soft as you want, you tell us what to do and we’ll do it.”

She smiled. “You bought chocolate sprinkles and chocolate sauce.”

“I think we could try that,” Keith said.

“I think we should eat something healthy,” Antonio said.

Keith stood, crossing over to the fridge where Antonio was. He wrapped his big arms around the skinny man’s body. “One tiny pizza, with chocolate sprinkles, chocolate sauce… marshmallows?”

“Yes,” Kanzi said, very seriously. “Definitely.”

“As a treat, for after the pizzas with healthier ingredients,” Keith said, his face an inch from Antonio’s.

“Deal,” Antonio said.

Keith gave Antonio a kiss. Kanzi smiled.

“Let’s get everything put away, and then we’ll start experimenting,” Keith said. “Can you put the mood chart back up on the fridge, and then I’ll give you the dairy to give to Antonio so he can put it in the fridge.”

She nodded.

The chart went back up on the fridge, and the spaces were empty, because the magnets hadn’t been holding them up.

She saw Keith looking at her out of the corner of her eye, and reached into the pouch to pick a smiling face.

She didn’t feel a hundred percent of the way back to smiling, but she kept that picture of a smile, putting it on the chart.

Keith tried to hide it from her, but she saw the clenched fist, the happy little fist-pump, before Antonio gave him a hug and blocked her view.

⊙

A gentle shaking stirred her from her sleep. Her eyes popped open.

“Oh hey,” Antonio said. He stood over her bed. Her bedspread had the space opera pattern they’d picked out while shopping two months into her stay. A lava lamp in the corner was casting out illuminated shadows across the room.

Keith slept in her bed, the book he’d been reading before dozing off dangling from the one finger that was wedged in between pages. Kanzi had dozed off after Keith, and now lay in bed, her head on his arm.

“I wanted to wake up my husband, so I could bring him to bed. He sleeps like a log, doesn’t he?”

Kanzi nodded. She smiled.

“I woke you up before I woke him, I’m sorry,” Antonio said.

“It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around quite as much,” Antonio said. “I got promoted a year ago and I’m still trying to get up to speed with my peers.”

“I don’t mind. I’m figuring out a lot of things too.”

“Neither of us have any experience being parents. Keith at least has some experience babysitting. I hope we’re doing okay.”

“You’re doing perfect,” she said.

“I don’t think we are, but I’m really happy you think so. If you need anything at all, I hope you’ll tell us. We want to do right by you.”

How could she even tell him? Just the fact that he said that was so super duper important.

“I need something,” she said. “Two somethings.”

“What somethings?”

“I don’t want to be Kanzi. I’m so tired of people getting it wrong.”

“That’s… a really complicated thing, actually,” he said. “There are rules. Things as simple as you getting a haircut get really complicated when we have to check a lot of the time.”

“Because I’m not yours.”

“Because-” he started. “I don’t know. But it’s eleven at night and I’ve been up since five. We could discuss that another time.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I’ll ask in the meantime, make sure it’s okay. What’s the other thing?”

“Can you not take him away? Please?”

Keith slept in a slumped over way, his ass on the bed, his feet on the ground, his back and head against the headboard and pillows. His arm had a faint mark where her face had smushed up against it. Antonio reached over to touch Keith’s face.

“Please,” she said. “Please please please?”

“I’ll compromise with you. Fifteen minutes. I’ll come back and I’ll take him to bed. If he sleeps like this, he’ll have a bad back in the morning, and then he won’t be able to do anything with you.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“Deal?”

“Deal.”

Antonio reached over to give her a pat on the head.

He left, dimming the lights on the way out, so the lava lamp was the only light source, and left the door ajar.

She’d never felt so relaxed and safe as she did right this moment, but the fact she felt so okay worried her. An inexplicable, terrible fear welled up inside her, worse than the ‘dread’ smiley that only ever went up on the fridge as a joke, when it was Antonio’s turn to cook.

The more she loved these moments, the more afraid she was of losing these moments. The love was uneasy, tentative, like a baby horse taking its wobbly first steps, gradually getting better at it. The fear was a feeling like someone had a big fat crayon inside her, scribbling madly, defying the lines the color was supposed to go inside, except it wasn’t color. Just… black.

She let her head rest against Keith’s arm.

⊙

Victoria paced.

“He doesn’t have a face,” Victoria remarked.

The still image of Keith lounging against the bed, the children’s book precariously at one fingertip, was incomplete, the face left unrendered. Everything else was as realistic as anything, from backhair to cuticles to pores. The face was an artist’s palette, a mixture of colors in vague patches, not the artist’s canvas.

“No,” Kenzie said.

“Why?”

“Because,” Kenzie said. “He asked me not to.”

⊙

“We’re the worst foster parents.”

Kenzie mouthed the word ‘no!’, silent, her eyebrows drawing together in anger.

They liked to sit on the swing near the barbecue. If she situated herself right in her room, then she could eavesdrop. It was nice, a lot of the time, because it meant she could hear them being goofy with each other, or if they were stressed out about money she could avoid asking for things.

“We’re terrible,” Antonio agreed. “You in particular.”

Kenzie, upstairs, shook her head.

“I admit it. I’m far, far worse than you. You at least had the decency to be a workaholic.”

“I’m not a workaholic, Keith.”

There were murmurs, then laughter between the two.

Concerned, Kenzie sat by her window, knees drawn up to her chest, remaining silent.

“I’m too fond of that girl. She’s wickedly smart, determined, everyone remarks about how she’s as cute as a button, and she reads for fun. If I could get you pregnant-”

“You’re trying your hardest.”

“-Ha ha. I’m serious. I’d want a kid like her. I’d be the embarrassingly proud dad if my kid was half as great as she is. I am psyched to wake up every day and spend time with you two. I want to do that more.”

“Keith, you can’t.”

“We can talk to people about options. They haven’t mentioned the bio parents much, but they were incarcerated, and it seems like some bad stuff went down. We could figure out what the requirements might be, make sure we’ve crossed our ‘Q’s and dotted our ‘i’s, right? We’d be the absolute worst foster parents if we took the first foster child to pass through our doors and then half a year later, started asking about adopting them.”

“The absolute, unequivocal worst.”

Kenzie’s eyes were wide.

She had no idea what she was supposed to do with this feeling, but she knew she had to do something.

⊙

“Ahem,” she said.

The teenagers continued talking. Her attention was on the one at the end of the bench who was alone and silent.

“Ahhhehehm.”

“What?” the teenager asked. He turned his head and gave her a once over. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Remember when the grade nines spent time with the grade threes, and the grade fours were with the grade tens, and so on?”

He turned his head her way and gave her a deeply aggrieved look.

“The buddy you were assigned told me that you’re really good with computers.”

“I’m okay. Why?”

“I need help with my phone.”

“Fuck off,” he said.

“I’ll do anything,” she said.

He looked at her. “You’re too young to be useful to anyone.”

“I’ll give you my lunch money.”

“How much?” he asked.

She fished in her pocket, counting change.

“That’s not going to do it,” he said.

“I get a dollar and twenty five cents every weekday except pizza day Wednesdays, where I get two dollars and fifty cents. I can give you some money every day until we’re square.”

“Twenty bucks, and it can’t take any longer than this lunch period to do.”

She nodded fiercely.

“Come on. Library,” he said.

They left the schoolyard and entered the school building, hanging a right until they were in the library. The library was one big room, and it had windows that overlooked the very spot where they’d just had their conversation.

He plunked himself down in front of the computer. “Phone?”

She handed over her phone.

“Unlock it.”

She did.

“And what do you need done?” he asked.

“I need it so I can search the web.”

She watched as he clicked the icon. The internet browser didn’t turn up internet, but instead it was a page with a talking car, suggesting some safe, pre-vetted search terms.

“You got helicoptered,” the guy said.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“They’ve got a program running on your phone. Controls the internet, messaging, contact lists, it also transmits your location, so they know where you are at every second.”

“Okay, that’s fine, but I want to be able to search the web and look for stuff.”

“You’re a little young for porn.”

“Eww. No, no interest, thank you mister. Not that.”

He turned his head to look at the clock. “I can give you a fix. It’s going to require that you change your background.”

“I like my background.”

“Look,” he said. “Here’s my fast, quick, and dirty solution. We change the background to blue and gray. We install a web browser obscure enough that these programs don’t know to control what you see… and downloads are also blocked.”

“Yep,” she said.

“File transfers usually aren’t,” he said. “Let’s try downloading onto the school computer… then using my cable, we move one file…”

It took a minute.

“There. You have a browser now. Do they check your phone?”

“All the time. They pay a lot of attention to what I watch, what I listen to, what I’m searching for online…”

“That’s horrifying,” the teenager said.

“It’s great, because they care.”

“If they check, we have to be careful. What we do here is make it so the circles behind every icon are dark gray. Then with our freshly web surfing program, we click, hold… and we get options. We give it a custom icon, the space invader pixel monster, and we change the color to dark gray.”

She watched as the icon changed from a folder online to an old game sprite. The sprite became invisible against the background provided.

“Click that space and the web browser will pop up,” he said.

She bounced on the spot, before giving him a hug.

“Okay, fuck off. And give me my money.”

She forked over the money for the day.

She had the access she’d wanted. A world of information now at her fingertips. She went straight to the bathroom, taking a seat on the toilet, so she had some privacy.

The typing was laborious, especially since she knew she didn’t have much time. Just a couple of days ago, she’d overheard about them possibly taking her for keeps. She needed to lock it in, somehow. It felt wrong that she wasn’t doing anything on her end, while they were doing something so monumental.

She entered her first search term.

how do i show somoene i love them

She looked it over, fixed the typo, and then submitted.

She read, studied as hard as she had ever studied math or sciences. When she wasn’t in class learning or doing, her phone was out. There were too many roads to go down, key phrases, like ‘making relationships last’.

⊙

Kenzie’s foot scuffed the floor of her workshop.

“Oh, Kenzie,” Victoria said.

Yep, she got it.

“In my defense, I was nine, and I was really, really oblivious,” Kenzie said. She smiled. “I wanted to do my part and make something really awesome happen, so the coolest, most awesome person in the world might adopt me.”

“It was going to happen either way, if it was going to happen.”

“So I’ve been told.”

There was a long pause. Neither was eager to press the button or move the diorama over to the next scene.

Victoria checked on the dining room. Neither had moved. Kenzie was tempted to resume surveillance, but still, it didn’t matter.

Surveillance was like the safety in numbers, from way back in the day. A thing to dive into, so real life didn’t seem so real or important.

“If I’d color coded these, the next scenes, set of you can probably guess, would be pink.”

Victoria nodded.

“I’m going to skip it. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I definitely don’t mind.”

Kenzie hit the button twice. The image flickered, holding the first for only a fraction of an eyeblink.

Then the aftermath. Kenzie winced.

So embarrassing.

⊙

“Jesus. Jesus!”

Kenzie backed away, eyes wide. Her eyes went wider as she saw Antonio enter the room from the adjunct bathroom. Her fingers clutched her nightie.

“Are you okay?” Antonio asked her.

“Yes,” she said, but she looked at Keith, saw him freaking out, and backed up a little more.

“Keith, you’re scaring her.”

“I’m a more than a little scared myself! She woke me up and I thought it was you.”

“Baby,” Antonio said. “Sit down on the bed. Deep breaths, okay? She’s the priority, remember? If you get freaked, she’s going to be freaked.”

She was freaked. Definitely freaked. Everything had turned sideways and she wasn’t one hundred percent sure on why.

Keith sat back down on the bed.

“I’m going to take her back to bed. We’re going to have a chat while you catch your breath. Okay?”

Keith nodded.

“Come on, Kenz,” Antonio said. “Let’s get you put back to bed.”

She was shaking as he took her hand. She let him lead her down the hall to her room, glancing back to see Keith with his head hanging, eyes wide and alarmed.

“Oh boy,” Antonio said.

“Oh boy is right,” Kenzie said, her voice about as small as she felt. “I didn’t know- I don’t know how this happened.”

“A lot of people, they go to this because it happened to them.”

“It didn’t happen to me.”

“Then where on earth did you get this idea from?”

She was back in her room. Her phone was over there. She could point it out, explain it, but-

“Kids talking at school.”

“Oh Kenzie, hon. There’s no need. Personal space is personal space, and that’s just for him and me, because we’re married, understand?”

She nodded, firm. Her heart was still pounding, and she had a sick feeling in her middle.

“I think- and I’ll ask Keith, but I think it would help everyone if we talked to an expert on these things. What do you think? Can’t hurt, right?”

She shook her head. “Can’t hurt.”

“I think I’ll look into that first thing tomorrow, then. Can I give you a hug?”

She nodded. A hug was the best thing in the world when she felt as horrible inside as she did now. It almost made the horribleness melt away.

He kissed her on the forehead. “Scoot down. I’ll tuck you in.”

She scooted. He tucked her in.

She didn’t sleep.

⊙

“My favorite person ever wouldn’t make eye contact with me,” Kenzie said. Her legs kicked where they dangled from her chair. Her toes scuffed the ground. “The next appointment Anton -that was his nickname in the house- that he could get, it was a week from the incident.”

“What happened?” Victoria asked. “It didn’t help?”

“They weren’t talking in the usual spots where I might be able to eavesdrop, and for the first time since I got there, Keith was going to work instead of working from home. It meant they were talking on the phone, everyone was more distant, and there was this big meeting with a therapist and child services to talk about things, coming at me like a big train.”

Kenzie flicked through scenes. Diorama images of her with the phone. Her with the baby monitor that Keith and Anton had kept in case they ended up fostering a baby.

“I just wanted to know what was going on. So I downloaded the same app they used to lock down my phone and watch my browsing. I put it on their phone and I hid that application like the teenager from school hid the icon on mine. I didn’t control his browsing, but I did make it so I could watch their texts.”

⊙

She’d set herself as parent, and consequently, the helicopter app let her monitor where Keith was.

She opened the door as he pulled into the driveway. He seemed startled to see her there so suddenly.

“Hey, Kenz,” he said.

There wasn’t the same heart in the words that there had been in the early days. No hug at the door.

A hand on the shoulder, instead.

She’d read the most recent messages. She knew what weighed on his heart.

This is the kind of thing where if it goes wrong, we can’t ever foster or adopt.

It’s not going to go wrong. We’ll explain.

Anton, I’m really worried.

This is the kind of thing where we need to be upfront with services for her sake and to cover our asses. Honesty is the best policy.

They wouldn’t ever adopt her, they wouldn’t adopt anyone. They were some of the best people and parents she’d known and they’d lose the ability to ever be parents. Because of her.

She’d considered running away, but she worried that would make things worse.

Cornered. Trapped. Drowning.

Everything was off. Things at school were off, because she was trying to put on a veneer of normal when she felt anything but, practicing being ordinary and casual so she would be ready today, and people thought it felt forced, which only made her feel the need to practice more. It was a feedback loop that had led to her being called creepy.

She wanted to scream and throw things and she wanted to curl up into a ball and eat her feet and keep eating until she was nothing.

“I brought snacks,” Keith said. “I don’t know if that’s appropriate, given what we’re doing.”

“I don’t know either,” she said.

“All you have to do,” he said, “Is you tell the truth. I’m not going to ask you to say or do anything more. Yeah?”

She nodded.

He smiled. He reached over and mussed up her hair. She tried to fix it.

“Help me get the snacks out?”

She hurried to get the bowls for the chips and the chocolate covered peanuts.

Antonio showed up a few minutes later, and decided a smaller number of snacks would be more fitting for the occasion. Too much, he opined, was a party, and this wasn’t a party occasion.

The child services workers arrived, with the therapist in tow.

“I’ll talk to her alone? Then we’ll trade off?” the man said, looking at Mrs. Yaris and the other woman.

⊙

Kenzie tossed the remote up into the air, and then caught it.

She looked at the still image. Herself and the therapist. She’d found a picture of the therapist in a book and used it to render a composite, which helped make things accurate.

“What happened?” Victoria asked.

“I studied,” Kenzie said. “Keith and Anton were looking up resources and I read all the resources, best as I could, to try to figure out what I needed to say to fix things.”

“They thought you were coached.”

“Yup. They thought I was coached, and they decided to separate us temporarily. New house, new foster parents. That’s the point where I had to take a bad situation and make it a hundred times worse.”

“Kenzie…”

“That’s my thing! That’s me. Anyone else, they like someone and then they have this stopper inside them. They think, oh, they love this person, they love them a lot, so they’ll do this thing and that thing and give them this gift and bam, that’s enough. Bam. But that’s not me. When I love people it overflows and it makes a heck of a mess. I don’t know where to stop things, and when things start slipping away, I reach out harder.”

She hit the button.

⊙

“Kenzie, there are ten, twelve reasons you shouldn’t be here right now. You can’t keep doing things like this.”

“I wanted to see you.”

“Kenzie,” he said. He knelt down in front of her. He put his hands on her shoulders like he was trying to minimize contact, only palms touching fingers and thumb splayed out. “I would love to see you. The best chance at getting back to normal is to take a break, stick to our routines, and avoid making waves.”

His coworkers were looking. She swallowed hard.

“You’re supposed to be in school.”

“There was an assembly.”

“And you’re not supposed to be here, and it just raises questions.”

She reached, grasping for some kind of answer or way to try to fix things.

“Kenzie,” he said. “At the bookstore two days ago. Was that you?”

Her mouth opened, then closed.

“No,” she lied, under her breath.

“How in the world did you know to find me there?”

“Luck,” she said, her mouth dry.

“How did you know I was here, and not working from home?”

She shook her head, mouthing a word that, if she’d been asked, she couldn’t have said what it was.

She saw the look in his eyes. Wariness. Fear.

It wasn’t a new look. It had been there from the time she’d entered his room, and it had gotten worse every time she’d opened a door, knowing he was there. The statements she’d tried, to make it sound like they were on the same wavelength. Over and over they’d had the opposite effect.

“Andrea,” Keith said. “What do you have on your plate?”

“Nothing big.”

Kenzie’s teeth chattered.

“Could I get you to do me a massive favor? I need Kenzie dropped off at school.”

“I think I can do that.”

“I’ll get you the address.”

She watched him leave the room, and she saw the look in his eyes. He was gone. She might see him again or talk to him again, she could get every detail, read every instant message, see every webpage he visited, but he would never be her dad again.

Every point of light in the room flared, a kaleidoscope, a lens flare across her field of vision. Even the edges of the desks where the sunlight drew highlights on glossy black finish became impossibly bright.

The images sorted, and she saw world turned upside-down, with land instead of sky and vice versa. The land looked like food coloring did when dropped into water, but it was solid and stable.

The parts of the world closest to her were inhabited, marked with messes of glass and machinery that stuck to surfaces and walls. The institution, the infrastructure, the weight of the army- all, when she zoomed far enough back, were part of a singular monolith of a gravity that sucked all energy from her, leaving her gasping.

“You alright?” Andrea asked.

Kenzie shook her head.

“Come on, baby,” Andrea said. “Let’s get you where you belong.”

“Home?” she asked. “Or- my foster home?”

Andrea looked back at Keith, and Keith nodded.

The elevator was distracting. The gold watch on Andrea’s wrist- it had a crystal display. Energy, light, lenses, geometry- everything had a meaning and that meaning was like the safety in numbers.

She wanted to ask a thousand things about Keith and Antonio and she bit her tongue instead. Something was wrong. She’d been broken to begin with and something had outright cracked.

Andrea dropped her off at the new foster house, and Kenzie hurried inside without a word.

She almost hyperventilated, as she went straight to her room.

Her phone. She pulled it out, slammed the door behind her, and went to her bed.

In the background, she could hear Andrea talking to her foster mom.

She found her bag, and she dug the card out of her bag. only one temporary tattoo left, and a business card with a number on it.

She called, head bowed, phone pressed to her ear so hard it hurt.

“This is Aerobat.”

“This is… you held my hand. You gave me your card. Please help me.”

Before I use this power to do something I regret even more.

⊙

“I didn’t want to do something I regretted,” Kenzie echoed the line of thought from the memory, that seemed so vivid as she stared at the diorama. “Which, you know, I did do. I got lonely or scared, and I tried to get in touch. I scared them more, which is why no faces. They don’t want me simulating them or using them in pictures. I figure it’s the least I could do.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“The funny thing is, you know, I’m mostly better. I’ve been working on things. I have a hard time with boundaries but I can learn some good basic rules to stick to and I stick to them really hard. I’m figuring out the team, I love you guys, I’m kicking ass, I’ve got some great projects on the go.”

It would just make her start crying like a baby, and she needed to get Victoria on her side, make sure that the wrong things weren’t said and that things didn’t get out of control with the group.

If she could just explain her side, Victoria would see, and then things could go back to normal.

Just like going to see Keith at work had been a way to just show him he cared, to reconnect, and then have things be like they’d used to be.

Or how saying just the right things to the therapist would make that whole incident go away.

Kenzie smiled.

“Is that the end of the slides?”

Kenzie clicked, even though she didn’t want to see. She smiled at the scene.

It was Keith and Antonio. Antonio had given her a gift. A bag with pink on it, because he hated that she, like so many other foster kids, were packing her things up in black garbage bags.

A goodbye, before she left for San Diego.

“They-” she started. Her voice cracked. “Um. They have two kids now. A boy and a girl, nine and thirteen. Foster kids that they adopted. They made it through Gold Morning. They’re out there somewhere, and I don’t look too hard.”

“Oh, Kenz.”

Kenzie’s legs kicked. She smiled at Victoria.

Victoria froze, staring.

Had she slipped? Kenzie tried to think if she’d said or done the wrong thing.

“Kenzie-” Victoria said. “Kenz, that’s got to be the worst thing in the world.”

“There are lots of horrible things in the world,” Kenzie said. She looked down, smiling. “It’s not my favorite thing, though.”

“Then why are you smiling when you’re talking about something so upsetting?”

Kenzie started to answer, then stopped. Too easy to be flippant.

She needed Victoria on her side. That meant being honest.

“I always smile when I’m upset or bothered,” Kenzie answered. She swallowed hard. “That’s just how I am. It’s easier than crying, it doesn’t bother people as much.”

“What do you do when you’re happy?”

“I don’t smile, I guess,” Kenzie said.

Victoria seemed momentarily lost for words. She was, no doubt, recalling a hundred past events.

“But!” Kenzie bounced a bit in on her stool. “But I have my parents back! And I know you’re going to say stuff. I get it. It’s weird. They’re a little messed up.”

“It’s a lot messed up.”

“Okay,” Kenzie said. “Yes, but –but– I have this entirely under control.”

“I have a hard time believing that.”

“I’ve had it under control for over a year now. I went looking for family and I found them. They pretended at first that they didn’t know who I was, but the people in charge of the gates had some good ways to quickly check stuff.”

“Powers?”

“Something like that. I was more focused on other stuff, like the family reunion. Anyway, I came to live with them, they had to take care of me because I’m their daughter, and they were pissed. When they’re pissed, they do stupid, stupid things, and I got those stupid things on camera.”

“You subjected yourself to abuse to get blackmail material? Please tell me nobody else knew about this and condoned it.”

“Nobody else knew about this and condoned it. Mostly they just think my parents are scared. They did their thing and told my parents to be good or else, but they don’t know about the video footage I got. I originally planned to get two week’s worth, but I didn’t have the guts. I ended up making it five days of footage of them, and I’ve gotten more since.”

Victoria leaned checked that the parents were still at the table, then spoke in a low voice, “You know police aren’t really able to prosecute much, right?”

“They’d prosecute some of this stuff.”

Victoria drew in a deep breath.

Kenzie cut in. “I know what you’re going to say! Really truly, it’s not that bad. I showed them the recordings and I told them they could go to jail or they could live with me and follow my very fair, very sane rules. They can quit at any time. If I die and it looks suspicious, the recordings get released and their lives are over.”

“Kenzie,” Victoria said, and now she sounded horrified. “You can’t do that.”

“But isn’t rehabilitation the main thing we’re trying to do? Isn’t that the whole freaking point? This is better than prison, because it’s targeted. They’re like a dog that was spoiled rotten and doesn’t know how to be loyal or good, and a dog that was kicked and beaten a lot, that’s learning to be nice to people again. They love each other too, and I think that matters.”

“Kenzie-”

“They’re mostly there! They are. They just hate my guts. They hope I’m going to die. They’re way more rehabilitated than they would be if they were anywhere else, and if the badness in them seeps out aimed at me every once in while, and they try to give me a mild case of lead poisoning, I’m okay with that.”

“No,” Victoria said. “No, no, and fucking- fuck no.”

“It’s what we do! We put ourselves on the line and we fix the bad guys!”

“No,” Victoria said. “The moment you get a concussion, you’re going to be vulnerable to them trying something. Or whatever. It’s- there’s no way this is healthy for you. Living like this, watching over your shoulder, you’re going to utterly destroy yourself.”

Kenzie swallowed, and then she said, “I’m doing okay so far.”

Victoria shook her head. “You can’t live like this. You can’t live that close to people that ugly, and not be affected by it. It’ll eat you alive. We’ve got to get you out of this house.”

Kenzie looked down, then looked back toward the door, where her family was on the other side.

“Then I don’t know what to do,” she said. “Help?”

“Absolutely,” Victoria said. “I’m going to call some people. You- call Ashley. She’s one of your favorite people, right, and she gets this? She figured stuff out or she had guesses.”

“She got a lot of it.”

“We’ll figure this out,” Victoria said. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

Kenzie nodded, her expression solemn.

“Can I give you a hug, or-”

More than anything, Kenzie wanted one, even a one-armed hug.

But Victoria was a friend and the rules were that she didn’t hug friends. That threatened to cross boundaries.

“No,” Kenzie said. And she wished with all her might that Victoria would hug her anyway, because that wouldn’t break the rules if Kenzie wasn’t the one doing it. It would make things feel so much better.

There was no hug. Victoria listened when she said no.

Victoria got out her phone. Kenzie got hers, checking on her parents on her way to dialing the number. Ashley.

Ashley picked up on the other end, “How bad was it?”

A goofy grin crept across Kenzie’s face, that she couldn’t wipe away or get rid of, for what felt like minutes.

Torch – Interlude 7.y

Gary Nieves was trying to save a world, and he was failing.

Twenty-six million people. The world had ended two years ago, and, as of last week, there were still twenty-six million people trying to survive on Earth Bet. The attacks had hit the portals, and some of the most accessible avenues between Earth B and Earth G had been wiped out.

He was pretty sure that they hadn’t been able to process more than a few million in the last week. Over twenty million people were out there, ready to file through with the things they could carry or pack. Many had been forced to relocate to other portals, after months of waiting for their turns at the portals in Earth B or equivalent areas in Earth B’s New York. Many found themselves at the back of the line at whatever stations they were forced to move to. Some would get on trains. Here, they had to get on trucks, because the portal was too narrow for anything else. The narrowness slowed things down more.

The only light was from spotlights, and for a moment, every spotlight was on a giant robot with a glass face, a giant eel swimming in the fluid within. Metal and strange technology gleamed in the instant before the spotlights changed focus, some turning to the convoy that followed the giant robot. The parahuman who managed the robot stood atop the thing, waving at someone on the ground as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Gary saw more of the trucks come through, most were logging vehicles with benches fixed to the back, every bench crammed with people, shoulder to shoulder, knees often touching the people on the bench in front of them, bags crammed beneath them. There was no exterior to the truck, nothing to break the intense wind that whipped through the area and stirred up the dirt and dust. Many of the people on benches faced off to the side, looking at the world they were being brought into.

Some looked directly at Gary, who was beneath a canopy tent, open on four sides because the wind that blew across the city was liable to blow any tent with walls down. He was surrounded by foldable tables, computers, communication gear and plastic crates.

Jeanne Wynn from Mortari had told him that people were getting sick over there. He’d seen people come through looking pale, underweight, and listless, but up until recent days, he’d chalked it up to the weather on the other side, the rationing, and the wounds that many had sustained to their very soul, to lose the universe they called home.

He wanted better for them. He did. Earth G was better than what they were coming from, but it wasn’t nearly good enough.

He’d made his bid to run the city, and he’d been ousted, because he wasn’t willing to cheat. Now he felt the acute lack of leadership in this situation. This was so far from being good enough.

“Ed!” Gary bellowed, double checking the monitor in front of him. This was triage at this point – there weren’t any locations that were actually ready to take people in, so he had to send them to the closest thing to ready, but there were other factors. The plaza at block nineteen was most capable and had the most capacity, but security had been called there five times in the last hour. Tess, the woman in charge, had called for some parahumans to help keep the peace, and Gary knew that she hated the people who ran around in costume. He had Ed’s attention, and now he had to make a call. “Take the convoy to block three!”

Ed was atop a concrete tower by one of the gates. The man moved the illuminated batons he held, indicating the direction to lot C. His partner would be on the radio, talking to others, ready to indicate the rest of the direction.

Gary hoped that the plaza would be peaceful enough to accept new people, because there were already messages coming through, saying that there would be another convoy in two minutes.

Sixty people could be packed into the back of one logging truck. Ten trucks had come through with the giant robot and its eel.

Not even a dent. This convoy marked six hundred out of an estimated twenty million.

Trucks passed. He recognized one of them as a military supply truck that had jackknifed and rolled while carrying civilians, just two weeks ago. A mechanical failure. People had died, and the image of that same truck carrying both civilians and bodies covered by white plastic sheets had burned into his mind’s eye. Now it was back on the road, because they were short on vehicles that could carry large numbers and traverse some of the rougher, broken terrain on the far side of the portal.

He saw mothers and fathers who couldn’t even bring themselves to look hopeful as they made it through the portal. He saw others, more heartbreaking, who came through with light in their eyes- until they saw the distorted portals looming along the horizon. There was no doubt they’d heard about them, but to see it? He was thankful that it was late evening, and that the portals weren’t that visible. He didn’t have to see the expressions change.

The giant robot with the eel inside stepped aside, the hand raising to give the person on top a platform to stand on. It lowered, putting the parahuman on a level with his teammates. The Shepherds.

Gary wasn’t the only one who was watching their every move. Reasons differed- children looked because costumes were brightly colored, personalities standing out in bold relief. Men looked because they worried, like Gary did, or, he assumed, because their eyes were drawn to young ladies in dresses that showed bare legs and left no illusions about chest size. Women- he had no idea why women stared. Probably the same things.

“Are they getting in the way?” Heather asked.

Gary shook his head. “Not so far.”

Heather was Gary’s relief, meant to be available if he took a break, with a five-hour shift due to start when he wrapped up his evening to get his five hours of sleep. That would have been an hour ago, but there had been so much to do he hadn’t been able to conscience stopping. She could have stood down, taking the extra opportunity to rest, but she was working in the background, supporting and double checking his work for mistakes, because mistakes happened when people were as tired as they were.

Given the fatigue and everything else, it would have been so easy for them to be at each other’s throats. Even if they’d both followed the routine outlined, stress, proximity, and fatigue could easily have seen them at each other’s throats. It didn’t happen. They worked well together, he felt. He had zero complaints, and she hadn’t suggested she was upset in the slightest.

As trucks slowed to round a corner, heading off to lot three, people were hopping up onto the sides of the trucks, bags in hand. Water and some basic food, to greet the newest refugees and look after those in need.

The heroes were still caught up with their discussion. The Shepherds were one of two hero groups present, the other being a loose assortment of the parahumans that had been guarding stations. The other stations were closed so all available personnel and parahumans could focus on getting people out of Earth B.

The Shepherds broke from their huddle. Each of them moved with a direction that suggested they knew exactly where they were going. Nobody came his way, though he was supposed to be in charge of this station and the connecting nodes. Nobody went to Ari, Mortari’s representative on scene- technically the person who was supposed to have final say from the higher-ups. Had they gone to Ari, Gary would have felt snubbed, but he would at least have felt like the parahumans recognized that people were working here, trying to get stuff done.

Had they come to him, or even if they’d gone to Ari, they’d have been told to stay clear of lot nineteen until things settled down. Gary could have told them where they would be useful.

He could taste acid in his mouth, and swallowing was hard. It was nothing to do with powers, and nothing to do with medical problems, not this time. It was his body’s unique way of telling him that he was stressed out.

“Ed!” he called up to the tower. “See if you can’t get any of the Shepherds on the radio! We need to know where they’re going!”

“Right!” Ed called back.

“One hand doesn’t know what the other’s doing,” Heather said.

She was half his age, liked by just about everyone, and, despite the fact that everyone here was supposed to be on the same side as they tackled this crisis, it didn’t work out that way in practice. She was one of the few he could count as being unreservedly in his corner. For much that reason, the talk and grumbling about hands and the struggle to get people to cooperate was a common refrain between them.

“Shepherds are doing their own thing, the… whoever they’re supposed to be, that used to be Wardens and are keeping an eye on things-”

“The thinkers,” Heather said.

“Sure, if you want to call them that. No leadership, no communication. They come, they do their shifts, they leave, and they act as if they’re insulted if we try to ask for details or if they can appoint a liaison. Those thinkers don’t think,” he said.

“And then John Druck, and Mortari, and the organizers on the far side, in Earth Bet-” Heather went on.

Gary checked the timers. His main window was an overhead map of everything with lots marked out and an 8-bit bus ticking along the map millimeter by millimeter. It was supposed to be black, but it was now ticking back and forth, an alarming red.

She leaned close. “Late.”

“Help me out, Heather? See if you can’t find Ari and figure out if he knows where we’re getting tripped up tonight? People keep showing up later and later, and they’re getting processed slower.”

“I think we’re all tired, Gary.”

“Feels like more,” he said. “Find Ari?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Don’t fall asleep.”

“I’ve got coffee.”

A thinker near the main portal relieved the detestable girl with the rats.

The ‘heroes’ did their own thing. Other factions were serving their own leaders. Druck’s labor, Mortari reporting to Wynn. That left a share of maybe twenty or thirty percent who were citizen volunteers, serving under him. He’d organized the volunteers and set the systems in place to train them. The backbone was a team of people that he’d once hoped would be able to go back to Earth B and start cleaning things up enough that they could start resettling it.

He’d hoped they’d be able to go home.

It was the numbers that slipped through his fingers, and drove home how out of reach it all was. Six hundred bodies out of twenty million. Twenty to thirty percent of the three thousand people here were his, or were supposed to be. But so many of them believed in the Shepherds, felt the Shepherds’ views aligned with their own. Gary knew they didn’t.

The lights flickered, spotlights going off, then coming on one at a time, unevenly, as the power came back on. He could hear the distant machinery buck into action as generators came online.

He looked around his tent, spotting his bulky flood flashlight in the moment before the power went out for good.

The generators only ever really bought them a second.

Blind, he went to the flashlight, hitting the button to turn it on. There were battery powered lanterns in one of the totes. People nearby came to him like moths to a candle. He was one of the only proper sources of light. The others were Patrol, officers, and others with flashlights as part of their standard operating gear. Those lights were more for personal use.

Gary’s supply was the kind of thing meant to light up work areas. He passed them out until he saw a face he recognized, and then delegated.

“Where’s Ari!?” he called out.

He got mixed, inconsistent answers.

“The Shepherds?”

“Full patrol,” came a nearby report.

He had no idea what that meant. He’d tried asking about terminology before, too.

Up on the tower, Ed had battery power for a floodlight.

“Conserve batteries!” Gary called up. “Only half on at a time, until we know what’s going on!”

His computer had a battery of its own, and the machine it was hooked up to gave it a satellite feed. In a vast sea of darkness, with much of the city unlit at this late hour, people were retreating to Gary’s tent.

It was a primitive instinct, like cavemen retreating to the shelter of the campfire. The instinct made it hard to check his computer.

It couldn’t be easy. The stalled convoy was moving again. If it had stayed put, then at least they could get organized and ready before it appeared.

“We don’t get a break just because it’s dark! Another convoy is coming through, and it looks like eight hundred!” he called out. “There are construction helmets with lights mounted on them in the tent with the barricades! There should be flares! We need enough light that we can point them in the right direction and keep them from driving into anything! Go!”

People ran to do as he’d ordered. Others were moving the opposite direction, clustering closer.

Why wasn’t Mortari leading? Why couldn’t the heroes be here to offer up one of their magical solutions?

As if thinking about them had summoned them, he saw how the girl with the rats was part of the crowd, and her eerily terrible mask with its bent nose was made all the worse by the dim lighting that came from low, below-the-neck angles.

“I’ll help,” she said. “Even though I’m on break.”

Then she turned to go.

When he’d been in fourth grade, an abysmal teacher had left him so stressed out that he’d gotten an ulcer. It was the kind of person he was. He could remember the ambient pain across his stomach, the distended way he’d felt, as if the stress had gathered inside him and was stretching his skin, and he could remember the acid taste in his mouth. That teacher and that experience had shaped him, driving home a distaste for authority figures who couldn’t lead.

He hadn’t had an ulcer since two years ago, but something psychosomatic made him feel echoes of those old sensations and tastes when he was acutely stressed.

He’d been feeling the acid in his throat and mouth and a dull pain in his stomach for a while now. It felt more pronounced now, to the point it probably exceeded what he would feel if it was real.

“People with headlamps on each side of the road!” he shouted. “Make sure they know where the road stops! The rest of you, if you don’t have business in this tent, there’s lights going up under the concrete towers! Go there, or go get water and hydrate our refugees!”

“He’s saying he wants you out of our tent!” Heather shouted. She was back, or she’d turned around when everything had gone dark.

The shouting didn’t help with the acid taste in his mouth.

Most people left the tent. The ones that stayed were recognizable faces- people he didn’t mind seeing. Not his, not one hundred percent, like Heather was, but they were friendly enough.

“Ari’s occupied. He’s tied up in policy stuff.”

Gary shook his head. “Well, I don’t envy him, but I think if he was going to be this busy, Mortari could have sent more people here.”

“Wholesale agreement here, Gary,” Heather said.

The headlights of the convoy were visible.

“Make sure they come in slow!” Heather called out instructions. “We don’t have enough light!”

He looked at his monitor. He hated it, especially since there was no sign that nineteen had resolved its disputes, but this was a big load of people, and he couldn’t conscience overburdening others with an influx of refugees when nineteen was mostly empty.

“Block nineteen,” he said.

“Nineteen!” Heather shouted, her voice high. Others passed it on, and on the concrete tower, illuminated batons touched tips to form a chevron shape. ‘Careful’.

The trucks were overburdened. People were almost falling off or walking alongside because there wasn’t enough space on the benches. The wind was fierce, as it so often was around the portals, and the trucks were having a hard time driving in a straight line as a consequence.

What was this? A thousand people? It was supposed to be eight hundred at most. Even if every single waypoint was ready, stocked, and fresh, there wouldn’t be a good place for him to stick a thousand people.

He left his canopy, waving down the lead driver. A hero sat on the roof of the vehicle- a man with a costume that had some technological aspects hooked up. Purple fluid glowed like it was under a blacklight, running through tubes to bracelets and something he wore along his spine. When the guy smiled, the saliva in his mouth was more glow-in-the-dark purple.

Gary tried to ignore him. There were things to do, answers to get. “What’s going on? A thousand people?”

“Eleven hundred.”

“Fuck me,” Gary said, his voice pitched low so that any kids at the back of the truck wouldn’t hear. “Come on, man.”

“They’re sardines over there. Logistics are a nightmare. Sir, seriously, just bring them over here and set them loose into the woods. It’s gotta be better than what we’re dealing with on the other side.”

“We’ve got to give them ID, make sure we aren’t letting dangerous people in. We give them a bit of money to start off, because they almost always have immediate needs. If we do like you’re saying, they’ll be second class citizens.”

“These guys are all people we vetted ourselves.”

“We don’t know your standards,” he said. “Can you split up the convoy?”

“You’d be parting some people from their belongings.”

Gary turned to Heather, who was standing back, a walkie talkie to her ear. She mouthed the word ‘Ari’ to him.

It took a minute. People were restless, and all the more restless because there were so many refugees coming through on foot, who weren’t staying in one place.

The thinkers were walking around and through the crowd, checking people. That was supposed to be some solace, he imagined. They’d see any weapons or traps.

“Ari says we can split up the people.”

“Have people get their belongings if they can. Trucks should get into position, moving slowly enough that we don’t run over anyone. One to block nineteen, one to block six.”

The trucks began to move at a crawl, a mile an hour if that. People hopped off or moved to the other truck, or made sure they had their bags. If this took too long, Gary knew, the next load of people would arrive. Backups and jams led to dissent, which led to violence and people who had only frustration as their first exposure to Earth G. It set bad precedents.

Things were still creeping forward when a sharp sound cracked through the air. His first instinct was to think it was something like the truck jackknifing. A mechanical failure, a backfire-

He heard the screams. The parahuman that had been perched atop a truck hit the ground, luminescent purple blood splattering to the ground around him.

There were more shots.

“Get down!” he shouted, but so many people were shouting or shrieking at the very tops of their lungs that he couldn’t be heard. It was a noise and a sudden onset of chaos that made it hard to see straight. He did what he could, motioning, indicating direction. The blood had sprayed in one direction, the parahuman knocked from his perch by a shot from the west. He had people take cover by the base of the truck, backs to wheels. People hugged the bed of the truck, using the benches and luggage as cover.

The next battery of shots came from the east. That was- it had to be automatic weapon’s fire.

A planned maneuver, to give them no place to take cover. Flanking gunfire from two separate directions, with serious firearms. Even the blackout-

Had it been planned? The idea filled him with a terror that somehow had more certainty than the bullets coming from the opposite direction.

“The tents!” he shouted, and nobody could hear him. “The tents!”

He started toward the tents, crossing open ground, and a shot hit the dirt a foot from where he stood. He beckoned, urging. Here, at least, there were plastic totes filled with equipment and supplies, enough that a bullet wouldn’t necessarily pass through.

He saw the woman with the rat mask. She ran low to the ground, straight toward the source of gunfire.

People followed him. People got shot for following him, because they were exposed, and each person he saw fall was a wound in the fabric of his very soul, because he was responsible.

Not wholly for the deaths. People would have died regardless.

Not wholly as leadership here. Others were supposed to be here to take charge. He was trying.

But between and through some alchemy of the two, he was responsible.

“Hurry, hurry!” he shouted. People weren’t screaming as much. They went to the tent, ducking inside. He found his back to one crate heavy enough his weight resting against it didn’t budge it. It would be cover- if it was placed in a better spot. His face distorted with effort as he dragged it across dirt. Someone else put a hand on it, helping. “Stack crates if you can!”

People did. He did what he could to help, when he was close enough to reach, but he and most others prioritized keeping their heads down. When crates were lifted up, it was by groups of four people who were careful to use cover. One of the heavier crates was being emptied, so the bin could be placed up high and then filled.

Assailants who lurked in the deep shadow around the portal station emptied their guns into the camp, placing their shots in the vicinity of people who had yet to take cover. Gary watched people die. All ages, all creeds. He felt a stabbing pain in his stomach like he had been one of the people shot, ten times worse than anything he remembered of the ulcer he’d had as a child.

Someone was calling his name. He looked back.

Ed was at the door at the base of the concrete tower. He had guns -rifles. They fired one shot, then needed a multi-step process to reload. They were meant for hunting and maybe for self defense, for the vast majority of instances that a single bullet would serve for.

Not for- for an outright battle.

He had been in one fistfight in his life, with his brother when he had been twelve and his eleven year old brother had called him gay. He knew his guns, and used them for fun, but he had never been one of the people who had dreamed up scenarios where he might have a justifiable excuse to use one or be a hero.

Ed pressed the gun and a box of ammunition into his hands.

In this situation, he felt the furthest thing from being a ‘hero’.

Every second, someone was dead or set firmly in that direction.

Ed was handing out more guns, favoring people he knew. The stockpile- weapons meant for refugees, kept more for their barter potential and in case of what had once been thought of as a worst case scenario, that the refugees might riot here in this camp.

There were only ten of them with shitty rifles.

He didn’t want to do this, but he couldn’t ask it of anyone else- he knew he could land his shots, if he could see his target. It would be hard to see.

“If one of us shoots, we all shoot. Hold your fire unless you think you can make it count,” Ed said, only audible because his mouth was almost against Gary’s ear. He spoke to the group, two people at a time, in much the same fashion.

Gary stared at the scene.

Flashlights had fallen. Yellow construction helmets with lights attached to the front lay in dirt. There were places the beams sliced across sprays of blood that had formed fluid balls or layers atop the dirt, rather than soaking into it.

He was so rattled he couldn’t count the arms and legs he saw strewn across the area around the trucks. It wasn’t that they were dismembered, but that the light and darkness chopped things up, so only one thing was visible at a time.

Too many moved- still hurting. But it was impossible to get to them if the guns weren’t dealt with.

Beyond those isolated beams of light, there was so much darkness. There were no flashes in the darkness as the automatic weapons fired.

“Go,” Ed said.

They broke away, using a hill for cover as they circled toward the group with the guns.

It felt like a suicide mission- they would each fire once. At best, they could drop half of the people on this one side of the station. Then what?

The opposition would open fire. Even with cover, they’d have no chance. There would be no returning fire.

But to do nothing?

Every second or third step he took, he tripped, because the ground wasn’t even, or there were obstacles. He thought the noise of it might disturb the shooters, but the sound of the guns drowned everything out.

Only darkness, absence of light. Only cacophony, overabundance of sound.

Only the cold feel of a weapon in his hands, hot feel of arm against body, armpit sweaty. Foot in boot, his awareness so sharp and out of place that he was aware of toes rubbing together, swimming in sweat like it had dripped off his body and filled his boots.

They hunkered down around one stone that stuck out of the hill.

No heroes in costume, no Mortari, no light, no help.

“Ready,” Ed said.

They got into position, guns pointed in the direction of the sound.

“Fire,” Ed said.

There was a hesitation after the word, as if the tried and true, universal ‘ready, aim, fire’ that had been imprinted in the collective consciousness had been broken, and that in itself created the doubt.

At least, that was what it felt like to Gary Nieves. The fact he might be shooting at someone was lost in the moment, because he couldn’t see them, and he couldn’t hear them. They were disembodied and if he straddled any fence at all, for all that he’d lived a mostly nonviolent life, the outrage he felt put him firmly in the universe where he pulled the trigger.

The guns were so loud- louder even than the semiautomatic ones that fired eight or more bullets in a single violent ‘splaaat’ sound. His jaw clenched so hard that his temples hurt.

Then, fumbling, he worked to reload.

The next wave of semiautomatic fire was directed at them, hitting the rock they were using for cover.

Gary slid down to the ground, crawling around the rock. Peeking around the corner at the very base of the rock, he took aim as best he could in the near-pitch darkness, and he fired.

The shot provided a hint of illumination. There was a figure striding toward them- a man in a knit mask with no holes for eyes or mouth. By his posture, he didn’t seem to care that people behind him were shooting past him to try to hit Gary’s group.

Others saw, and they opened fire.

The man darted around, jumping a half-foot to the right, a foot to the left, a step back, two steps forward. Teleportation or something like it. No bullets landed because he was relocated in the instant before anything -friend or foe- could hit him.

He hopped up onto the rock, boots scuffing, drawing a knife from his belt.

No, Gary thought.

“Run!” he barked out the word.

Half the group, Gary included, ran.

The other half tried to fight, with ‘try’ being the fundamental idea at play. Gary’s third rifle shot was aimed at the man in costume.

The first attack on the man’s part missed, because he relocated mid-swing, avoiding a bullet. He swung back the other direction, however, then back again, almost careless in how he swung back and forth. Ed’s friend Shane died. Ed kicked out- hit only air as the man relocated to a spot just to the left. A knife plunged into Ed’s chest.

Gary fumbled to reload, dropping his ammo. They’d left their cover, and they were still under fire. Soon was hit in the midsection and sat down hard, falling back because they were on a slope. Even in the dark, the whites of his eyes were visible.

Gary found more ammunition, slotting it into the side of the rifle.

The man with the knife had three bodies near him, now, and the dark silhouette on a dark background was fixating his attention on a fourth person, who was trying to run for it. That person -another of Gary’s volunteers- wasn’t nearly so camouflaged in the dark. His blue shirt stood out in the gloom.

The knife-wielding parahuman didn’t get his hands on that person- but only because the people with the semiautomatics landed a killing blow before he could get there.

Gary ran.

A loud noise and an intense gust following the movement of aircraft bowled him over. He skidded on the slope below him.

A giant robot, and not the one with the eel inside.

Anyone would have recognized this kind of design. Sleek, green with gold trim, with enough lights on it that it seemed to glow. The craft landed a short distance from where the shooters had been.

The flashes as the machine attacked were brilliant, though Gary wasn’t in a position to see what had caused it.

The parahuman who nobody could touch was approaching Gary’s group. A sharp whistle from behind gave it pause.

A man in green scale armor with gold trim, a faint beard on his chin, a spear in hand. He swung the spear, and the head detached, swinging like a flail with what had to be a thirty foot cord or wire.

The parahuman disappeared, reappearing at a point close to the base of the hill. Just out of reach of the flail.

The man in green armor swung the flail again, but this time the head came loose. It disappeared into the darkness.

An explosion ripped through an area at the foot of the hill. The spear’s head had detonated- and the parahuman stood at the periphery of the explosion. His arm went up to his nose and mouth.

“You can’t touch him!” Gary shouted. “He killed three people!”

“More than three,” the man in green and gold armor said. He held his spear-shaft like one might hold a rifle. It bucked like it had fired something, but it was silent, and there was no light nor smoke.

Another explosion, but this was more of a firecracker, detonating before it made impact with the parahuman’s head.

“There,” the man in green said. “Who can give medical attention?”

Gary couldn’t. One of the people Ed had conscripted could. He went to the man in green armor’s side.

The parahuman at the base of the hill was coughing violently, now at his knees. Gas.

The situation was resolving. The gunfire had ceased with the arrival of the big craft. Other capes were down in the town below, including the giant robot with the eel in it. They weren’t- he refused to let them be important. Gary could only see the carnage, the massive loss of life. People who had come here hoping for better. They hadn’t even had a chance.

How unjust a thing was that? How galling? They’d had no part in Gold Morning. They’d had no part in the waits or the delays, the plodding efforts to move people through when people were getting more sick or more desperate every day. By whim and the movements of greater players, they had lost their lives.

He dropped the gun. It wasn’t needed, and it wasn’t him. He wasn’t the kind of person who could give medical care.

He made his way down the hill and toward the station, where the road emerged from the portal and concrete walls with a few towers for vantage points helped to secure the area. The people within guided people coming through to other locations. The lights of Dragon’s craft illuminated much of the area.

People were in a daze, as they tentatively emerged from the shelter of the tents and the surrounding crates. They stared around them at the bodies. The trucks had taken enough gunfire that tires had popped and small things like door handles and side-view mirrors had broken away.

“If you’re able bodied, try to find the wounded among the dead,” he called out. “We need clean water, get it boiling so it’s sterile, for the wounded. Jim, use the coffee machine with no coffee grinds- it handles large quantities.”

Jim got moving.

“Kath- blankets, we have rescue blankets in one of the totes. Recruit help, see if you can find them. They might be under other crates. Lay the ones we aren’t using for people on the ground. Dominic, you-”

He stopped as he saw Heather.

He walked around her body, the words failing him.

So many eyes were watching him, looking to him for leadership. They saw him crack a little in the moment. He’d let them. He clenched his fist, like he was grasping something in front of him, then let it fall. He thought he might cry, but he stopped himself from going that far.

So many.

“What do I do?” Dominic asked. The poor fucking kid, he was only sixteen, and he was trying to hold it together and help.

It helped Gary to pull himself together. “Radio. Let other places know what happened. Uh- we’re going to need people for-”

So many. Attacked and shot for no clear purpose. It caught him off guard.

The ground rumbled as the giant robot landed nearby. Mechanical arms reached out to the nearby power poles, and the power came back on. It wasn’t a good thing, when it brought the losses into sharp relief.

Dragon and Defiant emerged from the craft.

“I’m Dragon, that’s Defiant, and that’s my ship. We can take wounded in her,” Dragon said.

People tentatively drew nearer to the two heroes and their giant robot.

“It was an act of war,” Defiant said. “More brazen than the other recent attacks. They’ve been testing the waters, going after areas they see as vulnerable.”

There was a pause.

“I’m so sorry for your losses,” Defiant said.

“You’re in charge here, Gary?” Dragon asked.

She knew his name?

“You were a candidate for mayor,” she explained.

“I’m-” he started. His voice was small.

That was the thing. He wanted to show emotion but he couldn’t show that emotion, because he would break down.

“Ari was in charge,” he said. “From Mortari.”

“Ari Burke, I assume?” she asked. He nodded.

She knew the names so easily. His. Ari’s.

“Ari’s dead,” she said, her head turned. “Does that put you in charge?”

“I-” he started. He shook his head slightly. “I guess.”

“Let us know if you need anything. Until we get other instructions, we’re going to tend to the wounded and shuttle them to hospitals. We’ll take routes that let us keep an eye out for trouble. When the refugees start coming through again, we’ll take some with us, if they’re willing to settle a location a little further afield. Jeanne Wynn already signed off on it.”

There it was. The magical solutions. Getting to be a hero. Jeanne Wynn was a parahuman, he was ninety-five percent sure, and she got her own magical solutions.

There was no acid taste in Gary’s mouth as he digested that. It had been a long, long time since he’d felt this bitter about something and his body hadn’t conjured up that strange sensation.

It felt too far away, when the here and the now were in such brutal, bloody relief.

“This is horrible,” Dragon said. “Seriously, anything we can do to help, let us know. We’re putting ourselves on the line by showing our faces, but I don’t think we can conscience holding back any longer. We can help with this.”

“Help?” Gary asked. “Why- I mean, if you want to help, let me ask you. Why did this happen?”

“Greed and wrath,” Defiant said. “People want this world and the resources it has, everything it’s connected to, and the possibilities it offers. They’re willing to hurt others to get what they want.”

Gary shook his head. “It’s you.”

Defiant looked confused, but Dragon said, “I don’t think that’s especially fair, Gary. Heroes as a whole are doing their best. Defiant and I haven’t been showing our faces, but we come with potential solutions to key problems. Give us a chance.”

“Parahumans took the world from us,” Gary said. “They took the sky. Our greatest hero turned out to be the greatest monster, and we don’t get any answers about why. Haven’t we been giving you chances from the beginning? How much worse do things have to get?”

He’d barely remembered that he had people watching. Like always, people in costume drew intense focus, and so his debate was drawing more attention than an argument already would.

It surprised him that the people were nodding along as he talked.

“We’re doing the best we can, just like any of you,” Defiant said.

“I think we’re owed better than this,” Gary said. He gestured. Emotion seeped into his voice, unwanted. “This- this isn’t good. I was a candidate for mayor. I heard things, saw the photos and video. There are things out there that, sure they aren’t as strong as Endbringers, but we’re fighting them with a fraction of the number. There are worse things out there. Tinker devices gone haywire. Sleeper. Monsters who look like men and women. And now war?”

There were murmurs of agreement.

“Perfect is the enemy of good, Gary,” Dragon said.

“The ‘good’ guys ran! Where were the Shepherds!?”

Again, he had to remind himself of where he was, but he did so too late, here. The people here weren’t necessarily his. Twenty to thirty percent of the people at this station were people he’d recruited or people who worked alongside him. Ostensibly, they were largely in support of recolonizing Earth B. But the Shepherds had linked their group to the ‘go back to better’ cause, and that ran contrary to something fundamental in Gary’s view of the situation. They hadn’t earned that publicity, only rode the wave of popularity as the movement found traction.

To speak against them was to potentially lose his own people.

His own people drowned out Dragon’s initial response, joining their voices and growing outrage to Gary’s. Some weren’t as loud as the others, but all the same, it surprised him.

“They were stopping a third group,” Dragon said. “They left discreetly when they got word that there were trespassers. We didn’t think it would be that bad. The flanking party was unexpected.”

“You got it wrong,” he said. “We put our trust in you when you come to places like this, but I’ve been here for a week and the Shepherds have barely said a word to me. They barely communicated with Ari. They left tonight and I had to send someone after them to try and open channels of communication. I didn’t get a chance, and now dozens are dead.”

“That could be how they operate, let’s not get carried away,” Defiant said.

“No,” Gary said. His voice was firmer. “No.”

“I talked to them,” Dragon said. “They didn’t want to tip anyone off that something was wrong. They thought they would deal with this discreetly.”

“People died! A- a horrendous amount of people died!” Gary Nieves shouted. At ‘horrendous’, his voice cracked like a teenager’s. He’d been a politician, a businessman before that. Had anyone laughed, he wouldn’t have blamed them. He might have stomped off. But there was only silence. When he turned to look, people gave him encouraging nods. He went on, “In Gold Morning. Broken triggers. The monsters you try to keep secret from us. Here.”

“They got it wrong. We’re only human, Gary. We’re trying our best.”

“No. You make yourselves out to be more than human. You have more, you put on costumes and you dress yourselves up, but you know… the Shepherds not talking to any of us and going it alone isn’t an isolated incident.”

“Defiant and I had our reasons. If you’d sit down and talk to us, I could tell you about our ongoing projects, and how we can start making great strides.”

“I don’t want your answers,” Gary Nieves said. “Your solutions- if they worked, if they properly worked for us, then we’d be leap years ahead of the other worlds. Instead? When the power went out and people flocked to the light of the monitors and flashlights, I was left imagining that we were primitives gathered around the light of a fire. That’s where we are.”

“You exaggerate,” Defiant said. Dragon laid a hand on the man’s arm.

“I want to open a dialogue,” Dragon said. “But there are wounded.”

Gary looked at the wounded who were being tended by the paramedics. People that had been on site already, ready for refugees to arrive, and people from nearby areas, who were starting to filter in.

Many were paying a wary eye to Gary and his stand-off with Dragon.

“It’s not where we are overall, but it’s where we were that moment. You want to open a dialogue, but- you weren’t here. The Shepherds weren’t here. In my limited interactions with parahumans, I keep on noticing- over and over again, even the good ones, we’ll hear you say that you forget our names, or we all sort of ‘blend into each other’. Again and again. There’s a disconnect, where we don’t even rate.”

“I remembered your name, Gary,” Dragon said.

Gary shrugged. He looked around at the fallen, at the wounded- the critically wounded were already being taken care of.

“The power may go out when I disconnect to take people to the hospital,” Dragon spoke, her voice carrying.

“Flashlights,” Gary called out, giving the orders. “Lanterns, same as before. Don’t conserve battery.”

Back to work, to the impossible numbers, and the hills with peaks that seemed to climb out of reach as he ascended.

But different, now. People avoided the Shepherds. They cleaved closer to him. People had felt lost, confused, scared, and his explanation had been an easy one to accept. It made sense, for one thing, and it spoke to justifiable fears that every single person harbored even before the first and best of the parahumans had wiped out landmasses and extinguished a good portion of the population.

They were angry, and the snippets of conversation where people voiced their anger were audible here and there. He could have stopped them and he didn’t. In the wake of this tragedy, of so many hurt and killed, they needed someone to blame and this was an instance of blame that had been a long time coming.

Dragon’s ship disconnected from the local grid, and Gary Nieves and his people were left in darkness.

From the safety of darkness, someone threw something in the direction of the Shepherds. The girl in the moon costume raised a hand, and stopped the thrown object in the air.

He could have said something to the thrower, but he didn’t.

Silence became murmurings and before the murmurings became a roar, the Shepherds left for another patrol of the area. They didn’t return to the main camp.

⊙

Gary tried not to begrudge people for the lines, especially when it was an effect of population saturation in small areas, but he hadn’t eaten earlier, and the services hadn’t had food. Not with people going lean for the coming winter.

He stood among people in clothes with cement on the pants leg or paint on the edge of the sleeve. Mud-caked boots flowed seamlessly into mud-caked pants, in places. He, in turn, wore a black suit, black tie, and a somber expression.

“Mr. Nieves?”

The person asking was narrow, Asian, with a very pointed chin and short hair. He wore a red tie with a gray shirt.

“Can I help you?”

“Question is more along the lines of whether I can help you,” the man said. “I heard some of what you said to Dragon, three days ago.”

It was hard to think about. Images of blood and bodies weighed heavy on his mind. He closed his eyes before fixing his focus on the food behind the glass displays.

“Were you there?” he asked, to maintain the conversation.

“No. Word of what you said reached me secondhand. Could I buy you lunch? I’d like to talk about things.”

“Ah,” Gary said. “I’ve just come from a funeral. My second today. She was a friend. I’d like some peace and quiet to grieve.”

“Of course. Could I give you my card, so you can call me at your convenience?”

Gary nodded.

The man was quick to present a card. Erwin Daeyoung. The English writing of the name was mirrored by what he presumed was the Korean translation. Mediation and Public Relations. The remainder of the card was in fine gold script- Korean letters to go with a Korean name.

He reached the end of the line, paid, and then waited for his food. He tried to think of what he could do for Heather, and for the others. His thoughts went in circles as he considered gestures, worried about whether the gestures would flop – donation drives were difficult when everyone anticipated a difficult winter. He thought of statues and symbols and nothing fit. Heather had always been a doer, not someone who put emphasis on things. Ed had been practical, and would have said something about any statue. The refugees who’d never gotten their second chance, because they so often didn’t matter- how did he even pay respect to that?

He was pissed, and he couldn’t even express it. He’d tried to write two articles before abandoning them, and there were no people to speak to that understood things quite like Heather had.

In one corner of the cheap little diner, a television showed Jeanne Wynn addressing the city.

Gary’s finger tapped against his leg. The card was within his pocket.

Looking back, he saw the man in line, and signaled him.

“My lunch is already paid for,” he said, “But if you want to talk, you can sit with me. My thoughts aren’t where they should be.”

“I don’t blame you. These are confusing times. I’ll join you as soon as I have my meal.”

He sat, setting his sandwich and fries down on the table, the card turned over in his hand while he waited.

Erwin sat across from him.

“You’re a mediator? And PR.”

“Are you a politician, Gary Nieves?” Erwin asked.

“No, not anymore,” Gary said.

“Then no, I’m not a mediator or a PR person. Not anymore. Despite that, I could be said to resemble one, because I have the skills. Maybe the same is true for you.”

“Maybe. It’s still cryptic.”

“You’re right. There are too many secrets,” Erwin said. “That’s why I started paying attention to you. You’re honest. You’ve had the position and opportunities to see things clearly. I think you and I, we’re similar in where we stand and how we feel.”

“How is that?”

“Angry,” Erwin said. “Lost. But you tapped into something as you talked to Dragon and people were willing to listen. I can tell you what you need to know. I can provide some direction, even make some radical suggestions. We could use that anger and loss, the righteous indignation, along with the very clear view of where we currently stand. Bronze age barbarism and stone age huddling around fires for warmth.”

“Given my background, I have something of a talent for spotting bullshit,” Gary said.

“I’m genuine.”

“You’re burying the idea of ‘radical suggestions’ in between promises and hope.”

Erwin nodded slowly. He drew his phone from his pocket, and searched for a minute, nibbling on his sandwich as he went. He turned it around and pushed it forward. As his hand left the phone, he pointed.

Gary looked.

Jeanne Wynn was still on the television.

On the phone-

A woman in costume.

“Stop me if this sounds familiar. A supervillain by the name of Citrine worked under a mastermind by the name of Accord, who was on multiple lists but skirted prosecution because he was very clever and very careful.”

Gary nodded. He’d suspected, but…

His lips pressed together.

“Accord wrote booklets. Booklets spelled out things like city planning, economy, efficient feeding of the many, logistics, environment.”

“This sounds familiar,” Gary said, saying the words slowly, as if he were trying them on and then deciding to keep them. “I’ve seen these booklets.”

“As have I,” Erwin said.

“From what I’ve read, thinker plans go sour. Things that parahumans create fall to pieces, as a rule. They create problems, first and foremost.”

“Is that your plan then? Do you wait until disaster strikes Jeanne Wynn, then swoop in to make your next bid at leadership?”

“I don’t know. I may retire. There are enough things to do. I keep it in mind as a possibility.”

“What if I told you it wasn’t possible?” Erwin asked.

“Keeping it in mind?”

“For disaster to strike. What if I told you that Accord’s plans will work? Through texts he wrote and Jeanne Wynn’s slavish adherence to the terms of those texts, he will turn things around with a minimum of casualties. People will be fed as well as you could hope. We’ll be able to defend ourselves, get set up in terms of shelter, and things will be good.”

“Isn’t that positive?”

“She’ll hold her seat. It would be madness to remove her from it if she was doing so well, which she will. So she’ll continue forward. There should be no disasters at all, beyond unavoidable external events, and she’ll handle them with aplomb.”

“Like the event earlier this week?”

“The handling of it was technically correct. Resources were moved, people hired and fired, and mercenaries tapped as an external resource. People higher up in government are applauding her. People on the ground feel safer.”

“Then the threat is… she does too well?”

“Government by parahumans. Once established, it’s hard to shake. There will be no opportunity. No mis-steps, no character weakness. The biggest skeleton in the closet is her past.”

Erwin picked up his phone. He fiddled for a moment, then set it down.

Gary looked. It was Sierra Kiley, one of the other past contenders for the mayorship. She too had stepped down. In the picture, she stood talking with the leader of the Undersiders and Citrine- Jeanne Wynn.

Gary nodded. “The game was rigged.”

“It so often is. But being down doesn’t mean you’re out. I looked for you and approached you because I think I have a plan. You would mobilize on the ground and swiftly rise to power.”

“You want me to use the dissent against parahumans?”

“That’s a sliver of it,” Erwin said. “I think you can get enough people behind you that they can’t ignore you. That would be your first step, and you’re already on your way.”

“What’s the last step? What’s your end goal?”

“That is a very complicated question, and it depends on a lot in coming weeks,” Erwin said. “But… we go back to what I said about the radical.”

Gary frowned.

“Think, Gary. What do these other Earths want? Why do they threaten war and pick at our weaknesses with increasing viciousness? They want the territory. A world of resources, and a network of portals.”

“And?”

“We give it to them. We promise leadership without parahumans in charge, stacking the deck. We turn to an established government we’re on friendly terms with and we invite them in. We become a vassal state.”

“Who are you thinking of?” Gary asked.

“Nobody. That would be a decision for you to make without my input. If I told you one or the other, you would think I’m working on their behalf. There are options. It’s an idea that takes some getting used to, but if you’re thinking you’d like to go home… perhaps a middle-ground solution would be to open communications and borders with a world that has hints of our old amenities and culture.”

It was an idea that took some getting used to.

It was ominous, uncomfortable.

He looked at the television.

The idea of Mortari failing to see the Megalopolis through the winter was terrifying. The people that would die, the desperation.

The idea of Mortari and Jeanne Wynn succeeding like Erwin had described… doubly terrifying.

The notion of banding together with another Earth was tempting, if it meant a steady supply of food in the winter. More people that could fight off attacks like the horrendous one earlier.

“I can see the beginning. I could perhaps see the end,” Gary said. “What would fill the gap?”

“For that, you need ammunition in the chamber,” Erwin said. The man smiled. “I have a list.”

He picked up his phone. He found a page and showed it to Gary.

“A list of people with stories to tell. Horror stories about parahumans. Stories that stoke anger. You would pick the right stories at the right time to hand over to the press, see if they bite. You use these narratives to build something.”

Stories about people in positions on teams. Stories about the monsters. Stories about those who had re-engineered their identities.

“You’ve been keeping this up to date,” Gary observed.

The most recent was from four days prior. A family, it looked like. Julien and Irene Martin.

Beacon – 8.1

A gloomy morning was punctuated by the worst blackout the Megalopolis had suffered yet, making plans more difficult.

The city was dark, and we were well into autumn, with temperatures dipping low enough that frost dusted farms, fields, and grass. The sunlight that managed to reach through the clouds and touch the ground melted the frost, which then remained melted, but it was a slow, inconsistent process that would take until ten or eleven o’clock to finish its work of changing things from a dull white-frosted green to a damp, vibrant green.

The world kept spinning, like a stubborn top, the seasons changed, and I was left to consider the logistics of costumes and updating them for the coming winter. Ninety percent of the group’s activities had taken place in the span between Norwalk to the west and Bridgeport to the east, and I could already tell that this area was a far cry from the more moderate, terrain-sheltered weather of the city I’d grown up in.

The wind didn’t help matters.

It was light out, but we apparently needed power, because the blackout meant that I got a text with a change of location for the meeting.

I had the ability to do a bit of a reconnaissance sweep before dropping in, because I knew that the others would be driving, and it would take time for everyone to adapt, especially with the condition of traffic across the Gimel Megalopolis.

No major crime, even with the blackout. Some people were scouting abandoned buildings, looking over their shoulders to see that nobody was watching them. My landing near them was enough to send them running.

Mischief, likely with some intention of breaking in, but not anything I could definitively act on.

I could see the crowd of costumed individuals well before I landed.

It was interesting that the location chosen was ‘parkland’. A slice of wilderness from a foreign reality, tamed only in that the thickest of the underbrush had been cleared away. In a clearing, opened up on three sides by logging, a creek emptied into a fat pond. A rock stabbed out of the pond, of a rough size and shape to serve as a podium.

This general area reminded me of our skirmish outside of the library, in our first testing of what the team was capable of.

My initial thought was that the destination had changed because the other place had no power, and that this place would, but… obviously wrong, given that there wasn’t any power out in a patch of park.

Other heroes had gathered already. Narwhal and Weld stood out, as part of the remnants of free and available capes from the Wardens. Cinereal was about as somber and intimidating in a breaker shroud of gray ash as Narwhal was scintillating and bright.

Auzure was here. I knew Spell, Dido, and Lark. Black, blue and gold. Uncomfortable to see them, but they didn’t seem to pay me much mind.

The Shepherds had Moonsong, who was paying a lot of attention to Capricorn. She wasn’t in charge, though, thankfully. Whorl had the reins for now, and he was decent enough.

Advance Guard had turned up. If the Shepherds occupied the nine o’clock spot on the dial, then Advance Guard situated themselves at two o’clock. Their numbers had been cut down by their part in the unfortunate conclusion to the Fallen raid, and the help they had provided after. They were still numerous.

Foresight hadn’t grown beyond its relatively narrow roster, but they hadn’t shrunk or been folded into another team, either. We’d continued to trade information with them up until the last moment, when we’d switched our focus wholly to Cedar Point and the raid.

There were other players. Some were individual. Others were small teams with their own core identities, or offshoots from the other big teams. I saw one or two friendly or friendly-ish faces. Tempera. Fume Hood. Houndstooth as a ‘friendly’ face from the Kings of the Hill.

I raised a hand in a wave as I approached. Tempera raised a white-painted hand in return. Fume Hood smiled beneath her hood. Houndstooth gave me nothing.

I would talk to Fume Hood and Tempera after, given a chance.

Capricorn was present in blue armor. Tress had a freshly painted body. Cryptid was camouflaged, and from the way Lookout was talking, she was having a dialogue with him.

There weren’t a ton of clear non-capes around, but our group had two in its orbit. I recognized Natalie, who was embroiled in a discussion with her friend, a guy with a bushy beard.

With the weather being what it was, the water being close enough that wind could blow over it and chill everyone present, and the light weight of costumes in general, a lot of people looked like they were struggling to stay warm.

Natalie’s friend wore flannel, and Natalie wore an overly puffy coat that I was guessing would do a lot to keep her warm in this chilly weather.

“Hey!” Lookout greeted me, as I got closer.

I put my hand out, and she jumped up a little in the process of giving me a high-five. With everything else going on since the dinner at her place, it was good to check in outside of the bounds of one on one meetings and phone conversations.

Our lives were in upheaval. Capricorn’s life was overturned on two hour shifts. Chris’ body and schedule were mixed up by form changes, but the chaos he wrestled was one he wrestled mostly alone, in a way that only made sense to him. Sveta’s boyfriend was away and the loss was felt.

Rain and Ashley? Relocated as a part of incarceration.

That left me -I’d just moved out of a desire to burn restless energy- and Kenzie, who had just turned her parents in a few days ago.

“Hey, so rude,” Sveta said.

I put my hand out. She gave me a prosthetic high-five.

“You realize the other teams are going to see this and think we are the absolute lamest, right?” Cryptid asked.

Maximum sass Lookout retorted, “You are dragging the rest of us down when it comes to the averaged numbers.”

“Oooh,” he said. “Just so you know, if you sound like a math dork when you’re giving your comeback, you fail. I’m sorry.”

“If you get a mouthful of comeback after you burp because you chug so much-”

“Nooo,” I interrupted.

“I’m going to be glad I didn’t commit to the team thing, and I’ll let my brother deal with this,” Byron said. “Zero guilt.”

Byron became Tristan. From blue scale armor to red plate and chain.

There was a moment’s pause as he looked around.

“Fist bumps are better than high fives,” Capricorn said. “I’m pretty sure someone out there has enhanced hearing and got to hear Lookout say that.”

“There’s more where it came from,” Lookout said. “I went to the training camps for Wards. That’s like, ten percent kids acting like it’s prison and crying in a corner being homesick, twenty percent kids with stars in their eyes being amazed by everything, and seventy percent kids trying to establish a pecking order and murdering each other with words.”

“You were, what, nine?” Cryptid asked. “I can’t imagine you establishing any pecking order.”

“I didn’t say I was one of those seventy percent.”

“Oh, stars in your eyes, of course. You have that all the time.”

“Ha ha,” Lookout retorted, working her shoulders so one stuck forward with one ha, switching orientation for the next. “You got it wrong again, Cryptid. Heart shaped pupils, not starry ones. Like my online handle.”

“That doesn’t mean what you want it to mean,” he said. “But I’m not going to try to explain it if Capricorn’s scared of eavesdroppers.”

“I’m not scared,” Capricorn said.

“You’re concerned,” I said. “Let’s change the topic.”

Lookout jumped in, “What we were talking about before- Those seventy percent kids were mostly the problem cases who the higher-ups thought needed boot camp to straighten them out. Most became problem cases who could kick ass, instead.”

“Ah yeah,” I said. “I’ve met one or two of them.”

“When you were a temporary Ward? Oh, wait, I can take notes, look up that team and work out who.”

“Boundaries,” I said.

“Boundaries, right. No prob.”

I wished I could see her face. The helmet she wore covered it. I had a sense of how she comported and conveyed herself now, and… she gave away very little like this.

There was an energy to her, a combativeness that I wasn’t sure was there all the time. Trick was, I wasn’t sure if she was more inclined to drop retorts or seize the initiative in conversation because she was unhappy, because she wanted more control, or if she was freer to do it because she wasn’t spending so much energy on defending herself against her parents on a day to day basis.

I glanced back at Natalie and her colleague.

Ashley was the only person besides Jessica and maybe me that ‘got’ Kenzie. She’d signed off on my proposed course of action. We’d turned the Martins in, leveraging Natalie, my mom through Natalie, my old Patrol contacts and the nebulous phrasing of ‘the complicating factor of a parahuman in the mix’ to get people to not sweep things under the rug.

The Martins had their initial tribunal meeting. It helped that they were on a different track and a different field of focus than the groups that were working their way through a backlog of Fallen arrests.

Kenzie was still at home, her parents were locked up, and people from the system were staying with her at her house. I was being kept out of the loop on purpose, until they could make sure that everything was square.

“By the way, just so you know, because boundaries, I’m recording stuff for our missing team members.”

“Might have to edit that recording,” Capricorn said.

“Keeping secrets?” Lookout asked.

“Just… depending on what you pick up,” Capricorn said. “We don’t want to get on anyone’s bad side because you recorded them and word of it got to the wrong people.”

“Oh, sure. Recaps, maybe?”

“Maybe. Let me glance over it before you send.”

“Okay.”

“That’s a good policy,” Sveta said. “Back at the hospital, if we wanted to vlog or upload gaming videos, we had to run it by the people in charge, first. It took forever, because they didn’t want to watch through everything.”

“They wanted to make sure no vulnerable kids were being groomed and that there weren’t any shitstorms from kids using their vlogs to claim they were being held prisoner in a parahuman hospital,” I said.

“Yeah, that,” Sveta said. “Probably a good thing for guardians to do.”

“Aww, are you my guardians?”

“Yes,” Cryptid said. “Now go clean your room, and scrub the toilet. Using a toothbrush.”

“Ha. My room’s always clean, and if I use a toothbrush on any toilets, it’ll be yours. Except you’d probably become Happy Disgust and enjoy it.”

“That’s not the convention, you dolt. I try to make it sound good. It’d be Wallowing Filth or something.”

“Oh God,” Capricorn said. He shook his head. “This team.”

“I’ll stop,” Lookout said.

“If anyone can overhear, I think they’ve made up their mind already,” Capricorn said.

A few of the stragglers were arriving, now. The last-minute change of location had screwed some people up. Most fleshed out other groups. A few solo individuals stood off to one side.

I spotted Longscratch. He didn’t join Tempera and Fume Hood.

I spotted my mom and dad. They were together, part of the same ramshackle group I’d seen my mom with when they’d been dealing with the student protesters.

An odd, uncomfortable feeling, seeing that.

Dad had updated his costume a little, too.

The key players of our big meeting here were the last to arrive. The trees swayed as the wind changed, and the soft roar of engines preceded the display.

A Dragon-craft, sleek and powerful, loaded to bear with weapons. It descended slowly with engines working against gravity, emitting a blue shimmer into the air that diffused into the area, tinting the craft’s surroundings.

It landed in the water, and the head rested on the stone. The occupants emerged.

Yeah, that was something. Wow. After getting taken out of the picture like I had, I’d missed so much of what had gone on in Brockton Bay, during the latter part of the Slaughterhouse Nine attacking, the villain takeover and the heroes’ attempt to establish the peace. I’d missed this.

Defiant. Armsmaster.

An awful lot of the bad that had flowed from that point in time had been due to a lack of leadership on the heroes’ side. Miss Militia had stepped up, but Armsmaster had ‘retired’ after flipping out at the hospital. My sister had filled me in on details. We’d been left short on good guys when we’d really needed them.

Things were never going to be okay after an Endbringer attack. I knew that. I’d known it to the core of my being when I’d attended Eric and Uncle Neil’s funerals, my dad unable to stand for segments because he hadn’t had the faculties. I’d known it when I’d lost Dean.

But something had gone fundamentally wrong, even beyond that. Between the Endbringer first arriving and the Slaughterhouse Nine, things had gone from a bad situation to something almost unsalvageable.

I wanted to know what. I wanted to know more about the role he played in it or the perspective he had on it.

Because we were in a place very close to that.

“Can we ambush them, knock them out, and then see about kidnapping the Speedrunner guys, just so I can have two forevers to look at her stuff?” Lookout asked.

“Either one of them would kick our asses,” Sveta said.

“I’m joking,” Lookout said.

“Maybe if we ask nicely,” I said.

People were drawing closer to the vantage point. Dragon was greeting Narwhal, leaning in close enough to say something in her ear. Narwhal smiled.

Defiant, meanwhile, looked pretty grim. When he got a nod from Dragon, he tapped his spear-butt against the rock, hard enough to be audible from the far end of the clearing. All conversation stopped.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “As of right now, the city is under a steady, surreptitious attack. Several arrests were made and now that we have some information, we want to make sure everyone knows the pertinent details.”

“If you want transcripts of the talks with the captives, you can message me at my Parahumans Online account,” Dragon said. “I’ll send you what I can.”

“The attackers are Earth Cheit,” Defiant said. “The divergence point for Earth Cheit was six hundred years ago. There was a change in the royal line and a push for an ‘age of enlightenment’ stance, denigrating and even criminalizing some aspects of religion. The backlash was severe and sharp. An inclusive, aggressive faction emerged in answer to it, and that faction would eventually absorb and conquer others.”

“The world has a population well beyond that of the Earth Bet we knew,” Dragon said. “It also has sub-sects which are violent and willing to die for their cause. These people have been steadily infiltrating and occupying. Now they’re escalating their attacks. You’ve all heard of the attack on the refugee site.”

Defiant shifted his grip on his spear. “They go for what vulnerabilities they see, and we have a lot. We’re stretched thin and it’s easier to destroy than it is to protect. If you’re willing to face this threat, expand your patrols, keep track of power lines, phone lines, railroad tracks, and key buildings. Hospitals, portals, schools, community centers, political offices and team headquarters are all possible targets for strikes.”

“If you aren’t willing to face down these people, or if you’re a group of minors,” Dragon said, “Allow others to cover this ground in your territory. We cannot allow them footholds.”

“Share information,” Defiant said. “Team rivalries, pride, rankings, and even financial competition should be set aside. If you’re willing, and if it would make the difference, we will subsidize you in the meantime. If you need or want mediators, referees, or brokers for trade, we will provide them.”

“It’s a state of emergency?” Mayday asked.

“It is,” Defiant said. “Thinkers, strangers, some changers and some tinkers may be invaluable, given the shape this conflict is taking.”

“Yes,” Lookout’s voice was barely audible.

“The man behind the worst of this is named Teacher,” Dragon said. “He grants thinker abilities or tinker powers. The tinker powers he grants may be something he’s using to create his own temporary portals. It’s not as simple as guarding the portals that already stand.”

“Are we considering working with villain groups?” a cape standing near Fume Hood and Tempera asked.

“We have to be careful,” Defiant said. “Several are working with other groups and powers, including Cheit. Cheit formed loose ties with the Fallen, who are…”

“Antitheotical?” Dragon suggested.

“Antitheotical to Cheit’s own belief system. But Cheit’s doctrine is one that accepts any sub-sect or branch religion that is willing to agree to a set of fundamental truths. The Fallen, with some strained interpretations, fall in line with that.”

“Is that where they went?” Mayday asked.

“Some,” Defiant said.

“The new self-described Thomais branch and remnants from the attack on the compound made a break for the wilderness. End of Days phases things into desolate alternate worlds- we think they gathered supplies and used a tech-augmented version of his power to escape into another world. They’re migrating to a settlement that isn’t part of the Megalopolis and they’ll emerge there. If we get information, we will reach out to interested parties.”

“Right now we’re trying to shore up what’s missing now that the Wardens are- I don’t want to say dead. We have no reason to believe they’re dead,” Defiant said.

“Out of the picture,” Dragon’s voice was soft.

There weren’t many people here who hadn’t felt some loss when the Wardens’ HQ had disappeared. Teams had called it a base of operations, worked with staff, or lost team members.

“Yes,” Dragon said. “We’re available. We’ve already reached out to some of you, and we’ll reach out to others soon- our focus is split and we do have to concern ourselves with things beyond the city.”

There was a kind of attitude shift across the crowd. On a level, I could get it. That things were sinking in. On another level, I felt like we were already seeing it, and that it shouldn’t be a surprise- even to the point that I was really kind of pissed that people were only just now getting it.

“This is about survival,” Dragon said. “We’re in this together. That’s the gist of it. Talk to us if you need more information. We will coordinate as we develop tools and gather information that helps with this problem.”

That marked the end of the speech.

Discussions started around us.

“The war’s finally reached us,” Sveta said.

Natalie and her friend drew closer. I had my arms folded as best as I could with my sling on.

“This is for real,” Natalie said. “They’re talking about this like there’s a very real possibility we might lose.”

“We might,” Capricorn said, putting a hand on her shoulder. He’d put an emphasis on ‘might’, but it didn’t feel like enough emphasis to change the meaning of his statement.

He was usually better about wording and presentation.

Leaving it up to me to try to rally the troops. “We’re tenacious. We made it this far.”

“Says the girl from Brockton-survived-Leviathan-Bay,” Cryptid said.

“Crypt,” Sveta said. “Show a little tact. That wasn’t a good period of time.”

Weld was making his way to us, but he was getting questions from every group he passed, and he wasn’t able to disengage or dismiss as fast as they came.

This was really it, wasn’t it? The good guys didn’t have much more than these groups that had been called here, and there was a lot of ground to cover. If we left a flank undefended, then it was possible it would get blown up or dismantled.

That was without getting into the other flaws and issues.

“Scapegoat turned coat. The Speedrunners did the same,” I observed.

“Thomais branch now, apparently,” Capricorn said. “We should talk to Rain.”

“In person,” Lookout said.

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Sveta said.

“It would be good if it was,” I said. “We need to figure something out over there.”

We need to figure out a lot of things.

“They might see a group visit as being a breakout attempt,” Chris said. “It sounds like a very sketchy, incomplete way of imprisoning people, they won’t want to add anything new or uncontrolled to the mix.”

I nodded, my arms still folded.

My mom was off at the other end of the clearing, looking at me.

“I’m going to go to Weld, so he doesn’t have to work so hard to get to us,” Sveta said.

“I’ll come,” Capricorn volunteered.

It left me with Lookout, Cryptid, Natalie and her friend.

I looked at the friend. He was red haired, with a red beard, and very blue eyes, and hooked his thumbs into his belt in a way that I wanted to describe as forced-casual.

“I’m Victoria. Antares if you want to use something fancier,” I introduced myself.

“Tony. I got the rundown on the group from a distance,” he said. He shook my hand. “I’m keeping an eye on things at Lookout’s house on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, making a dinner, breakfast. Usually there are two of us there at a time.”

“Because I really need that much supervision,” Lookout said.

“We supervise each other, too,” Tony said.

“They thought we should send someone here for this meeting to supervise and ensure we know what’s going on,” Natalie said. “Tony’s a friend of a friend of mine that’s in family law.”

“We saw each other a few times when we did the big friend group get-togethers. You know the kind, where you say hi to a bunch of people that are three degrees of separation away from you, but you don’t ever really talk to them,” Tony said.

“I know the kind,” I said, smiling.

“We’re talking now,” Natalie said.

“Everything’s okay on the home front?” I asked. I looked at Lookout.

“Okay enough,” Lookout said. “Quiet.”

“We’ll figure out something more long-term later,” Tony said. “For now, quiet isn’t the worst thing.”

“No power all last night,” Lookout said. “It’s terrible. No TV, no movies, no computer, can’t run half my tech.”

“Build a generator,” Cryptid said.

“I’d have to box it up, and I’d have to make it big if I wanted to get energy from nothing, and it takes resources, and it takes time. And oh, duh, I can’t build in the dark, so I’d need a generator to build a generator. See my problem? Ugh.”

“Ugh,” Cryptid echoed her. “Try harder.”

“Go easy, Cryptid,” I said. “Why don’t you go for a walk?”

“Whatever,” he said. The camouflage that cloaked him slipped around his body as he moved, adapting to the surroundings within a few feet of him with each step or so.

“Come on,” I told Lookout. “You two okay on your own?”

“Capes are neat,” Natalie said, in a way that made me think she was being sarcastic. “We’ll crowd-watch. Right?”

“Yeah,” Tony said.

“What are we doing?” Lookout asked.

“Checking in,” I said.

There were too many things I needed to know, wanted to ask. Some were past, some present, some future.

And Lookout needed some distractions, because as far as I could tell, her home life was less mired in the bad, but there was also a distinct lack of good in it. I could imagine it was lonely.

As I took her hands, my eye fell on my mom, who was talking to my dad.

Even when things weren’t great, or when there was a measure of resentment or hurt feeling, there was sometimes hope. There was a lingering fondness.

I flew, lifting Lookout over the crowd, past Weld, Sveta, and Capricorn, who were together, Weld with one arm around Sveta’s back, helping to keep her upright as they tried to talk to five people at once.

We landed on the far side. There was a crowd here too. It was more the team leaders like Mayday and Houndstooth who were lingering here.

We lingered, waiting. Lookout craned her head around, looking at the Dragon mech.

“She combined my tech with that hack Brim’s stuff for the eyes, I think,” Lookout said. “I know I signed off on other PRT tinkers using my stuff, but it kind of sucks that she didn’t use just my stuff on its own.”

“If you get a chance, you could ask her why.”

“I don’t think I could. She’s so amazing and important, and I’d sound so petty.”

She was interested, her attention occupied, but I had no idea on whether she was okay. I wasn’t sure the home situation was good like this, as temporary as it was, but did she ever have a good home situation?

I could have asked her how she was, but I wasn’t sure I could trust the response. She would sooner tell me she was fine when she wasn’t than be upfront and risk scaring me off.

Maybe… a roundabout route?

“If Swansong was here right now, what would she tell you?”

I saw her head tilt.

“Don’t overthink it. It doesn’t matter what I feel or know. How does she respond? Generally speaking, not about Dragon. But about anything today.”

“You keep telling me stuff and changing what I’m supposed to think about.”

“Just… don’t think. Off the top of your head.”

“She’d be like, imbecile. Go kick ass. Be proud of yourself. I dunno.”

“Doesn’t sound quite right.”

“I’m not the Swansong whisperer,” Lookout said. “But I know she treats me pretty nice and she doesn’t think much about other people being important. They’ll all be… subservent?”

“Subservient,” I said.

“They’ll scrape and bow before her in the end. So she’d say even Dragon shouldn’t be a big deal.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I’m focused more on you than on her, though. What would you regret? Saying something and being shut down, or saying something and maybe getting a neat bit of info?”

Lookout shrugged. “I get turned down a lot, I guess.”

“I didn’t mean to frame it that way, but…”

“But…” she picked up where I’d trailed off. “Can’t hurt too badly.”

Mayday kept giving us more and more wary looks, until he gave Defiant a handshake and left. A bit nervous – it hadn’t been my intention to bring Lookout uncomfortably close to him.

My intention was more along the lines of opening a dialogue with the closest thing we had to heroes at the top. The new Triumvirate were all either busy or they’d been taken when Mrs. Yamada had. There wasn’t any clear indication.

Defiant turned his attention to us.

“Victoria.”

“Defiant. Thank you for coordinating people.”

“Thank you for the information you sent us. We’re still sorting through it and verifying.”

The stuff from beyond the G-N portal. In drafting it, Capricorn, Sveta and I had included the details about the jail, as well as how they’d been acquired.

“Your mother and father are over there,” he said. “You’re not with them?”

I shook my head. “Not right now.”

“It’s complicated,” Dragon said, like she knew. When I gave her a curious look, she said, “Your parents are working for us, until the Wardens are established again. In costume she’s halfway with us, halfway with her old team. Whatever she prefers at the time.”

I felt uncomfortable that my mother had so casually, even easily slotted herself into this.

“Parents are complicated,” Lookout said.

“They really are, aren’t they?” Dragon asked. “We interact now and then with your sister, just to make sure you aren’t caught unawares.”

I winced. I tried to be diplomatic. “Makes sense. She’s strong.”

It was Defiant who mercifully changed the subject. “You did a good job with the portals, getting us to a place where we could save most. Valefor. Mama Mathers.”

“Our team’s collective efforts,” I said. “This is one member. Lookout.”

“I know Lookout,” he said.

“We’ve met?”

It was Dragon who replied, breaking away from a side conversation with Cinereal. As she approached, the head of her dragon craft moved slightly to follow.

“The internet slowdown?” Dragon asked.

“Oof. Embarrassing.”

“Confidential files on capes.”

“Yeah,” Lookout said. “Oops. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

“If you got into the files, we might have had to take action.”

“Not going to do it again.”

“Glad to hear it,” Dragon said. “I’ve read your file-”

“Oooohh. Oh no.”

“-and I know where things stand. Did you need anything?”

“Nothing big. I know you’re busy.”

“The little things can matter a lot. I wouldn’t mind a brief distraction. What did you need?”

Lookout looked up at me, then over at Dragon. “Why’d you use Brim’s visor tech with my eye tech?”

“A very good question. If you promise to be good, and if your teammate is okay with it…”

“Sure,” I said. “We need her back in a few minutes, though.”

It looked like Weld, Sveta and Tristan might soon wrap up the Warden business of corralling people and handling questions. The crowd was dwindling, with people breaking away to talk to others.

Lookout took Dragon’s hand. The ship opened up to accept them into the bay area, where a team or cargo could presumably be stored. Monitors lit up around them.

“I’m glad you’re better, Victoria,” Defiant said.

“Thank you,” I said. The words were kind, but I wished I hadn’t heard them, because they were a reminder.

“I’ve scanned files about your team members,” he said. He leaned back against the side of the ship, setting the spear so it stood a few feet beside him, needing no hands on it to keep it upright. “You’ve taken on a pretty heavy job.”

I nodded.

“I wish things had gone differently.”

“I want things to be different this time around. Thinking about the future, not the past.”

“I agree.”

“And- completely contradicting myself… Armsmaster- Defiant. I don’t know exactly what happened, when Leviathan attacked.”

Even with the power armor he wore, not just regular armor but armor that required motors and machinery to move, I could see him draw in a deep breath. I couldn’t see his face to read his expression.

Same as Lookout. Same as Dragon.

Was it because I’d grown up with New Wave that I found it so frustrating, now? I’d always considered myself a cape at heart, and now I was feeling this annoyance at the omnipresence of something fundamental- masks. Secret identities.

Did I jar them just as much? Did they look beneath my hood and expect to see a mask there?

“What about that day concerns you?” he asked.

“You did something- you broke the truce. You were deemed guilty enough that they ‘retired’ you.”

“All correct.”

“Eric Pelham. Neil Pelham. Shielder and Manpower?”

“Yes.”

“You did something, and… did that something get my family members killed?”

“Shielder was before my mistake. Manpower- he was after.”

“You got him killed?”

“Not through malice. Not even carelessness, I feel. My mistake was that I decided I was fine with villains dying if it meant the monster could be slain. By me, ideally. Manpower was there, but I didn’t want him to die. I told myself that if Leviathan had to kill someone to end up in a certain time or place, it might as well be Kaiser. My computer helped work out the sequence of events.”

Shit on me.

Yeah. That was a violation of the truce. It fit neatly into things.

“If the villains had been spared- if you hadn’t started down that route? Would his chances have been better? Do you think Shielder could have died because you were subconsciously preparing to do this?”

There was a pause.

“I don’t know, Victoria Dallon,” he told me. There was something less crisp and confident in his voice, more momentarily lost, that left me feeling like he genuinely didn’t know. Maybe even to the extent that it wasn’t something he’d truly considered before now.

I wanted to be angry and I couldn’t. It just hurt. I felt the loss of those family members very pointedly right now, especially with Crystal away.

He went on, “But if there’s even a possibility, I’d be willing to do anything reasonable to make it up to you. It’s the sort of effort that keeps me moving forward.”

I nodded.

I wasn’t even sure how to feel about that. I understood the idea, even if I hated that he might be responsible for the renewed feeling of loss I was dealing with right now.

I hadn’t come here with the plan of guilting him and using that- but he was offering help and… fuck me, we needed it.

“The prison complex. We have teammates there,” I said.

“I don’t think we can release them. Things are volatile. Unless you have new evidence you’d like for us to push through.”

Kenzie needed this. The team needed it.

I shook my head. “I don’t think you could or should, either. My question is, can you get us in to visit? As a group?”

Beacon – 8.2

Defiant walked over to the Dragon craft, knocking on the frame of the hangar door. He wore power armor -armor heavy enough it needed engineering to move around- and the rap of metal gauntlet on metal frame turned more heads than necessary.

He wasn’t the kind of guy who cared. That hadn’t changed any from when he’d been Armsmaster. I knew most of what I knew of him from Dean, with a little from chance encounters.

There were tinkers who were barely restrained. They were excited about what they did and they needed only the slightest excuse to go on at length in their attempts to explain their work. Then there were tinkers who were drawn into themselves, the work and the inspiration all happening in their own little world. Kid Win had been more the latter. Chariot had been, but he’d been a special case, with reasons to keep secrets. Armsmaster, obviously, but that had been what had set me on this train of thought.

Lookout was the explaining, excited sort, naturally. Bakuda, from what I’d heard, had been the sort to go on at length, even while in captivity, but she took that to an extreme, like it applied to other things than her tinkering. Bonesaw… yeah.

I shivered a little at that thought. Bakuda had been able to make bombs that threatened hundreds, thousands, or even theoretical millions of lives. Bonesaw worked on one subject at a time, but her ability to make actual monsters and set worse things in motion made her scarier, in my books.

I distracted myself from thinking too much about that, focusing instead on how that the names I was pulling up were so divided along the gender lines. Chariot, Armsmaster and Kid Win on one side, Bakuda, Bonesaw and Lookout on the other.

If I thought about it harder, putting effort into finding exceptions to that gender rule, extending my line of thought to tinkers I didn’t know but could make guesses about… it was really hard to imagine Dragon talking about the minutiae of her work with anyone that she wasn’t very close to. Past a certain point, professionalism had to take over. She couldn’t risk revealing weaknesses, right?

Trainwreck from Brockton Bay had been both a Case-53 and a tinker, reportedly. The guy had taken the oversized silicone testicles meant for hanging off the back of pickup trucks and incorporated them as an ‘easter egg’ in his power armor at one point, to be revealed if the heavy metal ‘kilt’ of his power armor moved the wrong way – usually when he vented enough steam. No surprise that he’d ended up with the Merchants when everything had gone to hell. I hadn’t interacted with him in any casual capacity, but I was on the fence about whether his demeanor meant he’d be less guarded about talking tech, or if the fact that he’d had to build his Case-53 body made it too personal.

Had I been able to go to college and study parahumans -it still stung that I hadn’t- even something as simple as the dispositions and presentations of tinkers could be something really, really interesting to look into for a paper.

I wanted to be able to do research and dig for answers. We’d already unraveled some of the big mysteries, and by some tragedy, we couldn’t actually work on them. We weren’t sharing information.

Time enough at last.

Either way, it tied back to my general observation: as Bakuda’s personality had been colored by the same traits that made her ramble and rave about tech to even her captors, Armsmaster had taken the taciturn tinker approach and extrapolated it to the rest of his personality. He stayed by the door, silent, knuckles of one gauntlet still resting on the frame, and he volunteered no small talk.

In fairness, I’d given him something to think about. The Leviathan attack had to be something that weighed heavily on him.

Unfair of me to confront him, but I’d felt I owed my family that- living and dead both. I’d have asked about Dean, but Dean had been injured early enough that I couldn’t imagine that he’d been swept up in the setup or rendered a casualty that might have been avoided if someone like Kaiser or one of the giantess twins had lived.

Thinking about it and Defiant’s place in it was heavy, so loaded that I felt inarticulately guilty by association alone.

I thought about the information and how we might share it. The old Parahumans Online was there, but it was bare bones, fractured, almost so messy that it was easier to restart than to fix.

“-if I wanted to make something like that, I’d have to make it a cube. I think that would be awfully silly to have a cube flying around.”

“You could make one of several cubes. Or a thousand cubes all strung together.”

“It’d look awful, and the connections between cubes would be weak points.”

“If you want to talk about artificial and abstract constraints, the person you should really talk to is Defiant.”

“Really?” Lookout was coming down the ramp with Dragon beside her, Dragon offering a guiding hand at her shoulder. Lookout looked at the cyborg in green and gold armor by the side of the ramp. “You break constraints?”

“I could help work out ways to minimize the size, the scale of the weak points, limit energy loss, even the look of it.”

“That’s awesome.”

“If you get a chance, on a day we’re not as busy, you should have a conversation with him. He’s not as intimidating as he looks.”

“Hm,” Defiant grunted.

Lookout looked up at Defiant, then turned back to Dragon. “But I want to keep talking to you. I could talk to you forever.”

“Not forever when we have work to do,” Dragon said, giving Lookout a couple of pats on the shoulder.

“Thank you for showing me stuff,” Lookout said, turning around, talking while she walked backward. I put out a hand as a just-in-case, because the ground was uneven, only recently covered in undergrowth, which had been uprooted and cut away to make this parkland accessible to humans.

Sure enough, Lookout tripped. I caught her weight with one hand between her shoulderblades. Cloaked tinkertech bounced against my wrist and forearm.

“It was my pleasure, Lookout,” Dragon said. To Defiant, she said, “We got an alert from Valkyrie.”

“I saw. No rest for the weary,” he said. “Do you want to go? Or should I call?”

“I’ll talk to her. We might have to go, either way. She doesn’t call often.”

“I’ll be out here until you’re ready to go.”

They were busy, so Lookout and I said our parting goodbyes then headed back in the direction of the others.

There was no reading Lookout’s expression, but there was a skip in her step.

“You happy?” I asked.

“Very. Thank you for making me.”

“I didn’t make you,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“You’re welcome, though.”

“I really want to see them again soon,” Lookout said.

“Maybe,” I said. My thoughts were on their admitted association with my sister. That was a road fraught with hazards.

“Did you have a good talk, at least? Or was it not a talk? Did you both just stand there being all grim with you having your arms folded and him looming there with his spear in his hands?”

“We talked. I don’t know if I’d call it ‘good’. I got some answers on stuff. My shoulders feel lighter, but I’m not sure if it’s genuine or if it’s because I transferred the burden over onto his shoulders instead.”

“He’s strong. He can handle a lot, I think.”

I opened my mouth to retort, and then closed it. It wasn’t worth arguing.

Besides, we were closer to people who could overhear and put pieces together.

Tempera and Fume Hood. Tempera raised a white-painted hand in a wave, and they walked over in our direction, intercepting us.

“It’s been a little while,” I greeted them. “Have you heard anything about Sam or Hunter?”

It had been so long ago- a scared boy and his friend with new and uncontrolled powers. Too dangerous for me to intervene, apparently, but I’d been able to tap Tempera for help, and to ask Mrs. Yamada to look in.

“They headed over to the settlement across the ocean,” Tempera said. “It’s smaller, with its own problems, but it has a place to hold parahumans.”

I nodded. “And you guys?”

“We’ve been busy,” Tempera said. “Trying to find places where help is needed, and where we won’t cause too much of a commotion.”

“We’re toxic,” Fume Hood said, with some irony. “I see you got hurt.”

“Yeah,” I said, shrugging one shoulder. “Shot.”

“Stupid thing to do,” Fume Hood responded, with more irony. “Don’t do that.”

“All the cool kids were doing it,” I replied, “A power nullifier knocked out my defenses, I figured I had one shot to get on board with the trend.”

She slouched forward a bit, head hanging so her hood covered most of her upper face. Her thumbs were hooked into the belt of her outfit. I saw the hint of a smile on her face. “If you’re saying I’m cool, you might have other problems. Any head injuries?”

“Ooh,” Lookout said. “Or it could be the same thing. Bullets have lead don’t they? If you get traces of lead in your system, it can cause permanent brain damage. Among other things.”

Tempera looked at me, eyebrow quirked- the eyebrow had white paint from her face-paint mask on it, making the fine hairs clump. “Smart kid.”

“I’m not all that smart,” Lookout said. “I just researched it a lot recently.”

“Oh. Lookout, this is Fume Hood and Tempera. They were at the community center attack.”

“I know. I looked everything up and I found some of the surveillance camera footage, so I got glimpses of stuff.”

I wasn’t really sure what to say to that, so I put it in my back pocket for later. I’d digest it and talk to her when we weren’t in front of others, if needed.

“That thing about it being cool to get shot- don’t take that as an actual example,” I told her.

“Ha ha,” she said. “Give me some credit.”

That was part of the general problem- I had no idea how much credit to give her.

“It seems you’ve found your team,” Tempera observed.

My knee-jerk reaction was to say no. That the team was breaking up, even though it wasn’t. That it wasn’t my team, even though it clearly was, now.

“Guess so,” I said. “You?”

“Seeing where I’m needed. I was with the Wardens on a trial basis until things-” Tempera stopped herself. “It was probably for the best.”

“For the best?” I asked.

“I mean the Wardens and what they needed from me- the rest of it was definitely not for the best. The work I was doing was heavy. Tensions between worlds. It’s not me. I prefer community level things. Hands on work where improvements are tangible. After I moved on, I was checking in with Fume Hood before and after doing low-level cape stuff. Mostly refereeing riots.”

“It went so well last time,” Fume Hood said. “I ended up going with Tempe for a bunch more.”

“Wise,” I said.

“Oh yeah. That’s me. I exude common sense,” Fume Hood said.

Tempera looked back in the direction of the other members of Breakthrough. “In an email a bit ago, you mentioned what you were doing at Cedar Point.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It didn’t go great.”

“Well, um,” Lookout cut in. “We did scare off the villains there. We more or less handled it.”

“It was messy.”

“When powers get involved, it’s always messy,” Lookout said.

“It’s true,” Tempera said. She produced a glob of paint in her hands, then dropped it. It splattered on the ground to her right. A moment later, it reversed course, leaping up to her waiting hand. “Messy.”

“Neat,” Lookout said.

“I asked, after your email. People were positive about it,” Tempera said. “Cedar Point, and what you were doing. It got me thinking, we wanted to be community heroes, but- there wasn’t opposition.”

“So they created opposition,” I murmured. I glanced at Fume Hood. “Sorry.”

“The timing was wrong.”

“You guys are thinking about this stuff?” I asked.

“After dropping the ball in our inaugural event, I think we have to,” Fume Hood said. She had a billiard-ball green sphere in one hand, that she tossed into the air as she said ‘ball’.

“We have opposition now,” Tempera said. “It makes it easier to be active. So long as people can believe we’re doing something about this disaster with the portals, they’re letting us be.”

“Maybe,” Fume Hood said. “Seems too easy.”

“It does tempt us down the potential road of manufactured enemies,” I said. “History’s told that story enough times. But I don’t think we have a shortage of real ones.”

“No shortage, for sure,” Tempera said. She drew in a deep breath, then looked down at Lookout. “Sorry, kid, to be talking about stuff this heavy.”

“Heavy and messy. I can handle both,” Lookout said. “So long as I’ve got my team. And my team has their own people. We share the burdens.”

Her focus turned to Sveta, Capricorn in red armor, and Weld, who weren’t as under siege as they had been earlier. No mob of questions or attention. Weld bent down to kiss Sveta, and held the kiss. Not a makeout session, but not a peck, either.

I looked away to give them their privacy, a smile finding its way to my face.

“I like that,” Tempera said.

“Hey, Breakthrough,” Fume Hood said. “Are these guys enemies?”

My head snapped around to look at her, then followed her line of sight.

Mom and dad.

Ugh. “My parents.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Fume Hood said.

To my left, Lookout stood up straighter. If I hadn’t been watching for her body language in the absence of facial expressions, I might not have noticed.

“We didn’t mean to interrupt,” my mom said.

But you did, I thought.

“Tempera, Fume Hood, Lookout, these are my parents. Brandish and Flashbang.”

“You mentioned you grew up with capes,” Fume Hood said.

“Yep. Yep.”

“I actually wanted to talk to Natalie,” my mom said. “Check that she’s managing okay, with everything. But it would be strange, I think, if we didn’t even say hello to each other.”

“A little strange.”

“We won’t bother you,” my dad said. “It’s good to see you’re doing well. I like the costume.”

“Thank you.”

“I wanted to ask,” my mom cut in. “Have you heard from your cousin?”

I shook my head. “Not since we parted ways. Communication is usually sporadic to begin with, but the attackers have been knocking out the phones.”

“You’ll let us know if there’s any news? I worry.”

So they were an ‘us’ again, now?

“Yeah,” I said.

“And I hear you moved,” she said it in a way that left the question or follow-up there only in abstract, not in any tangible form.

“I don’t remember the address off the top of my head, but I’ll let you know the address at some point.”

It was the best dodge I could come up with on the spur of the moment.

“I know the address,” Lookout said.

Damn it, Lookout.

“Remember, you never know if there are people with enhanced senses around,” I said. “I might not have a secret identity, but it doesn’t mean I trust everyone here with the address of the place I live.”

“Oh, for sure,” Lookout said.

“Very sensible,” my mom said.

Yeah, well. I gave her my best convincing smile and a small nod.

She totally knew why I’d just done that.

Turnabout was fair play, though. I knew why she’d done this, pressing me for information I might have been reluctant to provide on my own. Telling her where I lived meant I had to deal with that slim chance that there might be a knock on my door, with my mom, my sister, or both on the other side.

Nah.

“Oh, Natalie brought Tony, I’ll introduce you,” my mom told my dad. She laid a hand on my arm in passing. “Take care of yourself, Victoria. You too, Looksee.”

“I’m Lookout, now.”

“Oh, did you change? Be careful,” my mom said. “Rebranding is a useful tool, but not if done in excess.”

“Yep,” Lookout said.

My dad gave me what I decided to read as an apologetic smile, before following my mom.

I sighed. I glanced at Tempera and Fume Hood, and I could see Fume Hood’s annoyance.

Wrong thing to comment on, mom.

“Is it a problem?” Lookout asked. “That I changed it? I used to be Optics and then Looksee, and now I’m Lookout-”

“It’s fine,” I said. “You were never officially Looksee, really. Even if you were, it really doesn’t matter. I think the mentality only really applies if it’s twenty-twelve, you’re in the Protectorate or an up-and-coming team, and you really want to rise in the ranks.”

“Was that you?” Fume Hood asked.

“A bit,” I said. “Yeah.”

“Is it you now?” Tempera asked. A change of wording and tense, and Tempera had a good way of sounding thoughtful, serious, and kind all at the same time. I could really believe that prior to Gold Morning, if her aspirations were different, she could have been great.

And in that little observation, I was already snapping over to my mom’s kind of mindset.

“Hard to say sometimes,” I said. “You grow up with that drive, your parent’s ambitions in line with your own interests. It can be hard to separate them from your own. But I think so. Yeah.”

“You want fame?” Tempera asked. “No judgment here. I’m curious.”

“Sure,” I replied, taking my time with the word, feeling less sure in the two-Missisipi seconds it took me to utter it. “Maybe fame is the wrong word. Prestige has a power to it.”

I glanced at my mom as I said it. Was that her idea, too, rather than my own?

“Me too,” Lookout said. “Fame for me. I want lots of people to cheer for me and think I’m awesome. Does that make me shallow?”

“No,” Tempera said.

That thought brought me to the edge of what felt like an existential cliff- the wobbly, spooked feeling that hit when at a high ledge and the brain and body momentarily forgot that flight was a thing. I’d had similar wonderings when I’d been in the hospital. I’d wondered if my thoughts were my own, and it had been terrifying and maddening, because they’d been all I’d had. My heart had been my sister’s, because of the hormones, dopamine, connections and whatever else that had resulted from the changes-

-even just thinking about that made me feel nauseous-

-and my body had belonged to… nobody. Nobody and nothing. Not a single fucking soul had wanted it. Not me, not my family, not the hospital, not my sister-

“I think Capricorn would be down for it, but I’m not sure about the others.”

Maybe my sister had. Maybe it hadn’t been an accident.

“Ah,” I said, trying to bring myself back to coherence. “The others and fame?”

“Yeah.”

“Swansong yes, for sure,” I said. “Tress. I don’t know about our multi-trigger or Cryptid.”

“We need to bug our multi-trigger to come up with a name,” Lookout said.

“Yeah,” I said. I felt distinctly out of place, with the memories and the existential brink such a short distance behind me. “I think there’s potential. For rising in the ranks. I think I’d be happy with it.”

“I have no interest in that, so if we get too much attention, we’ll send the people your way,” Fume Hood said.

I smiled. “I don’t think it works that way.”

“If-”

She was cut off as Dragon’s craft started up. Narwhal and Cinereal joined Dragon and Defiant on board. Weld, I saw, remained behind.

Another crisis, of the sort that wasn’t announced or explained. Some of our best were out there now, trying to handle it.

And this- this series of attacks by Cheit. We had to handle it ourselves.

There was a rush of wind as the air blew downward and out, with the dragoncraft navigating a route through the foliage so it wouldn’t knock too many branches down. In the midst of it, it was hard to be heard, so I just signaled a goodbye to Tempera and Fume Hood.

“You’re pretty deep in thought,” Lookout said.

“Sorry. Talk with Defiant, then my parents, thinking about our goals.”

“It’s okay. I am too. I saw stuff on Dragon’s ship that got me thinking. Aren’t Weld and Sveta cute?”

I looked. They were leaning against a pair of trees that had grown together- or one tree that had grown apart, with a seam running through it. Weld had his arm around Sveta, who leaned against him, and the wind from the craft had blown her hair around. Some had blown into his face and around his chest and shoulders- some, it looked like, had gotten snagged. He didn’t react or brush it away like someone else might, if they had hair across their face.

“Super cute.”

“I want to find someone like that one day,” she said.

Capricorn sat on a slab of stone that looked Tristan-created. Red armored, so it was Tristan in the armor right now, Byron as the observer. Cryptid was a few feet away, sitting on a seat that was much the same, but smaller. The coloring of the stone and the veins running through it made Cryptid easier to spot, as the camouflage extrapolated from the image of what he was sitting on and painted it up into his body, in fragments.

It was camouflage that would primarily work against someone who wasn’t actively looking for trouble, and primarily in static, dull environments. In the city or the immediate vicinity of strange textures, it wasn’t nearly as effective.

“And there they are,” Cryptid said. “Did you steal Dragon’s notes?”

“No!” Lookout said. “And I wouldn’t. She’s nice.”

“She gives me a vibe like Legend and Valkyrie do,” Sveta said.

“Good vibe or bad vibe?” Capricorn asked.

“Bad. Sorry,” Sveta said.

“So powerful they’re scary?” Capricorn asked.

“No. I think if it was that, I could deal with it. I’m scary,” Sveta’s voice was quiet as she said it. “But they give me this feeling, like they descend from the heavens and deign to deal with us mortals, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I could see that.”

“But also… Legend was tied into the Cauldron thing. I had to get the full story from Weld, but it’s why he left the Protectorate. He got caught.”

“He seemed remorseful, but I don’t know if that’s good enough.” Weld was as serious as I’d ever seen him.

“Where I get paranoid is that I have to wonder if Valkyrie, Dragon and some of those others are for real. Why are they that strong? What happened, and… if they’re on that level, are they tied into it, like some of the other powerful people were? Did they ignore stuff?”

“It makes for an uncomfortable feeling,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry if I offended anyone, saying stuff about their favorite people.”

There were a few heads that shook across our group.

“I like them,” Lookout said, “But I’m not offended either.”

“I think if I had a chance to get to know her and reassure myself on things, it wouldn’t be so bad. But she’s kind of… distant.”

“Less distant for me, I think, because she’s apparently dating the Protectorate team leader from back when I was in Brockton Bay,” I said.

“Prettty much the same for me,” Weld said.

“Yeah,” Sveta said. She smiled. “I get that.”

“I don’t like her,” Cryptid’s voice was almost a mumble but not quite. It wasn’t until I saw him lower his hand that I realized he’d had his fingers in his mouth- maybe adjusting his braces. “But I think I’m different from you, Svet. I get the vibe that the more we knew about her, the less we’d like her.”

“Well,” Lookout said. “That’s screwed up, but that’s okay, because you’re screwed up.”

Chris scoffed. “Thank you for respecting my opinions.”

“I might respect them if you justified them, except Dragon is cool and there’s no justification for thinking otherwise,” Lookout said.

“No infighting,” Capricorn said.

“Okay,” Lookout said.

“Let’s change the topic. Before Antares and Lookout arrived, we were talking jurisdictions,” Capricorn said. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Remember when you were talking about your rationale for making Cedar Point our focus, Victoria?”

“I remember,” I said. “High villain population, not covered in any existing jurisdictions, it slipped the net. Plus they flaunted their villainous independence from things. That kind of pissed me off.”

“Cedar Point is mostly okay now though,” Lookout said. “I peek in now and again using cameras I set up a good while back.”

“Mostly okay,” Capricorn said. “But there were other places that were up for consideration, and I get the feeling some more have sprung up since.”

“They have,” Weld said.

“Teams have other focuses,” I said. “The gaps are getting wider. It doesn’t help that the portals blew up like they did. A lot of key sites fell apart. Places where a team like Foresight might have headquartered are gone or hard to use. It means crime is up, there’s more distractions, and there’s a lot more places for people like Cheit’s groups to hide without leaving the megalopolis.”

“What are you thinking?” Capricorn asked. “An agreement? That we all take territory and commit to keeping the streets clean of crime there?”

“No,” I said. “I’m thinking… more comprehensive than that.”

“Comprehensive how?” Weld asked in a voice that was deep, the tone serious to the point of concern.

“Comprehensive… like jurisdiction. Why do we fight over it? We don’t want to be crowded out or to let others take credit for our successes. Very often our territories are close to home, so there’s a personal element. If there’s crime and we want our people to stay safe, we want to rid that area of crime. Financially, it’s easier to hero in some areas than others.”

“Sure,” Capricorn said.

“I think so long as those issues exist, no matter what we do, there’ll be pushing, shoving, and trying to get people to take some cases or to get others for ourselves. If we can address those issues… say we all get a special allotment, we put funds into a pot and apportion it out, and we organize, with communication and sharing of information.”

“I can do the getting and sharing information parts,” Lookout said.

“And,” I said. “Keeping in mind this whole Cheit thing is demanding attention and resources while they’re doing other things in the background- it potentially addresses some of the other heroing issues we run into. Like how hard it can be to go run off and do something where we’re needed when things can be going to pieces on the home front.”

“Meaning we can go investigate this group that attacked the portals while still maintaining a territory,” Capricorn said.

“Or investigate whatever. Yes, for sure,” I said. “And then a week later, we might babysit another territory while simultaneously giving the team in charge there a new, fresh set of eyes for any ongoing problems, while they do their thing.”

“Have you been thinking about this for a while?” Weld asked.

“Only since talking to Defiant. I’m talking out loud as I think about it.”

“And you want to take over where the Wardens left off?” he asked.

“Not taking over, and not doing what they did,” I said. “They’re- you’re, if you want, you’re still a fixture. But the Wardens were always focused on the top-level threats. Distant wars. Class-S stuff.”

“Ogun,” Weld said. “Sleeper. Machine Army. And a bunch of other things I can’t even namedrop, because they’re classified.”

I nodded, my arms folded.

“I’d have to ask,” Capricorn ventured. “Let’s say we did this, and magically everyone was on board.”

“We wouldn’t need everyone,” I said.

“Even so. We’d need enough, since it’s…” he struggled for a moment.

“The more you have, the more effective it works in aggregate,” Weld said.

“Yeah,” Capricorn said. His mouth moved with a smile, barely visible with the gaps in his mask. “Thanks.”

I tilted my head. “What are you asking?”

“What’s our role in it?”

“Nothing too special,” I said. “Except that people were already talking to us and communicating about collaborating. They wanted a chance at doing their part in Hollow Point. Let’s… I don’t know. We’d coordinate until things were coordinated. Let’s learn from our mistakes, and make every territory into a Hollow Point. Make it so the bad guys don’t know who’s going to show up on a given day. And because we have other focuses and bigger priorities, we offer leniency if they help us with the things that matter.”

“Cheit,” Sveta said.

“The Fallen,” Capricorn said. “They’re not all gone, Defiant said.”

“Or any other big group that’s a problem,” I said.

I saw them considering.

“It’s a tall order,” Capricorn said.

My motivations weren’t pure. My mom and the conversation with Tempera and Fume Hood had me thinking about why I did this stuff. Why I did the hero thing. She was a little ways away, having a conversation with Natalie at the very edge of the parkland clearing.

There were other things too. I wanted information. I missed having resources and we couldn’t lean wholly on an eleven year old girl with a bad family situation to tackle it.

“I know someone from the library who might know how to set up a database,” I said.

“I-” Lookout said.

“A mundane one, that doesn’t require tinker maintenance. It’ll last longer. You- you’ve got something amazing with the time camera, and you wanted to be more frontline.”

“Yeah,” she said. She gave me a frenetic nod, helmet bobbing.

“I don’t think we can or should chuck you into a fistfight with a cape, but… we can get you closer to what’s going on, test the waters, and we can only do that if you’re not maintaining databases. Breakthrough has something solid with a pretty strong set of powers, and good group cohesion in a fight. Let’s start building an infrastructure that we can lean on.”

“It would need refining,” Capricorn said.

“For sure. We can sleep on it – but we can’t wait for too long,” I said.

“No, you’re right. I don’t think we can afford to wait too long before doing something big to try to fix these big problems,” Capricorn said.

“And,” I said. I paused for effect. “Defiant gave the a-ok. They’ll talk to the prison-”

“Yes!” Lookout shouted.

“We can go in as a group-”

“Yesss!”

A cloaked Cryptid covered her mouth. “Let her finish.”

“We can see our people, see what we can figure out about what’s going on. Let’s make sure our asses are covered and that we’re not neglecting anything back in the city. There’s a chance that if we start poking our noses in, we might scare the people who are trying to pull something there.”

Beacon – 8.3

The wind had reached inside the apartment space, blowing papers through the room and across the floor. A window had been left cracked open, and the combination of persistent wind and a few days of us being away had added up to a fair bit of mess.

We hadn’t left anything too vital behind, nothing too identifying on papers, no computers, nothing that would hurt if stolen. Some of the basics had been left behind, as had a lot of the detritus. Some were things like the snacks for when we patrolled or camped out in headquarters, loose papers and an assortment of tinker notes, Sveta drawings, and what seemed to be Chris’ notes for a game he was playing or designing. The whiteboards had been wiped down, but some had been wiped more meticulously than others, and traces of letters remained here and there. Sveta’s still had fragments of the individual pieces of art. Ashley’s hadn’t been wiped clean at all. ‘Swansong’ still stood out on it.

I bent down and picked up one sheet of paper, which looked remarkably like an instant message conversation- one line on the top left, a line just below it and aligned to the far right. The left column had a spiral drawn above it. The right a teardrop.

note to self: owe 45m and thank-you treat to
awesome brother

suck up

seriously what do you want? we time share a body and I
have no idea what sort of thing you like. think about it
and write something down when I pass control
$50 max. I have cash from work on construction block

dunno. clothes? clothes are expensive
something in my style

proposal: I get you two somethings not totally your
style but maybe broaden your horizons

I like my horizons where they are
hoodie / v.neck tee / straight-leg jeans
no big graphics. dark colors if any color at all
or don’t worry about it. if it’s a hassle
don’t sweat it

The conversation terminated there. No reply from Tristan. No indication if they’d found equilibrium or if the gift had been given.

The long plastic tables with the legs that folded down were still in place. I rolled up my sleeve, hesitated, and then undid my sling, ducking my head to get the strap over it and off. I wouldn’t do anything more strenuous than what I was doing in the physical therapy sessions.

Both sleeves rolled up, I began gathering papers. When repeatedly bending down got to be a pain, I used flight to dip and move along the length of the floor, gathering with one hand and holding them with the other.

Everything in order. There was a process, and I could follow steps and make things better. It was meditative, even. I didn’t mind that there were parts that were mind-numbing or dull.

The landlord had sent an email, asking if we were staying and asking us to either check and see that the place was intact or let her know so she could stop in. With it being a hero headquarters of sorts, temporary or no, I’d decided it was better to err on the side of caution. Easiest for me to stop in, considering how much easier it was for me to travel around the city.

I had originally planned to simply stop in and check that the place was intact. Now I found myself staying. Fifteen minutes of tidying became thirty. After another fifteen minutes, I dug into the snacks, getting a drink and a small bite to eat.

Food not from our Earth. An unfamiliar variety of trail mix gathered together by something like honey and some preservatives, packaged in waxy paper rather than plastic. It was supposed to be in bars, but it crumbled so much that I ended up eating more of it by tipping the open bag into my mouth to let the broken-off bits fall in, than actually eating any bar.

This was where we were at.

This is how things are now.

We weren’t in a position to fight against a dedicated, serious enemy that wanted to dismantle us. The foundations our buildings were built on weren’t as solid as they should be. Our infrastructure was stretched thin, and a lot of it had been built with things given by other worlds. Things that had strings attached.

Clothes, appliances, even things as simple as screws were coming from elsewhere. We’d been desperate to set ourselves up and get back to a semblance of normal; it was to the point that a lot of things that looked like Earth Gimel things with the inevitable shortcuts and changes made were actually foreign products. Not Gimel, not Bet. The clues were subtle. The font had weird serifs on it, the layout of things like ingredients and the absence of nutrition info, the lack of anything like trademark or copyright symbols by brand names-

It wasn’t ours.

Now relations with other worlds were tense. Some remained allies, but the construction workers’ riots, Cheit in general, and the sheer mess of this portal disaster were taking their toll.

I picked up some papers that had blown against the wall and beneath a table. Kenzie’s homework, with doodles all over it. She was experimenting with art styles on her English homework. An apple in the top corner, realistic and shaded, with ‘apple for teacher’ written beneath it. A lot of disembodied heads littered the page, drawn in an art style that consisted of circular heads with details and hair drawn on. ‘T.soup’ praised the drawing of the apple. ‘Maxtag’ suggested asking Sveta for tips. Another, unnamed one at the bottom right told her to start over on a fresh page, because the current one was a mess.

I put it on Kenzie’s table with other papers and weighed it down with a small hammer.

After another fifteen minutes of work, I got my laptop and put it on the table at my station. Once it booted up, it took a while to connect to the internet- long enough for me to sweep the entire floor.

No disasters so far today. No major fighting, the blackout and phone connectivity tracker was already up, and there weren’t any fresh outages.

I left it on in the background, music playing, while I resumed work, so the group could have its fresh start if and when we resumed working out of this headquarters. My work was punctuated by my searches online.

I paused to stop and check my arm. The muscle twinged. I’d go easier, I decided.

Trash collected from the small bins and put away, stray boxes returned to where they belonged. Rain had left us a few stray pieces of traps, and blades both with and without handles. I left those where they were, because a tinker’s stuff was sacrosanct, even if it didn’t look like tinkerings.

Though I’d have to touch it anyway. Odds were slim that he’d be the one to turn up here and collect it.

I was wiping surfaces clean of dust when I heard heavy steps on the fire escape.

I flew, heading first to the ceiling, my sudden movement stirring some of the thin snakes of damp dust and hair that I’d been wiping away. From the ceiling, I headed to the space above the door.

The footsteps were quieter as the person reached the top.

“Hello?” he called out.

“Tristan,” I said. I dropped down to the floor.

He pushed the door open. He wore his costume top, helmet, and jeans. He had his usual rugged gym bag with him, heavy with his costume stuff.

“Yeah,” he said. “I saw the door open and thought maybe someone broke in. You got the email from the landlord?”

“Yeah.”

“I wasn’t sure if it was only me. Huh. You beat me to it.”

“I fly,” I said. “Tactical and logistics advantages.”

“And I’m jealous,” he said. He stepped inside, pulling off his helmet, then looked around. “I was thinking I’d sweep or something, but I guess I made the trip for nothing.”

“I did send out emails, trying to set the plan.”

“Outages. My ulterior motive was that I wanted to come here and see if the internet and phones were working. Besides, it seemed like the thing to do. If we can’t communicate with anyone else, we should go to the nearest rendezvous point.”

“Until Lookout gets us some means of communicating reliably,” I said. I remembered the conversation.

“Yeah.”

He put his bag down. He wasn’t gentle, and I could feel the weight of it settling through the floor.

I walked over to my computer and turned the music down.

“You can leave it on if you want. What is that?”

“Oldies rock,” I said.

“Oldies, huh? Where’s the line drawn for that?”

“Before we were born, I think. A lot of what I listen to is from a decade before that.”

“Ahhhh,” he said, like it was a big revelation. He walked over to his table and whiteboard, paging through the papers he’d left behind. The conversation with Byron was among it. “From the days before powers.”

I frowned a little. “I hadn’t wanted to make it about powers.”

“I ruined it for you.”

“No, not ruined,” I said. “It’s more-”

“It’s hard to get away from, isn’t it?” he asked. He did what he could to fix his hair, where the helmet had pressed it down. As simple as the action was, there was something very serious in his eyes and his voice as his hands worked. “It saturates everything. Our team, we get it more than a lot of others, I think. Other teams, maybe they have one or two members who really feel the weight of powers the way we do.”

I thought about it. “Different ways, for different members of our group.”

Fingers worked to twist locks of hair into the rolling curls. He still hadn’t painted his hair again. “You’re an outside case, but I think you qualify, you’re even an expert on the matter. Sveta’s been like she’s been for… five years?”

“About.”

“Ashley dealt with her hands from the time she was thirteen to the time she was a little older than twenty. Two years spent being dead, clock turned back a bit, fuzziness from not being her original self… still. Eight or nine years at most?”

I shrugged.

“Byron and I trigger, endure a few years of this. Kenzie triggers really young, same principle, though, and she doesn’t have that many years under her belt. Rain triggered later than most of us, but he’s very, very similar to you, I think. He grew up within arm’s reach of powers. Not so direct as you, but… there.”

“Yeah.”

“You lived it. From birth, your mom was a hero and that was normal. Your dad.”

“My aunt, my uncle, my cousins. My boyfriend, friends, afterschool activities, hopes, dreams, field of study, the meals I ate. Over a thousand nights spent acutely aware that one of my parents was out there, and they might not come home.”

“How do you avoid drowning in it?” Tristan asked.

“If you’d asked me before? I’d have said they were natural waters for me. I didn’t drown because I breathed it.”

“And now?”

I shook my head. “I think I could still breathe it, live it, if it wasn’t for-”

For the wretch.

“For?” he prodded.

“Things I need to figure out. One personal, and a bunch of external ones. People, forces, trends. I feel like I might be drowning, but it’s because of others making the waters choppier. Pushing me under, even.”

“Tattletale?” he asked.

“That was a fast reply.”

“An accurate one,” his voice was smug.

“Yeah. People like Tattletale. Don’t get me wrong, I have my own stuff to deal with, and I’ll figure that out with my therapist. But I really want to handle or get away from the people who are making life way more fucking difficult than it needs to be. Get some control over things, so they stop getting in the way.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Capricorn said. “This strategy of yours. Uniting the teams. Is that you handling things like you just described?”

“Yeah. Some. Is that a problem?”

“Nah,” he said. He smiled. “Nah, it makes sense. Assess the problem, get the resources together to address that problem. More contacts is good. More resources is good.”

I nodded. “You brought this up for a reason. How hard it is to escape, the power stuff.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Nothing big. Tired of swimming, always on the cusp of drowning. Can’t get away from my situation. Rain was a friend and we’re going to see him later, but he’s gone. Sveta- can’t complain to her. It’s like bitching about a cut finger when your friend is inside a blender.”

“I think she’d listen and understand,” I said.

“I have days where I can’t do it anymore. No energy to keep fighting and pushing forward. Byron worries about me then, you know? But that’s not the hard part. It’s that all the time, I’m also watching Byron, worrying about him. Gotta keep an eye out, try to analyze, figure him out, make sure I’m not being too hard on him when he’s having a bad day.”

“It’s good,” I said.

“But I was never good at understanding him. I want the days we fight tooth and nail and fuck with each other. I know they’re bad, duh but that’s so easy. This is what drains me. We’re not fighting each other, and how do you fight onward if you’re not revved up and ready?”

“You find external focuses. Other enemies to fight. Line them up, knock them down, vent off steam that way.”

He created what had to be his fourth top, setting it to spinning. It was more balanced than the others, but it had some wobble.

“I miss kissing boys,” he said. “I saw a guy with a beard on my way here. He wasn’t my type at all, but it hit me pretty fucking hard, that I’ve never kissed a guy with a beard, and I might never.”

“Never is a pretty ridiculous word when we live in a world with powers.”

He snorted loudly. Then sniffed, hard, blinking fast once or twice. “You’re Sveta’s friend, for sure.”

“Yeah.”

“She likes to hold out hope. There’s hope, there’s always hope. But that doesn’t do any good, does it? I’m trying to get through the now, and you two are telling me what the future has in store. My boat’s sinking because there’s a big gaping hole in it, and every time I ask for help, my friends say, ‘If you get to shore, there’s an awesome party with great booze, music, and dancing’.”

“What I’m saying- what Sveta’s no doubt saying, is don’t stop bailing out the boat because you’ve lost sight of that shore.”

“I lost sight of shore a while back. I dream of it, but I dunno. One of the coolest night of my pre-cape life, I was teenager, went to a birthday party and it was boys and girls, big house, mostly unsupervised. Someone had the bright idea of playing strip poker. We didn’t get that far before everyone started chickening out and panic-squabbling over rules details until it wasn’t fun anymore, but… that energy, before it went to pieces. You know? The people, wondering if it’s going to be the best night of your life or the night you fuck up so bad you wince about it for years? It’s stuff like that. Jumping off the roof of a house into the pool below and having everyone cheer.”

“I can see it,” I said. “I think my equivalent is different. The cheering I get, I think. Validation.”

“I’m not sure I’m chasing that anymore, and that’s my identity, or it was. I’m not sure I’m bailing out the sinking ship anymore. If I can’t figure out those things, then I’m not sure it matters whether there’s a shore or not.”

“Pretty dark place to be,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “And I wish I had a not-Case-53 Weld of my own to lean on or help me bail out the boat, but I don’t.”

“Shit,” I said. “I most definitely hear you on that.”

He smiled.

“I’m not six feet tall, broad shouldered, or all that muscular, but if you want to hammer this stuff out-”

“Nah,” he said, dismissing me.

“Seriously, Tristan. Listening ear, time. I’m not sure I have it in me to dredge up the time I couldn’t bail out, see shore, or even… whatever it is. Remembering the good days. But if you need me to, if you want to tackle this like our team tackles the bad guys, I can try.”

“Don’t. No,” he said. “Because if you tackle this like this team handled the last few things, two-sevenths of you will be gone by the time you’re done.”

“That sounds about right if I have to do any dredging. But the offer stands.”

“Nah,” he said. “No need. You’re looking after the kids, right? Checking on Chris, you checked on Kenz.”

I nodded.

“And that was important to do. You’ll check on the others.”

“Probably.”

“Focus on them.”

“A lot of what you were saying sounded like a cry for help, Tristan. Especially toward the end.”

“It’s not, not exactly. It’s- I can’t talk to Byron, because the two of us can’t be in the same room at the same time. My parents don’t like talking to me. Not since the murder charge. I’m limited in the friends I can talk to, with one being worse off and one in prison. I needed to vent and I needed to say it out loud and make sense of it.”

I frowned at him.

“For the record. This is coming from three places,” he said. “Beard guy I saw on the way over. That’s a bit of it. Sveta was asking me for boy advice, that was the second. So you know, look out, because that’s probably coming.”

I frowned more, but mostly because Sveta had asked Tristan first, and not me. I could set that aside because Tristan was wrangling something.

“And the third part, which actually got me thinking about this in the bigger sense… that whole thing about how powers are hard to get away from?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. That’s our group, but when I was trying to figure out who we might be seeing at the prison, the mentality we were working with or around, what to look out for… isn’t that it? They can’t get away from their powers or what their powers have done to their lives.”

He grabbed the latest spinning top he’d fashioned with his power, caught it between fingertip and thumb, and crushed with an ease that suggested his superpower wasn’t even needed.

⊙

“I can turn into a monster that’s ninety percent mouth. I could do it now.”

“Don’t,” Capricorn said.

“Or a form that’s all slimy tentacles.”

“No,” Capricorn said.

“I just don’t see why it matters what’s in my pockets.”

“I don’t see why you didn’t just leave it at home,” Lookout said.

“Because,” Cryptid said, “I need a bunch of this stuff. There’s a good chance it matters. And because it matters, I don’t need glorified security guards tampering with it.”

“You could put it in the locker,” Sveta suggested. “Two of us can move fast. If there’s an emergency, we could go get it.”

Discussion continued. I waited, my eyes roving over the surroundings. The entryway to the jail was built of the same prefabricated segments, with the arching ceiling over the booth, the layout of the hallways, and the setup around the door. The difference was in the protective measures. The entryway looked like a place that was triply fortified, with shutters that could drop down at regular intervals, and a very fortified booth. Painted lines traced along the floor, pointing to different destinations.

“I’ll keep some of the essential stuff,” Cryptid said. “If I end up unconscious for any reason, if I look dead, if I’m dying, something vital plops out of my chest, just stab me with these. If you can get me conscious again, I’ll figure out the next steps myself.”

They looked like the epipen needles and the adrenaline-shot needles that came in the mass-produced first aid kits. He had three of them, and he walked over to the desk to show the guards.

We were in costume. Cryptid wasn’t cloaked, because cloaks would have been concerning, but instead had decorated himself in a look that was shadowy, crocodile-like scaling. The light and shadow that hit him affected him in a different, odd way, with deeper shadow and slimmer bands of light.

He ended up having to hand over the cloaking device, too. He turned his head away from both guards and security cameras.

“You don’t need to worry,” one of the guards said. “We’re law enforcement. We’re on the same side.”

“I prefer to play it safe,” Chris -not Cryptid for the moment- replied.

“If we didn’t have this recommendation letter, your attitude here might mean we’d turn you away.”

“But you have it, right?”

“Cryptid,” Capricorn said. “Go easy.”

“I am, believe it or not,” Cryptid said. He took the cloaking device as it was slid back in his direction, and snatched up the syringes when they were passed his way. “I’m here because it’s my duty to a friend. I hate institutions.”

“You live in one,” Lookout said.

“Barely. It’s a place with a bed and we have a nice agreement where they don’t make me follow rules and I don’t bother anyone too bad. I don’t see why it matters what I have on me, when we’re capes.”

As much as Cryptid was complaining to us, but the guys at the desk overheard. One said, “The question is what you might slip to them, not what you do yourself.”

“They have powers. What tool are we going to hand over that would trump that?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” the guy at the desk said.

I was given the all-clear. I fixed my bag over my shoulder – my arm was back in the sling, so the management of the bag was made more difficult. The contents had been confirmed safe. I’d have to use their supplied cord for my laptop, since they’d taken the battery, but that was fine. At least it lightened my load by a pound or so.

“Keep a safe distance from all prisoners in the area,” the instructions came from the desk. The first shutter between us and the yard was opened. “Limit hugging or touching to once at the start of the visit and once at the end.”

“Aww.”

“You may sit at the same table, but nothing may cross that table while you’re there. The breadth of the table should be kept clear. You will not agitate the prisoners, whether the ones you are visiting or the ones who may be observing. Some others will be out exercising, but they won’t be allowed to approach within three hundred feet.”

“Got it,” Capricorn said, with a rush to his voice that, in another context, might have suggested he was in a hurry and he wanted the guard to stop talking.

In reality, he was probably trying to get an answer in before Chris said anything ill-advised.

“Don’t wander off,” the guard said. “Stay within ten feet of one another. If there is an emergency-”

“If there’s an emergency, we’re capes, Cryptid said.

“If there is an emergency, you’ll return here. Failing that, enter any non-residential building. There will be two near where you are seated. You’ll be free to seal and shutter the entrances.”

It was such a messy prison system. A minimum of guards, the prisoners free range, without even a wall between them at the outside world. It was just… flat and marshy out in three of the four directions, with the fourth not being fantastic. Everything hinged on the ankle-worn bombs and other countermeasures that the prisoners wore. To run meant to have one’s foot and calf blown off.

The shutter down the hall opened.

“You may proceed straight ahead. The prisoners you’ve asked to meet will be on their way to the table shortly.”

The light from outside was bright as the shutter came up. Wind blew through as the shutter raised, but it wasn’t because of the distorted portals and weather from that. We were too far off the beaten track, and things were more tranquil here.

Buildings were set down in tight clusters, for administration buildings, or in nondescript collections of apartments, fitting within the narrowest possible interpretation of code and then cramming that full of one-room apartments.

One set of a dozen prisoners were filtering into the buildings. Our visit had been timed by the prison to take advantage of the shift to the next exercise period.

I saw three or four of the Fallen capes in the mix. Complicated. They were some of the ones who had been in the background during the raid on the camp, periodically using their powers. If they were here, they were diehard enough to be deemed irredeemable. Most of the others had either expressed genuine remorse or they’d feigned it well enough to convince a judge.

If they were here, they were the kind of Fallen who were unquestionable problems.

I was glad that most seemed to be going inside. Some found seats by windows, where they could stare us down.

I spotted Rain, who approached from the other half of the complex, passing through a corrugated metal gate that a guard managed, and approached us at the table.

The table was longer and wider than what I was used to, and so were many of the other parts of the area – the buildings were squat and heavy, with a lot of fortification. Roads were wide enough that four cars could pass down them side by side.

The large fixtures and the wide, broad planes of everything coupled with the isolated individuals to make the entire space out to look exceedingly isolated.

Rain took his seat. He’d trimmed his hair short, and with no hair in the way or covering anything up, his eyes were open wider, no longer shielded or half-closed in readiness to blink as hair fell over them, and a multitude of tiny nicks and cuts covered his face. There were places where the scars left a tiny notch in his jawline or ear. The lines of his hands and the half-moons of his fingernails were black with oil. He wore a prison-issue denim coat over his regular clothes.

At least he had that luxury.

“Hi,” Lookout said.

“Hey critter,” he said. “I heard about some of your adventures a few days ago.”

“All good now. Things are mostly the way they were, except I don’t see my parents outside of the courtroom. It’s nice. More peaceful, with more people to talk to.”

Rain nodded. “Peaceful, yeah. Same, except for the whole imprisonment part. Boredom so bad you might imagine you’d do something stupid. Some do- and I’d join them if I didn’t have the realty check every night. The days don’t seem to end.”

“We brought gifts,” Sveta said. “Things to read. The guards will bring it to you later. I hope that helps with the boredom.”

Rain smiled. “That’s perfect. I’ll probably end up reading each one twenty times.”

“Have you heard from Erin?” Lookout asked.

“Yeah,” Rain said. “She dropped by yesterday. She’s splitting her attention between me, her family issues, and Lachlan Hund.”

“The brainwashed teenager,” I said.

“So apparently when I ran off the night before the attack, going to March to try to break the connection to Mama, Erin was given some options. One of those options was that she marry Lachlan.”

“Oh no!” Lookout said.

“They’re both really nice, attractive people,” Rain said. His expression was grim. “Front-facing people to recruit others. They could become celebrities without any issue. I can see the logic”

“Yeah,” Sveta said. “Logic, except, the brainwashing, the forced marriage, all that.”

“Mmm,” Rain grunted. “It’s an awkward thing, her helping him and him being a go-between for her and her family- who aren’t dealing well with the family mostly shattering. She might be by later.”

I noticed mostly because Lookout was bouncing in her seat, but Ashley was in view now. Double-vision. There were two of her, wearing similar dresses. The one slightly in the lead was our Ashley, our Swansong, with hair cut short. It had fanned out slightly at the bottom, and where weight had pulled it straight, it had a bit of a twist to it. Her bangs were similar, but more twisty, pushed over to one side.

Our Ashley’s hands were intact. Her darker self had knife-hands.

“So cool,” Lookout said.

Rain leaned forward, touching the intercom at the middle of the wide table. “Can the other Ashley Stillons join us?”

“Checking,” came the reply.

I was aware of the eyes on us. The visitor seating table was about a hundred feet down from the main office. Some chicken-wire fence separated sections of the greater infrastructure, but little effort had been made to make it tall or make it private.

I might’ve seen one or two more fallen, as I surreptitiously glanced around. I got my notebook out and began scribbling down notes as best as I could with only one arm free. People, places. Suspicious individuals.

Lookout bounced out of her seat, half-running-

“No running, careful!” Sveta called out.

-and half skipping. She slowed down at the warning.

Ashley pulled her into a hug.

“How are the hands?” Rain asked.

“More functional, but the right is giving me jolts of pain.”

“Damn it, sorry,” Rain said. “Tonight’s not a good night. We’ll see about tomorrow?”

“Okay,” Ashley said. She set a hand atop Kenzie’s head. “If it gets bad, I can take it off.”

“Best not to,” Rain said.

The intercom buzzed, but no voice came through. It took three or four seconds, and then there was only a “Permission refused.”

Too bad. It had been a long shot, to bring Swansong’s sister in.

I looked at her, and I saw a reflection of Ashley, but one that casually wore the glares and haughty expressions that had been rarer or which had only emerged in times of stress. She stalked, eyes wide.

I was reminded of the Siberian, seeing her, what with the long pale hair across her face, the natural arrogance, and the dangerous look in her eyes. I didn’t see it in the Ashley that was hugging Lookout right now.

“You’re getting our emails, right?” Capricorn asked.

“Yes,” Rain said. “Thanks to your testimony. Until we fuck up, we get some slack. You guys had ideas for a new team direction.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We didn’t want to decide on anything definite without consulting you guys.”

“I have questions, yeah,” Rain said. “Like what does Capricorn Blue think?”

“He’s not protesting as hard as you might think,” Capricorn said. “We need to do something.”

“It’s bad. The war,” Sveta said. “It’s not one with battlefields, and we’re not organized enough to win a war of information.”

“I like it,” Ashley said. “The thing about the group that never made sense was the insistence that Capricorn was a leader.”

“Hey.”

“But,” she said. “We have three leaders. Different styles. Different focuses. It fits for a group that’s steering other teams to better places where the old didn’t fit us.”

“We’re not taking over anything,” I said.

She snorted.

“No, really.”

“Capes take over. We take power because we have power. Just as those with money have a natural ability and desire to earn money. The healthy are inclined to stay healthy.”

“Capes are unhealthy by definition,” Cryptid said.

“There’s room to maneuver in there,” Capricorn said. “Listen, Rain, Ash, are you two talking? How easy is communication? What other channels do you have open? People here you talk to?”

“I can do bi-weekly maintenance on Ashley’s hands, we get internet, some freedom of movement, some access to tools.”

“More of a benefit to Rain than to me. But it’s nice to be able to talk to him, at least,” Ashley said.

“Some people talk to housemates by standing on the balcony,” Rain said.

“My roommate is fine. Exceptionally beautiful and graceful,” Ashley said. “Good genes, I think. Clever. Quick to learn. Witty, even.”

“That joke is wearing thin,” Sveta said.

“I’m not joking,” Ashley replied.

“I think it’s a perfect assessment,” Lookout said. “I like our version better though. The hair looks amazing.”

“She’s fine. There’s a lot to catch up on. The others in the house- not good people. A big Asian woman who won’t tell me her cape name. She stonewalls me. Another woman who only whimpers and cries. She panicked months before we arrived. Tried to take off her ankle bracelet. Now she has a bracelet on the one ankle she has left. The last is a child killer.”

“What?” Sveta asked. “That’s a thing?”

“She went by Unicorn, but it was an inherited name. So she’s Unicorn the fifth or something.”

“Unicorn four,” I said.

“Shit, yeah,” Capricorn said. “I heard about that one. It was on the news a decade ago. She was on the sponsored team ‘Goldenrod’.”

“She’s Monokeros now,” I said. “Yeah. Stay away.”

“They send teams of two to escort her when they need her to do something, like visit the doctor,” Ashley said.

“Not much help then,” Rain said. “I’ve talked with my housemates, a bit. They don’t love me, but two sound like they’d be willing to sell me info, if they see anything hinky.”

“If it’s verifiable info, I can put money in their commissaries,” Capricorn said.

“Great,” Rain said. “We’re looking at staff, mostly.”

“You’ve already started then,” Cryptid said. He looked over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Rain said. “Definitely. Helps with the monotony.”

There were so many people watching from windows. Our investigation couldn’t help but be conspicuous… and if it was staff that was interfering, then they had the benefit of access to surveillance, records, and any number of other means of tracking these patients.

Now that it struck me, we’d have to figure out if a staff member could theoretically detonate the ankle bombs as a weapon, to control or remove problematic individuals.

I’d ask when Rain and Ashley couldn’t hear. It wouldn’t do to stress them out.

“I found one person who stands out,” Ashley said. “It might be worth looking at them or having a chat. Or it might be a problem. You know them, Victoria.”

Oh, no. Those were spooky words.

“It’s not bad,” she said, seeing my reaction. “From the community center. Crystalclear is on the boys’ side. That’s your starting point, I think. If anyone knows something, it’s him.”

Beacon – 8.4

“Crystalclear,” Capricorn said. “As employee, or-”

“No,” Ashley said. “Inmate. Rain was paying more attention to the employees. I was focused on…”

She paused.

“The competition?” Capricorn tried.

“The pecking order,” was her reply. “They limit contact, make us keep a certain distance from one another, but we cross paths and we see each other.”

“Not solitary, not segregated confinement,” Cryptid said. He was standing by the picnic-style table with its broad top, rather than sitting. He spoke differently when he was in costume.

“Kind of segregated,” Rain said.

“It used to be fully segregated,” Ashley said. “There are too many of us now. They can’t send each of us individually to go exercise and still give us enough exercise.”

Rain put his elbows on the table, hands together, cracking his knuckles, before cocking his head to look at Ashley. “I haven’t seen Crystalclear, and you didn’t mention him.”

“It was recent. The main yard isn’t that far from my place. You can see it from one of the windows. The boys go to their windows to look when the women exercise, and the women go to the window when boys exercise. I heard the jeering and went to look. He’s recognizable from a distance.”

“I don’t have a view of the yard from my place,” Rain said.

“You draw the shittiest hands in life,” Cryptid said.

“I guess. I’m as red blooded as anyone, but I feel like I’d watch for five minutes and then get bored.”

“Five minutes is long enough for most,” Cryptid said.

“Maybe for you,” Tristan said.

I rolled my eyes.

Lookout looked from me to the boys. “Oh. SO gross.”

“Yes,” Ashley said, tilting her head Lookout’s way in a conspiratorial way. “Keep this in mind when you’re older and interested in your first boys.”

“In my defense and in defense of my gender, I’m not part of this,” Rain said. “This is those two.”

“It’s standard teenager talk,” Cryptid said.

“Everything’s fair game, so long as nobody’s uncomfortable,” Capricorn added.

“Okay,” Lookout said.

“Um. Sorry, I’m feeling a bit awkward. Can we just go back to talking shop?” Sveta asked. When eyes turned her way, she shrugged as best as she was able.

“Okay,” Cryptid said. “Sure.”

“Thank you,” Sveta said, “Where were we? Crystalclear?”

“Crystalclear,” Capricorn confirmed. “From the good guy side in the community center attack. You’ve talked to him, Victoria?”

“Yeah. Fume Hood and Tempera didn’t mention him going to prison,” I said.

“Maybe they don’t know,” Ashley said.

“Probable. He doesn’t seem like the criminal type.”

“Spooky, that you never really know what your teammates are like,” Sveta said. “Do you think he’d talk if you reached out?”

“I can try,” I said.

“I thought he seemed out of place, he’s a contact of yours, and from what little I saw, he was talking with others. A lot. That’s not always easy,” Ashley said. “Guards weren’t really pulling him away, I think because he’s got a past record as a hero. He seemed like a good person to ask.”

“How does that work?” Capricorn asked. “Talking to others. There’s talking across the balconies, right?”

“At yard time, four buildings with sixteen people get out at the same times,” Rain said. “We get split up into areas. There’s a weights cage, a basketball court with one hoop, two people allowed at a time, but you can’t play with someone if you’ve had any altercations.”

“The basketball hoop is the Queen’s court,” Ashley said. “Top woman on this side of the prison, Llorona, gets the court and nobody argues if they want to have a good stay. She invites different people every day.”

“Similar for the guys who get out around the same time I do, but they hog the court,” Rain said. “Coalbelcher and his right hand man get the court every day. It’s rare that someone else gets to go. You basically have to kill someone to earn enough respect to get in.”

“If you go that far you’re never leaving,” Capricorn said. “Maybe they figure they might as well get to know you, if you’re committing to being a lifer.”

Rain snorted, a laugh without humor.

“Court, weights, and…” I prompted.

“And the main yard,” Rain said. “There are a lot of rules for all of it. Weights cage, you get seven minutes at a time, have to clean up and reset the area as part of those seven minutes, or you don’t get a turn for a week. You go from there to the yard, next person in the yard gets a turn. Court, you can’t have a record of altercations with other prisoners. Yard is where most go.”

“Most people run laps,” Ashley said. “You have to stay a set distance from others. If you don’t, your ankle beeps until you get away. We can’t stand close to one another, but there’s leeway if you’re in the middle and doing something active. Some throw or kick balls. Talking happens while running thirty feet behind someone or playing catch. You’re always far enough apart you have to raise your voice, and so you can’t conspire with anyone.”

“I’m not really social,” Rain said. “I haven’t really tried, but it’s hard enough to run that long and not look like a wuss. People try to lap you, too. They’ll signal the guards, guards call out for you to stop in a corner and let them pass.”

“They do it on purpose,” Ashley said. “You get the people who run together, just close enough to not cause trouble, talking while they run, others try to lap people, shame them, show off their stamina, and the rest are either trying not to look bad or they give up and throw balls.”

“Sounds right,” Rain said.

“Can you talk to Crystalclear?” I asked.

“You might have better luck than me. I haven’t seen him yet. They keep some buildings of people segregated from others. Like, they don’t want Fallen in the same yard as me, you know?”

“You have a better chance of ending up in the same yard with him than I do,” Ashley said.

“Yeah,” Rain said. “Sure. I mean, if the chance comes up, I’ll try.”

“And I’ll try on my end,” I said. “I’m not sure if it’ll ring alarm bells, me being too obstrusive, but I’ll see what I can do.”

Rain nodded, cracking his knuckles again. “While you’re at it? Could you keep an eye on Cradle and Love Lost?”

“We have been,” Lookout said.

“Cradle is in custody here,” I explained. “Other end of this complex. I wasn’t able to check in for his meeting with the court processors, because I had physio. I would have skipped, but Capricorn had it.”

“I looked in, sat in the back,” Capricorn said. “It went by quick. He’s been doing a lot of business, which is working against him now, because he can’t explain where his money came from, but he doesn’t have many friends, either. Not while Tattletale is freezing him out.”

“She’s staying out of it?” Rain asked.

“She’s staying out of it,” I confirmed. “As far as we can tell. It’s hard to know for sure with the masterminds.”

“Do you trust her?” Ashley asked. “Or will she try something?”

“No, I don’t trust her,” I offered up half of a laugh to go with it. “But I do believe her, I guess, when it comes to this.”

“That simplifies things,” Sveta said. “I don’t think she’d breach a contract, written or unwritten, if it’d hurt her ability to do business. I believe her too. And I’ve been on the same side as her, I guess.”

I nodded.

“What about Love Lost?” Rain asked.

“She’s hanging out with Nailbiter, Sidepiece, Disjoint and that group,” Capricorn said.

“Oh, my friends,” Ashley said.

“I think she’s in charge,” Lookout said. “I don’t know how that works, someone who can’t talk being a leader.”

“Keep an eye on her?” Rain asked. “She’s stronger than she was. Cradle too. The bias of power shifts around a lot between our group. Since Snag’s gone, it’s… stormier. The pendulums swing further and harder.”

“We will,” Capricorn said.

“Scapegoat’s here, Seir’s here,” Rain heaved out a sigh as he said it. “Valefor is in a hospital with one of these ankle bombs attached. Mama Mathers is…”

“Isolated,” I said. “Classified location, given the likelihood the Fallen would try to get her out.”

“I don’t know why they would,” Sveta said. “She ruled by fear, everyone’s finally free.”

“I think being controlled and managed, having that firm a hand on you, it’s reassuring to some types,” Rain said. “Like how some people can’t handle it after they get out of prison. They no longer know how to be free. She’s had control for a long time.”

“Creepy,” Sveta said.

“Definitely,” Rain said. “Just… keep me updated? I feel so out of the loop, stuck in this weird prison-town, ghost-town setup, a universe away from you guys.”

“Three universes away, if you consider the number of steps you need to take to get here,” Cryptid said.

“Thanks, Chris. Thanks. That really helps with the weird disconnected, homesick feeling I’m wrestling with.”

“I’m sorry, Rain. We’ll send a care package, okay?” Lookout said.

“Okay. Just to warn you, I think they’re pretty careful about what they let me have, though, given how I’m a tinker. They measure out all the materials I get and what goes into Ashey’s hands.”

“Okay. Books should be okay, right? And you’re online, so we can message you?”

“Yeah, but they look at everything we send, so… secret identities, and be aware our enemies could be getting the same info.”

“I’ll message you, we’ll catch you up,” Capricorn said.

“Cool,” Rain said. “Just keep me in the loop, and I think I can do this. Maybe. It’s the boredom that’s making me second guess what I felt before, that I can ride out this entire sentence, whatever it winds up being.”

“I’m patient,” Ashley said. “We’ll entertain ourselves with our side of the investigation. I won over Llorona, I think.”

“The Queen of the basketball court?” Sveta asked.

“Yes. Everyone meets with her, if they’re here for a couple of weeks without incidents. She keeps the peace and smooths out wrinkles, so they let her.”

“I would have thought you’d have to play a good game of basketball to win her over,” Capricorn said, pausing while Ashley nodded. He added, “And your hands aren’t working.”

“Yes. That’s one way. And I’ve never played basketball. I’d lose if it came down to it.”

“Then how did you pull that off?” Capricorn asked.

Ashley smiled. “When she acted like she was better than me because I wouldn’t play, I tore my left hand off in front of her.”

“Awesome!” Lookout reacted to the self-dismemberment with awe and glee, because of course she did.

“That’d do it,” Cryptid, by contrast, was almost smug, even though he hadn’t had anything to do with it.

“I think she likes me now.”

“You do realize staff are watching you, and they report these kinds of things, right?” Sveta asked.

“Yes. I told them I needed maintenance, no sweat.”

“It was such a mess,” Rain was almost despondent in tone, contrasted with Lookout’s excitement and Cryptid’s satisfaction. “I’m the maintenance, you know. And there’s blood with forced removals like that. Like, hurry, hurry, get dressed, shoes on, and run, because she might not live if it’s not plugged in right.”

“Spooky,” Sveta said.

“Messy!” Rain exclaimed, to Sveta. To Ashley, he said, very seriously, “Messy.”

“Letting the Queen place me at the bottom of the totem pole would have been worse,” Ashley said. “It helps Rain, too.”

“Helps?” Rain asked.

A buzzer sounded across the complex.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Rain said.

“Time’s up?” I asked.

I saw their nods.

“Aww, what? No. We just sat down,” Lookout said.

“Another time,” Ashley said.

“Keep an eye out for the care package,” Lookout said.

“It’s not like I’m going to be out when it arrives,” Ashley said. She stood from the picnic table.

“I wasn’t sure what to do but I thought books would be best,” Lookout said. “They were always something I went to when I couldn’t sleep. I had stacks of them on my bed, piled high enough they could have tipped over and bruised me. I’d sleep with my head on a book sometimes.”

“I don’t think I’m going to do that,” Ashley said. “But I’ll read what you send me. C’mon.”

Lookout went to her. They hugged.

The buzzer sounded again, more intense. Rain’s anklet beeped once.

“I should go,” Rain said. “They’ll get pissy if we get in the way of schedules.”

“Yeah. I can stay, I think. It’s my yard time,” Ashley said. “They’ll let me know if it isn’t.”

“Then I’m going to duck out,” Rain said.

He clasped hands with Capricorn, then the handshake became a half-shake, half-hug thing. “Keep us up to date on that team thing.”

“Yeah,” Capricorn said.

We parted ways, our group heading back toward the gate, while Ashley walked on the other side of the road.

Guards were out, each with positions in mind. They fanned out, each armed and uniformed, their belts heavy with gear. For the most part, they were isolated – one guard to a given location. There was one case where the guards moved in a group of three, with something of a determined cast to their features.

We were almost at the gate when Lookout took a hard right turn, striding away from the group.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She was silent.

Something was wrong. I lifted off, but in that same moment, Sveta’s arm went out, propelled by tendrils. She grabbed Lookout by the shoulder, stopping her in her tracks.

I wasn’t the only one to look in the direction she’d been going.

Off by one of the buildings, a woman with black hair and a few tattoos was leaning against the side of a building, camouflaged. She was a considerable distance away, to the point where I couldn’t make out details of her face, tattoos, or outfit – only a top with a ‘v’ cut at the neck and a frilly flap that went from collar to shoulder, black pants, and shoes.

“Monokeros!” Ashley shouted the name. When she had Monokeros’ attention, she shook her head.

The woman laughed in response, audible even from a considerable distance.

The woman stepped away from the wall, thumbs hooked in pockets, and started walking away. We’d been traveling north to south, and Monokeros had been a few hundred feet to our west. She walked north, which put her behind us and off to the side.

A non threat, supposedly.

Ashley stared, watching the woman as she left.

“Fuck,” Capricorn said. “You okay, Lookout?”

“It was like getting hit with Victoria’s aura, but without the jittery oh-shit-ness of it,” Lookout said. “Purer, stronger.”

I folded my arms, thumb hooked into sling.

“I pretty much only ever get the jittery oh-shit part from Victoria,” Capricorn said.

“Same,” Cryptid said.

“I’ll talk with her,” Ashley said. Her expression was cold. “She was testing me. That can’t stand.”

“Don’t get yourself in more trouble,” Sveta said.

“She fucked with Lookout.”

“Stick with the rules,” I said. “Use the system against her. Report her, let them handle it and change their policies.”

“No, don’t use the system,” Lookout said.

We looked at her.

“If you do, they’ll say the easiest fix is to not let me come back. They’ll say it’s too dangerous to let kids come here, and then I won’t be able to see you.”

“They’d punish her, not you,” Sveta said.

“They might punish me.”

“I’m on the kid’s side,” Cryptid said. “Institutions are dumb.”

Ashley drew in a deep breath. Holy shit, she looked more pissed than she had with Beast of Burden. I could imagine the only thing that was stopping her was that her potential target was out of reach.

“Leave it,” Lookout pleaded. “It’s fine. Please?”

“I’m not going to leave it,” Ashley’s voice was quiet. “But I won’t make it an incident.”

“Take care of yourself,” I said. “If you let her get to you, she wins.”

“It’s fine,” Ashley said. “I’m betting she’ll go back to her cell to hide, the coward. I’m going to run, and I’ll think for a while before doing anything.”

“Good plan,” I said. “Except the doing part, I’m worried.”

“It’s fine,” she replied, with a tone that suggested it was also final.

“Okay,” I said, glancing at the others.

“I’m sorry things ended on that note,” Ashley said. She set a hand on Kenzie’s head.

“Me too,” Lookout said.

“Don’t let this place get to you,” Sveta said. “Remember your goals.”

“Yeah. Always focused on the future, hm?” Ashley asked.

“Exactly. Just get through today.”

Ashley stepped back, like it took a measured effort to separate herself, then she smiled. With that, she left, heading back into the deeper prison, while leaving us to enter the gate.

Capricorn and Sveta each placed a hand on one of Lookout’s shoulders. I glanced at Cryptid, but I couldn’t read the expression he wore, Lookout’s device masking his face.

There were people to keep tabs on, both enemies and on our side.

⊙

Our hideout was coming together. Kenzie’s computers were hooked up, monitors and projected screens arranged. Whiteboards and desks were being moved around. Ashley’s whiteboard with ‘Swansong’ across the top in fancy script was now joined by ‘Rain’. The preliminary notes on what they needed and what they’d found were going up on their shared board.

The board we’d freed up listed the other teams, from the Wardens, the Guild, all the way down to the pairing of Fume Hood and Tempera. It stood at the back of the room, furthest from Kenzie’s workstation. People we’d rope in.

Kenzie’s projectors started showing images from her camera feeds. A couple were from Cedar Point. The graffiti had been painted over in places, or had chipped away because some of the yellow paint they’d co-opted and used had been meant to draw temporary lines for outlining buried power cabling or highlighting spots for danger, not to paint something in a way that lasted for weeks or months, across weather changes.

Tristan’s laptop stalled as it loaded the page. I’d stepped away to sort out whiteboard markers while it took its time, and now I approached again. He was wearing only the lower portion of his armor, the upper half just the under-armor part that prevented chafing. Sveta was beside him, hands clasped behind her back as she bent over to a degree that most would find untenable after a minute or so.

The page that had only loaded ninety percent of the way was a map with a list of crimes reported, as compiled and shared out by the police of the Megalopolis. Citizens managed it, apparently, listening in on the police scanners and putting in push-pin style markers on the map.

A slice of the map was gray, refusing to load in, but the overall situation was clear, especially as Tristan moved the slider. Petty crimes were up. People were cluing in that the heroes and the police didn’t have the authority or power to arrest everyone.

In Cedar Point, things were ‘better’. The vacancies were filling, as people relocated here from places nearer to the devastated portals, the villains were scattered with only a few lingering and not really conducting business. Even here, according to the map, there were burglaries, robberies, and concerned citizens reporting that they’d seen drug deals or drug-related activity.

It was a ‘good’ area, with an influx of hopeful people and criminals still spooked from the recent crackdown and collapse of their power structure- there were bad areas too, and there were areas that had been bad, that had been lowered a few notches by the portal fiasco, and by the threat of war.

“We need to figure out how to handle this,” Capricorn said.

“Is that even possible?” Sveta asked. “Handling this?”

“Let me refresh before I try to answer that,” Tristan said.

He refreshed. Some of the site elements lingered, while the map reloaded. I bit my tongue rather than comment or complain.

“I’ll have you guys hooked up to my internet in five or ten minutes,” Kenzie said. “Things will be faster then.”

“Please God,” Tristan said. “Thank you.”

I looked at the other pins on the loading map.

“Domestics, assaults, threats, noises at late hours,” Sveta recited, listing pins.

“Those are rare,” I said. “At least compared to some of these others we see over and over again. Look. Robbery. Dealing. It’s about resources. It’s about people feeling the cold and not feeling ready to face months of it, of darkness and food shortages.”

“That’s not law and hero stuff,” Sveta said. “That’s infrastructure. We can’t do much about that.”

“Drops in the bucket,” Chris said. He was standing beside Kenzie’s chair, watching.

“I could help a little if they let me give them tech,” Kenzie said from her workstation. “But they won’t. Speaking of tech, second box going live. Additional systems, monitors, and information, no super internet just yet, sorry. We’re booting up in five, four, three, two, one-”

There was a pause where a second or two passed. She kicked the box to her left. Projected images began to fill up more of the walls. News having to do with capes, with politics, with crime and industry. Some terrible newspaper comics popped up briefly, before being replaced by more pertinent things.

“And zero,” she said. “Tinker internet hookup next to come.”

In one area, according to a headline on a news ticker, Mayday was getting a hard time. The territories that Advance Guard was managing were seeing civilian pushback, citing Mayday’s lack of leadership in years before Kenzie had even joined his team.

I glanced at her, but she was busy enough that she didn’t see it. I watched as it lingered on the ticker before other news pushed it off.

The map had loaded incompletely again, with more gray than before. Tristan groaned loudly in frustration, walking away.

“We can’t make this about riot duty and supporting a crumbling infrastructure,” I said. “We can’t be extra police officers, with some extra capabilities and a lot of access and procedural stuff missing. It’s inefficient.”

“We stop going after criminals?” Tristan asked.

“We go after the key ones, prioritize the worst, and the ones our team can break up. The courts are under enough strain as is. They aren’t going to appreciate us sending petty drug dealers their way.”

“And there’s subversive, hostile elements in the city,” Sveta said. “Earth C’s soldiers.”

“That’s the big reason we’re needing to coordinate,” I said. “Them. The Fallen. Maybe Love Lost’s group. Possibly Prancer’s remnants, depending on how resentful they are. Those who aren’t playing along or who pose too big a risk.”

Tristan added, “And each group or major location may be targeted by hostile powers. Dragon, Defiant and others at the top know, but…”

“We have to keep an eye on the prison,” Kenzie said. “Ashley and Rain.”

“Yeah,” Capricorn said. “Among other things.”

“I was thinking about it,” Lookout said. She swiveled around in her chair. “It’s a lot.”

“It’s a lot,” I agreed.

“We can pick something to do, and we can go after it, but other stuff is going to come up while we’re doing that, even if we’re really, really good about it,” Kenzie said. “Even if we get the other teams to coordinate and we’re really, really, really fast with getting other teams to cooperate with us, it’s going to be hard.”

“Maybe impossible,” Chris said.

“Why does you chiming in like that make me suspicious?” Tristan asked.

“Me?” Chris asked.

“You’re hanging out with Kenz, no snark, no hostility, you’re being quiet, you’re helping-”

“Because he likes me,” Kenzie said.

“No, it’s because,” Chris said. “I’m not stressed about being in the latest of a long, annoying line of institutions. Don’t put me in a hospital, orphanage, jail, school, I’m good.”

“Good might be overstating it,” I said.

“You two are conspiring,” Tristan said.

I studied their expressions, carefully neutral. Kenzie had the hint of a smile on her face, but she mostly seemed jittery, heel on the top of a cardboard box, foot jiggling.

“I can see it,” I said.

“It’s not a conspiracy. Can I just make my pitch, explain how I see things, and you can correct me if I’m wrong?” Kenzie asked.

“Go ahead,” Sveta told her.

“This is a big thing. I’m going to end up working really hard either way, but if we go the way I was just talking about, where we try to do one big thing at a time and other stuff keeps coming up and getting in the way, we’ll get buried, we’ll start slipping, and I’ll end up working super late to build stuff we super duper absolutely need.”

“It’s possible. We could establish rules to avoid that,” Sveta said.

“Or,” Kenzie said. “We agree we’re in trouble. If things were really terrible in a fight, Victoria would stop holding back and would hit hard to smash people to smithereens. Tristan and Byron would use some of their tougher tricks, like stalactite rain or drowning people in rock.”

“I’ve never had cause to do that. I’m not even sure I could.”

“Sveta-” Kenzie started. “There’s maybe possibly a situation where things were dangerous and you’d leave that body.”

“Let’s not discuss that,” Sveta said. “I don’t want to entertain the idea. I know how bad it could be.”

“My point is, we’re all really strong. Sometimes there’s a situation where we stop being nice about it and just do our best.”

I saw the almost-smile become more of a smile. Because her means of self expression was different, with a smile meaning something totally different, I had to parse eyebrows, eyes, mouth and body language individually and then piece it together to read her.

Worry, guilt?

“What did you do?” I asked.

She froze.

“Smooth Kenz,” Chris murmured.

“Fuck off if you’re not going to help,” she said, under her breath. “I figured we needed all the info we could get.”

“You didn’t take Dragon’s files, did you?” Tristan asked.

“No! No. Nothing like that,” Kenzie said.

I imagined everyone in the room breathed a faint sigh of relief at that. Even Chris probably would’ve, and she’d apparently included him in her plan, confiding in him.

Taking Dragon’s files would’ve been a potential shitstorm of epic scale.

“I took over the prison security system, so we can use their surveillance” Kenzie said. “And Chris and I kind of worked together to get cameras inside.”

She hit a key. The feeds along the wall switched to footage from the cameras spaced across the prison. A few of the scenes flicked between multiple perspectives across the building.

I closed my eyes.

“Chris, why?” Tristan asked.

“You’re getting on my case?” Chris asked. “She’s as culpable or more culpable than I am.”

“She’s two years younger than you and you’re supposed to be a good role model.”

“I failed at that a while ago, Tristan. And she’s right. We need this, because we can’t take the long road every time. We were going to end up doing this anyway.”

“Why didn’t you just ask?” Sveta asked.

“Because,” Kenzie said. “It’s the kind of thing where it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than ask permission. Plus if I got caught, you all can claim I’m the ditzy tinker kid and you had no idea what I was doing. It’s proof against even lie detector capes.”

There were some out there, in Foresight.

“But I didn’t get caught and now the chances are really slim we get caught. Just like my being on their server. Now that it’s done… I think it’s done, I can tell you guys and you can decide what you want to do with it.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Um. Here.”

She reached for a book at the edge of her workstation, checked it front and back, and tossed it to me.

A novel of the sort that was aimed at young adolescents. It was one I’d read a long time ago, but had largely forgotten. I remembered more of the movie of the same name.

Examining it, I found the circle of the ‘o’ in word ‘Holt’ on the spine had been colored in black. The book opened and closed, with nothing shaking out of it.

I pried at it, got my fingernails under it, and pulled it out. It was the eye camera that Kenzie had placed in Ashley’s eye. It had phased into the book, the extra bits almost invisible, they were so phased out.

“The books you were talking about,” I said.

“My care package. It comes with a way to keep a better eye on things.”

“You helped?” I asked Chris.

“The tech I had on me that they looked at was what let her get access to the security cameras,” Chris replied.

“Let me get this straight,” Tristan said. “You hacked a secure facility. Using a… virus?”

“Vector of attack,” Kenzie said. “Yes.”

“Chris feigns being an asshole to buy time to hack in-”

“I didn’t feign, thank you,” Chris said.

“You had and have control of prison oversight now,” Tristan continued down his list.

“Yes,” Kenzie replied.

“And you snuck in a camera- multiple cameras.”

“One for Ash and one for Rain,” Kenzie said. “So I can show you stuff, and we can communicate with them, and it gets a lot easier to do stuff. Look, look, I can show you-”

She swiveled around and then hit buttons

“Kenzie, stop,” Sveta said. “We need to discuss this, then we need to discuss what we do with the aftermath.”

“Too late. Feed’s up,” Kenzie said. “Sorry.”

“I’ll cover your entire system in stone if you aren’t careful,” Tristan said. “Soak it in water. You’re getting carried away.”

“I’m saying we might need to get a little carried away because the whole situation is carried away. I had to do this little dodgy thing, but it means we can communicate better with them, and we definitely need that. It means we can communicate more to other teams, and that’s super important.”

The projected icon showed a slice of Ashley’s cell.

“This is old footage,” Kenzie said. “About half an hour ago. She figured it out.”

The image distorted, the book’s perspective shifting.

As Ashley’s prosthetic hand reached in, almost covering up the lens in entirety, it was momentarily possible to see the artificial texture of the thumb-tip.

“I can’t get you out,” she murmured, her voice amplified by the speakers.

There was a thud as the book was allowed to fall to the table.

“Problem?” Ashley asked, audible through the computer speakers.

“I need your claws.”

“They’re mine, and I’m not about to hand them over. I like looking dangerous.”

“To pry something free. And for something else.”

“Pry? Now I’m curious.”

“Voice down for the camera. Come. Here, see the ‘o’?”

“I see it. You want it cut out?”

“No!” Kenzie said, to the wall. The wall and the two Ashleys weren’t in positions to hear.

“No. Bring your blade this way, pry.”

“Don’t scratch the edges of the lenses,” Kenzie said, again talking to the wall.

There was no echo of her statement this time. The Ashleys worked in silence.

“There.”

“Got it. Here we are. I’ve seen this before.”

“It looks like someone wrapped barbed wire around an ice pick and put a lens on the butt end.”

“A small ice pick, maybe. I need you to stick that into my eye.”

“Me?”

“You.”

Kenzie’s eyes widened.

“Didn’t leave instructions?” Chris asked.

“I… kind of forgot that her hands are wonky right now and her sister’s hands are even more dangerous.”

“We might need to turn it on,” Ashley said.

“It’s on!” Kenzie hurried to say, shouting at the wall. “Don’t flip the switches or you’ll change polarity or bias, or you’ll turn it off and it’ll become a weird stabby knife instead of one that goes through eyes!”

They couldn’t hear us, and a phone call or message was a procedural nightmare that would take a while to arrange and use. Even if we did tip them off about what was going on, we’d risk the ‘good guys’ finding out about the cameras.

I folded my arms.

The camera’s focus changed. The strange Ashley had the lens gripped by the flats of four blade fingers. The points of the fingers extended a bit beyond the pad or ‘head’ of the eye camera. If everything went in smoothly, the points would bury inside the eye before the object fully did.

Ashley took it, not flinching as the point touched home. Other parts of the camera flowed in. The points of her sister’s claw came perilously close to her eye and eye socket, but they didn’t penetrate. Our Ashley pushed it the rest of the way in with a stiff finger.

“One eyeball on the inside,” Tristan said.

“Until battery runs out,” Chris said.

“Nuh uh,” Kenzie said.

“Batteries run out. There’s no way you hooked that up to some greater power source and still sent it that far away from the source.”

“I included a battery recharger,” Kenzie said.

“What you said about sleeping with your head on a book,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Did you worry, when I had my claws so close? Did you fear me?” It was the other Ashley, talking to our Ashley.

“I trust you as far as I trust myself.”

“So corny,” Chris said. “I can imagine them just doing that nonstop for the next two years, and acting like it’s still cute or funny.”

“For the record,” Tristan said. “You’re not in the good books either. This whole thing with being underhanded and potentially screwing up everything is so not good.”

Kenzie protested, “In really tough fights, Victoria can go all out and hit full strength. In really tough information warfare, why can’t I do the same? This stuff is maximum importance, and now we can do more with less!”

“We might,” I said. “But we talk this sort of thing out first. This is the exact opposite of what we’re trying to do.”

Kenzie nodded, smiling.

“We should talk restrictions,” Sveta said. “Make sure we don’t make anyone suspicious. What if we waited a while before visiting again?”

“What?” Kenzie asked. “You’re joking.”

Sveta said, “We just dropped some tech off at their place and compromised their systems-”

“It’s not going to get caught. I guarantee you.”

“Just to be safe,” Sveta said.

“You’re punishing me.”

“I’m being safe,” Sveta said. “If it’s unreasonably safe, maybe it’s because I don’t like my team doing things behind my back, and I’m uneasy.”

“I’m- really sorry,” Kenzie’s voice had unexpected emotion in it. Her expression was a contrite half-smile.

“Good,” Sveta said. “Apology accepted.”

“I really thought this would be best. We can get info to and from there without it being stuck behind paperwork, or super difficult to get there and back. We’re so behind on everything, and-”

“And we communicate,” I said. “Please.”

Kenzie smiled and nodded.

Damn it. I’d have to figure this out, in a time and place where I wasn’t putting her on the spot. Smooth things over, make sure she wasn’t too upset.

“Speaking of communications,” Chris said. He was on a computer. “We have a peek at their systems.”

“Stay away from classified files,” Tristan said. “We’ve torn past enough boundaries today already.

“Nothing classified,” Chris said. “Employees make notes of frequent callers and people who request visits. We’ve got some threads to follow.”

“Cheit?” Sveta asked.

Chris tapped the screen, before stepping back.

Rather than us go to the computer to look, Kenzie changed the display, broadcasting the image of yellow text on a black background onto the wall.

The self-proclaimed Blue Empress was wanting to see people within the prison. She had been refused a few times. For good reason.

She went by other names. The Woman in Blue. Goddess. She’d taken over a world single-handedly. After Gold Morning, she’d been left in our world, where she’d lurked on the fringes. Something or someone in the prison had piqued her interest, and now she was exerting pressure, trying to get inside.

What to even say? On the one hand, to dismiss this would be madness. On the other hand, to mark it as important when doing so would only encourage Kenzie…

Pieces were almost falling into place.

“Chris, can you find information on Crystalclear? Requests, communications?”

“Yeah,” Chris said. “I can try.”

I folded my arms, looking at the image on the screen, the moving text, the slow-moving query.

My aura was like a push, fear or awe. Lately it seemed to be only fear, with a few rare, weird exceptions. Monokeros could pick one person and sway them wholly and completely. The Woman in Blue was the best of both, or even stronger.

She’d been making subtle moves, biding her time, and nobody knew exactly why or what that patience served. Now we had a glimmer of what she was doing.

She was after someone, something, or what the prison offered to someone who had absolute control over others- an army.

“Crystalclear is in communication with others,” Chris said. “It’s encrypted.”

“We can get in,” Looksee said. She looked at us. “If you’re okay with that.”

One of the biggest players around was circling around one of the biggest, meanest collections of parahumans around. Cheit knew and planned on turning it into a trap for her, explaining their interest in the place as a form of bait, or they’d happened to be after the same prize.

This was going to turn into a battlefield.

Beacon – 8.5

The wind blew my hair across my gloved hand and the glowing screen of my phone. On the screen, a short email chain had me biting my tongue in reality, even though it was an exchange of text alone.

I flexed the arm that was no longer in the sling. The injury was still very much felt.

I’d been idle for too long, because the ‘circle’ dropped down from the top, obscuring part of the screen. Two options were on the circle. On the left, the phone offered the option of trying to draw power by way of ambient, wireless energy, including solar, EM, and whatever else. It would put the phone in a ‘rest’ mode. On the right, a music note and a list of my music, with the phone browsing recent messages and context to try to smart-pick a playlist of music to listen to based on my guessed mood.

The phone left both up as choices, with an upward swipe to go back to what I was doing. Each option grew and diminished as a two-segment pie chart while the phone’s thinking process brought up words and ideas- distance from home, recent browsing.

Just about every part of that whole process was about two steps shy of being hot garbage in terms of accuracy and functionality, but watching it happen and seeing the pie slice of ‘rest’ shrink was a distraction. The countdown appeared, as the phone prepared to make its choice.

I swiped in the last second. The emails.

Mayday
Re: Proposal
ReSound and I are away right now. Killing toxic waste eating mutants on Bet. Wish I was joking. Not even the lousiest part of my week. If Looksee hasn’t had any contact with the files or computer in question we will look at what you have. Meet our guys on their patrol and give them a disk or something? Sound and I will review when we can or others can check it out and give us feedback. Sound good? Will call my guys and find out who you’d meet and where.

Antares
Re:Re: Proposal
Sounds good. Looksee is busy with a project- no issues there. I’ve got a flash drive with info I can leave you guys.
Sorry to hear about the mutants. Good luck.

Mayday
Re:Re:Re: Proposal
They’re racing down Post st. in pursuit of unpowered criminals and should pass through Westport soon coming from the east. Can’t call them but you should be able to help intercept. Notify if intercept fails or is too much trouble. Is Spright Flapper Shortcut.

Mayday had a habit of writing in big blocks of text. In the gloom, half an hour past sunset, my phone bright and everything else dark, the grid of black text was hard to read.

I squinted at the name ‘Shortcut’, my teeth still set on my tongue, biting down.

Advance Guard was tricky. Things weren’t great when it came to Lookout and her history with a few members of that group, but Shortcut was a bit of a problem too.

My hope was that Shortcut was a chronic enough problem that his dislike of me in specific and our group in general wouldn’t taint things. We needed these groups, if we were going to make this work. It just so happened that Advance Guard was both the most difficult to wrangle and the fastest when it came to responses.

On the other hand, if Mayday wanted to set us up to fail here, while maintaining plausible deniability, having us offer unasked-for help to a group that included Shortcut would be the way to do it. Just… was it worth it? What did he gain?

Advance Guard was in a bad spot, and they had to be careful. It had been a leading team and its numbers had diminished. A handful of losses and a bit hit to morale had led to a cascading effect. The team was half what it was.

Despite the later hour, traffic was stop and start below us. Headlights formed a staccato line of yellow-gold, stabbing through a haze of illuminated car exhaust and dust. Behind us, the car headlights were red, the dust and car exhaust less visible in that particular light.

No sign of the chase.

Capricorn stood on a piece of construction equipment, near one of the bottlenecks that was slowing down the flow of traffic. He was decked out in his armor, illuminated from below by the lights of the cars, but also by the background tint of a dull orange light by the motes that swirled through the air in tight spirals, out to about fifty feet to his right, fifty feet to his left, and to varying heights above him. The orange light coupled with the red of taillights for an even more exaggerated effect.

As ominous as it might be, he periodically turned his head or bent down, to better communicate with people on the ground. Eight o’clock at night and the construction workers were still suited up, some still working, though mercifully without any heavy, loud equipment or too much obstruction of traffic.

Sveta, meanwhile, sat in the light of a spotlight that had been used for construction, that was standing in lieu of some streetlights that had been knocked over. There was a platform below the light, and she was there, head both bowed and askew. Tendrils crept out of the neck portion of her costume, back to her hair, and down the front of her body and arms. She was changing the colors in one of her arms, pausing here and there to look up and make sure our Advance Guard heroes and their quarry weren’t on their way.

The work she did was very precise and particular, twenty-plus tendrils looping down her body, around her arms and then anchoring at different points on three different paintbrushes. The movements of each paintbrush were meticulous, six to ten tendrils all pulling at the same time, one relaxing to allow the others to pull it away from that direction. At the same time, a tendril worked its way around her face, gripping her eyelid, working her way into the socket.

She shook her head fiercely, and it pulled away. Others snapped out to grip the edges and bars of the platform she sat on.

Dangerous, maybe, to be doing it in the open, but she was above the cars, on a platform a distance away from the road, the people were safe within vehicles, and she was partially anchored to her body and the platform. I knew she had control enough that she’d been able to hang out with me and she hadn’t lost control to the point that she’d broken my forcefield.

I put my phone away, drifting through the sky, to find a position where it wasn’t pitch dark, but where I wasn’t breathing in car exhaust or letting the wind blow my hair into my face.

Sveta spotted me. I watched as the paintbrushes were pulled into a plastic package, still wet, and tendrils retreated into her body with remarkable speed. Her head tilted one way and then the other as she closed up her shell, locking the tendrils within. She raised a hand.

My invitation to approach.

I flew to her, one eye on the direction the criminals were supposed to be coming from. She was closing up the paint- a curated selection of paints in the same colors she had as part of her outfit, each ‘pot’ no larger than a dairy creamer.

“Can I see?” I asked.

She twisted around to show me her new paint. “Patching up scuffs, and the shading on the octopus face never looked right.”

“It looks good. I can’t give you a real verdict until we have better lighting.”

“Yeah,” she said. “All these poor people. It’s eight fifteen, and they’re still on their way home. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could make a big dinner, go car to car, and hand out chowder or something?”

“That’s the go-to? Chowder?”

“Yeah,” Sveta said, eyes widening at the thought. “Soup is just depressing. It makes you think ‘soup kitchen’. Thin, and in times like this, you know you’re getting it because there’s not much and the people serving you are trying to stretch things as far as they’ll go. But chowder? Big chunks of salmon or crab? Tons of butter and salt, then some potato, onion, celery, some dill?”

“Sticks to the stomach. Serve with some rolls. Toasted, ideally.”

“Yeah, absolutely. Fresh baked rolls. That’s part of it. It’s not enough that the quality is there. There has to be just enough in a serving that people can’t eat it all in one go. Give them that tiny bit of security for tomorrow.”

Impractical, a herculean task to put together. And it was far from being part of the ten percent of issues we were gearing up to tackle.

But this wasn’t about practicality. That wasn’t what she was imagining or spelling out.

“It makes me think of crisis points,” I said. “Head to the houses where the crimes just happened, say hi, offer to patrol the area for a bit, just to help them feel a bit safer- security. Like you said. Visit the church, talk to the people who just lost their home. Police stations, hospitals.”

“Absolutely,” Sveta’s voice was barely audible. In the distance, cars were honking. It didn’t look like it was because the villains were whizzing by. “Except nowadays, if you want to help the traumatized…”

I brought my hand up to my hair, to push it back behind my ear, before I flipped up my hood to try and give my hair some shelter. My eyes were on the road, my ears on the honking and on the slams of car doors, as people opened them and leaned out the side of their cars, trying to see what lay ahead.

“It would be nice if we could wave our hands and get all of them home,” I murmured. “Get the obstacles out of the way, dedicate some time, help with reconstruction, and make it happen. Give the ones who missed dinner because they’ve been on the road for the last two hours and there aren’t any rest-stops. But doing too much is a problem too. We do what we can.”

“I want to find the middle ground between not doing too much and not being self-indulgent.”

“That’s- self-indulgent? That’s not what I think of when I think of you,” I said.

“Except I am, aren’t I? This body paint- some like it but it’s by me, for me. The wig, it’s for me. The body, the hassle others go through for me, to help me with the little things. The trip I took with Weld, all for me, and the errands surrounding getting this body put together- he didn’t have that much time before he started with the Wardens, and it all went to me.”

“Ah, this is about Weld? Even the parts you talked about that aren’t about Weld.”

She paused, deer in the spotlight. “Yeah. Am I that obvious?”

“There were hints. For what it’s worth, I think he’s the kind of guy who gets invigorated and refreshed by helping others. He seemed pretty genuinely happy that you were where you were at, that first meeting.”

“I dunno,” Sveta said. She shrugged, shoulders squeaking slightly. “I wanted to make him something for dinner the other day, and he said no. It took me a bit before I found out it might be a bit of a chore, trying to find things he can eat. He came home so mentally worn out that he didn’t have it in him to pretend or feign interest. What else do I do for him, if you cancel that out or call it a chore? What can I do for him? It’s supposed to be a partnership.”

“It’s not an answer, but… one thing I found, that I talked to Dean with a few times, is that guys can’t always wear their hearts on their sleeves. They can’t turn to their friends and cry it out. So they bear it, carry it.”

“Dean would know that stuff, huh?”

“Some. I’m generalizing a lot. Thing is, a lot of the time, guys only have one outlet, if they have one at all. And even then, they-”

I saw lights in the distance. Advance Guard had the costumes with panels, sharp angles, illuminated sections and hyper-modern cuts. Some of the panels, it seemed, acted like reflectors, or were bright enough to make them distinct from a distance in the dark.

“There they are.”

“I see them,” Sveta said.

“We’ll talk about this later?”

“Please,” she said. “I don’t know who else to ask about some of this stuff.”

I got Capricorn’s attention with a wave, pointing. He nodded. The orange motes swirled more.

He hadn’t solidified the motes into anything. He just kept drawing, the motes remaining in the same spaces, filling in gaps between orange lines.

Flapper had her wings out – her clothes had altered, sleeves extended to great length, formed into great wings that she beat, as she swooped and dove to ride air currents. The wind was at her back, and she had the natural flier advantage of not needing to worry about following the road or terrain. Where the road curved, she could fly in a straight line. Nothing like the old-timey flapper style to her, except the short dress in the Advance Guard style.

Shortcut- I could see him on the ground, periodically obscured as he moved behind trucks and obstacles. He was fast, but it was hard for him to see where he was going. He zig-zagged, with careful movements.

And then Spright- who had both the wings out, though he wasn’t flying. His feet were on the ground, and the same stop-start zig-zag motion, if a bit freer.

I flew for the spotlight that Sveta was under. Gripping it, I twisted it around, aiming it at the incoming pursuit, keeping the worst of the light out of Shortcut and Spright’s eyes. Flapper was high enough up that she wasn’t going to be blinded.

Two trucks, what might have been postal vans or armored trucks- I wouldn’t know until I was closer. One eighteen wheeler, that lagged behind the rest. One parahuman- a man in what looked like a blurry hamster wheel. All traveled on the flat ground to the side of the road. Traffic of construction vehicles had torn up the ground already, and the passage of these vehicles kicked up geysers of mud and dust, depending on how dry or cold the ground was where they passed.

The hamster wheel was the worst of it, when it came to the collateral mess. The geysers of flung dirt would’ve painted the face of a two-story building.

“Don’t engage just yet!”

“Right!” Sveta called.

I gave the hamster wheel guy a wide berth, flying to Spright. The moment I got close to him, though, he kicked off the ground, taking flight with what looked like a combination of my flight and Flapper’s.

“Yesss!” he called out, before lunging forward with a combination of wing flaps and Glory Girl flight.

Which, inconveniently, meant I couldn’t ask him stuff. It left me two options – Shortcut and Flapper.

“Flapper!” I called out. “Mayday sent us! What’s this!?”

“Capes and getaway drivers. Living cargo in the trucks!”

“What capes?”

“Trial and Error! Trial’s the wheel, crazy strong, but he’s tiring out! You can’t hit Error! She picks one person and they’re fucked. There’s a general fucked effect around her too!”

“There’s an aircraft runway and helicopter landing pad at Westport Stretch!” I warned.

I saw her digest that.

“Does Spright know the rules?” I asked, flying closer to her. I could feel the force of the wing flaps.

“He knows!”

I flew in the direction of the wheel, who was leading the way now. Sveta was keeping pace, but only barely. Ahead of us, Capricorn had his motes of light, ready to form his barricade, if he had to.

Airspace meant restricted flying. Standard operating protocol for getaway drivers was to try to cut through an area where police helicopters couldn’t pursue. Once the aerial was lost, it was that much easier to disappear on the ground. Westport was large enough that it was conceivable that three trucks could disappear, if advance preparations had been taken.

“Wheel is heavy offense!” I called to Sveta, as I caught up. “One truck has a stranger! Trial and Error! Stranger in truck with fucky effect!”

She went for the trucks, leaping onto one cab roof.

“Careful!” I called out.

Traffic was mostly at a standstill, and we were racing past it, to the point it was easy to imagine we were traveling faster than we were. The air was cold, and it was filled with flecks of dirt, in the wake of those guys.

Capricorn’s wall popped into being. Crenellated, styled, with ram-headed men in stoic, stern positions at set intervals along the wall’s length. For the moment, the bottleneck on the real road was made small enough to only let small, regular cars through.

Trial was gunning for the wall now, evading Spright’s harrying fly-bys. Shortcut drew nearer, raised his weapon while skating on the grass, and then leaped- only to skip the follow-through. He ducked and rolled on the ground, got his feet under him, and resumed skidding endlessly on the ground, legs barely moving, while holding his polearm.

I gestured, as dramatically as I could, for Capricorn to get down, my arm sweeping from above my head to down and away.

He jumped off the wall at the same time Trial reached it. Trial unfolded from his wheel form, going high with the final ‘kick’ of the disassembling wheel, and his mechanism became clear- chains. Heavy chains with what looked like telekinetic control slammed into Tristan’s wall and knocked a good chunk of it down like it was a sand castle.

He was still airborne as the chains came down toward other targets. Spright evaded, as did Shortcut. The remains of the wall couldn’t. Chain snagged the remaining parts and flung them away. One chunk came toward me, with Flapper a short distance behind me. It became water in the air, and I was sprayed by what felt like a shower of ice-cold needles, breaking my forcefield in the initial spray, the follow-up pricking my exposed skin, the liquid soaking my costume.

I would have preferred the big chunk of rock.

A truck passed through the gap Trial had made. Spright harassed it. Shortcut followed behind, but without much vigor. He didn’t attack.

They were getting through. The second truck. The third had Sveta on it- she was reaching inside the cab, forcing a hard brake. It had to be the emergency brake she’d grabbed.

“Knock it over!?” Flapper called out to me. “Gently!”

I could do that, especially given the gentle slope away from the proper road with the gridlock of cars. I threw myself at the side of the truck Sveta had stopped. Wretch out. Fingers gripped corrugated metal, digging in until they found purchase in the heavier, sturdier frame.

With flight, some strength, and some attention to pushing on the end where the wheels sat on more of a slope, letting the torque of that initial motion carry through to the front of the eighteen wheeler’s container, then to the cab at the very front. Once it started moving, I flew along the side, arm out, forcefield skimming against the corrugated metal, periodically snagging or catching on it as hands that weren’t mine gripped parts of it.

But the pressure and the push that moved forward helped with using the rotation that was already there. The truck tipped. The wretch gripping metal and the fact that the metal had to tear for the truck to fall was even something of a help.

I flew up, gathered myself, and flew down, kicking at the point between the door and the frame of the vehicle. With the benefit of my forcefield, the kick served to bend metal. That door wouldn’t open easily.

Glancing at the others to make sure there was no imminent danger, I hopped down, and I used my aura to drive the point home. Through the windshield, I could see a face reacting to the aura.

Hopefully he would stay put. Breaking an intact windshield or opening a car door that was above him and damaged would be very difficult.

Flapper’s wings had transformed- each had been an exaggerated overextension of her sleeves, but now they each had middle fingers- lengths in the middle that she was using to attack in time with her wingbeats.

A combination of wind, trying to stay aloft so she could attack from above, no doubt her most effective tactic, and a slip in her technique led to her misgauging things. She missed the van and couldn’t get her wing up in time for another flap, as it slapped the ground by the moving vehicle.

I flew to her rescue, as she fell, landing hard. Her wing hit construction equipment and one car at the head of the line. I could hear her swearing.

“Careful!” Sveta called out. She’d been on a vehicle, but she was moving alongside the convoy now. She looked scuffed, her hair in disarray.

“What’s going on!?” I called out.

“That stranger effect!”

You can’t hit Error.

Shortcut hadn’t been able to hit Trial. He’d decided to hold back. Flapper had told me that the stranger effect stuck on someone, and then there was a general effect on the parahuman and their truck.

Flapper had apparently decided to test the limits of that general effect.

Capricorn had been left a bit behind, but he was active.

“Heads up!” the words were bellowed, in the top-of-the-lungs way, where it would have hurt.

And it wasn’t in Tristan’s voice. Even in a shout, I could hear the difference in the two boys.

Water shot toward the armored vans in five mirror spurts, all flying in parallel. Each jet of water became solid as Capricorn blurred, coalescing into javelins. They landed in front of one vehicle- and that vehicle rammed them. The van shuddered, rocked, and then swerved, before coming to a stop.

Leaving Spright, Shortcut, Sveta and I against Trial, Error, and the mooks from the trucks.

A push of my aura helped to spook them. They’d been grabbing what they had on hand for self defense, and they slowed for a moment.

“Boss?” one asked, nervously. “You need us? I don’t think we can fight capes.”

“Stay by the truck. We can handle this,” Trial said. He said it with near-complete confidence, too. If there was a waver or a pause a tenth of a second longer, it was because of my aura.

Only fear, these days, with exceptions for someone like Kenzie.

Trial had armor in overlapping plates that were each connected by chains, and more chains wrapped around him. His mask was the best part of it, with a shaped metal mask that contoured to the angles of his face, and two ‘laurel’ horns, and the mask was only a B-.

Error had a costume with red ‘x’ icons across it, in a motif that recurred like spikes did on a punk rocker. She wore a medical mask with a red ‘x’ on it, and a flat-top hat with the same above the bill, and I could see a white outline where it had been cut imprecisely from whatever the source material was. The non-red parts of the costume mixed khaki green and black. Nothing about it was even B-.

Error. She made people fuck up. Right.

It was such a bad name, it gave so much away and it barely worked as a cape name. It was such an offensive costume from a design standpoint… Trial, unless I was missing something in the background of the name, didn’t even make sense given the guy’s power, it was a shitty gimmick…

“Didn’t ask for help,” Shortcut said.

I was already irritated, digesting who we were up against, and he had to go and say that.

“I had something to hand over, you guys can watch it or pass it to Mayday. If you want, we can leave.”

“Leave,” Shortcut said.

“Don’t leave!” Spright said. “Please. Shortcut, ease-”

Trial lashed out with chains.

I flew to intercept.

“No!” Shortcut bellowed.

I felt the pressure wash over me before I even got to the chain. If my response to Shortcut saying something might’ve been mixed, given our past history, the sensation helped tip me to the one side of the scale. I changed course in mid-air, flying straight to the ground.

The chain flew over my head. It came perilously close to Spright and Shortcut, but both were nimble, using Shortcut’s power. They dodged.

Sveta, as quick as her hands were, wasn’t able to reach out and grab something, and also haul herself away, before the chain could connect. The chain clipped her. I heard the impact.

“Error’s specific,” Shortcut said, like Sveta hadn’t just taken a hit. “She turns your attacks-”

I flew to Sveta’s side.

“Against you. Including deflections.”

I saw the chains move. I tensed, ready to fly up there, to beat the incoming attack back, collateral be damned.

What happened, then, if I deflected? The chains went in the worst possible direction for our side? Did I miss and hit the wrong part?

“Don’t,” Shortcut said. “Trial. Don’t.”

Spright added, “You lost your cargo, she’s giving medical attention, the other one needs it. You don’t fuck with that.”

“Nobody cares about that anymore,” Error said.

Sveta’s chest was broken. Tendrils were creeping out.

“You alright?” I murmured.

“Rattled. Broken. I have stuff, but I can’t move my arms.”

In another situation, where the rules were in place, Sveta might be fine like this. She could lie dormant and wait for help, or ask for the coast to be cleared.

It was always the problem, lingering in the background.

She looked tense.

“Can I?” I asked. At the nod, I reached for the small of her back, where her clothes covered her kits. I saw some smaller tendrils reach out for my hand and stop short.

Her tendrils were growing over time. She grew new ones. Right now she was keeping the longest at bay, because they were a danger to others, not just to me.

“This is taking concentration,” Sveta said.

I grabbed the kit, hauling it free with a tug that would have been violent if Sveta’s body were flesh.

This situation was requiring me to split my own concentration. I was trying to ignore Trial and his chains, and the fact that Error had her hand hovering near her belt. The bars at the side- batons?

Nunchucks.

“Let us go,” Trial said. He had an accent like someone from the midwest. “We take our trucks, we drive away, and you stay.”

“I can’t see myself agreeing to that,” Shortcut said.

“I’ll attack those girls,” Trial said. “And I’ll attack that line of cars. Error’s rule means that no matter what you do, it’s going to be messy. The heroes can’t afford it.”

“If you attack us, the only mess will be the stains your bodies leave behind,” I growled.

“We’re willing to take that risk,” Trial said. “But only if we have to. You can afford to let us go. It’s pigs, chickens, and cum.”

“Valuable, needed pigs and chickens,” Spright said. “The equipment and refrigerated material for breeding stock. Forty pigs at a thousand a head, plus the other stuff, forty-two thousand on the one truck, easy.”

I pushed the seal over the armor- the damage was enough that one patch didn’t cover it all. Tendrils reached around and touched my hand. I pulled away.

“Pigs, chicken, and jizz… or their lives. And their lives?” Trial asked. The tip of the chain turned in the air to point for him. At me and Sveta, then the cars.

I didn’t want to be a bargaining chip. I gripped Sveta by the shoulders.

I had to wait. Wait until I could be sure Error wouldn’t focus on me, use her power, and potentially turn my attempt at an evacuation into a horrible disaster.

A tendril wrapped itself around my hand. It squeezed, and it squeezed against my forcefield. The forcefield didn’t break, but I was aware of the strain. Fuck me- I was too close to Sveta, I could see the whites of her eyes. She was too close to me. I’d destroyed door handles on cars and pavement like this, and she was this close.

I canceled my forcefield, and something in the micron of slack that resulted saw the tendril fail to cinch tighter, then unwind. It twisted and kinked in the air before retreating into the crack. I pressed down another patch.

Sveta had her eyes closed.

Capricorn was approaching. I saw a mote pass me, and I shook my head. Error saw, turning to Capricorn. He froze.

Spright looked at me. I raised my hand, indicated with a thumb jab. That got me a nod.

I seized Sveta and dragged her away.

Trial twisted around, chains raising up around him. Four at each side, each as big around as his arms were, tipped with a spiked ball as large as his head.

Error, meanwhile, had her hands out to her sides, one in front, one to her left. A mime pressing against two walls of her invisible box. Except it wasn’t- she was broadcasting, or maintaining a signal.

Trial went on the offensive. chains whirled at one side, rotating in a circle with enough force to strike the ground and cast him forward. Spright slid on the ground, ran to chase-

“Go,” Sveta said.

I charged in.

Spright manifested his own chains. He started to swing them around- and then stopped. Chains shattered, each individual link breaking. He turned to look at Error.

Too dangerous to use when under her influence?

I had to unravel this- figure it out. While her back was to me, I could go after her. Wretch out- one move to take her out of the fight. Given what we were up against, I wasn’t sure we’d get a second shot.

A swing for the legs, like I’d done when hitting concrete.

I felt the effect as I got within a few feet. I felt it intensify as I swung-

I saw other movement in the corner of my eye. Shortcut closing in. The effect was like grabbing soap, only for it to slip free of one’s hands. The swing was too soon, the angle and arc, and Shortcut’s timing of super-quick approach put him squarely in the way.

I canceled out my power. I swung only a fist, and my fist turned up, so I struck him with a lighter blow using the heel of my hand instead. I hit him in the shoulder, strength unaugmented.

He shoved me away. He swung his polearm, missed, and the butt end of the thing came perilously close to me. If I hadn’t been flying back and away, it would have hit me.

Was it because it didn’t hit me that it succeeded in scratching her? Or was the power itself no guarantee?

More concerning was the chain guy. Trial. I flew back, out of shortcut’s reach, and I tried to find an opening.

The chains were defensive- they slapped at Byron’s water, they blocked Spright. They were offensive– small wrecking balls with whip-crack power behind them. They were mobility. Whirling them in one hand like a wheel or whipping them around him like a fucking skip rope -I hated these guys- moved him at high speeds, with good maneuverability.

Error might need to concentrate. She seemed to focus on looking at people.

Identify the cracks, then strike. So long as it was reasoned out and so long as it didn’t escalate…

I hit the ground, scooping up as much as the Wretch could get, and sending a cascade of dirt and clumps of earth at Error and into the air. In the process, I hit Shortcut, because of course I did. But as much as it blinded and debilitated him, it also served to blind and limit her. I flew in closer, aura on, and I didn’t feel the pressure of that power settling in around me, warping space or altering my tactile and visual senses, or whatever it did.

Sveta’s hand grabbed me. I turned to look- and I saw that the dust was thick enough in the air that she couldn’t tell us apart, a fact that wasn’t helped by darkness and dirt.

I did the natural thing to communicate to her without tipping off Error. I gave the hand a waggle.

Then I grabbed it and I threw it out in Error’s direction.

With how this power seemed to work, it might get Shortcut instead. That would win us points.

But Shortcut, blinded, had backed off. Sveta’s hand dragged Error to her, and though her other arm was still disabled, she wrapped her legs around Error’s neck and shoulders.

That left Trial- and Trial was winning. Capricorn had sealed chains down by creating water and turning that water to stone, but with a simple tug, the chains came free, stone flecks flying. Shortcut was fended off, and Spright was maneuverability, not offense.

And, it seemed, even with where we were at, Error could use her power. Spright came dangerously close to impaling himself on Shortcut’s halberd.

On the ground ten feet from me were Capricorn’s javelins. As I approached them, people backed away.

“Cover her eyes!” I called out to Sveta. At those words, Trial looked and he seemed to realize the position and the numbers.

He lunged for the street, where cars still choked the road. Chains went up, and I turned on the Wretch, reaching for javelins that weren’t in my reach.

“No!” Shortcut shouted. “Stop.”

There was a pause, as if nobody was entirely sure he was referring to them, nobody wanted to stop if the others were still going. At this stage, people on the other side could be maimed or killed if the dynamic shifted.

“Pause,” Spright said.

The lighter word seemed to have more impact than the shout and the firmer ‘stop’.

“Stop,” Shortcut said. “You really want to go this far?”

“As far as we have to,” Trial said.

“Then go. Take your semen. Take your swine. Take your cocks. You’re in good company.”

I wanted to facepalm at the lame line, but Shortcut was on our side.

And frankly, I couldn’t fault him for calling it here.

It wasn’t worth.

“Hens actually,” Trial said. “Let my friend go.”

“We’re giving you a head start, but this definitely isn’t over,” Shortcut said. He gestured at Sveta.

Error climbed to her feet.

“This way,” Trial said. He gestured at the trucks. He was careful to remain within a chain’s length of the road, doing so with Error at his side. “There should be one more truck.”

“Tipped over,” I said.

He shook his head. “Tip it back over.”

“Driver was unconscious, last I saw,” I lied. “You can send someone if you want. Maybe Error can drive.”

“It’s not worth,” Error said.

I watched as Trial considered his options.

He indicated for the trucks to go, with one pausing by him to let Error on. The chains started up, and they were gone.

“We’ll tail,” Shortcut said. He looked at me. “You…”

“We can cooperate on this.”

“We could,” he said. “No. Spright, tell Flapper to handle this mess, talk to the unconscious one when they wake up. Catch up with me after.”

Then he was gone.

“Dick,” Capricorn muttered under his breath.

“Yeah. No way that was going to end well,” Spright said. “Heavy hitter paired with that kind of stranger power. We’ll take our lumps. This loss is Advance Guard’s fault, provided you don’t ask Shortcut to assign blame. Always good to see you.”

“Spright-” I said, interrupting before he could go.

“What’s up?”

“Two things. Mayday wanted me to pass this on. It’s a proposal for information sharing, networking. Dividing up the ten percent of threats that really need cape attention, swapping out. Take a look?”

He took the flash drive. He considered for a moment, the nodded. He floated a foot above the ground, borrowing my power. Just the movement aspect.

“Second thing is… I’m not okay with leaving it like this.”

“Me either, but sometimes we need to eat our losses.”

“I don’t like losing,” Capricorn said.

“What do you say I gather reinforcements and we do this again, try to corner them? This time with no civilians nearby.”

“If you want to try, I’m not going to complain. You have my number. It won’t make Shortstuff happy, but…”

“Rare thing?” Capricorn asked.

“Sure. Do me a favor and brief Flappy?”

“Okay,” Capricorn said.

Then Spright was gone, flying away using my power.

“I’ll call and check on Sveta,” I said. “You handle that side? See what the driver of the big truck says?”

“Yeah,” was the reply. Capricorn jogged off.

Yeah.

I had my phone out a moment later. The automated process for idling had selected one of the songs I’d downloaded for Gilpatrick during one of the Patrol’s visits to a school. Gun rules as a song for grade schoolers.

Because of course it had.

Tristan was gone. Sveta was sitting up, rubbing at the shoulder that wasn’t working, near where the damage was, and the cars were moving down the road, barely visible past the cover of construction.

At least chances were slim that some of the Error-induced disasters hadn’t been caught on camera. I could imagine that would go over well.

With the phone pressed to my ear, I walked over to the javelins, which were almost lost in the dirt that had been turned over by the passage of the vans and slashes of the chain whip.

I released the Wretch, and I reached out with my free hand, the bicep twinging from the gunshot wound that hadn’t fully healed.

Come on. Come on. Come on.

If it had mattered, would I have been able to?

Come on.

The Wretch grabbed the first javelin, then the next, and then a third. One broke in two- a bite, not a hand.

The other two, the Wretch simply held. I waited, then I moved my hand. There was no way to tell if it would work or not, because they broke to pieces as the grip tightened or changed.

I bent down and looked in the direction Capricorn had gone, and I reached down to one of the chunks of stone.

It crumbled in my grip. No power in effect.

We’ll work this out, I told the Wretch.

I straightened. Sveta reached me, having walked over. Her metal shoulder bumped my spiked one. Solidarity.

The phone was answered. There was squabbling. Boy and girl.

“Cryptid.”

“She hasn’t gone home?”

“No family dinner to get back to. She’s fiddling. Her person’s here, the guy Natalie knows.”

“I’ll have a talk with her in the morning,” I said. Talks were overdue.

“You call for something? I hope you called for something. I was asleep and you woke me up. The thing go okay?”

“Atrociously, actually,” I said. “But it’s not over, as far as I’m concerned. I need you to call people.”

I could hear his groan. I could also hear Kenzie in the background, volunteering her help.

“Or give me the numbers. I’ll call.”

“It’s fine. I’ll do some. Which people?”

“Everyone underlined in green. It’s not an emergency, but if they’ll do us this favor and help out, we’ll pay them back, or I will.”

There was a pause.

“If I didn’t spontaneously swap rods and cones in my eyes, that’s… a lot of people.”

They were the ones I didn’t think would take too much convincing, ones we’d worked with or had contact with.

Capricorn was back. There hadn’t been delay in getting the info. His arms were folded as he stared at me, and orange motes danced to either side of his head, forming shapes. Like branches.

Like antlers.

Prancer. His last hurrah, or his new and improved way of doing business. It couldn’t be easy- not someone we were already gunning for. It only reaffirmed my conviction here.

“Yeah,” I said, setting my jaw, glancing at my two teammates. “A lot of people. The villains might not want to stick by the rules of the cops and robbers game, but I want to keep the penalties.”

Beacon – 8.6

“I have a random thought,” I said.

Sveta and Capricorn were with me. Heroes were arriving- some in cars. They were the ones I’d labeled in green. The friends, the acquaintances, the ones where I figured there was enough trust that we could promise a favor in exchange for their help and they’d listen. Our vantage point on the roof of a garage put us above them all.

“Do share,” Sveta said.

“When the team was first getting together, I was trying to wrap my head around it. In thinking about names and thinking about themes, whatever I thought about, I felt like there was always at least one odd man out.”

“I know what you mean,” Capricorn said. “Branding, theme, style. If the team goes rugged then you, me, Ashley and Lookout are tough to fit in, while Chris and Rain are happy as clams. Sveta can adapt to that. If we go polished, preppy, hair done up… opposite.”

“Applies to other things too,” I said.

“And I don’t think I could adapt to polished,” Sveta said, cutting in before I could return to my thought.

Capricorn shrugged. “You’ve got the creative, artistic touch and a pretty face. You could change how you do your arms. I really think you could pull it off.”

“Except I don’t want to, and I’m uncomfortable,” she said. “Sorry, can we change the subject?”

“Sure,” Capricorn said. “But before we drop it-”

“Capricorn,” I interrupted, my voice a warning.

“What?”

“Boundaries,” I said.

“Really. It’s twice now in recent memory you’ve wanted to change the topic. This is just me adding to the discomfort for five seconds so I can avoid all of it in the future. Okay?”

“Okay,” Sveta replied, sighing like it was an extension of the word.

“Why uncomfortable?”

“Um. Saying I have a pretty face is a very nice thing to say-”

“No hetero,” he interrupted.

“-er, yes,” she said. She smiled despite herself. “But it reminds me that I’m just a face, pretty much. Sorry, I’ve been thinking a lot about… um, bodies, and my lack of one, because of stuff I brought up with you both.”

“Got it,” Tristan said. “Chat me up if you want to pick my brain again. Until then, no talk of bodies or boning.”

“Thank you,” she said the two words with finality. She looked at me, “There was always one person who didn’t fit in, when you tried to create a cohesive identity? Except maybe for the, uh, group.”

The therapy.

“Victoria wasn’t a part of that,” Capricorn said.

“I guess,” she replied.

“Thing is,” I said. “Standing here, thinking about how I didn’t even have to ask Capricorn if he was on board with seriously going after these guys-”

“Damn fucking straight,” Capricorn said it with enough force that a few heads turned our way.

“We’re tenacious,” I said. “Every last member of the group, we’ve been given every reason to give up and we pushed on.”

“For better or for worse. Poor Lookout,” Capricorn said.

“I can get behind the idea,” Sveta said. “Tenacious.”

I stood a little straighter, taking in the group of gathered heroes. I drew in a breath. “Then let’s go be stubborn. We’re not going to accept this loss.”

“Yeah,” Capricorn said.

I flew down from the roof of the concrete garage. I went straight from flying to striding forward. Capricorn hopped down, though it wasn’t a distance most would want to jump- twenty feet onto packed dirt, a heavy landing with the armor he wore. Just a little bit of enhanced physique could go a long way.

Sveta’s landing wasn’t as graceful. I heard the noise as she hauled herself, turned to look, and saw her coming my way. My arm went out and I caught her with it- stopping her from stumbling forward while helping to keep her upright.

She took my hand and gave it a momentary squeeze.

Heroes gathered around us. Fume Hood was present- Tempera wasn’t. Lighter had come, which was nice- it was my first time seeing the low-key vigilante, though we’d talked some by email. He’d been scheduled for a turn at harassing Cedar Point, but things had gone to hell before the scheduled time had come. He’d been enthusiastic about that- and I could assume he’d like the idea of this.

Sometimes a team seemed like too much, but being a solo hero was too lonely. Triggering tended to involve some lack of support structures- that was Parahumans 101, class one, an hour and fifteen minutes into the three hour lecture level stuff. To go from that to being a costumed hero didn’t generally involve gaining more support.

Maybe this would appeal.

Houndstooth was absent, but two of his subordinates were present. I recognized Foxtrot and another member of the Kings of the Hill. Foxtrot’s chatter about the Cedar Point operation had led to Advance Guard jumping in and our involvement being spoiled. Well, I had my suspicions that Scapegoat might have helped matters. The defected healer from Advance Guard was the primary one to blame- but Foxtrot had let some minor things slip.

My parents had been on that list of heroes with green labels. I’d been pretty certain that in an emergency, they’d help. If I asked, even. But they hadn’t answered the call, and they weren’t here. I couldn’t fault them – three out of four of the people we’d reached out to hadn’t.

“You want to handle this?” I asked Capricorn, as we drew nearer.

“Nah. Let me lead in, but this is your idea.”

I nodded.

Twelve capes in all, from various teams. More would have been nice, but we’d reached out at eight-something at night to essentially say we wanted a hand, could they meet us near the mid-Megalopolis point in the next ten minutes? Some had been too far, others had been retired for the evening… these numbers were good, considering.

“Thank you for coming,” Capricorn said. “I’ll recap in case our teammate didn’t spell it out in full when he reached out. Two villains, strong ones, just threatened civilians to get the good guys to back off so they could make a run for it. They’re driving trucks of stolen livestock. The one we caught said they’re working for Prancer, from Cedar Point.”

I started my piece. “We feel the rules need enforcing. They can’t threaten civilians. Help us, and we’ll either owe you one or if you want a longer-term relationship, we can talk about building something.”

Lighter was nodding. Fume Hood looked receptive- but I wasn’t sure if that was her trying to be helpful, putting on a good face.

“Where are they now?” Foxtrot asked.

“Just north of here. Mover and multiple vehicles,” Capricorn said. “Trial and Error.”

“I’ve run into them,” Lighter said. “Trial hits hard. I didn’t get Error.”

“Good names,” Foxtrot said.

We’ll have to politely disagree on that, I thought. Instead of voicing that thought, I explained, “Trial hits hard, he’s defensive, and he’s mobile, manipulating chains and spinning them to propel himself forward.”

“Yep,” Lighter said. “Good summary.”

“Error is a stranger. She seems to blur perceptions so you lose coordination and lose track of who’s on the battlefield and where. That includes whoever you’re trying to hit, I think. She seemed to have an always-on effect surrounding her at low strength and a concentrated, magnified use that seemed to require her eyes and focus to be on the victim. She uses it to take people out of the fight. If it affects you, don’t do anything, or people that aren’t Trial and Error might get hurt.”

That got nods.

“Two from Advance Guard are pursuing. We’re going to go assist.”

“The sooner the better?” Foxtrot asked.

“Yeah,” Capricorn said.

“Lead the way,” she said. “I want to see how these guys pulled their concept together.”

“Tress and Antares are fast. The first responder types should follow them. Everyone else, with me,” Capricorn gave the order. “If you have questions, ask us, or call our phones.”

I was in the air a moment later, heading toward the last known location. I gave Fume Hood a nod in passing. Sveta and I had four people with us- two more who were able to get on a motorcycle or get in a vehicle within a few seconds of getting the go-ahead. The engines were already running, and they peeled out.

It became clear that our fastest moving members of the group were pulling away from the members at the rear. I turned around in the air, looking for Sveta, and I found her riding the roof of the rusted, post-apocalypse sedan that one cape had climbed into.

I gestured, and she thrwe out a hand, which I had to fly over to intercept and catch. She pulled herself to me, which made flying momentarily difficult, slowing the pull somewhat as she drew near.

“I’ll take the lead group, you take the stragglers?” I asked. “I go left, circle around to eleven o’clock. You go right, two or three o’clock. Remember Capricorn will be coming in for their six like a battering ram.”

“I go left,” she said. “Look. Trees, taller buildings. That’s my kind of terrain.”

I nodded once, confirming.

She let go of me and pulled away with a force that was almost as intense as her arrival had been.

Foxtrot was one of the two in the lead. She didn’t teleport, exactly, but as I flew, I could see glimpses of her off to the side, below me, just ahead of me.

I’d researched her, after she had ended up being a bit of a problem. Foxtrot and Houndstooth had dated for a bit- and potentially still were. It had been a thing early and then the team had grown and that faded into the background. It said something that she’d, despite the concerns of the girlfriend being promoted, despite the fact she had no apparent record or history of a hero until about a year ago… she’d settled into a weird pseudo-leadership position, leading patrols a lot of the time.

For the moment, she was my ally in going up against the Trial & Error team. I had to consider her power; on paper it was ‘harassment repositioning’.

She was speeding up. All at once, she was at a rooftop ledge just above and in front of me – ready to leap down on top of me, despite the considerable distance to the ground. As I flew closer to a rooftop to lower my profile, she was there, within arm’s reach. I had a close-up view of her cute, smiling fox mask, bright costume with a crown and a chevron for the ‘hill’ worked into the lapel and sleeve, just above a Gold Morning remembrance armband. Her hair was tied into a lopsided ponytail, and her hands rested on the rooftop ducts just in front of her.

Her power let her pick a target. Her not-quite-teleports would position her advantageously to catch them off guard. They were not-quite teleports because she didn’t appear out of nowhere so much as she was just there, ready, when the time came.

She picked out a target and her teleports centered on them. What wasn’t on paper or available with a bit of research was the detail that she very clearly escalated. In speed, in proximity, in how there was an ever-improving edge that each location she or her power was picking seemed to offer.

Then, like a switch had been flicked, she broke away. The speed slowed and the target of focus changed to our companion. Something-kite.

I was willing to bet Foxtrot had a bit of a history as a cape, but not as a hero. The speed with which she’d assumed a place on her team and the intensity I felt as she closed in on me made me think she was more experienced than her record with the Kings suggested.

We were pulling ahead. I could hear the tires as the trucks Prancer’s hires were driving turned corners.

I pulled out my phone and plugged in the earbud to make a call to headquarters. It wasn’t Chris that replied.

“Heyy!” Kenzie answered.

“You’re supposed to be home and in bed.”

Kenzie audibly scoffed. “At eight o’clock at night? When stuff is happening? No. Don’t be silly. Listen, I’ve got the others in on conference, Swansong and… we really need that one last code name.”

“Don’t even ask,” Rain said. “The names I’m feeling are closest to right right now are terrible. For now, if you need to call me something, use Precipice.”

“Precipice,” Kenzie said. “Okay. A bit of a mouthful to shout in a big fight, but Antares and Victoria are both long words.”

I expected Chris to say something about codenames or whatever. I noticed the silence.

“Where’s Cryptid?” I asked.

“Gone,” she said. “He made the calls and then he left.”

“Okay. Can you give us eyes on things? Cameras? Specific locations on where these guys are, so we can close in?”

There was a pause. My phone started a video, then started chugging along, before seeming to stop.

“One second,” Kenzie said. “You’re outside of my setup.”

Then the video started.

Trial, Error, a crowd of hirelings with guns – there was no shortage of people looking for easier money, given the situation across the city. I saw other capes I could dimly recognize, too. Cleat. Etna. Crested.

“Can you tell the others? Three more capes, twenty hirelings? I’m going around the right side.”

“Got it.”

I landed on a rooftop, striding forward at a slower speed than I’d been flying. The intent was to buy myself a moment when-

There. A glimpse of Foxtrot.

“Additional capes, guns,” I said to the glimpse. Her head snapped around to look at me. “Proper B-listers.”

Her focus might have changed to me, because she recurred in my vicinity, as I continued forward on foot.

“This is supposed to be the drop-off,” I spoke my realization aloud. “Spright and Shortcut are down there, making things difficult. I think Flapper is airborne here too.”

I reached the rooftop’s edge, looking across to where I could see the trucks – the people around those trucks were so small that I couldn’t make out whether they were male or female. The coveralls didn’t help. Foxtrot appeared next to me, standing almost shoulder to shoulder with me, nose pointed out in the direction of those trucks and specks.

Kite landed beside me a second later.

“What are you gunning for, with this strategy, pulling everyone in together?” Foxtrot asked.

“That? Is it really the priority?”

“No,” Foxtrot said. She made an amused sound, “But that isn’t, down there. Not until we have friends at our back or our side starts bleeding. What’s this group thing?”

“It’s saying to hell with jurisdictions,” I said. “To hell with getting credit for one win or another. Coordinating to make sure we’re all going after the ones who count. Sharing information.”

“Some like credit and having their own jurisdictions,” Kite’s voice was quiet, almost guilty. “Not me, but I know people and I don’t think it will be that easy.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, in an ideal world, I’d like to do something here that would get us attention, enough that any abstainers would feel like they’d need to join in if they wanted a share of the limelight. But that’s all secondary. For now, we live and let live, and we fix what’s broken.”

“Others are reaching you now,” Kenzie reported through my phone. I missed Kite’s response.

Sveta’s group.

“Tell them to hold back a second. How far behind is Cap?”

“A few minutes.”

Okay.

Shortcut and Spright were mostly evading at this point. They weren’t pushing in to attack, because Error didn’t let them do so without risk. They’d draw in close, then pull away, leap onto something, wait until someone tried to come after them, and then move again.

The villains started to corner them, and Flapper made her appearance, diving down from above. She landed, and long clothes-wings extended out to sweep the legs out from under a whole crowd of mooks. Her sleeves raised up to become a barrier around her, a shield against incoming fire.

Then, with one herculean flap that drove people back with dust in their eyes, she took to the air again, weaving past the lights that illuminated the area and past power lines. She had to run alongside the edge of a building to reach the roof.

They didn’t have a lot of space to maneuver. The area was a loading bay to a large store, more or less a wide road without markings that sloped gently down to the bay doors that lined one wall of the brick building. Neither of the vans had made it to the bay doors, if that was even the goal- the wheels had been slashed. One had bumped up into a yellow-painted pillar, the front grille dented.

Round two. We could use what we’d learned from the first round. The buildings opposite the row of loading bay doors looked residential, which was inconvenient. I could imagine the employees of the store lived there.

“If we corner them, and we will corner them,” I said. “They’ll threaten civilians again. Can your power get you inside to warn civilians, Fox?”

“Only if I have someone else I’m tracking that gets close.”

“I can get you close,” Kite said.

“Good,” I said. “Lookout, are you there?”

I heard her yawn. “I wish I was there. But I’m here.”

“We’ll get you in the field,” I pledged. “Communicate with Sveta, see if her contingent of capes has anyone who could help notify civilians and get them to evacuate.”

Kite and Foxtrot slipped away. I gave them a wary look as they made their way to the ground, then around to what would be the ‘front’ the residential complex, if the back of the building was what faced this loading area and fight.

My attention fixed on Spright and Shortcut. If they needed help- even if they were hit by something and fell, I was ready to fly to them. They’d wanted to do this alone, they apparently felt capable.

They were evading, distracting, forcing Prancer’s hires to deal with them. The trucks were disabled and the animals were within. The villains’ prize.

Thoughts flickered through my head. Of my mom telling me how that greed was a weakness. One of many lessons. Some, I felt, had contradicted others. I was divided on whether that was because they had, or if it was because I’d been too young to properly digest, and what hadn’t digested had warped slightly with time. What was right and what was wrong when hurting others. What school was supposed to be for me, given my inevitable career and lifestyle. Greed was a weakness and if the villains had something they prized then a lot could be done from standing between them and that prize.

That was what Spright and Shortcut were doing.

There were other thoughts. In trying to get my parents to talk about Amy, the Wretch had typed out one word, asking for the story we’d never really gotten to hear in full.

M-A-R-Q-U-I-S.

My dad had told the tale. Somewhere in there he’d said something about Marquis’ prize- Amy. I remembered because anything to do with Amy had been something to fixate on, back then. I remembered because there was something to the story that connected with what my mom had said, about the villains and their treasures. Connecting those dots had helped bring the already vivid mental picture of the scene to life.

Fuck me, why was it that a memory about clarity and communication left me so painfully uneasy? Beyond the fact that it was the Wretch in the scene, that the momentary peace I’d felt only highlighted how brainwashed I was.

It was the communication itself -not the thing being communicated or the context- that gnawed at me and made me want to hit something and destroy it.

Kenzie’s voice made me jump, and I was already on alert, watching to see if Spright or Shortcut got hurt.

“You’ve got a Cryptid inbound. Don’t freak,” Kenzie said, over the phone.

“Don’t freak?” I asked. “He actually made it here?”

“He flew. Then he switched forms- he warned me it was an awkward form, in case I saw on camera. And he yelled at me a lot about not watching him change, even though I wouldn’t ever do something that invades his privacy as badly as that.”

“Lookout. This form? I’m trying to keep control over this mess. I need all the details you can give me, and I need to know if we need to turn Cryptid away before he engages.”

“He doesn’t usually use it because it’s screwed up,” she told me. “That’s all I know.”

That wasn’t helpful.

Way off in the distance, barely distinguishable from the spots in my vision, I could make out Sveta’s unnaturally pale face.

On the roof of the residential building, I saw what had to be Cryptid’s form.

A face -one reminiscent of a certain teenage boy-was cast in a hard white, shell-like substance, face twisted in anger, with lines drawn deeper and bumps drawn out as ridges. It was also, I had to notice, larger across than an unfolded umbrella.A metal ring that reminded me of the external headwear for his braces stuck out of the mask and plunged into the side of his head, almost as if it was fixing the mask in place. Where his curly hair was usually pushed back by headphones, so hair was very close to head between brow and headphone band, the head of the form was striated slightly.

Definitely him.

He was big, built like a truncated caterpillar or tardigrade. His skin was translucent, but given the lighting, with only the loading bay below really lit, the translucence mostly meant that the inside seemed very dark and only the edges that had more material to catch the light really appeared as pale as they were.

With flight and an eye for timing things to avoid revealing myself to the people on the ground, I skipped about two hundred feet to get from my building to Cryptid’s.

A caterpillar with a giant head, some shell, and short limbs that I could now see were bristling with weapons. Claws and growths like barnacles surrounded the lower limbs, giving them a great deal of character compared to the expanses of translucent flesh.

He raised a clawed, barnacle-crested hand in greetings.

Discs mounted on his two frontmost shoulders flickered on.

Projections of Ashley and Rain.

Here with us in spirit? Or would they struggle through bad latency and being outside of Kenzie’s service area?

A masked Swansong walked with her hands clasped behind her back to get to the rooftop’s edge. Depending on how the light hit her, her hologram nature would be more or less apparent.

Precipice, short-haired and only wearing a machine mask over his face, stepped back and looked up at Cryptid.

“You’re one weird guy,” Precipice said.

Cryptid put a clawed hand out. It waggled in a so-so gesture.

“Cryptid,” I said. “You’re weird as fuck.”

He shook his head, made the gesture again.

“It’s not the weird part,” Precipice said. “He’s saying… iffy on the one? Or on the guy part.”

That last one got an affirmative nod from Cryptid.

Cryptid stretched, craning his body to one side. Translucent body distended, and insides pushed up against the skin.

In those insides, with the dim light, I could faintly make out dark shapes. Misshapen skulls with almost circular mask-like faces at the front filled whole tracts of his insides. Some had rings running through them like the greater form did, but at different angles and in different places. As I looked, the skulls moved.

Tiny hands pressed up against the sides of his tardigrade body. Dozens of them.

I found myself squirming, just seeing it. They were sharp fingers, too. They pushed at his flesh and the points threatened to cut through, spilling out the contents.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Precipice said. “No. No, sorry. Call me if you need me.”

With that, the projection winked out of existence. The camera that had been floating where the head was returned to Cryptid’s shoulder.

“Cryptid,” I said. “This form-”

“Heads up!” Kenzie reported. I heard a voice in the background. “Okay, no, not you. My team! Heads up! Capricorn is just now arriving and he’s wanting to blitz right away. Give him reasons not to or he’s going to jump in.”

There was no reason not to let him jump in. He knew well enough not to attack Error, with the risk.

I was ready to fly in- my feet momentarily left the ground, before finding it again. I turned to Cryptid.

“Do not, under any, any circumstance, give birth to whatever those things are. Not on this battlefield.”

He bristled, puffing up.

“We need this to go well,” I said. “Please.”

He shifted position, bringing his rear end forward, settling down into the slouching kind of sit that some dogs and cats managed, when their construction didn’t normally allow for that degree of slouch.

Settling in to do nothing, it seemed.

I left it at that, because I had to. I gave Swansong a small smile as I passed her.

I saw Etna reacting with a measure of panic as the heroes came in. She backed up toward the loading bay door where there was more cover, separating herself from the other villains and their mooks.

There were guns, but guns drew attention. It was attention from Fume Hood, who gassed the heaviest concentrations, attention from me.

Calm, collected. If we were going to pull this off-

We had to do this right.

I hated how much I sounded like my mother in my own head, when I thought that.

The effect on the scene was little different from the old cowboy movies, when the convoy passed through a valley, only for the valley entrances and exits to be blocked, rocks pushed over. In those scenes, the attackers appeared at the fringes, on either side of the valley, attacking from established, fortified positions.

So it was here. Attacks from alleys and from rooftops. They were surrounded.

Cleat balled up into a mass of spiked armor, then moved all at once, with a speed that surprised me.

Not him. It wasn’t his power.

The path he traveled had a logic to it- it wasn’t a straight line. It was a curve.

Nearly invisible in the gloom, with no lights shining on that specific area, Trial had thrown chain to Cleat, and now Cleat was his wrecking ball.

Massive, crushing swings raked through building faces and toward the good guy capes.

Cleat came around again, whipcrack fast.

This time I was the focus of the strike. It came at me, and I knew I wouldn’t have time to run.

In that same moment, Error hit me.

Even an accidental deflect could send that wrecking ball into ten or more people, with how Error’s power worked.

I tried to fly out of the way, and I knew I couldn’t.

A hand at my shoulder adjusted my flight path. A yank pulled me away from the human-sized flail. I landed on my back, the impact traveling through my arm to the bullet wound. Concrete below me, Sveta knelt above me. the sky was dark, and it smelled like violence. People approached, coming after me.

Fume Hood lurked nearby, her hands out, three shiny spheres the size of billiard balls floating around her hands. She let them fly their courses, each one rocketing into a dense collection of the villains before detonating into a cloud of gas.

Error was focused on someone else again, no heavy pressure settling around me. It freed me to deal with Cleat. Foxtrot was closing in around Trial, but her ability to appear at random or at strategic points close by her target didn’t really jibe with the fact that Trial was swinging his teammate around him, clearing a forty-foot radius around himself of anyone with any measure of self preservation.

I rose up into the air, ready to meet it.

I had one shot, for best effectiveness. I watched as the wrecking ball made its rotation, hit a wall, and then bounced off with almost more momentum than before.

He was manipulating the chain to make it so Cleat could be swung, keeping it out of my reach.

Foxtrot closed in on him, narrowing her range for harassment. One appearance to his left, ducking beneath the swinging chain. She kicked him in the back of the leg, then the small of his back. She had a weapon in hand-

She was elsewhere. Swinging-

And stopping. Errors influence, no doubt. Foxtrot couldn’t follow through without danger.

Balance found, back now straight, he swung the Cleat-ball in one rotation, counter-clockwise. A second rotation. A thir-

Cleat hurtled toward me as Trial used other chains to lunge in my direction, putting the flail on course to hit me.

This time my timing was right- no confusing changes in direction. Just hitting that cape-turned-weapon with everything I had, aura-wise.

Cleat uncurled, yet still flew toward me. He’d lost his grip on the chain. He’d carry forward, bounce off of things, and maim or kill everyone he contacted.

I threw up the wretch, and I caught him, full-bodied, the Wretch’s arms, the Wretch’s chest and faces. The impact made a sound that was almost enough to deafen me. The spikes scraped against my armor on their way down.

He hit the ground, tried to rise up, and then stumbled, landing on hands and knees.

Etna, having retreated, was now faced with a huge numbers disadvantage, with no help from her peers. A surrender.

Crested was a mix of offense and defense, but he was up against capes who were pure offense or pure defense. Fume Hood blasted him, and as our guys backed away to safer ground that was free of the noxious gas, Crested had no such option.

But Trial and Error- that was a team that was tough to crack.

People closed in, but we had dealt some damage to ourselves, thanks to Error. Nobody wanted to be the next to hurt a friend or alienate a potential ally with an attack turned the wrong way.

“We had this,” Shortcut said, behind me.

“You still have it,” I said, watching Error and Trial. “It’s yours.”

“We might not be able to beat them, but they’ll have a hell of a time fighting us,” Shortcut said. “They go to any contacts, any place they think is safe, we’re on them. They want to go home? We’ll be after them. We will win because they- because crime does not have a place in this world.

I felt that crime as a whole was taking root too easily to be so easily dismissed. That we couldn’t deal with Trial and Error was another problem.

We had the power, but not the means to use it.

“Cryptid is saying he could climb to a point above them and unload his cargo on their heads. Nonlethal,” Kenzie reported, over coms.

“Let’s not,” Capricorn said, within earshot of me.

Sveta joined us.

Above us, Cryptid crawled along rooftops, peering down. Beside us, Spright was talking to Shortcut.

We had them cornered, but there was no way to follow through. Not when Error could turn a simple action like an execution-style shot, into something more risky for someone in the area.

I glanced at the damaged residential buildings. Not a soul, no lights, all dark. It looked like we’d evacuated fine – the contents of rooms exposed to the world looked fairly fine.

“Just take the vans away and they lose,” I said.

At my statement, some people headed to the overlong vans, climbing into the driver’s seats.

If they won’t fight alongside us, we’ll take away the rewards and satisfaction.

One of the trucks started up.

Trial rose up, using chains to climb. Sveta grabbed two. Capricorn created his motes. Chris- he burbled, I supposed.

I checked the coast was clear, and then I brought the Wretch out.

The associated emotions were heavy, a weight on my shoulders. But he lashed out and I deflected. I felt Error’s power take hold of me and dodged instead of fighting back, and I felt a measure of triumph as someone else took my place on the defensive line.

We were working more as a collective now. Trading off, being aggressive, being different, without judgment. This was what I wanted this organization to be. It would take tuning.

I slowly turned up my aura while I stared down Trial. Error was in the background, ready to act, but she wasn’t sticking anything on me because I wasn’t doing anything. Not as far as she could tell- my aura didn’t reach her.

I stared down Trial. The second truck started up. Both started to make their limping way away from the scene. Trial wore a metal mask that covered the upper half of his face and some of his chin. It exposed enough that I could see his expression change, as his prize drove away.

He could fight us and do okay at it, but it was mostly a stalemate, as long as he and Error were the tag team they were supposed to be. Like this, however, he got nothing.

People like him would get nothing.

“Fine,” he said. “You win.”

“Thank you,” I replied, as coldly as I was able. The audience watched with careful eyes. One or two might have had phones out to gather evidence, now switched to video mode to track anything particular.

“You got the cargo. Let us go.”

“Not going to happen,” Capricorn answered.

“You can’t beat us, not without paying a price,” Trial growled.

“If you want to pull an all-nighter,” Shortcut said, “I think we’ll have more friends turning up than you will. You lost already. Anything more is theater.”

“Oh, but I do like theater,” Spright said.

Shortcut and Spright were taking point now. It was technically their arrest, and I didn’t care about jurisdiction. I cared about word of mouth.

“This is what you’re wanting to do more regularly?” Sveta asked me, her voice quiet. “It’s not bad, but…”

“This. But more,” I said. “Bigger targets, bigger numbers, more focus.”

I saw her nod.

“Which part are you nodding at?”

“Targets,” she said. “Focus. Mainly targets. There are too many dangerous people out there who need to be put down or dealt with.”

Others who’d been lurking at the periphery were making their appearances. We had our own cheats there. Our two projections. Chris. The perimeter guard was now working to pressure the villains.

They had nowhere to go. They were outnumbered ten to one. They could fight and they could make the arrests hurt, but there would be costs.

We’d won. They would cave before anything else. I’d use my power again in a moment.

For now, we’d let them be stubborn.

“You want bigger?” Capricorn asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“‘Bigger’ can mean different things,” Rain said.

“In this case?” I asked. I lowered my voice until it was barely audible. “We might need enough in the way of power, people, resources, and tools to defeat a Goddess.”

Beacon – 8.7

There was a growing feeling of satisfaction as people got underway with their days and messages started coming in. Steelmasons were starting patrols near the devastated old Wardens HQ. Auzure was resuming business as normal, but as they got things done they hoped to be able to spare their people. Shorewatch was just setting up at their HQ- they’d been on a break since the portal attack and were just getting into the swing of things.

Shorewatch’s situation wasn’t so dissimilar from us. We’d taken a break to reel, to attend to our individual group members. Sveta, Tristan and I were in headquarters early in the day, the place was clean, and the whiteboards that had been wiped clean were filling up again.

More messages, and it was a two-for-one this time. Rushdown and Royale were reporting in. They weren’t a team so much as they were a pair, but they operated from the same area of the city as Houndstooth’s Kings. They’d emailed a report they were starting their day closer to noon, with the intent of going after some people who had been trying to stir up riots. There was an outside chance those people were Cheit’s provocateurs. They also included a report on behalf of the Kings of the Hill.

Houndstooth hadn’t mentioned that he’d be doing that, but I could understand it, kind of. One degree of separation. Lookout couldn’t hack people. This enabled his team to communicate with us without discomfort.

I saw the first message from people that hadn’t been at the meeting. They hadn’t used the email format I’d requested, and they called themselves The Major Malfunctions. There were also several glaring typos, to the point I was suspicious that non-capes or villains had found our word-of-mouth setup and were toying with us.

A painfully slow search online brought up some images of kid heroes with terrible costumes. They’d been small timers before Gold Morning, small town ‘heroes’ who’d rotated between three middle-of-nowhere towns in North Dakota looking for villains or criminals. Four years of activity and they hadn’t found any.

It would have been easy to dismiss them, or to disparage them. They had dropped out of school to be heroes and had no wins. The lack of education was clear in the spelling errors. It worried me a bit that their referral had come from ‘Super Magic Dream Parade’, the loopy team from Boston, who had apparently heard about what we were doing and passed on word.

The Major Malfunctions were teenagers now and they’d been kids when they’d triggered. They’d stayed heroes across six years, and they’d stayed together.

That had to count for something.

I took a minute to fix the errors and formatting, then dragged the email over to the tracking program. It was the same program the Patrol Block had used, but I’d filed off the serial numbers and gone into the code to change the names of some labels.

I sent them a reply. We’d use their help if they were free.

I wasn’t even done with looking over the next entry when the Majors replied, excited and incomprehensible.

“How’s it going?” Tristan asked. He stood by a whiteboard. It looked like he was sketching out the prison complex. He’d worn the non-armor part of his costume beneath his jacket, and now had the skintight top and jeans. It wasn’t the textured pattern of the usual under-the-armor bodysuit, which would allow the texture to peek through the gaps between armor. It was just black.

He’d painted his hair again, though. Orange-red. Stiff rolls, curls and waves locked in place with glue-like hair product.

“We’re getting responses. People are talking about what they’re doing, they’ll fill us in if they get answers and they’ll open it up to the rest of us if they end up with questions. Do you know these kids, uh, Major Malfunctions?”

“No,” he said.

“Sveta?” I asked.

“Hm?” she looked up from her computer.

She looked nice. Beaded necklaces were looped around and below the more rigid part of the collar that was her neck. Her top was a very summery sort, a hooded crop-top that was torn, not cut, at the neck and sleeves. Tan with a bold blue-green lizard on it. Her pants were a little less loose and casual than her usual. Her wig was brushed and her tattoo at her cheek was left uncovered by makeup.

She’d gone shopping. A selfish part of me felt left out- I would’ve wanted to take her shopping, do that as a thing together, but Tristan had prodded her to talk about what was making her feel awkward, and clothes and body were apparently off the table.

Just business and safe topics then. “I wanted to ask if you were familiar with Major Malfunctions? They’re a team.”

“I don’t know them.”

“Okay. They’re hard to get a read on. Zero experience despite putting in the years. Odd histories.”

She nodded.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, heard from an old acquaintance, that’s all,” Sveta said, giving me a tight smile. She had to work her fingers into the right position before hitting the key combination to take her computer to the log-in screen. She shut the computer.

Not yeah, I thought.

“We can talk about it if you want.”

“Let me digest it first,” she said. “Catch me up?”

She and I both walked over to the point roughly between my setup and Tristan’s.

“I’m thinking about the prison,” Tristan said. He stabbed a marker at the series of squares and lines that depicted the prison. “To get there, you have to travel to one portal, which is about twenty-five minutes away from the city, and then you have to travel for another twenty minutes to get to the next portal. That one’s where the guards and security are. That’s without the time it takes to reach the first portal. It’s deliberately set out of reach. What are our options?”

I folded my arms. “The obvious option is that we enable Kenzie because she’s exactly what we need in this situation, we exacerbate her issues and ignore problematic behavior, and we regret it down the road.”

“Obvious but not ideal,” Sveta said.

“We have reason to believe they’re watching- which would be hard, or they infiltrated the prison with the aim of going after Goddess- we assumed staff.”

“They have more ability to communicate with the outside world than prisoners do,” Sveta said. “Though they did let Rain and Ash have laptops and phone access.”

“Limited,” Tristan added, “And monitored.”

“Code?” Sveta asked.

“Could be,” I said. “But staff seems more likely. Staff can drug, make promises, open doors, manipulate.”

Sveta nodded, her eyes widening. “It’s scary to think about. Remember how vulnerable people were at the hospital? If someone had caught me at the wrong time with a few kind words, I could have believed anything. I think some of the Irregulars fell into that trap.”

“Okay,” Tristan said. “We keep an eye on the staff?”

I shook my head.

“No?”

“The question isn’t whether we do. I think it makes sense. The question is if we can do it while keeping Kenzie out of trouble. We need to do this surveillance without handing a ridiculous amount of work to an eleven year old that’s already prone to overworking herself.”

“Agreed,” Sveta said. “Did we make any contacts that might be able to help with thinker powers?”

“I can’t think of any big ones from the people who replied already, but we’re getting a lot of responses and it’s only, what, nine?” I got a nod of confirmation and carried on, “The prison being isolated is a double-edged sword. The staff need to sleep, they have families, homes to go back to, and they have commutes.”

“If they’re out of reach at the prison, we get them when they’re elsewhere,” Tristan said. “See if they arrange any meetings.”

I smiled a little. “Yeah.”

“It’s a lot of people,” Sveta said. “And you want to do it without Kenzie?”

“If we’re going to make her happy or find a safe way for her to hero, for both workload and this frontline role she really wants, I don’t think it’ll involve her maintaining a thousand surveillance operations.”

“So we have a thousand surveillance operations to manage some other way?” Tristan asked.

I couldn’t help but notice the way he’d asked it. Was he disappointed that I was trying to steer us away from leaning on our tinker?

“We’ve got some responses. We can whittle down the list, rule some people out.”

“Who do we have?” he asked.

I led them over to my computer, showing them the program and the responses.

One of the most powerful parahumans we know of on one side, a hostile and nebulous force on the other, and a prison filled with some of the most irredeemable and unfortunate of us in the middle.

I went over the people I’d already seen the responses from, from the Steelmasons to the Major Malfunctions, and I was just getting into the message from Dream Parade when the fire escape rattled.

Our kid team members. They were noisy as they let themselves in, because they were mid-argument. Natalie was a short distance behind them. She ducked her head in a kind of greeting-apology, lingering at the door.

Kenzie’s hair wasn’t in the two buns, but was instead parted to one side, glossy and still with the pin. Today was a blue heart day, it seemed. She wore a blue sweater-dress with a glittery texture, pink tights, and a pink shirt with a folded collar that poked through the collar of her sweater.

Chris, by contrast, looked a little worse for wear, with circles under his eyes. Under his jacket, he wore a horizontally-striped shirt of black and green. He wore torn jeans and a leather fanny pack. It was the kind of nice fanny pack that suggested maybe a nod toward fashion or a kind of effort, but it was a fanny pack. They were never going to be cool.

Where Kenzie had adjusted her hair, Chris was in usual form – the external rigging for his braces, and the headphones with the bar of the headphones pushing the hair at the top of his head flat against his scalp, so the curls only really went wild at the back. Pockets were full, the fanny pack was full, and he carried a bag heavy enough that his usual slouch was worse.

Natalie, meanwhile, wore the jacket I’d seen her in before, as well as a black button-up under a gray business jacket, with black slacks. If the belt hadn’t also been black, it would’ve worked nicely. Her forehead creased in worry.

I beckoned for her to come in. She had to edge past the two younger members of the group.

“You can do the costume thing!” Kenzie was saying. “Not just stealing my camo. I have to recharge that stuff.”

“The costume thing you’re talking about would be exactly the same.”

“But it would be your costume, not my camo.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Chris said. To us, he said. “She doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t make sense? Do you want to share with the class what you told me when I had to go looking for you at the train station?”

“We were late,” Chris said. “I had a health issue. I don’t know what her excuse is.”

“The people who are looking after me hogged the bathroom! I didn’t even get to do my hair!”

“I can talk to them,” Natalie said.

“It’s fine, mostly. I could deal if I could just adjust, but it’s different people or mixes of people with different ways of doing stuff,” Kenzie said. “You can’t talk to them about that. It’s just the way it is.”

“I’ll talk to them about mixing schedules,” Natalie said. “This is solvable.”

Kenzie nodded.

“Your hair looks nice,” I said.

“Thank you. It makes me feel anxious. Anyway! I got to the station late and he was off in my direction, so we were going to catch the train together, but he wasn’t there. And he comes out of the bathroom and-”

“You asked if I wanted to share with the class, and I can’t get five words out before the digressions and you start telling the story for me.”

“You weren’t telling! And, um, if you’re not comfortable telling, that’s okay. But if you are and you’re slinging mud at me instead, I’m just going to tell it.”

“I’ll tell it,” he said. “Apparently taking on a form with a thousand and five hundred angry foetal grubs crammed inside it gets messy. I changed back to normal, but I guess the foetal grubs didn’t all vacate. I had a slurry of their bits in my guts.”

I could see Natalie visibly pale.

“That’s a good reason to not use that form again,” Capricorn said. “That was horrifying.”

“It’d be fine if I’d evacuated while I was still Brooding Anger,” Chris said, giving me a look. “But I was told not to. By someone who isn’t really official leader.”

I was careful as I articulated myself, “A thousand grubs inside you. They had fangs and claws-”

“Technically they were part human, part grub. I think.”

“You said they were nonlethal,” I said. I frowned. “Chris, I don’t believe you.”

“They would have listened to me, after,” Chris said. “I think? Instinctual listening.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“No sounds good,” Natalie echoed me, her voice soft.

“Let’s not terrorize people too much,” Tristan said. “That thing was horrifying.”

“That thing was me. Anyway, I’m done talking about this.”

He tossed his bag onto the table by his favorite chair, then removed the fanny pack. It joined the bag.

He gave me a hard look when we made eye contact. With everyone going to their workstations, only Sveta and I lingering, I opted not to bug Chris.

I headed over to talk to Kenzie. Natalie followed, because safeguarding Kenzie was her job. It seemed like a conflict of interest, given our prior arrangement, but I imagined the pool of people who could be told Kenzie’s identity as Lookout was narrow, and the system was overloaded.

“Sorry to hear your caretakers left you frazzled,” I said.

“They’re super nice, and I trust them,” Kenzie said. “I think whenever hero stuff comes up, they don’t know what to do, so they give up. It’s like in books when a girl says she has woman troubles and the adult guy gets flustered and gives her whatever she wants, except I don’t think that happens in real life. How do you end up forty and not know basic stuff?”

“Uh huh,” I said. “There was a seventeen year old in my Patrol Block who didn’t know the ordering of the alphabet after T. You’d be surprised.”

“Well, it seems problematic to not know how hero and villain stuff works,” Kenzie said.

“I don’t think anyone knows,” Natalie said.

“The basics, though,” Kenzie said, as she typed at her keyboard. “Is it okay if I bring Rain and Ash over here?”

“Bring?” Natalie asked.

“Projections,” Kenzie said. “Basically a prettied up video call. It lets them be here, even though they’re really over there looking at their laptops.”

“It’s fine,” I said.

Kenzie nodded enthusiastically. She began working.

Two cameras came to life. They floated to different heights above the ground. Then the dark sides of the big projector box came to life, and the images appeared, frozen in space.

“When you said projections, I thought they’d be see-through or flickering,” Natalie said. “They look real.”

“Almost,” Kenzie said. “Calling.”

There was a beep, and Rain’s projection started moving. The physical movements below the neck were fairly generic, but the faces seemed true to life.

“I wish I had a better idea of what my body was doing,” Rain said.

“Welcome to my life,” Sveta said.

“I can’t tell if you’re joking. If you’re not, I’m really sorry.”

“I’m joking, don’t worry,” she said. “Dark joke, but hey.”

Ashley’s projection took on a semblance of life. She looked around.

Tristan was the one who started us off. “People are interested. We’re lining up help, and what we’re thinking is we’ll use that help to track prison staff when they’re outside of the prison- especially those who are making suspicious movements. Any clues you can give us help.

“This kind of tracking sounds extreme,” Natalie said.

I answered, “Standard cop-style surveillance. Lots of waiting. No peeking in windows, no trespassing on property. If they go for a drive late at night, we have a flier or speedster track them. Maybe thinkers poke their heads in.”

“Okay,” Natalie said. She considered for a moment. “How do you enforce this if it’s hired help?”

“If they screw around or bend the rules, we cut them off,” Ashley said.

“That,” I said. “We have reason to think the prison is compromised. The big heroes know about it, but we’re in an awkward position. It’s like trying to deal with someone planning on crashing a plane. It’s a lot harder to get them when they’re out of reach. If we can get them on the ground, though-”

“You fly,” Rain said.

“It’s an allegory, Rain,” Sveta said. “I’d punch you in the arm if you were here.”

“Anything you guys can give us helps,” I said. “Starting points, ways to narrow down who we’re looking at.”

“I talked to Crystalclear,” Rain said. “I tried, anyway, he wasn’t down for it. I said I knew you, and you’d fought together at the community center, but he didn’t believe me.”

“Makes sense,” Chris said. “You could be a thinker. Or an anything. If he was a hero, he might have enemies.”

“Yeah,” Rain said.

I mused for a second before saying, “I visited Fume Hood at the hospital, Tempera and Crystalclear were there. Later that night, I had Tempera help me with a kid in crisis – she would have told Crystalclear. The kid ended up going to Europe. He should be able to confirm where we’re at, then see what he has to say.”

“Got it,” Rain said.

“I have something too,” Ashley said. “Goddess is interested in the prison. Did you read her messages?”

“No,” Tristan said. “There’s no written record. She’s doing it through her people, who call or visit, because her actually showing up would be as good as an act of war. There are some notes here and there, for paperwork, and we can see emails going out asking for arbitration or help. She’s been interested since before the portal debacle, and she’s been getting impatient.”

“I got part of it,” Ashley said. “I had words with Monokeros. She mentioned this woman – must we call her Goddess?”

“We mustn’t,” Sveta said. “The woman in blue. The Dictator of Shin.”

“Calling her a dictator would be giving her too much respect. This blue woman reached out to Monokeros. It’s part of why she wants to come here. She wants her, and she wants some specific others- all of us, I’m sure, if she can get us, but she was apparently asking if the Mathers bitch was at this prison.”

“Shit,” Rain said. “No. Mama Mathers?”

“Yes,” Ashley said.

“She wants mind controllers?” I asked.

“She might not have control over Shin,” Sveta said. “She has this power that makes capes willing to serve her-”

“One of her many powers,” I added.

“But she was pulled out of her world just like everyone else. Her lieutenants were pulled out of her world. No more capes to control things – we don’t know how the population reacted.”

“Riots,” Chris said. “It’d have to be.”

“She can’t go back until she has the means of seizing control. She hasn’t come after Gimel to take that because…” Sveta trailed off.

“She’s missing something,” I said. “Or she was injured in the final fight, or… there’s some stipulation on how her powers work or how she maintains a balance where she’s a multitrigger like Rain but with top tier powers across the board.”

“Or,” Capricorn said. “She knows it would mean war between her world and ours, and we have more capes. Her civilians might outnumber our civilians, but they hate her. There’s no loyalty. She took over her world and it was a hostile occupation.”

“I was wearing the eye camera,” Ashley said. “I talked to Monokeros after I said goodnight to Kenzie. You didn’t watch?”

“No,” Kenzie said. “Should I have?”

“Don’t,” Ashley said. “Pretend it doesn’t exist, as a favor to me. Someone else in the group should watch it. Sveta, I trust you. Victoria. But not Chris or Kenzie.”

“I’m being lumped in as one of the kids now?” Chris asked. “If I hadn’t been strongarmed into keeping my womb to myself last night, I’d have kids. Probably. I think some of the hardier ones would have lasted.”

I saw Natalie suppress a shiver.

“It’s private, and I’m saying no.”

“I don’t like being left out,” Kenzie was quiet as she said it.

“Please. I’ll make it up to you,” Ashley said.

“Make it up to me by getting out of prison sooner,” Kenzie said.

“Okay. I’ll try.”

“Keep doing what you’re doing, guys,” Tristan said. “Twist Crystalclear’s ear, Rain. Ashley, we’ll watch your video. Victoria was showing us a list of the people who’ve showed interest lately.”

“I think the other heroes are discouraged and frustrated too,” Sveta said. “It’s been a long time since we didn’t have the PRT or the Wardens as a thing we could turn to. They want a way to fill that void.”

“We’re not a replacement for the Wardens and we’re definitely not a replacement for the Protectorate,” I said, firm. “I don’t want to be that. It would be a complete and utter disaster. I want to change the rules we’re playing by.”

“We’ll try it,” Tristan said. “I’ve got, hm, nineteen minutes before I need to switch out. We divvy up people and groups and give them direction, Lookout- Kenzie, can you queue up the video for Rain, Sveta, Victoria and me? Then maybe use that program we had in Hollow Point. Not listening in on anyone directly, but tracking keywords and phrases.”

“Goddess, prison?” Kenzie asked.

“What do you think?” Tristan asked Natalie.

“I feel nervous saying yes to several things in a row,” Natalie said.

“Are we reasonably sound here?”

“Let me look at the list of words you come up with after.”

“Great. Chris? Take it easy, we’ll have you running errands later. And if you have to go, find a discreet place in nature to do it. I don’t want you destroying our toilet by filling it with tiny bones or whatever.”

“I can feel the love,” Chris said.

“I like you fine,” Tristan replied. “I like our security deposit too.”

“Everyone has their tasks,” Ashley said.

“Mine’s apparently to not shit in the toilet,” Chris said.

“Yours is to wait, conserve energy, be ready to change to something convenient so you can go talk to people or run recon, and stop being a nuisance,” Ashley said.

“Yeah, alright,” Chris said. “I’m going to go for a walk to find a spot of nature so I won’t have any distractions later. Maybe it’ll get me closer to normal sooner.”

“Good luck,” Kenzie said.

As the group broke apart, there was immediate decision-making to be had. Sveta wanted to go talk to the misfits, individuals, and the ones who seemed more like the ‘true blue’ types. It seemed like a fair balance, difficult misfits and easier heroes.

For Capricorn and I, it was a question of who we thought we could get along with or communicate with more easily. Some consideration was given to the fact I could fly and Capricorn had to travel a route on foot.

Kenzie had found the footage of Monokeros. As she moved through different areas of the apartment and Ashley’s activities therin, there were glimpses. Black haired, pretty, with numerous tattoos, with the most prominent being a bold triangle at her forehead.

The image stopped at a short-haired Ashley looking in the mirror, hands resting on the table just beneath that mirror.

“That’s fine,” I heard Ashley tell Kenzie.

“I’m going to go get stuff together,” Kenzie said. “Keep me company?”

“Of course.”

Sveta and Tristan put down what they were doing to approach Kenzie’s workstation. The image of Rain was already nearby. I hit the spacebar.

Audio levels fluctuated as Ashley went from being on pause to moving.

The rooms were basic, built without much flourish and with basic materials. They had to be new, yet the floorboards creaked as Ashley walked. Her other half was in the kitchen, standing by two cups of tea- styrofoam cups, teabags still in.

She took her tea with a simple “thank you” and carried it out to the balcony.

I appreciated the view the eye-camera gave us. A glimpse of the prison from a higher point of view. I hadn’t been able to go up by the visitation rules. No thinker 1 power for me.

Ashley’s head turned. She looked down at the next balcony – a floor below, as close to the corner of the building as it could be without turning a right angle.

Monokeros. As glimpsed in the rewind.

“You tested me, Monokeros,” Ashley said.

“Monokeros,” the woman replied. “It’s always Monokeros. You can call me Kathlee.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“You could even win points if you called me Unicorn.”

“I’m not interested in your points, Monokeros. You know what you did. Another person might report you to the authorities for the use of your power.”

Monokeros snickered. “You’d be a rat. That gets you in trouble with Llorona. It puts you on the bad side of everyone here. No, you have to be smarter than that.”

“I know. I have acquaintances, and I have very poor impulse control. You should know that every time you get close to me, there’s a chance I’ll come for you. From now on, if we’re in the yard, you keep your distance from me. If I come near you, you’ll scramble to get out of the way. If you’re sitting, you’ll stand and walk away.”

“If you try anything, you’ll hurt more than I do,” Monokeros said.

“If I try anything, your existence will end. You’re a child killer, Monokeros. You have no clout.”

“Don’t they say that if someone lives on in our hearts, they’re still with us? They say it when a family member dies, but when you use my diplomatic pull ability, draw them in, take them apart with delicacy, never sullying them, but working with an eye for beauty… and then watch the light go out of their eyes, slowly, slowly, slowly,” Monokeros luxuriated in her own words. “Mm. If you hold that moment more dear in your heart than any parent could hold onto the memories of their child, no, you’re a murderer. It’s death this time, the idea of holding onto memories is some kind of falsehood all of a sudden because the child is gone. Hypocrisy.”

“You call it diplomatic pull? No, Monokeros. You’re pathetic in every sense of the word.”

“I could do it to you now, if the monitor wouldn’t blow up,” Monokeros said. She backed away and shook one foot. “You’d adore me. I’d see glimpses of you as a person, more as time passed, until I understood you fundamentally. And even if you managed to push away the feeling of adoration for long enough to do something… you can’t touch me.”

“It’s an inane name, it doesn’t fit your theme.”

“Someone else disagrees, you know. I’ve had brief exchanges with her. Promises were made. She would make me something better, housemate. Higher class, wealthy, and she promised me an infinite supply of my drug of choice.”

“I don’t believe you. Communications don’t come and go that freely.”

Monokeros made an amused sound.

“Keep your fictional Goddess close then, and scramble to stay out of my way.”

“She’ll save you too. She’ll save all of us. Those who served her before she had that control will live lives of luxury.”

“You’d be her slaves. That’s her power.”

“I’d be her slave and I’d be beautiful beyond compare. She has a lieutenant who creates pods. Sensory deprivation and plastic surgery in one. She ran a whole world, and she’ll run it again. I could go anywhere, any country or city, and enjoy the sights, party, be waited on hand and foot.”

“And your victims? You pretended to set up a hero team and baited young heroes and heroines in, only to kill them.”

“They aren’t truly dead if they live on in our hearts, or in my heart. Haven’t you been listening?”

Ashley was silent for a long time.

“I see.”

“I like you, Ashley the second.”

“Swansong, if you must distinguish.”

“Ah, I have a fondness of using ‘the second’, ‘the third’, ‘the fourth’. I was the fourth Unicorn. There was a boy who applied to join my team. My second Paul. It’s like a way of keeping count as everything marches on.”

The view bobbed as Ashley nodded.

“As I said, I like you. It’s my habit to jab and cut when I like something, that’s all. Your friend? She’s not in any danger from me.”

“You’re a known liar, Monokeros. A deceiver. You were a spider drawing others into your web.”

“I was a unicorn, that every young child wants a few fleeting moments with. Wonder, awe, and the fantastical. And when they tell those stories in the children’s books, that’s so often where the story ends. Sometimes a quest, sometimes a moralizing about beauty or the nature of innocence, but most often it’s an end to that section and set of descriptions. Nobody writes an epic about the life lived after the unicorn is befriended. It’s the moment that matters.”

Ashley was silent.

“I don’t want your friend because she isn’t beautiful. I’m sorry, but she’s scuffed, and it’s on the face. I saw it when I got a glimpse of her. I can accept other scars, but I draw the line at the face.”

“The lines are showing in your own face, Monokeros,” Ashley said.

“Unkind,” Monokeros said, but there was a note of emotion in it.

“I might deal with that pod maker before he can fix those lines around the eyes. Maybe that would be fitting punishment for using your power on my friend.”

“There’s no need to make something so monumental over something so scuffed and small,” Monokeros said. She sounded irritated. “I’m saying I don’t want her. Ask any parent if they’d adopt her or the girl without the blemish. Ask any boy if he’d date a girl with a scar or one without. A toy unboxed and scratched is worth a tiny fraction of what it would be if left intact. Worth is objective. This is not complicated.”

“You have no eye for true beauty and worth, Monokeros,” Ashley said. “I can tell you that. I’d have her as a subordinate, teammate, or friend before I had anyone else. You’re blind.”

“Such cutting insults. I’d say it’s been a pleasure to chat, but I’d be lying. This whole conversation has been so tiresome,” Monokeros said. She retreated inside. Her voice was faint. “My kingdom, my kingdom, my kingdom, for a decent housemate.”

“You’ll have no kingdom if I can help it,” Ashley said, but she said it to herself. She turned away, and the view went dark as she reached up for the eye camera with clumsy hands.

Tristan hit the spacebar. The video froze.

“That’s a pretty good indicator of what we’re up against, then,” he said.

I nodded.

“There were hints,” Ashley said. In the background, Kenzie was with Natalie, drawing something on the whiteboard. Ashley’s projection had come our way. “Monokeros’ attitude, she seemed cavalier, she doesn’t keep secrets, she likes to tease, hint, bait. It led me to think she had an escape route.”

“Goddess,” I said.

“Yes,” Ashley said. There was a pause. “Kenzie.”

I turned to look. Sveta and Capricorn did too.

I saw Kenzie smiling.

“She listened- I didn’t realize until it was too late. My view isn’t as good as real eyes, like this.”

I winced.

“I don’t get it,” Tristan said.

I made eye contact with Ashley- or with her projection.

“Watch her,” Ashley said to us, to me in particular. “My gut feeling is it wouldn’t take much.”

I nodded.

“I’ll try,” I said.

Beacon – 8.8

Our group was splitting up, each person assigned a task. Sveta attended to the outcast-types, and Kenzie was even communicating with a group online, while Chris looked over her shoulder. Rain or Ashley would sign off on the messages before they were sent, just to head off the worst issues.

I found myself wincing a bit at the possibilities- each of those four had their issues. Tristan had seemed confident that they’d balance each other out. I wasn’t so confident, but I’d held my tongue. It was one group they were communicating with, and it was better to know sooner than later if there was a communication issue with those four members of Breakthrough.

My destination was a tent city. Most in the tent cities had already departed for more secure accommodations, but new people were coming in regularly, and there was a stubborn holdout. As I flew over, I could see the efforts that were being made to patch the problem. Rigid black sheets of insulation were being laid against the sides of tents with yellow fabric, tents were being moved together and connected, and equipment was being brought in- truckloads of what might have been heaters or furnaces.

It was like a game of musical chairs, but the winners moved on to the next room, new people filed in from outside, and the end of the game loomed closer with every passing day. Whoever was in these particular seats come winter was going to have a rough time of it. Tents weren’t houses and this area was going to be as bleak as fuck when the snow and food shortages came full swing.

Overhead, the sky was overcast with heavy black clouds, sunlight cracking through. The movement of air through portals was generating the flow to keep the clouds rolling, the cracks appearing and disappearing, casting down slices of light before they closed up again.

The landmark I was looking for was a building that looked like a cube. Trucks were parked around it, getting their fuel from large drums. Rather than construction uniforms, the workers were wearing civilian gear, with only vests to mark them as anything different.

I dropped out of the sky, landing on the ‘road’, where the passage of trucks and feet had worn away the grass. A gap in the clouds overhead provided a gap for the light to shine through, sweeping over the area. Had I seen that light in a movie, I might have imagined it was an alien spacecraft or a rapturing sweeping up people. This, though, it was aimless. The people weren’t carried up and away, here.

I spotted the teen Major Malfunctions before they spotted me. I took a second to take stock. Two girls and a boy, ranging from sixteen to eighteen years of age.

The oldest or tallest member of the group was a girl with a dress-like costume that hugged her body, extending all the way to the ground. I’d come across some of the individual pieces of clothing she’d used to put her costume together in my browsing of stores and magazines- and they weren’t clothes I would’ve looked at and thought ‘costume’. A dress in charcoal gray that hugged the body and legs down to a taper at the ankles, exploding into a poof of rolling yellow fabric around the feet. She might have bought two of the dresses, because the same ruffles had been borrowed from elsewhere to form the voluminous sleeves with their own yellow explosions of fabric. Her hands poked through those explosions, clad in black gloves.

The dress was worn over a turtleneck, which went with a ski mask that covered eye sockets, nose, ears, and chin. In effect, fabric covered her from just below her eye level to the ground. Yellow-orange eye makeup, bold slashes of black for the eyebrows and nicely done black hair completed the look.

The guy was the tinker of the group, it looked like- and it was good they had one, given the ‘malfunction’ part of the group’s name. He would have been between the two girls in height, except for his suit. I hesitated to call it power armor, exactly. Power armor implied armor that was heavy enough that it needed machine power to move- remove that power and the tinker was stuck. The stuck part probably held true, but this guy had no armor.

No, if I had to come up with a term for this guy, I would have called it an agility frame. It didn’t thicken his body, but stretched it out, with an mechanical extension adding two feet to his legs, long mechanical gloves that started at his wrists extending the arms much the same way, and a lightweight set of bars and discs providing the bare minimum of strength to hoist what looked like a syringe filled with maybe ten gallons of pink fluid. The syringe’s needle wasn’t the only mount at the front of the fluid’s case, and various other tools or attachments surrounded the front end of the cylinder, all in metal of varying shades, glosses, and textures.

The frame was made on a budget, given how the spray paint had settled on different pieces in different ways, and it was almost buckling between the guy’s lean weight and the weight of the cylinder, to the point that the line of mechanical foot to calf to thigh formed a curve, not a straight line. His mask was a simple one, a circular plate of metal with eyeholes cut out, worn over a hood of something rubbery that clung to his head. The eyes glowed pink.

The girl with the dress so narrow it seemed to bind her ankles together and the frame that threatened to snap explosively under its own weight made me anxious. The third member of the group, at least, seemed a little bit more sane. She wore a flat-top cap with a brim that overshadowed a simple domino mask, her auburn hair was wild, and her costume was a cute variation on a military outfit, all in glittery baby blue and a fabric with some stretch. I suspected it was something like a dance uniform for a particular number or event that had then been claimed from thrift. A stylized music note sat on her breast and the front of her cap where badges or medals might otherwise be.

Which wasn’t to say it wasn’t cute or cohesive. These guys had apparently spent years without much luck on the villain hunting front, but they’d at least spent the time to find costumes that were pretty darn good for the slapdash sort. That her costume was simple and effective was a point for her, in particular.

She was laughing a lot as she talked to the others – and there was something about the timbre of her laugh that made me wonder. A very kid laugh.

People had noticed my arrival, and as caught up as the three were in their own discussion, they caught on that others were looking at me.

The youngest one jogged over. The oldest moved by sliding herself along the ground- like a chess piece might move, or flight that couldn’t lift her off the ground.

And the frame- it was last to start moving my way, but first to arrive, by only a second or two. It lurched, lunging a few steps, putting one leg out forward, letting the leg telescope somewhat with springs clearly at work as suspension absorbed the frame’s full weight, wobbling like it might give way. The entire body swayed and shifted to compensate as pink liquid sloshed in the oversized syringe while it proceeded to lurch into motion again.

It made me nervous, on a few fronts, because I couldn’t shake the impression that one of those feet would bend too far, snap, and all of the tense springs within would shotgun out to impale bystanders. Because he moved like he was in attack mode, and I was the one intruding on their turf.

“Hi!” the sixteen-ish year old girl with the cap said. “I’m Finale.”

“Hi Finale,” I said, “I’m Victoria, or you can call me Antares. Either way is fine.”

“That’s Withdrawal,” she said, indicating the guy. “And that’s Caryatid. We’re the Major Malfunctions.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said. I extended a hand for her to shake, and she clasped it in two of her own, giving it a firm shake.

Withdrawal had to shuffle the syringe over to one shoulder, balancing it precariously there while he extended a mechanical hand across the four foot gap between him and my hand. Caryatid was more formal, less unusual, giving me a firm shake.

“Thank you for coming this far out,” Caryatid said, sounding very normal for how rigid and aristocratic her outfit was.

“It’s not an issue,” I said. “I can fly, so getting here is pretty painless.”

“I’m jealous,” Finale said. “Flying.”

There was something so guileless about the statement that I was left short on responses. I smiled at her and was about to respond when Withdrawal beat me to it.

“Do you remember what we talked about, when it comes to powers and where they come from?” he asked.

“Yes,” Finale said, with more severity than necessary. “They usually come from bad days, and sometimes other people’s powers aren’t as good as they seem from…”

“From a distance,” he finished.

“Yes.”

“That’s a good thing to keep in mind,” I said, smiling. “In my case, though, it’s not a problem. I like flying.”

She smiled and gave me a thumbs up.

“How is the team network coming along?” Withdrawal asked. He swung the syringe-cylinder around, resting it on one shoulder, before setting his free hand on Finale’s shoulder.

“People are reporting their movements. Already had a couple of people ask where others were patrolling and adjust their routes. Someone called in to ask if we knew anything about a certain villain. I knew off the top of my head.”

“A bit of a band-aid, to make up for the Wardens being gone?” Caryatid asked.

“Maybe. That’s not the end goal, though,” I said. “The Wardens and Protectorate were sponges, trying to soak up everything they could. We want to empower.”

“A lot of people are feeling powerless right now,” Caryatid said, looking out in the direction of the nearest hole in reality.

“Can we help?” Withdrawal asked.

“How are you guys with stakeouts?”

“Never done one,” Withdrawal said, “But we haven’t done a lot that’s practical. Caryatid should be pretty good with that, though.”

“How so?” I asked.

“I switch modes,” Caryatid said. “My other form can only move with my power, and is indestructible with enhanced awareness while still.”

“A breaker form?” I asked.

“I don’t really keep track of the terms,” she said. “I looked online once and it seemed like everyone was a breaker.”

“Almost everyone is, if you want to be super technical,” I said. “But that’s power geek talk. If I’m thinking of the same sites you are, it’s because the template that was copied for individual cape bios had ‘breaker’ included in it by accident.”

Finale turned around, looking up at Withdrawal. He leaned down, murmuring, “I’ll explain after.”

“Can you show me?” I asked Caryatid.

She slid a couple of feet to one side, looked around to make sure the coast was clear, and then swept one arm in front of her, bowing slightly. The change was subtle- the lines of her dress became a flow, the parts that clung to her rotated, and the rolls of yellow fabric at the sleeve and around the feet began rising and falling, crashing out around her like waves. Her hair did much the same, rolling, flowing, taking on motion.

Her face was the biggest change- it looked like butterfly wings, endlessly unfolding, like a multifacted book with pages constantly turning, merging into hairline and the flow of rolls, locks, and loops of hair.

The movement that defined every inch of her slowed, then creaked to a halt. Waves and loops became hard crags, with faint sounds like stones scraping against one another. Instead of the pages or wings of her face unfolding, they began folding like origami or a glacier, a construction forming around her head, first around the eyes, telescoping, then moving away from the eyes to the ears, with a kind of conscious focus.

“Yeah, that’s Breaker” I said. To Finale, I said, “Breakers are one of the labels we use for people with powers. She changes to this special mode this to use her powers, or to use them at their best. Breakers will often want to be careful what costumes they pick, because it becomes a part of the form they take. It looks like Caryatid realized that.”

Finale nodded.

“Breakers are complicated, so a lot of people got confused online. That’s what I was talking about earlier,” I said. “Even the people who came up with the system got a bit confused at first. The important thing is that Caryatid seems to have figured it out.”

“Cary’s smart like that,” Finale said. She walked over to Caryatid, stepping on a rigid crag of dress hem to get close enough to give her teammate a one-armed hug.

Caryatid’s arm moved very slowly, deliberately, with a break in the rigidity and a resumption of motion that rippled out to the rest of her, based on how much she moved her arm.

“If you’re confused about any of it, I’ll explain after,” Withdrawal said, again, his voice muffled slightly by his mask.

“I think I got it,” Finale said, with a smile. She gave Caryatid another hug before hopping down. Behind her, her teammate resumed a more mortal form, everything about her relaxing and transitioning to its regular variant.

I was secretly glad that my lesson had gotten across okay. I would’ve felt a bit put out as a power geek if my best attempt at a simple, clear explanation had fallen flat.

I thought for a second, then said, “One person doing surveillance might be tough. Do you need to sleep or eat while in that state? Any long-term consequences?”

“I don’t need to eat like that. I’ve never tried to stay up all night,” Caryatid’s voice had a note of surprise and idle interest, like it had never occurred to her.

I wasn’t sure how it had never occurred to her in six years, but this team seemed to have its own wavelength. That was fine- we’d have to adapt to wavelengths.

“If you do, be careful,” I said. “Go easy on yourself, test the waters carefully. Sleep is important, and replacing your sleep with your power could leave you feeling mentally off.”

“I will,” she replied, “Thank you for the warning.”

“It might be best to switch off with your team if you do any long stints.”

“I’ll switch off with Withdrawal,” she said. “If there’s trouble, Finale has our backs.”

“One hundred percent,” Finale said.

I pulled out my phone and scrolled. I found the ‘mugshot’, for lack of a better word. A grim looking man with his forehead very clearly divided where the front of it transitioned to the sides of his head. He might have looked like some renditions of Frankenstein’s monster, but he had a mustache with zero whimsy to it, just a brush on the upper lip.

“This is the person you’ll be keeping an eye on. The people who attacked the stations might be working with him, or they might be looking to force him to do what they want. I’ll send you the details, along with his schedule. Keep an eye out, discreetly if possible. If there’s weird activity around him, pay attention to that. Maybe he’s already being watched by someone else. If he sneaks out at night or goes to meet people, we want to know who. Get all the information you can. Pictures, license plates, addresses.”

“Bit of a problem,” Caryatid said. “I can’t hold bring phones or cameras with me. They get chewed up by my form.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Withdrawal told her. To me, he said, “We’ll do it. You can count on us.”

The conviction and determination caught me off guard. “This isn’t paid work, I want to make sure you know.”

“I know,” he said. “We know. We want to help.”

“If this works out, then we’ll owe you a favor,” I said.

“I don’t even know what we’d do with a favor,” he said. “Just give us a chance to get put on the map. We’ll show the world how awesome Finale is.”

“No, don’t.” Finale was suddenly self conscious. “I’m lame and stupid.”

“No,” Caryatid said. “No, Finale.”

“But I am.”

“We’ll talk it out,” Caryatid said, gentle and firm. “But we’ll do it away from company. If you’ll excuse us?”

“Of course,” I said.

They walked away, talking. I waited, my hands clasped behind my back. When Finale gave me a look over one shoulder, I smiled. It got me a smile back.

“We got in touch online. All of us got our powers young- it was Caryatid and me at first. Finale a year later. We had different names then, obviously,” Withdrawal said.

“Yeah.”

“We were fine, got along great, she was a bit immature when we were ten, eleven, twelve, but we grew up and she… didn’t. Not mentally.”

“Because of her power?”

He was startled by that, and the sudden shift in position forced one of his legs to take on additional strain. It wobbled precariously, metal straining on each flex to the extent that I could hear it creak and pop.

“That’s a thing?” he asked, once he’d found his stability.

Geez. These guys needed to take a powers 101 class.

“Could be,” I said. “I guess it doesn’t make sense as a thing powers would do. Powers tend to steer clear of the suicidal, the helpless, the invalid, or people who are limited. I wouldn’t rule it out one hundred percent, but I wouldn’t blame the power either.”

He nodded. There was a pause, and then he collapsed into a sitting position, the glass cylinder with its fluid resting on the ground, the syringe point stabbing skyward. “Don’t scare me like that.”

“Sorry.”

“Just a bad roll of the dice,” he said, quiet. “I’d take a bullet for either of them. They deserve better than this, but we spent so long doing nothing at all that getting started became more and more… huge. We got here and we ended up in the tents, and it let us dip our toes in the water.”

“Did your powers or side effects act up when you were idle?” I asked.

“That’s a thing?”

“Can be. Not all the time, not even most of the time, despite conventional wisdom. But it comes up.”

“That explains shit,” he said. “Oh god. Why isn’t there a manual or website that walks us through all of this?”

“There was. It was called the PRT.”

“Couldn’t go to them. Cary lost her brother when she was young. Her family got split up. We were like siblings, us three, we only had each other, really. We’d go from one of our towns to the other, to check on family and friends, but we were the only ones who always had each other’s backs. We were worried we’d get taken away from home or broken up, like how her family got broken up. They reached out a few times, but-”

He stopped there. He shook his head.

“I’m sorry it was such a hard road.”

“The answers mean a lot,” he said. “That favor I was supposed to ask of you, I think you did it. Or- almost. I have more questions. After we help, maybe you can give us some answers, as the favor?”

“I can give you some without it being a big favor,” I said. “I like talking about powers and figuring this stuff out. But for today, I think, there are things to get squared away. I have other people to talk to like your group.”

“Why face to face?”

“Because there are some things that you can only see face to face, like how genuine someone is or if they’re interested in the mission.”

“We’re interested,” he said, with barely a breath’s span between my statement ending and his starting.

“I know. Yes. And besides that, there’s a need to establish a connection. A website that you visit a few times a day to log your activities, an email exchange, they’re things that are hard to keep up with after the novelty wears off. Someone who you see face to face? It’s harder to ignore them.”

“Establishing trust,” he said.

⊙

I landed with more force than was necessary as I returned to the headquarters. My feet rang on the metal slats of the fire escape, announcing my arrival.

“Where are we?” I asked, as I let myself in.

“Auzure is in. They’ll send people whenever they aren’t actively doing a job,” Tristan said. “Money takes priority, Lark says, because he thinks that if he can’t get money, he can’t keep his team running, and it’s a long-term loss. If we start paying him then he’ll give us priority, even if others are offering a bit more. I think the numbers he gave were two hundred dollars a day from us, three hundred from the next guy, he’ll help us out.”

“Can we pay him in New Dollars?” I asked.

“Trading dollars.”

I scowled. Then I blinked, looking at Tristan. “I thought it was Byron’s turn.”

“I was antsy, I begged. I owe him time later, now. He thinks this is important. We were talking about money, Sveta talked to Weld and Weld talked to his bosses. They’re going to see what they can funnel our way. It won’t be a ton, but it’s going to cover rent.”

I looked around the room. The two members of our group who were in jail were present, as were Tristan, obviously, and Kenzie.

“No Chris?”

“Out. We messaged him to come back.”

“And Sveta?”

“Stuck around with the people she was talking to. Ratcatcher and others Ratcatcher has talked to. They got to talking and she wanted to keep chatting. She’s on her way back, but she was a good ways away.”

“That’s good. Rapport,” I said.

“It is. Except,” Tristan said. He made except its own statement, with emphasis, glancing at Rain.

“Except I caught Crystalclear during morning yard,” Rain said. “We got caught up. Everything was foggy before, and we’re getting a clearer view now. We found Goddess.”

“Found?” I asked, my interest piqued.

Kenzie opened up a screen, projecting it onto the one wall. It was her overhead camera, in an area where the sky was much darker, the light that peeked through much briefer. The wind blew at people’s jackets and hair, whipping it.

“It’s a replay,” Kenzie said.

The camera fixed on one individual. A woman, blonde, wearing a light blue jacket with a white fur ruff collar. She walked with her hands in her pockets, head down.

As the replay continued, a few droplets of moisture collected on the lens of the camera. It blinked them away. Each time she raised her head or the wind blew her hair out of her face, the camera took snapshots. The various shots of the woman’s face appeared off to the side, organized into rows and columns by some system I didn’t recognize.

“Crystalclear is in the prison undercover,” Rain said. “Once I confirmed I knew you, he talked to his superiors, and they reached out to us. One subset of the Wardens.”

“They’re letting us know, but we’re not supposed to tell the other teams we’re working with,” Tristan said.

The scene continued, the woman entering a store. The scene skipped ahead to when she was making her exit, now with a bag in hand.

“Why lead a mundane life when you’re that powerful?” Tristan asked.

The camera zoomed in on the bag, shifting through vision modes, each shift suggesting something about the outlines of what was in the bag. Food, it looked like. Regular Earth-Gimel groceries.

When the camera pulled back to get a better view of her, she was staring up at it.

“Good bye,” Kenzie said.

The hand that was holding the groceries twitched, fingers going from a curled position to straight-out. The image shattered- all glitches, artifacts, violent flickering, and the brief audio of a clatter.

“Broken into a million and a half pieces,” Kenzie said. “It hurts to lose it.”

“She knows we’re looking at her?” I asked.

“She doesn’t care,” Ashley said.

“She doesn’t,” Rain said. “Foresight and the Wardens have been keeping tabs on major players. They knew she was interested in the prison- she didn’t make any secrets about it. Her underlings have been ringing in regularly. That interest of hers was reason enough to watch her. She sees them watching and scares them off, just like she disintegrated the camera. She doesn’t change her routine outside of that. She doesn’t use powers, they don’t think, unless it’s in situations like that just now, and at one point she went for a swim.”

“Why is the swim noteworthy?”

“Because she swam three hundred and sixty miles without coming up for air,” Rain said.

“She flew underwater,” Ashley said. “It’s evasive action, ducking out of sight, going where a lot of cameras and some thinker powers can’t.”

The still images gathered together, then the individual variances served to help it form a three-dimensional map. The representation of the head faced the camera, and then began rotating slowly.

Tristan spoke, “We’ve got people keeping an eye out for the zealots that are operating around the prison, Auzure is keeping an eye on the prison medical, Sveta’s guys will track some key guards, now the Major Malfunctions- who did we give them?”

“I gave them the response team leader,” I said. “If things get bad and the anklets don’t work, his people are the ones who suit up and go in. If the anklets do work, he’s one of two people who sign off on pulling the trigger.”

“Good to have eyes on him, then. We’ll get more teams in on this later this afternoon.”

“She’s weaponizing the second chance,” Ashley said.

“Weaponizing?” Rain asked.

“Walking among us. Disappearing into the crowd. She’s gathering people, and she’s being subtle about it. She’s too important to go completely unnoticed, but she’s doing something here. She does have minions, she’s just telling them to stay away.”

“Because keeping her allies close would draw too much attention. This way, it’s ambiguous. It’s really hard to take issue with someone who’s living in an apartment and buying groceries,” I voiced my thoughts aloud.

“We’re just glossing over the fact she took over a planet,” Tristan said.

Images popped up. They were odd angles, some forced. Surveillance camera footage of the street. Someone’s photograph that they had put online, which had her in the background.

“This is all I’m able to find right now,” Kenzie said.

“We have thinkers we can turn to the task,” Tristan said. “Contacts. Foresight is offering to help.”

The screen was practically on fire with the lines that showed connections, ten or more flickering through every second, brute-forcing their way through possible renditions.

More images popped up. Someone’s dash-mounted camera caught her on the street.

“Let’s make sure we have some resources,” I said. “We have the greenlist. It might be worth seeing if anyone could help us if she goes rogue or if she tries to collect people by force.”

“Power nullifiers?” Tristan asked. “Thinkers? Masters?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me do that, then.”

Chris let himself in. His eyes immediately went to the wall.

“Kenzie,” Ashley said. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Yup.”

“The moment she destroyed the camera. Can you go back to that?”

“I can go back to that place in things, yeah.”

The image on the wall shifted. Back to the scene where the Lady in Blue had her groceries.

The scene moved around by increments, as the camera hovered, swaying in the wind.

“There.”

“That doesn’t do me much good. Send it to my laptop?”

“Oh. I forgot you weren’t really there. Now I miss you.”

“I’m here talking with you. It’s as good as we’re going to get for now. Focus in on the face?”

Kenzie did, doing the same with the image on the wall for our benefit as well.

Anger, a flash of it, disdainful.

“Scared,” Ashley said. “And not of the camera.”

“I don’t see it,” I said.

“I can almost see it,” Chris said.

“You’ve seen the footage?” I asked.

“Before you got back. I went out to make sure I’m free and clear if something happens this afternoon.”

That soon? We’re not ready.

There were still people to organize, we needed to find people who might be able to deal with this woman, get them on board, and then coordinate them. If none of us could go, then the hit team we recruited would have to. Beyond that, what? Civilians? Men and women with guns against an invincible woman who could telekinetically smash a camera from a quarter-mile away?

All of which ignored the zealots. They weren’t invincible, far from it, but they were invisible.

We had no idea of knowing when this could all come to a head.

I heard the squeak of whiteboard marker and I looked.

Tristan was at my board where I’d listed the ‘green’ capes and teams. The same ones we’d just recruited.

A black ‘x’ here.

A black ‘x’ there.

By my mom and dad, even. A black ‘x’.

“Cap-” I started. But he was talking to the phone that was pressed to one ear.

I waited.

He finished. Everyone was watching him as he put the phone down. When he slashed out the black ‘x’ by the Kings of the Hill, it was more dramatic, messier, angrier.

“What happened?” I asked.

“We’re being undercut,” Tristan answered. “It’s going to be a thing tonight, but these teams and people-”

He stabbed the board.

“They’ve got an ear to the ground. A group is talking about Lookout, and they’re pushing it to the public later. They don’t want to deal with us until we get this handled.”

Beacon – 8.9

I hurried over to my computer. The setup I’d put together wasn’t really set up for a PR crisis, especially one revolving around us. Some people had put in requests for info, with stuff wedged into the wrong fields. Others had emailed us directly.

I shut my laptop. That particular mutant could be tackled later.

“Kenzie-” I said.

“I didn’t do it,” Kenzie said, her eyes wide. “I’ve been good.”

“I can count ten things you did that aren’t ‘good’ in the last week, and that’s without trying,” Chris said.

“I did?”

“Breaking into secured systems, watching people, tapping into phone lines…”

I glanced at Natalie.

“Oh. That. I was thinking more about the personal, relationship stuff,” Kenzie said.

“I’d be much more concerned with breaking the law,” Natalie said. “I need to get caught up, apparently. How much of this did you get permission for? What secured systems?”

“I might be a little too frazzled to remember all of them,” Kenzie said.

“No documentation?” Chris asked. “On top of having no timestamps?”

“Ease up,” Ashley told him, stern. “Not the time.”

“Sure.”

“Nobody’s given me a number, or even a ballpark estimate, for these breaches,” Natalie said, with a bit more incredulity in her voice. “Someone explain. Please.”

“It was in the interest of tracking the Cheit attackers and maintaining lines of communication with Ashley and Rain,” I said. “We talked about some of this.”

“Some was pretty concerning. I was on the fence about that some,” Natalie said. “If there was more than some, I’d have put my foot down.”

“Come, use my laptop,” I said. “Look at my notes.”

I had to pause to open my laptop, a little annoyed that Natalie was making this a point now. Too much to juggle, to then have her demanding attention and focus.

I appreciated it on a level, but still.

I lowered my voice, aware I was missing conversation between Kenzie and Ashley in the background as Natalie and I leaned over my computer. I kept my voice quieter, “I detailed it as best I could here. This is where we’re at, these are the justifications and issues. Open-bracket-N-closed-bracket for Natalie, where we consulted. Our peek into the prison’s inner workings is the worst breach, it caught us by surprise, but we consulted you after, we’re punishing her by restricting visits, and the Wardens and the Guild have signed off on the general thrust of this.”

“I’ll read,” Natalie said, terse.

I nodded, standing straight and looking back at the group, my computer and Natalie behind me.

“How does this affect us, if it’s the breaches, monitoring, and whatever?” Tristan asked.

“We can deal with it,” I said. “We got ahead of the portal thing- we didn’t stop it entirely, but we kept it from being worse. A lot of people were hooked into that. The public would forgive the approach if we could prove results, I think, especially given Kenzie’s age and the bigger situation.”

“That’s optimistic,” Rain said.

“The number one priority-” I started.

“Is Kenzie,” Ashley cut in.

“Is- Yes,” I finished. “Laws are vague, we’re helping. They’re not going to burn her at the stake. At worst, it’s a headache.”

“I’ll grudgingly agree with that,” Tristan said. “Total agreement on the headache part.”

“We’ll help you, Kenzie,” I said. “And I think if it’s that, we can deal. If we get ahead of it and show we can do basic PR and that it won’t bounce back on anyone who interacts with us, the others will relax.

She smiled and nodded.

“Because it needs to be said, there are second, third priorities. This situation with Goddess is explosive and dangerous. Cheit is dangerous. We absolutely cannot afford for this to tie our hands or we end up with an international incident, a prison break, or a potential enemy of Gimel recruiting a mess of our most dangerous and depraved parahumans to use against us.”

“Or all of the above,” Rain said.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” Kenzie said.

“You don’t even know what crime or incident you’re apologizing for,” Chris said. “Do we know what it is?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry. What am I sorry for?” Kenzie asked.

“I’m still figuring that out,” Tristan said. He’d just dialed a number on his phone and was holding it to his ear. “But your parents are in on it.”

“Oh,” she said. She looked at me.

“How many things does that narrow it down to?” Chris asked.

“A few,” Kenzie answered, before giving a short laugh and smiling. “I’m kind of caught off guard. Um. The most obvious one is the… parental blackmail? Is that the right word?”

“Extortion,” I said.

“Oh, a crime they might go after you for,” Chris said.

Kenzie looked at me. “Is it?”

I winced. “Harder to dismiss than the breaches, depending.”

“I’ve noticed how Kenzie asks Victoria for input on it being a problem instead of trusting me,” Chris was quiet.

“Feeling left out?” Kenzie asked, the smile dropping from her face as she took on a more serious, somber expression. “I trust you, and I’m touched that you want to help.”

“Uh huh. Regretting I said anything now.” Much like how Tristan was on the phone, having retreated to the far corner of the room, blocking out our conversation with one hand on his other ear, Chris was turning to his laptop.

“I could go to jail,” Kenzie said it as if it was just dawning on her. She sat back in her chair, the adjustable metal parts shaking audibly with the force of the movement. Her eyes widened, and she turned to look at Ashley’s projection.

“No,” Ashley said, pre-emptively.

Kenzie’s eyes widened. “I could go to your jail.”

“Oh geez,” Rain said.

“No,” Ashley repeated. “It’s not worth it.”

“Silver linings, though.”

“You’d be put in another area, on another schedule. You’d be close but probably wouldn’t ever interact. And that’s if they put someone as young as you in that prison,” I said. “I think they put most minors in the Wardens HQ, like Bonesaw.”

“Aww. But it’s not there anymore, so maybe-”

“We’ll do everything we can to keep you out of jail,” Ashley said. To the rest of the group, she said, “Victoria and I talked about this being something the Martins might do.”

I shook my head. “It seemed like something that would come up as part of the tribunal. It’s pretty easy to dodge being put away if you can come up with any excuses or reasonable doubt. But they went with it. When they didn’t, I figured they wouldn’t.”

“Maybe it’s something else?” Kenzie asked. “I didn’t really talk about what I was doing with them, and they didn’t ask. It’s not like they could go in my room without me knowing and find notes or anything to use against me, either.”

“I have no idea,” I said. My eyes roved over the whiteboards. “We’ll wait for Tristan to finish his call. If it doesn’t pan out, I’ll call some people.”

“I’m looking into stuff too,” Chris said.

Kenzie smiled. “Okay. Thanks guys.”

I frowned. “Do you want to step outside? Chat in private? Or ask something? Do you need anything?”

“I’m good,” she said, smiling lightly. “It’s stupid.”

“What’s stupid?” Ashley asked.

“Like, surprise, parents! And I feel exactly like I’m eight years old again and I hear the car door close outside, and… afternoon cartoons are done. Cool babysitter goes home. I’d go to my room to do homework and stay out of the way. And then, you know- I talked about this in the group, but then I end up either trying to be perfect or I’m not perfect and I’m anxious about it, but it’s never a good feeling. I wasn’t perfect here.”

“Nope,” Chris cut in, his focus on his computer.

Kenzie gave him the finger, but he didn’t see.

“Perfect is a pretty high standard,” I said.

“Yeah,” she answered, nodding. “Normally I’m okay, and I was okay before when I knew I had a say and they were scared, but…”

She trailed off.

“Victoria,” Ashley said, her voice soft. “Make those calls you were talking about. Get answers, because it doesn’t look like Tristan’s having any luck. I’ll talk with Kenzie. It’s all I’m good for right now.”

I glanced at Kenzie, and saw her nod.

Okay.

“We’ll reach out to everyone we already talked to or were scheduled to talk to, same way we divided it up beforehand,” I said. “If they’re out, find out why, get details. If they’re still in, we might need their help. Eyes on the scene, looking out for Cheit.”

“Makes sense,” Ashley said.

“Let Tristan know, let Sveta know in case I don’t run into her. I’m stepping outside.”

“Good luck,” Rain said.

I stepped out onto the fire escape, letting the door close behind me.

Between Natalie and the other members of the group, it was too much to balance. We’d figure out what was going on and we’d tackle it, but a conversation with that many people in it wasn’t a good place for me to get my thoughts in order, even when some were quiet.

I could have pulled out my phone and made a call, but I didn’t. The sky was dark overhead, the angle of the sun in the late afternoon made it so it didn’t peek through in fleeting slats and beams as it had earlier. The wind was only moderate, if insistent, and the city was eerily quiet for the daylight hours. If there was construction ongoing, the wind consumed the sound.

How many heroes were out there? How many teams were doing what the Major Malfunctions were doing, settling into a territory where jurisdiction wasn’t contested and just subsisting? No interest or willingness to join other teams, no clues about where the villains were, no information with which to equip or empower themselves.

I’d pushed for this network because it made a fundamental sense to me. I knew it was an uphill fight to get it established. I knew there were outright nightmares coming, when groups with views and perspectives as opposed as the Shepherds and Advance Guard ended up butting heads. I knew that. I was wholly aware, both from real life experience and from parahuman studies, that any grouping of capes was going to be a dramafest at best, an implosion most of the time, and an implosion with collateral damage at worst.

But I’d wanted to try.

Fucking damn it.

Five minutes. Five minutes to get my thoughts in order, and center myself. I checked my phone for the time, so I could measure out those minutes.

Three missed calls. The cell coverage was so spotty my phone couldn’t seem to decide if I had a connection to the greater network or not. I didn’t check the missed calls, and instead focused on the signal.

Up. Away from things, to a point where I could see more of the city.

Not that long ago, I’d mused on how I needed to stay connected, because flying could mislead. This was me seeking out the disconnection.

I let the five minutes pass, and I checked my missed calls.

A press of the button dialed the number and initiated the call. I took a minute to fish out the earbud and plug it in.

“Victoria,” my mom said.

“You called?”

“I had a chat with Tristan on the phone. I was worried by how I left things, I gave perfunctory answers, because he clearly wanted to move on and call other people to confirm. Given how tense things have been between us-”

She didn’t finish the sentence. Was it meant to be a question, without the inflection? Asking if things were tense?

“Yeah,” I said.

“I hope you know that dad and I saying we don’t want to cooperate until this is resolved isn’t because of you.”

“Do you know what this is?”

“Allegations against your youngest team member. They’re doing a news segment tonight. The people involved are buzzing- they were asking some others for input on the legality. Protecting identities, not divulging enough that someone could find out her civilian details. But they’re bringing the parents in. The news crews took cameras to the holding prison to record footage or testimony.”

“You told this to Capricorn?” I asked. He’d said something about the segment, and the involvement of the parents. Was it from my mom?

“Ninety percent of it. The rest is inconsequential. Can I help?”

“Without putting your own necks on the line, rep-wise?” I asked.

“If you ask me to, I will. Your father will. But only if you need it. Are you upset?”

I understood the dynamic they labored under- they were part of a disparate team, but if they crossed the line or went against the vast majority, there was a chance they’d be kicked out.

And I’d be asking them to do it for what? A bit of firepower, when we didn’t have an active enemy to aim it at?

“No. I’m not upset. It makes sense.”

“Good. I liked Tristan’s questions and approach. He has a good mind for the PR stuff. He’s attractive, stylish, clever about some of these things. Keep him close, Victoria. He’s an asset.”

“He’s a friend. If that last bit was you trying to subtly maneuver us into dating, think again. That’s not going to happen.”

“It wasn’t. I see merit, there. Nothing more, nothing less.”

I nodded, annoyed and restless.

“We had a similar experience, back in the beginning. A team with all the promise in the world, people were talking about us, the public was supportive, the law, the heroes…”

“And then Auntie Jess died. Murdered. New Wave lost its momentum.”

“It lost what it initially had. I’d like to believe that if things had been left alone, if we hadn’t had to deal with the horror that came with Leviathan or after, we might have found our way back to prominence. All it would take would be the right event, all of us coordinated in how we’d approached it. Ideally, you would have all been over eighteen, and we could have gone all out in the public eye.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. It wasn’t that like my mom to be so impractical and out there, talking hypothetical situations.

Had Leviathan been that right event, with all of us not coordinated enough? Too many of us had died.

I suppressed a sigh. I wondered how my mother’s mind worked and I didn’t want to know, at the same time.

I could barely remember Auntie Jess. The memory was occluded by the very clear distinction of a sniveling kid in a courtyard- someone who’d been looking to earn his stripes as a member of our local racist troupe. He’d cried, begged, and asked for his dad to save him when the pronouncement had come from the court. I could remember seeing him and being disgustedly disappointed in him. That someone as awesome as my aunt had been killed by someone as far from awesome as him.

No- no. That hadn’t been my opinion. It had been something my mom had said that had struck so close to home that it felt like my own idea.

My opinion had been a quiet certainty that his craven behavior in court would at least ensure that he didn’t get what he wanted. He wouldn’t get his initiation into the gang if he acted like that. And I’d been wrong. He was young, he hadn’t been tried as an adult, and he’d gotten out in short order. He’d gone straight to Empire Eighty-Eight and been welcomed with open arms.

Auntie Jess- she hadn’t been a true aunt- Uncle Mike hadn’t gotten around to marrying her. She was a pretty, dark-haired woman in the photographs we had too few of – good straight-on images of her face being rare. She was foggy memories amid holidays and other focuses. I could remember bedtime stories with- with Amy and me on either side of her. My most recent memory of her was all of us in the backyard, Eric, Amy and I trying to do a thing chaining water dart guns together, like Eric had seen in a video. He’d been insistent we’d make it work, and his dad was to be the victim of the barrage. Auntie Jess had saved us by grabbing one of the water dart guns and starting a war.

There’d been a break in the conversation, but it lingered in a way that made me think my mom was lost in memory too.

I was trying to formulate a response when she spoke up again. “The media hounded us, after Fleur died. We had a lot of discussions on how New Wave should handle it. We were disheartened, heartbroken, tired. We decided to let the news cycle roll over while we mourned. It made sense. By the books, it was how we were supposed to handle the public relations side of it. As a family, we needed to take care of each other.”

“Yeah. It makes sense.”

“All the sense in the world,” she said, in a different tone. Wistful.

I sighed.

“I heard that,” she said.

“Things were coming together. I’m worried about timing. It’s occupying us at a time when we really have bigger things to worry about.”

“I remember you mentioning some of those things. Is it a distraction? When masterminds are in play, you can’t assume it’s a coincidence. If you’re doing something big and there’s a wrench in the works…”

She left the statement at that, open ended, inviting a response.

“It’s not out of the question.”

“Who do you know that would employ that kind of distraction?”

“Everyone? Any major player? Tattletale? If it’s a distraction, we could ignore it. Let it go, like how you guys ignored the media and focused on mourning.”

I was putting it forward as a hypothetical. I didn’t believe it, myself. We couldn’t ignore it, when it was potentially character assassination of a child.

There was a pause on the phone.

“Did I lose you?” I asked.

“I’m wrestling with a thought. Do you have others to call?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You can hang up, and we’ll update you the moment we have any information that could help,” my mother said.

“I’m curious what that thought of yours was,” I said.

“I don’t want to butt my head in where it isn’t wanted. Unsolicited advice?”

I thought about it.

“I’ll take whatever advice I can get,” I said.

Below me, Sveta had arrived. I would have waved, but she wouldn’t have seen me. She pulled herself up to the fire escape, metal limbs clanging on metal slats, and then let herself inside.

“Don’t make the same mistake we did. If you’re trying to build something, defend the turf it’s founded on. Don’t let others decide what the narrative is. Don’t fight it- that’s the path of cowards and tyrants, and you don’t want to appear to be either of those things.”

“Ignore the rules? Go on the offensive?”

“Don’t give them ammunition. Do show you won’t fold.”

“It’s dangerous to do that, given the current climate.”

I expected argument, retort, elaboration.

“Yes,” she said. “It is.”

Only confirmation.

“Good luck,” she said. “We’re available if you need us.”

“Would you be willing to help with something that isn’t in the public eye? No backsplash if this all goes wrong.”

“What something?”

“Surveillance,” I said. “And for the record, it feels really weird to ask for my mom to conduct surveillance.”

“It felt weird to tell my fourteen year old daughter to break a man’s arm, once upon a time,” she said. “We adapt. I’ll do it, invite your dad, we’ll swap shifts.”

“I’ll email you the particulars,” I said.

We left it at that. The wind whipped at my hair and hood as I floated in the air.

I called the Paint Fumes team, not that that was their real name, but I had to call them something. Tempera was out. Fume Hood was in.

The Major Malfunctions were in. They had no idea that there was even a welling PR issue, and when I explained it, they seemed to have some difficulty understanding why it would change anything for them.

I wasn’t sure if I should send Fume Hood with their group for the extra backup or split things up. It was a weird combination to imagine.

I landed on the fire escape, then opened the door.

All conversation stopped. In the corner of my vision, Kenzie hit a key, and an image disappeared from the wall.

“You’re back,” Rain said. “That was fast.”

They’d thought I was gone? That I’d flown off to talk to people in person, maybe?

“I went up, not away,” I said. I couldn’t help but notice the awkwardness in the air, the lingering silence. “Is there a problem?”

“No problem,” Chris said.

I looked at Sveta. She gave me an uneasy smile.

“You’re all acting weird. Paranoia makes me think it’s a stranger effect?”

“No,” Rain said. “If it was, Ashley and I wouldn’t be affected.”

I nodded.

The cape geek in me wanted to say probably not. But there were stranger effects that were able to be passed on with recordings and written words. Rare, but they existed. Blindside from the community center attack, I was pretty sure, could turn cameras away or black them out. There were hypnotic singers who transmitted their effect through digital devices.

People were looking between each other. There seemed to be a consensus as just about all eyes turned to Sveta.

Not Natalie’s, for one thing. She looked about as confused as I felt.

But it seemed Sveta had been decided by unspoken agreement to be the one to handle this.

“It’s mundane,” Sveta said. “Kind of. Can we change the subject?”

“The sudden change or lack of subject is why I’m confused,” I said, wary.

“Please?” she asked. “Don’t make a big deal of this? Count it as coming from me, speaking as a friend?”

“Does it tie into Kenzie’s situation, Cheit, Goddess, or any of the things we’re trying to juggle here?”

“Not in a way that impacts our mission, I’m pretty sure,” she said. She had to look to others for confirmation.

I swallowed hard.

It looked like she genuinely didn’t know what to say or do.

Chris was staring me down, eyebrows furrowed. Tristan- he looked almost casual, thumbs hooked into his pockets, hands flat against the sides of his thighs. Kenzie- hard to read. No smiles, at least. Rain kept glancing at the blank spot on the wall where the projected screen had been. Ashley looked like she was busy thinking.

No, Ashley was impatient. it was hard to tell when her body wasn’t giving the right body language, just default poses and stances. Her face, though. Irritated? Agitated? Restless?

“Okay,” I said.

“Just like that?” Chris asked.

“My parents will handle some surveillance. Fume Hood and the Malfunctions will as well, but they’re novices when it comes to that.”

“That’s reassuring,” Tristan said.

“We can get others,” I said. “Tap the teams, figure out who doesn’t care about PR.”

“The good ones do,” Tristan said. “I called, on your suggestion. They told me your idea of how we move forward, so I reached out. I only got one of my four teams to agree, and they aren’t totally committed.”

I nodded. I’d somehow figured mine would be more loyal – not because I was anything special, but because there was a lot more personal investment in it. I outlined the next step in my greater plan, “We’ll scratch together something to hold down the fort, and then we handle the current PR crisis. Once it’s handled, those who flew the coop should come back to roost.”

“You’re going to let this go?” Chris asked.

“Hm?” I made a sound.

“I don’t think you’re sincere, saying you’re going to ignore this whole thing here, just because Sveta asked nicely.”

“We have other things to focus on.”

“We do,” Tristan said. “Don’t cause trouble, Chris.”

“I only kinda-sorta agreed to this because I thought she wouldn’t go for it.”

Ashley looked away.

I was noting Ashley’s silence. She seemed annoyed. Chris… he was baffled, if I had to put my finger on it, which was a very different thing from Natalie’s confusion.

Those were the three who looked more bothered by this scene.

“I trust Sveta,” I said. “And I trust you guys as a group. Whatever the other teams are reporting- you’re keeping it from me. Okay. Because I trust you guys, I’ll trust you’re doing it for the right reasons.”

“It’s weird,” Chris said.

“Chris,” Tristan said.

“It is, but I’m going to go with it,” I told Chris. “Because I trust them. There was someone in the past who told me something. I ignored them, I gave them a hug. Everything fell apart. My best friend tells me not to pry? Fine. I’ll listen.”

“Best friend. That’s so sweet,” Kenzie said.

Sveta didn’t look like she was super happy. Guilty? Something else?

I put it out of mind. My concern was more in the realm that I really wanted to talk to Sveta about other things, and now it might seem like I was trying to butter her up with gifts or attention. It was just so hard to actually sit her down and have a conversation. We kept getting interrupted or distracted.

“First problem is the PR issue,” Tristan said. “If we can’t fix that, it’s impossible to do anything else.”

“We get out ahead of it,” I said.

“Solving one quasi-illegal or illegal issue with more extortion,” Ashley said, her tone dry. “Naturally.”

“Nobody said extortion,” Chris answered. “That’s really interesting, that you immediately think of that.”

“It’s sarcasm, you oaf. Figure out a form that helps you figure it out and spend a month or two in it. You have a lot of catching up to do.”

There was an insult in the first sentence and a harsh phrasing throughout, but Chris didn’t seem to mind. He even smiled a little.

“I have some info,” Chris said. “I did some searching.”

“It’s really interesting to see which times get you most into things,” Rain said. “They tend to be the worst times.”

“Intriguing times,” Chris said. “Which are some of the worst because powers are both intriguing and they’re fountains of suck.”

“What info?” I asked.

He looked at his computer. “One of the TV studios owned by a Mr. Buckner is handling this whole thing. It’s going out on the radio first and then depending on whether it’s a success or not, they’ll televise a continuation. People drive home from work in the late hour, they catch it, they listen, and then they get home and turn on the television.”

“How did you get this?” I asked.

“I have like, forty online accounts. A lot are connected, but if I’m careful not to post too often, I can build up a persona and people accept me into their communities. I have something like four accounts in four very different sub-communities.”

“Because you deceive people about who you are?” Sveta asked.

“Sure,” Chris said. “It works. The television studio had employees doing research on Parahumans Online. I ask Lookout and… she confirmed it.”

Which was code for ‘she broke in and stole info’. Natalie didn’t seem to have been fooled by it.

“Why forty accounts?” I asked.

“Fog of war. It confuses investigators online, makes my trail harder to follow. Algorithms track everything you do, so I break it all up. One set of names for one site, another for another site. It lets me narrow down what came from who, if I get an email to one account or another.”

“Seems unnecessarily complicated,” Tristan said.

“Don’t know what to tell you,” Chris said. “Except that it worked for us in this instance, so stop getting on my case.”

“It’s good,” Tristan said. “Question is, what do we do about it? Mug ’em? Tell them to leave it alone? Ignore them? I should stress that if we’re doing anything in costume, you’re going to have Byron as a tagalong, not me.”

“We shouldn’t ignore them,” I said. “If they’re intending to spread lies-”

“They could spread inconvenient truths and it would be bad,” Ashley said.

“Urg,” Kenzie said.

“All the more reason,” I said. “When is the show?”

“Three hours,” Chris said.

“We could try getting on the show.”

“I asked,” Tristan said. “They don’t want us. That’s our big issue. It’s a hit piece, probably aimed at Kenzie by her parents, and it’s going to be organized so they can leverage the fear or whatever that they play up. Kenzie’s parents get to discredit the primary witness against them, and there’s no competing viewpoint to screw with that or muddy the waters.”

“Spooky,” Kenzie said.

Sveta rubbed Kenzie’s shoulder with a prosthetic hand.

“Stupid that preys on fears gets a lot of traction,” Rain said. “If you want airtime, you need to offer something stupider or more nonthreatening than what they’ve got in line.”

“No,” I said “I refuse to believe that. That’s not what this ecosystem is about.”

“Post Gold Morning?” Rain asked. “I might have been interacting with a biased pool of people, but I feel like it weighs pretty heavy on us. It breaks people a bit. People are so overwhelmed by the end of the world and an entirely new universe that they can’t even think straight. Someone tells them how to think? They jump on it.”

I frowned.

“I’ve seen that fear and anger,” Sveta said. “Against case fifty-threes. By them.”

Fear and anger. I spoke, “I want to go on the show with our most stylish, best PR people on the team. If we offer the right thing, maybe we can swing it… like if we take the next two hours to ask the other teams if it’s okay, and then we put ourselves forward as the sacrificial goats.”

“The goats?” Tristan asked.

“We can’t reach everyone,” Sveta said.

“No,” I agreed. “But at this stage, if someone comes to us and they’re angry about us talking about things they wanted to leave alone… let them be angry. If they don’t matter, we deal. If they do matter, we tell them the truth. That there’s too much at stake these days, and they need to step up or get out of the way. A small convenience isn’t worth everyone being in the dark.”

“You’re putting out a fire by dropping a bonfire on it,” Rain said.

I glanced at the blank spot on the wall.

Yeah, I didn’t want to give up. I didn’t want this team to be an idea that existed for a fleeting moment, then existed as a haunting echo thereafter. Good moments? Sure. Some celebrity, some success, money, whatever. But the momentum had been lost.

I wanted to keep the momentum. There was a need among people, and capes were aching for unity and collaboration. They wanted security. That could be granted. If we were going to go up against giants, we had to swing big and swing high.

I nodded slowly. I clenched my fist and rubbed momentarily at the spot on my arm where the bullet had gone through. “Bonfire. Yeah, I like that analogy. If they want to burn us, let’s show them just how bright we can get.”

Beacon – 8.10

Five minutes to fly to Ashley’s place -now my apartment-, three or four minutes to get things. Six minutes to fly back against the headwind. I came back to the headquarters to find everything on fire.

Not literally on fire, but for all intents and purposes, everyone was in motion and being loud except the two people who weren’t really there. Costumes, hair, clothes, words. In making my proposal, I was throwing us to the wolves. I was trusting that we could do okay, come out the other side with the confidence of outside parties. The confidence of the city, who would be listening and rewatching things for days to come.

Everyone running around like they were on fire was… entirely fair. At least it wasn’t a grim silence, this time.

I had to be a pillar. I couldn’t get swept up in the chaos. I put my bag of the stuff I’d grabbed from Ashley’s place on a computer chair, and used a push of my foot to send it across the room, to the corner that was mine. I walked over, through the metaphorical fires that were igniting and being put out.

Natalie was hanging back, actually fairly near Chris’ usual nook. Looking stuff up on her phone, it seemed, or frantically communicating. Worry lines creased her forehead.

Ashley was with Chris, the two of them staring at a phone. Kenzie was beside them, facing the other direction as she typed away.

“I want you to wear the armor,” Tristan said, to nobody in particular, as he walked across the room.

An instant later, with some blurring and glowing eyes, he was Byron. “Your armor. I’m supposed to be you?”

Another shift. Tristan glanced at me. He drew in a breath, eyes unfocusing, one hand gesticulating as he paced toward his station in the headquarters, not even alongside words- he wasn’t speaking yet, but punctuating thoughts before he outlined them.

“Yeah. I can shift down, wearing my stripped-down costume, secondary armor and bodysuit, mask, present better for the cameras, it’s a bit of an effect, it’s almost like disarming, and it’s cool,” Tristan replied.

“It would be effective,” Ashley said.

“It would be scary people with powers using powers while at a public venue,” Sveta said.

“That’s a good point,” I said.

“It’s not even really using a power,” Tristan said, dismissive. He switched out.

“Natalie?” I asked.

She lifted her head, eyes wide, wider behind her glasses.

“Give us a civilian perspective? Someone does the transforming thing like Tristan and Byron do, in a tense but civil situation. How do you react?”

They changed and changed back to demonstrate.

“At a television studio? I wouldn’t mind, I don’t think,” Natalie said. “But I’m weird. There are a ton of things that bother me that other people treat as normal, and a ton of things I wouldn’t blink at things that annoy or freak out other people.”

“I respect that,” Chris said. “Yes, you have to find that nugget of you and cling to it. That stuff that makes you different.”

“It’s not anything fancy,” Natalie said. “I’m anxious about the stupidest stuff and I can get zen with routine work and chores. There are maybe three times in my life something horrible happened near me, and I kept my cool while other people were breaking down. That’s basically it.”

“Fancy enough,” Chris said.

“It’s really not,” Natalie replied.

“Nat, if you have Chris’ respect, take it and run. That’s better than a lot of us get,” Rain said.

“That’s not true,” Chris said. “I respect you guys, mostly. I think you’re obnoxious and wrong-headed, but you don’t suck at everything. If you did, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Okay. Keep swiping,” Ashley indicated the phone Chris held.

“I tell people I respect them and I get told to get back to the grunt work. People wonder why I’m the way I am,” Chris said.

Natalie frowned a bit at Chris, then seemed to remember something, going by the small look of surprise on her face. She snapped her attention to me.

“Oh, Victoria! We got the go-ahead from Ms. Kenzie Martin’s guardianship to have her on the show.”

“Good,” I said. “If you’re up for it, Kenzie?”

“Yeah. So long as I’ve got you guys.”

Tristan had said something. He switched.

Byron shook his head. “There three things here I have issues with. Your armor is heavy, and I’m not that strong. Why are you in the spotlight, when I’m supposed to get the extra hours tonight? And why? Really why is it so important I wear the armor?”

He switched back to Tristan. No immediate reply from the bolder brother, but Tristan’s hand was in motion, like an orchestral conductor with his stick. Flick, flick, stop- he met my eye, and there was a light in his eyes.

He was nervous and he was also wholly in his element, getting ready to face this.

I was going to say something, but I heard the others. Chris was being cranky, still on about the swiping. Ashley and Kenzie were talking to him. That was more of an immediate concern, as much as I worried about Tristan wanting to do this so badly he was willing to bulldoze over Byron.

“I’m going to get a repetitive stress injury if you don’t pick,” Chris said. He had a phone in hand, and he was swiping, swiping, swiping. “Kenzie’s putting something together to make it easier, so why not just wait two minutes and spare me the pain?”

“You’re not that weak,” Ashley said.

“I’m literally that weak,” Chris said. “I’m prone to just about everything, because of all the tiny flaws in how I’m put together.”

“Keep scrolling,” Ashley said.

Chris leaned back, his elbow shoving the dinner-plate sized disc that handled Kenzie’s lesser projections in the field. It moved toward the table’s edge, the lip of it extending over. “Oops.”

Kenzie’s head snapped up. Her eyes locked onto the disc. “If you knock that over, I’m going to hold you down and flash you so many times light comes out your butt.”

“Wording. Flash gun,” Chris said.

“Or I’ll use the eyehook and get inventive,” Kenzie said. She waved her hand and the eyehook that was draped over the end of her workstation made a limp shuffle forward. The combination of the weight of the hook on the end and the new position of the prehensile limb made it slide off the table, collapsing noisily in a heap on the ground.

“Nice,” Chris said.

“That was meant to be way more intimidating,” Kenzie said.

“We’ll work on that,” Ashley said.

Kenzie nodded, looking at Chris. “Keep scrolling.”

“Keep scrolling,” Ashley repeated.

“Uuggh. Maybe I should just say I’m coming, and I need to get ready, just so I don’t have to keep doing this.”

“Yeah, right,” Rain said. “Mr. Privacy is going to go up and put himself out there in front of millions.”

“I could hide my face with the projector.”

“You could, except they’re already taken. I’m using one for me so I don’t have to have my helmet on, and I’m bringing one so we can have Ashley come along.”

“You’re coming?” I asked Ashley.

“For Kenzie. Is it a problem?”

There were issues, but…

“You can tell me,” she said. “Tristan was against, Kenzie was for.”

“If she’s not going I don’t want to go,” Kenzie said.

“And…” I looked at Rain and Sveta, who were hanging back. “Where are you guys?”

“I’m obviously not going. I’m worried that if I comment or touch anything I’m going to make it worse,” Rain said. “I don’t know enough about this stuff.”

“I know just enough to say I’m worried-” Sveta said.

“Worried is a good way of putting it,” Rain cut in.

“-And I feel only dread,” Sveta finished. “Not about Ashley going. All of it.”

“We have to do something,” Kenzie said.

“I know. I even agree with Victoria. I trust her. I’m just worried this will be a disaster.”

“Agreed,” Rain said.

“You two are really on the same page, huh?” I asked. I unlocked my computer and checked the messages. While the page loaded, I began fishing things out of my bag. Makeup, a hot roller for my hair, hair stuff, a clothes brush…

“We’re the ones on the sideline for this,” Rain said. “Us two and Chris.”

“And Natalie,” Rain said.

Natalie nodded. “I’ll be at the studio, so I can monitor Kenzie, but please don’t put me on stage.”

“Absolutely won’t,” I said to her, before looking back to the pair of Rain and Sveta. “Your vote counts.”

“This is your thing. You and Tristan, you understand… PR,” Sveta said. “And I do want to learn, so I understand it for next time, but I trust your instincts more than I trust mine. I know almost nothing. You make the tie-breaking call on bringing Ashley.”

I nodded slowly. I didn’t want it to be me. It put me pretty squarely between multiple members of the group, and the fact that so many people were abstaining made it feel more like feelings would be hurt.

I looked at Ashley, and saw her with her chin held high. Kenzie practically bounced as she talked to her.

That was Kenzie’s happiness. In motion, restless and hard to restrain, words falling out of her mouth rapid-fire.

“Tristan,” I called out.

Byron switched. Tristan walked over to me, then asked, “What?”

“I’m thinking we should bring Ashley.”

“They’re going to shit-talk Kenzie,” Tristan said. “I’m going to have trouble not punching faces. Ashley will have a harder time.”

“She can’t hit people like this.”

“She can say something, though,” Tristan said.

“So can we. Worst case scenario, we blip her out, explain it away.”

Tristan drew in a breath.

“If it’s the two of us alone, it’s going to feel like we’re the PR team. They go after one of us, or they create an issue, and we’re done. Bring Kenzie in, it feels more personal. Bring someone like Ashley in, and I think we’ll shed the image of being the public relations branch of something bigger, because it’s easier to have an actual, natural back and forth.”

“Can’t bring Rain,” he said. “Not enough projectors, according to Kenz. Can’t bring Chris, because we want to win this PR battle. Sveta?”

“No,” Sveta said.

“Then Ashley. Fine, makes sense,” he said. He went back to what he was doing with his costume buckles and plates.

Sveta helped me by holding my bag while I fished past stray receipts, some paper, and finally got the last of the individual makeup things out.

“You don’t want to come on?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “I can’t do- that. The makeup, the hair. I don’t have the clothes for it. I’m toxic, too.”

“Toxic? No,” I said.

“Yes. The other Case Fifty-threes hate me. Every time I pop up in the news because people know I’m dating Weld, it gets bitter and nasty. For now I want to keep my head down.”

“We keep trying to talk and getting interrupted or distracted, especially about-” I stopped, glancing at Rain.

“I’ll get out of your hair,” Rain said.

“I didn’t mean to scare you off,” I said.

“S’alright. I might need to referee for Tristan and Byron.”

Rain half-walked, half-floated across the room, a camera periodically becoming visible at the edges where his head moved too much. Sure enough, Tristan and Byron were arguing.

“And- I really do want to spend time with you and cover all the bases, get one hundred percent caught up, and make sure there’s no stone unturned- of course, no touching any stones you want to leave alone.”

“You mentioned shopping once,” she murmured.

“I did,” I said, using my flight to make getting under the table to plug my hot roller into the wall. “I was under the impression you didn’t want to talk about any of that stuff.”

She leaned closer, nearly losing her grip as she seized a table edge so she could bend over better. “You’re an exception. You’re my friend. Tristan is pushier.”

“Got it,” I said. “We’ll do something. Get you clothes you like?”

She nodded.

“Something closer to hippie, surfer, bohemian styles?”

“I have no idea what those things are, but yes. Soon?” she sounded almost eager.

I’d been neglecting my friend, trying to juggle this everything thing. I felt bad.

“Soon. I promise.”

“Tell me what you’re doing, so I can learn some of it?”

“Absolutely,” I said. I saw a message pop up on my screen.

Advance Guard: if u want to bite that bullet for the rest of us, is ur funeral

Shortcut’s response, I was thinking it was Shortcut because I refused to believe it was anyone half-decent, was the latest in a long line of general agreement.

In the background, Tristan was in Rain’s company. Kenzie was switching up her costume colors, and Ashley was- I had to look twice. She and Kenzie had moved the camera away from the projected image of Ashley. Now the image was changing clothes and hairstyles.

The thing on the phone – had that been a game? A character customization menu, used to finalize her costume details and look for the projection?

“Your hair?” I heard Byron, incredulous. “So the real reason you’re pushing for me to wear this heavy-ass armor is because you don’t want helmet hair?”

I caught the dubious look I got from Sveta.

“We’ll get the wackiness out of the way now, talk strategy in the car.”

The look didn’t pass.

⊙

‘B-TV’. The building loomed above us as we got out of the car. It was me, Capricorn, Lookout, and, after a short delay for the camera and projector to boot up, Swansong in a dress that combined black and white. The dress had costume lines and straps that crossed over at the collarbone. Elegant, but short enough a dress that it could have been indecent.

Natalie climbed out of the car and stood off to the side. She pulled off her puffy jacket, throwing it back into the car, before locking it. Back to her more professional demeanor.

I’d read up on Buckner, the person who controlled over half the media we got in the city, and I didn’t get the parahuman vibe from him. Back in the day, the racist gang leader had turned out to be a businessman, outed as part of a massive break in the unwritten rules. Tattletale, naturally. But it had made sense. Max Anders had been a name that I’d been familiar with through my association with Dean, I’d seen him around three or four times in my visits to high society. He’d given me no overt clues, and yet I’d been entirely unsurprised.

Doing the cape thing in any meaningful capacity took too much effort. Being successful and being a cape? Possible. Max Anders, AKA Kaiser, AKA the CEO of Medhall, he’d done it. But there’d been something missing- I’d seen it in my mom, as she’d struck the balance of being a prosecutor and a heroine. When you lived two demanding lives then petty things had to be pared away, like levity or idle hobbies.

Buckner was a storm of multimedia, a finger in a hundred pies, and he spent a lot of time trying to promote and investigate side things. He went to concerts with new bands playing, sponsoring them, and had photos taken with him and the band on stage at the end of the night. Artists, actors, movie ideas…

Too inane to be a cape.

The building was glass panes in a grid of metal bars, tinted windows that caught the glare of the spotlights. There’d been a brief point in time when the city was under construction that the building would have been nice, taller than all of the rest that were going up around here, a visual break from the siding and brick that made up most buildings.

But that moment had been brief. Materials had been prepared and arranged in advance, and buildings had gone up fast once we’d had the labor.

Squat, ugly, nothing distinctive about it, now, except for the illumination and the people who milled around in it, getting their smoke breaks in, one or two with hands tucked into their armpits, until they needed to bring one up to the cigarette.

I wasn’t warm either. I looked at the others.

“Let’s go,” Capricorn said.

The lobby was brightly lit, organized in a way that would let whole crowds file in and out, or even stand comfortably around for a media or news event. The front desk was organized appropriately for that same purpose, set up like an island in the middle of open space, the ring of desk serving to fortify against and divert the ebb and flow of any crowd. Employees were dressed in uniforms that, like the very design of the B-TV building, would have looked fantastic in the right moment in time. As it was, the cheaper suits with vests beneath looked like the kinds of uniforms a movie theater employee would wear, with a jacket added.

Those were the employees that mobilized to approach us, to manage us. We’d called just before we arrived, and they were ready.

Three people for the five of us, but the security team at the other end of the room moved as we did.

My costume was clean, face made up in a way I normally wouldn’t bother with if I was going out in costume, my hair dressed up, with no braid, only the loosely spiraling tumble of hair over my shoulders, my hood pulled down over my forehead, the spikes of the hood’s ornamentation at my brow, working with the metal band that we’d worked into the white trim to keep the hood in position.

Lookout was in silver and dark gray, with an illuminated green at spots all around her costume, including the lenses of her mask. An eye icon was displayed in white against the dark green plate of the circular projector, which was worn on her chest. The eye shifted between three different configurations of lines and circles, an endless shuffling. Another plate was at her shoulder, smaller than the other, with wires running along her suit to it- power. That would be the projector that let us have Swansong with us.

She had her Eyehook, but it was in a discreet mode. No gun, no weapon, toolbelt reduced down to the essentials. While she walked toward the front of the group, the encasement around one of the buns of her hair opened up. The bun, a mechanical pupil surrounded by a green iris, started staring at me. She turned her head, glancing at me out of the corner of one eye, and I saw the slight skip in her step, alongside a small smile.

That would be the connection pad from Rain’s tech, repurposed so that she apparently now had an extra eyeball extending from the back of her head.

Two.

Televisions along the corridor were showing the ending of the show that preceded our segment. This would be the one where a mix of adults and younger people went over the news of the day. The dynamic was that the adults tried to do it seriously, while the kids teased, joked, interfered and played pranks.

We were led to a room not far from the studio where things were being shot. The room had various seats, a horizontal green band running along the walls, and several televisions. There were some others gathered. At a glance, matching to the kids who were on the television, it was the kid actors’ parents.

“We’ll be starting shortly,” the staff member in the cheap suit told us. “If you have to use the facilities, please let staff know so we can find you quickly if we need to get you on set.”

“Somehow this seems familiar,” Ashley said.

“If you need anything to eat or drink, there’s a fridge over there with a clipboard on top. Write down what you took on the clipboard so we know what to replace. Thank you, and we look forward to having you on the show!”

Bubbles and cheer. The adults in the room were trying to block out the sound of our interruption and follow the final segment on the show.

It would’ve been easy to be grumpy or dismissive. Instead, I put a smile on my face. “Thank you very much. Listen, do you have any tips?”

“Tips?”

I pulled the hood of my costume back. The others were finding seats, except for Swansong, who stood at empty space between Lookout and I. “You watch these shows. I’d bet a box of pastries the staff watches, you talk with each other, and you complain about how every guest does it wrong. I’m nervous and this would help.”

“It would be bad manners for me to say.”

“I’m not asking you anything about employers, only about the guests.”

“Just as I wouldn’t tell anyone anything about you, now that you’re a guest in my care, I can’t speak about past or current guests.”

“Okay,” I said. “I can respect that.”

“We’re broadcasting on television and radio both. Be clear in how you speak, because a share of our followers are going to follow by audio only.”

“Good point. I didn’t have to deal with that the last time I was on a show.”

“It’s a different time. The panel segment that starts halfway through is where things get bad, if they get bad. That’s your segment, by the way. Keep an eye on H.K.”

“Hamza Kouri?” I asked.

“You know the show!”

I didn’t know the show. I’d done research to try and figure out what we were getting into. “Some.”

She went on, “Yes, he’s one of the panelists. If you’ve seen, you know sometimes he derails things, he always looks for his producer in the back of the room to get the go-ahead, or to make sure they have the clip while he’s asking a question, hoping they give an answer that contradicts the clip. It used to go over real well, but it doesn’t anymore. Once they find a schtick, they tend to overplay it or exaggerate it over time, and it’s not playing so well now. He asks the question or launches into the speech, and the moment there’s a weakness, he goes after it until someone makes him stop. He shouts people down, gets condescending. The majority of the audience doesn’t like it, so he’s supposed to be stopping.”

“He looks offscreen, then the trap? Or the rant?”

“Yes. Lynn likes jokes. Keep her laughing and the mood will stay good. John Combs is less predictable. He does his own research. If it’s good research he hits hard. If not… he’s anyone you might see on the street, but with a nice jacket.”

I smiled.

“I’ve got to go run more errands to get us all ready. I will be back to check on you before you go in.”

“Thank you… you didn’t tell me your name.”

“Kaylar.”

One maybe-ally in this whole mess, a bit of information.

Ashley had one raised eyebrow on her face as she looked at me. Everyone else was focusing on the television screens.

“Ask someone for help, and they’re in your debt.”

“Not the other way around?”

“People want to be helpful,” I said.

“That might just be you.”

“It’s true of all of us. Helping us made her feel more important. It made her a part of things. People are grateful for that.”

“There’s no use in it for me,” she said. “I’m not the type to ask for help.”

“If you ever feel the need, remember that the other person is probably waiting for you to do it.”

She offered a dismissive sniff of the nose and shook her head.

The assorted parents were leaving the room, free to retrieve their children while the end credits rolled. Ads were playing on the one side of the screen.

Leaping from family-friendly news to something more controversial.

The door of the room with the green stripe opened. It was Gary Nieves who walked through. He was solidly built, his hair short and dyed to mask white hairs, his clothes rustic. With a wide waistband, he relied on suspenders to keep his pants up, and a tailored suit jacket to hide his suspenders.

“I had half of an hour of screen time allotted to me today. They called to let me know they’re bringing other people on. Now I have seven minutes. They want to leave room for us to debate and to let you say your piece.”

I smiled a little. “You brought her family into it, Mr. Nieves.”

“I would say she brought them into it by a campaign of extortion. They’re small, vulnerable people in a world with terrible giants that exploit or compound vulnerabilities.”

“A terrible giant,” Ashley said, her voice dry. She indicated Lookout, who was all of four-foot-ten and seventy five pounds.

Gary looked nettled.

“Hi,” Lookout said.

“I think I’ll wait elsewhere.”

“You should know my parents are not good people. If they sound sweet and convincing to you, they’re just messing with you. They’re really good at it. Kind of.”

“Excuse me,” he said.

“Um!” Lookout interrupted, with a loudness and urgency that seemed to catch him off guard.

He frowned.

“Um. This isn’t that easy for me, but would you like to see the proof?”

“You falsify evidence. Multiple sources, some ex-PRT, have confirmed this.”

“I can falsify video, because I’m a camera tinker. Falsifying audio is a lot harder. I’ve never been able to do it. Here.”

“I’m not-” he started.

The video began playing. Audio. A sound like a single clap, a book being closed. Then a crash. Dishes breaking. A man’s raised voice, muffled.

“April twenty first, first year,” Kenzie’s voice came through. “Meet my parents, Mr. Julien Martin and Mrs. Irene Martin. Episode three.”

“This is moronic,” Nieves said.

There were more impacts that could be heard over the audio from her phone. Footsteps. Even though they only existed on the phone, Lookout’s shoulders drew together a fraction.

“Kanzi,” Julien said. There were more distant crashes.

“I’m- I’m Kenzie now. Please, I-”

“Stop,” he said. “Stop talking, stop interfering, stop interjecting yourself into things.”

“I filled the dishwasher. To help out!”

“You filled it wrong, and coming home to find it done is a reminder that you’re here. Why are you here? Why come to us?”

“Because you kind of-” there was a pause, a horrendous crash like the whole dishwasher rack had been torn out. “You guys gave birth to me in the first place, and I wasn’t sure where to go.”

“Kanzi, you-”

“Kenzie.”

“Kanzi!” he raised his voice, angry now. “Stop talking back. You left. You told stories and we were sentenced probation, community service, classes, we spent time in jail.”

“I told the truth.”

“You left, and once we got past the legal hassles, things were better,” Julien’s voice came through. “We were happy. You- I have to imagine you were happier, wherever you ended up. Call it- I don’t know. We’re a bad fit, us two and you. Separating us was a good thing, the hell we went through with jail and court aside.”

“I’m in therapy now, I’ve worked on my stuff.”

“I don’t- I can hear your mother coming. This is- it’s so stressful, Kanzi. Every day is stressful.”

“Are you going to stop her? Stop this? Protect me?”

“Are you going to leave?”

“No.”

“Then no. You’re going to keep being you, and she’s going to keep being her, and I wouldn’t survive ten days trying to get between-”

A bang, door against wall.

Then noises, sounds of struggle. The sharp slapping sound of fist against flesh.

Gary looked away from the phone Lookout was holding up.

“Look, please. Listen,” Lookout said.

The sound repeated. Three, four, five times. The arm that was holding up the phone wasn’t steady, and it drew a figure eight in the air with the phone, almost, to the point that if there was anything new happening on the screen, I doubted Gary would be able to track it with his eyes.

“You can falsify evidence,” Gary said. His voice was tense. “That’s a big part of today’s episode.”

The sounds continued, scuffling. More hits on flesh. Kenzie’s voice with each one, indistinct.

“Stop that,” Gary said. “Please and thank you. You made your point.”

“Has she?” I asked. “It’s pretty major for her to show you this.”

In front of me, Lookout shrugged, still holding up the phone. The sounds continued to play. She held her position like she was trying to stand still, but the waver in her hand failed her.

“It’s manipulative and it’s questionable!” Gary said, with an anger above that which was warranted.

In the face of that anger, Lookout backed up a bit. The phone dropped to her side. Video still played on the screen.

“I assume you’re going to try to get them to put this on the air?”

“No,” Lookout said. “I don’t really want it to be seen by millions of people. That’s not the me I want to be in front of that many people.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it,” Swansong said.

“Thank you.”

“For the last time, excuse me,” Gary said. “I would like to get my thoughts in order.”

“If you leave and you ignore this,” Swansong said, “Then you’re no more a man than Julien Martin. You’re worse. You’re the kind of person who empowers the Julien Martins of the world.”

He opened the door and walked through.

“Be sure to let them know where you’re going,” I said, after him. “They want to be able to find you as soon as they need you.”

He ignored me, walking away.

I walked over and closed the door.

“Dickbag,” Natalie said.

Why had I wanted to say that? Pettiness? To make sure he knew he wasn’t supposed to be walking away like that? To inject some civility, however backhanded, and ensure he knew we weren’t wholly bad guys?

I wasn’t sure. I looked over at Lookout, who was exchanging murmured words with Swansong. She walked over to Capricorn, who had been largely absent from the conversation.

He was staring up at the television screen. The show had started, our part wasn’t up for a bit, and he was following it with an almost unblinking stare, his jaw tense, fist clenched at one side.

“Capricorn?” I asked.

“I thought someone should watch, make sure we knew what we were going into,” Byron said, in a voice that was quieter and softer than his usual. “And if I looked away, I’d do something stupid.”

“Okay,” I said. “That makes a lot of sense.”

He looked at Lookout, who drew a step nearer, and reached out, hand on her shoulder. He pulled her close, until her helmet knocked against the armor at the side of his body, and he used one arm to hug her against the side of his body, tight.

She nodded, like she was answering a question.

The show was playing out with the narration of a true crime documentary. Laying out the facts. Kidnapped, tortured, no justice. It wasn’t Lookout’s case, but as images lined up, showing victims with faces blurred out, silhouettes identifiable as her parents appeared.

A part of me ached to check online, make sure that the sky wasn’t falling while we were tied up with this. We had too few people with far too little in the way of effective experience keeping an eye on things. Chris and Sveta were handling the organization.

That part of me didn’t have any motive force. I watched the episode, steeled myself. More words appeared on the screen. A golden flash. A silhouette.

The door opened, and Kaylar the staff guest organizer poked her head into the room.

“You’re on after the next commercial break,” she said. “Come on, hurry. Last chance to spruce up. Get your microphones.”

Microphones clipped to our belts, my own threaded up through my armor like I tended to do my earbuds, we made our way into the hallway. Swansong couldn’t wear one, so Lookout lagged behind, fiddling with her phone and periodically tapping at the projector plate. As Capricorn and Lookout caught up with me, I put a hand on Lookout’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. She put her hand over mine.

The hallway, mundane and ordinary, but for a high ceiling that extended up to the reflective glass above the front section of the building.

Then the studio. The energy of a few hundred people in their seats, all chatting as commercials played, the set, the music, the iffy curtains that kept us out of view until our reveal. People had spotted us and were pointing, leaning toward one another to whisper and to get a better peek.

There was a buzzer, a red light, and conversation stopped.

Televisions throughout the area and screens on various cameras all showed the episode resuming. A flash of gold, a silhouette, and then the word: Answers.

The distortion of voice and bass with our proximity to speakers made words almost unintelligible. A hand gave me a light push. Kaylar.

And I stepped past the curtain, into the studio, wearing my A- costume with my makeup at an A and my hair done to an A+. I stood tall and walked with confidence, my hand at Lookout’s shoulder.

Swansong, an image, not the real her, made her debut in a way. A++ in poise, and that counted for enough.

And Capricorn, Byron up to this point, turned into Tristan to ‘transform’, to drop armor helmet, and to be presentable. He’d done his hair differently, almost but not quite making the two sides of the parts into horn-like lengths, and he wore a mask that left his mouth free.

The hot lamps and spotlights of the studio left me momentarily blind.

Beacon – 8.11

Our applause was like most of the applause at a golf match- far from uproarious, provided by expectation, not by free will. All light was reserved for the stage; four fifths of the expansive room was dark. The audience were nebulous shapes, an audience manager with her back to us keeping everything in order. The audience was easy to lose track of, as the lights were directed our way, a brightness I had to look past.

The three hosts were standing in the center of the stage, in front of the arrangement of table and chairs. A woman at the front of this particular triumvirate- Lynn Chess. Black hair in a bun, bangs straight across the forehead, black suit jacket, a light blue silky top that cut straight across her cleavage, black skirt. She would have looked severe, if it weren’t for her expression and the animation in her eyes, a smile natural on her lips. The face of the group.

With the applause dying down, I could hear her talking. We didn’t have the benefit of speakers, and she didn’t do the talk-show thing of waiting for the applause to die down, gesturing and smiling all the while.

“Breakthrough is an up and coming team, credited with identifying the threat to the inter-world portals and helping to save one of them…”

Hamza Kouri and John Combs walked behind Lynn to greet us while Lynn talked.

Hamza was a big guy, maybe eighty pounds heavier than Gary Nieves, bald at the top with hair only at the sides and back of his head, a thick beard and thick eyebrows that were shot through with white. Dark brown spots flecked already deep brown, damaged skin. I would have taken him for homeless, going by the skin, hair, and the natural angry-at-the-world glower, but his clothes were nice, tailored well to his frame.

He shook Capricorn’s hand, leaning in close to say something, one or two words.

“…Tonight, for those of you catching up, is the second episode of our series looking at the rogues, heroes, and villains of the city, and the dynamic that all of us are having to adjust to…”

Hamza shook my hand, clasping it in both of his, leaning in close enough that I could smell cigars. An expensive habit to have, after the end of the world, when supply was next to nil. He was barely audible. “Good to have you.”

“Thanks for having us,” I murmured back, offering a smile.

Lynn continued, “…talked about duty, about law, and the shifts in attitude that seemed to surround our heroes in the years just before Gold Morning…”

Hamza, where he’d bent over me and Capricorn, stood very straight and stuck his hand down at an angle for Lookout. She shook it, her hand disappearing in his. She tugged, and he bent down, and she said something, while pointing at Swansong.

I shook John Combs’ hand. He was a good looking guy, clean shaven, black hair styled down to the strand, button-up shirt with no tie worn under a suit jacket. When I glanced down at his hand to shake it, I saw his shoes. Earth Bet shoes, like Hamza’s cigars. His grip was aggressively firm, but he actually smiled as he murmured a pleasantry.

“…Tonight, our focus shifts to the present, and how the authorities are handling this, if they’re handling it at all. Today we’re focusing on the question marks. Our investigative reporters brought three cases to our attention. A pair of killers in black raincoats. A husband and wife are held hostage by a family member that was taken into PRT custody years ago. An actual, literal warlord rules over a disconnected section of the city, and it’s not the only one,” Lynn said. Her eyes lit up. “One of the alleged culprits is with us tonight.”

I raised an eyebrow at that.

John had wrapped up the handshakes. He touched Lynn’s arm as he moved back to center, joining Hamza. “Joining us again at our table tonight, we have the recent candidate and contender for the city’s first run at Mayor, and an outspoken, authoritative voice when it comes to figuring out where the costumed fit into things. Mr. Gary Nieves.”

The woman who was managing the audience gave the signal, arms in movement as she encouraged. They applauded. More applause than we got.

Gary Nieves approached. To my eyes, he was a touch red in the face, but I wasn’t sure if that would translate to the cameras.

We were indicated to take our seats, while the hosts greeted Gary Nieves. The arrangement of chairs and table were an ‘L’ shape, the short leg being an arrangement of four puffy chairs, the long leg being a single table. They faced the audience, while we faced them.

Cameras were moving, tracking our every movement. I smiled, keenly aware of my hair, my expression, and my body language. I was aware of the others’ body language and expressions, where visible.

I saw Tristan hesitate a moment, then step away from the chairs. Toward Gary Nieves. Wearing a smile that conveyed I had full confidence in Capricorn, I followed him with less-than-full confidence. Past the three hosts, to Gary Nieves.

As the hosts finished with Gary, Tristan reached him, hand extended to shake. Cameras moved to follow the exchange, and I could see the fraction-of-a-second hesitation in Gary.

He didn’t want to shake Tristan’s hand? Fear? Or optics in the eyes of the audience?

He couldn’t refuse without looking like the bad guy, so he did accept the shake. With no helmet on, only a mask around the upper half of his face, Tristan was free to flash him a winning smile.

As Tristan turned away, Gary shook the hand he’d used to shake Tristan’s, not so much like it was gross, but like Tristan had hurt him. I could see the hitch in Tristan’s stride as he spotted it at the last second before turning completely away. He met my eyes.

I was pretty sure I could tell from his expression that he hadn’t squeezed Gary’s hand. It was a power play to make us look bad, in exchange for a power play intended to toy with Gary’s optics. A fine distinction, to discern if Tristan was resentful because of lingering feelings from Gary and Lookout a few minutes ago, or if it was because he’d just been played.

Then we were walking in opposite directions. Tristan walked to the chairs. I walked over to Gary to shake his hand. I leaned in closer when I did have his grip. I murmured. “Going to pretend like I squeezed your hand too hard, Mr. Nieves?”

There was no smile, no change in expression, only a firm shake. I smiled at him.

The others were seated as I strode over to the chairs. We’d picked good people for this, and all of us came across as confident, and our team looked genuinely good. Even Lookout, who had the most reason to be nervous, gave nothing away.

I knew she was good at pretending things were okay. The tell was in what she did, action-wise. We’d have to be mindful.

Tristan had taken the seat closest to the table. The next seat, mine, was empty, followed by Lookout and Swansong at the end.

Conversely, at the table, Hamza was the closest to us, followed by John, Lynn, and then Gary Nieves at the end. Given the description I’d gotten of Hamza, and my surface assessment from the segments of show I’d watched to research, Hamza was a bad pairing to put so close to Tristan. They were both too prone to butt heads.

This show was a very specific kind of machine. I’d seen fragments of it before, and it hadn’t been the kind of show that I enjoyed. Investigative journalism leading into segments with the panel, exploring what was uncovered. It was too aggressive a show, leaving me uneasy and tired- and I didn’t watch television to be uneasy and tired.

I’d also studied two episodes, my finger hammering the ‘skip 5 seconds ahead’ key at times to get to the next scene, where I could let it play at normal speed, see the tone, read the expressions, and see how the guest or topic were handled. It looked like they always had the initial segment, setting the tone with an easy to understand story. Then the guests, or the expert like our Gary Nieves here would get a chance to say their piece. A slow roll, getting the audience used to things, and then the steady pressure, like they were interrogating a witness, looking for cracks or discrepancies. John liked to create them, Hamza liked to attack them, and Lynn managed the tone. However things ended up in the end, the audience would often find one of the three personalities hosting this show to be a rough approximate of their own feelings on the matter, even though all three were on the same general wavelength.

They feigned being something between a friendly talk show and a more intellectual panel show, but if they had an excuse, things tended to devolve into the attack dog dynamic. Like the personalities, the show’s identity was nebulous enough that a given viewer could claim it was any one of the three things- friendly, intellectual, or aggressive problem solving.

For them, success meant sticking to their gameplan. On our end, doing this right meant avoiding any sign of weakness, reinforcing ourselves and each other, and holding on to the card up our sleeve- the promise of information. We had the advantage of knowing how they’d operate.

“Team Breakthrough,” Hamza said. “Or is it only Breakthrough?”

“Either is fine,” Tristan said.

“And do you want me to introduce you, or will you introduce yourselves?”

“I’m Capricorn,” Tristan said. “This is-”

“Victoria,” I said. I pulled my hood down, trying not to mess up my hair in the process. “Antares in costume.”

“And you wear no mask,” Lynn said. “You use your name freely? That’s interesting.”

“No mask,” I said. “I never had the benefit of a secret identity.”

Lookout was removing her own helmet. When she lowered it, I saw that her face wasn’t her usual.

“I’m Lookout,” she said. “I do have a secret identity, so I’m camouflaging my face a bit.”

“That’s perfectly fine,” Lynn said. “Thank you for coming on, Lookout. I know this must all be intimidating.”

“It’s funny, lights and cameras don’t bother me much,” Lookout said.

Lynn tittered. “Cameras being your power, of course.”

Lookout smiled. “Yep.”

“And your fourth member would be-”

“Swansong,” Swansong said. She sat comfortably in her seat, one leg folded over the other. “I’m only here in spirit.”

“Only here in spirit? That’s odd,” Hamza said, with an inflection on ‘odd’.

Swansong smiled.

“She’s sort of like a teddy bear I brought with me for security, except I’m too grown up for that,” Lookout said. “So I brought someone cooler than a stuffed animal.”

“I’m glad I’m cooler than a stuffed animal,” Swansong said.

Lookout nodded.

“I’m surprised you came in costumes,” John told us. “I imagined suits and masks.”

Not an angle of attack or criticism I’d anticipated. It made sense, in a way. Delegitimize, disarm, call reasonable and natural things into question.

“That would have bad implications,” I said. “The aesthetic you’re talking about is a popular villain thing. Ambassadors in Boston, Dark Society down the East coast, there was a group of weapons dealers called the Brokers… And of course the Elite who were the biggest American villain gang. The exception on the hero side would be the Suits, and even they had costumes for serious events where they needed the extra pockets, armor, and everything else.”

“So interesting,” Lynn said. “This is all the sort of thing you have to consider.”

“We wouldn’t want to borrow from the Suits’ look either,” Tristan added. “The members of their team who weren’t the first casualties of Gold Morning were some of the bravest fighters. We respect them too much to plagiarize.”

Good. Gold Morning. We’d get there sooner or later, and making it something we were talking about would make it feel less like a cold splash of water in the audience’s faces.

It didn’t change that we had to manage Lookout’s situation and her family.

I was alright with Capricorn taking the lead on this thus far. He’d been following the opening segment of the show while we’d been facing down Gary.

“I’m sure our guests are wondering who you are,” Lynn said, leaning onto the table. “Breakthrough is relatively new to the scene.”

“As a team, yes,” Tristan said. “As individuals? All of us here have a few years under our belts.”

“Tell us about that,” Lynn said.

Gary was staring us down. He didn’t look happy. Minutes spent on us and on small talk here were minutes he couldn’t do his thing. Good.

I answered so Tristan didn’t have to. “Speaking for myself, I was born to a family of heroes. My mom, dad, sister, my two cousins, two uncles, aunt, all had powers. I grew up with it. My boyfriend was a hero. Being a hero was my life, past, present, and future.”

“Was?” Hamza asked.

“Ah. That point in time was a past life, and a different me,” I said. “A majority of the people I just listed are dead or gone. Some died fighting in Gold Morning. Some died prior. Some… left.”

“You’re referring to your sister, who went to the Birdcage,” John Combs said.

Asshole. I wanted to say something to that, and I couldn’t. But was this his plan? To just drop things like this on us until something cracked?

“I was thinking of my uncle,” I lied. “His partner was killed because of our lack of secret identities. I think he couldn’t stay after that.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Lynn said.

There was strategy in play. To anticipate that they would go on the offensive, and to disarm and lay groundwork first. Paint a picture of who we were, then use that pictured ground as terrain we could fortify.

Hammering in that the other hero teams were doing good work, solidarity, being sure to express that we wanted to be heroes. All were meant to cut off avenues of attack.

Still, I couldn’t ignore the sister remark.

“Thank you. I was young, but it was hard at the time. A tragedy. My sister too. We’d just lost almost half of our family, the Slaughterhouse Nine showed up. She broke down. She went to the Birdcage because she didn’t trust herself.”

It was as kind of a response as I could come up with. I felt a creeping sort of dread with the notion that she might be looking, watching, reading something into this, maybe even showing up unexpectedly.

“And you went to the hospital at the same time. That’s hard,” John Combs said. “She’s free of the Birdcage now, of course. All of them are.”

He went straight to the hospital. Asshole. He had to know about the Wretch- the one I’d been, not the one I carried with me every day, now.

“You seem very interested in that one family member of mine.”

Stupid. Defensive.

“She did go to the Birdcage. That’s for only a select few,” John Combs said.

“John and I were talking about this earlier.” Hamza’s voice was deep, and he was slower with his words, like he could somehow leave us less words and time in the process. “The Birdcage was emptied out on Gold Morning, so there would be more firepower out there. Your sister was among those released. Those are threats that are active in the city now. Do you feel safe, knowing this?”

It was hard to find words,because they were taking this angle. Tristan looked at me like he was checking to see that I was okay, ready to jump in.

I beat him to it. I didn’t want to look weak in front of an audience. I couldn’t afford for myself to see me as that weak. “I feel like I want to do everything I can to help others feel safe.”

“Amen,” Tristan said.

“People don’t feel safe,” Gary Nieves said. “If that’s your goal, you’re failing.”

“We’re still starting out,” Swansong said.

“But you’ve been heroes for some time, by your own admission,” Gary said.

“I can tell you I was out there in construction, helping to build shelters,” Tristan said. “Victoria was out there in the patrol block, using what she knows about villains to keep people safe. Swansong was getting care because she wasn’t in one piece, but she was helping authorities with research on powers.”

“And then we have Lookout,” John Combs stated. There was weight to the sentence.

Tristan had walked into that one.

“Hi,” Lookout said. “Mostly school for me.”

“More than school, as the allegations go,” John said.

Hamza didn’t give us a chance to respond before adding his own commentary. “When we started looking into the story with Lookout’s family, you all told us you wanted to come onto the show, to argue your teammate’s side.”

“I hope it doesn’t come down to arguing, Mr. Kouri,” Capricorn said.

“When we decided on Breakthrough’s direction, the goal was to communicate, it’s why we’re here,” I said. “We just want to make sure everyone has as much information as possible.

Hamza was ready with an answer, voice angry. “And for our audience out there, let’s not lose sight of who ‘we’ is supposed to represent, when you talk about your group. Two murderers, sitting here.”

“That’s not right,” Lookout said.

“The information is out there. Team Reach. The junior member Capricorn was arrested on accusations of murder, by his own teammates, no less. We called one of them earlier tonight to corroborate the facts.”

“Hey,” Lookout said.

“Hamza,” I said, my voice firm. “If you’ll-”

“Let me finish,” he said. “Swansong’s presence her raises an interesting question. She bears a startling resemblance to not one, but two murderers who are supposed to be in lockup right now. I have to worry about how many there are. We also have a little girl who was terrorizing her parents with threats of extortion,and then yourself, a heroine who didn’t save her hometown, didn’t save her boyfriend, didn’t save her many family members who were killed during the various major incidents, and who couldn’t or wouldn’t stop her sister from, as you put it, breaking down, putting lives at risk. I do my research, Victoria.”

I drew in a breath. The faint noise of audience was enough to take the oxygen out of that breath. I tried not to let it throw me. This was fine. Expected. Just… more of a gut punch than anticipated. I needed-

Hamza interrupted my thoughts. “I could believe that Lookout, this child here, wasn’t to blame, if this is the company she’s been made to keep.”

“That’s not fair,” Lookout said, and her voice was almost lost in the noise of the crowd. The audience manager was motioning for them to shush, and a red light flared near the ceiling. I imagined it was an order to shut the fuck up.

The noise level made it hard to jump in with a rebuttal.

It was a bit of a reversal of the dynamic I’d observed with the show. Three different show identities, between its face as a friendly talk show, an intellectual panel of experts, and a pit for enemies to be targeted and torn up.

“You named a lot of points. Would you like to name one or two of your favorites for us to address?” I asked.

“The point is that you, as a group, and parahumans, as a collective, are deeply flawed and unhealthy,” Gary Nieves said. “Two children in black raincoats conduct a ritual with peers that were chained to a radiator and a bed, respectively. Through this ritual, they get powers.”

“That is not how you get powers,” I said.

That got me a few raised eyebrows.

“Metaphorically, then? They seemed to believe it worked for them.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Parahumans are taking on positions of leadership- many corner worlds, many of the refugee groups outside of America, and many of the roaming factions are controlled by parahumans. We already know of one whole Earth which is under the sway of a parahuman and her court. I can tell you that as someone who has had to deal with parahumans from the fringes, every single one I’ve met has deep-seated problems.”

Tristan had to twist to get a good look at Gary. His head bent at an angle, getting close to the points of golden spikes at my shoulder, in his attempt to see the man. “This was after Gold Morning?”

“Most that I met were after, yes.”

“Then that isn’t a fair assessment. Everyone‘s suffering and dealing with deep-seated problems these days.”

Lynn offered a one-note laugh. “That’s a point, sad as it is.”

She smiled and laughed while calling it sad. It was disconcerting, taken in stride with the fact that she was working with Hamza and John to undermine us, but in a softer, harder-to-tackle way.

Leaning forward on his elbows, Gary made a fist and then clenched the fist in his other hand. His voice was low as he said, “The idea that we might have a leader who has political or economic power, these deep seated problems, and a power? An ability that sets them apart from the rest of us? That’s a complete and utter nightmare, and it’s one we’ve seen in play countless times over the years.”

“And so you attack us?” I asked. “The answer to solving this problem lies in collaborating, sharing information, and mutual understanding, not in attacking.”

“The goal isn’t to attack you,” Gary said. “We would like to use you -a team that is on the surface very presentable and helpful- as a broader illustration.”

It was Swansong who replied. “You wanted to use Lookout as your illustration. She’s example number two out of three. You’re attacking a kid.”

“We’re focusing on a parahuman of interest. That she’s younger than some doesn’t matter if she has immense power.”

“I make cameras and boxes,” Lookout said. “People keep acting like I’m something special.”

“You are special, Lookout,” I said. “But it’s only because you work way too damn hard for your own good.”

“Thank you.”

“The allegations are that she terrorized her parents, controlling every aspect of their lives for over a year,” Hamza said.

“And?” I asked.

Shit, there went civility.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why does it matter, Mr. Kouri? What do you want that you aren’t getting?”

“Consequences,” he said, his voice hard. Lookout shrunk back into her seat.

Swansong’s voice was soft, compared to her usual, and softer still in contrast to Hamza Kouri’s aggressive tone, “Victoria discovered the problem recently. Within the hour, she was talking to authorities. Authorities know the details. They chose to arrest the parents and leave Lookout with a city-appointed guardian. Consequences were meted out.”

“Based on the say-so of a girl who can falsify her own evidence. She’s altering her own face right now,” Gary said.

He’d already tried this. I answered, “It was a decision made by people who have access to all of the evidence. All of it, including paperwork she didn’t have access to. I’m sorry, but no. You can’t smile and say it’s fine that she’s protecting her identity one minute, then use it as a point against her the next. And it’s a special sort of unkind to pretend there’s something wrong with protecting identities when I just told you what the consequences are, less than ten minutes ago. I’ve lost a family member.”

“That’s not what I was saying.”

“You’re attacking us on the grounds that we’re too unreliable, too dangerous,” I said. “But you’re taking allegations as fact and then running away with it. Lookout, once we realized what was going on, was removed from the unhealthy dynamic. Her parents are in custody and she’s safe in the hands of the City. The court cases I’m aware of are in progress, but yeah, sometimes when you’re dealing with monsters, lives are lost. The courts will arbitrate.”

“If they have untainted information,” Gary Nieves said.

“You wanted to be mayor,” Swansong said. “Yet you can’t trust your own city’s information? What would you have done if you won? Would you have second guessed every one of their decisions, until you were ousted, retired, or resigned?”

“Let’s not be hostile,” Lynn said.

“I would have second guessed the ones involving parahumans who can distort reality or records.”

“They do good work,” Tristan said. “Police, patrol block, courts, fire, medical, they’re doing the best they can, given the circumstance. Admirable, considering circumstances. And I’ll tell you this- we’re going to give our all to do our own share. That’s what gets us through the colder months.”

“That’s a heavy topic of its own,” John said.

“It’s imminent,” Tristan said. “A month or two. You want to focus on a twelve year old girl?”

Nieves leaned forward. “If traffic is limited, doors are closed, and this girl has the ability to get inside homes, steal or kill, and get away, hiding her evidence trail, yes. So long as the monsters are among us, yes.”

Hamza was nodding along. The other two weren’t disagreeing.

“I’m not going to say it’s all perfect,” I told them. “But I’m going to try to spell out how I see this. It’s going to involve sharing some stuff that others haven’t talked about. About powers. And about Gold Morning.”

I could see the audience shift at that. My heart beat faster.

“We could just walk away,” Swansong said. “If they want to condemn us, let them. But we don’t owe them this, and some of it is going to come down on our heads.”

I shook my head.

“Okay,” she said.

“I grew up into powers,” I told the people at the table. I could see expressions of concern. “I’ve been studying them for a while. I studied enough to know that there were huge gaps in our knowledge and those gaps were barely closing with every passing year. Where did powers come from? How do we get them? Now we know. Gold Morning wasn’t just destruction. It was answers.”

“And you didn’t share,” John Combs said.

“For decades, people who told about other major secrets were visited by a bogeyman who targeted capes. It was someone who could kill or disappear the invincible, outsmart the masterminds, and survive things that would kill or stop just about anything. Whatever they planned to talk about would be mended shortly.”

“Yeah,” Tristan said. “Then Gold Morning happened. There were people here and there who talked about it, but most stayed quiet. Pressure from other groups, and most of the ones with a podium to talk about it had the sense to stay quiet, because the bogeyman would act on this kind of thing.

Thank you for the reminder, Tristan, I thought.

Lookout’s hand went over mine on my armrest, squeezing.

“We had glimpses through Scion’s eyes, when our powers manifested or when certain effects came into play. During these times, we saw things as he saw them. It includes millions of fragments raining down on us, invisible to the naked eye. Each of those fragments… a power. We were made to forget, but when Gold Morning happened, we were able to remember. He stopped caring so much about perfection, and he became something else entirely. Not that he was ever human.”

“What was he? An alien? A demon?” Gary Nieves asked.

“He was an alien from another reality, more distant from us than Gimel is from Bet, as best as we can tell,” I said. “He moved between realities like we walk through doorways. Something went wrong with what he was trying to set up, and he lost his partner.”

“He had a partner? There’s another one of these out there?”

“Dead in the crash landing, we think,” I said.

“What’s the point, then? Or was that broken up in this crash too?” John asked.

“To experiment with what we’re given. To be open and vulnerable for effective study.”

“A real justification about why you’re all so screwed up?” Gary asked.

“That’s-” I started. I was aware of all of the eyes on me. I smiled. “No. Because we have definite proof to the contrary.”

“That you’re not all screwed up, with some alien god as an excuse??”

“Some of us, probably,” I said. “But the reality is that Scion, the strongest of us, who used powers to generate himself a body and who gave himself a set of powers that none of the rest of us could touch…. we beat him. We were nudged here and there to take part in his games, to fight amongst ourselves we were given powers and limited in ways that didn’t let us even try to hurt him. He was insurmountable and we… surmounted.”

“We won,” Tristan said. “If you have any doubts about how we were ‘programmed’, look to the scholars for answers. It’s subtle if it’s there at all. Focus instead on the fact that when it all came down to it, we concentrated our efforts, looking past petty squabbles. It took a nameless cape to grab us all and drag people from every corner of reality to reinforce. That cape tried to keep us, but when we broke free, we kept fighting him, and we fought as one.”

I nodded at that.

A nameless cape. Taylor Hebert. Skitter. A bug controller from my hometown.

We were too spooked at the idea that we might draw her attention and start that whole engine back into motion to mention her by name.

Best to leave it alone.

“We won,” Swansong said. “We defeated the embodiment of that impulse. We can and will defeat it in ourselves.”

I could see it in the audience and in the hosts of the B-TV evening show. A split, even a fissure, running through them. In the gloom past the bright lights, there were people who might’ve been grateful, yes, but there were many who were angry.

There was always going to be a backlash, the band-aid ripped off, the hurts reawakened.

Beacon – 8.12

The television studio had been flipped on its head for the time being. The hosts were quiet, the audience was loud with chatter, and the stage wasn’t so bright with the lights on above the audience. We weren’t the focus and we could breathe and we were simultaneously under an immense pressure- not trying to find the flow of things and steer with it, but caught with nothing to keep us afloat, the waters rushing away to gather strength for the incoming wave.

It would have been easier if the show had continued. Instead, monitors intended more for the hosts showed the ad break and a countdown until we were live again.

Lynn, Hamza and John Combs were all talking together, with two members of the studio staff leaning in close. The audience talked about what they’d heard.

Ninety seconds.

“Are you doing okay?” I asked Lookout, my hand over my microphone.

She nodded, doing the same with her microphone. “The pressure’s off me, right?”

“They’ll return to it, probably,” Capricorn said. He leaned one forearm across on one knee, his weight shifted hard to the right- he sat at the leftmost end of our row of four chairs, so he had to work to get in close enough to talk to us and not be overheard. “They prepared for a show with your family as an example scenario. Right now, they’re looking for a way to right their ship, and that stuff they prepared is a tool at their disposal.”

“Ugh,” Kenzie said.

“It’s not the end of the world if it happens,” I said. “It sucks, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want anyone attacking you. But we planned for it, we have a strategy, there shouldn’t be any big surprises.”

She nodded.

“Let’s think other approaches. Do they hit any of us on credibility?” I asked. “Me keeping my powers covert in Patrol block?”

“Weak,” Capricorn said.

“Maybe. They just need to cast doubt,” I said. I eyed the timer on the monitors. Two minutes, twenty-one seconds.

“It’s weak doubt. Capes keep identities secret. You have a reason for doing it,” Capricorn said.

“Okay. Who else do they target? Bait one of us into talking, then attack them?”

“Mute my microphone,” Swansong told Lookout.

“Done.”

“If they choose me, I deflect. I’m only here in spirit,” Swansong said, with a slight smile on her face. “I’m one of several clones.”

“Good,” I said. I glanced at the countdown. I put a casual smile on my face, in case the audience was fixated on me. Best to look confident. “Capricorn?”

“I’m vulnerable. Not so much credibility as… dark. Going back to my murder charge. Making me out to be a bad guy.”

“We talked about that, briefly. I would have liked actual details, so I can back you up, but…”

“But my brother wants it left in the past,” Capricorn said. “If it comes up, I’ll deal with it.”

“Don’t hand them the ball,” I told him. “Morality, that stuff, don’t bring it up, they’ll use it to launch into the topic.”

Capricorn nodded.

I looked at the clock. One minute, fifteen seconds.

“Attacks on us miss the point,” Swansong said. “They could do worse?”

“How?” Lookout asked.

“They could make us leave.”

Kicking us out during the ad break? My initial thought was that it would fail. On rumination, though… what would we even do? They had the platform, and we hadn’t had a good chance to lay out what we wanted to say. They’d cut to ad break shortly after my pronouncements about Gold Morning.

If we were ejected… it’d be a complete and utter mess. Point missed. They’d get raised eyebrows, but we would be the group that had put out some problematic info and then left before owning it or taking the time to defend ourselves.

Swansong nodded, more or less in tune with my line of thought. It would be bad.

“Shit,” Capricorn said. “Let’s hope it’s too late for that.”

The lights around the audience went dark. Little boxes mounted above and in front of the audience glowed yellow, a word illuminated in the sudden gloom. On the televisions, the countdown was in the final twenty seconds, as an ad for a show on the same network played.

Only seconds. They couldn’t kick us out if there were only five seconds left.

Kaylar, our friendly assistant in the cheap suit from earlier, practically skipped as she left the conversation with the hosts. My heart skipped a beat.

How would we handle this? Did we stay despite being asked to leave?

Three seconds. Two. One. The audience went quiet. The lights and focus were on us, but the wave of response hadn’t hit yet.

The monitors shifted to the show’s logo. ‘Hard Boil’. ‘TV-B’. Staff hurried away from their huddle with the hosts, glancing at Kaylar.

On the monitors, they segued straight to a video recap.

We weren’t on screen.

“Guys,” Kaylar said. “Just doing my job here.”

“Hi,” I said.

Her job was either to tell us we had to vacate, or-

“Are you doing alright? Do you need anything? Water?”

We shook our heads.

“It’s going well so far. Keep it up!”

With that, she was gone, fleeing the stage before the focus came back to us. She’d occupied our attention in the moments the clip was playing on the screen. Silhouettes of a couple, the lighting from behind enough to show the very edges of their hair, heads, necks, and shoulders, but hide their faces and identifying details. Julien and Irene.

“…always difficult,” Julien said. “She told the teachers stories. Babysitters too.”

“We sent her to camps. Things after school, what was it? Piano? Art? Computers?”

“Yeah. Soccer, but she wasn’t one for sports, especially team sports. She didn’t make friends at any of the classes or camps. Never brought anyone home from school. We gave up on taking her to those after a while. She wasn’t getting anything out of it.”

I looked over at Lookout. She glanced up at me and smiled.

I gave her shoulder a rub.

John Combs’ voice could be heard, interviewing the pair as part of the pre-recorded clip playing for the audience. “I’ve wondered whether people know, even before it happens. Were these parahumans quiet, strange, or aggressive? Did you think she might be different back then?”

“Quiet and strange. I never thought about powers or that she might be the kind of person who gets them, but it makes sense in retrospect.”

“If we’d suspected, we would have done things differently when she found us again. The last we’d heard she was in the hands of the authorities, then the world ended, and with no warning she appeared in front of us.”

“Spinning more stories for people who were overwhelmed trying to assign people houses and work.”

“And the video manipulation. That was our first hint that something was wrong.”

I leaned over to Lookout and whispered, “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about what they did?”

“I’d really rather not,” she whispered back. “Not on television, in front of everyone.”

“-false videos?” John was asking, in the clip.

“Putting us in scenes where we weren’t, making it look like we committed crimes,” Julien responded. “A preteen girl, she found us and she trapped us.”

“She trapped them,” John said. His actual voice, and not the clip. On the monitors, he stared into the cameras, his face severe. His expression changed, a slight smile. “And we’re back.”

Lights gave the go-ahead for the audience to applaud. Cameras moved, slowly turning to keep us centered in the shots. The clapping had more energy than it had had when we’d made our appearance. When Gary had made his.

“Now, that clip was recorded yesterday, and obviously we didn’t know about this big story you would be giving us all tonight. It’s impressive and monumental if true, we will get back to it. But first, can we talk about Lookout? What’s your reaction on seeing that?”

“Um. That’s tricky,” Lookout stumbled.

“Enraged,” Swansong said, her voice cold.

“That’s a strong word,” Hamza retorted.

“It’s a good word,” Lookout said. “Um, and thank you for caring, Swansong. I got tired of being enraged or feeling much of anything about what my parents do, a long time ago. I don’t really try to understand them.”

“A breakdown in communication?” Hamza asked. “A lack of appropriate emotion, be it shame or empathy, can suggest certain labels.”

“Those labels you’re implying don’t apply to kids,” I said. “Let’s get real here.”

“That’s what we’re trying to do tonight,” Lynn said, all enthusiasm and verve. “Getting real. We’re getting answers- about what happened on Gold Morning. And as part of that, I want to know what it’s really like, to live with a parahuman? Sometimes we hear from… what’s the term? Cape wives? And cape husbands, I suppose. Legend had one.”

“As the slang goes online, even the men are ‘cape wives’,” I said. “But I don’t think that’s important.”

“Amen to that,” Capricorn said.

“There’s no cape parent, is there?” Lynn asked, glossing past us. “They don’t have a voice.”

Hamza’s heavy voice cut in, following up and speaking over Capricorn’s response. “There isn’t a guidebook, and there’s definitely no guide for what happens when the child gains incredible power and flips the script on the parent, seizing authority, asserting control, deciding how the parent lives their lives. What they can wear, what’s served for dinner, the chores…”

“My parents are finally where they belong,” Lookout said. “They’re in jail.”

“With,” I added, interjecting in much the way Hamza had, “the courts fully aware that Lookout can manipulate video. At a time when they were processing dozens of Fallen and pushing other cases off to the side, they had witness testimony, video footage and past records, and they decided it was best to incarcerate. Despite being overloaded. Make of that what you will.”

“But we can’t know,” Hamza said.

“The decks are stacked,” Gary said. “Victoria’s sister was in the Birdcage for good reason- now she’s free. Capricorn was facing trial, with proceedings benched indefinitely, until the end of the world erased all records. There are members of the Slaughterhouse Nine who are alive and free.”

“There were no records, no facilities, and there was no organization. By necessity, it was treated as a second chance for everyone.”

“Bullshit,” Gary retorted.

Lynn cleared her throat.

“Bull,” Gary said.

“It’s not bull. That was the reality,” Capricorn said. “There are multiple criminals out there that I helped put away who are free now. they’re out there and I have to worry about them.”

“Same here,” I said.

“Me too,” Lookout said. “I was more behind the scenes though, and the Wards kept me away from big stuff, so it’s less obvious I played a role in getting anyone arrested.”

“It’s bull because the second chances aren’t being evenly distributed. Two parents are arrested based on their past records, as you said earlier. New, possibly falsified evidence, witnesses who may or may not be biased, and past records. No wiping the slate clean there.”

“The slates aren’t wiped clean,” Capricorn said.

I tensed. I was worried about them delving more aggressively into Capricorn’s backstory, if he got more moral-focused and put his jaw out for the return smack. The way we were discussing things, there were a half-dozen mysteries surrounding us. Who we were, what we’d done. Delving into any of the mysteries would satisfy the audience, and we didn’t want them chewing on that.

He seemed to notice I’d tensed, and didn’t elaborate.

“What are they, then? It seems one sided,” Lynn said.

“The past still exists,” Swansong picked up the slack. “We look past it until there’s a reason to bring it up. If you screw up, you lose your second chance, and it’s fair game again.”

Gary shook his head. “We give this pass even to a walking, talking, potentially unhinged bioweapon? Allowed to go free. Come on, Victoria. How do you feel about that? You should know as well as anyone what your sister is capable of. One person, who could singlehandedly wipe out Earth Gimel. Or, if she so chose, the whole population of an alternate Earth.”

“I know as well as anyone what she’s capable of,” I said. I felt too aware of where I was, the amount of air in my lungs, the beat of my heart. I felt overwarm for the first time, the stagelamps overhead hot as they shined on me. “I grew up with her.”

“You grew up with her and you parted ways with her. You no longer communicate,” Gary said.

“I don’t know why you’re all so obsessed over her,” I said. My voice sounded too breathy, as I tried to sound casual or dismissive and ended up with a voice that sounded hollow instead.

“She put you in the hospital-” John Combs said.

“We’ve gone over this.”

“-and you needed special facilities,” he continued. “Because she went to the Birdcage, the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center, and she left you with eight arms, ten hands, three heads with one additional face that had no head or skull to go with it, two-”

I used my aura, hard, and I wasn’t sure it was purely by reflex. It was the closest thing I had at hand to slapping him across the face.

In the doing, I hit my team, and from the sounds of it, I hit the audience.

I was keenly aware of the silence that followed. Of the noises from the audience that had been affected. Lookout’s eyes were wide behind the mask she wore on her fake, projected face.

Gary spoke, “That, for the benefit of our audience-”

“Please be quiet for a second,” I said, my head lowered a fraction.

“-was a power use. Antares has the ability to project emotions, and she just gave everyone here, including our audience, a moment of abject terror.”

“How dare you?” Hamza barked.

“How dare you?” Capricorn retorted. “Opening up someone’s old wounds and getting affronted when they react?”

“How dare you? Hamza barked, again. He puffed up, chest expanding, and glanced over his shoulder at the staff in the background.

No. This was all wrong. This was everything I didn’t want to happen.

“You wanted to get real?” I asked, looking at Lynn.

I was drowned out. Hamza was blustering, saying something. The audience was getting louder.

Lynn looked right past me as she turned to the camera. “We may have to take a short break.”

I stood from my seat. It was another aggressive power move, like using the aura had been. It got attention, and it threatened. Swansong stood from her chair too, moving oddly as the projection failed to transition between two poses perfectly. From grace to glitch and back to grace.

Capricorn, meanwhile, leaned forward, not quite standing, his hands out, urging the hosts to stay seated. The look he gave me was worried. Only Gary stood, backing away, almost afraid.

In the background, some people were leaving their seats, filing out through the door. Only five or six, but a camera swiveled a hundred and eighty degrees, focusing on their departure. Footage for the show, no doubt.

I had the stage, for better or worse.

“You wanted to get real, Lynn?” I asked.

“That was our intention. It sounds threatening when you say it like that.”

“That was never my intention. It was always my goal to share information, to inform. I taught with the Patrol block, I joined this team to teach and counsel, and I wanted- want Breakthrough to be about sharing information and informing, among hero teams.”

“Among hero teams? I notice you don’t mention the civilian heroes, like police,” Gary said. He hadn’t sat down again or approached his chair. He looked like he could bolt at any moment. That nervousness communicated itself to the audience.

“They’ve got their hands full,” I said. “If they want information, I’ll gladly give it to them, but I’m not going to put more on their plate just yet. Give us a week or three to iron out the wrinkles and get organized. That way, any of the issues that come up with any new venture don’t become their issues.”

“How generous of you,” Gary said.

I didn’t dignify that with an answer. I looked at the hosts who were still seated. “Real?”

“It still sounds threatening,” Lynn said.

“Do you know where powers come from, Lynn?”

John answered, not Lynn. “We know where you say they come from. Scion. The story about what he is and where he comes from has come up here and there, but it been from people who sound like crackpots, it sounds even more crackpot on its own, and the credible people have been silent.”

“Are you saying I’m not one of the credible people?”

“We’ll definitely have to look into it and verify with outside sources, to make sure you aren’t giving us a tall tale as a distraction,” he replied, measuring out his response with a care that would ensure that anyone who could put one and one together would know he was saying ‘yes’.

“The good guys will back it up,” I said. “Scion is a fragment of something bigger. We killed it. Its partner- gone. Based on what we know, they left a trail that ensures their kind won’t be coming after them. All we have to do is manage the fallout. And that’s not easy. Things they set up are unraveling, that’s why we’re getting the broken triggers.”

“The disasters, people getting powers and dying immediately?” Lynn asked.

“Taking other people with them,” Hamza said.

“Yes.”

“And he gave you dangerous impulses, so you aren’t in control of your actions?” Gary asked, his voice dripping with doubt. “You’re not to blame.”

“Scholars have known or theorized about that for a decade. It’s not a secret, and it’s not a free pass. As you guys said, my so-called sister hospitalized me. I’m not forgiving or forgetting, I’m not giving her a pass. A person destroyed me and I’m not going to bang my drum and demand they see the inside of a prison.”

My voice was raw with emotion, rancor both for my sister and for the people who were making me talk about her. It wasn’t the image I wanted to convey, but given a choice between silence and speaking on this, I was going to favor the latter.

“We can’t afford to dwell that heavily on the past. I’m trying to focus on the present moments and on the days ahead. We can’t make it if we let fear rule us.”

“Amen,” Capricorn said.

“You make it very easy to fear you,” Gary said. “You don’t give us many reasons to trust you.”

“You don’t give us much reason to trust you,” Swansong said, barely audible behind me. “If you can’t help us, stay out of our way and let us do what we need to.”

I wanted to correct that, to reject it.

I let it stand.

“When I asked if you knew where powers came from, I meant on the personal level. How did Lookout end up with powers? How did I? You were asking the question when you talked to her parents.” My voice was very level as I spoke.

“There are theories,” John said. “The Triumvirate released a book that seemed to confirm the most popular.”

“That it took an event,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Good or bad?” I asked.

“That was the idea. The greatest and strongest came from good events. The lowly and the monstrous came from the violent, ugly moments.”

“It’s prettied up,” I said. “The part about good things giving powers. That’s not true, that’s the old government trying to keep kids from trying to force it, like your two people in black raincoats that you mentioned earlier.”

“They did get powers.”

“Long after,” I said. “You can’t make them happen because if you think it’s a possibility, you aren’t low enough or desperate enough. You can’t force others to get powers or governments would have whole battalions of people with abilities.”

Had to keep kids from hurting themselves, even if it made it harder to maintain the thrust of my little speech here.

“You wanted real? There it is. Powers and where they come from. Millions are watching and millions are on the same page as us. Scion? Something set him off, I don’t know the particulars, but he wanted to wipe us out, parahuman and human both. We fought like hell and I lost family members in that fighting. He was everything that was wrong with parahumans, and we beat him, and maybe his influence on some of the worst of us has loosened. Maybe.”

“Nilbog was quiet, almost civilized. Bonesaw was helping, with careful monitoring because we’re not idiots,” Swansong said.

“The remaining Endbringers are quiet,” Capricorn said.

“We have our problems,” I said. “We have big issues, really. But we can’t add the issues of yesterday to them, and we can’t… we can’t do this. We can’t manufacture issues. We’re going to organize, and we’re going to help each other.”

“We’ll answer other questions,” Capricorn said. “But not tonight. We have things to do. We’re out there. We’re not hard to reach. If you’re news, government, finance, if you’re a cape and you don’t know what the heck you’re doing, reach out. We’ll do what we can. Resources allowing, and we’re getting those resources in place.”

“You’re talking like you’re done, but we still have half of a show left,” Lynn said.

Was I? Were we?

I was. We were.

“You brought up the arm thing,” Lookout said. “And her hospital stay. It was scummy. I think we’re leaving, yeah.”

She’d checked with us before the ‘yeah’.

Yeah.

We’d wondered what would happen if they’d kicked us off the show and tried to take control of the narrative. Without planning it among one another, we’d arrived on the same page about how we’d handle this.

“You can talk about Lookout’s case, Capricorn’s, and Swansong’s, or you can dredge up Mayday’s history. Time and the courts will tell. In the meantime, we have work to do.”

“The same applies to Lookout’s family,” Gary Nieves said. “They haven’t been tried or convicted by the court.”

“We’ll trust the process,” I said.

“So will I,” Gary said.

We left the hot illumination of the set, into the dimly lit side area, beneath the staring, hostile eyes of the crowd in their seats.

⊙

The mention of the Wretch on national television had felt like the moment the wave had connected. It hadn’t been. That was just for me, my own misshapen boat on uneven, dark waters.

There was always going to be the backlash. Hostility, blame. Breakthrough being the faces of the enemy, for those who wanted to blame parahumans and make them out to be the people standing between the refugees of Gimel and a better future.

That backlash was always going to be hardest at first. The people who watched that show were the people who were receptive to it. We’d left the set -it hadn’t been going anywhere good- and they’d had another fifteen minutes of discussion and pre-recorded footage before ending prematurely.

The messages were rolling in from online, people finding us and then passing it on to their friends or whatever communities they belonged to. There was a lot of vitriol.

“You can tell yourself that it’s going to be worse when it’s new, the people who are going to back us have to catch on that something’s going on, catch up, and then find their own voices,” I said.

“Yeah,” Sveta said.

In the time it had taken me to say that, seven messages had come up. In the subject lines alone, two had profanity. The other five weren’t exactly roses and sparkles, either.

“But… this is pretty disheartening.”

“It is,” Sveta said. “Speaking from experience… the best thing you can do is look away.”

I watched as more messages came in. Sixteen in ten seconds. That was cheating, though. Five were the same guy. Subject line: Fuck. Subject line: Yourselves. Subject line: With. Subject line: A. Subject line: Rake.

“I have to wonder at the mechanics of that,” Rain said. He wasn’t next to me, but stood by Tristan’s laptop. He wasn’t looking at that either, but if he was here in the headquarters at eight o’clock at night, that meant the real him was in his cell, a laptop in front of him. He could see the same email feed.

“You could weaponize it,” Chris said.

“I don’t mind rake man,” Ashley said. “That’s a fire that burns hot and for a short time.”

“It’s a fire that burns stupid,” I said.

I saw her smile.

There were other messages, though. One more email came in. It was longer, with five times the filesize of even the larger of the others.

In Rain’s court, a girl had read her letter to him, giving him her forgiveness. It had been thoughtful, meaningful, personal, giving and possibly life-altering. This email was almost the inverse of that.

A woman had lost her son and she poured grief onto the page like water flowed from a waterfall. It was feeling rather than thought, raw, and disconnected from us, our actions, and who we were. It was purely and wholly selfish.

Jessica Yamada had once asked me to write letters. They hadn’t been letters I was meant to send or give, but ones that let me figure out the sizes and shapes of some of the individual wounds, so I could work on them.

This was that, but it had been sent. The room was quiet and I imagined everyone was either lost in thought or busy reading, taking it in. It was long.

A lot of hurt. A lot of blame.

“Just look away?” Sveta asked.

It was hard. It was being stuck on train tracks and seeing the onrushing train, being told not to flinch at the impact or pay too much attention to the train. There was nothing we could do about it in this moment, so we were supposed to let it roll us over, damage us.

The same window that gave us a view of the train or of the damage was the window I had to look through to see if there was help coming. If it was worth it.

I closed my laptop.

“I was talking with Fume Hood and the Malfunctions,” Sveta said. “The Malfunctions started their stakeout and realized they didn’t bring food. It was a whole thing.”

“They’re okay?”

“I sent someone their way.”

“And Fume Hood?”

“She’s fine. She was with the Malfunctions for a bit, then went her separate way, keeping tabs on someone from our A-list of concerns. She’s been at this for a while, hasn’t she?”

“Yeah. At least six years, maybe eight.”

I could see Kenzie’s computer screens at the front. She was talking with Ashley, reading the messages without a glimmer of a smile on her face. If anything, she looked energized by Ashley being there, her chatter punctuated by brief statements from our ex-villainess.

Emails with bold text to signify they were unread. The labels along the right side of each email were color coded. Too many were white. Unknowns. Anonymous people.

Chris… doing his own thing. Too hard to read. His stuff was all packed up and he was ready to go back and retire for the night, just as soon as he was sure nothing big was happening. Goddess, attacks, riots.

There was a large enough subsection of the population that resented us and enough stirred up by this to spark a riot.

Byron and Rain were the best people to watch, if I wanted to check the reception. If I wasn’t following the list and immersing myself in that flow of resentment and toxicity, then I could at least watch their faces and see if there was a note of interest anywhere, a spark of hope or light as someone said something in support.

“Did we make a bad impression?” I asked Sveta. “I thought we looked good on stage.”

“You intimidated,” she said.

“I tried to cover as best as I could, once my power leaked out.”

“Wresting control of the situation.”

“Was that wrong?”

“In some of their eyes, you’re a monster,” Sveta said. “Anything you do is wrong, somehow. For others… it was their show. You threw your weight around, took over the discussion.”

“If we let them have the control, it was going to end in disaster.”

“Oh, for sure,” she said. “But you took over, and that’s what they’re afraid of, I think. They’re upset.”

I could see the message inboxes on Kenzie’s screen scrolling as new messages came in. White labels. No change in Byron or Rain’s expressions.

“You’re right,” I told Sveta. “I like that perspective.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I was still wearing my costume, the breastplate left off, and my phone sat against my belly. I was conscious of how alien my skin felt, and how unusual the clothes felt against my skin. On a low level, I didn’t feel quite like me. It had been a while since that had been the case.

If tonight continued along those lines, that dissonant feeling persisting, I’d probably need to find an excuse to get out, fly, and hit something.

“Are you going to answer?” Sveta asked.

It was my mom and dad.

I answered, putting the phone to my ear. Too much trouble to fish out the earbud and cord from my other pocket.

“Mom,” I said.

“And me,” my dad said. “Saw you on TV.”

“And?” I closed my eyes, listening to his voice. I did miss him, hurt feelings aside. It helped to hear a voice I’d known for all my life when I didn’t feel very me.

“And people are going to be mad. But in our corner, we’ve talked with this team we’ve been palling around with. Not everyone’s here, but… unless a strong voice comes out of nowhere tomorrow morning, you can count us in. Any negatives that came up are outweighed by the positives. You guys have backgrounds? Unresolved trials? That can be argued down. We’re doing the second chance thing, and people believe you when you say you want to share information and organize.”

“They’re in,” I said. I covered the phone with one hand, felt a twinge of pain in my upper arm where the bullet wound still wasn’t one hundred percent. “My mom and dad’s team are back on board.”

I saw the eyes of others light up. Sveta’s was among them.

They’d been a bit down too, awash in the sea of hostility.

“Yes, we’re in,” my mother was the one who answered. “Good job fighting for what you want. It didn’t look easy.”

“Thank you.”

My dad added, “Knowing your sister, she’s probably going to take the excuse to reach out.”

“It would be generous of you to at least not push her away too quickly, too violently,” my mother said.

“Mom.”

“Carol,” my dad said, his tone identical to mine.

“She was put out in front of millions of people because you chose to step in front of the cameras. That’s all I’m saying. I hope you’ll be kind to each other if you happen to end up communicating.”

I drew in a deep breath. “Thank you for talking to your team for me.”

“I suppose that’s you saying you’re done with this conversation. I’ll let you go,” my mom said.

I hung up.

“A response from Mayday through his intermediary, while you were talking,” Byron said. “It’s hard to decipher. A tentative yes? He doesn’t seem sure. It might have been a mix-up in communication.”

I saw Kenzie do a fist-pump.

“Better than nothing,” Rain said. “It’s movement in the direction we want.”

I opened my laptop to check. For a guy with authority and personality, Mayday’s response didn’t seem to have much direction, with all of the qualifiers he’d added.

“He was in the last episode,” Sveta said.

“Of Hard Boil? Yeah,” I said. “Questioning competency, organization, the PRT, getting into the Echidna event in Brockton Bay, the allegations about the Protectorate.”

“Yeah,” she said. “He’s sticking his neck out.”

“We’ll pay him back. We’re already drawing off heat, they weren’t done with him, because they left some threads hanging. His tie to Kenzie, for example. Something for a later episode, maybe, maybe the conclusion episode. We’ll divert attention and deflect from him. Over the next couple of days, if any stations want us, we’ll give them interviews or information. Up their ratings so Hard Boil can sink a bit.”

Sveta nodded. “That’s time taken away from bigger crises.”

“Yes,” I said. “Absolutely. But it’d be one person at a time, and if we mess with their ratings so soon after they had to end a show early… might knock them down a peg or distract from Mayday.”

Sveta smiled. “Might.”

“Might.”

More messages were rolling in. Another team. Shorewatch was back, the latest move in their routine approaching and retreating.

And so much anger, so much hate. Nine negative messages for every positive, but at least there were positives.

And, so quick I almost missed it, a name flew by, one among three messages that came in all at once.

“Guys,” Chris said. Fastest on the draw when it came to computers. I was still double checking the name.

A name. One of the enemy.

Goddess.

“Shit,” I heard Sveta mutter.

“I still don’t like her title,” Ashley said, her attention on the screen.

I read the message. One word:

Meet?

Shit. I set my teeth.

We’d put ourselves out there, and now we were on her radar. Probably. The others were agitated, their screens open to the one word message, all of its foreboding. The person we were investigating and tracking was reaching out. It could have been a threat, an ambush, a ruse.

“Victoria,” Sveta said.

I met her eyes.

“That thing, earlier today? The suspicious thing?”

The others weren’t talking anymore.

“That was Goddess?” I asked. “I asked if it was relevant to what we were doing, and you said no.”

“It was no,” Sveta said. “We had other, immediate concerns, and she- she wasn’t one.”

I frowned.

“Can you bring it up, Kenz?” Sveta asked.

“Are you sure?” Kenzie asked.

“We have to, I think. We can’t put it off or hide it. It’s going to come up.”

I could put the pieces together before the image appeared on the screen, and it was still a slap in the face. Still an impact that caught me off guard.

A scene, caught through a window. Goddess, eating lunch in Earth Gimel. Somewhere not too far from where she and her portal were situated. If it were that alone, it would have been unremarkable, except maybe remarkable because of the clarity of the shot.

Amy Claire Dallon was in the scene, along with what might have been a pet squirrel, lurking within her sleeve, biting into her sandwich while Goddess sat across from her, holding a sandwich off to the side, her finger stabbing at the table.

I was about to open my mouth to say something, or to ask, but Kenzie seemed to read my mind.

More images. Amy, her face covered in freckles from scalp to chin, hair tied back, long sleeves mercifully covering her arms and hands to the knuckles, she was wearing a different outfit. Three outfits.

Another image. Four outfits. That squirrel wasn’t a squirrel, whatever the hell it was.

It was good that they’d kept it from me. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything else and deal with this. It was good they’d warned me now.

But ‘good’ on both ends still left a horrible pit in my stomach.

“It’s unavoidable,” I said, half of my meaning intended to follow Sveta’s last statement. Half for myself, to warn the me of the present day of what was coming.

Beacon – Interlude 8.x

After the stifling atmosphere of the television studio, the night air felt cool, too clean and refreshing. In the background and across the water, the city was going dark. There was still only so much power to go around.

She was glad for the puffer jacket she’d bought with the bonus from her last payday. In a way, she’d needed to push herself to start thinking about the cold weather and what it meant. Her hands and face were cold, now, but her body was warm, and that helped the rest of her. It meant she could stay outside in the cold and the quiet.

Her breath made her glasses fog up, the lenses catching the small amounts of orange light from the nearby streetlight, illuminating her entire visible world with orange light, which would fade as the condensation receded. She could avoid it by directing her breath to one side, or controlling the output, but as soon as she turned her thoughts to something, she would forget and her glasses would fog up again with that alarming amber glow. Tonight had been important- more important than she’d anticipated.

She’d heard the discussions, the insinuations. She’d been asked once or twice to chime in with her opinion on things. She had been the escort for Kenzie to go to the television studio, and she’d waited in the darkness of the wings as the show started.

Even up to that moment, she hadn’t expected the gravity of it.

If she was anything more than an idle smoker, she would be puffing away right now. If she were a drinker, she would be tipping something back. Maybe, anyway- she still had work to do. The right-now wasn’t so important. It was that if she were anyone else, anything else, she would be able to do more than stand in the dark, her hands in her pockets, fogging up her glasses with her eyes wide.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know what to do with herself, exactly. She knew. If she were asked, she could have spouted off a checklist of things, ordered them by priority, and given the go-ahead, she would do it.

It was the herself, the she. It was the notion that she liked capes. They were neat and she’d always been enchanted by the notion of them. She’d told herself that she had no major illusions when it came to what capes were. They were human but they were humans with a lot of power. That could be a very bad thing and it could be a terrific thing. It depended on the person. She’d told herself they were flawed. Even when Mrs. Dallon took the gloves off and made it look like she was a superhuman lawyer, not just a superhuman in costume, Natalie had kept her perspective in check, or so she liked to think. Mrs. Dallon was a person to look up to, one with a lot of talents, but she was a person.

Those were things she could watch out for. The awe, the hate, the seeming perfection, the perspective or lack thereof. Early work, past classes, upbringing, everything in her life up to this point had primed her to watch those things. She could point to just about any bad incident in her upbringing or past and think of the big lesson she’d taken to heart.

This… she’d always thought capes were cool. It felt like just yesterday that she’d been Kenzie’s age, utterly enchanted by the idea of getting powers and doing something. That moment when she saved people. The moment when the villain was about to win. The moment when bystanders depended on her, or clapped for her because she’d won. She’d been enchanted by the magical powers of one book, the biological alteration scenario of a television series. When she reflected on the fantasies of childhood and adulthood both, it was the moments that stuck with her. Endless replays in her head of a given monumental scene, the crux of a decision.

Not even all good moments, either. Just moments, the key scenes. When she’d wanted to be a lawyer, it had been with a mind to having those moments in the courtroom. When she’d started working with the capes, a part of it was that she’d wanted to be adjacent to those moments.

Tonight had had a few of them. She’d been adjacent.

Except they weren’t any moments. Time didn’t stop, and there was no room to think about each decision. Events came, they went, things moved on, people adapted, conversations led to them and from them.

Standing here in the cold, glasses so fogged up and amber-tinted she couldn’t even see through them, she wondered if she was trying to stand in that current and find or create a moment.

But it couldn’t be manufactured. There was no moment here, only a checklist of things to do, each thing with its own priority.

Best not to leave Kenzie alone too long, either. She cleaned her glasses of condensation while walking from her car to the building.

Her hands remained in her pockets even though the steps of the fire escape were narrow. She knocked, and it was Victoria who opened the door.

“You don’t need to knock,” Victoria said.

“I’m thinking I should take Kenzie home.”

“Okay.”

“Let me get my stuff,” Kenzie said. “I want to take stuff home to work on.”

“Go easy,” Victoria said. “Don’t work on your things too late, or spend too much time watching feeds.”

“Okay, I can take stuff to work on in the morning though, right?”

“Not too much,” Natalie said. “Whatever you can take in one trip. We’re all tired and we don’t want to be going back and forth from the car to unload.”

“Okay. One trip, hmm.”

“I’ll take one bag,” Natalie said.

“Thank you,” Kenzie replied, almost sing-song, already gathering her things.

Rain and Ashley were offline and gone. Byron was packing up. Sveta was with Victoria, and Chris- sometimes Natalie had to look twice to spot him. He was sitting in a different corner than his usual.

“Do you want a ride, Chris?” Natalie asked.

“No thanks, I live close.”

“Byron?”

“I’m close too, but thanks.”

“I live in the other direction,” Sveta said, “I’m going to hang with Victoria for a bit.”

“Okay,” Natalie said.

“Thank you for coming tonight,” Victoria told Natalie. She looked down, Natalie observed. Like it was a week after her cat had died, and she had just reached the point where she could hold it together.

Eight arms? Three heads?

She had questions and she couldn’t ask. Others had questions and they wouldn’t ask. It felt almost like a moment and it was gone by the time she’d recognized it.

“Take care, Nat,” Byron said, in passing. The air felt colder in his wake.

“You too,” she told him. She stepped out of the way so he could leave.

Kenzie hurried over to her, a bag in hand. “Laptop and cords.”

“Got it,” Natalie said, taking the bag.

Then Kenzie was gone, back to her desk, sorting through lenses and components. Some of Rain’s things, maybe? Natalie tried to keep track of them so she could be a better guardian, but she wasn’t sure if she could really demand that of herself. There were tables and corners of tables where it looked like a television, radio, and a few flashlights had been dismantled and broken down into their constituent elements. Kenzie’s work areas were sorted by color, with a collection of bits of glass, bulbs, and lenses.

Rain’s work areas that hadn’t been cleaned up were in piles, crowded in by the wolf trap, chains, and knives Rain had brought in. There might have been an emphasis on the sharp-edged, ragged breaks where plastic or metal had snapped off.

“Victoria,” Natalie said, pulling her eyes away from those ragged edges. “How are things?”

“Do you mean overall or with me, specifically?” Victoria asked.

She’d meant Victoria, specifically. “Both, I guess.”

Victoria’s gaze was heavy, searching.

When Victoria did answer, she said, “Same answer for both. It’s going to sting at first. We anticipated that. But we’re already seeing the hero teams responding, and it’s the reception we wanted. It’s gratifying. My parent’s team, Mayday sounds like a yes. Shorewatch is a yes. Auzure is yes.”

“Some civilian responses too,” Sveta said. “People without powers, supporting our side.”

“I don’t really get it,” Natalie said. The show didn’t seem to go that well.

“It’s what we expected, with a couple of unwanted surprises along the way, obviously,” Victoria answered, checking her laptop, then stretching a bit as she turned away from it. “I’d hoped for a bit of a healthier balance of positivity to negativity.”

“It’s only one good message for every twelve bad, I think, but the number should improve as the night goes on,” Sveta injected a note of hope into her voice.

“It might, and only up to a point,” Chris said. “The bad is going to keep outnumbering the good.”

“Thank you, Chris,” Sveta was a bit sarcastic.

Victoria seemed to mostly ignore them, fixing her attention on Natalie, “this is what we wanted.”

Was it? How?

But Natalie didn’t miss those fleeting moments, when Victoria was mid-stretch or talking about how this was expected or wanted, when she looked a lot like Carol had a few times back at the Wardens’ office. Not happy, far from happy in this case, but fully confident.

“Yeah,” Sveta said.

“I hope it keeps that course then,” Natalie said. The words felt hollow when she still wasn’t sure about it all.

Victoria smiled. She turned to Kenzie, who had stopped bustling and rummaging and now stood still. “Are you ready?”

“Got my stuff,” Kenzie said. She had a very full cloth shopping bag full of junk, slung over one shoulder. She’d grabbed a bag of snacks.

“Alright,” Natalie said. She put a hand on Kenzie’s shoulder, guiding her to the door. “Good night, Breakthrough.”

Victoria smiled in response, while it was Sveta’s turn to look wearier as she smiled as well.

Because Natalie had addressed them as ‘Breakthrough’?

Emboldened, Natalie added, “Keep me on speed dial, in case there are issues. After shows with that ideological a bent, people sue, threaten, or otherwise use lawyers to try to bully or influence the narrative. Cries for censorship, cries against. Don’t respond and don’t panic. Call me and let me call the people who can handle it.”

“Got it,” Victoria answered her, all tired seriousness. “You have Gil’s number?”

“Gil? Oh, Gilpatrick? Yes.”

“Drive safe. I’ll be patrolling, burning off restless energy, starting when the messages start slowing down.”

“Next month then?” Chris asked.

“Go home, Chris,” Victoria said. “We’re done for the day, and you’ll be missed if you’re out too late.”

“Mmf.”

Natalie turned away from everything, stepping back outside.

All of the tech stuff went into the back seat of Natalie’s beetle, seats folded forward to provide access. Nowhere near as much space as Tristan’s truck, which she had driven earlier. Feeling how cold the car was as she leaned into the back to set the bag down, Natalie was sure to grab a blanket while she was in the back seat.

“I like your car,” Kenzie said, settling into the passenger seat. She looked surprised as Natalie draped the blanket over her lap. “Thank you.”

“Heat and fan struggle if I need to accelerate a lot while going up any hills,” Natalie explained. “Let’s get you cozy.”

“I still like it, struggle or not. Ooh, I wonder if I could soup it up somehow. I wonder how I’d do it.”

“Ask before you do anything, please,” Natalie said, as she got belted in. The steering wheel was cool, but not so much that it would be bothersome over the long term.

She drove. The amber of the streetlights swept into the car, followed by a sweep of darkness, lingering just a fraction of a second too long, before the next sweep of amber. It was as though the city had adjusted the spacing to save on resources, and so it was somehow less than what she’d grown up getting used to.

At least the roads were more or less clear.

Another her would have made tonight the sort of night she would have sped down the highway, letting her foot rest more heavily on the gas, letting herself experience the thrill.

She drove the speed limit, sticking to the right-hand lane, only moving to allow ample space for mergers. Hers was the car that other people zipped by.

In the other seat, Kenzie leaned her head against the window, staring not at what was beyond, but at the hypnotic play of light against the glass just in front of her eyes. Light from the dash, light from the city beyond.

No happy smiles, no bubbling vivaciousness, no excitement.

“Are you okay?” Natalie asked.

“Yes. I’m super,” Kenzie replied, her head not moving.

“You sure? You don’t sound super- it’s allowed to not feel super.”

“I mean it,” Kenzie said. The amber light of streetlights swept into the car’s interior. A chance trick of light played off of her eyes, making the natural moisture appear to be glowing yellow-orange. Light passed over the little girl’s face, and there was a line below her eye where it looked like her face was a thick mask, a hole had been cut in, and the glow of the streetlights came from within the mask, not outside.

Kenzie turned her face away, pulling the blanket up so it covered her shoulders, and gripped it from within to tug it close to her body. “I feel more okay than I have since Ashley and Rain turned themselves in to go to jail.”

“Why? Because-”

“Because my friends had my back. I got to spend the day with my favorite person. Did you see the emails? People are cheering for us- for me.”

“It’s good you’re happy. I don’t want to take away from that, but-”

“But some people are being awful? Hateful? Scared? All my life, people have been that way. For a long, long, looong while, everyone was like that,” Kenzie said. “If five million people watched that, and one in thirteen people that care enough to say something about it are saying something nice? That’s a times-infinity improvement. And Breakthrough had my back.”

“Got it,” Natalie said.

“Infinity times six,” Kenzie said, sounding almost like she was falling asleep. It was nine o’clock at night, so she wouldn’t have been faulted, but Natalie knew she usually stayed up well past that point.

A long day, in other ways.

“Infinity plus five, maybe. Chris sucks sometimes, and he didn’t really help. But then there’s you and you’re part of Breakthrough, and you have my back?”

“Yes,” Natalie said. “I don’t know if I’m part of it, but I will have your back. Best I can.”

“And it’s not just because you’re getting paid?”

“No.”

“Or because you get to see more of Tony?”

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s Thursday tonight. He’s staying over. He’s your boyfriend, isn’t he?”

“He definitely isn’t,” Natalie said. “And don’t- don’t try playing matchmaker.”

Oh please God, don’t try playing matchmaker.

“No promises. My current score is infinity and six. I think that’s pretty amazing. Who wouldn’t be psyched to have someone with that good a record giving them some help?”

“I-”

“Right?”

“No, not right. Kenzie, it’s complicated. I like things the way they are now.”

“But he’s not your boyfriend.”

“Not exactly.”

“And you want him to be your boyfriend.”

“Yes, but. It’s weird and it’s fragile and I don’t want to ruin a good thing by trying to shoot for a maybe-great thing.”

“I like that. It’s a good way of putting it.”

“Thank you,” Natalie said. The drive remained quiet, the lights sweeping through the car, the traffic denser closer to the broken portal in Norwalk, but still manageable and polite. All the same, her heart was pounding.

“I’m mostly teasing, by the way,” Kenzie said. “I know I’d be the worst relationship doctor.”

“Please don’t tease me, Kenzie,” Natalie answered, gripping the steering wheel, her heart still racing. “Today has been stressful enough, and we don’t know what tomorrow will bring.”

“We’re okay,” Kenzie said. “This is all according to plan.”

“You think so?”

Kenzie nodded, serious, before hugging the blanket tighter to her body again. The car wasn’t even that cold anymore. The girl’s expression was solemn.

“You’re really okay? You’re happy with this outcome?”

“I told you!” Kenzie raised her voice, blanket falling from her shoulders to fold across her lap. She was indignant, adding, “I said!”

“Okay, okay!” Natalie replied.

The trip continued, with idle chatter, and no mention of Tony, thankfully.

Kenzie’s neighborhood was dark, her home illuminated by flashlights, lanterns, and candles, by the look of it.

“No power, ugh,” Kenzie said. “I won’t be able to build tonight, or check on things.”

“That’s not a complete tragedy. You might get a full night’s sleep,” Natalie said.

They let themselves in.

“Hi Tony!” Kenzie called out.

“Hi!” the call came back. “Did you eat?”

“A while ago. Do you have snacks?”

“I’ll put something together. Get yourself ready for bed, okay?”

“Is Dave still around?”

“He left a while ago. The game you guys were playing is still where you left it. Your move, apparently.”

Kenzie carefully put her bag down, kicked off her shoes, and bounce-skipped to the living room. Natalie took her time getting her jacket off, boots off, and putting away Kenzie’s shoes. She was relieved in a way to see Kenzie being a bit messy and normal.

When she looked up, Tony was there, at the door to the living room. Natalie felt a bit of trepidation as she joined him. Seeing what Kenzie was up to meant standing right beside Tony.

He was intimidating. Doubly so by candlelight. He was growing out his red hair, and it was long enough that locks curled around the tops and to the backs of his ears. His red hair and beard looked amazing in the warm light, and the play of light and shadow made the shape of his face, his neck and his adam’s apple very noticeable. He wore a long-sleeved t-shirt, what might have been silk pyjama bottoms, and slippers.

Approaching to stand closer meant she wouldn’t stare at him, but now she could smell his body soap, shampoo, and whatever else it was he used. He’d just showered recently.

“Laser chess,” Tony said, by way of explanation. The corner of his t-shirt sleeve at his bicep brushed her shoulder as he raised a hand to point.

“Kenzie mentioned it on one of our car trips,” Natalie replied. “Hard to visualize, hearing about it.”

Kenzie moved a piece, then hit a button. A visible laser reflected across the various pieces, leaving the board to stab toward the easel where Kenzie’s mother had once had her paintings.

“Move decided?” Tony asked.

That got a nod.

“Good. Get ready for bed,” Tony said. “I’ll get your snack.”

Kenzie ran off to do just that. Tony and Natalie didn’t move from their positions, looking into the now-unoccupied living room.

“You’re better at the kid-handling than I am,” Natalie said.

“I raised my littlest brother. You’ve crossed paths with him. When you were at my apartment?”

“Oh. Yeah. I thought that was your roommate.”

Tony shook his head, but the way he shook it- not just because she was wrong.

“Today was kind of a holy shit day,” Tony said.

“You watched the show?”

“Everyone did. The five of us were in group chat discussing. You didn’t look in?”

Natalie shook her head.

“I don’t blame you. You probably had your hands full.”

“I wish. I would have liked to be able to do more. I just… tried to keep an eye on Kenzie, give feedback.”

“That’s important,” Tony said. “Do you want a snack too? I’ve got blueberry muffins.”

“Sure. Please,” she said. “I’m going to go get changed, I’ll grab it when I come back downstairs.”

“I’ll warm it up,” he said. “Coffee? Tea?”

“Coffee. I have work I should do,” she said. She didn’t leave right away. “I was wondering-”

“Yes?”

“The reception. What did the group think? What did you think?”

“Of the show? I think a lot is going to depend on what others say. Some pretty freaky, wild stuff. The powers and the…”

“Alien?”

“The lies,” he said. “The Triumvirate lied? Legend, Alexandria, Eidolon? The secrets being kept? I mean, we knew there were secrets, but this is something else.”

“Yeah. Were the others upset?”

“Not upset. Wondering. Processing. Why? Is there backlash already?”

She nodded, eyes widening for emphasis.

“Are you okay? Are they okay?”

“I’m fine. A bit shell-shocked. Kenzie’s… as happy as I’ve seen her. The others… it’s not my place to say.”

“We’re on their side. Nobody’s leaving Kenzie’s rotation here or changing how we do it.”

She felt her forehead crease as she thought on that.

“Go get changed. I’ll warm up your snacks. We’ll get her put to bed like responsible caregivers, and then we’ll talk. Or you can do your work and we can… you want to hook up Saturday or Sunday? Or both?”

Both, was her immediate thought. She did her best to switch to unflappable lawyer mode, like Carol so often did. “Saturday? My apartment? We’ll figure out if Sunday works from there. We can chat then.”

“When not otherwise occupied,” he said.

Aaaaa, she thought.

“Perfect,” she said.

He smiled, “I’ll look forward to it.”

Aaaaa, she thought, again. She wasn’t sure she trusted her legs not to go out on her if she tried to walk away, but she knew she’d look like an idiot if she stayed.

She headed up the stairs without wobbly knees failing her, grabbing one of the electric lanterns from a stair on the way up, and headed to the room that she shared with one of the other girls- a daughter of one of the family law administrators. Their schedules overlapped by the one day, at the tail end of Natalie’s shift, but they’d only crossed paths with a couple of seconds of contact shared with them each time. As a result, Natalie only knew the girl by the things left in the one corner of the room she’d claimed. Natalie had her own corner, with clothes, toiletries, books, and some of her computer stuff.

She had two sets of sleep-clothes, which included a flannel two-piece set with a buttoned top with a collar, and then the nightie she’d bought but never worn. Modest enough to wear around Kenzie without feeling weird, but… Tony would like it, if he liked anything she wore.

She agonized over the choice, and she wished she had some sense of what was right, or appropriate, or good. She second guessed herself, then second guessed herself again.

Natalie picked a piece of lint off of the flannel as she emerged from her room. Kenzie was just down the hall, leaning over the counter, brushing her teeth. The girl wore a silver silk nightdress with a silk headscarf wrapped around her hair, the hairpin she’d been wearing earlier in the day helping to keep it in place.

Natalie waited until Kenzie was done.

“You do have to take that hairpin off at some point.”

“I know. I’ll take it off before I go to sleep. Is Tony sleeping upstairs?”

“I don’t think he is. He usually takes the couch downstairs. Why?”

“I was just thinking, if you wanted to share the same room, you should. I wouldn’t mind.”

“N- no, Kenzie. That would be weird.”

“But you guys do that when I’m not in the way or around, I’m pretty sure, and so I don’t want to hurt that by being in the way or being around. He’s great and you’re great, and you’d be great together. If it’s because you’re worried I’d watch you on camera, I wouldn’t. I took cameras out of the bedrooms and turned them away from places people sleep because I like you guys and trust you.“

Apparently there had been no need to dance around the subject of her physical-only or physical-mostly relationship with Tony in the car ride here.

Also, cameras?

“No.”

“Because I’m not really paying attention to that stuff and I could do much less creepy research online if I was, that didn’t involve anyone I knew. I think if really wanted to figure it out, I’d start with studying videos of kissing I’d do that and work my way up, so I’m good at the general stuff before I get to the advanced-”

“Kenzie.”

Kenzie stopped.

“There are blueberry muffins downstairs.”

“Yes!”

Kenzie practically flew down the stairs.

A heavy crash downstairs made Natalie freeze.

It was a moment, not a fleeting one, not a missed one, or the sort that hit so hard it rippled, making the decisions that were to come after that much more difficult. It was the kind that she’d thought about as a kid.

There were voices below. Multiple male ones. Another crash.

“Kenzie!” she hissed the word.

Kenzie was already coming up the stairs on all fours.

The moment Kenzie was confirmed upstairs and safe, Natalie ducked into her room. Phone.

She had numbers. Police. She texted rather than call. If she had to call, if there had to be a back and forth, it would take too long.

Glass shattered downstairs.

Victoria’s contact, Gilpatrick. A repeat of the prior message.

She was in the middle of typing a message to Victoria when she heard footsteps on the stairs, with voices, a back and forth between a guy and a girl. Kenzie tried to put herself between the stairs and Natalie, but Natalie pushed her back.

“I’m the hero here,” Kenzie said, insistent, dead serious. “Let me protect you.”

“Do you have your gear up here?”

Kenzie shook her head. “Some in the bag in the hallway, but that’s mostly scrap. I didn’t bring the eyehook or any of the really useful stuff because you said you didn’t want to make too many trips.

The pair came up the stairs. A twenty-something guy and a teenage girl with bleached hair. The guy had a knife.

Natalie had seen knife wounds, once. It was so, so easy to do horrendous amounts of damage.

“Can I have your phone?” Kenzie asked.

“No,” the guy said. “Don’t be stupid.”

Natalie looked down at her phone in her left hand. The screen had a large red ‘connect’ icon with a slash through it.

No service?

No power in the building, no service. If service had dropped like this, the texts might not have gone through.

“Drop it.”

Natalie bent down, letting the phone fall the remaining distance. She winced, hearing the sound. Phones were too expensive.

As the guy moved, knife in hand, she put herself between him and Kenzie.

“Kid,” the guy said. “Make this easier on all of us. We’ve got capes, and we’ve got you outnumbered. Come with us, and we’ll leave this chick and the guy downstairs in one piece.”

“Deal,” Kenzie said.

“No deal!” Natalie said. “What’s wrong with you guys? She’s a kid.”

“She’s got enemies, and she’s not exactly popular right now. As far as a lot of people are concerned, a lot of people who watch television, she’s fair game. If you get in the way, so are you. ”

“That’s not how it works. There is no ‘fair game’.”

“If we can get away with it, it’s fair,” he said.

“It’s really, really dumb to attack a tinker in her workshop or home,” Kenzie said. “You’re being recorded on cameras.”

“No,” Natalie said, quiet. “Not a good approach.”

“But they’re being idiots. They’re not going to get away with it, so it’s not fair or good.”

“You’re just making them desperate,” Natalie murmured.

“She’s not making us anything,” the guy retorted.

“I’m not making them desperate and I’m not making them anything,” Kenzie said. “Because I’m giving myself up.”

“No,” Natalie said, seizing Kenzie’s arm as Kenzie walked past her. “No.”

“Yes. You and Tony are cool and you don’t deserve this.”

“They’re going to hurt you.”

“Probably. Or kill me. That girl over there is Colt, hi Colt.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Her mom misses the hell out of her, since she left home to go be a henchman for Nailbiter. Nailbiter is in Love Lost’s group, and Love Lost’s group is all about violence and threats. Protection rackets, debt collection and doing hits on people. Sometimes hits with prejudice. Making it hurt.”

The guy smirked. Colt looked away, down the stairs.

Kenzie smiled back at the guy. How could she do that?

Natalie, already glancing back behind her to see Kenzie’s expression, glanced down. If her phone had landed screen-up, then she might be able to see if there was a signal. If so, could she grab her phone, grab Kenzie, and get into one room, barricading themselves in there?

The phone was gone.

Was Kenzie doing something? If so, Natalie could-

She had no idea what she was supposed to do. It was another moment and…

She could only trust.

“Colt,” Natalie said. “If you want out, if you’re trapped, you can call. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, we can get you the best possible result.”

Stupid, to say it in front of the guy.

He advanced on her. She backed up, and she bumped into Kenzie. It let him close the distance by another step, the point of his knife moving toward her chest. She raised a hand, ready to defend herself in the meager way that a hand could fend off a knife, and he swiped out in the direction of that hand. She let it drop.

The knife’s point penetrated skin, stabbing her in the sternum, just below the collarbone. It might have been the particular spot, but the contact of metal on bone was surprisingly painful.

“Move,” he said.

How could she feel so weirdly calm like this, and panic to the point of crying over an exam for a class she was doing well in? She could be held at knifepoint with zero idea of what to do and be almost okay, and yet when her sex buddy said he wanted to fuck her, she didn’t know how to deal.

As a kid, she’d imagined getting powers and facing down impossible situations and weirdness like this made her think maybe it was what she was meant for. She could trigger, especially if it was only during the bad events, and-

And people who thought they might trigger didn’t. Wasn’t that the rule?

She was finally here and she might die or be maimed for it.

No, that wasn’t even the worst possibility.

She was here, finally, and Kenzie or Tony might die, with her left intact, agonizing over how she’d had no heroism in the end.

For that, she couldn’t move.

She watched the man’s expression twist. A twist of the knife followed, point still against bone, edge still in flesh. As she reacted in pain, her hands moving involuntarily, he flicked the knife out again, slashing at the hand as if it might reach. She backed away, hands dropping.

The pain followed a second later. Blood. He’d cut her as part of that slash. She started to react, and saw him brandishing the knife.

“No!” Kenzie said. “Please. Okay? I surrender for real, ignore her.”

“Don’t you dare,” Natalie said.

“Just- here,” Kenzie said. She pulled the silk scarf from her head. “Press this down on the cut. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Please.”

Natalie took the scarf.

Kenzie turned to the guy, hands out and to the sides. “Please?”

The guy didn’t wait. He bent down, reaching for Kenzie, seizing her by the shoulder. She ducked out of his grip, and pushed at his arm, knocking it away.

He brought the knife around- and for just a second, there was a distortion, three or four Kenzie heads and shoulders, a body at an angle.

As the distortion passed, Kenzie was gripping the man’s wrist with two of her hands over her head.

Natalie got to her feet again, stepping forward to help, to follow through before Colt could step in. Not that there was a real point. Kenzie held the wrist with one hand and moved the other, the hairpin held within, point raking along the length of the guy’s arm, wrist to elbow.

He dropped the knife, and Natalie hurried to pick it up. He kicked Kenzie, one hand gripping his wound, and Natalie, still rising to a standing position, hurled herself into him. She was smaller, but she caught him off guard- there was a chance that he could have resisted her or pushed back, but she had the knife, and she could see his eyes widen as he realized it. He let himself be driven back, to where he tumbled down the stairs, stopping as he collided with Colt, who was just around the bend in the stairs, positioned to brace herself.

“You don’t want this,” Natalie said, to Colt.

“They’re up here!” Colt hollered.

Natalie hopped down to the stair that was broader because it turned the corner, and kicked Colt. It helped the guy fall down a few extra stairs.

She thought about taking one hostage, just to buy time for help to arrive, if it was even on the way. Time-time for Kenzie to build something. Was that even possible?

Then she saw the man at the base of the stairs, wearing a shattered porcelain mask. She could see it in his eyes. He didn’t care.

He moved his hand, and there was a lawn dart in it.

It hit the wall behind her as she hurried back upstairs.

Buy time, bide time.

Into the parent’s bedroom. She shut the door, then worked to move the dresser into the way of the door. She sat with her back to the dresser.

Thuds hit the door, at varying intensities. Something hit it hard enough to splinter wood above.

“You’re bleeding.”

Natalie grit her teeth. Something hit the door with an impact that made the dresser move, Natalie’s head flying forward as the third object moving in the chain of conserved energy, then naturally moving back to crack against the wood.

“Can’t do much about it right now. Did you call help?”

“I gave it a try. And I did the projector thing, and glanced at the cameras. It was four people, two capes. Hookline’s got Tony.”

“Kid!” Kitchen Sink raised his voice.

“Hi!”

“I’ve got a burning plank in my hand right now. I’d say you have until it gets too hot for me to hold before it becomes your problem.”

“Um! We moved furniture, and my friend is bleeding enough she might be too weak to move it away.”

“Fine.”

There was a sound of wood clattering.

Natalie frowned.

“You’re not bleeding that badly,” Kenzie said. “Come on. Window.”

Natalie started to stand, and then fell, more out of the surprise of how difficult it was than out of the actual difficulty. She was actually weaker.

And it was actually a good amount of blood, now that she could see what she’d deposited on the floor in the short time since sitting. In the unlit room, it looked black on a gray floor.

Stay calm for Kenzie and Tony.

She climbed to her feet with Kenzie helping, and she made her way to the window.

Kitchen Sink was already outside. As her head popped up, he hurled something.

“I wish I had my stuff,” Kenzie said.

“Sorry.”

“Oh, don’t- I don’t blame you. It was smart and right to not want to bring everything. It’s just- being a tinker sucks sometimes.”

Natalie chanced another look outside. Kitchen Sink was creating and tossing away things. One in each hand. Utensils, vases, toys.

He’d found one he was keeping. She could barely see it in the dark.

A stick? A stick of dynamite, unlit.

“We need to throw something out there. Don’t let him figure something out,” Natalie said.

“Got it. Books?”

“Whatever.”

Natalie did what she could to open windows. Kitchen Sink threw something at the window, but it only cracked the glass. She got the window open partway.

Kenzie had hardback books. Natalie reached for the first.

“You’re hurt.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m still stronger than you.”

“Well, that’s rude.”

With a two-handed grip on the book, Natalie heaved it through the open window, in Kitchen Sink’s general direction.

There was a return throw. She checked immediately after. He’d moved a step to the side.

Another throw- her shoulder hurt with the movement, but adrenaline carried her through.

After her third throw, she heard vehicles. She could hear Kitchen Sink shouting. She chanced a look – he’d lost the dynamite at one point.

The group of capes were running off to one side, all together. Colt, the guy from the top of the stairs.

The focus of the vehicles was on the house- they didn’t give chase. But they weren’t alone.

A shape like an eel crossed with a large wolf paced into the scene, weaving between the trucks, where patrol officers were just emerging.

Kenzie leaned out through the window, past the broken glass before Natalie could stop her, and pointed in the direction the bad guys had gone.

The eel-thing, which had to be Cryptid, ran off.

“He came,” Kenzie said. Her voice was soft. “Infinity and seven.”

Natalie nodded. She reached for a pillowcase beside the bed, and pressed it to her cut.

“I’m sorry you got caught up in this,” Kenzie said.

“It’s what I signed on for.”

“I don’t think it is. I think we really kicked the hornet’s nest.”

Natalie nodded. “Tell them about the fire.”

“You can’t?”

Natalie wasn’t sure if she could. “Conserving strength.”

“Guys!” Kenzie called out. “There might be a fire upstairs!”

People broke into a run, a straggler emerging from the patrol truck with a fire extinguisher.

The shout had drawn attention. Victoria appeared, landing on top of a truck, eyes searching, before she found faces peering through the window of an unlit room. She flew to them.

“Are you okay?”

“Got cut,” Natalie said.

“She’s bleeding a lot.”

“Let’s get you out of there. I’ll lift you down. Come on.”

Natalie began to work her way through the window, which didn’t open all the way. Nice house as it was, there were still shortcuts in construction. Victoria helped her.

Victoria’s voice was reassuring. “We’re getting our forces together. Same as Trial and Error. This doesn’t go unanswered.”

“My-” Natalie started. She wasn’t sure how to label Tony. Stupid, to have that be the thing she stumbled over in this moment.

“Tony’s scraped up and scared, but he’s otherwise fine,” Victoria said.

Natalie nodded. With that, she could pass out.

Beacon – Interlude 8.y

William’s shoes rubbed his feet raw as he ran, the seams like tiny saws against flesh, the crisp edges of the material at the ankle and tendon more like the blade of an axe, waiting for flesh to come to it, rather than the other way around. The ground by the fences was dirt that had been packed down to be as hard as any concrete, and even if his shoes weren’t shredding his feet, he would still be suppressing a wince with each footfall.

He couldn’t show weakness. Stepping onto the grass, it would cost him too much. Stopping? Resting? It would be an excuse that too many people would use against him.

Not just the people here, either. There were a dozen people in the yard, no doubt taken painstakingly from a list, to keep them away from bad influences and their old gangs, to avoid power interactions, and keep it all simple. It wasn’t just them that he had to concern himself with. The buildings throughout the prison complex were spaced out, but plenty of them had a view of the yard and the surrounding area. Man and woman, divided by a short wall and a wider gap than usual, could look over at the yard from their individual buildings.

People could only watch so much television, and there were plenty of strategists and long-term thinkers who watched the yard to evaluate, study, assess.

He knew he wasn’t a big guy. He was fit, decently attractive, with his mop of blond hair that was halfway between curly and wavy being his primary selling point. He’d been told since he was in middle school that he had a natural glower, and now for the first time, he found himself grateful for it.

This was a stage, and by running, he performed. To stop or take the easier path of running on grass would see an easy dozen people judging him. They would switch over their assessment of him from ‘villain’ to ‘victim’, and then they would victimize him.

His own assessment of himself would change. He’d dealt with worse. Caving to hardship now would… it would be a new low point on the graph of his successes and failures, part of a set of points that suggested he was on a decline, that more lowest points were to come.

“Slow down, Gambol!” a guard hollered, very close to William.

William could hear Gambol well before Gambol drew close. Feet tromped on the dirt and grass, more of a gallop than a run.

“Slow the fuck down!” the guard’s voice reached the point of rawness on the lowest syllables. He hefted his assault rifle, and William staggered to a stop, dropping to his knees on grass, hands up and touching the back of his head.

Gambol stopped, taking the wide path around William. He was a changer, and his arms and legs were a good six feet long each, each mutated to have a lifeform at each end – like a headless dog or ape with its own limbs that served as Gambol’s digits. His knees were effectively backward and the weight distribution and center of balance were screwed up enough that he had to do a push-up motion to get his upper body up enough that he could stand up, for lack of a better way of putting it. His exaggerated ‘hands’ went behind his head-two ‘thumb’ limbs touching, other limbs radiating out.

“Too fucking fast, asswipe,” the guard said.

“I have a note from my doctor.” Gambol’s normal way of talking was like other people’s telling-a-joke voice. Not the kind of thing that went over well with the guards.

“Walk or sit.”

“I really have a note. Can I reach for it? I’ll show you.”

“No. Walk or sit, Gambol.”

Gambol moved his arm. William, about four paces away, winced in anticipation of a possible gunshot. Instead, he heard the radio buzz as the guard signaled the others.

Paper rustled, and Gambol reached out with his long arm, pressing a piece of paper to the double-layer wire fence. “See? I need to exercise these limbs, or my body cannibalizes itself. I’m supposed to go all out.”

“You’re going to trample someone.”

“I won’t. I’m better than that. I’m doing warm up laps right now, but once I get going, I’ll just go over them.”

Other guards were approaching. William couldn’t get his ankle in a position where the hard back of the shoe wasn’t biting into the raw flesh around the tendon. His face settled in a glower, his eyes on the ground, while he waited for this to be cleared up. At least he wasn’t running for now.

The guards talked, the loud one with his gun still raised giving the note a dubious look.

Another guard said, “If the doc says it, we have to let it go.”

“I could die if I don’t run as fast as I can,” Gambol added.

The comment was unnecessary, the smug tone doubly so. William remained silent, tense. He knew Gambol was a weird guy, too prone to pushing limits and boundaries. The guy got away with it too, like with this doctor’s note.

The guy had befriended Coalbelcher, William knew. That might have explained the doctor’s note and the arrogance. Fucking whatever, it was still a bad idea to play with fire here. The guards looked ready to shoot someone.

William kept his eyes down.

The guard lowered his gun. Gambol took that as his okay to go. He stretched in front of the guard before running off, a loping, awkward motion that still covered a shocking amount of ground.

“You can go, William,” a guard ordered.

William found his way to his feet. “When do we get better shoes?”

“Shoes are expensive. Those will be fine once you break them in.”

Breaking them in. That wouldn’t be before it was too cold to wear them outside. It would, however, be a possibility after winter. It hit him just how long he might be here. His expression twisted into a scowl as the pain resumed, each stab matched to a footfall.

Gambol approached from behind, already prepared to lap him. He stepped over to the grass, while Gambol leaped- hitting the fence full-bodied, limbs finding purchase on the multiple layers of chain link, hauling him forward.

The guy was moving fast enough he was putting his mutated extremities against the fence to brace himself as he rounded corners. Mutated musculature around the spine flexed as the body absorbed the shock.

William focused on running. He was lapped several times by Gambol, who was moving faster than before, still periodically leaning hard into the fence as he turned a corner.

The guard that had been calling for Gambol to stop was standing with his arms folded. He was talking with another prisoner- up until William drew closer. The conversation aborted.

A convict friend had told William about how things went in jail- what was true, what wasn’t, what to watch out for.

Silence was dangerous. Something was about to happen.

Gambol approached- on his fifth lap, while William was just wrapping up his first since the earlier incident with Gambol. He leaped up to the fence, gripping the bar at the top with the complicated arrangements of three separate limbs for a more solid grip. He went over William’s head, leaped down to the path, scuffing and breaking up the packed dirt, and then broke up more dirt by sprinting from his landing position.

William had to jog over the broken piles of dirt. He used it as an excuse to kick some chunks of dirt back into their holes, stepping on one to help it find its fit.

“Keep moving, William!”

He jogged on, glancing around to check where the guards were. The prisoner that the one guard had been talking to- paying attention to Gambol.

It happened almost forty seconds later. Behind William, Gambol leaped to the fence to grab something and go over the heads of a group of others, and the fence distorted. It was a flicker, a separation of the wire from its diamond-shaped links to a webwork of segments of wire, each sharp at both ends. It was so quick and momentary that Gambol and most who weren’t paying attention wouldn’t have seen it.

A slash of crimson. Gambol had cut his hand. He tumbled through the group he had been meaning to jump over, with some glancing hits and a violent fall.

He’d been moving fast, and the fall was consequently violent- the kind that could snap necks or break limbs.

William jogged over, while the guards called for backup or ran to the gate where they could enter the yard. Other prisoners were backing off. Staying out of it.

“What the fuck was that?” Gambol’s voice wasn’t jokey anymore. He was writhing on the spot, back twisting, limbs curling and twitching. The words came through grit teeth.

“Don’t move,” William said.

“Can’t not,” Gambol muttered.

William reached out, placing his hand on Gambol’s shoulder.

I hate my power, hate it so much.

He sensed the wound to Gambol’s back and he sensed it, feeling it in detail and in entirety, so real that he might as well have been the one to destroy his back in a freak fall.

He explored that sensation and found a catalogue of similar scenes. He could see other Gambols, including ones without powers, arranged so that some were close, others far away, and there was a pattern to them that distorted the perspective. Where they had powers, they stood in the shadow of great monoliths that were simultaneously existing in the plural and the singular, the images too indistinct to make out, too great in scale to ignore.

He could see himself, blurrier, hard to track. He could transfer things from the other to himself and vice versa. Even ailments or complaints as minor as feeling too hot or too cold could be moved. On the other end of the scale, he had brought someone back from a point so close to the brink of death that he wasn’t sure he hadn’t brought them back from death itself.

A lower back injury was easy, in the grand scheme of things.

He picked out versions of himself, distributing the load. He took on the lower back injury, the injuries that would be bruises from the fall. Some of these alternate Williams would feel a share of the injury, possibly even a totality of the injury.

He set about taking on Gambol’s injuries, bearing them himself, distributing the load among his fellow selves while using his own wellness as a template to contrast with and highlight the damage. The pain hit him sharp, and the strength went out of his legs, seemingly concentrated in a trio or quartet of lower-back muscles, which started crumpling into themselves, or that was how it felt.

“Step away from the prisoner!” a guard bellowed. “No contact!”

“I have first aid training and field experience! If we don’t stop him from moving, he might do permanent damage to himself!”

“Step away!”

“I can’t!” was his answer. He met Gambol’s eyes. “If I let go, he might never walk again!”

“You will not be asked again!”

It wasn’t the jerk guard from before that was making a point of this. It was a new face, female, stern, and rigid, who was acting like a wall, getting in his way.

He avoided looking at her, his attention on Gambol and the aftermath of the violence. He looked past Gambol and at the arrangement of other Gambols, who had made their own decisions and faced their own consequences.

He was already taking on a lot. The pain in his back was intense, no doubt permanent. Part of the reason he said he couldn’t back off was that he wasn’t sure he could walk.

The cut on the hand transferred to his own body, a dotted line drawn across his palm, raw and painful. The dots were where other Williams had taken some of the burden onto their own shoulders. Unwitting and unwilling.

There had been a time when he had felt bad about it.

“Step away!” A new voice. They’d said he wouldn’t be asked again. The woman was talking into her radio.

“Can’t!” he shouted. “But I’m not hurting anyone! I’m safe!”

“Our decision, not yours!”

It wasn’t that he didn’t respect that kind of thinking. Stubbornness was strength, in its way. He’d seen it among the Crowley Fallen, especially. Weak opposition could be broken surprisingly easy with enough stubbornness.

Gambol, oddly enough, was a good representation of that kind of confidence. The issue was that like the Mathers Fallen, he’d stirred up things that could have been left alone. Gambol had crossed the guards, made them look and feel dumb, and their resentment had hit a limit. The Mathers group had attracted too much attention in too short a span of time.

Had either been subtler in that, they might have provoked the enemy while making that enemy look unreasonable if they went on the offensive.

William winced as the pain set in, worse than before, and winced because he was pissed off that the recklessness of others landed on his shoulders. The Mathers’ failure was why he was here. Gambol’s idiocy had brought them to this crossroads.

Well, he’d had an idea of what he was getting into.

“Why?” Gambol asked.

Why? Because he was thinking longer-term.

“Put in a good word for me with Coalbelcher,” he said.

Gambol smiled. “I can do that.”

Simple, easy to process. A favor given for a favor granted.

He pushed some of the ankle pain out, then worked on more of the stomach and back pains. Feeling how they naturally grouped, the musculature at the core of the body overcompensating for the damage to the back. Focusing on one damaged vertebrae, he could trace it down to legs he was just now realizing were oddly numb.

That numbness made it hard to adjust his seat and lean toward the deceased.

“Last chance! Don’t be stupid, William!”

He chose to be stupid.

Instead of stopping, he talked to Gambol. “This fix is fragile. If either one of us gets too hurt, the injuries will go back to the source. Use this opportunity to take care-”

A bullet shattered his work like so much glass, on its way to demolishing his ribcage and casting him out of consciousness.

⊙

A thousand images of himself, viewed in a thousand different realities. Each self had made its own decisions, faced its own consequences, and found its own unique perspectives. One thing was near unanimous, however, and that was that when those versions of William Giles had their power, it was this power, and they fucking hated it.

Sunlight streamed in through the window of the hospital room. It was on-site for the prison, the room flooded with an orange light, more because of the texture and color of the curtain than because of the time of day. Armed guards stood on either side of the wall, guns ready, but they were paying more attention to the television than to him. A nurse was going about her business, adjusting his IV bag, which had another bag connected to it.

He tried and failed to move, and the act made his back hurt. He groaned. His feet felt awful, too. And as he took in a deep breath- his ribs. They’d broken. He reached for the wound, to try to feel it and see if there was a trace of the bullet’s passage, and restraints clinked taut instead.

“The hell?” he asked. He immediately regretted the question. Asking made his throat hurt.

“Oh, you’re awake. Good morning, William.”

“Morning?”

“You had surgery. You were intubated, that’s why your throat hurts. I’ll page the doctor, and he’ll be along shortly to explain what happened.”

He started to move and winced again. His feet had been bandaged where the shoes had cut them up. He felt strange about that.

“I’ll get you some pain medication soon,” the nurse said, looking up at the television.

What was so important? A show? ‘Hard Boil.’ The kind the other Fallen liked.

He recognized some of the people on the stage. There was the blonde from the Fallen assault, he forgot the name, but she was standing in front of her seat, speaking with conviction. The one with white hair, Damsel, he remembered her. There was Capricorn, another goat by theme. And some black kid.

“…There it is. Powers and where they come from. Millions are watching and millions are on the same page as us. Scion? Something set him off, I don’t know the particulars, but he wanted to wipe us out, parahuman and human both. We fought like hell and I lost family members in that fighting. He was everything that was wrong with parahumans, and we beat him-“

Oh. It was important.

And, it seemed, it was a clip from a show being played by another show. From the ‘beat him’, it cut straight to an interview.

Mayday from the raid on the Mathers camp was on stage, talking to smiling hosts. Where the show in the clip was severe, stark in lighting, this one was warmer, less shouty.

“It’s true, and I’m grateful that Breakthrough opened the door for this conversation to happen, this morning.”

“Talk to us. Can you tell us what happened that day, from your perspective?”

“I can tell you that I’ve worked with twenty-six people with powers over the years, who I would have called my teammates. Some were with me for most of my career, up until that day. Others were… fleeting. But they still were teammates. Sixteen died that day. We fought to occupy him, distract him from attacking whole cities or sinking landmasses. Every last one of us was fighting him, and it still looked like he was going to win.”

“But you won,” a man breathed the words.

“We won, absolutely, but that victory isn’t what I hold close to my heart. Let me say this, as a veteran of Endbringer fights, fights against monsters, and someone who fought in the endless war on gangs, it’s not that we won, it’s that we gave our all and we came together when it didn’t look like winning was possible.”

“Skipping some things there, Mayday,” William said. He laughed a bit, and the resulting pain in his ribs almost blinded him with its suddenness and intensity. Worse, it made him gasp, which in itself made the ribs explode with pain once more, and the whole-body reaction made the pain of his back reawaken.

The nurse approached, watching over him while he found his way to a pained stasis, unable and unwilling to move without something dissolving into agony.

“Skipping?” a guard asked.

“We fought each other, around then. Different opinions on how to do things. There was infighting, bitterness, old rivalries. Can I get some of that pain medication, now that you’re not watching as much?”

“You’ll have to wait,” the nurse said. “It’s not the tee-vee. Supplies are limited and you’re being rationed one dose every eight hours.”

He grimaced.

He did have options. He had a mental template of his uninjured self. With focus, he could round off the edges, hold things off, or take the almost-healed and push it away. It was the holding that he wanted to use here. If his power was to take the ailments of others and then give them to others, then ‘holding’ something was to take it and not shelve it within his own body, with that body feeling the worst of it. He’d hold it in his hand, apart, away, and ready for another target, leaning on the template of self to keep everything in rough place.

Ready for another target – the nurse was being careful, and he was pretty sure using his power on her would get him shot in a more final way. No. And besides, he would feel shitty for making her deal with all of this.

Things got a bit easier as he focused on holding things off. There was a drawback to this, where dropping what he was holding meant it would take hold with a splash. The effects would be worse if held off and accidentally dropped or if he was disturbed enough by outside factors.

“You don’t seem to have a very positive view of this stuff,” the guard said, indicating the television.

“I had a lot of teammates over the years. I lost a few too many of them. I saved a few of their lives, before, and… it was for nothing. I helped save towns and those towns are gone now. When everything went to shit, it all went to shit. No use prettying it up. Can you change the channel?”

The nurse picked up the remote from the small rolling table that would later let him eat in bed. She changed the channel.

Another hero, from another team, talking to people. “No.”

Another show, a children’s cartoon. “No.”

A third segment where heroes were talking to the media.

“Turn it off,” he said.

She changed back to the original channel. “Say please next time, and I might.”

“It’s all pretty words.”

The nurse looked a little upset as she walked around his bed. She approached the IV bag, adjusting something.

It made itself felt over the next twenty seconds. His head lolled back to the pillow.

His power afforded him a greater sense of the shape of things. For a long time, it had been masked or protected somehow, his thoughts steered away from understanding it all. Since the golden calf had been slaughtered, the protections were peeling away. From noises he’d heard while with the Fallen, he wasn’t the only one.

It was a scary thing, to see what they were working with.

The shape of their reality, for one thing. As the golden man had made his descent, he had sorted out the universe, taking something infinitely branching and viewing it through a lens. The Bet reality, which had been William’s before he’d left it for Gimel, was the point at the peak of the lens, the most ‘forward’, for lack of a better word. In the eighties, the golden man had arrived. Bet had cleaved off from Aleph.

‘Bet’ was, within the umbrella of the lens, a collection of realities, all of the derivative realities flowing from that point of cleaving, with the more far-flung being further away from ‘his’, harder to reach and see. Accessible, despite common opinion, but only for power interactions, not for actual travel. The golden man had been careful to limit that. Careful enough that even after his death and the ruin of his insane designs, that separation was inviolable.

When William used his power, he made use of the ‘lens’ and its construction. Earth Bet was a pool of William Gileses thirty years deep.

As a side effect, it made him just a little bit better at noticing other dimensional manipulation. A shockwave through existence, almost upsetting his hold he had on the broken ribs.

This was the point he could have said something, warning the guards. He could have helped the nurse.

But he’d given his all and tried his hardest to help for so very long, and what? Lives he’d saved had been ended in Endbringer fights and on Gold Morning. Towns he’d helped rescue had been leveled.

He’d joined the Fallen because all that selflessness and communication had amounted to nothing but whole universes of ruin- great golden beams that had cut through the lens, through the Earth Bet he knew and into the seemingly infinite Earths that were included in that package, that were used for predictions and simulations, for templates and data. It was too vast to comprehend, so people didn’t bother comprehending. Nothing meaningful had changed since that point.

The guards on either side of the door slouched, then, backs to the wall, they slid down to the floor, collapsing unconscious. The nurse turned to look, alarmed, then looked at him, as if he was somehow responsible. A moment later, that thought dismissed, her eyes searched the room, anxious.

“Free me,” William said. “It’s your best chance.”

She dove for the gun that the unconscious guard held, instead. She got her hands on the weapon, and then slouched, collapsing on top of the guard.

William’s heart pounded in his chest. He was tied down, helpless, and what came next was either his salvation or his doom.

Three people entered the room, the first one doing so with caution, ducking his head in, glancing around, and then letting himself in, his attention on all corners and crevices. The man seemed to look past William as if he wasn’t even there.

No mask, nothing fancy. A t-shirt and black pants. The white t-shirt had a symbol on the left sleeve, with faint lines that extended over the rest of the shirt. The hairstyle was short, a utilitarian buzz cut.

The girl that followed was almost identical, down to the buzz cut, but her skin was light brown and she had a scratch through her eyebrow.

The man who followed was forty-five to fifty years old, but it was hard to judge with the clothing and look. He wore a black blazer over a black turtleneck sweater. His head was shaved, his beard grown out, and he wore glasses with circular frames, tinted. If he was trying to look cool, it was dampened by the fact that his cheeks were ruddy-blotchy with red where the beard didn’t cover them.

“William,” the man said. He smiled.

“I thought that if someone came after me, it would be someone I knew.”

“No, we haven’t crossed paths, but you’ve seen my plans at work, and I know I’ve noticed you. When you got people’s attention in the yard yesterday, I decided to move up my timetable.”

“Timetable?”

“Reaching out, recruitment. Giving you what you need so I can get what I need.”

“I’ve heard that a few times over the years.”

“I know about your tentative relationship with Tattletale. I know you tied yourself to the Fallen- that’s fine, so did I.”

“Uh huh.”

“Let him loose, would you, Key?”

The girl with the buzz-cut started forward. She stopped when she reached the bed.

“Get the keys for the cuffs from the guard’s pockets,” the man said, like he was speaking to a child. To William, he said, “She was unruly, but essential to my long term plans. The influence I need to exert to keep her in line doesn’t leave room for much autonomy or intelligence.”

“You’re Teacher.”

“And you are Scapegoat, onetime Ward, onetime Protectorate. Later you were the Black Goat in the paperwork and clandestine conversations between high-ranking Fallen.”

“Yeah.” William was wary, not taking his eyes off the man as his cuffs were undone. He winced, then coughed violently.

The man waited until William finished coughing.

“I want you with me. Right now, we’re all at the team-picking stage, and I like you. I want you in my corner before people pay attention to your incident with Gambol the Vandal.”

Gambol’s full title. “I have other allegiances.”

“The Fallen. Tattletale, to a far lesser degree.”

William shrugged.

“You’re still here, William. Have they done anything for you? Provided connections, conveniences, smoothed over any wrinkles, given you a way out?”

William was silent, his efforts momentarily focused on sitting up in bed without another coughing fit. Once he was sitting up, he removed his intravenous drip.

“They haven’t,” Teacher said. “Tattletale is trying to save her area of the city after a portal cleaved it in two. The Fallen will focus on their own first. The family, then friends, and then recruiting new elements. It could be six months before they remember the capable young man that was left in prison.”

William worked his way to a standing position, and the weight of his upper body on his back and ribs made him want to fall to his knees.

He’d dealt with pain before. Pain was transient.

With careful steps, he approached the unconscious guard, one eye always on Teacher.

“No,” Teacher said. “Leave him be.”

“If you leave me like this, I won’t be any good to anyone.”

“I want to help you, William, and I want you to want to help me. Let’s stop problem solving each problem that comes up, giving each an imperfect solution until the imperfections pile up. Let’s resolve.”

It sounded like the evangelists from the Fallen, but with different terminology. ‘Resolve’, not ‘believe’.

He looked up at the security camera.

“Don’t worry about that. Nobody is watching the cameras, and a glitch will ensure the recordings don’t keep. These three won’t remember anything. We’ll go for a walk as soon as you’re able.”

“How will I be able?”

“Do you know who I am and what I can do?”

“No. I’ve heard some but…” But this man had never seemed important, however frequently he’d come up.

“I grant abilities. Mental abilities, tinker powers, and thinker powers. The powers are minor. The abilities are… powers, but so close to our own capabilities that they blend in. The ability to understand a language, to do math.”

“Yeah?”

“My powers come at a cost to the person who takes them. They lose free will and independence. They’re brainwashed, for lack of a better term.”

William looked at the pair who had accompanied Teacher.

“It traps me, William. It limits my ability to gain the trust of others or flex my abilities to their fullest. Volunteers help, but finding those means putting my neck out for others to axe. I think you’re the key, and I’m prepared to reward you handsomely if you can provide what I need.”

“Suspicious as fuck,” William said. He walked over to the security guard, and with one arm on the wall, he eased himself down until he could grip one of the guns.

“I’ve studied you. I got access to the old PRT files, while their previous custodian was in my custody. I read your files and I have some idea of how you work. You can ‘hold’ your conditions, can’t you? You can concentrate to keep them at bay, reverting to a template of yourself.”

“Sure,” William ventured. “I’d say more, but I don’t like that you looked at my files. That’s personal.”

“William, trust me. If I’m correct, we’ll both think this was more than worth that breach of privacy.”

“I’ll think it because I’m brainwashed, probably.”

“Why would I invite Key in here, if it wasn’t to let you know the full impact of my power? If I wanted to brainwash you, I would hide that sort of thing from you. I would have taken another route, like entering this room while you were drugged from your surgery, and getting my permission then.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Nobody does, William, but if you’ll extend me the smallest measure of trust, I’ll reward you. I want you to let me fix your head.”

“Fix?”

“Better than. Put your hand out, like you were going to shake mine, please. I’ll explain before doing anything… good. I’m going to put my hand out, the back of my hand touching the back of yours. Neither of us can easily grab the hand of the other without stepping in closer or opening ourselves up to having our arms twisted back. If you don’t like it, you can pull your hand away. If you try anything, I can do the same.”

Hand still outstretched, William considered his options.

He made his contact with Teacher, the back of his hand touching the back of Teacher’s. He felt the connection.

Teacher was on the far end of a lens, like anyone else was when William used his power. The fishbowl perspective let him sort through the various incarnations of the one human being.

And then there was the monolith. Teacher’s was much different from Gambol. Gambol’s had been blunter, more singular of purpose, and Teacher’s was so segmented as to look crippled and broken. It was clearer, and it moved, scraping at the empty space between itself and William as though it could somehow claw its way to him.

Before he could voice anything on the subject, he felt teacher’s power work, like a shot of cold water extending from the front of his brain to the back. With that water, he felt a kind of steadiness.

Teacher had asked about ‘holding’ effects.

The back pain. The ribs. The feet.

All ‘held’, suspended in a place between being used on someone else and being shelved, placed on his own body for later use. Three at once, and it was easy. A sufficient impact or distraction

Slowly, he arranged it all, the effect flickering around his body, and then he held it at bay.

He was well again. He felt a kind of amazement, tempered by just how fragile it all felt. He was horrifically injured, and with, what, a small tune-up, he could effortlessly maintain that concentration and keep everything suppressed?

He had little doubt it would get harder if there was more to hold at bay, but… he could see the danger and addictiveness of Teacher’s influence, now. He’d heard some tales, but this was worrying.

“Come, let’s move quickly,” Teacher said. “We’ll want you back here before you’re missed.”

“What?” William asked. “Where? And I’m leaving? I’m coming back?”

“You’ll have your way out. You leaving is temporary for now, but you’ll be a free man soon enough. Let’s talk on the way. I don’t want to risk being overheard when I talk about the big picture.”

William hesitated, then followed.

Leaving the medical room, they entered a hallway. At one end, a portal was open, the edges ragged and crackling.

“I’m still refining transportation, but this works. We’ll need to take three trips to get where we want to be.”

“I can’t leave,” William said. He shook his ankle. The bomb was still attached.

“It’s fine. I’ve handled it, trust me.”

William hesitated.

“I wouldn’t come this far and give you this much of my time if I thought there was a possibility you’d lose your leg. Come. There’s not a lot of time.”

He walked toward the portal, following Teacher. The two white-shirts followed behind, eerily quiet.

“My deal is as follows, William. Give me the next five to ten minutes of your time, and I’ll make you one of the most dangerous and influential parahumans of our time. Believe it or not, you already have the tools to do it. In exchange, you’ll go back to the prison and pretend nothing is amiss. You’ll lie if they ask why you’re well and say you used your power on a mouse.”

“What if they test me or don’t believe me?”

“If you really want it, I can help tune your mindset. Some limitations can be tripped.”

“Giving you more control over me.”

Teacher chuckled. “Give me those five to ten minutes, and I promise you, you won’t be thinking like that.”

“That’s still worrying.”

“I won’t use my power on you again, not without permission. As I said, we don’t need to go any further.”

Through the portal, a smell of burnt ozone in the air, they were on a rocky clifftop. Rain pattered down around them.

Another device was rigged. Ten people with white shirts or white clothes were working on it. An archway with power from a chain of six generators feeding into it.

“Goddess is on Earth Gimel. I have her pinned, and she’s desperate. She will make a move for the prison soon, because she needs and wants subordinates, and it’s the best place to find them. You’ll be my trap for her.”

“What do I get out of this?”

“Power. A power that works. Position, with a place to belong. A world of your own, if you want it. Endless wealth. Name it, or name several.”

Teacher’s men were arming themselves with ray guns.

“That kind of generosity makes me suspicious.”

“Tell me, William. Did you trigger with other parahumans nearby? Did they have a role in things?”

“In most circles, it’s rude to ask about triggers.”

“I did. The PRT called those with powers having to do with powers Trumps. The nullifiers, the people who choose their own powers, the power granters. I’m a granter.”

“Sure. I was a Ward, for the record. Briefly Protectorate.”

“And you know the kinds of events that lead to certain triggers. A need to get away leads to movers. Physical injury leads to brutes. The involvement of powers leads to the complicated trump classification. I think you’re a trump.”

“You’ve read my files. You already know.”

The gate that was hooked up to generators was being powered. Electricity crackled, arcing inside the gateway until it looked like the ‘door’ of the arch was a solid pane of crackling energy.

“This gets us past defenses,” Teacher said. “And it carries us laterally, not just to the same point in space in a different reality. Follow.”

Then he strode forward, into the electricity. William could see him flinch at the touch of electricity, the burning of clothes.

Not perfect. Worse, if that broke his concentration, augmented as it was…

Better that it happen now than later.

He marched forward, his strides long. His hands pushed his sweat-damp hair out of his eyes and against his scalp.

Lightning kissed him, and then licked across his arm, up to his sleeve. The arm burned, and the sleeve was set on fire. Another shock made his body go stiff, and he felt one of the things slip out of his hold. His back.

He staggered through what felt like a very long tunnel, collapsing to his knees. Teacher’s minions were fanning out along the length of a hallway very similar to the one they had just left.

“What is this?” he asked.

Teacher pressed his finger to his lips.

William did what he could to suppress the back pain. Harder, now that it had been reapplied.

Together, they walked down a corridor. They reached a door where two guards already slumped down against the ground.

One of Teacher’s minions hurried to the electric keypad, attaching something to it, then dialing.

The door cracked open.

“Good, we’re clear,” Teacher said. “We can talk normally.”

One room, with a comprehensive medical array. A young man lay on the table, bandages heavy around his lower face, a machine managing his feeding, hydration, and breathing. A catheter tube extended from beneath the blanket.

“Valefor. You’re playing with fire, Teacher.”

“I’m harnessing it. This is where our discussion comes full circle, William. Everyone else is recruiting. They’re picking their teams, and you’re my first pick. This is how we cheat the game.”

“You’ll use him to recruit?”

“Not just him,” Teacher said. He smiled at William. “I want you to give him something. You’re not limited to physical maladies, are you? You can take mental illnesses, stresses, poisonings, parasites, take them into yourself, and then transfer them. And, I think, you can move other things.”

“He’s an ally.”

“He’s a complete and utter monster that even the other Fallen detest and fear. I need you to work on him for me.”

“Work?” William asked. He frowned. “You want me to give him… the influence you gained over me?”

Teacher smiled. “You take and you give injuries, ailments, and other maladies. This slavishness and loss of autonomy is a malady. Part two of this process is to give it to him. I want him under my thumb.”

“What’s part one?”

“He put a compulsion on himself, using his own hypnosis. We’ll give that to someone inconsequential. We can’t have his loyalties divided.”

“It doesn’t stop with him, does it?” William asked.

“You are so immensely powerful, William, but you were always limited by the fact you had to endure whatever it was you intended to heal or inflict. I can suppress that. In exchange, you can turn anyone into a pawn for me. We’ll turn the most dangerous monsters into docile servants, and the world will be better for it.”

William approached the bed. He felt for and found Teacher’s influence. It was hard to look directly at, because he could feel the pressure of the thing on the other side, trying to do its work.

Reaching out, he touched Valefor’s forehead.

He’d barely noticed the influence while it was in effect, but he noticed its absence. A weight was off his shoulders.

“We’ll give him his jaw back,” Teacher said. “And we’ll give him his eyes. He’ll be able to use both.”

“After, you mean? You’ll want more influence first.”

“Of course,” Teacher said. “We’ll be careful, even with someone already accustomed to servitude.”

William paced around the room, deep in thought.

“You’re interested. Will you leave the Fallen and join me?”

“Are they mutually exclusive? You helped them before.”

“Not mutually exclusive, but not wholly inclusive either. Some are too dangerous to leave alone. Others, like the new branch, are already firmly in my camp. Our camp.”

“Who else?”

“Goddess recruited her own healer and is trying to find a way forward that isn’t picking a war with a whole reality. The heroes are banding together. Mortari is focusing on running the city and following their precious plans, but I don’t think that’s where it stops for them. They’re up to something else. The humans who have come through the end of the world with hate in their hearts are taking marching orders from the same young precognitive who predicted the end of the world two years in advance. Well, one order with some advice. We don’t know her aim yet, but she’ll be high up on our list. I want a Contessa of my own.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“She would be the person who saved the world once, and predicted this end of the world thirty-one years before it happened.”

“Thirty-one? How?”

Teacher smiled. “You sound interested in this. More knowledge comes with the role.”

William nodded.

“Give me a moment. Something to follow-up on,” Teacher said, walking around the table that Valefor was on.

William didn’t answer right away. This wouldn’t be easy. Major players. He’d been at a low point, contemplating how to read the graph that was his life. This-

He felt inside himself, to check that all was well. Those like Teacher and Valefor were dangerous influences, liable to work their way in and take someone over. He could check that he was free of trace influences by way of the same power that let him seize his own diseases and cuts and bruises and transfer them elsewhere.

He was aware of all of the faces of alternate William Gileses. The successes, the failures, the broken, the fearful, the triumphant. He couldn’t really see their faces or make out details, any more than he could know the nuance of grains of sand on a beach… but he knew how diverse they were.

It was in recognizing just how many different ways he could have turned out that he could shrug off the role and the identity, that William Giles who had sulked and kept his head down, trying to look tough while he waited for his family and church to find their feet and bail him out. That was gone, transferred away like any disease or cut.

He could become something else.

Teacher put away his phone. The man raised a wiry eyebrow at William.

“Let’s do this.”

“Let’s. To start with, we’re going to have to adjust slightly. I was just informed that while the security team at the prison wasn’t observing us… someone else was using those cameras.”

“That’s-”

“Not a problem,” Teacher said, smiling.

Gleaming – 9.1

I paced. Simple footsteps felt insufficient to burn off the nervous energy, so I took to flying, only to quickly realize that it had the opposite effect- I would have had to fly at max speed against the wind to feel like the external effort was helping anything psychologically.

I landed, and instead of pacing back and forth across the room, I used my flight to push myself down. Walking a few steps involved a whole-body strain. I made it three steps and decided to focus on just standing instead, testing myself against that tension.

It took endurance to keep my knees from buckling or the trunk of my body from folding. It took concentration to not automatically snap to using my forcefield, which would absorb the strain with zero effort.

It helped like pacing helped, and it was a little less conspicuous.

The sound of the elevator opening was my cue to stop. I was more or less recovered and normal as Dr. Darnall emerged. Doctors left the same elevator, one pair that walked together and one alone, apparently doing their rounds.

The hospital itself was inconsistently lit. Areas were dim, where patients were asleep, and other areas were bright. It was almost backwards, that there was so much lighting where there were no or very few people, and the places where the people were most densely congregated were dimly lit and quiet. The white walls and bright fluorescent lighting made the difference from the dark, unlit pre-sunrise morning outside that much more intense, like there was nothing at all beyond the hospital. Rain droplets on the window captured the light at an angle, forming crescents.

Darnall was dressed down from the prior times I’d seen him, wearing a sweatshirt over a t-shirt, jeans, and nice shoes. He looked as tired as fuck, with lines in his face.

“Good morning, Victoria,” he greeted me. He didn’t sound tired, at least. “Thank you for coming out here. It makes things easier.”

“It’s not a problem,” I said. “Thank you for seeing me with no notice.”

“You’re welcome, I’m happy to address whatever it is this is. Here, this way. We can talk in the cafeteria.”

The building was the same hospital where I had visited Fume Hood, and the same one where I had done some rounds of crisis-point style visits, flying kids around. The part that had been under construction weeks ago was built, and other parts were now in progress. The hospital was set up with long-term care in mind, and the surrounding area was arranged to give the families of patients the ability to stay or live close to their loved ones.

Some of those people were up at this alien hour, in this fluorescent white space. In a lunch room that could have fed two hundred, three or four pairs or groups of people sat talking. There was a wide expanse of open seats and benches where the only person who might approach and overhear was a janitor.

“Do you have someone staying here?” I asked. “Is that too personal a question?”

“No. But I come here for some of my other patients.”

“Ah.”

“This is close to home, and it’s reasonably close to you, you said?” he asked. When I nodded, he nodded as well. “I don’t go to restaurants, so I don’t know what places we could meet at. With most of my patients, they have places they prefer, or I’m going to them because they work high-pressure schedules. Much as you do. If you prefer anything different-”

“This is good,” I said. “Just- anything except an office or actual hospital room.”

“Good. If it’s alright, I’m going to grab a coffee.”

“I’ll grab something too,” I said.

It was kind of awkward to follow him through checkout and either make small talk or be silent, so I took a bit more time than necessary.

We sat. The table was slightly damp, having been recently wiped down, and I used my jacket sleeve to wipe it dry before pulling the jacket off and draping it over my lap. I wore a sweater-knit tube top over a button-up collared shirt- the fabric of the shirt was too thin on its own, because ninety percent of the shirts on the racks were, and the sweater part of it at least kept things modest while dressing things up in a similar-ish way to wearing a vest. Jeans worn with the legs pulled down over boots kept things more casual.

“I’m sorry to have you wake up early,” I said.

“It’s not too bad, today. It being this dark out makes it feel later than it is- I had a year where I had three patients I saw at five in the morning, because it was the only way to fit around their shifts. Six-forty-five is nothing compared to that. Is this an emergency, or something between an emergency and a regular appointment?”

I had to think on that for a second before deciding. “The second one.”

“I had that feeling. Is it okay if we structure this like an ordinary session?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

“Okay. We’ve met for two sessions now, laying groundwork-”

His polite way of saying we hadn’t made much progress.

“-and as part of that groundwork, we set out goals and tasks for the week. It hasn’t been a full week, but I’m interested to hear how this is going.”

“Uh, two components to the homework. Tracking my mood over the course of the past few days, and tracking my outbursts.”

“Let’s start with the first. Mood?”

“It’s… nervous right now. Over this week… I wrote it down as a morning, noon, night thing. There were days I was busy and I didn’t get to it until the evening, and it was really, really hard to remember how I felt earlier that day.”

“Even when you thought about the events of the day?”

“There were days where I was contacting hero groups, trying to get people on the same page, going after the same villain pair twice… and at the end of those days I couldn’t remember if things had happened that day or the day before, or sometimes the day before that.”

“I wonder if there’s a way to stabilize that, or structure things better.”

“I don’t know,” I said. I had an iced tea with peach flavor in front of me, and I cracked it open. I took a sip and then said, “Not at this stage.”

“Alright. Were you able to work it out? If there were blank spaces in the entries, I would be concerned that they would be the times you would most want to be aware of your state of mind.”

“When I’m most stressed and busy? Yeah. I used my phone, the music I listened to and the text messages I sent. I was… surprised. Having a focus helped.”

“Reaching out to the other groups?”

“And Lookout. Yeah. Except, I think I was surprised by the positive trend, and I let my guard down. It led to outbursts.”

“Uncontrolled power use? On television?”

“That was the big one, yeah,” I said.

“How’s your diet?”

“Skipping meals. Eating stuff like this on the fly.” I indicated my blueberry muffin. I picked off a crispy edge, dismantling the cap.

“Your sleep?”

“I was up late and I’m up early, as you can see. That’s pretty usual.”

“Are you functional? Having difficulties focusing?”

“No. But I think my body tricks me sometimes. Fatigue sneaks up on me.”

“If you’re fine after staying up late and waking up early, then don’t worry too much about it. But be mindful and take notes, try to track fatigue and times when you feel you’ve hit your limits, at the same times you’re tracking your feelings. It can sneak up on you.”

“Okay. I’m not sure it’s staying up late, exactly. Last night, it was because a teammate was attacked. Casualty from appearing on television is that the bit-rate villains will break ranks and try to mess with you.”

“Was that Lookout?” Darnall asked. When I nodded, he said, “Is she okay?”

“She’s more or less fine, but she’s having to relocate from her home to an institution. Anyway. We’re still trying to track down the people who did it, but that cuts into time I’d spend sleeping.”

“It’s good to be aware of that. Continue to keep track of those times when you do slip, either outbursts or disassociation, and do try to eat better. Your body needs its fuel.”

Dr. Darnall sounded a lot like my mom, talking about the fuel of the body.

He told me, “See if the days of accidental or impulsive power use or especially bad disconnects from whatever is going on correlate to days you’re not sleeping enough or times you haven’t eaten recently. I do want to talk about that involuntary power use in a minute.”

“So do I.”

“It’s a good first update. I like how you’re already assessing your own data from tracking your emotional state.”

“That’s the plan, right? Training me to be my own therapist.”

“Yes. That’s a good quick assessment of the homework. If you’re up for it, I’d like to keep our appointment for the one-week mark, you can keep taking notes and keeping track, and we’ll focus on it more then, with some deeper discussion.”

“Sure. No complaints.”

“Any questions before we move on? Thoughts from your last session?”

“No questions. No thoughts.”

“Okay. Then let’s talk about today. Why did you call?”

“Well,” I said. I removed my jacket from my lap, moving it onto the bench beside me, just so I could shift position to something more comfortable. “One of the most powerful and dangerous people on Earth wants to meet to talk. She was a villain and tyrant who took over a whole Earth.”

“You said you were nervous. She’s why?”

“She has apparently recruited my sister,” I answered him.

Even just saying it, it was taking the respect I’d accumulated for this very powerful, very scary woman and tainting it. It took a big feeling and made it also one of the most negative feelings possible.

“Someone toxic who was gone from your life is now back.”

“Somewhere nearby. We may end up talking. Um. But the timing is godawful.”

“It absolutely is.”

“Some b-list nutjobs just came after a kid. That would never fly, before Gold Morning. They put our lawyer in the hospital. We haven’t caught up with them yet, despite me spending a few hours last night on the hunt, but the consensus seems to be that it’s stupid, petty people seeing us putting our faces out there and wanting to ride the wave of attention. I had a kind-of aunt who died for pretty similar feeling reasons, and remembering that’s really bothering me. And then my sister gets thrown into the mix? She’s the one thing I can’t handle. I can’t deal with thinking about her on a good day. Now I have to face her on a bad one?”

“Do you have to face her? What happens if you sit this one out?”

“I don’t think anyone truly knows her. Sveta knows her by association only. If I sit this out, I think this ends in utter disaster.”

“You attended the taping of Hard Boil. You lost control of your power and it almost ended in disaster. Why is this different? What guarantees that your intervention and presence makes this better?”

I drew in a deep breath.

“You look like you disagree.”

“I don’t blame you for taking that stance, when it comes to the show. It’s an interpretation, and a fair one.”

“For what it’s worth, it didn’t end in disaster. I’m still rooting for your team.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That means a lot. Look, Hard Boil was always going to be a disaster or something approximating one,” I said. “I don’t think the show changed many minds among Hard Boil’s core audienece. It did distract and let us pass the ball to people who can take the shot, and opened up the way for those who receive the shots.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Okay. Look, Mayday’s with Advance Guard. The team was pretty fractured after the attack on the Fallen. This morning he’s going to go on television and radio. People have questions about powers, about Scion, the day we fought Scion. They’ll have other questions and the teams we’re associating with are positioned to talk about it. We’re coordinating this like we planned to coordinate information. People want to know this stuff and they want to discuss it. Hard Boil wants to demonize Lookout? They’re going to be left behind while everyone else focuses on bigger things.”

I saw his eyebrows go up.

“It’s an excuse to let people reach out to media and put their best faces forward. We sacrifice ourselves a bit to give everyone else a chance to elevate themselves. Considering the problem came out of our camp to start with, it’s a kind of amends.”

“One that came back on you. Not to diminish what you’re doing, but you talked about wanting to protect Lookout, and she was almost hurt, by your own words.”

“It did. You could argue that once they chose to use Lookout as their example criminal for the show, she was going to be a target anyway. We just didn’t think they would track her down that easily, or that they’d be willing to cross that line.”

“I hope you’ll forgive my saying so, Victoria, but there seems to be a common thread running through your statements and behavior here. You seem to be fighting with all your might to get control over the situations you find yourself in. You talked about wanting to get a handle on the situation with the people who attacked your teammate in her home. You’re sacrificing sleep to hunt people down, and you stood up on stage and took an aggressive stance to regain the control you’d lost. Then you left to keep it.”

“Well, I mean, obviously.”

“Explain this to me.”

“The Fallen? Chaos and ignorance. The community center attack? Shortsightedness, more chaos with civilians caught in the fray. Hollow Point? Chaos and greed. The invading soldiers from Cheit? Secrecy and ignorance. We combat the chaos with order and the ignorance with the sharing of information. We combat greed by being selfless.”

“No mention of your sister and this Goddess?”

“I don’t… really think of my sister, if I can help it.”

“Sorry. But you did ask me here to discuss her, didn’t you?”

I hesitated, then nodded, finding it momentarily too difficult to talk. I drank some of my peach iced tea.

I tried to think of my sister as an agent of chaos. Maybe way back then. Goddess? She would cause chaos, as soon as she decided to make a move. But was she an embodiment of it?

If I’d thought she was one, I wouldn’t have been willing to consider the meeting.

Doctor Wayne Darnall wasn’t talking. Waiting for me to finish sipping at my iced tea and round out my thought.

“I don’t know how to deal with her, and I worry I’m not strong enough to deal with Goddess. I want help. I need… whatever armor you can give me, psychologically. I need tools or weapons, coping strategies, any mental tricks you have for not snapping.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Victoria. My goal and my role is to equip you with tools that you learn to use over the long term. The operative word is learn. Nothing is instantaneous.”

I’d known that. I just… a part of me had hoped he could give me some tricks. Even for the placebo effect, just to give me a sense that I wasn’t completely defenseless while facing down giants like my sister and her new queen.

“Sorry,” I said. “For wasting your time.”

“It’s not a waste. I don’t think there are any one-hundred percent answers, but I do think we can take some baby steps in the right direction. We can talk coping strategies, coping mechanisms, but only if you understand these aren’t fixes, and I’m not giving you the all-clear.”

“Please,” I said.

“For the record, I don’t think you should attend this meeting if your sister might be present. There’s too little to gain, and too much to lose.”

“I’m the reason she wants the meeting. Amy’s the reason that’s the case. If I don’t facilitate this and attend, then there is no meeting, there is no communication, and there’s only chaos. I don’t think the good guys come out ahead in that scenario.”

“All for the sake of getting a handle on this?”

“One hundred percent,” I answered him, with only a sick feeling in my gut.

“Then let’s change the subject for a moment. I may have been misreading things as I watched the episode, correct me if I’m wrong, but your team looked surprised when the subject was raised. My instincts were that it wasn’t because of how low the hosts stooped in trying to get to you.”

“It wasn’t. You’re right.”

“Have you told them since?”

I shook my head. “Only one of them.”

“I can’t armor you, Victoria, but I can point out a weak point you’ve been ignoring. Let’s talk this through.”

⊙

I felt conspicuous, as people milled around me. The hospital was waking up, and both the families who were staying at places nearby and the families who were really devoted were arriving for the start of visiting hours. Eight thirty in the morning.

I didn’t feel great, as it happened. I was less Victoria Dallon and more the arms, legs, body and head of Victoria Dallon, very aware of the clothes she wore and the movements of this body. With the rain outside, people came in with wet hair, umbrellas and coats. Slick wetness slid across bare hands and occasionally the face. Lurching bodies periodically bumped and brushed up against the body of Victoria Dallon.

I hated this and I didn’t fight it either.

It was a state of mind that had kept me alive and sane when the body hadn’t been mine. A way of framing thoughts and not letting the small discomforts and the awkwardness get to me. In rehearsing conversations and facing the details I’d have to spell out for others, I found myself back there. Not irrevocably so, I could have backed off or forced myself to the surface, but I wasn’t one hundred percent up to it.

Some people saw me and gave me second glances. One or two smiled. Ten glared or gave me dirty looks. The looks only distorted the alignments and fits of body, skin, mind, and heart. I could rationalize it- I’d been on television less than twenty-four hours ago, after all. I couldn’t sell that rationalization to the feeling in my gut.

It went beyond just me, though. It felt like people were more frazzled, more angry, more rumpled. My mind was in a place where I was more able to dwell on the bad.

Natalie had family with her- a few young cousins or siblings, a few people of an age to be aunts and uncles, and a lone parent: a mom who was probably the complete inverse of my mom. Her mom babied her, getting water that she didn’t reach for, fretting, moving aimlessly. The main reason I thought the kids were Natalie’s siblings was that her mom looked very much like a mother of four that hadn’t slept, showered, and had pulled on whatever she’d had at hand. Natalie just seemed to lie back on the hospital bed and let it happen, making regular comments to the cousin or sibling nearest to her in age.

A rain-slick umbrella licked its way along the length of my arm. I pulled my arm away, gripping my wrist to help keep it out of the way, and took a step forward and a step the side. Toward the door, putting myself in line of sight. I rapped my knuckles on the frame.

“Oh, hi Victoria,” Natalie said. To her family, she said, “This is someone I’m working with. You’re up early.”

That got me a dubious look from her mom.

“I was in the area.” Intentionally. “How are you?”

“I’m ready to go home. They kept me overnight after I fainted a second time, and I really shouldn’t have. I’m discharged after lunch.”

“I’m still worried,” her mom fretted.

“I’m just really, really lame.” Natalie’s head lolled back to her pillow as she said it, as if she was exasperated.

“You’re not lame,” I said. “You went above and beyond last night.”

“That night feels like a dream now,” she said. “The pain drugs are contributing to that feeling.”

“I’m sorry we put you in the line of fire,” I said. “That kind of thing with going after people at home- that shouldn’t happen. It’s unprecedented.”

“Don’t say that,” Natalie said, mock-stern. “As the closest thing you have to legal counsel, you saying that is tantamount to admitting culpability. If I wanted to sue you, you’d be digging your own grave with that.”

“Right,” I said.

“This wasn’t what I wanted for you,” her mom cut in. “You would have been safer going into medical school.”

“If I worked in a hospital, I’d have belligerent drug-seeking patients to deal with or something, and I’d be miserable. I’m working under some excellent lawyers and my prospects are good. I’m only three-quarters miserable doing what I’m doing. If I put up with the three-quarters I don’t like for a little while longer, I’ll be able to move to doing things I like. And I get to do this stuff with the hero team too. Scary moments aside, it’s really neat.”

“The hero team is too dangerous for what you’re getting.”

“You don’t even know how much I’m getting.”

“I know it’s too dangerous!”

“Thank you for coming, Victoria, you don’t have to feel obligated to stay for the family squabbling. Can you keep me updated? I may drop by at four or five.”

“You should rest,” her mom protested.

“I can do that,” I said. “I’m glad you’re on the mend.”

“They warned me I’ll have a scar, but they said I’ll probably have no permanent damage.”

There was no sentence the mom didn’t react to, whether it was dramatic expressions, eyes widening, or posture shifts.

“Can I see?”

She had to adjust the hospital gown collar, pulling it down enough to show me the slash. From sternum to shoulder, and some of the arm. Only the arm had bandage taped over it – by the location, it might have nicked an artery. The rest had the stitches alone. It was even on both sides, stitches neat, skin not puckered or even that inflamed for this stage in the healing process.

“Looks tidy. If you want, I brought a pack of different shades of camouflage concealer over from the old Earth, and I think I have one that would match your skin tone. You’re a shade lighter than me.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s only enough in each tin for two or three applications, but maybe you’d want it for an event. Minimize or downplay the scar while wearing something strapless.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll wear anything strapless in my life, but it would be really nice to have the option.”

“Also brought this,” I said. I held up a knit blanket, still in its packaging. It was tartan, in bottle-glass green, white, and dark gray.

“Thank you,” she said. I saw the worry line on her forehead, even as she smiled.

“The last time I visited this hospital, there were walls still incomplete. I was imagining a draft.”

“It’s perfect. Can you put it over my feet?”

The mom took it from me and arranged it over Natalie’s feet.

Natalie seemed inordinately pleased with the gift. Meanwhile, I felt weirdly out of place in my own skin, and very aware of her family’s attention on me.

“Drink, Nat,” her mother urged. Natalie drank her water.

“If you’re bored with nobody around, and if visiting hours are still open, there’s something I want to discuss,” I said. “I can bring anything you need, too. I’m fast and you’re not far.”

“If you think my mom is leaving while visiting hours are open, you’re just plain wrong,” Natalie said.

“Where is that doctor?” her mom asked.

“Don’t bother the doctor, mom. Everything’s fine.”

“The more attention you get, the better.”

“I will get worse care if I’m obnoxious.”

“I’ll be the obnoxious one then if it means getting you the care you need.”

“Natalie, I’m going to get out of your hair,” I told her. Then, spur of the moment, I winked and said, “Be sure to get in touch about that one-on-one conversation. Team stuff.”

“Team stuff? Legal?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But it can wait until this afternoon, I think.”

That was excuse enough for Natalie to shoo her mom and the mini-Natalies out of the room- they weren’t even paying attention to us, mostly sitting in a row of three chairs in the corner, talking. They went with the aunts and uncles. Cousins. The mom went a separate direction.

“Needed a moment to breathe?” I asked.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Believe me, I get it.”

“My mom is embarrassing. I love her, but you can’t tell her anything. Your mom, I know for a fact, is awesome.”

I drew in a breath and held back the big sigh I wanted to give.

“Are you okay?” Natalie asked. “You didn’t stay up all night hunting those losers from Kenzie’s house, did you?”

“No. We got the mooks and handed them off to the authorities. Tipped off other teams, we’re collapsing on them like we did with Trial and Error. If we pin them down, I might fly over and help.”

“Are you okay though?”

“I did want to talk with you about something one-on-one,” I told her. “If you’re up for it.”

“Something legal?”

I shook my head. “Not really. But it came up last night, and it’s been pointed out to me that this stuff being kept private is kind of a weak point. Maybe if the others had known, they would have known what to say when it came up on the show. Extra heads-

“-extra arms,” I finished. My voice was quieter with each word.

“That was a real thing?” Natalie asked, equally quiet.

“I was a puddle of body parts for two years and the one person who could change me back sent herself to the one place nobody was supposed to get out from. She threatened bioplagues if they didn’t send her there…”

“Bioplagues?”

“So I heard. She said if they put her in a jail cell, she’d make bacteria that ate through whatever materials they made it out of, and disperse the bioweapons through the holes. It was stupid and shortsighted to send her to the Birdcage, but she forced their hands… and now she’s working with Goddess.”

Lips, a tongue, and a throat that didn’t feel quite like my own carried on with their explanations for our unofficial eighth member of Breakthrough.

⊙

Sveta’s first words on seeing me were, “You’re drenched!”

“Saw Natalie,” I said, stepping inside. Most of the team was assembled in the headquarters. No, it looked like it was everyone. Chris was just napping under a table, waking up as Byron kicked the table leg. “She seems alright, all things considered.”

“That’s so good to hear,” Sveta said. Without moving from the center of the room, she snatched up a towel from a table and thrust it into my chest. I grunted at the impact.

“I’m glad,” Ashley said. Her projection was beside Kenzie. It was static, like a power-saving mode, arms folded, legs crossed, rear end against the edge of the desk, but nothing below the neck moved. “We owe her one. Does she need books or something while she’s in the hospital?”

“She’d be out of the hospital before she could finish anything. Is there any news on our targets?”

I found myself looking to Tristan for the answer, but it was Byron sitting next to Rain in that corner, instead.

“No reports from the teams that are helping us out,” Rain said.

“Nothing on Goddess, she’s sleeping in,” Kenzie said. “But we did have some weirdness at the prison earlier. I wasn’t here, and I couldn’t do much on my phone, but it’s like I kicked a sad, pathetic hornet’s nest.”

“Hornet’s nest?” I asked.

“An enclave of really shitty tinkers,” Chris said.

“Probably teacher,” Rain clarified. “But we were thinking it might be the Speedrunner cluster. The New Fallen.”

“Whoever it is, it’s fun! It’s like playing whack-a-mole, except they’re bad at dodging and the guts get everywhere when you land a good hit. Really satisfying.”

“But you don’t have the files you wanted,” Chris said.

“I’ll get them soon!”

“This is your specialty and they’re succeeding in stalling you.”

“I’ll get them soon, Chris!”

The flow was comforting, reassuring. Stuff to do, enemies to target. The banter, the easy companionship. More a team than friends, maybe, or that was the immediate vibe.

“I need to get this out of the way,” I cut in, abrupt. I was aware of the heads turning. That ease and comfort fled, replaced with scrutiny. Only Sveta looked concerned, not suspicious or surprised. “Therapist’s orders.”

“Is this-?” Sveta asked.

I nodded.

“If I don’t do this now, I won’t get around to it. It was a problem last night. I don’t want it to be a problem again. It’s too glaring a weak point, and if my sister’s out there, it might come up. You need to know what she’s capable of.”

“She changed you,” Chris said.

So blunt, so crass. I was annoyed and that annoyance could’ve made it so very easy for me to take all of the feelings that were stewing inside and lash out at him.

I glanced at Sveta.

“It’s more than that, Chris,” Sveta said.

“Easier to show than tell,” I said. I indicated the door.

It took them time to get outside. Raincoats, an umbrella. It took more time because Rain and Ashley were locked into position for whatever reason. Kenzie left last, one camera under each arm, while Byron held up one umbrella. Sveta just let the rain soak her.

When they’d all found the fire escape, I was by the ground. I walked by the trash, and snatched up three two-by-fours. Planks too warped for use in construction or repair, weather-worn from being left beneath the fire escape.

I took to the air, holding out the two-by-fours. I let the Wretch out.

Hands took the two-by-fours from me, holding them out and ready. One creaked with the hold on it. The other twisted as two different hands gripped it and threatened to snap it.

My hands no longer held the beams of wood, while they floated near me.

And as the rain came down, droplets ran down and wicked off, momentarily tracing the Wretch in its entirety. The arms, the heads, the faces, the hair. A tangled flowing of nude flesh, parts repeated over and over again, with me in the center of the mass. I didn’t look at it, keeping my head down, my hood down where it covered most of my face.

“She can do this,” my voice didn’t sound like me. “Change powers by changing the host’s physiology. She made the Class-S threat that took control of everyone, bringing them to the battlefield. That’s who’s going to be at the meeting today.”

I swiped my arm down and at an angle. The Wretch threw the planks down toward the foot of the fire escape.

Gleaming – 9.2

I cast off the Wretch as I reached the fire escape. Water didn’t stick to my forcefield, and a lot of it wicked off naturally, but there were enough crevices and folds that did hold water that the rainwater came down all at once. It splattered against my hood and back, and against the slats of the fire escape.

The others retreated as I landed, some folding up umbrellas. I knew it was to give me room to land, and to get back to where it was dry- no reason to stay in the wet outdoors. I was aware, I knew the rationale, and I couldn’t shake the idea that they were getting out of the way of the Wretch.

I was no stranger to distorted thinking. Even before… before everything, I’d been swept up in it. As a child, wanting to belong to my family, being the odd one out, until I got my power. I’d later realized how lonely powers were.

The flip side of the coin applied too. Being the odd one in.

Amy had been the odd one in more than I had. Purely average in appearance, quiet, she hadn’t been passionate about hobbies or about anything in particular. She’d liked movies from Aleph and when she was twelve she’d break her usual reserved, quiet composure to get way too excited if she checked the change slot of a vending machine or pay phone and found a quarter. And yet when we got to high school, she was automatically included in the group of popular students. The group with Dean, who was supposed to take over his dad’s company, and with the star athletes and the star athletes’ boyfriends and girlfriends.

I’d eventually looked beyond my bubble of thinking my sister was great because she was my sister and I fucking loved her, wondering why she was included in the group of popular students when she wasn’t popular. Then I’d had to draw the eventual, inevitable conclusion, and wonder if I belonged to that group. Was I there just because my parents wore costumes and had flashy powers?

I’d settled in despite that. Amy had settled out- hanging out to keep me company, but not going out of her way to stick with the group. It had been easy for her to move in that direction, after I’d gotten powers. I’d been grateful for my earlier realization about the nature of the group, because it kept me real and provided a starting point for realizing where Dean was coming from, having come from money. I’d loathed it at the same time, because it cast doubt on every normal interaction.

My perspective had been distorted by anger, by the fact that I’d been young and I was being confronted with some of the uglier sides of my town. A classmate had confided in me that she had trouble seeing her path to a happy future because every adult she knew seemed miserable, and I’d sat back, thinking that I couldn’t see a way for our whole city to have a happy future because my parents, aunt, and uncles had sacrificed nearly everything and there were still racists, addicts, murders, theft, corruption, and pain.

It had been around the point of that realization that I’d started hitting harder, as if I could hit the worst offenders hard enough that they would stay down. Living up to the ‘brute’ part of the brute classification. So stupid, deluded, short sighted. Even now, I shuddered to think what I might have become if the combination of Dean and my sister hadn’t reined me in. In that world of heroes and criminals, that very stark reality, I hadn’t had enough points of reference to think straight.

The truth didn’t always correct distorted perspectives- it could just as easily create them. Comforting lies and illusions were important.

The group maintained its retreat, my instincts told me it was because of what I’d shown them, while my brain continued to protest in vain, telling me Kenzie was waging a war with a ‘hornet’s nest’ and the others were putting umbrellas away and getting situated.

I didn’t miss the fact that Byron switched to Tristan, even though it wasn’t Tristan’s turn.

It was Sveta who approached. She still had the towel she’d tried to give me.

“Let’s try this again. Get yourself dry,” she told me. “Whatever you need, let me know. I’ve got you.”

I put my hand over hers, and gave it a waggle. Then I took the towel and dried my face of the moisture that had beaded it in the midst of stormy weather. Lengths of my hair had been blown free and been soaked, and I wrapped the towel around each in turn, squeezing the fabric to leech out the moisture. I didn’t look at anyone in particular, and in a way I was spared from having to, since Sveta was close. She was wet, damp, but she loved the water.

I was on the third length of hair, which had wrapped around my shoulder, when I heard someone break the silence.

“That shape- that’s what you looked like in the hospital? Your sister changed your power?”

Kenzie. Wide eyed, innocent.

“How about I tell you after, Kenzie?” Sveta asked. “I know most of it. If that’s okay, Victoria?”

“Thanks,” I said. I was worried about the silence, and I decided to confront it head-on. “I needed to get that out of the way. It’s hard to bring up or even explain. My forcefield is wild. It’s important that if we get into a fight, you have some sense of its reach. I pay close attention, but stuff happens. If I end up compromised… something which isn’t out of the question with people like Goddess in play, it’s important you know.”

I saw some nods. Kenzie looked very serious. Tristan too. Chris looked disinterested.

“The forcefield is your strength? It’s the car-crushing strong part of your power?” Rain asked. “It’s hard to ask questions, because I don’t want to push, but I just want to make sure, get this out of the way.”

“Yeah. It’s where my strength comes from.”

“It’s good to know,” Tristan said. “Fuck those guys on television for getting into that. They knew?”

“Seems like,” I said.

“That might be important,” Tristan said. “It felt like they were angling to come after me, too. They had sources.”

“Including whoever tipped them off about Kenzie’s parents,” Ashley said. “I can’t imagine them watching that show or reaching out to those people first.”

“Gary Nieves first, probably,” Tristan said. “He was supposed to be on point. We threw him by getting onto the show and changing the topic of conversation to Gold Morning.”

“That’s not really a clue,” Rain said.

“It might be important.” Tristan’s voice was firm, his response almost an interruption.

“It might be, but… okay? If the trail leads to Gary, are we going to confront him or expect him to have a casual talk with us?”

“No,” Sveta said. “He’s a bigot.”

“Right,” Rain said. “So let’s not get too stuck in that specific mud. We can’t use that info, so let’s just keep in mind that people are getting info and using it to sling that mud at us, and move on.”

“At Mayday too,” Kenzie said. “He was the focus of episode one. It was why he was distracted when we were trying to coordinate everyone.”

Tristan sighed audibly.

“There are a lot of things to focus on,” Rain addressed Tristan. “Let’s focus on what we can fix.”

“I like that,” Sveta said.

Tristan met my eyes. I nodded.

Distorted perspectives aside, I did have the impression that Tristan had jumped in to change the subject, and that it had worked. Based on my understanding of him, it seemed like his particular form of goodwill. Ashley was a staunch defender of her favored few, with thorny words for anyone who stood against those few. Sveta supported. Tristan… he hurled himself into the fray.

“On the topic of immediate threats, any updates on Hookline and Kitchen Sink?” I asked.

“Herded to where we have surveillance teams waiting, surrounded and arrested. Auzure got the actual arrests, actually. They’re sitting in on the interrogation, and they’ll send us info when they have it.”

I winced. Not my favorite team, but… it was good we got them.

“There was chatter,” Kenzie said, her back to us as she typed. “Love Lost wasn’t happy they did that, apparently. She might be covering her rear.”

“It fits her, to not want people going after kids,” Rain said.

“Okay,” Kenzie said. “Also, I don’t know if this matters, but they noticed what we did when we went after Trial and Error, and people mentioned it in phone calls and whatever when Auzure got Hook and Sink.”

“Online too,” Chris added. “People mentioned it in some villain sub-forums. They aren’t doing anything about it yet. Emails are still coming in about your stunt on the show, mostly negative.”

“Our stunt on the show,” Ashley said.

“Sure,” Chris said. “Still, randoms came after us once, and they might do it again, if the emails we’re getting are right.”

Tristan shook his head. “Another one of those things we can’t do anything about. The question is, was it worth it?”

“The other hero teams are getting a chance to shape the discourse?” I asked.

“Mayday put on a good show, a bit stilted,” Tristan said. “Some ex-Wardens were also out there. Chevalier’s back, Legend and Valkyrie are away doing something important. Narwhal doesn’t do TV, and some of the ex-Guild like Stonewall and more stern, dark Protectorate types like Cinereal aren’t exactly TV types either.”

“Weld’s pretty good at it, but he’s still away,” Sveta said.

Crystal too.

It was sobering, that we had so much going on, and key figures and faces were gone. People close to us.

“But they’re doing okay?” I asked. “I was busy all morning, I’m behind on things.”

“In my expert opinion, they’re doing okay,” Tristan said.

“It’s looking like it might have been worth it,” Sveta added, her voice soft. “Time will tell, but for now it looks like we’re mostly on course.”

I really hoped that was true.

“About your morning-” Tristan started.

I caught the uncharacteristic hesitation, and I heard the change in tone. More serious. Was I wrong that he was changing the topic? Were we going back to it?

“You decided you needed to share stuff you’ve been keeping in your back pocket,” he said.

I nodded.

“It’s good for us to know in case it comes up in conversation. It’s good if we know how we each operate on the battlefield. I’ll match you, I’ve been stuck on something the past week…”

His power.

“…My and Byron’s power are in flux.”

“What does that mean?” I asked. “Changing to a different creation?”

“Nothing that extreme. Hopefully we don’t go that way. It’s just that right now, I’m stronger, Byron is weaker. Which might be to our advantage.”

“You’re stronger?” I asked.

“Right now? Yeah.”

He created a swirl of orange motes. They manifested into a rough cleaver shape, the edge narrow if not quite razor sharp. Dark stone with veins of orange-red running through it.

“May I?” I asked.

“It’s heavy.”

I crossed the room, and I took the oversized cleaver. Dense.

“Can I destroy it?”

“Sure,” he said.

I flew up a bit, so the floor wasn’t in the way of the Wretch. My forcefield out, I let the Wretch grip it, my focus fixed on the cleaver, looking for a sudden jerky movement that might indicate the Wretch was flinging it at someone.

The narrowest edge cracked, then cracked more, but it took three or four seconds before it outright broke, a corner coming off. Once that happened, the entire thing broke into chunks, raining down to the floor. I let the Wretch go, and the stone dust that had built up in crevices fell down in narrow streams.

“During the Trial and Error fight, your creations weren’t this strong. They were practically chalk. Weak, no substance.”

“Yeah,” he said. “In flux. Sometimes it’s more stable. Lately? It’s very back and forth.”

“Powers do that,” I said. “Some more than others. Breakers especially, some Trumps, and powers with a lot of random chance. They depend more on the alien intelligence to manage the power, or they’re closer to that intelligence, so those parahumans feel it more. Powers are more generous or leave you hanging.”

“You think the random chance side of things isn’t random?” Rain asked.

“I find myself wondering,” I said. “But I think if we’re dwelling on the sources of powers, it might be worth keeping in mind that it serves their purposes. They have wants, and it makes more sense that when they’re choosing something random or giving us more or less raw power, they’ll favor us if we’re meeting those wants.”

“After I killed Snag, I got an edge, power-wise.” Rain’s expression shifted at the admission, brows drawing together.

“I had good and bad days when it came to my misfires, before I had working hands,” Ashley added.

“Not technically you,” Chris pointed out.

“Me enough.”

Chris shrugged. “Meh. I don’t think this conversation is fair to some of us, for the record.”

“Making sure everyone knows what’s up with each other’s powers?” Tristan asked.

“Pressuring side members of the group to divulge by being all share-happy.”

“If you think there’s happy in this sharing, you’ve got it wrong,” Rain said.

“I think there are agendas,” Chris answered, his tone harsher, his eyes moving between people but fixing on me more than anyone. “Maybe not the first thing in anyone’s mind, but I think it’s a thing in people’s minds.”

“Chris,” Sveta said. “There’s no agenda. If you wanted to share, then we’d be happy to get more information, but for right now-”

“You don’t have to tell us anything, but if you wanted to tell us stuff we’d like it?” Chris’s tone was sarcastic, almost mocking.

Distorted perspectives. The day had barely started and I felt wrung-out. Now he was attacking my friend? It was enough to piss me off in a shockingly short span of time. No rising temperature leading to a boil – it was one sentence in one voice that had me instantly off.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Tristan said.

“All I’m saying is that it seems kind of manipulative, the power-players in the group dish out their personal dirt, team mom Sveta plays nice and tries to rug-sweep-”

“Don’t call me the team mom,” Sveta said.

And it was at times like this that I couldn’t afford to act on feeling. Fingers and fingernails digging into the fabric of the towel, I kept the idea of the warrior monk in my mind.

“Why don’t we pause this conversation and come back to it with cooler heads?” I asked. “I know I’d be happier if we could.”

“Why don’t we just drop it entirely? You said what you needed to say, fine, whatever. But it doesn’t need to be a conversation. If it’s a conversation then that means it’s going somewhere. And that somewhere is just more pressure and expectations that we talk about shit.”

“You were the one who told me this team idea worked because we trust each other,” Ashley said.

“I think it’s painfully ironic that you take something I shared with you in a private conversation and bring it up to make a point about trusting one another. Or do you want to get into that full conversation and why I brought that up?”

“Ease up, Chris,” Kenzie said.

“Stop.” I used more emphasis and volume.

“That-” Chris started.

Tristan banged his hand on the table, hard. There was silence in the seconds after, broken not by words, but by the mechanical shuffling of Sveta’s body as she walked over to Kenzie’s workstation.

“You’re way out of line, Chris. This isn’t what we’re about,” Tristan said. “Did you dose on double-strength paranoia recently?”

“Why don’t you ask one of the girls if they’re acting aggressive because they’re premenstrual? It’s about as sensitive.”

“Stop,” I ordered. I had to resist using my aura to punctuate the statement and get their attention. “Enough. Whatever you’ve got going on, deal with it, or ask for help if you can’t deal on your own. But don’t do this.”

“May I go for a hike, ma’am?” All sarcasm.

“It sounds like a good idea. Let’s clear our heads before we return to this topic.” I didn’t miss the change in his expression, like he was about to say something. Before he could, I said, “If we return to it.”

Clearly pissed, inexplicable in mindset, he gathered his things. His messenger bag had a flap over the top, protecting it from the rain. Grabbing an umbrella, he headed for the door. Out into the late-morning darkness and the torrential wet. The wind that stirred in the room saw others standing back or catching papers before they could blow away and scatter. The cool wind made me very aware of my soaked clothes.

“If you’re heading somewhere, call me.”

I patted at the damper spots with the towel.

“What the hell, Chris?” Rain asked.

With no apparent powers in the mix, Chris’ paranoia had somehow disconcerted the team more than me revealing the Wretch. No warped perspective at play there- I understood it. A destructive, invisible force with an alien or dark subconscious driving it wasn’t a threat to the team or the dynamic in the same way that a problematic thirteen year old was.

Kenzie offered her interpretation. “Chris gets to a bad place now and again, and he doesn’t have anyone because he doesn’t want anyone.”

“That’s not an excuse,” Tristan said.

“No,” Kenzie said. “But I think he’s great, he’s so fun when he’s cool, and I think he deserves a chance to work through whatever’s bothering him.”

Tristan sighed. “This wasn’t okay, here. Right? I’m not out of my mind?”

“It wasn’t okay,” Sveta said. “But we’re all going to have one bad day, sooner or later. Days our powers screw us up, the past catches up to us, or life kicks us while we’re down and we can’t explain it to the group.”

“Do we need to go after him?” I asked. “Is that an invasion?”

“Leave him be,” Sveta said.

“We need to figure out how we’re going to handle the meeting with the Lady in Blue,” Tristan said. He drew in a deep breath and heaved out a sigh. “You’re up for this, Vic?”

“I have to be.”

⊙

Eight out of ten of our computers and phones were refurbished salvage. Old tech polished off with new software and new logos. The new software included an emergency alert system, each phone and computer now with a warning front and center, or a warning in the top corner, the image depicting water droplets with snowflakes embedded in them, rows of icicles in the background to fill in the white space.

Because our phones and systems throughout the region were being leveraged to get the warning out there, all services were slow. The alert was obnoxiously persistent, popping up with every one degree change in predicted temperature. Not a good thing when we needed battle updates.

The Major Malfunctions, Fume Hood and one other cape in their area were responding to reports of suspicious activity near a power facility as a group. A thinker on my mom and dad’s team was aware of potential riots stirring- or, more specifically, being stirred up, and the active members of that team were responding to that, ready to stave off any problems before they occurred. The Patrol was out and patrolling, no training for serious events, because today was the serious event, just a bunch of painted school buses and young people in scavenged body armor trying to control the damage done.

And those were just the groups and organizations I was personally managing. Tristan had his set, Sveta had hers, and Ashley had a couple of people she was emailing.

It was the first truly cold weather since spring; freezing rain that coated every surface in a thin sheet of ice. Ice left people outright spooked. Spooked people, in turn, did desperate things. They banded together to attack even larger groups and institutions, and they robbed places to try and scrounge up resources that could help them get through the winter. Even with the average Janes and Joes who were leaving work at four in the afternoon, there would be countless accidents, people needing saving.

I would have liked to be out there, helping.

I would have really, really liked it if they had focused on staying warm and stayed indoors. Instead, this weather was a cover for the covert, the break in the city’s rhythm a chance for the criminal, and it was a whole lot of activity needing attention.

The cameras showed Goddess walking up stone stairs. The stairs were built into a hill, not far from the apartments where laborers had been situated. All around the peak of the hill, construction projects stood dark, still unfinished following the strike a month ago, the same event where a broken trigger had leveled a crowd and broken the backs of a laborer’s union.

She had an entourage of two. Three if I counted the creature huddled in Amy’s jacket. Goddess’ jacket was blue, with a white fur ruff, and she had black pants on, with boots worn over. The coverage didn’t seem exceedingly necessary, as she wasn’t touched by the rain. That rain came at an intensity that made it closer to darts being flung sideways than any water coming from above.

She was her own eye of the storm, and the storm wasn’t hers. Sundancer had briefly stayed in my hometown, and her burning orb hadn’t touched anything within a few feet of her, but it had been hers, under her express will. This storm was just nature, and where the rain bent away from her and ran along an invisible slope, I could see the distortions in the air.

A young man with brown skin and an umbrella that didn’t seem to budge in the wind walked beside her, the umbrella open despite the lack of necessity.

On the other side was a young woman with brown hair, freckles dense on her face, neck and arms, and tattoos visible on the backs of her hands, poking out of voluminous coat sleeves. A white duffel coat, with red toggles.

The others kept glancing at me, double checking me, making sure I was okay.

“The Attendant had a member who got hurt,” Capricorn reported, in Tristan’s natural confidence. “Mission fail.”

“Damn,” I said. “Can we follow it up?”

“Everyone is tied up or resting. Nothing available, no. It wasn’t a big mission either.”

“They still failed,” Swansong said.

The laborers had built these stairs to make getting from one side of the hills to the other easier. The path was a touch convoluted, but it was better than hiking up steeper slopes. At the halfway mark, a gazebo-style enclosure or lookout had been set up, with benches inside and out, plexiglass windows, and a fire pit in the center.

Buckets of sand and shovels were sitting at the ready beneath tables and in cabinets that had been built into benches. At that fire pit, a fire burned, keeping its flames down as the wind seeped between plexiglass and stone column.

My heart was pounding.

We were all, Cryptid included, assembled. We’d established a ‘v’ formation. Capricorn was at the front, me at his right shoulder, Swansong at his left. Beyond Swansong was Rain, while Sveta was by me. Past Rain was Chris, while Sveta kept Kenzie close by.

She walked with audible, powerful footsteps that shouldn’t have echoed like they did, given the environment. I could hear her. And I could her the scuff of shoe on stone. I knew those footsteps – she’d never picked her feet up enough when she walked places.

It became hard to breathe as they stepped into he enclosure. This was it. We’d taken precautions and we were making use of safety measures, but the wait was over.

“I would say thank you for coming, but what’s the use?” the Lady in Blue asked. She reached out in the direction of the fire, and it swelled in size.

It was an oddly disconnected fragment. The formality so brief I had to replay the question twice in my head, the question not directed at anyone in particular.

“We’re here and we’re open to talk,” Capricorn said. “We’re a novice group but have information and we have connections. Are introductions in order?”

“Bianca,” the Lady in Blue said. “This is Luis, and I hope you know who she is. I already know your names.”

“Hi,” was the addendum from- I couldn’t call her my sister because that familiarity combined with relative proximity upset me on a deeper level. I couldn’t call her Amy for much the same reason. From Amelia. I felt my skin crawl. “And this is Dot.”

I had to look to see, getting my first really good look at the little squirrel-like companion. Big ears with longer hair drawing to a point at the tips, a long prehensile tail with a tuft at the end, and big eyes.

“Should we call you Amy, Amelia, or Panacea?” I asked.

“Amy, please. Same as always.”

“And are you actually creating life from- from nothing?”

“No. She’s her own being. It’s really good to see you. It’s nice to meet you, Breakthrough. Tress, I’ve heard a lot about you, secondhand. Swansong, we meet again. Same, Cryptid, kind of.”

I’d known she and Swansong had crossed paths. She had checked Bonesaw’s work on Amy’s hands. Cryptid, though?

I swallowed and the swallowing made my throat hurt, it was so tight.

“Bianca,” Capricorn said. “What can we do for you? I’m guessing you saw us on television, and you decided to open discussions.”

Bianca didn’t reply right away.

“A power was taken from me,” Bianca said. “Without it, I can’t return to my throne. I’m being hunted and fucking hounded, and I get no peace.”

“We’ve been keeping an eye on you,” Capricorn said. “We didn’t see any assassination attempts.”

“Not lately. They’re active elsewhere, which freed me up enough to meet with Amy and her father.”

As she’d said ‘elsewhere’, she had turned her head. Indicating the portals?

“Flashbang or Marquis?” I asked.

“Marquis,” Amy replied.

Her voice got to me more than anything. Hesitant, quiet, perpetually apologetic. I didn’t want apologies. I just wanted to feel normal.

“An ally,” Bianca said. “I like people with their rules. Discipline. It’s a good mindset to have.”

“Including Monokeros?” Swansong asked.

Bianca pressed two fingers to her lips, kissing the knuckles halfway down.

“That doesn’t tell me anything,” Swansong said.

“Silence is golden,” Amy translated.

Gold is a loaded word. Idioms or gestures from strange earths might work better than running away with this.

Gold. The tattoos on Amy’s hands had traces of gold. More black, more red.

“If you’ll help me get what you need, I’ll help you with our mutual enemies and I will reward you. Help me take power, and I have a world’s worth of wealth and resources. I can make you head of a state. I can give you power and influence here. I can tell you that people in my world were very interested in deciphering powers. They helped make me what I am, unwittingly, but they were happy in the end. The, ah, monsters who made you, painted Tress, that icon on your cheek-”

Sveta reached up, touching her cheek. I was caught between observing her and paying attention to the gestures that punctuated certain words. Monsters, index finger curled into a hook. By the faint change in her expression, perhaps something obscene.

“-they would deposit the monsters and the unsolvable riddles in my world. We solved most. My understanding of powers helps, our labs help more.”

“I could help too,” Amy said.

My heart sank into my ankles, plunging through and leaving cold toxicity in its wake, curling through my midsection.

“All our heart’s desires, and we just have to bow and scrape for the rest of our lives?” Swansong asked.

“I’ll give you a heart’s desire each, if you’ll find this person with my power. You have the means, the knowledge, and the talent. No servitude required. I would go home and conquer it fairly, again.”

“I’d go with her,” Amy said. I winced a little at the sound of her voice. “I would be gone forever, if you wanted. Like I tried to do, way back then, except I’ve been thinking about this a lot, the last few weeks.”

I knew just what arguments had struck home for which people. I worried some had been tailored to specific individuals.

But there was no way we could conscience handing her power or agreeing to this, when it meant potentially putting an entire Earth into servitude. We’d say no, and-

“We’ll think about it,” Capricorn said. “We need a bit of time to discuss.”

“Minutes? Hours?”

“A day?” Capricorn asked. He glanced at us. “At a minimum?”

“Time is of the essence. In a day, things might be too far gone. Your Mama Mathers, Rain, is gone. They’ll find out soon. Your Valefor is healed and gone. Warlords from your old Earth have been snatched up, and people don’t yet know.”

“Half a day,” Capricorn said. “Maybe. It’s-”

“Amy,” Bianca said, and her voice was low.

“I say yes. Play fair with them, give them their time, agree to some of my dad’s stipulations for your next term of rule, I’ll come with you, be your lieutenant.”

I heard a whisper.

“And Dot too.”

“It’s easier and cleaner to gather my army. Let the hounds come en fucking masse. One fell stroke.”

I had a sense of her way of speaking now, as it belatedly clicked. Like a girl from an overly formal private school or college, bucking at the confines. Spoiled and dangerous.

“That’s not clean at all,” I said, as diplomatically as I could.

“If we run out of time, if we let them get too much of an upper hand, it will be the opposite of clean. Ask your Amy.”

“It’s bad, Victoria.”

“Don’t-” I said. “Don’t say my name, don’t address me, thanks.”

“Okay.”

“It’s bad. Alright,” I said. “But there are options. Better ones.”

“If you attack the prison, you’ll be playing right into their hands,” Capricorn said. “They’re ready for you. It’s how we ended up here in the first place.”

“I’ll recruit my assistance, and I won’t be attacking alone,” Bianca said. Then there was a moment, and it was like she’d said a word with monumental emphasis.

My heart skipped a beat.

Sixty-four miles away, we were still in the headquarters. Cameras and projectors put images of us in the gazebo-like structure. But she’d known that, she’d realized it right away, and been put off by it.

Sixty-four miles away, and she had me, without an action or a word spoken.

I looked at Sveta, ready to communicate something, and I saw it in her eyes.

She had us. All of us.

“I took over a world with my power,” Goddess said.

“Bianca-” Amy said.

Goddess half-turned, hand raised. Amy went silent.

Goddess finished, turning toward the projected images. “That is not a takeover that happens if I need to be where I assert my power. Let the hounds come baying.”

Gleaming – 9.3

“Bianca. This wasn’t what I agreed to,” Amy stated, a tightness in her voice.

“I told you the damn stakes.”

“No, Bianca,” Amy said, firmer. I watched the projected image on the wall, and saw the little creature crawl out of the space between duffel coat and body, perching on Amy’s shoulder. She held what looked like a razor blade melted into the plastic end of a pen, but the nib of the pen was a spike- the resolution and angle weren’t good enough for me to see. “This isn’t okay. This is not how you win me over.”

I blinked a few times, my thoughts turning over.

“Amy,” Goddess said. “I like you. I like your father-”

“Then don’t mess with my family.”

“-But I can’t make concessions to win you over if I lose everything else. You know the stakes, you know the situation, and if you want to change my mind, you’d better stop posturing and start thinking of some good fucking arguments or options. I have no patience right now.”

“Okay,” Amy spoke with measured words, “I would appreciate it if you would free them to think coherently so they can also come up with arguments and options.”

“They’re clearheaded. Or they will be.”

“They’re stunned.”

Were we? I didn’t feel like I had my mental footing, after the realization of what Goddess had done. I didn’t feel especially bothered by the realization either, but I couldn’t find a train of thought that went anywhere and that did bother me. It wasn’t that they were stalling or being derailed, but that it was a complete and total paradigm shift to switch over to thinking of something that would work for both Breakthrough and Goddess. My eyes darted over the room and looking at anything, everything, in my effort to find inspiration. Everything except the image of Amy on the wall.

“Give them a moment. Once they’re with us, this discussion will move more smoothly,” Goddess said. She sounded calmer than before.

“I-” Amy started.

“It’s fine,” I said, authoritative. If I’d had my aura, I might even have used it for punctuation, for all the good it would do against Amy. I didn’t want to let her respond if it meant I had to hear her voice. “Let’s do what we need to do, you can leave for some world where you get to be a queen, and I never have to see you again.”

“That’s-” Amy started. She winced. “That’s a gut punch, Vicky. For what it’s worth-”

“It’s not worth anything.”

“She was going to come after you all anyway. I convinced her to talk to you and your team-”

“We talked,” Goddess said.

“-but you didn’t talk enough before doing this. Please believe me, Victoria, I didn’t want this.”

A refrain that I’d heard before, that played through my nightmares. I shook my head, as if that could cast off words or whatever else. “Just stop, please. Stop talking. Leave, get lost. Please, you owe me that much,” I talked over her, too impatient and angry It was worse because I was experiencing a moment’s hesitation, a lurching feeling like I stood on a cliff’s edge and I was unable to fly.

“I do, but- there’s no point where I’ve done enough to make up for it? I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.”

Did she mean to let bygones be bygones, as if that was even possible? Was I misunderstanding? ‘Done enough to make up for it?’

“I mean, I’m doing more harm if I let this happen,” she said, as if to clarify, her voice quiet. She sounded lost, a little hollowed out.

I tried to ignore her, my skin crawling. She sounded lost, hollowed out, and she communicated that same sensation or experience to me with her voice. It wasn’t an unfamiliar voice, either. I heard voices like that around the edges of my nightmares, images and scenes my brain couldn’t keep in my long-term memory.

There were other things to dwell on. Goddess, for one. This feeling- I could place the why of it. I’d made assumptions. I addressed Goddess. “I said we’d part ways after this was done. Was I right about that, or is the plan that we come with you after?”

Goddess answered me, “I’ll end my relationship with Breakthrough after I have what I need from the prison, a few of our mutual enemies’ underlings removed, then you can decide with clear heads if you want to come with me. Agreeable?”

“No, it’s not agreeable to me,” Amy said.

“It’s perfect. Stop talking, Amy,” I said.

“Victoria-”

“Stop!” I raised my voice, taking a step forward. It took Capricorn’s hand on my shoulder to remind me that she was more than sixty miles away.

I’d spooked Lookout by being so loud, by the looks of it.

I saw Amy drop her hands from the small raised ‘hands up’ position that had followed my shout. It would have been comical if just about anything about this scene had been different.

I didn’t like feeling so off when it came to my mental footing, especially when I had to deal with the relative proximity of someone I’d really hoped I’d never have to see again. I avoided looking at the screen- I didn’t want to make eye contact, to see if she was staring at me.

“Make her stop talking, I’ll stop, you can talk to the team,” I said.

“Breakthrough?” Goddess asked.

The others were voicing their agreement- most of the others. My thoughts were chaotic enough that I was momentarily incapable of sifting through overlapping voices.

“…should work out,” Capricorn’s voice trailed after the others.

Even the projections of Swansong and Precipice nodded assent. Good. The satisfaction that we were all on the same page was disrupted by the sound of her voice. Amy’s voice. I grit my teeth.

“Vicky,” Amy said. “I’m on your side here… and I don’t think you’re on your own side.”

“Are you working against me now?” Goddess asked.

“No,” Amy said. “Because I think this is a bad move. I’m helping you by saying no to this.”

“You don’t get it,” I said, and my voice went weak on ‘get’ in a way that made me think it would crack. I didn’t want to be weak. I wanted to be angry, so I spoke with more fervor, more harshness in my voice. “The fact that you’re here, that you wanted to talk to me, it shows you don’t get it. You invade my thoughts every few minutes. You altered me as a person, on multiple levels. Everything I do now, everything I touch, everything I eat, it’s stained with- with you. You intruded that deeply, that thoroughly, and the very fact you think you can talk to me is screwed up. It’s another intrusion, your words in my ears. Whatever you think you’re doing- this isn’t helping.”

“After this is done with, I think you’d thank me.”

Heavy words. I was pretty sure she’d said the same thing way back then.

Something in my expression seemed to communicate that.

Her expression was forlorn, lost. Fuck her. She asked, “What am I supposed to do? If I let this happen then you’re never going to forgive me.”

“I was never, ever going to forgive you in the first place, even before this meeting,” I spat out the words, and the pent up emotions found some release in those words, anger etching the sounds more and more. I was aware of my team in my peripheral vision, and my voice softened a bit. The Warrior Monk. What would Jessica want? I didn’t have an answer, so I asked a question instead, with no anger in my voice. Only the disappointment equivalent to an entire childhood of friendship, loyalty, trust and respect being dashed to the rocks, infusing quiet words as much as anger had infused the loud. “How do you not get that?”

She didn’t have a response to that. Her creature looked between her devastated expression and ‘me’- the projected image of me.

“I could ask you to,” Goddess told me. “Forgive her.”

“No,” Amy said, as I shook my head.

The standing-on-a-ledge feeling lurched inside of me at the idea.

Goddess reached out to fix a lock of brown hair that the rain had pressed down to Amy’s ear. I moved my shoulders, shifting my weight on my feet- I wanted to squirm free of skin and awareness to not be a part of this.

Goddess asked, “What am I going to do with you, Amy?”

I stared at Lookout’s workstations, at the other monitors, the email feeds, desperate for something that would give me an excuse to not be here, a distraction or a daydream.

“It might be better if I handle things from here on out,” Capricorn murmured in my ear.

“Yeah. A lot better,” I murmured back. “Thank you.”

Goddess was talking to Amy in the meantime. I didn’t want to listen, but she wasn’t the kind of person who was ignored.

“…asked you what you wanted, you said you wanted to talk to her. You wanted resolution before you left. That was part of the deal.”

“I meant- I didn’t say to force her.”

I winced.

I heard Goddess talking to Amy, telling her, “You didn’t say it, but you wanted it. Needed it, even. Now you have it.”

There was only silence. I imagined a head-shake, but I didn’t want to look.

A damning silence, I thought.

Something about Amy’s voice with an edge of desperation to it hit me to my core. Silence was better.

“We’ll return to that if we have time. Breakthrough,” Goddess said. “Let’s talk strategy.”

There was a moment’s hesitation before Capricorn responded. “Let’s. What do you need?”

That hesitation was a factor- especially if the hounds were coming calling. I knew Capricorn’s own thoughts were no doubt working on getting used to the new paradigm. There were wrong answers and right answers, and nothing was explicitly saying we couldn’t choose the wrong answers, but… why choose the wrong answer?

“The last time I made a play, there was a twenty minute delay before they came. This time, my danger sense suggests something closer to ten or twelve.”

“Good to know,” Precipice said.

“What does it mean?” Capricorn asked. “When the hounds come?”

“They’ll come for me, at first. Lesser tinkers and thinkers with guns, grenades, more tricks than sheer power. I don’t get the feeling he’s willing to go for outright war. Squads are led by people with enhanced coordination and special means of communication. They strike in coordination, multiple squads with perfect timing between them. I can fend them off, but not forever, not without my full complement of powers. If I use my full powers, it draws hostile attention of other sorts. Your Wardens, or what’s left of them. Others. If I run, I have to abandon my missions, they gain ground, and they will divine who I was working on and target them.”

“This is Teacher?” I asked.

“It is.”

We’d heard some of what was going on from Tattletale. To hear about Teacher having this kind of clout was a little daunting, bringing home some of Tattletale’s anxieties.

Forget Goddess having a small influence over us- the notion that I was both facing down Amy and sympathizing with Tattletale threatened to break my brain in half.

No. This wasn’t okay. The wrongness of the situation crept through my bones and belly. If I’d had to talk more or ask follow-up questions, I felt like I’d be stuck for what to say.

“You had a camera person?” Goddess asked. “It came up on the television program.”

“Me,” Lookout said.

“And you’ve networked with other groups?”

“Yes,” Capricorn said.

“Connect me to those groups. I want straight video feed, or multiple groups gathered in one place. Internet is unreliable and phones are frequently down. What can you do in ten minutes?”

“I have connections already,” Lookout said. Eager to please, happy to have been proactive. “Secure line, separate and distinct from what the city has. It doesn’t connect directly to most of those guys, but I can leapfrog from a place very close to them. I can do it in a minute, as fast as I can dial the numbers.”

No hesitation curve there, I noted.

“I’ll come to you. Be ready.”

“No,” Cryptid said. His voice nearly overlapped with Amy’s.

“Why not?”

“It doesn’t make sense. We should be compartmentalizing more.”

“Compartmentalizing like having thirty-two online accounts?” Rain asked.

“Like that. Break operations into cells. You want to do something, Goddess? Fine. Hold off your small army and let us do what you need us to do.”

“Just you? No. I want others.”

“If you reach out to others, people are going to realize. Thinkers watch out for this kind of thing. Some teams have their precogs, others are scattered and wary. We’ve told them to be careful, because multiple players in this game have stranger or master powers.”

“Cryptid is the paranoid type,” Capricorn explained.

“If you’re not super paranoid then you’re not paying enough attention to how fucked up things can be,” Cryptid said. “There are people still trapped in time looped torture bubbles. The kid who did it? He was supposed to be dead. There is no degree of ass-covering that’s too much. This? You can’t show your hand.”

Amy had been murmuring with her creature- to Dot, she’d called it. Trying to work out a course of action. She’d paused to observe this part of the conversation, and that she was observing that keenly was something worth paying attention to, as much as I didn’t want to.

“I’m not convinced,” Goddess said. “There’s no time for subtlety.”

Cryptid explained, “They put the prison behind two portals. They have the means to close ways between universes- they used it to seal off Aleph entirely. That’s the trap. If you go there, they abandon ship and lock you in, or they’ll just blow up the prisoners that might end up compromised.”

“Let’s avoid that,” Precipice said.

“They’ll try to evacuate staff, they have ways to get them out fast, but they will lock them in if they have to. If you try to take over teams and word gets out, they’ll take similar measures, blow up anyone who might be compromised, or they’ll lock off the prison, temporarily or permanently.”

“We could shut off communication,” Lookout said. “Keep them from sending out an alert.”

“Sure. Except are you sure that wouldn’t set off failsafes?”

“Uhh.”

“I think it might set off failsafes,” Cryptid said.

“Things were rushed,” I said. “They can’t get universities up and running, groups are underfunded, we’re just getting a working government. And you think they’ve built a perfect prison?”

“I think the stakes are high,” Cryptid replied. “Swansong probably wants to keep her legs. Precipice too, though he could probably do a prosthetic arm for a leg. And I’m betting our Lady in Blue doesn’t want the other guy to win. Screwing up would hand him that win. We can be better than that.”

“A good-enough prison, maybe?” I asked.

“Let’s anticipate everything,” he said.

“It’s hard to imagine you were being so unreasonable a few hours ago, and you’re Mr. Rational now.”

“I was reasonable and rational all along,” Cryptid retorted. To the screen, to Goddess, he said, “I’m confident I’m right here. This isn’t the way to do this. There are too many traps.”

Goddess didn’t respond. The silence stretched.

Cryptid was staring at the screen, chin up, headphones and headgear on, but masked with the projection plate that dressed up his body in weird shapes and shades. I could see his silhouette, slightly broken up, but I couldn’t see much of him.

Between Rain and Capricorn, Swansong was staring off into space. Was it a consequence of being on the other side of a computer screen, two steps removed? No- because Precipice was more or less normal.

She was fighting this- treading water. The inverse of Lookout.

Amy approached Goddess, and she spoke in a very low voice, inaudible.

Lookout glanced over her shoulder at us, then typed something out.

The audio distorted, then settled at a point it was audible. Nobody complained- I suspected because they all wanted to know.

Even my desire to know outweighed how little I wanted to hear Amy talk.

“-to do things better this time. You wanted people who weren’t yes men. I’m trying to be that, but I’m not good at it. I’m not a debater, I’m not quick. Cryptid’s team has information we don’t, and he says no.”

“We can hear you,” Cryptid said.

“Chri-ptid!” Lookout hissed.

“So don’t go talking about anything private,” he added.

“Is he trustworthy?” Goddess asked Amy.

“No,” Cryptid said. “No I’m not.”

“He’s reliable,” Amy said.

“Cryptid. You’ll come to me by the fastest means possible. Head to Bridgeport, the downtown crossroads, wait five minutes, then head East from there. Stop at landmarks. I will find you.” Goddess said. “We’ll compartmentalize, as you said. Individual cells. You’ll come with me and coordinate. Breakthrough? Work on the prison problem. I will be in touch. Acceptable?”

“If I’m understanding the way this works, you could tell me to level the entire city, and I’d think it was acceptable,” Capricorn said. There was something in his voice that made me think he was smiling beneath his helmet.

It felt disconnected, weird. The storm still raged outside, there was virtually no light out there, and the lights inside seemed artificially bright. It was like we were in a box, and the world beyond wasn’t real. This was just a story, a contained, ethereal scene.

A nightmare in a box.

“No,” Goddess said, approaching Capricorn’s projection. She studied it- a head and face that perfectly matched our Capricorn’s in position and in every last detail. “You’re not capable. By asking if it was acceptable, I wanted to know if there were questions or concerns.”

“You’ll be in touch,” Capricorn said. “We’ll ask then.”

“Then we’ll go, there’s not much time before the asshole’s mind-slaves are after us,” she told Amy, Dot, and Luis. “I’ll be in touch, Breakthrough. Next time, we meet in person.”

I glanced at the screen just in time to see Amy glancing back. Momentary eye contact I hadn’t wanted. She flipped up the hood of the white coat, with its red cross at the brow. I watched her go, her squirrel-gremlin climbing up to her shoulder, to wave its toothbrush-razor in what might have been a wave or might have been menacing. She put a hand up to catch it, pulling it down to the front of her coat, where she rummaged, presumably getting it settled there.

I didn’t know how to digest it all. I had fear in my chest, anger running through me and a pit of something bleak in my gut. I felt like I could burst into tears and I felt like I was too numb to move, let alone cry.

I suspected that if we’d been there in person, I would have hit her hard enough to kill her. As part of that thought, I well and truly believed that had I hit her hard enough to kill her, I would have felt better.

Cryptid dropped his costume-projection, becoming Chris in the process. stretched on his way to the door, taking only a short detour to grab his bag and coat, flipping his hood up to brave the rain.

“You’ll be okay?” Sveta asked him.

“I have a form prepared.”

The door slammed behind him.

Capricorn immediately began shucking off armor. Sveta backed away from the consoles, while Swansong and Precipice exchanged looks- Precipice losing his mask to become regular Rain. It was done. That was the meeting.

“That could have gone worse,” Rain said.

“Yeah,” Capricorn said. “Like Victoria said, the effect from her isn’t that bad.”

“Tolerable,” I said, again.

“Are you okay?” Sveta asked me.

I shrugged one shoulder and shook my head.

“Did it help to get things off your chest?”

“If it did, it was outweighed by how much that sucked in general,” I said. “I don’t know if it helped. Ask me again in a week, when I’ve replayed these conversations and those expressions over and over in my head a thousand times.”

“For what it’s worth,” Tristan said. “Thanks for coming, Victoria. I think someone as powerful as Bianca is used to getting her way. If you hadn’t been here, the meeting wouldn’t have happened, and she would have plowed forward- probably triggering the trap.”

“They’d shut off the prison portals, cutting it off from everyone and everything,” Sveta said. “Except maybe the man who can apparently travel between dimensions.”

“At least now we have Cryptid on the case, and he’s guiding the game plan,” Tristan said.

“That doesn’t make me super confident,” I told him.

“It’s better than what it looked like we were going to be doing with her,” Tristan said. “We’ll find a way to help Goddess and we’ll do it while avoiding hurting the other teams.”

I walked over to Ashley and Rain, my arms folded.

Rain was walking over to Tristan, noting the gear, his attention on tables and tinkerings. Lost in thought. It had to be a tricky situation, to be so far away and so relatively helpless. He’d be more helpless if they figured out he was spending hours a day in front of his computer and logging next to no hours online.

And then there was Swansong. Ashley. She stared at a point on the table like she wanted to kill it.

“You’ve been quiet,” I observed, to Ashley.

“I’m trying not to think, so I don’t fall into her way of thinking. I think I’m slowly losing.”

“It’s fine, we’re fine,” Kenzie said. She had removed her helmet. “Chris is gone, which sucks, but we’re all mostly okay.”

“I don’t think we are,” Sveta said, her voice gentle. “But we have a way forward. We’ll have to rely on Chris to handle his end of things. In the meantime, we do what we need to.”

Tristan was still pulling off his armor. “We should touch base with the other teams. If we’re going to get information, it should be soon. Byron, I owe you time, but can you do me a favor, and let me swap back to pick up my gear before you leave to go anywhere.”

Tristan blurred. In frame and the color of the clothes he wore, he changed. The momentary blur faded.

I saw Byron with his eyes wide, like the deer in the headlights. I knew, with the same certainty that I’d known she had us. He was unarmored and unarmed, and wholly his usual self- which was also the self that would look most alarmed by the status quo.

She didn’t have him.

“Think very carefully about what you do next,” I said.

“I’ve had a pretty level head when it comes to sitting in the back seat and watching someone do something awful. I’m careful, don’t worry,” Byron said.

His movements betrayed his words. He backed up, moving toward the largest, most empty portion of the room.

“Byron,” I said. “If you make this whole thing more complicated than it is, there’s a chance people get hurt. A chance Rain and Ashley get hurt, their legs blown off or they’re stuck on a prison world with no way out. There are bystanders. Prison staff who could get hurt.”

“I can sympathize with your sister in this,” he said.

I winced. “Bad choice of words.”

“In this. Trying to deal with you, when you’re like this.”

“It’s not major,” Sveta said.

“Are you telling me that in your current state of mind, you wouldn’t hurt a bystander if it helped her?”

I paused, my thoughts working out the best possible answer, which took some doing, since it was pretty far from what I might have normally said.

“There’s always a chance I hurt someone,” Sveta said. “And I lead the most selfish existence because I go through everyday life and I do the costumed thing despite that chance.”

“I know,” Byron said. “But… would you willingly do it, instead of your body doing it? If it helped her?”

Sveta didn’t answer. I could see her eyes move.

“I might,” I said.

“Then you’re not you,” he said.

Kenzie was in the back, staring. But she was on our side.

Rain was behind Byron, but Rain was limited in what he could do. He was a ghost.

Ashley, too. But Ashley stepped forward, talking. “That’s not the way it works. When your brother said something about leveling the city, she said it wasn’t something he was capable of. It has to be something you’re capable of.”

“You think you’re capable?” Byron asked me.

“I came close with Valefor. Raise the stakes, and-”

“You keep saying that. You got that from the Lady in Blue. You and Kenzie are the good ones. The only ones besides me who haven’t killed. You can’t be so casual about it.”

“It’s not being casual about that,” Ashley said. “It’s about being serious about this.”

“I was thinking about what we could do. She wanted the connection so she could get people right?” Lookout asked. “If they see her on camera, she can take control over them. If we do that enough times, we can get an army.”

“See, that? That’s terrifying,” Byron said. “That doesn’t sound like you, Kenz.”

“It’s a plan,” Sveta said.

The lighting in the room changed. It was Byron’s motes- like fireflies that left lines drawn in the air as they traveled their lazy helixes and loops. All around Kenzie’s workstation and tinkerings.

“No, no, no,” Kenzie said.

“You guys broke free of Valefor. Can’t you break free of this?” he asked. The water-to-be floated around the computers and things like a knife held to a person’s throat. Kenzie’s work.

I shook my head slowly. I wasn’t the only one. Sveta did too, the logistics of her body obviously applying.

“Byron,” I said. “Switch back with your brother. Take a backseat role while we do the high-risk stuff. I know you didn’t ask for this life, and there’s no reason you should be caught up in something bigger.”

“I don’t think I’m going to do that. The problem with the powers thing is that it sweeps through everything and leaves ruin and devastation,” Byron told me.

“It does.”

“This is a lot of really big powers in one persons’ hands, and she’s catching you guys up in her wake. She would have caught me too, if I was out and Tristan was in, like he was supposed to be. We can’t let that be a thing- the devastation. I don’t want that here, with you guys.”

“Two of us aren’t really here,” Rain observed. “Whatever we’re made of, it’s cracked and broken.”

“No,” Kenzie said. “I don’t believe that. Because they’re still here. They’re here in the way that counts.”

“Maybe,” Byron said. “But I’m not sure that’s true. That Woman in Blue is not equipped to lead. As far as I can tell, that’s a woman who was younger than I am now when she took over her planet, and nobody was strong enough to stop her. She didn’t know how to lead, she just… things work out because she keeps everyone united in fear, if they’re unpowered, or united under her banner if they’re powered. She’s spoiled and unhinged. I can’t see a good outcome from that. If I don’t take a stand here, there’s going to be more ruin and devastation. This whole thing needs to stop now if we’re going to keep this from ruining Breakthrough, hurting the other heroes, letting Teacher or Goddess win, or letting both win while everyone else loses…”

There was a pause. I suspected nobody involved really wanted to pick a fight or force a move. Too messy.

“Um, I’m sorry to interrupt,” Kenzie said. There was nothing to interrupt, really. “Your Malfunction Junction guys have an major update, Victoria. Please don’t drench my workstation, Byron.”

“Noted. Thank you, Kenzie,” I said. My voice was empty of emotion. My expression was unflinching, as I stared down Byron, one corner of my eye noting the blue motes. The stalemate continued.

Ashley was stock still, watching. Sveta circled the room, flanking him.

He rushed me. I held up hands to either side, telling the others not to intervene.

With fear clutching my heart to alternately slow and hurry its beats, a sick weight in my stomach, and nervous energy running angry through my limbs, I caught Byron’s wrist as he reached for me, pulled it down, and used flight to help step into his stride, planting one foot such that it was right behind his, the length of my leg leaning against the side of his knee, keeping him from extending his leg. It put him off balance, and he grabbed me to try and regain that balance.

I didn’t need to care about weight or balance. I let flight carry me off the ground, got to the point my foot could touch down, and with a push forward, drove myself into him. He tumbled to the ground, started to grab my breastplate with both hands- and ended up grabbing it by one hand, because he might have stabbed himself on decorative spikes if he’d used the other hand.

He tried to pull me down on top of him, and I used flight to help arrest my fall. He was hanging off of my breastplate now.

“You have to realize there’s something wrong here!” he grunted.

Even being out of practice, after having my arm in a sling, followed by a move that saw my weights and bars packed up, and even with my injured arm not being at one hundred percent, I was stronger than him. His build was the build of an average guy who ate and exercised an average amount, but who had also never developed his strength.

Because it would make him too similar to his brother, maybe.

I hit his sternum with the heel of my hand. He let go, and he dropped to the floor. All of the negative emotions were stronger, not better, after this exercise, and it pained me. I didn’t want this to continue, I didn’t want to think about the situation with Goddess and Amy.

“Victoria!” Sveta called out. “Above!”

Water hit me perhaps half of a bathtub’s worth, with no pressure beyond the fact it dropped from ten or so feet above me. But the weight of it and the surprise made me sag, bringing me close enough for Byron to grab.

He’d had training. He was rustier than I was, but something went into him gripping my armor and the cloth of my costume, and using that leverage to hurl himself from a lying-down position to a position where he was beside me, pushing me. Blue motes swirled around us.

“Give me something!” he said.

There was desperation in his voice, like there had been desperation in Amy’s. He gripped my throat, the whites of his eyes showing as he stared me in the face, and then he let go just as quickly. My skin didn’t feel like my skin as his fingers slid off of it. Slick with anxiety sweat, prickled with the goosebumps of cold, even though I was hot in this outfit, in a room with too many hot lights overhead, with muggy wet weather outside.

I got a grip on the shoulder of his v-neck shirt, and used flight to wing around him, twisting up his shirt and putting my arm part of the way around his neck. I started to pull my arm into a proper headlock. He knew how to break it.

Had I used my strength, the Wretch would have torn him to shreds. This was the scenario Uncle Neil had been preparing me for when he’d sparred with me.

I’d sparred with Dean too. Roughhousing and real sparring both. The difference was that Byron kept trying to grab me, but Dean had been more of a striker.

“What do I say to convince you!?”

Byron brought his leg around, hard enough to bruise my side, and tried to use the momentum of the kick to drive me closer to the ground, where he could try to grab me again. I wasn’t sure what he aimed to accomplish.

I knew what my goal was, though. To grab him, subdue him, and if we couldn’t have him become Tristan again, we would keep him from calling the wrong people until Goddess could bring more people onto her team.

Again, I tried the head-lock. I let my aura burn at ember-level heat, my cold breastplate pressed against his back, the icon at the pointed top near my clavicle pressing in between his shoulder blades. As I’d used my flight to stress myself, I put weight on his shoulders, pressing him down with more than just my physical weight. His legs buckled.

“Victoria,” he said, his voice strangled.

“You shouldn’t be able to talk that easily.”

“Apparently… perk of.. water-focused power. Didn’t know,” he said, each couple or trio of words heaved out with a fresh breath.

I maintained the pressure. It was having some effect. I gave Sveta a look, a jerk of my head. She’d help. We’d bind him if I couldn’t make him pass out.

“Master stranger,” he said. “Master stranger protocols. You have to have studied them.”

Master stranger. It put me in mind of my study sessions with Dean.

A second thought of Dean. It was refreshing and bright when everything else felt so dark.

“You’ve been a hero since birth. You studied this shit. You have to know this. They drilled us on it in Reach, you-” he huffed out a laugh. “You probably enjoyed it.”

I nodded, unable to speak, as if I was the one being choked.

“Follow the protocols,” he said.

Sveta had reached us. She had straps that had been used to bind boxes closed.

“Follow the protocols,” he said. “You’re compromised. You know you just interacted with a strong Master. Your team’s at stake. Master stranger protocols.”

It was such a subtle effect, wasn’t it? I felt like I’d barely been influenced.

I released him. Sveta grabbed my wrist, hard, like I was the danger, all of a sudden.

“It’s fine,” I said. “Trust me.”

I wasn’t sure it was fine. I wasn’t sure I trusted this. This course of action felt wrong.

“It’s fine,” Byron said. “I won’t cause trouble.”

Sveta bit her lip. She released my wrist.

I didn’t feel quite as lousy as before. Less fear, less bile, less anger. A whole lot more doubt.

As if Goddess and my sister both were power so great that they had their own gravity. As Byron had said, they left chaos in their wake. Devastation, if we weren’t careful.

“The Major Malfunctions have something?” I asked, trying to change the subject away from Byron.

“They moved on to another prison employee. He turned out to be shady. They’re waiting for backup before they act on it. It’s what we’re looking for, and it’s what Goddess wants.”

I closed my eyes for a moment.

“I’ll go with Byron,” I said.

“You’re sure,” Sveta’s tone made the question a non-question, more of an accusation. I was crazy to do this.

“Have to be. We can’t leave the kids alone with him. He is interested in helping, right?”

“Yes,” Byron said.

“I can manage him. Can you get the info from Kenz?” I asked.

She gave me a dubious look, but she went to do it.

When it was the two of us again, I lowered my eyes to the ground, and with words I scarcely believed in, lit by a glow of warm feeling. That feeling emanated from a scene in the back of my mind, of me studying classifications with my boyfriend. I’d honor that memory by throwing myself into this morass of doubt, this wrong feeling, when the last thing I wanted was to feel the weight of more wrongs.

“You’re going to have to steer me away from the wrong kinds of actions,” my voice was a whisper, words in confidence to a person I didn’t know well enough to have confidence in.

“Okay. Thank you,” Byron whispered back.

“We have to get ahead of this whole thing, fast, before Chris or the others do their things,” I said.

Gleaming – 9.4

I let Byron be the one to step outside, with me following. It gave me time to think about what I was going to say to the others, and it was symbolic of my course of action here- he would lead, and I’d support.

The freezing rain had already coated the fire escape. The strength of the wind this close to the breached Norwalk portal made the icicles slanted, more sideways than down.

“Do you want a hood or covering? We could probably cobble something up,” I told Byron.

“I’m fine,” he said, stepping down from the base of the door to the metal slats of the fire escape. The rain pelted his armor and helmet, and he didn’t flinch. I saw his shoulders rise, then fall very suddenly. A deep breath, his breath fogging out from the mouth portion of the helmet.

He dropped a clump of metal and chain onto the fire escape, then bent down, slipping his feet into them.

“Strap-on cleats?” I asked.

“Yeah, crampons,” he said. “I never thought I’d have reason to use these again.”

“It can’t be because of where you lived- you were… North Carolina?”

“Reach was Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. We were Maryland originally. No, you’re right, it was to work with powers. I’m surprised you didn’t know what these are called, living more north.”

“Our winters weren’t too bad, in Brockton Bay, and I fly, remember?”

Another puff of breath, like a laugh.

“Power related?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “For a little while, I was ice.”

“Do you know what made it change?”

“We have ideas. If it was any of those ideas, it’s not worth trying to do it again. Too costly, with a lot of bad memories.”

I could imagine. Murder. A team breaking up.

“I can relate, I suppose,” I said.

“Maybe, yeah,” he said, his head turning my way. I’d read articles about helmets and how a given shape of opening or slit for the eyes could be heroic or villainous, or evoke a certain effect. His was more open and ‘heroic’, tracing the general outline of the eye socket, just low enough at the brow to cover the eyebrows, but even though the lighting touched his armor and the rivulets of moisture that ran down it, it didn’t let me see more than a faint reflection in the natural moisture of his eye.

I was supposed to trust him, rather than my instincts and thought processes both.

His breath fogged, very alive in contrast to the stillness of the rest of him. “It’s weird, having a normal conversation when there’s so much screwed up stuff going on.”

“Let’s not dwell on that stuff if we don’t have to.”

“Shouldn’t we?”

“I don’t think there’s any good answers, and it doesn’t change anything. You take point, you make the final calls.”

He nodded slowly.

I indicated his feet. “You having those is handy, but we’re not exactly walking. Are you going to be okay driving in this?”

“No idea,” he said. “I’m an okay driver, but I’ve never driven in weather like this.”

“If you want, I can fly alongside. If there’s a problem, I could… do some exterior damage to the car, but maybe make it stop.”

“You can fly in this?” he asked.

I winced, stepping outside, the door still open behind me. My hood was up, the icon at my forehead, and my hair was tied back. The hood was pinned to my hair at either corner of my brow- it wouldn’t move naturally or flow right, but I doubted it mattered- I just wanted it to stay up when the rain was coming down.

I was wearing a tight-fitting waterproof jacket over the hooded portion of my outfit, waterproof, and the ornamentation that helped keep my hood in place kept the one hood nestled in the other. I had better gloves, and I had tights on underneath the tight-fitting black pants.

I wasn’t sure I would be terrifically comfortable, even with those precautions, but we didn’t have a lot of choice.

“Yes. We’ll both do our best,” I said.

“And- I know we said we wouldn’t discuss it, but-” he started. He lowered his voice. “I can trust you? You won’t… help Goddess by dealing with me?”

Funny, to have the idea turned back on me, when I was the one making the leap of faith.

I thought about it. It seemed like I could, if he was a real threat, if I was more willing to kill. It would even make sense.

“You’re taking about two seconds too long to answer that,” he said.

“You can trust me, and I’m extending my trust to you because you’re right. There are a lot of factors that could mean I’m compromised. We’re both helping her, because we’re both dealing with the same threats.”

“Sure,” he said.

I imagined he was thinking about the same thing I was- the question of what happened if I had to choose between him and Goddess in a more explicit way.

Speckles of moisture were already beading my face. My costume seemed to be keeping the worst of it off, but it made me aware of the time spent standing in the rain, making no headway.

I turned toward the door, paused to think for a second, double-check my thought processes, and then leaned partway inside.

“Kenzie.”

She was at her desk, helmet off, costume on. She spun in a half circle, putting her hands out to either side and behind her to catch the desk and stop. “Yes?”

“Don’t do anything.”

“I know. You guys already decided we shouldn’t.”

“Really. Don’t. Talk to us first if you’re considering anything.”

“I won’t! We’re good. I am low-key-enzie right now,” she paused, glancing around the room. “I miss Chris already. He would’ve liked that.”

“I can guarantee he wouldn’t have,” Rain said.

“He likes snarking because it makes him feel clever, so if I set ’em up so he can knock ’em down, he gets to feel good, and I don’t mind because it’s just me being a dork.”

“I’m not sure about that, but okay,” Rain said.

Kenzie turned my way. I stared at her, and I saw a slight smile on her face, uncertainty.

“Don’t take any actions, approach anyone, or give Goddess a line of communication to other teams until you’ve talked to us. We’re going to be super close to the front, dealing with sensitive matters. The wrong action at the wrong time could make our enemies unpredictable or change up the dynamic.”

I’d been trying to think of a convincing reason for her to stay put and stay away since before holding the door for Byron to step outside. This was the best I could manage.

There was a pause.

“Fiiiiine,” Kenzie said, like she was finally conceding the point in a long argument.

“I’ll watch her,” Sveta said.

I glanced at Ashley, who was still being quiet, lost in concentration.

“Victoria,” Sveta spoke up in a sudden way that suggested she’d had to push herself to say it. “Is Byron close enough to hear?”

I turned my head. “He headed down to the car to warm it up.”

“Byron was supposed to give Tristan control. What’s going on?”

This was hard. Hard like convincing myself to walk into traffic blindfolded. I didn’t have a ready answer.

“I don’t like teammates fighting,” she said. “And I don’t trust Byron like this.”

“I normally like Byron, but I agree with Sveta,” Rain said.

I tried to give an answer, “If we have them swapping back and forth, they’re going to fight each other, or Tristan’s going to keep control, and we’ll pay for that in spades later.”

“So you’re choosing Byron? Taking sides is also the kind of thing we pay for,” Sveta said.

“I know. But honestly, Byron’s more powerful in this situation.”

“His power is weaker right now,” Rain said.

“It might not have as much density or water pressure or… whatever it is that’s different, but it’s water. It’s sprays of water when it’s as cold as tits outside. I can beat him in a fight- I just proved that. I don’t think the water pressure that he has right now would go through my forcefield. Trust me on this?”

“Earlier, he asked if you’d be willing to kill someone,” Ashley said. All eyes turned to her. “You said yes.”

“I might,” I said. “What does that have to do with Byron?”

“Would you be willing to kill him?” she asked.

I was aware of everyone’s gaze. I was aware of every inch of me, of my already damp costume, and the sudden realization that when I’d said yes, it might have been Amy that was my exception.

Valefor, I could hurt him so badly that he might die without care, and I was okay with that. I could go that far and if death happened, I believed I could make my peace with it.

Peace was also the idea at the root of my thought about Amy. She was the person I might kill for reasons other than protecting others. The circumstances would have to be pressing, I’d have to be worn down or otherwise not at my best and most clear-headed, but I could see myself doing it.

I could imagine myself being less miserable in the aftermath, somehow. Wrestling with shame and self loathing in the aftermath of something like that was better than wrestling with oblique shame, self loathing, and the daily fear of either running into her or a repeat incident of her using her power on me.

I knew it wasn’t rational, that it wouldn’t bring me peace or an end to the worrying. But my thoughts could go there.

I had to look troubled, thinking like this. I looked at the others and I finally gave my response- a nod. If I spoke, I felt like it would sound like a lie.

“Good luck, if it comes to that. I really hope it doesn’t.”

“Thanks, Kenz. Me too.”

“Be safe,” Sveta said.

I closed the door. When I turned around, Byron was still there. He wasn’t down at the car. It had been important that he hear.

“Shit, that’s scary,” he said, his voice so quiet that the drum of rain on every surface nearly drowned him out.

“Let’s go. Try not to make too much noise on the stairs,” I said. He nodded.

I ended up giving him a hand, floating on the far side of the railing, my hand on his upper arm as he made his way down.

Doubts crept over me. I couldn’t kill him – I wasn’t sure I had that in me. That had been a lie. I knew I could maim him, though, break him enough that it would take him a long time to heal, and that gave my troubled thoughts some peace- until I remembered I was supposed to be viewing my own thoughts through a lens, that this wasn’t a good thing.

He started up the car, while I floated above, the Wretch out and shielding me from the freezing rain and the wind. I knew the rain was tracing its outline, but the alternative would be intolerable.

Travel advisories had been out regarding the rain. Too many cars lacked the tires for dealing with weather like this, with supply being short, and there weren’t any trucks to salt the ice, no work trucks clearing the roads. If last year was any indicator, the paralysis of winter would affect most people more than the lack of food supplies.

Tristan or Byron had at least looked after their tires. Once he found his course, fishtailing a bit as he turned one corner, correcting for the swerve, it seemed we were good to go.

Master-stranger protocols. PRT and the organization under its umbrella had it in handbooks, and it was one of the things people got quizzed on. Some of the largest departments had scenarios and surprise drills.

Thinking about the paperwork helped. Black text on white. Strict rules to be followed.

With a strong master-stranger of this type, we were supposed to implement eyes-on protocols. Once someone left our sight, they were to be assumed to be compromised. Didn’t matter, it didn’t apply here, until Byron started talking to people and tried to get them on his side against Goddess.

Flying through the dark with the Wretch active and the rain coming down had my heart pounding. When the streetlights illuminated the raindrops, the Wretch was made briefly visible, the direction they were facing made ambiguous by the fact that only the surface was being seen. Hands reaching, faces neutral.

Black text on white, I thought, turning my attention away from the images in my peripheral vision and toward the car. Byron was doing fine, but the roads were clear of vehicles. What had I been thinking about? I had to remind myself. The eyes-on protocol shouldn’t matter in this case.

What did matter was the system for when people were compromised. Being rushed, agitated or otherwise reckless when everything was fucked up was a good way to make mistakes, so the first step was to get to a position where decisions could be made with care and deliberation. Not so different from my warrior monk approach.

Chain of command automatically passed down the chain as though people were dead or out of action. If discussions of the chain of command took more than a set amount of time or if the affected individuals couldn’t be trusted or detained, it meant a mission abort to a safe location with self-isolation once there. A good team with the right organization would see the leader step down the moment he might be compromised, the next person taking up the mantle.

The wind was more intense as we got closer to the Norwalk portal breach. On the upside, the sky on the far side was clear and bright, a slice of blue at the horizon, and the weather that extended out around it was rain-free. The precipitation wasn’t as bad, here.

Light blue. It was the late afternoon, I had to remind myself. Waking up early and the sky being so overcast it was black was throwing me.

I heard a rev. Byron picked up speed as he reached road that wasn’t icy.

“Careful,” I murmured.

The mere mention of the protocols and this course of action was supposed to be cause for a leader to quickly step down. If their second-in-command was the one to raise the issue, the third-in-command took over, to prevent the protocol from being weaponized by the compromised.

A really good team would default to the core approach for whatever the threat was. Defer command to the most capable person believed to be uncompromised, or to HQ if comms still worked, then stick to the protocols for dealing with strangers, or the protocols for dealing with masters.

I was aware that in this case we were dealing with a master. The protocol? Take them the fuck out. Second priority, right after the thinkers, who were ASAP-level. Ninety-nine percent of the time, taking the master out of consideration also dealt with the control.

I felt nervous at the idea that Byron might be driving, his own mind going a mile a minute as he reminded himself of protocols and options, figuring out a game plan, with eliminating Goddess as his end-goal.

It was wind and a thin layer of moisture that saw Byron lose his traction, his vehicle sliding over the dotted yellow line that marked the division between lanes. No ice here, but it didn’t matter.

I landed on the roof, ready to act if I had to- it meant having the wretch down, my hood flapping violently, the pins in my hair pulling at the roots until I ducked my head lower, droplets of moisture stabbing at my face- it wasn’t freezing rain, at least; it stabbed only because of the speeds involved.

There was no incoming traffic, the turn he made to get back in the right lane felt too drastic, forcing an overcorrection the other way. He came perilously close to steering into one of the memorial posts- there weren’t many here, but someone had situated one near the corner of an intersection.

Before I could activate the wretch, grab the car, and try to force a correction, he got things back under control. There wouldn’t be handprints in the car exterior.

We drove around the north of the portal. A slice of sky revealing the barren world on the far side, the sky nonetheless blue, the weather relatively calm there. To our south, buildings were illuminated, people trying to go about their days, waiting for the weather to clear. To our north, some artificial lights and the headlights of vehicles illuminated the spaces where farmers were trying to save crops, and where people were hurrying to handle the weather in tent cities.

He’d slowed down, both because of the scare and because of the upsurge in traffic near here. Which was good. He slowed down more as the freezing rain resumed in its full intensity, the roads icy once again.

Past the breach in reality that was almost an oasis in this weather, into the thicker portions of the city.

It wasn’t far from here. If we hadn’t had to pause to find our way in an area that was too dark, with no street signs or landmarks, it would have taken four or five minutes.

I let the Wretch fall away, the ice that had collected in the crevices dropping down to pelt the car, which had slowed.

Two pink circles gave away Withdrawal’s location. The lenses of his mask glowed neon in the gloom, as did some of the oils of his costume. I raised a hand, and he raised his.

He was quick and silent as he approached, moving on three limbs while holding his giant syringe with the fourth. The syringe attachment looked more like a nozzle, today.

“I’ll let the others know you’re here,” he said, as I floated closer. Byron got out of the car behind me. His voice was muffled by his mask. Ice had crusted around the places in his mask where his breath filtered out.

“Alright,” I said.

“Can ya go easy on Finale?” he asked.

“Easy?”

“She thinks we did this wrong, and we can’t convince her different.”

I nodded. I was worried what ‘wrong’ constituted, when so much about tonight felt wrong, but I’d wait until I had information. With a possibly altered mental state, moving slow and carefully was critical. It was point one of the protocols.

Well, point one would have been to not attend, but sitting out was really not my thing.

The bright lenses of his mask left trails in my vision as he nodded back. He didn’t cross the street directly, instead hopping over to where the shadows were deeper, a narrow band of dark extending across the road where the pools of light from streetlights didn’t quite meet. He crossed that band, barely visible.

If he was being stealthier, I would be too. I dropped to ground, stepping close to the car.

“What do I need to know about these guys?” Byron asked. “I know the basics.”

“Inexperienced, but eager. That was Withdrawal, the tinker. Caryatid is their not-so-mobile breaker. Finale is a blaster that lacks confidence. Lots of potential across the team, but they never broke ground. This is one of their first outings. Too small a team to be on most people’s radars.”

Byron nodded. “Not Goddess’ radar, then.”

“Shouldn’t be.”

He nodded.

Across the street, in the copse of old trees that were bounded in on four sides by the suburb-like neighborhood, a slice of nature that had been preserved as everything else was cleared away and a pre-fab neighborhood was dropped down, bubblegum pink lenses appeared out of the darkness. I saw the syringe appear in a similar way, the fluid going from dark to pink, bubbling visibly, until it was as neon pink as anything else. He moved it like a baton, waving us over.

I took a course that used the same shadows Withdrawal had. Byron followed after me.

They were gathered in the trees, out of sight of the rest of the neighborhood. Finale wore a blue poncho over her costume. Caryatid wore something similar, but it was black and more voluminous. Her arms were folded in the midst of it, so the bright yellow and orange of the sleeves were hidden.

Withdrawal had gone completely dark. I saw him set his syringe down and lean against a tree. With his elongated limbs, the stilt-like legs, he looked very tall as he peered down at us, his head difficult to see in the branches of a mature tree.

Caryatid was positioned where she could stand with her back to a tree, looking over one shoulder in the direction of a quaint house. It was the prefab sort of home, a little more boxy than what would have passed for usual back on Bet, too similar to other houses on the block, but it was still nice enough.

“I’m sorry we didn’t listen,” Finale said.

“Did something happen?” I asked.

“No,” Caryatid said.

“We did stuff in the wrong order,” Finale said.

“We didn’t. The order didn’t matter,” Withdrawal said.

“But… the names had numbers by them.”

“Can I explain? They’ll tell us if it was wrong,” Withdrawal said. His tone was patient, the rest of him exasperated.

“Yeah, sure,” Finale said, an accent creeping into her voice, a truncated ‘yeah’. She sounded defeated.

“We were tracking target number one. Staff medical. He met with a coworker halfway through the work day. That coworker was also on our list. Staff medical number two. She has shopping bags in her very nice car, and she paid for the lunch.”

“She had some nice clothes,” Caryatid said. Her breaker form was stirring around her legs. Partially but not completely entered into. Slowly, it crept up her legs. She didn’t have to make it slow, I knew. A way of staying warm?

“Yeah,” Withdrawal said. “We switched to following her, because whatever she’s doing, it seemed off.”

“Sounds right,” I said. “Something came up?”

“You know when they have an officer do regular checkups? Making you part of their patrol, because they’re all concerned-like?” Withdrawal asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“There are people doing that for her. We don’t think they’re officers.”

“What do they look like?” Byron asked.

“This is Capricorn, by the way,” I said.

“Hi Capricorn. Saw you on T.V. the other night,” Withdrawal replied. “They were driving average looking cars, but they’d slow down as they drove by, attention on the house.”

“What makes you sure they’re not after her?” Byron asked.

“One got out of their car,” Withdrawal said. “They talked, guy on the sidewalk, woman standing on her front stairs. Friendly-like.”

“What did they look like?” I asked.

“Normal,” Withdrawal said. “Regular clothes, jackets. Cars were mostly the same, beaters from Bet or garbage from Gimel. They dressed normal. But normal doesn’t circle the same block five or six times, driving real slow as they pass a house.”

“This is good,” Byron said. “Exactly the kind of thing we were hoping to get with the surveillance.”

“Agreed,” I added.

“Really?” Finale asked.

“Really,” I said, with conviction and extra emphasis.

“Finale was the one who saw the shopping bags,” Withdrawal said. “Got us thinking about what was up with this woman.”

“Fantastic,” I said, meeting Finale’s eyes.

Even in the gloom, everything already dark, made darker by the trees around us, I could see Finale smile.

“What do we do?” Withdrawal asked.

I wanted to respond. I glanced at Capricorn, instead. If I was compromised, it was his voice that mattered.

“We call for help,” he said. “This is bigger than us.”

“One of the major teams?” I asked.

“We’re not sure what’s going on with them,” he said. “Protocols. But I think it’s reasonable to assume that the most major team is clear.”

“If they’re available,” I said.

“Major?” Finale asked.

“Wardens,” I stated. I saw her eyes go wider. For her benefit, I added, “Dragon, Defiant, Narwhal, Chevalier-”

“Most are away,” Byron said. “Give me a second.”

He pulled out his phone.

“How was your stakeout?” I murmured, while Byron stepped a bit away, plugging a jack into his phone.

“Cold, wet, strangely exciting for there being so little happening for hours. We kept each other company.” Withdrawal said. “Listened to music when we weren’t watching out.”

“Withdrawal has recordings of a really funny radio musical,” Finale said, suddenly effuse, just over the mention of this thing she’d enjoyed. I smiled a bit, seeing it.

Caryatid, meanwhile, was almost one with the trees. She looked out in the direction of the house, but her face was one of butterfly wings overlapping, unfolding, flapping.

“Antares,” Byron said. “Look.”

I looked.

It was his phone. Red triangles cascaded down the screen, each with an old fashioned phone in the center. Network down, no service, no tower available.

I checked my own phone. Following my cue, the others checked theirs.

Caryatid dropped out of her breaker form, the butterfly-winged face slipping back to reveal her normal one. I saw her expression change. “They’re on the phone.”

“Who?”

“All of them.”

I had to step closer to a tree to look.

At the end of the driveway, a man that wore a heavy raincoat was talking on the phone.

“They know. They had safeguards in place,” I spoke my realization aloud. “They’re onto us.”

‘Onto us’ meant that cars were already approaching. One stopped in front of the house. People got out, and they wore a hodgepodge assortment of gear over white, simple masks on their faces.

Teacher’s thralls.

More cars were arriving – they had to have been parked in nearby driveways or a side road. They kept stopping and getting out, their lack of parking jobs meant not solely to hold them back, but to obstruct traffic.

Obstruct emergency services.

There were people in one car who were working as a team to get something big from one of the trunks. When the group moved, this long case in their possession, they did it with at least twelve people protecting the case.

The destination: the same house the woman from the prison clinic lived in.

“I’ll try to help,” Withdrawal said.

A spray of laser shots flew through the trees. Trunks splintered, and whole sheaths of brittle mark were cast off, sent flipping through the air.

I could see the alarm on the Malfunctions’ faces.

“They keep adding more,” Finale said. “I can’t do anything if they just endlessly add more.”

“We’re okay,” I said. “Run if you need to. They should let you. They don’t want the casualties it could involve.”

More laser shots now. More damaged trees. What a shame.

Goddess had outlined a way that her enemies would pin her and defeat her. Coordinated groups, seemingly endless numbers, a sharp offense coordinated by thinkers. There was no information that they didn’t potentially have, no problem we could pose that would fatigue this intelligent morass of humans.

“Is there any way to get a message across on the secure line?” I asked. “The one we’re not supposed to have?”

“I’ll try,” Byron said. “Figure out what they’re up to! We stop and interfere, but the information is key.”

He was the one in charge, with the protocols. I took off. “Be safe, Malfunctions. Be safe, Byron.”

The enemy numbers kept increasing.

Against thinkers, take them out ASAP. Distract, stress, befuddle. Mental and psychological strain, when it can be applied, should be used, as they have an ironic tendency to have their minds be their weak points.

I used my aura, hard, and probably disturbed some ordinary residents in the neighborhood in the process. Someone fell, losing their bag, and I grabbed it. I hurled the bag at the largest cluster of thralls.

There had to be thirty of them. Three to five to a car- six cars. What had been an orderly suburb was chaos, drowned in freezing rain, a thin film of ice crusting anything that was getting rained on.

They turned guns on me, and I flew up and away, trusting the darkness and the rain that fell in people’s eyes to give me cover. The bright shots stabbed randomly up into the sky. There were some that didn’t need eyes, instead having powers that Teacher had granted, but they were wretched, less people with added enhancements, and more slaves who had lost more than they’d gained in ability.

It was easier, like this. No doubts, a clear enemy, no having to juggle my allegiances and compromise my thoughts to fit someone else’s goals. I could put Amy out of mind, let the dust settle, mend and care for myself.

I hit the large group with the case they’d withdrawn from the trunk of the car, bowling into people with the wretch only momentarily active. The incoming fire stopped- any miss would hit a friend of theirs, but they had other methods, including makeshift melee weapons.

I leveraged my fear aura, turned to outright shoves, flying knees to vital areas with no wind-up, and backhand strikes with my hand enclosed in a metal-braced glove. I fought through the tide of thralls, and if they might have found their footing and hit me back, those opportunities diminished to almost nothing as the fear aura slowed them down and gave them second thoughts.

They were thinker-one, tinker-one. Each gave up a lot to get access to that power. They were enemies of the city and enemies of Goddess. Were they here for us? Had Goddess been right about them tracing the echoes or traces of her power to those affected?

I hit a man hard enough he might have lost teeth. He might have been innocent, a regular man who’d been promised power and paid too high a debt, losing all independence. I reached the box they had been carting. The Wretch emerged to strike at it, shattering wood.

The contents, as far as I could tell, were a long flat rectangle broken up into fragments, a sheet of exposed metal mesh. There were engines or generators, wires with exposed metal, and reams of extension cords- enough electrical stuff overall that the box had required four people to carry.

I checked nobody was close enough, brought out the Wretch, and I smashed it. Whatever it was Teacher wanted to do here, I didn’t want to let him.

Smashing done, I turned away, flying to the nearest clearing, so I could survey the situation. The Wretch was still active, and as I moved, it dragged things in the dirt behind me.

It had taken up weapons- spears and twists of metal. It held them high, ready to stab and twist, bend and snap.

Worse, with people bowled over, there was nothing to deter people from shooting at me. They were realizing it, turning on me. This was too much offense, when I very much did not want to kill anyone Goddess didn’t want dead.

No, I needed defense. I took evasive action, casting off the Wretch, then resuming motion, so the scraps and twists of tinker technology were left behind. Zig-zagging movements. Movements that went up, then down, then between feet that were planted far enough apart.

I dropped low, breastplate touching knee, and flew along the road.

I’d done my part- and Byron was doing his. Water came in broad sprays, showering people, catching them at angles that hit faces, went under hoods, or caught bare legs and tights beneath shorts or skirts.

His water was normally cold, and in this weather, it was unforgiving.

I’d destroyed one device, and Byron was apparently working to destroy another, repeatedly hitting a fallen box with torrents of water.

But the enemy- we’d bowled them over, bruised, abused, battered them. They kept coming.

Goddess hit the point where she was frustrated with these guys. In the broad abstract, she needed our help if she was going to break up Teacher’s growing hold on things. In the more micro-abstract, we were struggling with this dynamic.

“They’ve got teleporters! That’s how they’re getting people!”

“The door you destroyed!” I heard Withdrawal’s voice, his accent. “It’s not the only one!”

Door. It had been a door.

I had to fly up to get a proper view of the scene. Up twenty feet, pausing, with only a few momentary movements, in case someone was trying to draw a bead on me. I could see other boxes.

He could drop a teleportation gate into things, bring in an army, and win whatever fight he wanted. Some of those boxes didn’t look like teleporters.

We needed a path to retreat, and that was harder for Byron than it was for me. We needed to get the Malfunctions out of here.

The Malfunctions seemed to hear my thoughts, because I saw Withdrawal enter the fray. He moved at high speeds, skidding on wet and icy road, and hefted his syringe that wasn’t a syringe anymore.

The contents of the syringe sprayed over a wall. He skated to it, then skated up the slick of spray. He bounded off of it, then landed smack-dab in the middle of a large group.

“Bam. Bam. Bambam, zaap!”

Finale. She used her blaster power to less effect than even the tinker-one ray guns and rifles. The air distorted in front of her hands every time she fired- with more distortion each time. The ‘zap’ was characterized by a distant sound of a whipcrack or thunder. Her mouth moved and she made sounds as she used her abilities, even though there should have been zero need. It put me in mind of people who could read, but who moved their lips as they did.

Caryatid was protecting Finale and Byron. She was a walking statue in black and amber, hands outstretched and pulled back, ready for a strike or grab if anyone got in range. Few did.

Finale dropped as she took a shot.

“I’m okay!” she shouted, as she got back to her feet. She swung her arm like she was throwing a fastball, then threw a sphere of distorted air.

I hit the other guys a little harder, my intent on getting to and into the house before they could unpack one of those boxes and get her away.

I hit a door, knocking it off its hinges, and strode inside. The walls were the same as the exterior, in that they were prefabricated, too neat and tidy. The woman who lived here had painted them crimson.

In the large room I entered, I saw the woman who had to be the lady-friend of the head of the prison’s medical. She was sweeping prescription pill bottles and bags of orange-yellow powder into a black trash bag. Multiple thralls jumped up from their seats to face my direction.

Drugs and some kind of ploy. Prescription medications and… something foreign.

I took it in, trying to commit details to memory, who had been where. I did that at the same time I advanced on the woman.

She was their prize, their target, that they were willing to lose ten to twenty thralls for. Injuries or separation would cost Teacher. My mother had always told me to take away their prizes. If we couldn’t take them out and arrest them, we would leave them with no wins of their own.

The woman ran from me, and I flew after her, hands gripping corners to help me navigate the narrow spaces while airborne. She reached the front door- facing off to the side of our impromptu battlefield, and found the statue-form Caryatid standing on the other side.

Purple flames erupted in the woman’s hands. She hurled them at the elegant statue-cape, and the statue burned. Caryatid’s voice rose in alarm, then a prolonged cry of pain.

“No!” I shouted.

Cornered, unable to get past Caryatid in the moment, the woman wheeled on me, one hand gripping a black trash bag of loot, the other bearing purple flame that could burn the invulnerable.

“I know your clairaudients can hear, Teacher. I want my reinforcements now.”

She’d had thirty, fifty people dropped in. Some had been capable- minor thinker powers, shooting accurately in the gloom. Others had been equipped.

People with powers. They had the communication advantage, and they were about to up the ante.

Gleaming – 9.5

Instinct: throw up my defenses to protect myself against this purple fire. Charge in, and remove the threat. Wrong move, putting myself in harm’s way. If Caryatid could be hurt, then so could I, theoretically. I had to hold myself back.

Plan? Taking a second to think things through, remind myself of key points and moves, accounting for things, they took time. It was time that she had to throw out some purple flame, setting the middle of the house’s living room on fire. It bought her space, as she moved in the direction of the window.

I’d come in through the side door, Caryatid through the front. The woman -pale and thin with thick-frame rectangular glasses, the sides of her head shaved and her hair tied into a messy bun at the back- had her trash bag of drugs in one hand and fire in the other. Jeans, sneakers, and a purple t-shirt with some new metal band advertised on the front, their logo surrounded by flame.

Her head turned from the flames, where a motion of her hand made the swiftly dwindling fire grow, to the window. She’d need hands free to haul it open.

In the heat of the moment, trying to consider my options, I turned to process, to follow the laws, and if that wasn’t possible, to do what was right-

I looked over in Caryatid’s direction. She’d crumpled over, and she looked like she was alternately trying to stop, drop, and roll and be very still while the flames licked her costume and skin. The skin I could see at her hand looked angry and red, her other hand gripping her arm at the elbow.

“Talk to me, Caryatid!”

“I can’t put it out!”

My heart broke at the composed, stylish young woman sounding so unlike she’d sounded.

I could circle the flame in the center of the room- it was swiftly dwindling. Edging around, I could keep relatively the same distance from the woman with the purple flame-

She moved her hand, and the flame swelled violently, barring my path.

“Let me-”

She moved her hand again. The flame billowed out in a slow moving explosion, though an explosion was the wrong word. It was though a balloon was swiftly expanding in the center of the flame’s mass, and the existing flame was forced to ride the surface, moving out as a wall with nothing beneath it.

“-help her!”

I was left to retreat, and I flew in the direction of an armchair. I hit it, Wretch-strength, and sent the chunks careening toward the woman.

But it wasn’t really possible to aim it, and I didn’t score any direct hits. One chunk hit her bag. Another rolled through the flame. A dismissive move of her hand extinguished it.

My heart pounding, breath coming hard, frustration welling up inside me, I had to force my thoughts back on track. Not instinct – plan, logic, law. My train of thought from before. My impulses still shaped my thought process. The first place my thoughts went was to Goddess- she was a ruler, she had a system of laws, and she had some idea of what she was doing, because one didn’t rule a universe without knowing something. She studied powers, too.

No use, though, because I didn’t have her on speed-dial, and I didn’t know what she would say or do.

The second place my thoughts kept getting caught on was the master-stranger protocols, because I’d been thinking about them so recently. What was the law, the rule, the textbook way to do this? Other protocols, other rules or by-the-books procedures.

This, for all intents and purposes, was a trump power, because it affected or involved other powers. Penetrating supposed invulnerability?

S.O.P. for trumps was to get the hell out of dodge, reassess, and step carefully.

I heard a pained noise from Caryatid. The flames were re-igniting at her sleeve and shoulder, perilously close to her face.

“Put out the flames, I’ll let you go!” I called out.

Bag still in hand, back to the window, she tried to lift it. Ignoring me.

“Listen to me!” I screamed the words. Then, in anger, lashing out in much the same way I might have struck her across the face with the back of my hand, I used my aura.

This time the fire exploded.

Purple flames became purple-white and blindingly bright, filling my vision in the course of filling the room. I threw up my forcefield on reflex alone, and my thoughts followed a moment later, with a stark awareness of why that was a bad idea.

The light that had washed over me became heat. As the glare faded, the heat remained. Even after being active for only a moment, I could see the vague profile of the Wretch, coming to pieces in dribbles akin to burning oil and scraps like flaming paper.

The woman across the room was busy extinguishing flames that had ignited curtains near her, not looking nearly as bothered by it as she should have been.

“Caryatid! Are you okay!?”

“What happened!?” still a voice without confidence, tremulous, small and afraid, like it belonged to someone years younger. Hearing it was almost enough to make me forget what I’d needed to say.

“Don’t use your power! The fire ignites powers!”

I saw the woman at the other end of the room react to that. That observation was blunted by the more pressing fact that I was on fire and I could feel the heat. My costume had absorbed the worst of it.

Get away, I thought. The rule for the powered dealing with trumps – especially the ones that screwed with powers. I had to fight my instinct to get away faster by flying.

I ran, feeling like a coward, feeling worse because Caryatid was still on the ground. Head low and face turned away from all hints of flame, my movements stumbling as I almost bounced off of a wall in my not-quite straight run down the hall.

Purple flames that licked me turned orange as I left the house. I spotted a puddle where road met a dip at the edge of a lawn, and threw myself at it. I chanced a use of my flight to get myself to the right angle, limiting the impact as I rolled into it. The coldness of the water and the wet corner of my hood slapping my cheek was a shock to the system.

A high whine caught my attention. I turned my head and saw a man in a white coveralls, a black jacket and black winter boots pointing a janky wires-and-kid’s-building-set gun at me.

I raised my defenses, and then remembered it had burned. What did that mean? I started to fly away, and he shot me.

The forcefield took the hit, sparks flying from the point of impact, visible flashes of light traveling between raindrops like lightning. Before he could line up another shot, I changed direction, to one side, flipping around to be right-side up, a spark of light passing just to my left, and then, planting my toes on the ground to help arrest myself and give myself a physical point to orient myself around in space, flew into his legs, rising once he started tipping over.

The result was that as his feet went up, his face went down with that much more emphasis. He had the weapon in his hands, and he was unwilling enough to let go of it that he only used one hand to brace himself in the fall.

He failed utterly, and more or less met the ground face-first, landing with half of his body in the puddle.

The gun fired in the moment of impact, or out of some reflexive action, the spark hitting the edge of the lawn, conducting through the water, and making his body convulse and jerk- which included a spasmodic pull of the trigger. The spark hit the same spot, more or less, conducted into the puddle, conducting into him, which made his finger jerk-

I kicked the gun away before it could happen again.

I could hear more guns- there were enough people around and the light was bad enough that I couldn’t see who was aiming at what. I could see the glows and crackles of guns as they reached the point of being charged enough to fire, the faint illumination giving me some sense of where guns were pointed, but that only gave me a moment to react to each.

The woman with the purple fire was either inside or leaving the other end of the house. And as for Caryatid-

I flew up, and much like the woman with the purple fire had divided her attention between me and the window, I was left to divide my attention between laser beams flicking through the sky and a barrage of wildly aimed white spark-balls that were each surrounded by nimbuses of electricity, as they conducted to nearby rain. A red flare jumped up from near a fence that one of Teacher’s goons was using for cover, and I gave it a wide berth. It detonated like a firework.

I chanced a glance down, and I saw Caryatid outside, slumped over on the ground. I had to help her.

At the same time, the others were being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Outnumbered ten to one, with the ten being armed. Withdrawal leaped from one ancient tree to the roof of a house so prefabricated it looked like a dollhouse. His stilt-feet skidded across the roof, cutting and dislodging shingles, followed a moment after by a raking of a thin blue laser beam and a few haphazard shots of brilliant white sparks, like the weapon of the guy I’d just taken down.

I used my aura, primarily to distract. Heads turned, shots were altered last-second.

Those guns seemed to be firing at very steady intervals, roughly one shot every second and a half, and they didn’t run out of ammunition. Where they hit a target, they crackled outward, arcs lancing out to the nearest conductive target. It was one of these shots that hit the ground beneath Withdrawal’s stilt-legs, then arced up to shock the metal there.

Once I recognized that there was a pattern, I could adjust. Earlier, I’d had to dismiss instinct. Here, old sparring matches against my extended family came into play. There had been brief skirmishes against thugs who were willing to pull a real gun on a teenage girl in costume, and even an intense skirmish against Fenja had its relevance. As I’d moved in time with her giant-sized weapon’s swipes, I flew in general circles while I found the cadence here and they divided themselves by focus. Three people who had turned my way had those guns. Two of them were firing almost together, one firing out of sync with them, their spark-gun being bigger. A fourth had a laser gun, like the one that had produced the blue laser.

Two shots, change direction by going to their flank, change direction again to account for the adjustment of the third man, going up. The laser gun glowed blue as it charged up for the next shot.

Two shots, change direction, dropping down, account for the late shot from man number three by flying up and to the right. The laser beam fired, and it hit the Wretch. The Wretch was better at handling sustained damage than a single good hit. The beam burned out before the Wretch did.

I closed the distance, grabbing one of them by their hair. The movement of my arm reminded me that I’d been burned- my skin felt tight.

Fingers gripping hair and coverall-shoulder, the top of my foot hooking in between the man’s legs, I strained my entire body and used my flight to fly him into his buddy.

My aura was affecting others, as I was flying closer. They turned, ready to complicate what I was doing. Withdrawal bounded over their heads, moving as if in slow motion, while his fluid spurted out over them and their heads. Guns fizzed and popped, and people fell, sprawling messily in the luminescent bubblegum pink stuff. One or two people who fell in the thicker patches of the spurt spun in place by some invisible force, their legs failing to find traction.

Someone shot at the ground just below Withdrawal’s landing point. Arcs jumped up to his legs and out to nearby puddles. His suit failed to make the final movements that would secure his landing, and he landed hard, tumbling.

“Bam, blast, zap, bam, bam and fuck you!” I could hear Finale.

The peppering of shots saw the one who’d knocked Withdrawal out get knocked onto his own ass.

A brief appearance of blue motes and a splash of water that covered face and weapon saw the man convulse as his weapons’ energy discharged into his body.

“I have to go get Caryatid!” I called out, as I spotted Byron. “You good!?”

“Go!”

“Don’t try to put out any purple flames with your power!” I called out.

He responded, but I was already too high up and far away to hear.

Moving across was dangerous. Adding a healthy dose of up to my plane of movement let me see more of what was going on, kind of, and it let me complicate things for those wanting to shoot me. People were not generally that good at hitting human-sized targets a hundred or two hundred feet away from them in the heat of the moment. I had one bullet wound that told me that there were exceptions to the rule, but I also had years of experience telling me that being airborne, mobile, and far away made me pretty darn safe in a firefight.

I flew up, looked, and saw Caryatid still on the ground. A few houses down the way, there were people in white standing around a contraption – they were setting up a tinker device. The woman with the purple flame still glowing at one of her hands waited.

As fast as I’d flown up, I flew down and at an angle, moving in more of a gentle arc than a straight line, to confuse anyone trying to target me.

I’d been the one that had involved these guys. If any ended up seriously hurt, permanently hurt? I swallowed hard as I dropped to Caryatid’s side.

“Did you get her?” she asked.

Costume burned. Her right hand and arm were charred black from fingertip to shoulder, the charred bits surrounded by red flesh-

No. The black was scraps of costume. I could see yellow where the voluminous inside of the sleeve had stuck behind.

She reached up with her burned arm and gave me a shake. “Did you get her?”

“She’s out there. They’re prepping a tinker thing. Maybe evac.”

“Can you get her?”

I glanced over. “I can try.”

“The others are okay?”

“Withdrawal fell badly, but I think so. Outnumbered badly.”

“Then go! Get her! Or help them! Help me stand?”

I got her arm over my shoulder, then straightened to a standing position. As we drew to a standing position, Caryatid was letting her breaker power creep over her. I could see the pattern by which it took over her hand and costume and made the two extensions of each other- the same pattern that the burn had traced. Residual heat had led to the more polyester-like fabrics clinging to skin.

Her body and arm remained utterly still, but her eyes urged me in the moment before her face dissolved into a morass of butterfly wing movements. Then even those movements went still, finer details becoming harder ridged structures, collapsing into a telescope-shaped structure.

I turned toward the yard where the woman and the squad had been. Caryatid’s head oriented, the ‘telescope’ narrowing to a cone, the point facing them, before almost immediately breaking apart.

“They’re making a door.”

Their exit.

There were others arriving. Crackles of electricity, rectangular apertures framing silhouettes, and those silhouettes became people. More in coveralls, moving in fours and fives.

Different guns this time. These ones had bands of teal encircling them.

I took flight, using the same evasive maneuvers as before. Around me, I could see the beams of the teal cannons, if they could be called beams. They stabbed out, glowing and became rigid, transparent and luminescent, not unlike the hard light forcefields my family could create.

Each had spokes, or spurs, like thorns on vines or spikes on barbed wire. Where the beams were close enough to one another, spokes extended, moving around to connect to nearby beams or spokes with a force and suddenness that I could feel in the air, with sounds like whipcracks.

As more beams filled the air- the space between me and my target in particular, I saw my paths steadily closing. There were gaps I could have dropped an eighteen wheeler through broad-side out, but it was a huge unknown, made worse by the suspicion that this had been deployed as an anti-flyer method.

He’s a tinker, I thought. The principles are the same. The toolbox that evolves to answer problems, the need for resources. The only thing that hold him back, like any tinker, are time and resources. He’s had two years of time, and Goddess had enlightened us about his resource-acquisition. Valefor, Mama Mathers. Others.

Like most tinkers, he has them make resources that help them acquire or refine their resources. And because one key factor in this network or engine of his are people… he gets the hypnotist to help him get more people.

I flew in a course that put me over the ‘side’ of the growing webwork of glowing teal beams and bars that seemed to stab off into the stratosphere. I had to get to that door before they slipped away. More beams appeared high above, beside, and below me. The cross-bars that connected them slammed out, connecting them all into the solid mass.

Wasn’t doable. There had to be twelve of those assholes down there, firing in batteries.

I didn’t have any routes to travel that weren’t to the sources of the beams- something I wasn’t sure would work, traveling in the opposite direction, far enough away that maybe the beams terminated or got far enough apart that there weren’t cross-beams, or fly for a gap.

The first and second options meant I wasn’t flying down, to get to the woman with the purple fire or the group that was building the door, and they had their own flaws- the fact I was flying into dense webwork and the sheer lack of guarantee, respectively.

I flew for one of the gaps I could have rolled an eighteen wheeler through. Wretch out.

Teal webwork flared around me as I approached. It shrank around me, breaking from the larger structure. A lasso, securing itself around the Wretch with enough force that the Wretch broke.

I slipped the noose in the same way that someone could escape a pursuer by shedding the jacket the pursuer had grabbed. Being smaller, freer, not caring about that which had broke.

But there were more gaps. I was forced to judge distances and timing. The Wretch took time to reappear, but it wasn’t too long. So long as I timed it so I was moving through a gap as it came back up…

I disconnected my mask from my belt, and I hurled it ahead of me and down, toward the center mass of the device and the people clustered around it. My hopes that the mask’s passage would activate the lasso-closures and clear my way were dashed. It landed in the midst of the work they were doing, and heads turned my way.

The ‘dash’ became the sequence of movements through that webwork, as more lines and bars of forcefield-webbing filled the sky between me and my targets. The Wretch was broken as soon as it re-emerged, and I had calls close enough that I nearly lost a boot as the webwork closed.

I was losing this battle, but I could get closer.

There had to be an opportunity.

The webwork steadily closed around me, and theoretically possible escape routes became impossibilities. My focus remained on staying clear, sticking to more open areas, where no lasso could close around me.

Far below and behind, Byron climbed over a fence, making his way in my direction. I pointed.

People on the ground seemed to report my action, or they’d sensed Byron through the use of a power. The ones who weren’t actively setting up the door prepared to deal with him.

Too many for him to reasonably deal with. Even if he drenched every single one of them now, if every single gun failed because of the thorough drenching with water, I wasn’t sure he’d win. Thirty people, easily.

I saw the nervousness of the woman with the trash bag in her hand. She backed up, putting some distance between Byron and herself, while her people lined up at the fence. Blue motes began to collect in the air, which didn’t help matters.

Come on, come on, I thought.

Then I couldn’t watch. More beams were flying in close, and I had to use the Wretch while throwing myself into the densest patch. The rectangles and triangles of empty space closed, paused for only an instant as they seized the wretch, giving me only a second to figure out which direction I was flying in.

I was literally upside down as I saw it- a flash of purple. Her hand drawn back, flame ready. Byron’s arrangement of motes included the air above him.

The webwork snapped closed around my upper body and one of my ankles.

I pushed out with my aura, for maximum range. I wasn’t sure the power mattered, but I gave that my all too. I squeezed my eyes shut.

The aura reached the woman and reached the flame she held. The aura ignited- the woman’s fire spread across powers like flame across oil, and I’d filled the space within a hundred feet of me with ambient power. Gas. Aerosol.

Too much to hope for that it would hit this forcefield webbing and destroy it. Too much to hope for that it would destroy the door. It had staggered that group, and distracted a few by setting them on fire.

Two individuals were burning with purple fire and they didn’t move or react. Their stares were vacant.

Byron looked up at me.

“Drench them!” I hollered.

“You said-!”

I moved my arm. Another lasso was prompted to snap closed, seizing my arm in a position where it was over my head.

I hoped the gesture had worked. I drew in a breath to shout again, but he was already using his power.

Blue motes became the shape of the water and the lines became the courses that water was to travel. The water pressure was still lacking, but it was a lot of water, and the frozen ground didn’t want to absorb it. It sloshed over and through the fence, across ankles, feet, and into the work area where a doorway was being constructed. People were knocked over. The tinker work was left awry.

He looked up at me, and there was something in his body language. Defeat. There was something imploring.

I knew what he would’ve asked, if he could’ve done it safely, with the distance between us, or if that wasn’t a consideration, what he would’ve asked if he’d been able to summon up the courage.

Right now, if he used his other power, and gave control to Tristan, that water would become stone. It would impact the device and it would trap most of the people there, the woman with the purple fire included. He wanted my permission, which was the opposite of the way this was supposed to work.

And then? Tristan would help, we’d have the evidence, go back to Goddess, and work out a game plan that worked for both Gimel and Shin. We’d screw over Teacher and we would organize against him.

Yes, it would be a win.

Yes, it was workable long-term.

Yes, in service of the law, fighting the lawless, in what felt right, and in turning to someone else for help if we were struggling as we were, yes.

In service to that kernel of warmth in my heart when I thought about Dean and the classifications, when I thought about the black text printed on white paper, that detailed the rules to be followed, the chain of command in times of crisis?

I shook my head, dramatically enough he could see. No.

I was reeled in, ice sloughing off where it had formed on the beams. In the course of my forced trip back, as I used flight to try to resist or change my course, more of the webbing snapped closed around me. Byron peeked over fence at the collection of people around the door, then reversed direction, heading for the source of the beams that had me.

I had nothing besides the vantage point that let me see the tinkers return to the door-shaped aperture they’d constructed, with its generators, engines, and other tech built up around the base and the sides. There were shouts from the woman, as she looked over her shoulder.

Switches were thrown. Electricity crackled, and a shimmer appeared in the doorway, before promptly bleeding out to the surrounding area, through and into one of the generator-like machines at the base, causing it to detonate.

The electric portal energy bled out like watercolor, crackling loudly enough that I couldn’t hear the people on the ground.

I pushed out with my aura. Nothing.

I couldn’t even summon the Wretch without it being canceled as my bindings continued to entrap me. More of me was covered than not- only my head and neck were left clear.

There was a pause. Then the woman ran, nearly slipping on wet ice that covered the backyard of the house, and she leaped for the center of the blurry mass, disappearing within.

A moment later, the energy of the electric portal ignited violently. The fire traveled to the sub-systems and engines, and they began to explode. The thralls that had been working on it scrambled to get away. A few didn’t manage to, and were close as visible shockwaves rippled out, through and past them.

Discarded like they were nothing.

In the other direction, Byron was focusing on the guys with the teal web-beams. His motes began to form. Men and women backed up, holding their guns, with the almost flexible beams almost all together, stretching out toward me, forming a single line that drew me in. Only four were positioned with their guns resting on the ground, pointed skyward.

And behind? There were still people from the earlier confrontation, though Caryatid, Finale, and Withdrawal were facing them down.

Fifteen or so left able-bodied in the yard with the now-destroyed and burning portal, ten or twelve as part of the group the Malfunctions were dealing with, Finale and Withdrawal crouched behind a slow moving Caryatid, and then the team of six with the anti-aircraft force-webbing.

Not just anti-aircraft force webbing. One of the guys on that team was reaching for another weapon at his ankle, one hand still propping up the larger weapon.

“Careful!” I shouted. “Gun!”

Byron broke into a run, the crampons giving his feet bite on the icier patches of road. Blue motes became water, washing over that squad. A drenching of cold water, in the midst of freezing rain.

“Bam!” Finale shouted. One of the men staggered, where he’d been finding his footing, and fell.

“Finale!” I shouted. “If you’re building up to something, now’s the time!”

“I don’t want to if-” she started. Then she shrieked as a group that had been huddled behind cover burst out, opening fire. Caryatid was slow to move, but Finale was quick to put Caryatid between herself and the attackers.

Behind her, another group was emerging, weapons ready.

“Behind!” I called out.

No place to take cover. Withdrawal shielded her with his body, empty syringe-gun held out like a shield. Both groups fired in concert, from opposite directions.

I used my aura, aiming to break up the rhythm. It affected Caryatid’s group, but it affected the attackers too. More, if I had to guess.

“What’s the catch!?” I called out.

“Do it,” I could hear Withdrawal’s voice, muffled around the edges. I’d been reeled in enough that non-shouts were barely audible.

Byron, meanwhile, was dealing with the group. He was taking cover by the back end of a car. The group couldn’t move much, so they were continually drenched. One of the guns had stopped working.

“If there are any more-” Finale said. “I don’t want to use my power if there are more coming.”

“There aren’t!” I shouted. “They got what they wanted!”

She looked at me, eyes wide beneath her brimmed cap and behind her mask.

Byron’s water took out the guy who was lassoing me. The gun fell to the ground, the beam twisted into a thousand loops like a badly kinked hose, and then winked out with a sound like a titan clapping his hands together a single time.

And Finale was doing her thing, wheeling on one group.

A blue light shone at one of the thrall’s shoulders, then detonated with a musical intonation, like a gong being struck. He was thrown to one side, as was everyone in his immediate proximity. The movement was slower than it should have been, glittering particles surrounding them.

More lights shone, one after another, with a rhyme and reason that likely only made sense to Finale.

Another detonation, throwing people in another direction, toward the group that Byron was working on incapacitating. One of those people was illuminated with an imminent explosion. As the flying bodies drew into range, the detonation that was waiting for them came down, a higher sound, a faster roll-out, sending them the opposite way.

Juggling them. Herding them together, so people crashed into each other, were thrown into waiting explosions.

Not perfect- people fell free of the cascading effect, of detonations synced out to sound like a drum solo writ out in gongs, bells, and cymbals, complete with a soft destructive effect.

I flew down to take out one of the guys who had fallen free of the chain reaction, who was fleeing for cover. I kicked him to the ground and then landed on him with added force, before stepping on his hand and driving my weight down with my flight. My eyes roved for other strays.

It seemed Byron and Withdrawal had them.

The explosions weren’t true heat, fire, shockwave-that-liquefies-organs kind of detonation. They got sloppier toward the end, as more people fell free and some landed far enough away that their own detonations affected only them, making them flop once or twice like fish on dry land.

The metaphorical dust settled.

“Patrol block is on its way,” Byron said. “Called them pretty early on.”

“Thanks, Capricorn,” I said. That would complicate things with Goddess, but- I kept my mouth shut.

“I didn’t do that right,” Finale said. “I took too long to set up and I didn’t finish it right.”

“You did good,” I said.

“I practiced on balls and sandbags, but humans fall in weird ways.”

“They absolutely do,” I said. “You did good.”

She didn’t respond, to either agree or deny. Her teeth simply chattered. That would be adrenaline as much as the cold.

“They got away?” Byron asked.

I nodded. “The one did.”

“Shit,” Withdrawal said.

On the ground, one of the people in white smiled.

I bent down over them, my eyes searching for anyone who was up to more fighting or attempted running. There were too many here.

“Care to share with the class?” I asked him.

The thrall shook his head.

“Not worth it,” Byron told me.

“I know,” I said. “Brainwashed.”

“These guys are scary,” Withdrawal said. He was more unsteady on his stilt-like limbs than before. One of his shoulders was venting a thin, steady stream of smoke.

“Teacher’s. He’s a major player. The fact we made it through this unscathed is… it’s going to have to be good enough.”

“I’m going to call the team,” Byron said. “Is there anything I need to tell them?”

“We’ll have to figure out where the woman with the pills went. Maybe if we get the destroyed tech to Lookout?”

“The woman from the house? Our target?” Caryatid asked. She was still gripping her arm with one hand. Her skin looked red, even in the meager light. “That’s what she had in the bag?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Can you remember who she was? We gave you a list, and she was number-”

“Number two,” Caryatid said.

My brain was so tired. I shook my head a bit. “Can you remember her job?”

“The prison pharmacist,” Caryatid said. “High risk because of her access and criminal history.”

The serious look that Byron and I shared communicated a hell of a lot, but for the benefit of our novice Malfunctions, it needed to be said.

“What if she wasn’t taking those drugs out of the prison?” I asked. “It’s their overwhelming focus.”

“I’ll call,” Byron said, all seriousness.

Poisoned supply? Something more sinister or obscure? Whatever it was, it was serious enough that Teacher had been willing to sacrifice…

I looked around the neighborhood, still drenched in continuous freezing rain. People were looking out of windows and standing in open doors, now that it had all gone quiet, all rounded off with an explosive musical solo.

Easily forty thralls that hadn’t slipped away or escaped by some other means.

The prison. After this, whatever she was up to, whatever Teacher was up to, the pharmacist would be putting it into motion now.

Gleaming – 9.6

“Reality is on fire,” Jester said it in a very matter of fact way, before adding, “purple fire.”

“Is it spreading?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Shrinking, but slowly, and it looks ominous.”

“It’s around the door thing?”

“Is that what that was? A door? Yeah, it’s mostly around some tech stuff at the base.”

“Then it’s fine. Get people to stand back, in case it blows.”

“We already did,” Jester said. He didn’t move from his spot underneath the shelter of the bus stop.

The street was now crowded with police cars that didn’t match each other, Jester’s patrol bus, and two ambulances. My hand was bandaged, and the Malfunctions were being looked after. The patrol had done its work, and Jester was keeping me company, under the guise of getting updates on the situation. That had taken two minutes, really, he’d stepped away to report to others, and he’d just come back.

As for the rest- it was only in the wake of the event that I could really take stock of just how much of a battlefield this neighborhood had become in a very short span of time. There were a lot of combatants, disabled or otherwise not putting up a fight, who were being put in the patrol bus.

“Are you okay? Really okay?” Jester asked me. “I know we’re not close, and that’s a very personal question, but…”

“We worked together.”

“For a bit over a year, and even this week, I was going into work and thinking I could bug you about some power classification thing or something I saw online. I forget what.”

“You miss me?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

He shrugged, shoulders straining against the straps of his vest- the stripped-down PRT armor with the identifying marks scraped off. In the cold weather, he was wearing a jacket over the vest. His tattoo wasn’t visible beneath the long sleeves.

“I kind of miss you guys too,” I said.

“That’s a very nice generic, ‘you guys’. A deft deflection from saying you miss me in particular, Miss Dallon.”

I smiled.

“Is that your way of saying you’re not okay? You miss when things were simpler?” he asked. “Because holy shit, um, I told Gil to wake me up or pull me in if your team ever needs anything, and I keep getting brought in for really messed up shit.”

“You don’t have to,” I said.

“I like it! Don’t get me wrong. Not the messed up stuff-”

“You’re losing me. You like it but you don’t like it?”

“I like you,” he said, before his eyes registered the words, and he gave a fraction-of-a-second-late, “-guys.”

“Deft.”

He spoke with more energy and verve, as if he could stampede all over that exchange, leaving it behind him. “I did this whole Patrol thing because powers kick ass and I thought if I didn’t have powers, I could still be the guy in uniform that the big goddamn hero turns to and says, ‘Hey, guy with the cool callsign, are you going to have our backs?’ and I could say yes.”

“Cool callsign, huh? That’s an integral part of this fantasy?”

“It’s not a fantasy. It’s a mission. I’m going to become an instructor and team leader one day, and it’ll be mandatory. No gun until you have a decent nick. Exceptions if you have a badass last name and you go by that name.”

“I feel sorry for your students.”

“Quiet, you,” he said.

Another patrol bus drove up. Jester raised his hand, and behind the glare of the headlights and the windshield with ice at the edges, the driver raised a hand in response.

I punched Jester in the arm. “Thanks. For backing us up. You were there at the Fallen thing, you were there for Swansong.”

“You’re welcome,” Jester said. “It’s nothing big. Trying to help out when I can, help the people who are doing the big stuff… like tearing through seventy-five jerks with tinker guns.”

He indicated the neighborhood street. The road was low quality beneath puddles and ice, already cracking less than a year after it had been laid down, and the wet surface reflected the flashing blue and red light of emergency vehicles.

“Fifty at most,” I said.

“How’s Swansong?” he asked.

I raised my eyebrows.

“I guarded her, kept watch, like you said. Spent enough time doing it I’m invested, and she’s cool.”

I had no idea how she was. The question was enough to get me to check my phone for any status updates.

“I’m going to see her shortly,” I spoke slowly as I scrolled. “Last I heard, yeah, she was okay. But with everything going on-”

I stopped myself.

“She’s in prison, though. How would she be involved?”

Damn it, Jester, why did you catch on to that?

“Nah. She feels like her hands are tied,” I covered. “And that’s hard.”

Jester nodded.

Byron was at the periphery. A cop had stopped him, but a moment later, was calling out to someone else. Getting backup, since it was no doubt intimidating to have a guy in armor show up at the edge of the battlefield.

“I should go,” I said. “Good luck with dealing with that patch of reality being on fire.”

“It’s really cool, if you haven’t seen. It’s like if they froze lightning and then set it on fire.”

“I got a close-up taste of it,” I said, raising my hand, where I’d pulled my glove on over bandages, the bandages peeking out the end, and tapped the bandage. “And you guys should keep your distance until it burns out, to be safe.”

“We will.”

I headed in Byron’s direction. He was still held up with police, but they didn’t seem as bothered. He indicated me, and I gave them a wave and thumbs-up.

The Major Malfunctions broke away from the paramedics, hurrying to my side. I paused, letting them catch up, while keeping an eye on Byron to make sure he was alright.

“Are you going after the pharmacist?” Withdrawal asked.

“Not sure yet. We’re rendezvousing with the rest of the team. Once we know what we’re doing, we’ll be in touch with everyone. You guys should rest, resupply, if you feel like you’re done, that’s perfectly okay. If not, let us know that you’re game, and we’ll let you know as soon as we know more.”

“I’m out of accelerant,” Withdrawal said. “And my exoskeleton took a beating.”

“It should be go-goo or speedslime or something,” Finale murmured. “And if you’re going to call it that, your suit should be a go-suit.”

I had the impression this was a discussion they’d had before.

“You guys are battered, burned, and bruised. You did more than your fair share- you did great. I totally did not mean to get you involved in something that intense. If you want to sit out, I will absolutely not think less of you for it.”

“I was gonna say,” Withdrawal said. “Accelerant is gone, Finale is spent, and Caryatid got burned-”

“It’s not a big deal,” Caryatid said. “Antares got burned too.”

“-and,” Withdrawal pressed on, voice muffled by mask, insistent as he fought against getting sidetracked, “I think I speak for everyone when I say we found out the pharmacist was up to something, we started this, and it would be satisfying to be involved when it wraps up. I want to get her.”

“Yes,” Caryatid said.

I looked at Finale.

“I want what they want,” she mumbled, evading eye contact.

“Sit back, recover, reload your slime, heal. We will be in touch,” I said. “We have to step carefully when it involves the prison. They’re wary of us, and they won’t believe us if we try convincing them that their staff member is a problem.”

“Alright,” Withdrawal said, his head turning, attention between Finale and me. I saw him take a deep breath, halfway through which he seemed to notice something about the frame he was wearing, his hand going to one shoulder to touch the metal there. It stayed there as he exhaled. “We’ll hang back for now. Thanks.”

I could see the tension release in Finale’s shoulders.

“Thank you,” I said.

Byron opened the car door as I approached. He’d apparently fended off the police. I waved for him to get back in, glancing at the cops to make sure he hadn’t complicated things by setting them against Goddess.

“Didn’t you get permission to take the box?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’ll get it.”

“It’s heavy, and you’re injured,” he said. “I’ll help.”

I wanted to protest. I shut my mouth. Master-stranger protocols. They didn’t really apply here, since this had nothing to do with Goddess, but maybe it was better to get used to letting him give the orders.

The box was roughly the size of a coffin, and it did take the both of us to get it into the trunk, the back seats folded down. Byron slammed the back closed.

“No injuries?” I asked.

“Benefit of being long-ranged. I got zapped a few times, nothing too bad. Weak guns.”

“Nonlethal,” I said, my voice quieter. “Just about all of it, as far as I could tell. Pharmacist excepted. I think it might be part of how they get recruits, now.”

Byron’s breath fogged, a lingering aftermath of a sharp, sudden exhalation. A swear expressed unspoken.

I didn’t miss the sideways look he gave me. His train of thought was easy enough to follow. Recruits. Altered mental states. ‘Quote-Brainwashing-unquote’.

The second patrol bus was picking up the wounded and disabled. It had come stocked with blankets, tending to those who’d been splashed or left lying against cold ground. The thralls didn’t fight or argue much.

“Thanks for having my back,” I said.

“I felt stuck, looking after the Majors, I saw you needed help, but getting there was tough.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “He’s… he has an answer to anything, and I was the threat that stuck out. They brought out the anti-air brute-binding measure, that’s on me. I could have been more strategic. We’ll figure something out. We have other teams, we have Goddess…”

“And-” Byron started. “Sit with me? I won’t go fast. We’re not rushing.”

I nodded.

We both climbed into the car, and I was glad for the warmth that was blowing in noisily from the fans. Byron had to work a bit to get in, with the weight and less comfortable aspects of having armor on. For me, it was just the breastplate, and I could use my unburned hand to loosen it.

“We have an issue,” Byron said, as he pulled the car around in a u-turn. “It means things might not go that smoothly.”

“The changing powers?” I guessed. “The ebb and flow between you two isn’t favoring you as much.”

“Not that,” Byron said. We were approaching a turn, and he turned to look over one shoulder. “Is my left side clear? Wearing a helmet while driving is not good for the peripheral vision.”

I twisted around to look. “Clear.”

He turned, moving more slowly than usual. More emergency vehicles were coming in the opposite direction, heading to the site we’d just left.

“Tristan and I made arrangements. I’m getting calls. They’re impatient, and Tristan didn’t pick them because they were easygoing.”

I could hear the friction of Byron’s glove on the material of the steering wheel as he gripped it tighter.

“The people from Lord of Loss’ territory?”

“Ah, you caught that.”

When we’d gone to the other Earth to track down the Fallen sypmpathizers from Cheit, there had been a group of people who Tristan had paid attention to. They were in Lord of Loss and Marquis’ orbit, which suggested things. Professional, off the grid.

“Hit men?” I asked.

“Is there a term for people worse than hit men?”

“How does that work? Hit men are generally pretty bad, they’re professional, they’re about as criminal as you get. How do you get more extreme than that?”

“They don’t kill,” Byron said.

I set my jaw. Too many complicated thoughts were stirred up by that line of thinking. My first, almost hopeful thought was that he meant they were worse as in less-effective. The summary thoughts led me down a trail that made me think about my sister.

“An end worse than death,” Byron clarified, unhelpfully.

“I got it,” I said, my voice tense.

The car’s tires cut through the wet, icy roads. It was far from being good hero transportation. Only the fact that license plates didn’t mean anything kept it somewhat anonymous. If anyone cared to pay attention, it’d be a problem.

Fates worse than death. As an idea, it was too close, too fresh.

Fuck, my burned hand hurt.

“Why in the upside-down fuck would you pick people worse than hit men?” I asked.

“I didn’t,” Byron said.

“It was Tristan?”

“He decided on it and moved forward. He does this thing where things get bad, and he sees a possible solution- he gets all gung-ho for it.”

“So he hires a fate-worse-than-death hitman?”

“He said it was extreme enough that he’d have to stay in line. I was witness to it, as I am to all things Tristan. Then it was done with.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“I’m resigned to it,” Byron said. “It happened, and by the time I wrapped my mind around it and did my own research, it was done. Too hard to revoke, and things were better. They were almost good for the first time in years.”

“Things go wrong, Byron. This exact situation, it’s one of those things.”

“I know.”

“What the hell are the particulars, here? Who are these guys?”

“Barcode. Most of the time they deal in death. But they have contacts, the sort of people who might be out in one of Marquis’ cabins in the middle of nowhere, not wanting to be bothered. I don’t know for sure where those contacts are, though.”

“And?”

“And one of those is a striker. A dealer in human parts. They take people apart with physical blows as if they’re dolls. Takes an arm and a leg, literally, takes kidneys, hearts, genitals, whatever people are willing or desperate to buy.”

“No,” I said.

“If one of us steps out of line or try to game the system, he makes being swapped in just as miserable or worse than being inside-”

“No, Byron. Just- stop? Please. No details.”

“Mm.”

The car sped along a road, down a street that, even with the periodic streetlight, was mostly too dark to see. The city wasn’t that bright around us, with lights in windows easily confused with the light catching on the edges of raindrops and flecks of frost.

“What’s the procedure?” I asked. “Forget the consequence- it’s bad. I get it. How do you do it?”

“We meet up every few days. We confirm we’re okay, we swap. There are two or three people who show up, sometimes with backup, whoever they’re working with at the time. One is usually a thinker. They can read people. Read us.”

My phone lit up, brighter in my lap than any light outside or on the dash. It was Lookout. They were close to our destination.

“They read people. For altered mental states?”

“Yep. Drugs. Amnesia. Brainwashing.”

He put emphasis on that last point.

“So you would go. You’d swap over to Tristan-”

“And whether he cooperates or not, he’s under her influence. They come after me.”

I closed my eyes. “What if the thinker doesn’t show?”

“And Tristan doesn’t sound the alarm? There’s no guarantee he switches back to me, for one thing.”

“And the deadline?”

“Last night,” Byron spoke in the kind of monotone reserved for those trying very hard to keep their voices level. At my look of surprise, he elaborated, “We had the TV show. They were willing to delay.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Tight time limit,” Byron said, and his voice was tense. “I can maybe fend them off for tonight, we did say we were busy. I’ve been thinking about other options since after you and I had our skirmish.”

It was hard to think of the skirmish and not find the doubts welling, my mind immediately going to the perspective of how Byron was a problem first. The protocols didn’t jump immediately to mind.

“How did he even find these guys?”

“Ha,” Byron said the word, humorless. The car swerved a bit on what looked like normal, not-icy ground, and he corrected. “I saw it happen and I don’t even know. I smile and it’s… it’s an expression. He smiles and people like him. He gets online and finds people we used to fight, people we threw in jail, asks how they’re doing, finds common ground in the world ending, fishes. A couple weeks later, somehow he has these guys, with a clandestine system for getting in touch. I didn’t even think it would happen, so I just let him do his thing, focused on my own things, and… surprise, it all came together, am I willing to shell out some of my own cash so it’s not one party paying the scary mercenaries? I should know not to underestimate him when he sets his mind to something.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then we have a time limit. Goddess, prison, pharmacist, make sure Rain and Ashley are okay. Tonight?”

“Tonight, yeah. All of that tonight. Then if we can’t fix it by then, you’re going to need to put me into a coma. Say I was hurt in the field.”

“If they have that thinker, and if I’m actually brainwashed, then they’ll catch on.”

“A neutral third party then,” Byron said.

“And we lose our one unaffected person in the chain of command for the master-stranger protocol.”

“Yeah.”

I folded my arms, being careful with my burned hand, and stared out the window, thinking. I had to anticipate what the others would say and do, I had to second-guess Byron while at the same time supporting him, and I needed to think about Teacher and his motives and goals. Even simpler things were made that much more problematic by the things in their orbit, like Amy’s proximity to Goddess.

We drove in silence. There was no radio, and our only soundtrack was the noise of the wheels through wet ice and the patter against the car roof. I’d spent relatively little time in cars and vehicles for the past seven or so years, even during my stint with the patrol block, and my awareness of the individual noises was harder to block out.

Not that I minded. White noise was a good grounding for contemplation, and the sounds were alien enough that I wasn’t reminded of anything particular.

I checked my phone and found it marked with the ‘no service’ icon. No internet waypoints, no cell.

I wanted to have neat and tidy answers and excuses like I had with Kenzie before we’d left, where I’d been able to keep her from going off and doing her thing to try and be helpful. Or so I was hoping. I didn’t have much of anything.

That left the battle plan. In twisting ideas around in my head, trying to think of how we might help Goddess in a way that Byron might approve of, or deal with a prison with a massive red button, where our enemy could run roughshod and we couldn’t…

It was all backward.

All backward.

The most un-superhero hatchback found its parking space at the desolate parking garage. Natalie’s bug was already parked in a spot. It was startling, on a level, to recognize how small that car was, that Natalie had to be the person driving it, and the rest of the team had fit in it.

The answer, of course, was that two of our members were in jail. A third was in Goddess’ company, no doubt enjoying how very simple and clear life was.

We were seven, eight if we included our tertiary member Natalie. Three were gone. That left three for the car, Byron and myself.

Capricorn and I got out of the car. The others were waiting. Natalie was fidgeting, her eyes wide.

Was it a good thing or a bad thing that they hadn’t been able to keep her in the dark?

“Swansong and Precipice are sitting out. No holograms for right now. They’re more focused on immediate happenings in the prison,” Sveta said.

“Sounds good,” I said.

“Can I see the tech?” Lookout asked.

“Sure. As soon as we unload it. Can you give us a hand, Nat?” Capricorn asked, popping the trunk open.

I saw Natalie studying us, wary like she thought I’d suddenly grab her or something. I saw Sveta studying Capricorn in particular, suspicious. Still, Natalie helped, and we slid the box out of the back of the car and down to the floor of the parking garage. Sveta snatched up a few things on the ground that we might have tripped on.

The lights of the garage were only half-illuminated, and the half that were illuminated were dim, the glows orange and diffuse. There weren’t many cars, and the cars looked like they had been there for a while, with rust and dust creeping over their exteriors. For a couple, it looked like people might have been living in them.

“So cool,” Lookout said. “It’s not every day that I get to look at a tinker’s stuff.”

“There’s a time limit,” I said. “If we move, we need to move tonight.”

“I remember you guys talking about not wanting to overwork K- Lookout,” Natalie said.

Still wary, even as she protested.

“I’m conserving my energy for the times and nights when it really matters and my talents are needed,” Lookout said, kneeling beside the now-open box. “And everything’s intact!”

“I smashed one box,” I said. “They unpacked and activated one. This was one of two others.”

Natalie looked downright desperate to figure out what was going on, suppressed alarm clear on her face. She couldn’t ask, though, not without signifying that something was wrong.

“We’re going forward with Chris’s disconnected cells idea,” Sveta said.

I approached her, reaching out. She put her hand in mine, and I gave it a waggle.

Tension across her face seemed to ease slightly with that. The smaller signs of anxiety like free tendrils finding their perch or the rustle of movement inside her shell of a body were muted in a similar way.

“Disconnected cells,” I echoed, confirming I’d heard.

“She has two other groups. We’ll move in coordination once we know for sure what we’re doing.”

Natalie touched her phone, which was in her jacket pocket. The layers she wore seemed overly warm for even this shitty weather, but I could see that she’d gone easy on the top beneath the sweatshirt and jacket. No doubt choosing clothes that didn’t press on her cut.

She didn’t draw out the phone, though, or tamper with it in a way that made me think she’d opened a call to emergency services, holding a button too long or tapping one area of the screen while the phone was still in a pocket.

I let myself relax.

“What’s the verdict?” I asked.

“Still studying it, but…” Lookout pulled out her phone, held it out, and clicked a button. A little square robot face with hearts for eyes pirouetted across the screen, providing the object of focus for a side-wipe screen transition. What was left in its wake was gibberish data. “Portal to another world, obviously. You mentioned that already, over the phone.”

I nodded. I was hyperaware of everyone’s state at this point. Natalie’s anxiety was creeping up. Capricorn was quiet, lost in thought. Lookout was lost in her work, naturally. And Sveta…

She didn’t look like she was wholly in control of herself. More tendrils snaked out here and there, finding gaps and crevices, or old damage. They weren’t the long tendrils- those were managed. It was only the shortest, narrowest ones.

It sucked that she could accept the hand-waggle, but she gave me a look with doubt in her eyes when she didn’t think I was paying attention.

Lookout was humming. “Hmm. Okay. Can you get my laptop? Oh, and the projector disc. I’ll image it.”

I got the computer. Kenzie tinkered, plugging projector disc and phone into the laptop, while holding the phone out near the door in a box.

“I can’t get the teleporter working, I don’t think,” Lookout said. The bun-encasement at the back of her head opened up, making eye contact with me, while she hunched over her work. “But I know space and coordinates, and these things were made with coordinates built in.”

It took three tries before it worked- a three-dimensional map, incomplete, with some rooms and areas simply in blocked-out estimations of building dimensions, other areas hyperdetailed. The route we’d traveled was as clear as day.

“There.”

Everything about the three-dimensional replication was cast aside as the image zoomed in on the pharmacist’s destination point. The image was supplemented by more rectangles that had video feeds.

“This is pretty awful work,” Lookout said.

“It looks good,” I replied, but I was lost in my observations. The pharmacist was in the room I had to assume was the pharmacy. The black trash bag was emptied, pill bottles put on a shelf with other bottles. I pointed at her.

“Can we get video of the area when she would have been leaving the scene?” Capricorn asked.

“Maybe. I use the cell networks, and they’re hinky right now. Some of this is old or out of sync.”

“Is that accident or intention?” Capricorn asked. “The towers being down?”

“I don’t know,” Lookout replied, even though I suspected he hadn’t really been asking for her verdict.

What is the pharmacist doing, and how does it factor into Teacher’s agenda?

“Can you get eyes on security, while you’re at it?” I asked. “I’m curious who was watching the monitors when a woman with punk hair and a purple metal shirt waltzed through a door made of lightning.”

“On it.”

Natalie shifted her weight from foot to foot.

Capricorn checked his phone, which was gripped in one gloved hand. “Feeling the time limit.”

Another call from the guys?

“Working as fast as I can,” Lookout said.

There. It hitched and glitched here and there, but the image split into two rectangular screens. In one, the electrical door appeared. The pharmacist came through with the latter portion of a leap. In the other, we had a view of one of the security guards reach out and change the image on the screen away from the violently flickering image.

“We want to know who he is,” Capricorn said.

“Already on it.”

I got to watch the pharmacist get settled, torch the portal from her end of it, and then set to work, pulling things from the bag and organizing them in a painstaking way… then getting the baggie of orange- I presumed orange because the image wasn’t great enough quality to contrast the warm colors and it was close-powder.

That was the main attraction in our little theater here, enacted in a neutral location that put us closer to the portal. On the sidelines, Lookout’s system was pulling out schedules and images. We had one pharmacist and one security guard confirmed as Thralls – or whatever it was when they weren’t outright brainwashed.

It was like dominoes falling. Security guard confirmed compromised. Schedule came up, as did address. Then there were the images, from prison video, from online, and from traffic lights that recorded those who passed through intersections. On a map, routes he regularly traveled were highlighted.

From that guy, another guy, tracking destinations and more, the system clearly inferred other moles in the prison staff. As portraits lined up, they became brighter or darker as new information came to light.

“Victoria? Can I talk with you?” Natalie asked.

Right fucking now? The dominoes are falling. We’re getting a sense of what we’re fighting here.

“Can you give me a minute?” I asked.

“I’m kind of freaking out.”

“Okay. As soon as we make sure everyone is contributing. Tress, try to communicate to Precipice and Swansong that they should absolutely not take their medication of the day. We still don’t know what that woman is doing. Lookout, where are you at?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out this door. I might be able to open it, but it’s going to mean taking this stuff back to my workshop, where I was fiddling with the teleporter project. I can kludge them together and give us a way to move to where the woman with the purple shirt went.”

“How long?” Capricorn asked. Byron was concerned about the time.

“Four, five hours? Closer to four if I have someone helping.”

I looked at Capricorn. We couldn’t afford four or five hours.

“No. We’ll go with another tack. We do this backwards.”

“Backwards?” Sveta asked.

“Cryptid thinks Teacher’s plan is to get them to close off access to that world. If Goddess is baited into going in there and they close the gate behind her, or worse, catch her between realities.”

“Why do you-?” Natalie started. She stopped as Capricorn moved slightly. A nudge or small wave, easily missed.

For all that he’d talked about his brother, he did okay when it came to convincing others.

I went on, “If he closes off that reality, especially with another person at the helm, then he can raid it continually, gathering thralls at his leisure. So let’s get ahead of him, start from his win condition.”

“That sounds like a thing your mom would say,” Natalie murmured. Her earlier insistence on talking to me was forgotten. She had stars in her eyes as emotions that clearly mingled with the worried curiosity, the fixed stares, and the nervousness.

“It very much is,” I said, agreeing. “If they’re running with cash in hand, take that cash. At best, if we can do that, we force a draw. Teacher wants to lock off the area and loot it? We beat him to the punch and close it off first.”

I looked Lookout’s way as I finished saying that.

“Do you want me to rig that?” she asked.

“Can you? Use the data you have from that door, and figure out a way to scramble coordinates so they don’t let people in, or so they don’t let people out?”

“I can make it so they can’t leave,” Lookout said.

“Perfect,” I said, smiling. As an option, it fit with timeframes Byron had outlined, and it helped to sway an otherwise untenable situation to our favor.

It made a kind of sense that Lookout’s toolkit would point in that direction. It was easier to destroy or distort than it was to create. Here, in the midst of it all, when so many other things were tainted with doubts and small betrayals, it was good to know that we could potentially be the ones with the keys.

It made too much sense. I wasn’t supposed to be following my instincts like this. I had to stop myself, and look to Byron.

“Yes,” he said. “Sealing him in there or sealing him away will be very good plays, if timed right. For now, we should inform the other teams we were talking to, see if anyone can do something about the bombs that are strapped to our teammates’ ankles, and while we’re doing it, we should be very, very careful to keep the cells discrete.”

Keep them away from Goddess?

“What about the medication?” Sveta asked. “I think they give those out around mealtimes, and as dark as it is outside-”

“It’s only the evening now,” I finished. “Meals aren’t that far off.”

“Do we roll the dice?” Capricorn asked. “We have some sense of who is compromised. If we reach out to prison staff and get them to stall-”

It wasn’t so easy as that. Too risky.

I shook my head, and he didn’t press for it.

“We tap other sources for help, we see what they have to say, and we see if they’re game for this,” I suggested. “Bigger powers. Maybe ones that can disable the bomb threat.”

“The Wardens?” Natalie asked.

“Goddess,” Sveta and I spoke in near-sync, with a distracted Lookout a syllable behind.

Gleaming – 9.7

“I’m going to need fifty different explanations,” Natalie’s eyes were wide. “Goddess?”

“It’s complicated,” I said. “And it’s not really a question of the law, exactly. I-”

“I think Natalie should be heard,” Byron cut in, his voice firm.

Master-stranger. If she was untainted… did she qualify as the next person in the chain, should Byron be occupied? There was a possibility that we’d have to put him in a coma or something like it if we couldn’t get all of this handled by tonight. Did that mean Natalie would be taking point, somehow? What would that even look like?

“Natalie,” Sveta said. “We owe you a lot for looking after Kenzie.”

“Mm hmm,” Kenzie made an affirmative sound.

“But Victoria’s right. This is complicated. Before Victoria and Byron left to check on the Majors, Byron attacked her. We’re really only letting it slide because she has the strength to keep him in line, and I’m not that convinced it’s right to do that.”

“That’s not entirely accurate,” Byron said.

“Um,” Natalie said. “I can mediate, then. But I need more information.”

“No,” Sveta said.

“Yes,” I countered. It wasn’t easy to do, to go against every instinct and rational thought and put something forward.

Sveta turned, her expression hardening. Harder still to see that. My friend.

“We lose nothing by doing it,” I said.

“We lose time. Teacher is making his moves and we’re two steps behind. The woman on the screen right there is preparing drugs for reasons we don’t know. We can’t take time to catch someone up when they’re about to be distributed, and we definitely can’t fracture the team and let things go to pieces with infighting!”

“Kenzie’s work won’t be instantaneous. It’s worth bringing more trusted people in, giving them information, and letting them have a voice.”

“I don’t trust them!” Sveta retorted. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, I’m grateful for what you two do, Byron, Natalie, for what you three do, if I include you, Victoria. But I feel like conversations are happening in the background, like you guys talked a lot while I was stuck here, and I don’t like the direction things are going. It feels wrong.”

“Yeah,” I said. I glanced at Kenzie. She was behind Sveta, hugging one knee against her chest, the other dangling, a small smile on her face.

“I was trying to figure it out,” Sveta said. “And the only thing that makes sense to me is if Byron drugged you while you were dealing with him.”

“Drugs don’t work that way,” I said. “Kenzie would have video of him applying the drugs.”

“I would, I do.”

“Something in the water?” Sveta tried, almost plaintive. “His power has changed before, and with things this warped… it’s not impossible that it’s not pure water, now.”

“It’s a bit of a reach,” Kenzie said. “I think simpler drugs are more likely. I can check my video.”

“I would really like to see that video,” Natalie said.

“I can show you,” Kenzie said, spinning around.

“Careful,” I said.

Natalie stopped in her tracks. Sveta’s expression didn’t change an inch, but the tendrils I could see moved with more energy now. She seemed to notice that I’d noticed, and broke eye contact.

“We don’t know if it would work across recorded video.”

“The Lady in Blue has the ability to influence parahumans,” Byron said. “Natalie isn’t one.”

“That’s our line of thinking,” I said. “But I don’t think anyone in this room is going to say that they’re super happy with the way things have gone in the last couple of hours…”

“I’m not super happy, but I’m happy we’re hanging out and doing something together,” Kenzie said.

“…And it started because she surprised us with what she’s capable of. However major, minor, or insignificant the influence might be, let’s avoid future surprises. Capes keep tricks in their back pockets. Especially ones as effective and powerful as she is.”

“Noted,” Natalie said.

“If she could affect regular people, she would have,” Sveta said. “She would have a population under her thumb. From what we’ve heard reported about her and her world, that’s not the case. It’s something she has to struggle against. That’s our reality: people don’t like parahumans, even when the parahumans didn’t do anything to deserve that dislike. I think all of us here have seen that in some form.”

“Okay,” I said. “Very probable, but yes, while there are powers that discriminate to be parahuman only, there are rare cases where people with the potential to get powers can be included in that group.”

“If I could have triggered, I think I might have last night.” Natalie’s voice was quiet. She touched her shoulder. “I think I’m safe, but thank you, Victoria.”

I opened my mouth to say something about how triggers didn’t necessarily work that way- that the popular thinking was that the reason they were so hard to provoke was that the trigger event needed to match the power that the person was primed to get. That someone could have a trigger of abject loss and heartbreak and not get a power, only to get one a few days later because they were threatened with bodily harm, or because their agent was waiting for a trigger event involving fire.

But I was grasping at straws, clinging to the science and the chances of danger. Was the risk really that great, that Goddess’ power included those with potential, that Natalie had that potential but mercifully hadn’t realized it, and that Goddess’ influence would also work through a recorded video?

“What’s going on with you, Victoria?” Sveta asked. Her face showed something closer to pity or disappointment.

My eyes dropped to the ground. “I don’t like this.”

“I don’t like this either. I wish we could be on the same page about why we didn’t like this.”

I nodded.

“Sveta,” Byron said.

“Hey,” Sveta said, still in that small, sad voice, as she looked at him. “I don’t want you as an enemy either, Byron. I feel like I haven’t even gotten to know you.”

He pulled off his helmet, clasping it in front of his stomach with both hands. Droplets of moisture from the rain still beaded some of his cheekbone, nose, and chin, and he had a spot of redness around one eyelid that had white edges in its midst, like skin peeling from a slight burn.

“I’m not totally on board with this, but Victoria and Chris were right. There are things we can all agree on, and being careful is one. That Teacher is dangerous and dangerous to our teammates is another.”

Tension didn’t show in Sveta’s body, but it showed in the details that wriggled around the edges and gaps, at her prosthetic neck that her head was perched on, and around her wig, almost indistinguishable from the locks of hair. It showed in the lines of her face, in features I would have called Eastern European.

Byron seemed to take Sveta’s silence as reluctant agreement. “Kenzie, when you’re done with showing Natalie the video, can you talk us through what you’re doing? In the interest of being careful, I’d like to make sure we’re not making any missteps when it comes to this… what is it we’re doing, Victoria? Shutting the door so Teacher can’t?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“I’ll show you in a sec,” Kenzie said.

“Let’s make sure we have a good game plan,” he said. “And… Sveta, you and I stand at different sides on this, but we can balance each other out. We each justify where we’re coming from, that keeps us level.”

She remained silent.

“I get where you’re coming from,” he said. “Your past experiences-”

She shook her head.

“But that was heated, irrational, driven by anger and emotion.”

“Communication is better,” I added.

“Speaking of staying level, or of balance,” Sveta said the words slowly, almost dangerously, in a way that made me unsure if the words themselves were dangerous, or if she was implying threat. “Are you going to release Tristan?”

“No,” Byron said. “Not like this.”

Sveta pursed her lips.

“We took measures to ensure neither of us could go too far. Tristan isn’t a stupid guy, Sveta. Trust in that.”

“Let’s focus on helping Ashley and Rain,” I jumped in, before an argument could start.

“Okay!” Kenzie said, clapping her hands together. “My time to shine.”

Sveta walked over, her gait less even than usual, before stiffly placing a hand on Kenzie’s shoulder.

“So, based on what my scanner is picking up -I built one into my phone’s camera to read any computer’s data on the sly- these gates cross dimensions, and they have to see where they’re going. That’s where I come in. Because machines see with… anyone?”

“Cameras,” Byron said. His eyes weren’t on Kenzie, but on the video footage of the fight. Natalie crouched by the table, watching. She glanced at me over one shoulder.

“Cameras! Well, there are other ways for machines to see, and this is closer to feeling than to seeing, but I won’t get bogged down. It’s close enough, and it’s not that different from what I was experimenting with, when I was making a camera that might see Byron when Tristan is out, or vice-versus.”

“Versa.”

“Versa! Yes. So! A couple of ways I can do this. To use an analogy, I could take the camera’s flash and crank it to always-on. Other gates trying to look in would see an overexposed image and they wouldn’t have a clear picture.”

“Would the prison notice?” I asked.

“Flickering cameras and lights, maybe. Hair standing on end if you’re in the right place for long enough.”

“And would it be traceable to the source? To us?”

“After a little while. But Goddess only needs a little while to do her thing, right? So we could turn ours off just long enough to let her in and let her out, while not letting the other ones start up. That would leave the exit portal intact, which would be best for her.”

“I don’t like that it could draw attention. What other options are there?”

“Um. The way these gates work, they warm up and map out the surrounding area. It’s a slow boil and it takes time, and I think they use multiple cameras to get a clearer picture. Then they flash, pulsing, to make sure there isn’t anything new in the area, like a person walking through the space at that time. Because that would skew the signal, I think. That part of it is a kind of mapping program, but it’s instantaneous or spontaneous.”

“Can this camera be one of the multiple cameras?” I asked. “Giving the other ones wrong info?”

“It could. I think they could decipher that this one is the culprit and block it out, especially if they’re already warmed up with their mapping done. And you asked about tracing the signal – I think that would be a pretty big red alert for them, with a huge ‘we are here’ sign above us.”

“That’s a no, then.”

“It’s good that you’re thinking along those lines, though!” Kenzie said, like an instructor applauding her student for trying. “And I don’t blame you for not thinking of what I’m thinking of, because the answer is more abstract and it’s harder to make an analogy for. The best analogy I can think of is… our camera flash is white light and white light is centered, but if we tint the light from one camera’s flash blue and green, which is up, then any other cameras are going to adjust more red because the image is skewed, which slants everything down.”

“What does that mean?” Sveta asked.

“It means everything looks right for them until they try to make their electro-gate, it goes zap, and it tries to put a gate down, only it puts it in the ground. And it’s subtle enough it won’t make people’s hair stand up or make cameras flicker.”

“And the regular portal that lets them walk in?” I asked.

“Well, that’s sort of the thing. Because it’s not light, it’s dimensions, so it would still skew with the signal and block it off. So that might tip people off if they try to use it.”

“Do they?” I asked.

“Um. Not often. From surveillance, it’s usually when work ends or when new prisoners come in, and nobody’s acting like they’re bringing anyone in. No prep, no prepared apartments. I think we’re clear.”

“Surprises happen,” I murmured.

Kenzie nodded, very enthusiastically.

“That’s good, though. It’s a shame we can’t keep the front door open just to make sure that everything doesn’t go to hell the moment one employee tries to leave because they have an upset stomach, then close it later, if we have to.”

“Maybe we could?” Kenzie asked. She made a bit of a face, scrunching everything up.

“You don’t sound sure,” Byron said.

“If I situated our blue-green light right, maybe we could put it far enough away that the, um, the front door wouldn’t close. Except I’m making an educated guess at that point.”

“And if we need to close the front door, we take the blue-green dimensional light this gate is making and move it closer?”

“Turn it off, cool down for a few minutes, then turn it back on, situated closer. Yeah.”

“Are those few minutes long enough for them to do something?”

She scrunched up her face again, shrugging slightly.

“We should contact Goddess,” Sveta said. “Let her know what we’re doing.”

“And talk to the other teams?” I suggested. “The Major Malfunctions wanted to know, and we could use help.”

“Chris wanted to keep things discrete,” Byron said. “Each group as a cell. We share info and maintain contact in a limited way.”

“She’s our network hub, she can lead,” Kenzie said.

“We don’t have a way of getting in touch with her.”

“We have a way of getting in touch with Chris, and Chris is with her,” Sveta said.

“I’ll call him!” Kenzie said.

“Don’t- just…” Byron started. He trailed off, looking to me for help.

I wasn’t sure what to give him. I was aware of Sveta’s stare.

“…I’m going to step outside,” he said.

“Can I talk to you? I’d really appreciate your perspective on things,” Natalie said.

Sveta’s eyes bored into me.

But just as he couldn’t really argue for a reason to not call Goddess, we couldn’t give a reason for him not to step outside. Not without fights breaking out, one way or another.

The phone rang. Natalie hurried to get her coat on, flipping up her hood, before following Byron outside.

“Who is this?”a strange voice asked, voice amplified by the speakers.

“It’s Breakthrough,” Kenzie said. “Is Chris there?”

“He is,” the voice came through. It was male. “He’s not human right now. He gave me the phone.”

“Show us?” Kenzie asked.

“I’ll take a video?”

“Please.”

There was a pause. Then Kenzie brought up a video on the wall. It was an image taken from the ground, looking up. A tall figure, feathered, looked like a vulture might look if it had been rolled over with a truck. The neck twisted around and bent backward, the head lolling back and hanging with curved beak extending down, one yellow eye staring. Along the inside of arms, black eyes that were nearly invisible in the black and gray plumage blinked. It moved its head, raising one arm with taloned fingers at the end, and gestured in the affirmative, blinking slowly.

“He’s scratching something on the ground. He… didn’t give you his number?”

Kenzie snorted. “We’re in the middle of something big. We wanted to talk strategy. Can you get her on the line?”

“She’s close. Let me get her, and I’ll put you guys on speaker.”

There was a moment’s pause, the only sounds in the room being the sound of the rain outside, a torrent of water flowing from a gutter that was ajar, and the noises on the other side. As wrong as everything felt, my little betrayals of Sveta, my complicating things when they could be so simple, the idea of having Goddess decide on a course of action was awfully tempting.

I could hear the noise of Goddess arriving, with a rush of air, a rustling of the phone.

“Breakthrough.”

“We were raided by Teacher when we checked on one of his pawns. She’s the prison pharmacist, and she has laced drugs or something like it. She made it back to the prison.”

“Disappointing. What happened?”

“It was what you described. A whole army. Not exactly marksmen, and not quite as coordinated as you described, but… it was a lot, very suddenly, and we had rookies to protect. We did come away with some stuff we can use and a lot of thoughts.”

In the background, Natalie stepped back inside.

“There weren’t marksmen or coordinated strikes because his focus was and is on me. Even now, those assholes move against us. I’ve tapped other resources. What thoughts or things that we can use do you have?”

“Antares thinks we should lock off the prison,” Kenzie volunteered.

“Why?”

“Pre-emptively,” I answered Goddess. “If we do it, then teacher can’t, and the people running the prison might not try to do it themselves. Why try to seal the door shut if it’s already sealed?”

“And we could still get you in,” Kenzie said, all cheer and enthusiasm.

“This is good.”

I glanced back at Natalie. She had a very serious look on her face.

“It goes a step further,” I said. “Teacher’s a tricky guy because of his criminal history. He went from being a near complete unknown to being a top-tier player to getting arrested. It means that his records and the records I had in my files went from barren to high-tier confidential.”

“You looked at his files?”

“After he first came up in relation to Earth Cheit. There wasn’t much. But,” I stressed the word ‘but’. “There was some stuff on his thralls. Based on what we’re seeing and what the PRT noted about them just in case they had to worry about infiltration in their own ranks, I think we can come up with strategies.”

“This is good. Explain for me.”

“His degree of control comes from his subjects having less volition. Less ability to make their own decisions, react quickly, problem solve. I was reminded when I saw some of them outside the pharmacist’s house. They were practically zombies…”

⊙

Within the prison, a red-haired correctional officer with a receding hairline sat with his share of monitors in view. The monitors showed several camera feeds each.

“Sending low-risk inmates to dinner in fifteen,” a man at the center of the room said. “Kitchens will have meals going out to high-risk buildings in twenty-five, once the cafeteria doors are shut. Start-shift ready?”

“Lagging in change.”

“Tell them to get a move on. I want more bodies on the ground. Exit-shift?”

“They’re at posts.”

“Meds?”

“Coming out of the pharmacy. Betty and her escort. They’ll make it to the caf and back with time to spare.”

“Red, remind us of any incidents today.”

“Johnny in building C, room four ate his own hands for bio-material. He’s locked up and in quarantine. Supposed low-risk inmate Screwdriver attacked her roommate this morning. Screwdriver is off-site and staying that way for the day, her roommate Gosling is recovering from surgery. Damsel One and Damsel Two are being quiet- mostly keeping to the internet. No sign of agitation, but we’re watching closely after a Damsel Three allegedly appeared on television twenty-four hours ago.”

“If only we got television here,” one correctional officer said.

“If you did, you wouldn’t watch the screens,” the superior said. “Stay the course, people. I want tonight to be quiet.”

As the superior walked around the room, checking on things, including screens with low-res images of various icons moving across a map, the officer with the receding hairline saw words on his screen.

Radio silence from here on out. Avoid phones.
Phones and computers are monitored.
-Teacher

He looked around, making sure the coast was clear.

Communicate all points to others. Nod if understood.

The officer looked over his shoulder at the camera. He nodded.

Bomb anklets must be deactivated ASAP.
Prisoner population must be preserved.

He glanced back, then nodded slightly once again.

The screen went clear.

My heart pounded in my chest as I watched him lean over to the correctional officer next to him, whispering in her ear.

Goddess had said that her danger sense wasn’t flaring from this, and it was apparently nuanced enough to tell her if this was a horribly bad idea. We were good to go, at least in the initial stages of this juncture.

“…gotta run to the washroom,” the officer said.

“Now?” the supervisor asked. “Thirteen minutes until we serve them their third square.”

“I won’t be long.”

“Aaron, take the console from Nick.”

Someone else took over. Our officer strode from the room, using his keycard to get through the door and to the hallway.

Teacher’s influence turned them more and more into zombies as he asserted more control, but there was no fine mind control. They weren’t puppets, and they had to be told what to do.

The lack of volition and the weaker problem solving meant they were more gullible.

“Should I message someone else?” Kenzie asked.

“Let’s not test our luck,” I murmured.

The guard headed straight to a guard who was at one T-shaped intersection of hallways. He leaned close to say something. On Kenzie’s projected image, lines traced his lips and mouth movements. A line of gibberish appeared, then was deleted.

“Couldn’t read his lips. The program might work after a few tries with the right camera angles,” Kenzie said.

“Three factions have the power to win, lose, or decide the course of this game,” I said, to Sveta. “Us, Teacher, and the prison. There are others- the prisoners notably among them.”

“They can’t win or lose. They’re just-”

“Part of this. Except for a select few, like Precipice, Swansong, Monokeros, and Crystalclear.”

“Crystalclear is onboard,” Byron said. he was at his laptop, hunched over it. “Foresight just emailed me. They’re ready when we are.”

“And the teams we put on people related to the prison and around the prison are on standby,” I said. Kenzie’s arm pointed up and waved around, less focused on the specific target than it was indicating a series of overlapping maps. The teams were represented by icons. All of the ones who’d been planted in nearby areas of the Megalopolis were now stationed within a few blocks of the first of the two portals.

We’d identified our correctional officer because he knew the pharmacist well enough to be one of the first people she’d communicated with once through the portal. Now, through him and the course he traveled, with information backed up from our series of ‘dominoes’, people we’d already noted as likely Teacher-compromised, because of their contact with those confirmed as compromised, we were able to confirm our suspicions on most counts. Each person was marked with a ‘T’ in a silvery-blue circle over their heads.

“Phones?” I asked.

“Still blocked. Only a few people have noticed but they’re treating it like it’s an ordinary thing,” Kenzie said. “None of them are our targets.”

Byron fidgeted. Natalie was beside him, and she looked even more nervous.

I was nervous, and I couldn’t even imagine how they felt.

Unspoken in this equation was Goddess. We were working on the Teacher issue, and we were all on the same page with it. When Goddess stepped in…

I wasn’t even sure.

“Things are going to get messy soon,” Kenzie said.

My head turned.

On the screen, it was Ashley on one side, and Rain on the other. She was telling them, so they could be ready.

“We’ll do what little we can to keep the peace,” Rain said.

“Or if it comes to it, we take out the people who insist on taking advantage of any lack of peace,” Ashley said.

The officer was walking briskly toward a stairwell, taking them two at a time on his way up to the top floor of the admin building.

“Is Foresight ready?”

“I think so,” Byron said.

The prison had administration like any business did, though the ranks sounded like military ones, they were closer to being a business in reality. The warden was like the C.E.O., the deputy warden like the vice president, and in this case, the assistant warden was their equivalent to their chief financial officer, with some added responsibilities.

Our red-haired correctional officer with the receding hairline and the worry lines across his forehead walked past the assistant warden’s office, where the man within was doing paperwork, glancing up for only a moment. He went straight to the deputy warden’s office, knocking on her open door.

Stop there, come on. Come on.

He held a finger to his mouth, then indicated the office next door. Not the office of the assistant warden, but of the warden himself.

My heart sank a bit at that. It couldn’t be easy.

The heavyset deputy and officer both headed into the warden’s office.

The officer said something we couldn’t make out, his face not at an angle where the camera could see his lips.

“That makes no sense at all,” the warden said. “You left your post for this?”

“I’m doing as instructed.”

“Are you sure you saw this? Your eyes or imagination weren’t playing tricks on you?”

“No.”

“I’m letting Foresight know now,” Byron whispered, so as not to hamper our eavesdropping too much. I gave him a nod of confirmation.

“What did it say, explicitly?”

“To not trust phones, to make sure the bombs were disabled.”

“We could abort,” the deputy murmured the words to the warden. The camera did catch her lips, providing sharp text to clarify the muddy ‘could’ and ‘abort’, which the crummy microphone on the security camera didn’t pick up.

“The anklets?”

“Hold off,” the warden said.

Okay, not the biggest surprise in the world. Both warden and deputy warden were Teacher’s. Being Teacher’s, they were invested in what he was invested in. And Teacher, as far as we could figure, had every interest in using Cheit, his thralls, and his manipulation of the prison to capture Goddess and turn the entire prison into a barrel of fish he could then repeatedly shoot. A large number of high-priority targets with powers, with nobody able to interrupt or gainsay him.

There were situations where the ankle bombs factored in, ones where they eliminated target individuals or tried to get control of a failing situation with threats, but it made next to no sense for them to simply wipe prisoners out en masse, even now that things were sliding into chaos. I’d observed that there were three critical teams here. Two of them didn’t want to see prisoners blow up – Teacher’s and ours.

As for the third, on another camera, the assistant warden was picking up his phone. Foresight was on the other end, and they would be explaining their situation. They had two people in the prison. If our alliance with them counted, they had four total. Hopefully they would be convincing, because as the third person in the hierarchy of the prison, the assistant warden was number three- a man with a nice suit and tie, tousled hair, and eyelashes and eyebrows so thin that it looked like he had none at all.

Foresight would be outlining the situation and explaining priorities to him.

And Breakthrough would be dealing with the leaders of the thralls.

“This isn’t right,” the head warden said. He turned to his computer, circling the desk to get to it.

Kenzie hit a key.

Nothing happened.

She smashed the keyboard with her fist.

Again, nothing happened.

“Umm.”

The lights went out in the building. After a moment’s delay, red lights in the ceiling came on.

“Time delay,” Kenzie said. “He didn’t make it past the login screen. We’re clear.”

In his office, the assistant warden was on the phone. Going by the script, Foresight should be telling him to pretend like the phone wasn’t working. In the tension of the moment, he took it a step too far, banging the phone against his desk. Everyone in the room winced.

On the cameras, a world of prison administration under stark red emergency lighting, we could see the deputy, head warden, and the correctional officer all leaving. The officer broke from the group to check on the assistant warden, who was in his office, phone on his desk.

A shake of the head and of the phone confirmed suspicions.

“Stay, Toby,” the head warden instructed, leaning past the officer. “Watch the office and be ready if we get power again.”

Toby the assistant warden hesitated. Was he weighing his trust for Foresight against his trust for coworkers?

He stayed. The moment his two seniors were gone with the officer, he had the phone to his ear, listening.

“If they get near a computer, black them out,” I said. Needlessly, we’d already established the plan. It made me feel better to spell it out.

“On it.”

It was a situation defined by chaos, and we had some modicum of control. Teacher had an army at his disposal, it seemed, but that army had been paid for with his power, and that power had its price.

He would make his play, but we had our own. It was a question of keeping an eye out and timing everything right. I’d thought of Teacher like a tinker, his human resources simply parts of a broader system he’d designed. Tinkers were most dangerous when they could anticipate their threats, and they were least dangerous when surprised.

We would strive to surprise.

“Assistant warden’s cleared by Foresight. We can tell him everything?” Byron asked.

I nodded.

“So far so good,” Sveta whispered.

I didn’t want to jinx it by agreeing, but the two of us were on shaky ground.

“Yeah,” I responded. “Except-”

“Except?” Byron asked.

Goddess. She hadn’t made her move. There was a point she was supposed to enter the prison and take her prisoners. It was a big reason for why Byron, Natalie and I were so tense.

The moment that happened, everything else was up in the air.

My hope was that by having Goddess there, we could seal her in and scramble the signal. We had people on the inside we could reach out to, but my real hope was that her power would be of the wide-reaching sort that didn’t reach through dimensions. If we could cut off the flow and close the doors… maybe this alleged influence would slip away. Breakthrough would be free.

Dinner was being canceled relatively quietly. Relatively because the prisoners were complaining, balking. They wanted their grub. But Foresight had the assistant warden in their corner, and he’d made the calls necessary.

“Computer screens at one end of the prison are flickering,” Kenzie reported. She hit buttons. The super-low-res copies of the security screens in question were blown up large on one wall. They showed what had to be at least third-hand video feeds. Computer screens caught on one security camera above them, viewed through another daisy chain of security apparatuses, and then displayed on our wall.

Sure enough, one computer monitor blacked out, fritzed, and then went normal. A moment later, an entire row flickered, one by one, left to right.

“He’s sending his army in. They know something’s wrong,” Kenzie remarked.

“We don’t have eyes on them?”

She shook her head. “I think… they’re out on the outskirts of the prison.”

“Alright,” I said.

We didn’t have Goddess in our net. As wrong as that felt…

I glanced over at Byron. He met my eyes.

“Shut the door,” I said. “He’s got just enough of an army in there to lose all plausible deniability.”

“Shutting the door, blue-green tint. We’ll see how fast his hornet’s nest of underlings figure out what we did.”

Door shut. Ankle-bombs disabled for now and with nobody really in a position to want to use them, provided things stayed peaceful. Teacher’s forces were caught with their pants down and no communication or way back to their leadership. Hero teams were on the periphery, with eyes on the suspicious, primed to join in if they needed to quell riots.

This didn’t feel over.

The door opened, and my first thought was Cryptid. Our messenger.

It wasn’t him. Everyone in the room stood up a little straighter. Natalie backed up a step.

Goddess was as dry as a bone as she stepped into our headquarters. Amy was a step behind her, looking less confident than I’d seen her yet, before or after everything.

“I’ve been told it’s done. Everything’s ready for my arrival?”

“Yeah,” Byron said. “I guess it is.”

“You’ll all come to the prison, then,” she said. “You. You have no powers?”

“N-no,” Natalie stuttered.

“You’ll come as well. Witness.”

“But-”

“It’s not a fucking request. Don’t try my patience.”

“Okay,” Natalie said, not sounding happy about it.

“Why are we going?” I asked. I met Amy’s eyes. She looked away.

“Because I was told most of you were there to talk to me, and most isn’t good enough. You’ll all stay with me until I’m sure I don’t need to be concerned about any of you.”

“I don’t think you need to worry anymore,” Byron said. He sighed.

He switched to Tristan, without a second thought.

I could see Tristan’s expression change as he realized he was free. It started somewhere in the neighborhood of anger, and it became something closer to fury.

It froze and became momentary confusion as Goddess set her hand on his shoulder. Coming back to reality.

“Save that anger for our enemies,” she said. “We have plenty of them waiting for us.”

There was no argument.

Gleaming – Interlude 9.x

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Tristan asked. “What the hell?”

Byron stared his brother in the eyes, incredulous. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Did you take drugs or something? You’re all aggro, not making any sense.”

“You’re not fucking listening!”

Tristan made a face, shaking his head a little. “Then I guess we’re not going to get anywhere, huh? I’ve got stuff to do that isn’t being yelled at for random shit.”

He headed for the door. Byron stepped into his way, grabbing for his brother’s shirt-collar. Tristan’s attempt to shove the hand aside produced a small ripping sound.

“My shirt! Let go!”

“Sucks to lose stuff you care about, doesn’t it?” Byron asked.

“Oh fuck you, you didn’t lose anything. Now let go. If you want to bitch and shout about stuff, the parents will be home soon, you can share your feelings while we eat and they can tell you that you’re making no fucking sense!”

Tristan’s attempt to push Byron aside and leave didn’t get him anywhere, except to risk tearing his shirt further. He grabbed Byron’s wrist, hard.

“Tried that. They take your side.”

“Because I’m right!”

“You’re not right!” Byron raised his voice, which went a note too high. There were tears in his eyes.

Tristan screwed his face up in disgust. “Come on, By. Name one person we know who would look at what you’re doing right now and say ‘hey man, cool. Good for you for handling this this way.”

“That’s the whole fucking issue!” Byron jerked his hand, tearing the shirt on purpose this time. Tristan grabbed him with his other hand, fingers digging into Byron’s shoulder and wrist, and shoved him against the door.

Through grit teeth and pants of breath, Byron growled the words. “Do you know how hard it is to make friends? To get people who have my back?”

“It’s not hard at all! And that’s the furthest thing from the issue!”

“It’s the issue!” Byron shouted the words into his brother’s face. “It’s what I’m trying to get into that thick skull of yours! Ever since sixth grade, I’ll make the effort to make friends and then you’ll show up to a party or even a place where we’re sitting around and talking and you’re in, you’re part of the group! It’s only easy for you to make friends because you take mine!”

“It’s not a transaction, you dipshit! Just because they’re my friends doesn’t mean they’re not yours!”

“It does! It always fuck-” Byron pulled his hand to the side, ripping the shirt more. He stuck his other elbow into Tristan’s shoulder, partially shrugging free of the hand that gripped him. What followed was flurry of him wrestling for a grip and striking out in half-push, half-punch hits, and Tristan doing much the same. Tristan prevailed, just a bit bigger, a bit stronger. Byron found his breath. “It always fucking did, Tristan! You join my groups of friends and then you make fun of me!”

“Reality check,” Tristan, his face inches from Byron’s, breath hot against Byron’s face. “Ninth grade, little brother. That’s what people do. Dad and our uncles rib each other.”

“Rib!” Byron shouted. “Not fucking destroying each other!”

His voice cracked at ‘destroying’. He hated that.

“Destroy?” Tristan asked. He started to laugh, but he didn’t even get a sound out before Byron pulled his fist free. Byron bucked, trying to dislodge his brother, and brought a knee up to hit him in the side. When held back, he scratched- anything to hurt, to convey what words couldn’t. Tristan winced. “Fuck, that hurt! Stop!”

Byron panted. “If there’s a new thing in clothes, you beat me to it.”

“That’s not destroying you, you shit. That’s me reading the fucking magazines and paying attention!”

“If I beat you to the punch, wear my hair a way that looks good, you do the same and say I copied you! I can’t say things without you saying I’m copying! I can’t talk about a movie I watched or say a slang word without having to wonder if you’re going to use it to get a laugh, or if people will do the pecking order inside joke shit and say you were there first, you beat me to it! They say it because you keep hammering it in!”

“I’ve been trying to make a point! You need to walk your own path!”

“You’re the fucking parasite! You’re the one who follows me! You’re the one who’s walking on my path and calling me the copycat! You’ve been doing it for years and there’s nothing left for me! That’s what’s destroying me!”

He pulled his wrist free and punched Tristan in the side. Tristan grabbed his hand.

“Having nothing I can choose to do with my hair or clothes without you or someone in the group using it as ammo!”

He punched, and Tristan deflected, shoving his arm off-target.

“Every time I say something, you have to edge your way in, say something better or louder or cut me down, every time!”

None of the hits seemed to be really making any impact. None of this did.

“Not being able to sit down with my friends, because you’re there and I know you’ll all joke about me, and they never did it before you entered the picture!”

“It’s called getting closer to people! You figure each other out and you know where the lines are and you prod them!”

“You break my lines! You kick them down and say things and they make fun of me for weeks! They’ve been calling me ‘little brother’ for a year!” Fueled with adrenaline, Byron punched out. Even with Tristan holding his arm, he was able to clip his chin. “And then you go out with Katie!?”

“That? That’s what this is about? It was going together to the stupidest fucking movie! it was one thing! It didn’t matter!”

“It mattered to me! I’m trying to convey to you that it matters and it doesn’t get through if I say it, hit you, or scream it!” Byron’s voice was reaching a fever pitch. “I liked her and now she’s your best friend! Your beard!”

Tristan’s expression changed. His voice was as cold as Byron’s was hot. With a surge of strength, he pushed Byron’s arms down. “We’re going there? You’re going to scream it so our parents might hear it if they come in through the door?”

“They know! Everyone fucking knows because you’re really fucking bad at hiding it! It’s why they treat you with kid gloves and give you the extra attention while you ‘figure yourself out’! Katie’s more excited to have you as a gay best friend like in the movies, than she is about having me as an anything! Even when you’re not there it’s about you, because they talk about how brave you are because you’re out to people, and then they joke I’m weak, I’m lame because they think I don’t have the guts. I’m not fucking gay! I’m not weak! It’s fucking ridiculous that I get the flack!”

Byron started to win the hand-to-hand struggle once again. Tristan was stronger, but in the sheer emotion that Byron brought to bear, he forced his way forward, arms straining. He got his leg forward and pressed it against the side of Tristan’s knee, so Tristan couldn’t stay standing. Inch by inch, he pushed back and pushed Tristan down.

“You’re a fucking- fucking gay basher, then?” Tristan’s voice was strained.

“Fuck you! Fuck you to hell, Trist! Fuck you, no!” Byron shouted, his voice a snarl. “You don’t get to play that card when I have backed you up! I have gotten in fights for you because they kept saying shit! Gaylord, gaylord, gaylord, back in seventh and eighth! Gaylord, gaylord fucking faggot gaylord!’

“Shut up!”

“Sucks to hear, doesn’t it!? But you know I was shutting them up, back then! I took the harder path so you’d have it easier and it doesn’t matter! You don’t care! It never counted for anything and you even used it against me! You were the one who called me a pussy after I told them to shut it on the ‘sissy’ shit! You just take! You have to win, you make this a competition! Except when I win, if you can call it that, I don’t get anything except normal, and when I lose I lose people that I care about!”

He pushed Tristan onto his back, and in the moment Tristan put his hand back to push himself to a standing position, Byron moved forward, pinning the arm under one knee.

Both of his free hands fought with Tristan’s free one. He hit and deflected.

“I. Lose! Katie laughs at me! Rob and Jem call me weak! Mama and papa talk to you more than they talk to me!”

“Stop!”

“You first! Back the fuck off! Stop taking!”

“I’m not taking!”

“You are! Why can’t you listen? Stop talking and listen to me for the first time in your shallow, selfish life!”

“It’s not on purpose, you moron! It’s life! You’re quiet, I’m loud! You’re lazy, I’m actually out there talking to people! So they listen to me more! Nature and school fucking politics and fucking logic favor those who do and say stuff! Now stop fucking hitting me or I’m going to hit you back!”

“I’m saying give me a chance,” Byron said. The volume was going out of his voice as the emotion shifted to something else. “You don’t have to speak up, you don’t have to butt in!”

“Give yourself a chance!”

“Shut up and listen!” Byron couldn’t get anywhere with the arm, but Tristan was lifting up his head. With a shove, Tristan’s head cracked against the floor in the basement. Seizing the opportunity, Byron gripped his brother around the throat, still kneeling on one of his arms.

Tristan’s reply was choked, a non-word. His one free hand groped, while Byron hunched over, denying him anything he could get much of a grip on.

“Shut up for one fucking minute,” Byron said, calmer than he’d been, though his voice was warped by the effort.

Tristan made a longer, strained sound, trying to get a word out and failing.

“You’re not even capable of shutting up. Learn to step down. Learn to give some ground, any ground, okay? Please.”

Fumbling to break Byron’s grip, Tristan was scratching now, groping for weak points. He wasn’t putting up half the fight he had been. He hadn’t even been choked for that long.

“All I want is my own space. Give me room to figure shit out,” Byron said. “I’m not asking for the world here.”

Tristan’s hand fell to his side.

“Just… nod, okay? Nod, agree. Or tap out, show me you can tap out.”

Tristan moved his arm. Byron felt a piercing pain.

He’d been stabbed.

What followed was nonverbal, almost animal. His grip tightened, because there was no other way this would end in his favor, because he was worried that Tristan would keep stabbing with whatever he’d just stabbed him with.

An impulse or thought ran through the background of it, he knew it was unrealistic on a fundamental level, but he couldn’t afford to lose this last one time. He’d already been beaten down so much, people he’d once liked had turned ugly, turned on him. ‘Ribbing him’.

If he lost here, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t break.

Tristan’s stabs, more aimless, caught on the underside of his arm. A worse cut than before, but it didn’t seem that much worse.

The blood, though. What followed was a ridiculous, outright scary amount for the size and depth of the cut.

In desperation, he maintained his grip as best he could, fingers digging into flesh. Tristan flailed, a flash of gold and black, a sharp point dragging against and puncturing skin.

He felt his own consciousness slip, and it wasn’t because of the blood loss.

He saw silhouettes, paired. Human, with something to them that he recognized on a fundamental level, or because the vibrations in the background of it all spoke to him. Warrior and scholar.

Another pair of silhouettes. Not human. Not a warrior and a scholar, but a creator and a destroyer.

Another pair…

⊙

He opened his eyes. They widened a bit further as he saw the amount of blood soaked into the carpet.

Mama and Papa were going to be pissed.

He coughed, and in that small action, everything felt wrong.

He coughed again, and when his hand came to his mouth, it wasn’t because he wanted it to.

His lips moved and pronounced a single hoarse word. “Fucker.”

His vision swayed. His limbs moved. He found a standing position, before coughing again.

He hadn’t bid any of these actions to happen. He was… an inside observer, viewing through eyes, feeling sensations, hearing the hum of the fan upstairs. He could smell the blood.

He felt cold horror of an almost alien sort as he began to absorb what this might be. The horror didn’t extend to gut, to the dilation of eyes, to breathing. The coldness of the emotion was at stark odds with the heated, breathless “Fucker!” that passed through his lips.

Through Tristan’s lips. The horror welled.

Byron watched as the eyes, not his, moved across the room. Looking for- for him. Searching for some sign. They moved to the blood puddle, then scanned the surroundings, tracing a line up the stairs, zig-zagging in a search for a trail of blood.

Every movement of the eye felt like someone was taking his eyes, wresting them to one point of focus, then to another. Muscles fired into action, felt alien around the edges because the configuration was right, but the scale and pattern was that one percent to ten percent different. The muscles forced the body into movement, into balancing to stay upright.

There were more coughs as Tristan rubbed his throat. He made his way up the stairs, into the kitchen, then wandered through the house, hands running through hair, around the neck, fidgeting.

Byron wanted to struggle, to push out, to find a way free. There was nothing. He could feel, he could think, and he could sense what Tristan sensed. There was nothing beyond that.

Having finished searching the house, checking the small bedroom for Byron, Tristan made his way back to the kitchen. He took a seat at the kitchen table, and buried his face in his hands, coughing once or twice. His throat hurt, and Byron felt the hurt.

With every second that passed, not even able to control the focus of his vision or sharpen his awareness on any point within the eye’s field of vision, Byron felt his thoughts growing more confused. There was nothing here, only void, and everything in thought and emotion bled out aimlessly into that void, with no perspective, no grounding, no action he could take.

Please no, he thought. Whatever this is. Please.

Emotions welled, but without a heartbeat, a stomach, muscles, and breathing to give substance, they were like blots of watercolor, bleeding out and into one another.

“Tristan?” Papa asked. He put down his bike helmet, stepping into the kitchen. He was sweaty from his ride back from work. The biking was because he was trying to lose weight, but he was only part of the way there- everything about him from mustache to build were heavy and thick. Heavy eyebrows furrowed in concern. “What happened?”

Tristan stared off into space.

“Tristan?” Papa asked. He seemed to see something that alarmed, because he turned toward the front hall. “Anita! Come fast!”

Mama came into the kitchen, still wearing her own biking outfit, her long hair damp near the scalp. It was Tristan’s eyes, not Byron’s, that searched out the little details that made her her- the shock of white hair by one temple, the twin moles that Tristan had called ‘vampire bites’ as a child. Byron had felt bad about that, even being the observer to his brother as Tristan unwittingly evoked a look of faint hurt on their mama’s face.

Help, Byron thought, as they turned their attention to his brother. Please help me. This is hell. It’s already hell.

“Byron flipped out on me,” Tristan said. He coughed, forced the cough, then touched his throat. “He was upset because I took Katie to the movies.”

That wasn’t it.

“I told you not to,” Mama said, her voice soft.

“He strangled me. Scratched me. Punched me,” Tristan searched his arm, pulled back his t-shirt sleeve with one hand to see where Byron had hit his shoulder.

“That’s too far. That’s too far and then some,” Papa replied. “We’ll talk with him. Where is he?”

Please help. Please notice that something’s wrong.

“Um,” Tristan said, sounding very disconnected. He wasn’t looking anywhere in particular. To an outside observer, it might have looked like a thousand-yard stare. “He stormed out, I think. I looked through the house.”

“Look at me, Tristan,” Papa said.

Tristan did.

See me in here. Isn’t that how it works in the movies?

Tristan’s eyes watered. “Something’s fucked up. A lot of things are fucked up. I’ve been sitting here trying to process, but my thoughts are sparks and I can’t think straight. When I can think straight, I’m worried I have brain damage because it’s really intense.”

“Tristan-”

Tristan stumbled through, not stopping. “And I’m worried he’s going to the cops or something-”

“Cops?”

“Because I got scared when he was strangling me and I couldn’t even hear anything except the ringing in my ears. I stabbed him with the pen I had in my pocket to try and make him let go, and he was so angry. So angry.”

Tristan dropped his eyes. The thousand-yard stare again.

“Tristan.” Papa took Tristan by the shoulders.

Tristan made eye contact again.

“He wasn’t making any sense,” Tristan said.

I made sense, you weren’t hearing it.

Their mama rubbed Tristan’s shoulders. Their papa gave him a kiss on the top of the head. Byron felt it all and he didn’t feel better in the slightest.

“We’ll get this figured out, mi hijo,” Papa said.

Please help.

“I don’t know,” Tristan said. “I feel like something broke inside of me. I can’t think straight- I think in…”

The orange-red light flared between him and Papa. A will-o-the-wisp from a video game, The diffuse light of a tinted lightbulb without the glass to encase it, condensed into a ball a couple of inches across.

“…sparks and lines.”

“Dios mio,” Papa said. He stepped away. Mama’s hands dropped from Tristan’s back. The lights traced thin lines through the air, just as intense as the lights were at their center, but without the diffuse glow around them.

Byron might have been the least surprised of all of them. Deep down, he’d realized something like this had happened.

Tristan seemed to belatedly realize what was happening. He pulled away, and the lights and the lines drew together into something solid – a tangle of metal that had been twisted and bent, with razor-thin strips twisting and branching up and out. It crashed into the kitchen floor, and Tristan nearly fell from the stool in his haste to move away.

In the retreat, Tristan receded. Byron felt the void he was in fill up, pushing him out-

Byron emerged, and the metal growth exploded into a spray of steam with no heat to it, only a sharp chemical smell. His parents backed away to the far end of the kitchen.

Byron gasped, much as if he’d surfaced after being held underwater for a very long time. He found his breath, and then he screamed. Neither parent could do much more than stare.

“My boys,” Papa said, his eyes wide, his voice filled with heartbreak. “What have you done to yourselves?”

He felt the void he could slip into so easily, more a sentiment than anything he could touch. It was as if he was standing with his back to a ledge, an impossibly long drop below that ledge. With that knowledge came the realization that Tristan was inside him.

Nausea and shock overwhelmed him, and he vomited onto the floor.

⊙

Danger. How much risk do we face? Is there a chance we get hurt? What’s medical care like? Does it involve fighting Endbringers?

Organization. How many people in the group? How are arguments resolved? Is there a human resources department? Manager? Team leader? How is that stuff handled?

Secret identity. How many people will see our faces? Know our names?

School. What do we do about school?

For that matter, what happens schedule-wise with holidays? Church?

Ask, damn it! Ask or swap so I can ask! You’ve only talked about money and costumes!

“Any more questions?” Mr. Vaughn asked. The man had shaved head, light brown skin, and both a mustache and beard that were trimmed down to a series of lines, the beard being little more than a narrow arrow that pointed down. His jacket hung on his chair, and the sleeves of his button-up silk shirt were rolled up, showing only hints of the tattoos at the upper edges of his forearms.

Byron knew because Tristan kept glancing at the guy’s arms.

“Nah. No more questions,” Tristan said.

“Some,” Papa said. He hesitated. “But this is a lot to take in. I need a moment to get my thoughts in order.”

Mr Vaughn smiled. “Instead of that, why don’t you hold onto any questions you might have, go home, sleep on things, and you can email our department any time. We will answer any questions- if you want to send us a hundred, it won’t be a problem.”

No. There’s a big difference between what they say to our faces and what they say if they have time to compose an email and word things carefully.

“I think we covered most of it,” Tristan said.

“…Yes,” Papa conceded.

No!

“Great!” Mr. Vaughn pronounced, with a smile.

Byron had to bite back his annoyance. Danger, management, secret identity, school, schedule, holidays. It was a mantra he mentally recited, so he could fire off the questions when he had the opportunity.

Mr Vaughn leaned back. “Tell me, what do you think?”

“I’m very interested.” There was no hesitation in Tristan’s reply.

“I’m not sure,” their Papa said, sounding hesitant. “To be honest, our number one priority is getting this whole situation fixed. The PRT has resources.”

“The PRT absolutely has resources,” Mr. Vaughn said. “I would say they’re above average in what they can offer.”

“Alright,” their Papa said. He looked at Tristan.

What’s the pitch?

“If you look into it, however, you’ll find they’re strictly above average. They’re exceptional and consistent at holding things to that level. You won’t get the exceptional wages, service, or attention from them. The people at the top have been in the PRT since before Tristan was born. There’s something called upward mobility, how many promotions you can get or how high you can rise in the hierarchy.”

“I know what upward mobility is,” Papa said.

“Then it should please you to know that when it comes to Tristan and his brother, we can give them mobility, and we can give them something the PRT won’t. We can give them exceptional.”

“With more risk, I’m guessing?” Tristan asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Vaughn said. “Being on a corporate team is like being in sales, except you’re selling your own brand. We’ll pay you handsomely, and you stand to gain much more if you hit our reward points. You’ll get extra for media events, a stipend for holding higher rankings on the right sites on the internet and any cape ranking lists in magazines. You’ll get a thousand dollars for every headline you net, five thousand if you get a positive headline in a major paper. But it’s more work, and not everyone’s cut out for it. If you don’t think you can sell and you can’t handle the risk, then the PRT is a safer bet.”

“I’m a risk taker,” Tristan said. Byron could feel his brother’s face stretch in a smile. “And I think I’d be a good salesman.”

I’m not a risk taker.

“I get that impression,” Mr. Vaughn said, smiling back at Tristan with something resembling a twinkle in his eye. “It’s why we’re so willing to reach out here, if you’ll excuse the pun. Costume, starting salary, branding push. You hit all the marks and then some.”

“Marks?” Papa asked.

Tristan shifted, almost as if he was uncomfortable with their Papa’s participation in the conversation.

“He’s the right age to match the others. He’s hip, attractive, he has a background in drama, good presentation, and a visually interesting power. Byron brings a different attitude, good academics, and their interplay is an interesting twist on an established formula.”

Damned with faint praise.

I don’t want to do this.

“I’m excited to do this,” Tristan said.

“We need to consider Byron,” Papa said. “Don’t jump to making a decision, okay?”

“Of course,” Tristan said. “I think he’ll be down for it.”

I’m not down for this, but you saying that makes it harder to say no.

I’m still going to say no.

“Let’s hope,” Mr. Vaughn said. “He can hear me, right?”

“He can,” Tristan said.

“We draw big money. We pay it forward. The PRT labs are very good, but every cape under their umbrella needs power testing at one point or another. It’s in their requirements.” Mr Vaughn leaned forward. “Byron, with the contacts we can provide and the money we can pay you, we can give you more help, and you won’t spend years in a queue after getting your requisite, everyday power testing appointment.”

Years. It was horrible to think about. A month had been hell.

He hated to admit it, but just the fact that Mr. Vaughn had said his name, addressing him directly, it meant so much. Only his parents really did it when Tristan was out there. Yet when the tables were turned, he didn’t miss that Tristan was so often addressed directly, with the odd person speaking right past Byron.

But he wanted to say no.

“Come, I’ll show you the facilities,” Mr. Vaughn said.

They all stood. Mr. Vaughn walked around his glass desk, opening the door to let them out into the main offices of Reach.

“We should let Byron out,” their papa said. “He needs a say.”

“After? Please?” Tristan asked. “He had all yesterday. I’ve barely had today, and I spent a lot of it in the car. I’m so restless.”

Byron was left to wonder why he had such a horrible sinking feeling at that.

“Okay,” their papa said. “But he gets a say when we’re done the tour, after you’ve stretched.”

Tristan’s face stretched in a smile that didn’t match Byron’s feelings in the slightest. This was the hell. If there were bars to this cell, Byron might have grabbed them, shaken them, screamed.

But there were no bars. To react like that and be in that state when he emerged was something that pushed others away, which made it impossible to enjoy the time spent with family. It made them fret, worry.

Danger, management, identity, school, holiday schedule. He held onto his list of questions.

“Would I be staying here?” Tristan asked.

“Reach travels. You’d have nice accommodations if you were out of town. We accommodate your parents if they wish to chaperone.”

“Oh man,” Tristan said. “I love you, Papi, but-”

“That might be a problem,” their papa said. “I have work.”

Byron was aware of Tristan’s faint exhalation of relief. He’s thinking like this is a done deal.

“And your wife?”

“We work in the same office.”

“Ah, I envy you,” Mr. Vaughn said. “I’m sure we could work something out if we needed to. Come, let’s walk. Tristan, you should wear this mask, temporary, to protect your identity.”

Tristan pulled the mask back on.

“And Mr. Vera?”

“I might as well. I feel ridiculous.”

The walls of the entire building were decorated with a stylization of Reach’s logo, a symbol that was clearly meant to strike a middle ground between a flame, the loose silhouette of an outstretched hand, if that hand were drawn with a very limited set of swooping lines, and an arrow. The symbol stretched diagonally across walls, separating the bold color on the bottom half from the white on the top. Tiles on the floors had whatever colors were on the walls at one edge, dissolving into less and less squares. It was the kind of thing that could have been tacky, but so much of the rest of the building was high quality, with high resolution images on framed posters, benches, railings, and other things in striking designs. It looked more like an art museum than an institution.

They’d been to the institution, the PRT offices. Past the lobby, there hadn’t been a lot of polish. The room where the staff worked on computers had smelled like stale coffee and printer ink.

But Byron was wary of things that presented a polished facade to hide their flaws. He knew well enough because he was inside a living embodiment of it right this moment.

Mr. Vaughn waved to a musclebound man who was standing beside a computer in a gym. The man waved back.

“Gym. Free to use. We have one staff member who is there at all times, professional trainer, and between nine and four there’s a second person in the building who can turn up in five minutes, if the man on call is busy with someone else. You look like someone who hits the gym.”

“I am.”

“What sports are you into?”

“Right now it’s rock climbing, mostly. Some snowboarding, some surfing, but that’s only doable if we’re in the right place at the right times. I was into football in grade seven, but I got injured, had to sit out for the season, and lost interest.”

“A lot of injuries,” papa said. “Too dangerous.”

Byron felt Tristan’s eyes move over papa’s face. No doubt worrying as Byron was hoping.

Ask. Danger! What’s the risk?

But their Papa was silent.

“There’s a pool as well, if you surf, you probably swim. It’s a very, very nice pool. Some of the members of Reach will use it as a place to take selfies or, ah, ‘selfless’ shots.”

“Selfless?” papa asked.

“Another kind of selfie, papa, don’t worry about it,” Tristan said.

“For heroes,” Mr. Vaughn explained. “They will have social media. The face is hidden, shots are taken from behind, or below the shoulders only. It teases the fans, gets them thinking about the person beneath the costume. The boys and girls will take these ‘selfless’ photos by the pool, or while standing on rooftops.”

“I’m not sure I like any part of that,” papa said.

“I’m sure you raised Tristan and Byron to be smart about these things.”

Papa laughed, abrupt, which looked like it surprised Mr. Vaughn. He looked at Tristan. “I think you might have misjudged my son.”

“Papa!”

“He is very smart, but not about that sort of thing.”

Byron felt Tristan turn his head to look at Mr. Vaughn, felt the heat in the face, the clench of a hand that indicated emotion more than anything in his voice betrayed it. “I think what my dad is saying is that if it sells, I’ll probably end up doing it. But if it’s about modesty or… whatever other issues my dad has with it, yeah, it’s probably not me.”

“Why would you want to get people to think about who you are under the mask? Keep it secret, Tristan,” Papa said.

“I will, I’ll just… tease. Misdirect.”

“All posts to social media are held for a short period of time and run past our staff,” Mr. Vaughn said. “Each will be scrutinized to make sure there is no danger, nothing that can be misinterpreted.”

“See?” Tristan asked.

“I do see. I see so much of my younger self in you,” papa said, one hand cupping Tristan’s chin, shaking it. “And this is why I’m worried.”

The longer this goes like this without me getting a say, the more likely I am to say no. Not that I’m sure it’ll matter.

Danger, management, identity, school, holiday schedule.

“I love you too, papa,” Tristan said, reaching up no to push the hand away, but to fix the mask. But as they rounded a corner, he pulled back a little, breaking the contact.

“The cafeteria,” Mr. Vaughn said. “And… the young members of Reach.”

Byron was forced to look where Tristan looked. He’d seen the images in passing, enough to know the names.

A helmet that consisted of a face-shaped plate at the front with chiseled features, hinges at the brow, the back and sides of the helmet fashioned to look like rolling locks of hair- all ivory and silver. The bodysuit of the costume wasn’t skintight, but a material thick enough to hold the armor plates that were worked in rigid. the armor’s edges and the pattern along the suit’s chest and down the legs echoed the rolling waves of hair.

The white of the costume’s face was supposed to draw the eye, but Tristan’s eyes touched on the face, then shoulders, arms, chest, down the side of the body, as if noting silhouette, then pausing for a tenth of a second on the package between the guy’s legs before moving and across to the person just behind the teenage guy.

Figurehead, Byron thought, with a bit of exasperation. The glances were something he’d had to get used to.

Tribute was taller, and again, he had a high quality costume, sleek and form-fitting down the body. A decoration extended up from a disc at the chest, like a raised collar, but gold, and with nothing joining it to the shoulder. More gold and more disc motifs decorated belt, mask, gloves, and formed a pattern on the inside of the fabric that draped down from the belt to the ankles. The skin that was visible was a cool black. Byron would have thought Tristan would pay more attention to the guy, given his apparent fitness, height, but no- Tristan’s gaze paused for that tenth of a fraction on Figurehead’s mask as it cut across again, to the man standing to the other side of Figurehead.

Then there was Boundless, all angles, athletic, muscular, but in a lanky way, like a basketball player. His mask and the pattern on his bodysuit weren’t shaped like anything, but instead had a pattern that started from a ridge at the center of face or chest and swept back in sweeping lines.

Another person Byron couldn’t identify, hadn’t seen in marketing. Newer, maybe. Lean, skinny, and fidgety. Her mask was like a cat’s, with ears that were worked into the side, sweeping back. Chain links ran down the black-bodysuit-covered neck and draped over the shoulders and over a flat chest. More chain decoration extended down the hands to oversized claw-gauntlets, which dangled from the elbow, leaving her hands free.

Steamwheel was a girl tinker with a mask that was hard metal, starting at two rectangular frames and extending down, leaving the forehead uncovered and mousy, greasy brown hair free. Short, flat-chested, maybe young. In full costume she was a titan of metal with a dramatic wheel mounted on it.

Then, more eye catching, there was a another girl, with a veritable mane of silver hair, a bodysuit that clung to the body, styled in a complex weave of jet black and silver locks that made it look like her hair was worked into her costume- the harlequin-ish design had one arm covered in the metal molded to look like hair, with blades extending up and sweeping back from the rigid structure. Tristan didn’t look, but Byron knew from pictures that she had a very generous chest. Coiffure.

And, beside Coiffure, the last member of the junior team. Raven-haired, wearing a dress-ish costume that she wouldn’t have gotten away with in the Wards, her legs long and slender. Like the others, fine molded metal was persistent across the design, and hers had crescent moons and discs with crescents worked into it, extending up from shoulders and from her mask in a diadem or crown style. She could have played a princess in a movie.

Her mask left more of her face exposed, enough that Byron could see her lips, painted with lipstick. For whatever reason, Tristan noticed it, focused on it, and Byron was treated to a view of the slight smile.

When he had been looking at photos of the team, he hadn’t even paid much attention to her. Seeing that small smile? He was paying attention.

“So this is the guy we heard about,” Figurehead said.

“Is he joining?” Tribute asked.

“I’m tempted,” Tristan said.

“Discussion is pending,” Papa said, firmly. “And I have questions about things like school, other things I’m apparently supposed to email about.”

The adults left.

Let me out. I should meet them too.

Tristan approached the group, all smiles, shaking hands. There was a brief demonstration of his power. The newer member was introduced as Furcate.

Let me out.

It was everything that had happened with his prior friend groups. Tristan bullying his way into things, elbowing Byron out. If Byron knew them first, Tristan knocked him down a peg on his way into the group dynamic. If Tristan knew them first, Byron never had a shot.

I’m going to say no, you asshole. I’m going to veto. I’ll ruin this any way I can, if you fucking don’t give me a chance to get to know these people.

“We’re going to have to adjust tactics, with Boundless leaving in a few weeks. Less mobility on the team, more stand-in-place-and-mess-them-up types,” Figurehead said.

“I’m pretty mobile,” Tristan said. “You get in fights then?”

“We’re supposed to be careful about how we go about it,” Coiffure said. Then she winked. “We have a lot of ‘accidental’ run-ins with villains and crooks.”

“Perfect.”

“If you want food, by the way, we’re totally stocked. There’s a microwave too,” Figurehead said.

“Oh man, thanks,” Tristan said. “I’m ravenous. It was a long car trip, and we grabbed gas station food.”

“Figured,” Figurehead said. “I’m going to grab something too.”

Byron’s anger mixed with disgust. Eating was a singularly unpleasant activity when one had zero control over their body. The mastication of food, the involuntary nature of the movements, the acute awareness of how the mouth felt different, the food dissolving into slurry. Byron’s tastes were slightly different from Tristan’s, too.

The entire team ducked into the cafeteria. Tristan got a sandwich loaded with cheeses and deli meats, and had Tribute show him how to use the panini press to heat it up.

With every chew, Byron felt his patience tested. He couldn’t see what he wanted to look at, couldn’t ask what he wanted to ask, couldn’t rejoin or add an anecdote as he saw the moment, watched it pass, and left it well behind.

He would get his turn, right? He’d be able to meet these guys for more than a few moments?

He talked about sports. He talked about movies, and shows, and the team talked about heroics.

“It’s a bit of a head trip, when you get your head around how the corporate side of it works,” Figurehead explained. “You hear about the ridiculous money they bring in for having us show up for a company’s event or putting on a show at a convention, right? Six figures, and we only get six thousand each? That’s what took me the longest to adjust to.”

“I don’t really care about the money,” Furcate said.

“That’s because you’re weird,” Moonsong said.

“Yep.”

“We’re a corporate team, hon.”

“Reach had the best costume design,” Furcate said.

“That was the deciding factor, huh?” Coiffure asked. When Furcate nodded, Coiffure shrugged, before using one hand to flick her hair over one shoulder, to better expose the silvery waves and whorls along the shoulder. “Well, it’s not like you’re wrong.”

Tristan extended a fist toward Furcate, “I think you and I are going to get along.”

Furcate hesitated, then slipped one hand into the oversized cat’s-paw gauntlet, before tapping it against Tristan’s hand. “I’m going to get something else.”

“Eat something that isn’t shitty candy,” Figurehead said.

“I’m going to get seconds,” Tristan said. “That was the best sandwich I’ve ever had.”

Byron hadn’t even noticed the taste, he’d been stewing over being trapped within, too busy trying not to think about slick tongue rolling through masticated food.

The realization that Tristan planned to take the time to make and eat a whole other sandwich -not even a small one- made him want to scream, to lose his mind.

His thoughts were a storm of fuckery, of vitriol and plots to get his brother back, to maybe finally get through to him and score one win, when Tristan realized that his selfishness in this moment had cost him a chance to sign up with this team.

Meanwhile, oblivious, Tristan made another sandwich, then put it in the press. He plated it up, grabbed some napkins, got another drink, and then sidled up to Furcate, who was grabbing what looked like lemon drop candies, of the sort grandmothers might buy and keep in a ceramic bowl, collecting dust.

“Do you have a preferred pronoun?” Tristan asked, voice quiet.

“Hm?” Furcate asked. Her entire posture was immediately more defensive.

“Sorry if I’m totally wrong. I was listening to see what they said, but they dodged around it.”

“They,” Furcate said, guarded. They looked over at the group, then added, “I’m saving the ‘she’ for when I feel done.”

“You know if I have a shot with any of the guys on the team? Figurehead?”

The tension in Furcate’s neck and shoulders relaxed. The response was a head shake.

“Damn.”

Tristan returned to the table.

“Welcome back,” Coiffure greeted him.

Tristan held up his sandwich, like he was toasting the group. Byron knew that if he tried to do the same, it wouldn’t work, somehow.

“I was remarking to the others, you look very interesting to my power,” Figurehead.

“Ah,” Tristan said. He sighed a little, almost resigned.

“Is there a story? Does the boss know?”

“The boss knows. I’m kind of a special case. Literally, I think there’s a label for it.”

“Fifty-three?” Coiffure asked. “Is it only obvious if we get your clothes off?”

“Ha ha,” Tristan said. He winked at her. “Hate to disappoint. No. Case seventy.”

“I don’t know that one,” Figurehead said.

“I share a body with my brother. He would be joining the team too.”

“Yeah? Shouldn’t we meet him then?” Moonsong asked. “Come on out, brother. Don’t be shy.”

“I have to let him out, just like he has to let me out.”

“Then what the fuck is wrong with you?” Moonsong asked. She moved her hands dramatically. “Let us meet him already.”

Byron was so stunned by that line that he had trouble processing it. He felt only confusion as Tristan held up his sandwich, pronounced, “Goodbye sandwich, I’ll miss eating you,” with dramatic flair, and then stood from the table.

Tristan took off his mask, turned his back to the group, and tossed it up, before releasing Byron. Byron only barely managed to catch the mask.

He put the mask against his face, holding it there as he turned around, still putting the cord back behind his head.

He saw Moonsong smile, red lipstick, almost pleased with herself, or pleased with him, and he felt his heart skip a beat.

He realized he’d been looking at her, just her, in a way that would have been very obvious. He dropped his eyes. He looked at the others.

“So. You interested?” Tribute asked.

The list of questions he’d meant to ask had already flown from his mind. With them went his reservations about joining the team, his anger, and the intent to stick it to Tristan.

“I think I might be,” he decided.

⊙

The team was dusty, battered, and bruised, with a few cuts here and there. Nice costumes were damaged, and where they weren’t damaged, they were soaked through with sweat.

Tristan walked them through the door, limping slightly. Steamwheel clunked off in the direction of the garage.

Reach’s staff was waiting for them.

“Injuries?” Mr. Vaughn asked.

“Nothing serious,” Figurehead said.

“Event report?” Mr. Vaughn asked. “It’s late, so make it a short one.”

“Do you want to hear how the fight went or how the media’s going to report on it?” Coiffure asked, one eyebrow arched.

“Time spent asking that question could be spent telling me both. Then you can give your costumes to the design team for repair and go to bed. It’s been a heck of a week, let’s rest when we can.”

“We did okay,” Tristan said. “Scritch, Scratch, Snicker and Snack all got away. We got one of the other powered ones, Hell’s Belle, and the civilians didn’t get a scratch on them, despite her attempts to pull some hostage stuff. I think the cameras will be kind, when they report the news in the morning. Extra kind if they get surveillance video from inside the building, because that hostage stuff was some of the best caping I’ve seen.”

He put out a hand. Furcate tapped their cat’s paw to his gauntlet. He moved his hand in Coiffure’s direction, and she did much the same.

“Anyone disagree with the assessment?” Mr. Vaughn asked.

There were head shakes here and there.

“Good. We’ll see if you’re right about the media tomorrow, Capricorn.”

“I always am.”

“You’re getting cocky.”

“Deservedly.”

“So far. Not that I don’t like that. Mr. Bigs loves you for it. Anything else? Questions, any resources you need to request? If there are disputes about the team or issues you can’t bring up here, you bring them to me or the appropriate staff member.”

With a sweep of the hand, Mr. Vaughn indicated the other staff- trainers, spin, social media, design, and accounts.

“Tristan’s taking over as leader,” Figurehead said. “Someone’s going to mention that. I’m not bothered, though.”

“He’s the least experienced member here,” Mr. Vaughn said.

“He’s good. Really, I don’t mind.”

“I hate to admit it, but he’s good,” Moonsong said.

“Why do you hate to admit it?” Tristan asked her.

“Enough,” Mr. Vaughn said. “Get costumes to design as soon as you’re back in civvies, then rest, do your things. It’s been a tough few weeks.”

The team began to break away. Tristan hung back to unstrap his armor, where a blade had cut through pauldron and the entire length of the arm. He handed it the guys from design.

“How’s the power?” Mr. Vaughn asked. The others had left.

“Metal and rock,” Tristan said. “More rock than before.”

“I want to set you up for another appointment with the lab. We should stay on top of this.”

“Not going to complain,” Tristan said.

“It’s working okay for you? Things aren’t harder.”

“Well, they’re harder,” Tristan said. “Ha ha.”

Mr. Vaughn smiled. “Puns don’t do well in front of press, online, or anything of our other marketing battlefields. Don’t you dare do that to the team.”

“I won’t,” Tristan said. He smiled behind his helmet. “It’s fine. Easier to be cautious, avoid hurting people.”

“And Byron?”

Tristan gave his armor a once-over, then passed over control.

Byron was even more ragged and battle-damaged. His costume was trashed. Funny how that worked.

“Almost entirely water now,” Byron said.

“And putting aside the power things… how are you?”

Byron had no idea how to answer the question. “I’m- things are better than they were. The schedule helps.”

It was only after the words had left his mouth that he realized the lie. Did Tristan sense the lie, feeling the slight changes in body language?

No. For Tristan to notice, Tristan would have to pay attention to him.

“You know where my office is,” Mr. Vaughn said.

Byron nodded.

He made his way to the showers. He took off his costume, rinsed off, and experimented with his power. Sprays of water. When he contrived to get some in his mouth without spraying himself, it didn’t have that chemical smell or taste to it, like the suffocation gas had.

Rather than give the damaged pieces, he decided the entire costume needed attention, and deposited the whole suit of scale mail with the design guys. They would be pulling an all-nighter.

On his way back to the dorm rooms, he saw and waved at Figurehead. Then it was back to his room.

He couldn’t sleep. More accurately, he couldn’t bring himself to lie down in the bed, couldn’t bring himself to give up the time he would spend unconscious. It wasn’t supposed to count, but-

Suffocation gas, the thought crossed his mind. It was hard to breathe, to swallow. It had been a heck of a week, as Mr. Vaughn had said. Something practically every day, whether it was fights or showing up at an event for law enforcement. As fun as the cape stuff could be, with the banter and the team interplay, the emotional highs and lows had their cost.

And he had so very little available to spend.

He made his way to the desk he shared with Tristan. Homework.

He felt like if someone said one mean word to him, he could burst into tears. Homework felt just masochistic enough to punish himself for not going to bed. Just enough to not break down into sobs.

At least with homework, he could tell himself that the time he spent in the here and now was time that he was freeing up later.

While the questions were easy and mindless, it was a good distraction. But they weren’t all easy. There was a paper he needed to write, and he was supposed to frame a thesis.

Try as he might, he couldn’t think to put the thoughts into action.

Pen tapped.

Frustration welled.

Pen jabbed. Stabbed his thigh. The pain was a shock, like a wake up call.

There’s something wrong with my brother, like the piece that can get him to compromise and understand just isn’t there. And I’m stuck with him.

The pen jabbed again, near the same spot.

There’s something wrong with me. I felt like I was going to lose my mind from all of this months ago. Things haven’t gotten better.

In a fit, like he wasn’t in control of his own body, he brought the pen down ten times in half that many seconds.

He released his hand. The pen fell to the floor. Rather than pick it up, he kicked it.

He jumped, hearing a knock at the door. He hadn’t shut it.

It was Kay. Furcate. They wore pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt, hair tousled like they’d just woken up, rather than like they were just about to go to sleep.

Byron’s hand pressed over the spot where blood was seeping into his pyjama shorts. “Something up?”

“Can I come in?”

“I’m not really up to company right now,” he said. “Is it important?”

Kay nodded.

“Okay,” Byron said. He swallowed hard, then nodded.

Kay approached, until they stood behind him. “Open.”

“Wha-” Byron started. A hard object was pressed between his teeth.

One of Kay’s old lady lemon candies, that tasted like menthol, citrus, and ass. Kay’s favorite.

Just as he was coming around to the idea that this too could be masochistic, he felt Kay’s arms around his shoulders. A hug from behind, Kay’s face smushed against the side of his head.

His fingers gripped the fabric of his shorts, tight around the oblong spot of blood.

They gave him a pat on the shoulder as they broke from the hug.

“Good work tonight,” Furcate said.

Then they were gone.

He didn’t let go of fabric, find another pen, or even think about much as he sat there, trying to summon up the strength to- to what? Go to sleep?

“Byron?”

His feelings leapt into another paradigm, where they shuffled around in confusion. He twisted around to look.

Brianna, at his bedroom door. She was wearing clothes, not nightwear.

“Want to get some fresh air?” she asked.

He nodded. “I need to change.”

“I’ll be waiting by the front door, then.”

She shut his door as she left.

He released the fabric that he’d clutched in his hand for long enough that the blood had stuck to his palm. A bandage covered it, and from there, he was quick to get his clothes on, fixing his hair with his fingers.

Fresh air was… very much what he needed, when being where he was felt so suffocating.

Jacket on, boots on, and… yeah.

They left through the front door, and then they walked. It was late enough that there could be trouble, a good hour for muggers. Silly to think about, when they were as capable as they were.

“Kay sent you?” he asked.

“Kay?”

“They stopped in for a minute.”

“I think Furcate checked on everyone.”

“Oh.”

At the center of the little park was a fountain, and around the fountain were stairs in concentric circles. Brianna sat on one stair. He sat down on the step her feet rested on, his shoulder near her knees.

She slipped down one step, so she sat down beside him.

“I want to talk to you, not the back of your head.”

He smiled. “Alright.”

“Thank you for agreeing to come for this walk. If you’re half as tired as I am, you must be dead on your feet.”

“Too tired to sleep.”

“Yes,” she said. She smiled, red lipstick parting to show white teeth with the bar of a retainer across them. He felt that emotional jumble again. “Yes, exactly.”

“I can’t promise I’ll be a very good conversation partner.”

“No,” she said. “Me either, probably. When I joined the team, Mr. Vaughn was on about how I was the daughter of a politician, I should be very good at the speech and the presentation-”

“You are.”

“Yes, but there’s pressure! And even now, there’s pressure, you know. I invited you and now I’m obligated to not make you regret it.”

“We could sit here for two hours, keeping each other company without saying a word, and I wouldn’t mind,” he said.

Words he immediately regretted. Words he wouldn’t have said if he weren’t as tired, as emotionally raw.

“Good to know.”

Her shoulder touched his as she leaned a little closer. She turned to look the other direction, and her hair brushed his ear.

The entirety of his focus, every inch of his being, was consumed in that oval-sized point of contact, where her shoulder shared its warmth with his. His head swam with the smell of her shampoo. Something like tea, but refreshing.

“I’m going to suck and say something that might be really lame,” she said. “Then you’ll think less of me.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“I think you’re really strong.”

He shook his head.

“Really. You’re managing despite a situation that would drive anyone crazy.”

“I’m not managing,” he said.

“Aren’t you?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“This,” he said. “This is nice.”

She reached out. Her fingers worked their way between his. She clasped his hand. “Like this?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I wouldn’t even know how. I’m not sure what I’d say.”

“I can’t imagine,” she said. Her voice was a whisper and it sent tingles through to the core of his body. Like the stab of the pen, it sent a shock through his body, as sure as anything. It reminded him that a girl this pretty and this amazing was sitting with him, so close that she could whisper and he could hear in that nuanced a way.

“I’m glad you can’t. It sucks.”

“That it’s your brother, that can’t make it any easier.”

He allowed himself a slight laugh. “Oh man, you have no idea.”

“I have some idea,” she said. “I’m pretty sure everyone has some idea.”

“Now you’ve lost me,” he said. He wasn’t sure she had, but he didn’t want to be right about his initial take on the statement.

“He’s doing the whole gay thing, because he likes to be bold and out there and-”

“No, Brianna.”

“-it’s weird. It’s creepy! That’s all I’m saying.”

He pulled his hand away. He saw the look on her face, like he’d slapped her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“No,” Byron said. All of the warm, fuzzy emotions, everything that made everything feel okay was now something black and bitter. Disappointment was the predominant feeling in that stew. “That’s- I have a hundred issues with Tristan. But that’s not one. I think I’m going to go.”

He stood. Brianna grabbed him by the wrist.

“And he’s listening. He sees everything I see and hears everything I hear,” Byron added. It was intended as a way to get her to let go, to break this and- and…

…To go back to that room where shorts stained with blood were lying in the corner.

She didn’t let go.

“Stay,” she said. “Fuck him. Just… stay?”

“I can’t betray him like that.” I have to live with him.

“I worry about you,” she said.

I worry about me too, he thought.

“…And I really enjoy your company,” she added. “I would like to sit for those two hours in silence. If- maybe we could? And that way there won’t be problems?”

Byron turned his thoughts over in his head. He was so tired, so heartbroken.

“The only way…” he trailed off.

“Yes?”

“Give Tristan a shot. Try to be open minded about his being gay. Okay?”

“It matters to you?”

“It- I think really highly of you, Brianna. You’re good at so many things, you’re smart, you’re stylish, you kick thorough ass. But this makes me think less of you.”

He could see the hurt on her expression. He was stunned, bewildered that she cared enough that she could even feel hurt at all.

She tugged on his arm, as if to get him to sit again.

“Yes?” he asked.

“If it matters to you. Yes.”

He allowed himself to be coaxed to a sitting position. She took his hand like she had before. She leaned into him more than she had before.

“Tell me about your family,” she said. “Tell me everything about you.”

“Everything is a lot. That would take a very, very long time,” he said.

“Perfect,” she whispered.

They talked until the sun was rising.

⊙

“I thought for the first time that I was legit going to lose my mind!” Tristan’s voice was raised. He paced. “Holy fuck. Holy fuck!”

To experience Tristan like this was to be in a plane with an erratic pilot. There was no way to wrest control, to change the course, to pull up from a nosedive. There was only remaining in the seat, helpless.

“Like the most boring movie in the world!” Tristan said. “Nothing happening for hours! You can’t- no!”

Had Byron been possessed of blood, that would have been a moment that his blood had run cold. Had he had eyes, they would be widening.

A moment of realization.

In the wake of last night, spent with Brianna, the issue wasn’t that Brianna had been homophobic. Conversely, the fact that Byron had stood up for Tristan wasn’t even a point of data in this moment.

It wasn’t even the time spent. Yes, Tristan was mentioning that, but Tristan had gone days with even less happening. Days of silence, when Byron had been almost nonfunctional in the first weeks, the two of them trying to find their way. Tristan had given up control at their Papa’s orders. Byron had spent hours just staring at the television, at repeats, nothing going on. Then Tristan had retaken control and without comment he’d taken care of the eating, resumed his day with only the periodic freakout.

Tristan had been able to deal with that. In this, something was different.

For the large share of those hours, Byron and Brianna had talked about themselves. Byron had done most of the talking. He’d even tried to keep the topics relevant to Tristan’s interests when he could.

That was the issue, in the end.

For his brother, listening to him was so impossible that it was literally harder than doing nothing at all.

And with that, a realization of just how insurmountable the obstacle was. The fact that Tristan might never understand, because he wasn’t even willing to begin trying.

That was what would make blood run cold, eyes widen, if Byron were anything more than a watercolor splotch diffusing out into a void, along for the ride.

A half-dozen hours of listening to Byron explain his perspective had Tristan more on edge than Byron had ever seen him. Byron had ran out the remainder of his day, deferred control a couple of hours early… and Tristan was seemingly unable to get over it.

“I can’t,” Tristan said.

Tristan shucked off his bodysuit, and then donned civilian clothes, with a clear intent to go out.

The plane with its erratic pilot dipped. Tristan made his way out of the building.

“Capricorn,” Coiffure said, noticing him as she entered. She was costumed, and she looked like she’d just come off a patrol shift. “Everything okay?”

“Nothing’s okay. I’m losing my fucking mind.”

“I can get the boss.”

“No,” Tristan said, stopping in his tracks. He fidgeted. “I can’t do this, but- that would spoil things.”

“You’re supposed to run a patrol tonight,” she said.

Byron could feel the emotional impact of that realization rolling over Tristan.

He felt his own, really. Tristan wasn’t one to lose track of the team stuff. On the usual day, at a snap of the fingers, Tristan could probably recite the next month’s schedule and then produce an essay on what it meant for team strategy.

A slight exaggeration.

“I’ll cover your shift,” Coiffure said.

“You’re sure?” Tristan asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Just… do what you’ve got to do. We all have our bad days.”

“You’re the best hero I know,” he said.

“You’d better believe it,” she replied.

“A week ago,” he said. “We crossed paths with some of the other local heroes. The Wards, the guys from Haven. There was talk of a thing.”

“A thing,” Coiffure said. She glanced up at the security camera. “I’ll text you from my personal phone. To yours. You’re not going to be doing anything in a Capricorn sense, right?”

“Right,” Tristan said.

The thing. Byron connected the thought.

It was late. Nearly twenty-four hours from their patrol last night. In crossing paths with various teams, there had been talking about just how intense things had gotten, with teams breaking up, villains banding together, and crime spree following crime spree. The various kid heroes had talked about needing a break, a chance to cut loose.

And Tristan, it seemed, needed to cut loose.

Tristan had dialed for a ride before he was the rest of the way out of the building, and he moved with the speed and assuredness of someone with an enhanced physique.

The message appeared on his personal phone. An address, and a note. Kay was already there.

The ride showed up, and Tristan climbed into the back. He provided an address on the same street.

“Want to earn some extra cash?” Tristan asked.

“Maybe,” the driver said.

“Grab me a drink from the store,” Tristan said. “I’ll make it worth it.”

“I dunno,” the driver said.

“I have a lot of cash,” Tristan said. Leaning forward, he began putting bills down on the console between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. Byron couldn’t track the amount because Tristan wasn’t bothering to. “And I really want to get drunk.”

The plane with the erratic pilot spiraled.

Byron felt only the experience of suppressed panic akin to imminent suffocation, bleeding out into the void where his body and physical sensations should be.

No more than ten minutes later, with a paper bag tucked under one arm, Tristan was walking up the driveway of a house. There were guys sitting on the porch.

“Got someone who can vouch for you?” a heavyset, twenty-something guy asked.

“Kay,” Tristan said.

The guy twisted around in his chair, opening the door and leaning in. “Kay?”

There was a pause. Then Kay appeared at the door, wearing skinny jeans and a top so small Byron suspected they’d have trouble breathing.

“Hi,” Kay said. They held the door open.

Tristan stepped through. Into his medium. His world, of throbbing music and crowds of teenagers. He put the paper bag onto the counter of the lake house’s kitchen, then removed the two bottles- tequila and whiskey. People cheered, they jostled him, and his face stretched in a smile.

What followed was a roller coaster ride with no stopping or option to get off, a series of scenes that was soon blurred around the edges, as Tristan drank.

Kay danced with abandon, with boys and girls, and when nobody else was dancing, they continued on their own.

There were jokes, conversations, all loud, spoken over music. Tristan watched but didn’t participate in a drinking game.

Byron saw faces and many were familiar, or on the bounds of familiarity, though the haze of drink didn’t help. Capes he’d met. Haven. Wards. Young protectorate members. There were times, though, when he thought he might have pegged one or two, only to see what had to be a sibling or cousin. This had been planned as a chance for the young capes to get out, to cut loose, but they’d brought enough others along that it was safely anonymous.

“Why do you look familiar?”

It was Tristan’s voice, but Tristan’s addled senses were Byron’s addled senses, and it took him a moment to realize the fact. Another moment to recognize the look of alarm in the face of the person Tristan was talking to. It was one person out of twenty or thirty Tristan had talked to in recent hours, and Byron was tuning much of it out, focusing on tolerating all of this.

But this- the look of alarm, it made this significant.

It’s a party of semi-anonymous heroes. We aren’t supposed to bring up secret identities.

The guy Tristan had addressed was blond, wore glasses, and had a metal stud below his lower lip. At the ‘v’ of his v-neck t-shirt, the top of a cross was visible. Tattooed on, not worn. A skinny nerd type more than anything. He glanced over his shoulder.

“I think we met briefly, a few months ago,” Tristan said. “At the… airport?”

“Ahh,” the guy said, before smiling. “All hands on deck?”

“All hands on deck,” Tristan said.

“Had a, uh, sports injury,” the guy said, leaning in close enough to speak into Tristan’s ear. “Been a while since I’ve been out there.”

“Understandable,” Tristan spoke in the loud, overly clear voice of someone trying to be heard in a cacophony. “I didn’t figure you guys for the partying type.”

“Feast and famine. Some of us are as pure as the driven snow. The rest of us need regular breaks from those guys and girls.”

“The girls too, huh?” Tristan asked. “Your girlfriend here? I don’t want to keep you.”

“No girlfriend,” the guy said. He paused. “You can keep me.”

The lingering eye contact made the meaning of that clear.

“You saying that just made my month,” Tristan said.

Subtle, brother.

I can deal with this. I can deal.

Fair’s fair.

It didn’t help shake that feeling, of being a passenger in an out-of-control plane.

“Tristan.”

“Nate. Want to step out?”

Tristan got a refill of his drink. As a pair, he and Nate stepped outside onto the expansive back porch. A set of stairs with lockable gates led down to the beach, which was more pine needle than sand. Byron could have interpreted Tristan turning his attention away from couples who were sitting in the shadows as being polite. He felt trepidation, all the same.

“You’re… a fan of goats, I’m guessing?” Nate asked.

“Yeah. Good guess.”

“Figured I had a one in two chance. I know most of the other faces.”

“And you’re the… you’re Reconciliation.”

“Just Nate is good,” Nate said. “The names are something you sort of learn to live with, working with those guys.”

“Hey, not judging,” Tristan said.

“You’re judging a little, I’m sure.”

“A little,” Tristan agreed.

“It’s fine. It’s a cost of doing business. We have to deal with the crummy names, you have to… I don’t even know. Wear tight athletic shirts on social media?”

“You’re getting judgmental on me, now?”

“I’m not saying I don’t like it,” Nate said. “I’m… well acquainted with those pictures.”

Byron was aware of every muscle firing, of the movement of Tristan’s arm, the contact, fingers running through the coarse hair of Nate’s forearm. “Limiting it to just seeing it seems like it would be a shame.”

Nate was silent. Tristan’s fingers made their way down to Nate’s hand, which he maneuvered to his stomach. Nate’s hand ran up across muscle and skin, to collarbone.

Tristan kissed him. Byron felt the contact, felt lip brush against sandpapery skin where faint stubble was growing back in, find purchase on smoother lip.

He hadn’t wanted to see or experience this side of his brother. He’d become too intimately acquainted with Tristan, with the physiology- that was unavoidable. But this?

“Where have you been for the last four months?” Tristan asked.

“I spent a few of them in the hospital, after running into Paris.”

“Paris,” Tristan said.

“He’s a lunatic,” Nate said, his voice a whisper. “Steer clear, you know? He’s dangerous, and he came after me. He came after Long John. A little less successful then, but I think Long was spooked. He was making noise about going after Furcate, toward the start of the year. They ended up benched, waiting for Paris to get bored.”

“Asshole,” Tristan said. Acting more drunk than before, like he was drunk on Nate, he kissed Nate’s neck.

“He’s kind of the reason I’m taking my time putting the costume back on again. He could go after you, so be careful, okay?”

“Okay,” Tristan said. “Thanks for the warning. I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”

Nate ran his hand up and down Tristan’s upper body, exploring the muscles, finding the lines of the ribs. This time, he kissed Tristan. Tristan returned the favor, and pressed in. The kiss became a makeout session.

Byron floated in the void.

He tried to turn his thoughts away. To be happy for Tristan. If he just had to endure this for an hour- if he had to accept that in the future, kissing Brianna might require the same tolerance from Tristan- then he would accept this.

That acceptance was gone the second he felt Tristan’s hands reach down, meeting at the buttons of Nate’s jeans.

Nate’s hands clasped Tristan’s firm.

“No,” Nate murmured, practically saying the words into Tristan’s mouth.

“No?” Tristan answered.

“I’m not that kind of guy. I’m not even usually this kind of guy. I’m really happy to meet you-”

“Oh, I can tell.”

“But I’m not… going to do that. I want a husband, kids, a nice house, dogs. I want those things and other things, and us doing this on the first night, or the third, or even in the first few months, it feels like it would put all of those things further away.”

Tristan pressed his forehead against Nate’s neck. “You might not be this kind of guy, but I’m not sure I’m that kind of guy.”

“There aren’t many of us out in this neck of the woods, Tristan. If you want to take some time, figure it out, I’ll probably still be here.”

Tristan nodded.

Byron could feel the guilt, the disappointment, surging through a body that wasn’t his. He had little doubt the emotions had absolutely nothing to do with him and his own part in this.

With that, he felt anger.

⊙

“You’re two of my best capes,” Mr. Vaughn said. “It was one mistake. I don’t want this to be a problem.”

“It was not a mistake,” Byron said. “No. If cooler heads hadn’t prevailed, that would have been something much worse than a mistake.”

Mr. Vaughn gestured, fingers extended, moving in a tight circle.

Byron shook his head, pacing across the fancy office with its fancy colored tiles. He switched, forcing himself to dive into the void, to displace Tristan and give Tristan a body.

“He’s making a big deal out of nothing,” Tristan said. “He does this. Gets unreasonable.”

“It doesn’t sound like it’s nothing to him.”

“Not many things are nothing to him. The difference between him and me is that when I have a feeling, I feel it. When he has a feeling, he bottles it up. then the bottle cracks and it fires off steam in some random direction for some random excuse. He hung out with a girl for hours and hours at a detriment to me. I kissed someone.”

“What were you doing? What was your mindset, Tristan?”

“For just a couple of hours, I wanted to get reasonably drunk, and forget… everything. Forget that I had to worry about my brother, forget the power issue, that I’m living half a life.”

“And did this forgetting extend to forgetting about your brother as you pursued… potential relations with a partner?”

“No.”

Mr. Vaughn gestured. Tristan switched.

Byron was free. “Yes.”

“You can’t know what Tristan thinks or plans, Byron. I think you’re being a little bit unreasonable.”

“I live in his body and look out of his eyes more than a hundred and eighty days a year, Mr. Vaughn. He doesn’t pay much attention to me, but I pay a ton of attention to him. Because I have to.”

“We’ve enforced some loose rules that keep a balance between you. These aren’t sufficient?”

“No! No, not at all. I want- I need something more. That keeps things like last night from happening again. Until this situation between us is fixed, there need to be restrictions.”

Mr. Vaughn gestured. Byron stepped into the void once again.

“We talked to you, we established rules,” Tristan said. “Now he wants to change the rules? No. I am not cool with that.”

Another gesture, another change.

“Is there no room for compromise?”

“Compromise?” Byron asked, incredulous. “I don’t see how you compromise on that. I thought I was being pretty cool with tolerating the extended touchy-feely make-out session. What are you thinking the compromise is?”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Vaughn said. “But my issue is that it seems very unreasonable to expect total abstinence for the indeterminate future.”

“That’s insane. It’s not that. It’s that he wants to go have sex or do whatever with randoms, and I have a front row seat. I have to see it. I have to feel it. And that’s- you can’t change that. You can’t make it not the case. I know you’re not a stupid man, Mr. Vaughn. You have to understand this.”

“I…” Mr. Vaughn said. “Find myself in a difficult position. On a certain level, I very much agree. Where I’m leery is that we have had attention from the Youth Guard. Gender freedom, freedom of expression, sexuality- they are touchy subjects.”

“So is me being subjected to that!”

“Byron,” Mr. Vaughn said, his voice firm. “My concern is that if I take a stance or take a side, I am opening myself up to issues, no matter what I do. I suspect you are right, though you may be acting unreasonable or operating on too many assumptions when it comes to your interpretation of your brother’s actions.”

“That-”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Vaughn said, less of an admission of ignorance and more of a statement of direction. “Probably not. You’re probably right. But I don’t and can’t know. I don’t want to abandon you either. If I wash my hands of this and say it’s between the two of you, I think I know the outcome.”

“Oh yeah,” Byron said. “I think so.”

“Before it comes to that, before I’m forced to make a choice that hurts my relationship with one of you, or before I make a choice based on things I can’t know, I would like for the two of you to talk. Discuss. Let me step out of the office. I’m going to go to the cafeteria, I’m going to grab my dinner, I’ll come back, and if you have found a resolution, my respect for the two of you will redouble.”

“And if we don’t?” Byron asked.

“Then…” Mr. Vaughn said. “We will discuss. And we will make hard choices.”

Byron nodded. Mr. Vaughn stood and left the room. Byron tried to think of what to say, what argument he could make. But before that, he had to know.

He had to confirm his suspicions.

He switched to Tristan.

“I can’t believe you brought it to him,” Tristan said. Switch.

“No choice. We needed a mediator.”

“He’s the boss, and he’s not stupid. When you talk about me having a partner, he can connect the dots.”

“You did it first.”

“You’re so demented, By. Seriously. I was already having a shitty day, and… God.”

“Is this about Moonsong?”

“I really don’t give two shits about Moonsong, By.”

“Are you sure? Because you went off rails and made a beeline to that party right after I talked with her.”

Byron switched out. Tristan had the body, but Tristan didn’t respond.

His finger traced his leg, at the thigh. “If she makes you happier, then whatever. She can say whatever she wants about me if she keeps you in one piece. I just- I really despise the fact that you’re not understanding that this is what I need to keep myself in one piece.”

“Tristan, he doesn’t want to sleep with you. This isn’t the hill to die on. Date him. Kiss him, stick your tongue down his throat if that’s what you want, if you can do it while being aware your brother is there and watching and feeling it all. If that’s what you want… I’ll deal with it. But I have to draw the line at anything that goes under the underwear.”

“No,” Tristan said. One word, curt, and then switching out.

“No?”

Byron switched. Tristan switched back a moment later.

“You fucking child,” Byron snarled the words. “You can’t even justify it.”

He switched. Tristan switched a second later.

Byron was left standing in the office. He knew Mr. Vaughn would arrive soon.

“You know he’ll back me. I think that’s what kills you. You know you’re wrong, and what you’re wanting here is unjustifiable and unreasonable.”

He switched.

There was a long pause. Then Tristan switched back, not a word spoken.

“Tristan,” Byron said. He hesitated. “Tristan, I have to draw the line here. Tap out. Give. Accept my terms. Or I’m going to reach out to Nate, and I’m going to tell him everything. That I was there, that I could see him- I’m pretty sure he didn’t even think that was possible, because he’s an actually decent human being and he would have stopped you well before, if he’d thought of it. I will tell him, and he will think you are completely and utterly fucked up. Which I’m pretty sure you are.”

Byron let those words hang.

Then he switched.

Tristan was very quiet and very still. That motionless silence lasted the remaining three or four minutes before Mr. Vaughn returned.

“Did you make a decision?” mr. Vaughn asked.

Again, a pause. Long, as if Tristan was having to rewrite his priorities, and find a way to act and form words when everything was reset to zero.

“I agree,” Tristan said, his voice soft. “Nothing beyond kissing and holding hands.”

“I can’t tell you how much I respect you for coming to this compromise.”

“I just wanted hope,” Tristan said. “I wanted to be a regular teenager for a couple of hours, and feel like there were silly, stupid, good things over the next horizon. I didn’t- I wouldn’t have done anything. I just wanted to be able to pretend it was possible.”

“I thought it might be something like that. But you got close enough in your pretending that you spooked your brother,” Mr. Vaughn said. “I admire you for agreeing to this, for his benefit.”

Tristan shook his head.

In a sea of doubt like watercolor bleeding out into endless darkness, Byron counted his first real victory against his brother.

⊙

There’d been no fixes. The power labs had scratched their heads.

For half of his waking hours, portioned out in four hour chunks now, existence still resembled a kind of hell.

For the other half, however, things were good. Moonsong sat beside him, her hand finding his, giving it a squeeze. Off in the corner, Coiffure and Furcate were being silly. Furcate had been weaned off of their shitty lemon candy and had now adopted strawberry flavored drops, still of the grandmother’s candy bowl variety, but without the lingering taste of armpit. Their arm was in a sling, but they seemed to be doing okay. Tribute and Figurehead were chatting about team rankings, and they seemed happy enough with where Reach stood.

But mostly it was Moonsong. Mostly it was finally having an equilibrium. Rules had been set, reaffirmed.

Figurehead’s phone rang. The conversation was short. Figurehead paused to think after hanging up.

The chatter of the team stopped. Everyone looked, sensing the gravity of the moment.

“We found that asshole Paris,” Figurehead said. “He went after Furcate once, after Long John twice, and he got Reconciliation from Haven a second time, just a week ago. This is an all hands on deck thing.”

There was no discussion or thought really needed. Byron reached out for Moonsong’s hand, and he gave it a squeeze.

This was Tristan’s fight.

He passed control.

Immediately, he was aware that something was wrong. Aware, and unable to act on the fact.

“Whatever you need,” Moonsong murmured to Tristan. “We’re with you.”

Tristan was silent, not responding.

When he stood, heads turned. Something in his energy, in his expression.

When I get mad, I bottle it up, it releases explosively, indiscriminately if the person is a moron like my brother who can’t see how things add up.

But it was different for Tristan.

Tristan… when he got mad, he became unreasonably mad. There was no upper limit, and the usual boundaries seemed to slip away, much in the way that led to him stabbing at Byron multiple times. When he set his mind to something, he got it.

And when the two coincided?

Byron had a gut feeling it was worse than a vehicle with a reckless pilot at the helm. This pilot knew what he was doing and he was on course; he just didn’t give a damn about the damage he’d end up doing.

Gleaming – 9.8

For those who missed it, there was a Thursday update. See the prior chapter.

⊙

Sveta was smiling, her face more relaxed than it had been when she had been challenging Byron and I. Things were balanced out. Kenzie was content enough.

Yet somehow, with whatever effect Goddess was supposed to have, more people in the room were upset than content. Me. Natalie.

Amy. I didn’t want to think about or focus on Amy. I didn’t want to think about the fact that she was here, invading my space yet again. I could still recognize that she wasn’t happy with the current dynamic.

Tristan.

For all the advice, the good advice, that Tristan was supposed to calm down and focus his efforts on our number one enemies here, he was as angry as I’d ever seen him. He’d taken off the bulk of his armor before switching out to Byron, and I had a full view of his face and neck. I could see his eyes.

He turned those eyes toward me. The look was dark, the tilt of his head and the overhead lights casting the sockets in shadow, with the shadows branching out through the lines along the nose and between the eyebrows. His fist was clenched.

A study in contrasts. In the moment before he had disappeared, Byron had looked okay. Less tense than I’d known him to be in a long time.

“Enough,” Goddess told him. “I can’t stand infighting.”

He didn’t back down, and he didn’t break eye contact.

“I’ve talked to some of my contacts. They claim they’re ready. Tell me what you’ve done.”

“We had a skirmish with Teacher,” I said. “The team that helped us with that should sit this one out. They’re depleted and as eager as they are, they’re also inexperienced. Tiredness combined with being spent is a recipe for disaster.”

“You have others?”

“Plenty of others,” I told her.

“When you said ‘the team that helped us’, who was ‘us’. Everyone went?”

“Capricorn and myself,” I said. “Capricorn blue, to be specific.”

She looked at Tristan. Seeing him still staring me down, she touched his shoulder. He turned away from me to look at her.

“They ran into a cape,” Tristan said. “Set powers and interdimensional doors on fire.”

“I know her. Teacher will send her after me sometimes.”

“She’s the prison pharmacist. She’ll be there.”

Goddess didn’t seem to be too bothered by that.

“Where’s Cryptid?” Kenzie asked.

“Assisting me. He’s with the team that’s looking for the girl who has my power.”

“Oh, cool. He’ll be good at that.”

“Can you give us more information on that?” I asked. “I’ve studied powers in the past.”

“On the day of the final confrontation against the alien, I was pulled away from my world. Many of my lieutenants and parahuman inhabitants of my world were as well. When everything ended, Several of my lieutenants slipped from my reach. I’ve found all but one. The craven bitch was one of the five others who got powers when I did.”

“One of your other enemies has mentioned your background, and that you… somehow took the powers from the group,” I said.

“Tattletale? Yes. She’s similar to the woman with the fire. She shows up at very inconvenient times. Sometimes because she’s an unwitting pawn moved by Teacher. Right now she’s busy keeping her area of this mega-city from collapsing. A cursed place, Amy says.”

I flinched at the name. I’d almost been able to pretend she wasn’t here.

“It’s probably because of the fact that she’s busy that Teacher is doing what he’s doing now,” Amy said.

“I want to ask, why are you here, Amy?” Sveta asked.

“Um. I’m kind of uniquely situated to get a lot of this. I knew Teacher, I knew Valkyrie, I’ve talked to Tattletale a few times, I had a sense of what was happening with Gold Morning before some others.”

I folded my arms.

“What I was asking is why are you here?” Sveta said. “In this headquarters.”

“Because I wanted to make sure that everyone is okay.”

“Your being here makes things less okay,” Sveta said. “I’m speaking for your sister here, because I’m sure she’s trying to avoid causing issues.”

My arms still folded, I nodded emphatically, my eyes averted to the ground.

“You’re causing problems,” Sveta said.

“I’m trying to take care of everyone, including the people important to me.”

“Enough of this,” Goddess spoke, her voice sharp.

Sveta shut up. Amy went silent.

“Antares,” Goddess said. “My power testing labs are very good and thorough. I can’t imagine you have any new information for me.”

“Can I ask what her power is? I might not know things that are better than what you learned from your labs, but I keep track of capes, as much as it’s possible, with clandestine groups and cults coming out of the woodwork.”

“A power battery. She has five very minor powers, scraps of powers, but she has the ability to charge one, extending its range out dramatically in a straight line, usable once every long while.”

“And with this power back, you’d extend your range?”

“In a sense,” she said. She made eye contact, and there was something searching in her gaze. “Not straight lines.”

“Including the brainwashing?” Natalie asked.

“Nothing is washed,” Goddess said, her voice hard. “It is aligned.”

Natalie nodded, ducking her head down.

Her answer to Natalie’s question hadn’t been a no.

“If you’re done interrogating me, tell me about the prison.”

“I lensed the energy the gates put out to throw Teacher’s attempts to get in or out out of whack. Teacher’s pawns are stupid-”

“They lack volition,” I said.

“And they’re gullible, which means they’re stupid. We tricked them into talking to each other and we have most of them identified.”

“Including the people in charge that Teacher got to,” Tristan said.

He didn’t look any calmer. It was an uncharacteristically cold kind of anger, though, one that left his voice level even as it stood out across his face, neck, and arms.

I could sympathize, on a level, but my anger wasn’t hot or cold. It just felt sick. It carried forward from the sick feeling that had come from being at odds with Sveta. I was thankful that she was defending me and that she wasn’t causing issues, because I wasn’t sure if I could have managed if she didn’t have my back right now.

“We control the access for now,” Kenzie said. “He’s trying to figure it out, but… I’m looking at data, and it looks like he keeps trying to open the portals a hundred feet below the prison. The energy diffuses out into the ground. He did four tries almost right away, and… it’s been a little while since then. He made one try, still down there. I think he might be out of energy.”

“Good,” Goddess said. She smiled. “Good work.”

Kenzie’s legs kicked, as she wiggled.

“Get ready. We’ll go now,” Goddess said.

“We have one more play that’s in the works,” I said. “An ally is going to make a move, and we should watch what happens so we know where people are.”

“Get ready in the meantime, then.”

I met Tristan’s eyes briefly as he turned toward the corner where he’d left his armor. Still angry, in an inexplicable way.

There was too much to keep a handle on, and telling myself master-stranger protocols felt like it was about as substantial as shouting ‘Santa is real!’ when I knew he wasn’t- and Byron had been compromised.

My option now was Natalie, who I could maybe trust but couldn’t rely on, because so much of this cape stuff went over her head.

Or… or Amy. Who maybe knew the cape stuff, but who I couldn’t ever trust.

Natalie. I couldn’t reach out to her now.

And the others… compromised, by the rules and guidelines stipulated in black and white, outlined in tests that tens of thousands of PRT employees had to take and perfect, even the desk jockeys.

I checked my phone. My phone was safe, covering distant territory. No messages had been sent by Rain or Ashley before all communications had been shut off. I looked at the monitors- also safe.

People were heading toward the cafeteria, and in that group, I could see Crystalclear and Rain. It was good. Coalbelcher was in the group with some of his lieutenants. Less good.

In her apartment, Ashley stood with her back to the kitchen counter, her head bowed, her arms folded. The Damsel, for lack of a better description, sat on a chair, one arm draped over the back, the other along the table, by the laptop that was now closed. It wasn’t much use to them, now that the internet was cut off as well.

Another screen showed the video feed from Ashley’s eye-cam. Once we were inside, if for any reason she wasn’t still in her apartment, then chances were good that we’d have to deduce her location.

Goddess walked over to look at the screens. Kenzie, organizing her stuff and unplugging things from the computer, looked up.

Amy moved in my peripheral vision. I shifted my stance. My aura was on and off in such a short period of time it barely rippled past my skin.

She wasn’t focusing on me. She’d taken a step toward Sveta, who was attaching her armor, her mask on the table next to her.

“Hello,” the small creature on Amy’s shoulder said, voice high. A few people glanced over.

“Hello,” Sveta said, before returning to what she was doing. She kept Amy in the corner of her eye.

“Dot, meet Tress,” Amy said. “My mother told me a lot about her, and I make- made small talk with her boyfriend when I ran into him at the Wardens headquarters.”

“You have a machine body, and you don’t smell much like flesh or blood.”

“Be polite,” Amy said.

“It’s good!” Dot exclaimed. “So special, to have something made like that. A lot of love and care.”

“There was,” Sveta said. “The most important person in the world had to work hard to make it even possible, and someone had to study very hard to learn how to make it, and that’s a kind of love too.”

Lookout, helmet on, gear gathered, approached to get a better look at Dot. I opened my mouth to express a warning, but Lookout stepped back as Amy turned to look at her.

Good, I thought.

Dot didn’t seem to care, instead adjusting her perch on Amy’s shoulder.

“My Red Queen does good work with a lot of love too,” Dot said.

“I’ve seen the work she does,” Sveta said.

I could feel a weight pressing in on me. Amy looking my way made it worse.

Tristan, on the other end of the room, was getting his armor on. He watched intently, still silent, but for a few of the strategic comments he’d dropped for Goddess.

“Natalie,” I said. I was desperate for an out. “Can we talk organization?”

“Please,” she said.

“We can step outside,” I said, “If you don’t mind your jacket getting wet. Give these guys some elbow room.”

Natalie nodded.

“Stay inside,” Goddess said.

There went that plan.

Why did this have to be so hard? One person standing in the center of the room while her squirrel-like companion made small talk was harder to deal with than just about anything.

“My Red Queen has fixed a few of my kind. Big ones, weird ones. She could fix you. She can make you just as wonderful in shape and strong enough you don’t need the body.”

“Don’t volunteer me,” Amy said. “Things are more complicated than that.”

“But you can! You can make her any shape at all, and then she won’t need that machine anymore! Then I can take a hand or take an arm! It’s all so colorful!”

“That’s enough. I’m sorry, Sveta.”

Sveta didn’t respond, only giving Amy a cold look that, ten minutes ago, she’d been directing at me.

“But I want-” Dot started. Amy brought up a hand, and stroked Dot like Dot was a cat. I saw the contact, and revulsion gripped my entire body.

Natalie looked between Amy and me, and then stepped closer to me, hand moving as if she was going to touch me. I flinched, and she stopped.

I nodded, and she touched my upper arm, just below the ornamentation of spires there. She moved between Amy and me, blocking my view, and the gratitude that rolled through me could have stopped a moving vehicle.

I hated feeling weak and powerless in front of people like this- in front of Lookout, who couldn’t understand. In front of Sveta, Tristan, and Goddess.

I looked away, tried to swallow and it got stuck, caught somewhere between up and down, in a position that paralyzed, too ominous for me to figure out how to breathe again. I really truly felt like forcing it would leave me either choking, if I moved one way, or outright coughing out a mouthful of vomit.

Fuck her. Fuck her for being here. Fuck her for intruding, for not getting it. Fuck her for her selfishness.

In anger, disgust receded. I could swallow, the motion hard enough it hurt.

“What’s going on?” Natalie whispered. “This is Goddess’ mind control effect? And you’re resisting it?”

“I’m not resisting it,” I murmured. “Every iota of my being is telling me that it’s not a problem, it’s minor, I’m making the sensible calls. But Byron said I’m affected.”

“Byron is-” she turned to look in Tristan’s direction.

“He’s affected now. Swansong and Precipice too.”

“Oh,” she said. “What do I do?”

“If you ask me, we ride this out, treat Teacher as the bigger threat, and we deal with that first. We resolve the prison situation and we let Goddess go rule her world as she sees fit. If she asks, we go with, we switch our focus… a lot could be done if we do our part there and use that work and accomplishments there to help Gimel.”

“And if she says she wants to destroy Gimel?”

“My first instinct would be to evacuate everyone and then destroy it.”

“And if she didn’t want to evacuate? Kill everyone?”

“I couldn’t do that,” I said.

“Just like in the video, then,” Natalie said.

She’d seen Byron fighting me, had apparently heard the audio.

“I can get away and call people,” she murmured. “The Wardens?”

“I think you trying would set off her danger sense,” I said. And as I said it, I turned my head.

Goddess stood by the computer terminal. Lookout was standing by her again, chattering away. Goddess wasn’t listening, though. She was watching Natalie and I.

“Be safe,” I said. “We’ll figure something out.”

Natalie nodded.

I was pretty sure I was lying.

“Do you know master-stranger protocols?” I asked her, my voice a dire whisper.

As expected, she shook her head.

“You’re not compromised. If you say to do something, anything, I’m going to put my trust in you. Byron might. I don’t know.”

Natalie opened her mouth to reply. She was interrupted by a change in the lighting. A whole wall of projected images flicked over to being a single image from a surveillance camera. It was in color, and the sky on the other side was lit by hues ranging from blue to pink and orange. The shadows of the people in the image were long.

Rain was a step behind Crystalclear.

On another wall, in another panel of projected image, Ashley had moved to the balcony. Damsel stood beside her, claws wrapped around the railing. Others were watching too.

“Audio,” Tristan said.

“…this with full knowledge of the consequences,” Crystalclear said. He’d been close to the head of the group of prisoners that were going to the cafeteria to eat, and now he stopped, arms out to the sides. Guards were moving to flank, weapons drawn.

“Don’t be stupid, Crystalclear. Your record is good, you haven’t had problems yet!”

“Yeh, don’t be stupid,” Coalbelcher’s voice was accented, with nasal intonation that didn’t fit him. “I was looking forward to my dinner, and I get cranky when something or someone gets in the way of that.”

“I have it on good authority that this prison is under attack as we speak. Part of that attack involves the drugs they intend to hand out at the cafeteria. I’m asking you to put a lockdown in effect and put everything on hold, medication included.”

“I’m seconding this,” Rain said.

“You’re delaying our dinner, boys?” Coalbelcher asked.

“Yes sir, sorry sir,” Rain said.

“Not smart.”

“Stand down, everyone else, kneel! I don’t want funny business!”

The other prisoners in Rain and Crystalclear’s group were dropping to their knees.

“If a few hours pass and nothing happens, feel free to come after us, Coal, but we’re pretty sure on this,” Crystalclear said.

“Us,” Rain said. “Put me out there, feel free.”

“Sorry,” Crystalclear added.

“I’m going to make you sorry if these guards don’t. Getting between me and my motherfucking meal.” Coalbelcher growled. From a distance, through the speaker, it sounded more like a child trying to sound menacing. I wondered if he was more dangerous-sounding in person, backed by reputation, in a Brando-as-Godfather way.

“Down on the ground!” a guard called, indicating Crystalclear.

“I’m already kneeling.”

“Chin to dirt!”

“Again, requesting facility-wide lockdown.”

“Chin to the fucking dirt!”

“Figured it wouldn’t work,” Rain said.

Crystalclear dropped, hands at the back of his head.

“We’re going to cuff you, and then we’re going to take you two back-”

An explosion.

Lookout hit keys. Our view shifted to surveillance camera footage of the cafeteria. The detonation had wrecked the door and surrounding brickwork.

“By the look and sound of that, it seems like Crystalclear’s power,” I said, my voice quieter than I’d meant it to be.

“At least they don’t realize it’s him,” Sveta said.

“Yeah. They had to take the guy who can grow explosive crystals on his head and send them through solid surfaces face-first against the ground, huh?”

The guards were focusing on getting the prisoners away from the site of the blast. Crystalclear and Rain were pulled to their feet. They didn’t seem to realize that it had been Crystalclear. It was possible they knew what he did on paper, but recognizing it in the field was something else entirely.

“Over there,” Rain said, turning his head.

Crystalclear stumbled as he turned partially around, while the guard had a hand at the back of his prison-issue jacket. As part of the stumble, he brought his leg back and kicked, scuffing the ground.

A moment’s delay, and- an explosion, off-screen.

“Can you get that for us, Lookout?”

Amy had moved closer to me in her effort to see what was going on in the video. Natalie positioned herself, guarding me. Sveta, too, had moved to another point.

Goddess was watching but not intervening. I knew she meant well, but…

Lookout’s voice cut through my thoughts. “Going back ten seconds. Play.”

Video footage. People running from the cafeteria. One of them was the pharmacist, marked with an icon over her head, courtesy of Lookout’s tech.

Crystalclear had to have put a crystal in his shoe, because he’d sent something forward when he’d scuffed the dirt with his toe. The explosion was the usual Crystalclear sort, but as it hit the pharmacist, she flinched, reacting, and the explosion unfolded into something more dramatic, with rolling waves of purple flame.

The shoe-crystal would’ve been his plan for if they hadn’t had him put his head to the ground.

The smoke was clearing away. Our pharmacist was fine in the wake of it. Of fucking course.

“That’s our cue,” Tristan said. “We’ll have to trust they’ve got this figured out. Rain and Crystal know what the pharmacist can do.”

Goddess turned toward the door. With a power, she bid it to open. Wind and flecks of moisture came in, beading the first few feet of floorboards. As she approached, however, wind and rain stopped.

The group headed for the fire escape, Goddess lifting herself up to the railing, then floating down. Tristan was behind her.

My thoughts were on Crystalclear and Rain, on the pharmacist, and how we’d travel to get there. To my right, a supporting hand reached for my shoulder.

It was a colorful hand in my peripheral vision. My first thought was that it was Sveta. Then, after processing color, that Natalie had pulled on gloves.

A hand of mostly red, black secondary, with lines of gold running through it for highlights.

I hadn’t even fully processed the thought, or the warning shout of, “No!” before I was flying. Forcefield out- I swung to strike her pre-emptively, before she could make contact.

The swing came at a downward angle. Floorboards became splinters, and I could hear Lookout shriek off to the side. I saw Amy’s eyes wide, her stumbling steps back as the floor shifted subtly under her feet. Dot went from under her jacket to her shoulder, then bounded off.

Floating, I had no reason to move a hair. I’d spent so long trying to avoid thinking about her, trying to find my equilibrium, to deal. Even swallowing or breathing could be made hard. Wearing skin could be hard, when the idea of her was close.

But if I didn’t move a hair, if I was a statue, all bridled fury and potential energy, I could stare her down, and hope that there was something that I could convey here.

My aura was still active. I was probably disturbing the neighbors. Just like with the swallowing, I couldn’t bring myself to do more than hold it in uncomfortable, bad-for-me limbo.

“Victoria,” Sveta said.

“Sorry about the floorboards,” I said. I didn’t look, but it was hard to miss, even in peripheral vision. “That’s probably the security deposit and then some.”

Amy’s lips parted. Anger flared in my chest. She got out just the two and a half words, “I’ll pay-”

I flew in, Wretch up. She hurled herself back and away, and it was like she was moving in slow motion. My flight was faster than her running.

Something connected with my forcefield. With it, the paradigm shifted. I couldn’t be close, couldn’t risk being touched. I changed the direction of my flight, placing myself near the wall.

It had been Sveta. As I turned around, she was reeling in her arm.

Amy had to circumnavigate the hole I’d put in the floor to get to the door. Dot jumped from Lookout’s arms to Amy’s shoulder as she passed.

“You’ll be happier if you stop here,” Sveta said. “We have a mission.”

The mission.

Do what’s lawful, do what’s right, when neither are clear, reach out for help.

The law and right aren’t in the prison right now. They needed help.

“Okay,” I said. “Absolutely.”

I headed for the door. Sveta reached out, extending an arm to my shoulder. I stopped.

“Give her a second to leave. Some distance will be good,” Sveta said.

“She won’t leave,” I said. “Because leaving would be the right thing to do. I have to make her.”

Sveta’s expression shifted, a frown.

“Sorry, Lookout,” I said. “I probably spooked you.”

She laughed. I imagined a smile on her face, on the other side of her mask.

I floated past the hole and through the door. I had to lower my head a little so I didn’t get a faceful of freezing rain.

On the ground beside the fire escape, Amy stood beside Goddess. She hadn’t left.

“Sorry, Natalie,” I said, as I passed her. She was standing on the uppermost stair that wasn’t the landing at the top of the fire escape.

“No,” she said, her voice small. “I get it.”

I wondered if she actually did, now.

Goddess was staring me down, looking utterly unbothered, beyond maybe some impatience about getting to the prison. Amy stood a little ways back, in her civilian clothes, her jacket’s hood up, her eyes not visible.

And I was- I was shaking, like the cold had gotten to me.

It hadn’t, but close enough.

As I drew nearer, I brought the Wretch out. I let the rain outline it.

Goddess didn’t flinch. Amy- I saw Amy take a step back. She said something I couldn’t make out over the drum of the rain.

I flew around the pair- put myself in front of her, instead. I touched down on the surface of the parking lot, and the Wretch scratched at it, scrabbled at it with multiple fingernails of a multitude of hands.

She turned away, and I put myself in her field of view again, my expression like stone because anything else would have broken in a second. My fists were clenched, and I was acutely aware of the burn… yet I didn’t feel pain. Even the old bullet wound in my upper arm didn’t hurt in this moment, which made me realize it usually did, just a bit. A tightness that wasn’t there in this moment.

Because I didn’t feel pain, I felt like I could do this. I could manage this because that almost-contact had shocked my system and my senses were altered in the now. That allowed me to show Amy. I could show Goddess because I trusted her. The others- they knew or they’d seen.

Well. Maybe they’d seen, but it might have taken the damage to the floorboards to show them.

Adrenaline surged through me to impel, drive me forward, in a moment I was stiller than even a person standing could be. A person that stood needed to make micro-adjustments to their position, to keep their balance. Weight shifted from foot to foot.

Not so, for me. I could have been a corpse.

I saw moisture on her face that wasn’t rain. Like the two and a half words she’d spoken, it was almost enough to provoke me again. I felt outrage, seeing that.

I knew I wasn’t being rational. I knew I was in shock.

Like with the master-stranger protocols, I had to recognize where I was, and what I needed to do. Things divorced from instinct, biological impulses, and baser needs, like fight or flight.

“Did you get your closure?” Goddess asked.

Amy turned her head to look at the woman, and I could see her eyes. Bewildered, haunted. Hurt.

Amy wasn’t under Goddess’ influence. She was a lieutenant who had connections to key players like Tattletale, Marquis, and Teacher.

I’d seen those eyes before too. Around the edges of memories that had been wiped away.

“Amy,” Goddess said.

Amy wasn’t up to speaking any more than I was.

“Go to Cryptid. You’re useless to me here.”

Amy nodded slowly. She backed away.

I had no idea if she planned to catch a ride somehow, run, walk, or do something else. I didn’t really care. She was leaving. She was gone.

She’d tried to touch me.

What to call it when someone I wasn’t prepared to forgive did something unforgivable?

I wasn’t sure. But I could cuss at myself in my head, for letting things get this far, for letting my guard down. A ‘fool me once…’ thing.

As the rush lost its hold on me, the shaking got a bit worse.

“Natalie,” Tristan said. “Can you lock up? Tress has trouble with things like keys, I don’t think Lookout keeps keys readily available- she has other things to do with her belt pouches.”

“Yeah,” Lookout said. “It’s in my satchel.”

The satchel was more like a fanny pack, worn at the back, strap extending diagonally over the right shoulder and around the left side of her ribcage.

“And I don’t want to go up and down the stairs in armor,” Tristan said.

“Okay,” Natalie said. Tristan threw his keys to her- a small object thrown in the dark. By his accuracy more than anything, Natalie caught the keys.

And just like that, things were close to normal again. The shaking in my hands didn’t quite go away.

I saw Goddess raise one hand. The surface of the parking lot cracked, and in the lighting, streetlights and lights from the nearby building hitting the icy ground at an angle, it made the shift in the ground and the breaks in the ground stand out that much more.

She used her telekinesis to lift up a disc of ground from the parking lot, and as she did it, it was clear that the telekinesis had its own shape to it. Something geometric.

I’d have to keep that in mind, like I had to keep Sveta’s suit or Lookout’s facial expressions in mind. Quirks and weaknesses.

Tristan approached. I could still see glimmers of that earlier anger. I wasn’t sure exactly what was coming of it, though. To be that angry and- what? No focus? Was he burning it off or eating that anger and digesting it into some other form?

It was too many question marks in a row, coinciding with the shaking of my hands. I hated feeling weak. I liked being the declarative sort, the one who could list off bullet points and elaborate on them, not get caught up in wonderings and doubts.

“I get it,” Tristan spoke. His voice wasn’t his usual. “The sibling thing. Wrestling with… with wrongs.”

I nodded. I could believe it.

“Difference is, I was the wrongdoer,” he said. “The blood was on my hands.”

He held out a gauntleted hand, where it could catch the light. Amy had tattoos. Tristan had metal that had been tinted orange-red, with a wash that let the tint collect in crevices and cracks.

“I’m going to need you to keep me in check,” Tristan said.

“Check?”

“There aren’t many things that get to me, but we managed to press a few of those buttons tonight,” Tristan murmured. “The last few times I felt like this, I did things I wasn’t proud of.”

“Got it.”

“Keep me from doing something stupid, and I’ll have your back. Yeah?”

I nodded.

Goddess lifted up her disc. With a gesture, she picked up Lookout by the satchel, then deposited her on the disc. Sveta accepted a hand of help from Tristan and I.

While we waited for Natalie, Tristan stood with his eyes on the group. Quiet, he stated a simple pass phrase.

“Master-stranger?”

“Yes,” I said, barely audible.

“Okay. I think I remember the rules. Who’s our person?”

“Natalie,” I whispered. “Until replaced.”

“Replaced?”

“Byron was affected.”

“I felt it. Yes.”

“Then the first untainted, trustworthy cape we can find. We should keep them unaffected where possible,” I whispered.

“Crystalclear?”

“Maybe.”

The disc was ready. Tristan stepped up onto it, and then he offered a hand to Natalie, lifting her up with no apparent difficulty at all.

The disc levitated- a chunk of ground fifteen feet across that rained a bit of gravel down on the ground far beneath.

I flew. Goddess landed at the midway point of the disc, and she lifted it, carrying herself with the rest.

Another thing to file away. She could lift herself, and she could lift a lot of weight, but in the here and now, she was using that power one at a time.

The rain didn’t let up, and being airborne didn’t help. There were less buildings to break up the flow of the wind, less sources of heat that could warm us up. My costume was covered in a thin sheet of ice before we were halfway to our destination.

Five minutes after that halfway point, my armor began to crack. The weight of the ice was its own downfall, and it came away in Victoria shapes, cascading down to empty streets below.

We reached the first portal and passed through.

The weather was different. The lighting from the now expired sunset, the sky bright even though it was night and it had been raining.

Eerily tranquil.

We approached the second portal in the airlock-like arrangement. Lookout deactivated the scrambler, and we had a clear shot through, the ability to see through the gate to the other side.

With that clear shot, we had a view as well.

The guards, their guns, and apparently prisoners that they’d released to assist them. Capes standing at the edges of the group of correctional officers, ready to back them up.

The wave of telekinetic force that reached out struck at them one by one. It had its own pattern, like a series of numbers that matched to the earlier pattern we’d seen. It swiped over guards and it disarmed them of their weapons.

A moment later, like a fractal pattern cracking the wall before the shape took its form -a pattern not too unlike Tristan and Byron’s power- Goddess tore an entire wall out of the side of the building. People who had been standing ready to defend this place now scrambled to get clear.

“We tear it all down before we leave,” Goddess said.

Gleaming – 9.9

When we were children and we were feeling insecure, we clung to the powerful authority figures in our lives. Mine had just torn down an interior wall of a prison.

It would be so easy to stop fighting. I was walking into a headwind, swimming upstream, alienating myself from my friend, doubts welling up inside me. Somewhere in all of this, I’d almost killed someone I’d grown up with- and I had less apprehension or regret about that near-murder than I did about momentarily meeting Capricorn’s eyes, seeing him give me a small nod, as we flew and jogged forward.

We were the frontliners, each of us taking cover at different sides of the same hallway. Goddess walked down the center. She indicated one direction, and without words, Capricorn acted. Orange lights appeared in a swirl, and someone that was sprinting forward nearly stumbled into them. They scrambled back, ducking out of view.

Capricorn shouted a warning to them, and I barely heard it.

That I didn’t hear it told me a lot about how well I was processing things right now.

I could tell myself that for right now we would go after the one threat we felt unambiguous about, but thought and feeling both told me that I would feel just as wrong about betraying Goddess later on.

Goddess indicated my side. I pulsed out with my aura. I saw her react- and I heard the people who’d been approaching stop what they were doing, backing off.

I opened my mouth to apologize, and no words came out.

“Do it again,” Goddess’ voice cut through the noise.

Sure, I thought. I found my voice. “Yes.”

I hit her with my aura, soft at first, like a taste of fear in the mouth or a flash of something amazing in the eyes.

Her head moved, as if she was getting a sense for it. When I tapered it off, she moved her fingers in an almost absent beckoning gesture, like she wanted more.

She nodded all at once, definitive.

“It won’t affect me now,” she said.

I wasn’t in a good place, and I could recognize that the inexplicable gratitude that welled up in me at hearing that wasn’t good.

Focus, I thought.

We’d been in this building before. It was shaped like a plus sign, with the intersection in the center being the place we’d been held up, a heavily reinforced desk, including the gates we had to pass through. We’d entered from the one corridor, and the corridor opposite opened into the prison itself.

Opened more since Goddess had taken that wall out.

Our current issue was the corridors off to the sides. They were apparently for staff, and prison employees had retreated off to either side. I looked back at Goddess, who hadn’t advanced.

“Deal with it,” she said, without stepping forward.

She’d have her reasons.

On our past visit, I’d noted the shutters. The shutters were meant to be brought down from the other side, but…

Capricorn was crouched in the corner by the wall that framed the metal detector and gate. Just past that short wall was the corner and the left turn to the corridor where staff had retreated. Prison officers, security. People with guns. I got his attention, then indicated the shutters, moving my hand to emulate the shutter coming down.

He gave me a nod of confirmation. I saw orange lights start to move along the ceiling.

I was crouched by the same wall on my side of the hallway. Behind me, Sveta, Natalie and Lookout were all gathered against the wall. Lookout was ignoring the situation and focusing on her phone. Her primary goal right now was in keeping the Warden and his deputy from accessing any computers to start detonating ankle bombs. Her secondary goal would be to keep an eye on what was going on.

She looked laser-focused on her task. I felt less like a cape than I had on my first night out in costume.

“Tress,” Goddess said. “At the desk. Someone with a gun.”

I barely had time to turn my head before Tress had sent her arms forward. She grabbed the sides of the metal detector, then slingshotted herself through it, straight at the window of the desk. The scrape that followed was sharp, suggesting she’d scraped away some paint. The red light and the buzz of the metal detector was immediate, but she moved fast enough that it seemed like it followed too late.

I didn’t stay to watch. As off as I felt, I had to act. I flew up, hands and feet going up and back as I landed with my back to the ceiling, my extremities catching the impact and minimizing the sound. I flew while keeping as close to the ceiling as possible, cloth skimming across painted ceiling. I had a glimpse of the people in the hallway, crouched by short walls and benches like I’d been crouched by the wall. The shutter and its mechanism provided some limited cover. The fact that the fluorescent lights focused on lighting the lower half of the room more than they focused on covering the ceiling helped. If anyone saw me and reacted, they didn’t shoot.

The Wretch struck the locking mechanism, disappearing an instant after it had appeared-

A violent image, the Wretch visible to me like it had been in the hospital room, except ghostly, existing only in the form of streaked raindroplets and rain breaking against an invisible surface. And beyond it- Amy.

Focus.

I worried I’d have to haul it shut. I didn’t. The shutter’s own weight brought it down, with my destruction of the mechanism serving much the same function as hauling down on any release lever or pressing any button would have. It was built like a garage door, but it was heavier, double or three times the thickness, and it was raucous, metal striking against the metal seat with a sound that would be heard next door. Most likely the intent.

Capricorn materialized his power, bringing down the other shutter, rock cracking as the metal moved and the individual slats bent. The impact wasn’t as much of a metal on metal sound as it came down to its housing. He glanced at my shutter, then stood straighter for a better view. Orange lights began to move along the shutters, covering each surface.

Sveta. I flew down to the window, to check that she was fine. She was already at the window, peeking out.

“It’s fine,” Goddess said.

I extended a hand for Sveta to take. Too late, as her prosthetic hands seized my wrist, I realized it was the burned one. It hurt, but I ignored it, pushing through it, as I helped pull her through. She found the positioning for her legs after they were through.

My arm buzzed and prickled with the pain even after Sveta let go.

Stupid mistake, and a mistake that bad could get us hurt. Focus, Victoria!

Goddess pushed down the additional barriers and barred walls that we would have had to be buzzed through. The group fell into step around her, the staff in the two side hallways effectively bunkered in. Capricorn made a gesture of his hand for effect. The orange motes became an additional wall of stone, flush against the metal shutters. It was very possible that it would make the shutters impossible to open until…

Until after.

It was a cold shock to think about how we had to handle the after. We’d just interfered with law enforcement, and the law was supposed to be one of my go-tos.

Follow the law, if that wasn’t possible, do what was right. If that wasn’t possible, we were supposed to reach out.

If I set that law aside- and I didn’t want to, but the situation was complicated, then I had other laws. In the morass of doubts and concerns, I had to get centered and focus again. I needed to put the events of twenty minutes ago behind me. Now that we were here, I couldn’t be numb and unthinking like I’d been on the flight in.

Black and white text. Protocols. Rules to be followed. Take all of the feelings and bottle them up, except those warm feelings of Dean, that give those protocols and stark letters their life.

Challenging each other, being competitive and trying to get the higher score. Getting in actual arguments over it, where we were both pissy the next day. Making up. Dean telling me, as we cuddled, that competitive was hard for him, because his dad expected so much, and he could sense his father’s disappointment when he didn’t do his best. I’d had such a distinct mental picture of Dean’s dad standing in the doorway, because so often when I went over there with Dean, there would be that kind of distance. As if Dean and I being in one of their living rooms watching a show together meant the room was ours and his dad couldn’t or wouldn’t intrude. I’d been so able to imagine the disappointment and distance both.

My mind jumped from that to an image of Amy standing in a doorway in the same way. It-

My heart had already dropped. The warm memory was wiped away and replaced with a chilled, ugly feeling. I tried to reason my way through it, think around it.

It hadn’t been when Dean and I were cuddling, but we’d been together. Another time. Why had I connected that image to Amy? The distance? She hadn’t been disappointed- or, no. Maybe she had, but I hadn’t known it then.

The ugly feeling persisted.

Had I known? Had there been some glimmer of a suspicion?

It wasn’t a rhetorical question or a revelation. Just… a very real question, where both answers were bad in their own way.

The ugly feeling got worse, as I dwelt on it.

I couldn’t cling to that for strength, so long as other memories attached themselves. Both the times she’d been there when I was with Dean and the times she hadn’t been there when I’d been with him were mucked in together, muddled and muddied, shat on by her proximity to them. That he’d had to have known. That she could have saved him and she hadn’t.

I couldn’t. The kernel of love I felt for him was too hard to reach for.

Then- then the other direction. Reaching for that other direction meant getting close, meant walking through a corridor of memories and ignoring the person who kept on peering in through the windows and stood off to the side, punctuating so, so much of my early life.

What wasn’t hers?

In the hospital room, studying like I’d studied the master-stranger protocols. Being the powers geek with the patrol. Yes. It was an identity I could and had wrapped around myself like a security blanket.

Never hers. Untainted, but for a few intrusions looking in on Dean and I.

I wasn’t moving any faster, walking in line with the others, my jaw set, but I felt like I was.

There was another identity, one from another world that had never been hers. It was a world that’d had- it had had its problems, but it wasn’t hers. She’d defied it, as a matter of fact. Where I’d longed for it, thrown myself into that world, she’d run from it. She’d wanted love and acceptance from our family, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to join in.

I reached for my mask, where it lay at my upper thigh, the curvature of the mask making for a neat fit. I slipped it on, hooking it to the metalwork where my hood met my hairline, a band of chain going around the back, securing it in place. It clicked in a satisfying way.

I wore a face, my face, but it was cast in alloy, untouchable, unmoving.

My breath was warm against my face as we stepped beyond the corridor, through the wholly unnecessary if impressive opening Goddess had made.

The sky was so bright, and it was warm. There was only a sliver of sun, but after the darkness and the rain, the harsh coldness, the setting was eerie. Less of a crossing over to another Earth and more of a crossing over to another world.

And there were guards. The long distances and the open spaces with only chain link blocking off access meant that getting from A to B was more time consuming, and that was a dangerous thing when anyone with a gun had an open shot, often with next to nothing on the far side of us, the targets.

Capricorn began drawing out orange-red motes, clearly intending to give us some cover.

Goddess beat him to it. With a sweep of her arm, she used her telekinesis to carve a great furrow into the earth. Dust and dirt was sent flying, and there was a great opaque cloud. Again, in the moment I saw the earth react, before the dust cloud covered it, I saw the pattern by which Goddess’ telekinesis touched the world, like a hand used to push would leave a handprint. A line that zig-zagged out, back into itself, out. The first gunshots erupted, the sounds louder because they could skip off the flat ground like a stone could skip on water. Our group ducked down, and I put the Wretch out, shielding Sveta, Kenzie, and Natalie.

The dust was clearing, however. Goddess had pushed out the earth, and where it had piled up, it formed a loose general barrier, thick with stones.

Goddess’ head snapped around. She reached out, and part of her barrier exploded outward, stones and dirt flying.

“Don’t hurt them!” I said. My voice was almost drowned out by the follow-up strike. Something more localized. Taking out one person who was still after her, following the initial strike.

“Hurt- you hurt the guards?” Sveta asked.

“Maybe they were bad people,” Kenzie said. “Right?”

“Would you rather be shot by them?” Goddess asked, ignoring Kenzie.

“We have to live with the consequences after,” I said. “We can do this in a good way.”

“One moment,” she said. She paused.

I clenched my teeth, lips pressed together behind my mask.

Four hundred feet away, at one corner of a building, brick and glass shattered, a window and balcony coming to pieces. From what I could see of the follow-up, a series of blasts and destruction within the room she had targeted, she was removing the floor from the room.

“That-” I started.

“A moment,” she interrupted, firmer. Her focus was wholly on that spot. There was a pause. “One fucking moment.”

I remained silent, letting her do what she needed to do. She turned her head slowly, looking around.

“There was a sniper. There’s one more on the other side of the complex. They’re not taking a shot. They’re too far.”

With a finger, she indicated a building.

“Girls’ side,” Kenzie said.

“The men and women have fled. Retreating to a fortified position.”

“I could spot them on my phone,” Lookout offered, helpfully.

“No,” Goddess said. “It’s not a question. I’m saying it because I know it.”

“Oh, cool,” Lookout said.

Goddess indicated the nearest building on the boy’s side. “You’ll escort me. Teacher’s pawns are close, and they were picked to stop me.”

“Is that the plan?” I asked. “Visiting each building in turn? Rounding up the capes, dispatch the guards and anyone Teacher set up?”

“Why does it sound like you’re questioning me?”

I hesitated.

I am Antares. I am a scholar of powers, I was born to capes and raised to be a cape. I-

I reached, grasping for the strength to push through my doubts. Me with my mom and dad. A weird scene, because I had been young, and I’d had a debate with my parents while we’d been out in costume, and I’d been thrown off balance.

I didn’t have time to replay the whole memory in my head.

“Yes,” I said. The fuller answer found me as I grasped the rest of the memory. The debate with my parents had thrown me off because they’d talked to me like equals, had considered my opinion valid, conceded points, or defended them. “You wanted people close to you who weren’t just yes men. It’s why you had- you had Amy, who you weren’t…”

I trailed off. Bringing up Amy had slowed my momentum. Trying to find a word to encapsulate this killed it.

“Aligning?” Lookout offered. “Inviting to the coolest cool kids club? Except we’re not all kids, um-”

“Aligning,” I said. “Thank you for the word, Lookout.”

“Anytime.”

“I did,” Goddess told me. She turned her head, looking for something. “I don’t like standing in this open field, when we don’t know what Teacher has prepared. We’ll walk to our destination.”

I nodded.

Capricorn created barriers to one side of us, as Goddess watched over her shoulder in the same direction. Natalie looked scared- it might have been the passing mention of a sniper.

“You wanted people who debate with you, offer differing points of view. You listened to Cryptid, so… is it okay if I bring up some points?”

“Cryptid may not be your best example, Antares,” Goddess said.

There was something ominous in her voice as she said it, even though she looked at me and smiled like there was almost a joke in there.

“I don’t understand.”

“He came to me with a form prepared to counter me. And that is, as far as I detected, only one of three levels of deception that boy was putting into practice. You don’t want to tell me that you’re following his suit.”

I wasn’t sure most members of the team weren’t shocked at that. Looks were exchanged. Of alarm, concern.

“But he’s helping you,” Lookout said.

“He is. He’s clever enough that I want to work with him. Antares, little Lookout, is a little more blunt about questioning me and making me wonder about her, and she already attacked one of my new lieutenants. Did you have an actual argument, Antares, or are we going to talk about him? Because if you didn’t have a problem to raise, I won’t be happy you questioned me.”

“Actual argument,” I said. It took me a half-second to refocus myself, taking my thoughts away from Chris and back into thinking like a cape, the kind of cape that could debate approaches with my parents. “The assistant warden of this prison is on our side, and he’s holding off on detonating the ankle bombs because Foresight convinced him. He’s presumably watching through surveillance cameras-”

“He is,” Lookout said, looking around. She sounded alarmed as she said, “Nobody said I should stop him from doing it.”

“It’s good,” I told her, reassuring. “It’s good. If you stopped him, he might start panicking and doubting Foresight. But if this group with a strange person in it starts assaulting his guards and collecting his prisoners…”

“He’s going to shit a brick, use that brick to break the glass, and hit the big red button that blows up those prisoners,” Capricorn supplied.

“Can you block him like you’re blocking the warden?” Goddess asked Lookout. “Don’t actually do it. I had a feeling as I asked.”

“I could,” Lookout said. “But it’d be hard. I’m already splitting my focus, and unless I want to shut off all power across the complex…”

“Leaving us in the dark,” Sveta murmured. Her pale face turned to look in the direction of the sun. No longer a sliver- it was a glow across the sky. The ‘slivers’ were now only the crimson-purple linings around some of the rare clouds at that end of the sky.

We’d reached the building. It was the same one the sniper had been in. It was less like a proper apartment building and more like six cargo containers organized so it was two side by side, another two stacked facing a different direction, and then two stacked at the top, with the original orientation. Staircases that led down or through were exposed.

Rain and Ashley’s buildings had four people per. This is a six. It’s almost like a threat rating, but the buildings with six have the easiest prisoners to manage.

We weren’t going inside just yet. Goddess was hesitating.

“I think I know why. If she does that then we become the bad guys,” I said. “Foresight will find out or think something’s going on- they have good thinkers. Right now they’re telling him that his staff and superiors are compromised, something dangerous is going on. He’s listening. We don’t want to give him a reason to think he’s being played.”

“Then we go after him. Tress, if I tell you to go to him and keep him quiet and cooperative, can you do that?”

“I don’t know if I’m that convincing.”

“You might not be, but a knife to the throat is,” Goddess said.

I saw Tress’ expression shift. Hesitation.

“Is anyone else capable?”

“I could try,” Lookout offered.

“You couldn’t be older than twelve, and I need better than try,” Goddess said. She looked in the direction of the entry-building. “Trouble’s coming. It feels like Teacher.”

“It might be,” Lookout said. “Let me look.”

She turned to her phone. I turned my focus to the immediate problem. We had to protect the leadership.

“If we grab everyone, they’ll panic and you’ll get nobody,” I said. “We told Foresight we’d reach out to our team members and their undercovers. They’ll let the guy in admin know. Let’s get our forces together.”

“Teacher realized he can’t get in,” Lookout reported. “He could’ve figured it out if he’d tried to make a portal a hundred feet in the air, but I guess he’s not that smart. Like, helloo…”

“He’s attacking the front door,” Goddess interrupted.

“Yes,” Lookout said. “I was getting around to that.”

“Our guys?” I asked.

“The teams we pulled together are going to be holding him off. Fume Hood, A.G., Auzure,” Lookout said. “And others.”

“They won’t succeed,” Goddess said. “I wouldn’t be aware of the imminent danger if he was going to be scared away.”

“Then tell them, Lookout,” I said. “Let’s not have them commit to a fight they can’t win.”

“I’ll tell them.”

“Get your people,” Goddess said. “Lookout and the unpowered girl stay with me. The rest of you- gather your forces. I don’t care how you do it, but do it fast. You know Teacher’s key players?”

“Yes,” Capricorn said.

“We’re doing what I did when I claimed my Earth. Start from the top. A prison warden has to be easier than a collection of world leaders. You can manage this? Remove Teacher’s pawns, that would give him control.”

“Would help,” Lookout said, her attention back on her phone. “I’m spending half my time keeping these guys hemmed in, now that they’ve split up. They’re gathering guards too.”

We don’t know what Teacher’s people are going to do. They could blow up everyone not on his shortlist, and that could include Ashley and Rain. It could include Crystalclear and Foresight’s other people. Or they might do something that isn’t using the ankle bombs.

“We can manage,” I said.

“Um, here,” Lookout said. She had her bag slung over her back, and she retrieved one of the projection discs. “It’s kind of broken since last time. But it has enough charge to draw lines. It’s hooked up to the computer at home, the surveillance-”

“Short version,” Goddess sounded testy.

“Points at people!” Lookout said.

“Good!” Capricorn answered her, before bumping her shoulder with one fist. She laughed in response, but we were already heading away. Further into the prison complex.

I did glance over my shoulder at Natalie though.

She’d been silent, quiet. What was she thinking or doing? Did she have a plan?

If she just looked after Lookout’s welfare, I would be happy. But there was a chance that wouldn’t be enough. There was a good chance that we needed more than that. Master-stranger protocols. We needed one level head in our group.

Fifty or sixty eyes were at windows, staring down at us. We were in the sixes, the buildings with six ‘apartments’ each, where the minimum risk prisoners were. There weren’t many. The fours were more numerous. More dangerous prisoners who were deemed cooperative enough to have full privileges.

Sveta, Capricorn and I jogged.

“Rain and Crystalclear first,” Capricorn said. The disc he held had lines extending from it, and some of those lines lit up.

“Yes,” I said.

“I can’t figure you out, Victoria,” Sveta murmured.

“Master-stranger protocols,” Capricorn said.

Sveta looked at him, “What?”

“Master-stranger,” I said. “We’re under the influence of a power. We can’t trust our own judgment.”

“And you’re on board with this, Capricorn?” she asked. “You’re okay with this?”

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“Not like this!” she exclaimed, stopping in her tracks.

“Do you trust me?” he asked again. “Forgetting this specific situation, do you trust me?”

“It’s more nuanced than that.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Stop that. Don’t play your games with me, Capricorn.”

“Do you-”

“Yes!” she shouted. There was a pause as she gathered her composure.

In that pause, the jeering and shouts from prisoners was audible. Catcalling, threats. Offers to get us money if we let them out.

“Most of the time,” Sveta added, more subdued.

“Do you trust Antares?”

“Most of the time,” Sveta said. She looked at me. “Yes.”

“Do you trust Weld?”

“What does Weld have to do with this?”

“The protocols we’re talking about are Ward and Protectorate protocols. If Weld was here he would be following the rules too. Do you trust Weld? Do you believe in the Weld fan club?”

“That is the most manipulative shit, Capricorn.”

“If you don’t answer with a resounding yes, I think I win.”

“Fuck you, no you don’t, and yes, of course I believe in my boyfriend, but bringing him up is a stretch.”

“Sometimes our feelings get screwed up. I’ve had to deal with it before,” I said. “You know that.”

“Yes,” Sveta said.

“The rules for the protocols are simple. We listen to the people we can be sure aren’t affected.”

“And you aren’t affected?”

“We’re all affected,” Capricorn said. “Me, my brother, Antares, the kids.”

“Only Natalie?” Sveta asked. “She didn’t say anything.”

“I think she thinks that if she’s quiet she could get an opportunity to make a phone call or reach out,” Capricorn said. “And I don’t think Goddess is that stupid, to let her.”

“I don’t know,” Sveta said.

“Trust us, trust in the rules Weld would have followed. Because they’re the guidelines of effective heroes.”

“Do the guidelines say how we handle this situation?” Sveta asked. “Teacher’s attacking, he’s focusing his efforts on the front door. Goddess is… she wants to fight him here, and we’re supposed to help her. This is going to become a battlefield, and…”

“And a single mistake could mean our friends lose their lives, or dangerous prisoners get free,” I finished.

“Or Teacher wins,” Capricorn said. “If he forces us into a retreat or captures us-”

There was a sharp whistle nearby that stood out from the lecherous ones one guy in particular seemed to be doing. I turned my head, searching for the source.

A prisoner, standing at a balcony, where he had to look around the corner and along the length of a building to see us. He was a black guy, with tattoos outlined across his face and arms that looked like they had been put on his skin with white-out. He pointed down, and he held up his hand.

I couldn’t tell if his thumb was out, at that distance, but it sure looked like he had all four fingers up.

I saluted him.

“We’ve got company. Officers, I’m guessing,” I said.

“We run, instead of fighting,” Capricorn decided. I nodded my agreement.

Capricorn created cover, orange motes tracing out walls, which appeared just as we reached them. I flew alongside, the Wretch active. What the walls didn’t cover, I hoped Capricorn’s setup would.

Which was fine, so long as we just had the one squadron of officers coming from around the back corner of the building. One squadron, one direction to watch, all good.

But there were others. We approached the building that Lookout’s compass was pointing us to, and I could see the broken window on the ground floor, with no less than four officers lined up along it, guns pointed out.

I had to push hard to fly out in front, my arms outstretched wide and Wretch stretched out wider. A momentary stop, working on the assumption the bullets would be accurate, turning to face one direction while flying the opposite, in an effort to confuse-

The Wretch caught a bullet. In the moment the Wretch was gone, so soon after that I imagined it would have been blocked by the Wretch had it been a tenth of a second faster, Sveta grabbed me by the cloth at the small of my back. She was already pulling herself to a destination, and in the process, she pulled me too.

I went high, because I could, and because I knew the people shooting at us wouldn’t be aiming that high with their initial battery. For a moment, I was kind of Sveta’s kite.

We didn’t get away unscathed. Each of those four officers fired off multiple shots. I saw bullets hit my teammates. I saw Capricorn fall in the wake of one shot.

Metal prosthetic body- not all that durable, with the lightweight metals. As Sveta collapsed into a heap, the three of us stopping at the base of one building. In the moment we passed through some of the light that reached down past the rectangle of a balcony, I could see the groove in Sveta’s body. It looked more like someone had buried a hatchet in her side than anything.

And Capricorn- he crawled to the base of the wall, sitting up, before twisting his leg around. It looked like his armor was up to snuff. Whatever it was made of was denser, and it hadn’t parted or let the bullet through when it had taken the grazing shot. Maybe a deflection, maybe a graze.

“All good?” I asked Sveta. “No damage?”

“Nothing I can tell,” she murmured. “Get me a patch? At my back, actually only a short distance from the damage done. I’ll try not to grab you.”

I found the patch. I had to fumble with it, finding the way it attached. There was a part that went inside the armor, inside the damaged portion-

Sveta grabbed it from within, pulling it flush against the armor. “I think I’ve got it. Thanks.”

I nodded.

Capricorn leaned out to peer around the corner. There was a gunshot, and he pulled his head back.

“Night vision goggles or something,” Capricorn said. He looked around. “It’s too dark for them to see me, normally.”

I glanced up at the sky. The sun had set. No light from above that wasn’t from the moon, and we weren’t near any cities. The only light pollution was from the prison complex.

“Guys who were behind us are going to catch up with us,” I said. “If I was willing to hurt these guys, I would.”

“Patched,” Sveta said. “So long as I don’t pick at the wires.”

Capricorn looked out. Another bullet made him pull his head in.

“Stop doing that, you’re making me nervous,” Sveta said.

“I guess our assistant warden isn’t telling all his men to stand down,” Capricorn said. “Antares, you’ve got-”

Something landed on the ground near us.

Trash?

No, not just trash. An adult diaper. Used.

I craned my head up to look, saw a wide-mouthed, wild-haired face peering down, and took flight, flying up toward them.

They shrieked, and then slammed their balcony door closed.

I lowered myself to the ground. Capricorn had already dealt with the diaper, burying it in a pyramid of stone.

“Get my phone?” Capricorn asked. “I’m wearing gauntlets.”

He indicated where, and I reached for it.

He moved it to the edge of the building, so that only the camera peeked out, and looked at the screen. The night-vision mode wasn’t great, but even looking over Capricorn’s shoulder, I could see the general shape of the building.

I could also see the bright spots that were his sparks. He was using the camera to help place them.

I kept an eye out for our pursuers at our rear. In a prison complex that was inconsistently lit, we were now sitting in the shadows just beside the illumination that came down from diaper-man’s balcony light.

No, nothing was that easy. I could see the first hints of flashlights mounted on guns.

“Hey Lookout,” I murmured. “Since you’re messing around with power and systems, if you happened to want to throw these guys for a loop…”

The lights went out around the pursuers.

“Uh,” I said.

“Coincidence,” Sveta said.

“Blocking the window,” Capricorn whispered. “We blitz. Go in three, two, one!”

We rounded the corner. A wall of rock blocked the window.

The door near them opened. Sveta reached out, missed the knob, threw out another hand, and caught it. She shifted her stance and hauled the door shut.

A gun fired from within. The door handle came away.

Sveta, halfway to reeling her arm in, whipped it. It reversed direction, extending in the direction of the hole.

She grabbed someone or something on the other side and yanked. They collided with the edge of the opening door, which promptly slammed. It was only a moment later, and after seeing Sveta’s expression, that I remembered the height that the usual doorknob was at, and what she might have grabbed.

The guards shot out the hinges, and at that point, there was no keeping the door up. I flew to intercept, and as I saw their movements as they turned to track me, I shifted course, flying up. With the Wretch active, I hit the ceiling just above the door, where the light was.

We still have pursuers from behind.

“We’ve got two red lines from the compass!” Capricorn called out.

Red line?

I flew back and away, so I’d have a second to think. I was in the middle of evasive maneuvers when a bullet hit the Wretch.

Changing course, I put myself close to the building, so the overhang above the door would provide some cover from the shooter.

They shot elsewhere.

“Stop shooting my body!” Sveta called out, arms up in front of her face.

I flew straight down. Wretch out, flat out, all out. A full speed descent, a downward swipe of the Wretch aimed at the concrete pad that the building was seated on.

The pad shattered. People all around me stumbled- shadowy silhouettes in more shadow.

I swung backhanded, aiming a punch with no enhanced strength active, but with my aura going from zero to ten.

A hand deflected my swing. The woman stepped in close, with an underhanded punch. The first hit my breastplate. The second, same hand, hit my side, where the breastplate didn’t protect me.

People were cowering, backing up, but this person didn’t flinch.

And the one with the gun wasn’t either. They brought their weapon around, aimed at my head.

I ducked right, relying on flight to keep me moving, when otherwise it would have been me landing on my side. At the same instant, Sveta had a grip on the gunman and pulled them away, hauling back on the torso, not the gun-arm. And, still also in the same moment, they fired.

With me moving one way, and Sveta pulling the gunman the other way, the bullet still clipped the edge of my mask just by the left eyehole. My head was twisted to the left, pain singing in my neck in a way that promised I’d ache tomorrow.

And the martial artist woman in the prison guard uniform was after me. Her body was a blur of grays and blacks against a black background, and I barely saw her leg come around. A kick aimed at my neck, while I was still reeling.

Teacher thrall, I realized. I brought the Wretch out. She kicked the Wretch, and the Wretch might have been lashing out or growing out in her direction, because I saw and felt her leg break.

She landed on the three intact limbs, centered herself, and then pounced at me.

“The hell?” another officer asked.

“You’ve got moles!” I shouted. “It’s why we’re here!”

The gunman was maneuvering to get a shot, his focus on Sveta again. The second teacher thrall. The night vision sniper Capricorn had remarked on wasn’t using night vision. They had something else going on, courtesy of Teacher’s gifts.

And they were dead inside enough that my emotion power wasn’t affecting them.

Capricorn closed the distance with the gunman. Sveta grabbed the pouncer.

The Wretch’s first hit was deflected, but only barely- the woman was hit hard enough that she was pulled from Sveta’s grip. She didn’t have a second leg to catch herself on, so she wobbled unsteadily as she dropped to a one-legged squat, put her hands out to either side, and then sprung forward at me yet again.

I ducked low, using flight to orient myself, and kicked out. She was ready for it, pulling her leg up out of the way- but the broken leg that dangled wasn’t so adroit. I’d kicked it, hard, and as dead as she was inside, she seemed to feel sufficient pain or shock. She landed hard across broken concrete.

“Hey! Stop!” one guard shouted.

Capricorn had been punching the gunman, his gauntleted fist coming back from what couldn’t have been the first hit, starting to move in for a third or fourth.

He stopped himself. When he let the guy fall, the guy fell limp, unconscious.

His head lowered, fists clenching.

“Can’t stop,” I said. “We’ve got more coming.”

There were others in the incoming squad. Capricorn looked down at the compass. I saw two more red lines.

Teachered people that Lookout had noted and marked in her system.

Fuck me.

“Two of these guys are compromised too,” Capricorn said, more for the benefit of the other guards.

There was an eruption. The incoming squad was scattered, various members thrown in every theoretical direction.

Rain and Crystalclear leaped from a higher point. Rain stopped them mid-fall, then let them fall the rest of the way.

“We’re clear? I’m not going to blow up?” Rain asked.

“You’re clear,” I said, before raising my voice. “The rest of you who’re listening aren’t, by the way!”

“What the fuck!?” a guy on a balcony shouted down. “What’s going on!?”

We ignored him. My phone was buzzing, and the ‘compass’ that was the projector disc showing headings of various threats that surveillance had spotted was lighting up. One big magenta line, then another, and another. Red lines were converging.

“I’m really hoping we can close the portal if we need to,” I said, because I’m going to guess that those magenta lines are… bigger threats.”

“The people at the gates,” Sveta said. She was working on patching her body where she’d taken bullets. “Powered people.”

“No sweat. We’ve got the Lady in Blue,” Rain said, smiling.

“Yeahhhh,” Crystalclear said, sounding very unsure. “Hey, how are we feeling about that? Because things are looking odd to me here, cracks in places there shouldn’t be cracks.”

His vision.

“We’re feeling master-stranger protocols?” I tried, with a note of hope, wincing a little at the same time.

“I’m not up to date on my protocols,” Crystalclear said.

I sighed.

“Things are screwed up,” Sveta said.

“Okay, it’s not just me then,” Crystalclear said, sounding relieved. I wasn’t sure he’d sound as relieved if he had the full story.

I pulled my phone free. My side hurt like a bitch where I’d been punched. Hit-in-the-organs hurt.

But that hurt was almost welcome. Hurt was part and parcel of wearing the costume, being in that zone of being a cape. It was me not being Victoria, for just a little while.

A different headspace. One of two safe refuges.

And… looking at my phone, I could see that I might need to tap the other- the powers scholar.

Kenzie had surveillance footage, looping between a few isolated clips because the people entering the prison now were destroying the cameras as they came across them, and one of those people was making cameras twist on their mounts to look away.

That would be Blindside. I was pretty sure that another one was Kingdom Come. The same guy I’d seen blow up… he must have reconstituted.

And they had a leader. These squads liked to have a big bad brute in charge, and these guys had picked one I knew well. Hometown brute, already growing in metal scales that punched through tattooed skin.

Fucking Lung. Fuck him.

They weren’t alone.

I showed Tristan and Sveta, before turning the camera around for Crystalclear and Rain to see.

As the focus shifted away, my vision remained on Capricorn. He’d wrapped up ‘cuffing’ the compass-marked threats. His hand was shaking, and he seemed to be trying to settle down. There was still blood on the gauntlet.

“Let’s get moving. We’ve got to get Swansong and whoever Foresight sent to that side.”

“Ah geez,” Crystalclear said.

“We can do this,” Capricorn said, with a courage and conviction that I one hundred percent did not believe rang true, after seeing his hand shake like that. He looked back at the guards that had backed off after hearing about the moles, as if for validation. “We’ve got this.”

Gleaming – Interlude 9.y

Byron

“We can do this,” Tristan said. But for Boundless, who was working other venues, Furcate and Steamwheel, the young members of Team Reach stood behind him, silent.

Byron was silent as well, but not by dint of choice. His attention was on the details, both of Tristan and of the unfolding mission. He wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as though he could burst forward to offer advice, and it wasn’t as though Tristan was going to let him out to offer input.

“What if he doesn’t show?” Tribute asked.

“Then we wait a bit longer, and then we go back, and we can tell ourselves that we tried,” Coiffure said.

“Trying isn’t good enough,” Tristan said.

“Sometimes trying is all we can do,” Moonsong said.

“It’s not good enough,” Tristan said, more intense now. Because it was Moonsong speaking? Byron had to wonder. Tristan seemed to rein himself in, and Byron could feel the intake of half of a breath, almost a snort as that breath cut short. Appearing to be calmer to everyone but Byron, who had that inside view, Tristan added, “The guy hurt Furcate. He hurt Reconciliation.”

Be a little bit less obvious if you don’t want to tell the whole team?

“And Long John and apparently Whipping Girl in Virginia,” Coiffure said, like she was trying to pacify. “I know.”

“He’s breaking the rules. I get it,” Figurehead said. “But we can’t blame ourselves if we don’t end up taking a non-opportunity.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Moonsong asked.

“I… guess I don’t?” Figurehead answered.

Tristan turned around to look at Moonsong, giving her a hard look.

She’s being clever, and that usually brings people closer together, yet Tristan thinks she’s betraying him, Byron thought.

“The shitheel is escalating,” Moonsong said. “This is crime 101. Worse incidents, with shorter times between each.”

“You’re talking all fancy, Moon, but I’m betting you learned that from a crime drama,” Coiffure said.

“It’s true, though,” Moonsong said. She met Tristan’s eyes. He looked away. She continued like it hadn’t happened, “He’s not just a lowlife scumbag who hurts good people. He’s hurting good people more and more as time goes on, and he’s going to escalate to the point where he kills.”

“Yeah,” Coiffure said. “Not disagreeing with you.”

“If he doesn’t show, he doesn’t show,” Figurehead said. “We can agree he needs to go to jail, but it doesn’t change the facts.”

Moonsong ventured, “I think what Capricorn is saying is that if the target doesn’t show, we should focus our energies on chasing him down.”

“Maybe,” Figurehead said. He looked at Tristan, who shut his eyes, leaving Byron to only detect the nod by the mechanics of muscles moving, the weighty sensation of fluids shifting across his brother’s head. “He needs to be dealt with, not arguing that.”

Can you at least acknowledge that Moonsong’s backing you up, shoring you up where you’re weak? You’re lost in the focus on the mission and she’s handling the team for you.

“Update from Furcate and Wheel?” Tristan asked.

“In position.”

The location was part of a mess of buildings, set in a triangular plot of land that seemed as though it had been pledged to three different buildings, ended up shared by all of them, and was then complicated further by the access and egress roads. An apartment complex loomed over a capital-E-shaped section of storage lockers, with a view that was further blocked by a squat building that was shared by multiple stores.

It was no surprise that none of the three installations seemed to be doing especially well. Like plants trying to share the same sunlight, water, and soil, all three withered, with an apparent lack of thriving.

A highway, a major road, and a road leading off of the major road and into a morass of suburbs boxed it all in. The car they were expecting eased its way down a narrow passage that cut beneath the highway, onto a single lane road that would turn the bend and enter the area with the storage lockers.

They heard the slamming of the car door. Tristan leaned out to look, a fleeting glance before he pulled his head back in.

The image was momentary, but it stuck in Byron’s mind’s eye. A man with Boundless’ height, but Tribute’s frame. Boundless could have been a basketball player, if he’d been coordinated in the slightest, and Tribute was a middleweight boxer.

It was Paris, in costume. His mask was the sort that covered the top half of his head, going down over his eyes and nose, his hair was long, very straight and blond, and the costume was a mix of loose cloth, like a mantle worn over the shoulders, and the form-fitting, with cloth and leather bands wrapped around arms and torso. Black and blue-green, with decorative flourishes in a spade-like shape at the front of the mantle, where it hung over his sternum, and in the metal at the end of his belt.

He’d been bent over almost double to look into the car window.

“Let him go, let him go,” Tristan whispered.

Is he talking to the group, or is he talking to himself?

The car had to maneuver carefully to navigate the tight space. It had been here before- the roads in and out of the storage locker area were confusing to new visitors, with most being one-way and one being out of sight.

“This is where he comes after he gets hired for a mission,” Figurehead said. “Our sources were right. Shit.”

Figurehead’s nervous. His power gives him better info with unfamiliar targets. He’s run into Paris before.

“Good sources,” Coiffure said. “Would it be weird to get them thank you chocolates or something?”

“Given the area, I think the chocolates would only work if they had heroin in them or something,” Moonsong said.

“I don’t think that would go over well with the boss,” Coiffure said, smiling.

“Let him go inside,” Tristan said, all seriousness, as if he was unaware of the light, tension-breaking conversation. “Let him get changed.”

“Are we playing it that way?” Figurehead asked. “Perception is going to be that we hit someone out of costume.”

“If he wants to grab his mask on his way out, that’s up to him,” Tristan said.

The shutter of the storage unit whisked open, banging as it reached its apex. Tristan peeked out, just in time to see the door sliding closed, Paris’ legs and feet on the inside. He looked in the direction the car had gone, then stepped out of cover.

Orange motes began to move around the door, forming like the flames of lighters catching, then striking out in straight lines.

He spared only a glance over his shoulder for his team, who was behind him. His focus was entirely on Paris, now.

With a clench of his fist, he made the lines into something solid. A ramp with the sides curving around to the sides of the door, with the backing that kept it from rocking forward. Had someone sat on the ramp and if the door had been open, they could have slid inside.

“What in the world are you making?” Tribute asked.

Tristan pressed a finger to his lips. There was a pause as he listened, and then he began drawing his next object. A pillar, singular, high above.

The door opened, and Tristan passed control, letting the pillar become water.

He can’t even trust me to follow his logic, Byron thought, as the water came down, hitting the funnel. The stone structure bucked slightly, even with the reinforced back, but it did its job. The water was funneled to flow into the door of the storage unit, straight at Paris.

Team Reach fanned out as Byron drew out more water. The direction he drew was more important than the points of light- the opposite of Tristan’s handling of it. He placed the lines so they flowed down, aiming at the ramp.

No movement from within, no sound, no response, no swearing.

Byron hesitated in his drawing.

Figurehead drew his fingers together, middle fingers and thumbs touching, so there was a circle in the middle, and he aimed it at the storage area. “He’s moving! He’s going through the far wall!”

Moonsong shouted, loud enough to be heard on the far side. “Steamwheel, Furcate!”

Byron let the water down. A spray this time, not just a body of falling water with some direction to its flow. It hit the ramp and banked into the storage unit.

He didn’t wait for the water to finish flowing or moving away. He released that water, disconnecting himself from the lines and then drew out others, low to the ground, pointing up at an angle.

Unlike Tristan, he didn’t gesture to confirm or out of some ‘rule of cool’, as Tristan had put it. It was to signal Moonsong as the water sprayed.

They’d done this before. They’d practiced it with most members of the team. He ceded control.

Sprayed water became ramps. His teammates ran up the ramps, leaped, and were buoyed by Moonsong’s gravity.

To work with her like this, to see the team working with them like this, it lifted his spirits. In everything that he did with Tristan, in eating, in sleeping, in watching stuff, listening to music, there was so little in the way of middle ground. There was nothing the two of them both enjoyed and could enjoy together.

Except this. Finding that teamwork. Ceding control mid-run, as the others bounded forward toward their quarry, knowing Tristan could leap off of the ramp, that Moonsong was at the other ramp, he was okay with it. It-

Tristan reached the top of the ramp, and instead of leaping into the field of reduced gravity, reached out for the lip of his funnel and hurdled it, his armor skidding on the rock with its veins of metal running through it. The water was already flowing out, calf-deep as Tristan landed in it, pushed himself to an upright position, and headed straight into the storage locker.

Not sticking with the team, but taking his own route.

Byron could feel the strain in Tristan’s legs as he ran through the water. He could see the red lights, a row of them ahead of them.

Had he been able, he would have said no, he would have vetoed this course of action. It was too brash, too aggressive.

He could only watch, worried. Tristan’s armored boots stomped through water, Tristan ducked through the hole Paris had made, and he punched into the red lights in a move that Byron had seen him practice, though not with this nuance. Never before to augment his glove and arm with a mass of spikes.

Tristan hurdled boxes, and he emerged from the storage locker that backed Paris’. Into the fight where the others were confronting Paris. Steamwheel on her knees ahead of him, Figurehead and Tribute flanking him, and Paris in the center, wearing a white undershirt, jeans, soaked sneakers, and his mask.

His arrival from behind caught Paris off guard, but, as far as Byron could tell, it also caught their team off guard.

Paris took advantage of it, leaping closer to the immobilized Steamwheel while remaining out of reach, and he swung his arm. The swinging motion produced flying darts at set intervals, though dart might have been the wrong word. Lines or needles more than anything thrown toward a bullseye in a bar or kid’s basement. One sank into the decorative metal at the side of Tribute’s leg, another into a shield that Coiffure fashioned of her hair, while the rest buried themselves into the road.

Where each needle sank in, they became a spray, a geyser, firing the opposite direction the needle had traveled. Decorative metal and road disintegrated, the pieces sent flying back toward the point Paris had been- now the point Tristan stood. Coiffure wrapped up the damaged hair in more of her hair, that flowed out like strands of wire she could manipulate, ‘catching’ the geyser in a spherical bubble of hair that left her momentarily unable to use her power. Flecks of metal and road chipped at Tristan’s armor, threatening to strike him in the exposed portions of his face, his eyes in particular.

Tristan had to blind himself by bringing his arm up to shield his eyes. Byron could feel the pain explode as Paris used the blindness, kicked one from the side, maybe trying to sweep Tristan’s legs out from under him.

Let me out, let me fight. We can trade off in moments like this.

Tristan landed on all fours, tried to find his balance, and before he could raise his head, felt the impact of a kick against the side of his helmet. He went flat.

The giant wheel at Steamwheel’s back spun up, steam poured out, and Steamwheel skidded forward, still on her knees.

Tristan raised his head, watched as Paris backed out of the way, and created a mote of light, moving it only an inch or so before giving it life. Paris walked past it, twisting around to throw more darts at Steamwheel.

Tristan didn’t even look at Steamwheel- he was focused on Paris, creating another mote, another short motion before he gave it life.

It manifested as a spike, and Paris stepped on it.

“I’m out of action!” Steamwheel shouted, her voice amplified by mechanics in her suit.

The spike hadn’t punched through, but Paris had rolled his ankle and tipped over. Byron felt a surge of triumph at seeing Moonsong slap Paris down with an increased gravity effect.

Steamwheel hit the ground hard, landing on her back as her suit disintegrated around her, the fragments flying out. While she was on her back, the fragments were directed at the ground.

Paris twisted around and threw darts toward the roof Moonsong stood on. She had to move, and as she did, the gravity effect broke.

Another throw clipped Figurehead in the side of his mask. He had to twist away to keep the resulting spray of his disintegrating mask from firing into the group.

He’s the worst guy for us to fight. Maybe if we still had Boundless…

Or if you would fucking let me out so we can work together, Tristan! Work with me! Work with the team! This guy is a professional, trained mercenary with more years of fighting capes under his belt than any three of us put together!

Tristan heaved himself to his feet, eyes moving to the ground, seeing the twenty dollar bills floating in the water that was still flowing from the storage locker. He raised his eyes to Paris, and Paris flicked his hands down, sending darts into the wet road.

A barrier of geysers, disintegrating the road and sending the fragments directly upward.

Tristan trusted his armor to protect him, running past the barrier. Byron felt the bite of a pellet at one corner of Tristan’s jaw, sharp, with an impact that made teeth clack together, followed by a pain that felt like a sore spot on a tooth had just been hit with ice water, magnified by ten. Another pellet bit into the back of Tristan’s leg, finding its way into the space beneath armor, past bodysuit, and into calf.

Paris was careful with the one leg where he had rolled his ankle, and Tristan was far less careful with his own injured leg, pushing through the pain. He closed the distance, orange motes appearing like stars on the ground behind Paris as Tristan charged in, swinging. Paris backed into a field of spikes and uneven ground, his footing unsteady, every other step a stumble. He blocked one gauntlet with the length of his arm, and the resulting grimace suggested it hurt.

The surge of triumph in the chest the two brothers shared suggested Tristan was glad to see that hurt. Tristan shifted his footing, and with his fist still in close proximity to Paris’ arm, slashed out with the spikes that he’d attached to his armor. Paris pulled back, stumbled more in the process.

A moment later, his feet skidded on Tristan’s rock, wet from the water that had splashed up with each footfall. Moonsong’s work, pushing him down when his footing was insecure.

Tristan closed the distance, swinging in the moment Paris was essentially reduced to kneeling. Byron knew every technique Tristan was employing, every thought process. He’d seen the training sessions and he’d had his own turn at them.

Tribute’s power surged through Tristan’s body, and time seemed to slow down. In the moment he felt it, Tristan felt confident enough to shift his footing and balance, and throw out a kick from the side.

Not a move Byron would have been confident making, but the reason Tristan did these things, took the risks, made the bad jokes, was because they worked. Where Byron failed, Tristan succeeded in his recklessness.

The kick landed, Paris catching it with the entirety of his folded arm, being sent sprawling by the impact. Tristan adjusted his balance, and in the same motion, brought the leg he’d used to kick down in a stomp, aimed at Paris’ ankle. Paris bent his leg to draw it back and away.

“Agh.”

Moonsong’s voice, pained.

Byron felt a sudden surge of alarm, and his frustration welled as Tristan didn’t even take his eyes off of Paris. He was drawing out more motes.

Look! Check on her!

“Shit!” Figurehead said.

At that, Tristan glanced to one side. It was the holes that Paris had put into the ground. The geysers had spat the high-velocity fragments skyward, and those fragments were coming down. There was a line of blood at Moonsong’s exposed shoulder. She bent nearly double and touched her hair as another came down.

Get away, Moon!

Help her, you jackass!

Tristan turned his attention back to Paris. In that moment, Byron hated Tristan.

On realizing that Paris had shifted position, using long limbs to put one needle to the gap beneath Tristan’s helmet, that hate didn’t fade by half.

Switch. Look at all of the rock you’ve left here. The rock on your costume, pointed at him. If you switch, that rock becomes water, we put him to the ground, and we fucking have him.

Trust me and switch.

Tristan stared Paris down, not moving, not switching. Behind them, their teammates could be heard running for cover.

The strength and perception effect faded as Tribute had to give up his position. Tribute gave advantages at the cost of his own, and he needed to focus to do it.

I know you like sports movies, because fuck me, you’ve made me watch a lot. How can you not draw the short fucking line and connect yourself to the jerkass team ace who thinks the entire team exists to support him and let him score?

Especially when you share a fucking body with one of those teammates!

Tristan’s eyes were locked to Paris’, and Tristan and Byron were both aware of the moment Paris glanced away, noting the teammates who were now beyond the area that was being pelted with a rain of pavement shards.

Tristan moved, reaching, moving his head to one side. Paris was faster, his free hand grabbing Tristan and throwing him to the ground.

No needle in Tristan’s neck, but Tristan’s armor had been caught, and was coming apart, and Paris was free to run. More darts were thrown behind him, to cover his retreat.

Furcate was waiting, as Paris sprinted away. Their arm was in a sling, but they had the other arm in their cat’s paw gauntlet.

As darts were hurled their way, Furcate split in two, each moving in a separate direction, with the darts passing between them.

Each of the two Furcates was different, one of them resembling the original, the other with an arm free of the sling, a costume of a different cut.

Tristan climbed to his feet as Furcate started swiping and slashing at Paris with their claws. They were nimble, but it was an ordinary human nimbleness, nothing augmented.

For that matter, Paris’ strength and agility weren’t anything special.

Coiffure had apparently realized that her hair was done disintegrating, and she was next into the fray, hair forming a bubble around her as she leaped through the fence of flying particles. She kept weapons in her hair, blades at the end of braids, hidden in the expansive, growing mane, and she used them, hands reaching out, catching a cord, swinging the blade, her own hair deflecting that blade from hitting her as it carried on its course. She moved like she had Tribute backing her, with a flying leap like Moonsong was helping with the gravity situation. When her blades came down, they came down with a force that Moonsong had to have helped with, biting into the pavement.

Then, the rest of the team incapacitated or stuck in support roles, it was Tristan, Furcates, and Coiffure fighting.

Here and there, they drew blood. It was enough to tell them that they were getting somewhere, achieving something.

Furcate split again. Unlike their usual gauntlets, this Furcate had gloves that extended to the elbow, with five long blades each, their mask narrow like a fox’s.

Three Furcates, one Tristan, and one Coiffure.

And it should be one Byron, Byron thought. He wasn’t watching for clues or details anymore.

Furcate was used to fighting alone or as… a pair or a trio, a quartet if they felt like pushing themselves. Coiffure needed to reach out, and Tristan worked best with battlefields he could exploit, and he was limited in what he could do when any changes he made to footing could hamper either of the others.

And, Byron had to admit, Paris was very good at what he did. He didn’t curse, even under his breath, he wasted no breath and few movements, and when one person got in the way of another, he used that, taking a position that meant Tristan had Furcate in his way if he wanted to close in.

In one of those moments when he had no access to Paris, Tristan punched his fist into a collection of motes. They solidified into a single spike, extending forward from Tristan’s hand like an extension of his arm. Even with his enhanced strength, it was heavy.

Byron could watch as Tristan swung, could see Tristan’s eyes mark the point where Paris’ heart was.

Paris saw it too. The swing was deflected, the spike pushed downward, that same hand gripping it, pulling Tristan off balance. Paris’ other hand reached toward Tristan’s chest, where glancing contact with disintegration pins had sliced at his breastplate without producing the geysers. Much as the spike had been aimed for Paris’ heart, Paris held a fistful of needles aimed at Tristan’s. Coiffure’s silver locks caught Paris’ arm, stopping him. As if he was expecting it, he slashed at the locks, freeing his arm to continue forward.

Tristan, only by virtue of the one second of delay, was able to throw himself to the side and fall instead of being struck. Paris tossed the needles down to the ground near instead. They erupted, and the violent eruption gave Paris the opportunity to back away from the group. Moonsong hit him, he stumbled, but he continued to retreat, throwing fistful of needles after fistful of needles, until visibility was nearly gone.

There was no advancing into that storm. A hail fell on the group, each fragment of ground, building or steel shutter razor sharp and heavy.

Tristan started to advance toward it, and Coiffure stopped him.

“You know you can’t,” she said.

“He’s getting away,” Tristan said, and he sounded hollowed-out, far from any Tristan Byron had ever witnessed.

“They have a way of doing that,” Coiffure said.

“But-” Tristan said.

The second of the Furcates that had appeared now advanced, flinching at the nearby spray of disintegrating street, hopping over potholes that the darts had made.

One metal claw thumped against Tristan’s chest, by his heart. Furcate’s body rested against his side, head at his shoulder.

“We made him bleed,” the Furcate said, staring into his shoulder. “We took his storage container from him. It had money in it. Probably a lot.”

“I wanted to stop him, for Reconciliation,” Tristan murmured. “For you.”

“Yeah.”

“For me,” Tristan said. His voice was barely above a whisper. “I’ve never hated anyone before, and I hate that man.”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s get under cover before those pellets start raining down any harder,” Coiffure said. “Come on, you badasses.”

Tristan allowed himself to be led away by strands of silver hair tugging on his arm. Furcate pulled back, lingered.

The three Furcates turned to one another. It was as though they played a game of rock paper scissors, but they played with numbers. Gauntlets were shucked off where needed, so fingers were free. All three had injured left arms or hands, but in different ways.

Four-four-three, the one closest to the original signaled.

Five-three-five, the second one signaled, at the same time.

Seven-two-five, the one with the fox mask indicated, putting two extended, splinted fingers against the palm of the right hand with all five fingers extended.

“At least it’s a cool costume,” the first Furcate said, before dissipating into smoke.

The second dissolved away as well, leaving only the fox masked Furcate. They hurried out of the ‘rain’, joining Tristan and Coiffure.

Tristan clapped a hand onto Furcate’s shoulder. “You good, azúcar?”

Furcate nodded.

Then, seemingly lost for words, or defeated on some fundamental level, Tristan allowed Byron free.

“Fuck it,” Byron whispered under his breath.

“We did the best we could,” Coiffure said.

We? I was barely there.

It wasn’t worth fighting. He would hash it out with Tristan later. Somehow.

“You okay, Moon!?” he hollered.

“Yeah! Tribute got an ice-cream scoop’s worth taken out of his leg, though!”

Byron winced, and he saw a matching expression on Coiffure’s face.

He had to move his head to see Furcate’s mask. “Two huh? I don’t want to pry, but-”

“You can pry,” Furcate said. They looked back. “So long as it’s you, and not you and Moonsong together.”

“Moonsong has your back, Furcate,” Coiffure said.

“She cares about you,” Byron added.

Furcate shrugged.

“You had a two or close to two in the second position the last couple of times.”

“I’ll deal,” Furcate said.

They hunkered down. Only a few more of the things were still geysering, spitting out their rain of pellets. It would be another minute or so.

Coiffure got Byron’s attention, while Furcate was at the door, craning their head to peer at the battlefield. A questioning gesture, shrug, and then an arched eyebrow above her mask, as she raised two fingers.

Two?

Byron tapped his head.

Mental. Emotional. He’d keep an eye out for Kay, some shitty candy and a hug ready if Kay seemed low.

It would be hard not to feel low after this. This didn’t feel like a win, even though they’d sent the guy running scared.

But Paris wasn’t what bothered him. Paris getting away was more the sort of thing that would eat at Tristan.

And Tristan was the thing that ate at Byron. Insisting on doing that whole thing himself? Fuck that. It was a slap in the face.

Worse than that, though… Tristan had said that Paris was the first and only person he hated.

Yet I hate you every single day, Tristan.

⊙

Tristan

“Abide with me. Abide with me, don’t let me fall,” Byron sang. “And don’t let go. Walk with me. And never leave. Be ever close, God abide with me. Ever close, God abide with me. Ever close, God abide with me.”

Tristan tried to lose himself in the greater service, ignoring the little things. The acoustics- he’d always loved that part of it, the way many voices joined into one.

“O love that will not ever let me go. Love that will not ever let me go! You never let me go! Love that will not ever let me go!”

Why did Byron have to focus on the book, glancing down as if to double check? From the time he could read and sing at the same time, Tristan had made it a challenge to see how much he could memorize, seeing how long he could go before he had to check. Seeing Byron do it now that he was fifteen pained him. It was like someone who never took the training wheels off their bike.

The song had concluded.

“Tonight, Mrs. Garza asks that we keep her son Luis Garza in your prayers. He struggles. Pray for him. Pascal Repp is not here, as he is finishing his most recent set of cancer treatments this week. Pray for him, for he more than embodies the strength I talked about in today’s sermon.”

There were murmured responses. Byron put their lips to work, adding good wishes.

Byron reached out for Brianna’s hand. He gave it a squeeze. Then he looked at Mama like- like he had to check with an adult that things were okay and that he had permission.

My brother, please.

People were filing out of the church, and bound in the claustrophobic darkness that was within Byron, Tristan felt an almost physical pain at Byron’s hesitation at entering the group of people filing out. Mama and Papa had already found openings like the ones Byron passed up because he didn’t want to bump into anyone. They were out of the church before Byron was out of the aisle.

It was like being stuck behind slow people on the sidewalk, every minute of every one of Byron’s turns.

“You didn’t mind this?” Byron asked Brianna.

She shook her head, then squeezed their hand.

Oh, dios mio and fuck me, the old women are hobbling toward us. Please, Byron.

Byron passed up another gap in the file of people. The old ladies approached, lights practically flashing in their eyes as they saw Byron holding Brianna’s hand.

“We’ve been caught,” Byron said, sounding far less anguished about it than he should have. “The woman with the hat pressed over her heart was my grandmother’s best friend, Diane.”

“Oh wow. It’s great that you have a community that goes back like that.”

“It’s a plus,” Byron said. His hand found the small of Brianna’s back, as he worked his way forward. They were intercepted by the old ladies.

He’s showing her off, Tristan thought.

“Tristan, how lovely,” Diane greeted Byron.

Tristan mentally pumped a fist.

“I’m the other one,” Byron said.

“Benson? Bennett?”

“Byron.”

“Byron. I thought your brother would be the one to have a girlfriend first. He’s flashy like that.”

“Nope. Anyhow,” Byron paused. Stuck on finding the words in the latest of his awkward-ish situations he should one hundred percent have known how to deal with by now. “This is Brianna. We go to school and work together. Brianna, this is Diane, Mrs. Caudle, and Mrs. Plumb.”

“Brianna, dear, you’re a lovely young lady.”

“Thank you! I’m touched- Byron told me that you were close friends with his grandmother.”

“I was. She was lovely. Tristan always took after her, I felt. Naturally athletic, charming, go getters, both of them. You’ve met Tristan, I’m sure.”

“I have met him, yes.”

You deserve this, Byron.

“I’m sorry, I’m so surprised he wasn’t the one bringing a girl to church.”

Byron flexed their lips in a forced smile. No teeth showing, lips pressed together.

The conversation wrapped up, with only two more thinly veiled attempts at setting Brianna up with Tristan while Byron stood there, being far too polite about it. It was Brianna, not Byron, who found the excuse to break away and rejoin Mama and Papa.

As they walked, Byron leaned in close to Brianna, “How are the injuries?”

“They’re okay. The scratch in my arm feels tight.”

“I wish that had gone different.”

“We all do, By. I wish- I keep replaying it in my head, wondering what I could have done better.”

“Yeah.” Byron, still holding Brianna’s hand, raised her hand to his mouth, kissing the back of it.

“You two look so nice together,” Mama told Byron.

“Thank you,” Brianna said. She smiled her politician’s daughter’s smile. Practiced.

As a group, they walked to the car. Byron didn’t let go of Brianna.

Tristan could only think about Furcate, sitting on stairs outside, back to the windows, wiping at their face. It had been after Brianna had said something to them. He wasn’t sure Byron got it, despite having seen. That, or that Byron hadn’t wanted to get it. Willful ignorance.

“I hope you’re doing okay, Tristan,” Papa said, looking past Byron’s eyes. Byron dropped his eyes to the ground.

I don’t think I am.

“As soon we drop Brianna off, I’ll take you out for ice cream, Tristan,” Papa said. “We’ll talk.”

“Oh, that’s nice, do you take Byron out for ice cream?” Brianna asked.

She couldn’t help herself. She had to interfere, and she had to do it in a slimy way, acting innocent and dim-witted.

“I didn’t think Byron liked ice cream,” Papa said.

“I don’t mind it,” Byron said, timid.

“It was always a thing Tristan and I would do, after his games,” Papa said. “Byron and I, we had other things we would do.”

“Oh? What sort of things?”

“We would watch movies together while Tristan went out with Anita.”

“It’s been a while,” Byron said.

“Do you want to do something, Byron? We could make plans, if you have any ideas.”

“It’s okay,” Byron said. “It’s hard, juggling things with the team.”

“Are you sure?”

Byron shrugged. “Yeah. It’s no big.”

Brianna met Byron’s eyes. Byron shook their head slightly.

Gutless.

The closer they were to Brianna, to Moonsong, the more distant the rest of everything felt from Tristan.

He thought of Nate and his failure to get the asshole that had taken a chunk out of Nate, even when he was giving his all, and that distance coalesced into a wedge, driven right at the muscle of his heart.

He might as well have been physical, trapped in this darkness as Byron’s world played in slow motion beyond it.

He had to do something, because he couldn’t keep feeling this way. He’d die.

⊙

Byron

Tristan was all smiles and charm. Mr. Wall was buying into it wholesale.

A two hour session and Tristan had taken an hour and a half of it.

“…does that make any sense? I don’t… I don’t want a relationship with him, not like he wants. We’re not that compatible. But he’s one of the most important people in the world to me.”

“I think it makes a lot of sense. You don’t have many real allies.”

“I- I guess not. It stings to hear it put that bluntly.”

“You told me you wanted blunt.”

Tristan’s face stretched in a smile. White teeth showing, and when he put on a face like he was trying not to smile, it was forced, acted.

Half of this whole thing had been.

No allies? Most of the team backs you. Dad backs you. Mom backs you. People we know forget I even exist, like Aunt Diane.

Fucking liar.

“I guess I did,” Tristan admitted.

“Is there a way to communicate that he’s important to you?”

“If you have any suggestions on how to do that without giving him the wrong signals, I’m all ears.”

“I guess that would be hard, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” Tristan said. “He’s the only other gay guy I’ve met, you know. I mean, there’s Long John, but… I don’t think I could have a conversation with Long John. I don’t have mentors, I don’t have peers. Just… one really cool, smart-as-shit guy who doesn’t deserve to have me and my situation inflicted on him.”

“I think we should talk about that. Why ‘inflict‘?”

“Because I’m thickheaded. Because I’m not there half the time. I’m… not allowed to even pretend that I could do something with him that isn’t kissing. It had to be hammered out as a strict rule.”

Because the only thing that stopped you that night was Nate.

“I talked to Mr. Vaughn about that. I thought it was good of you to strike that compromise, Tristan.”

“It kills me. It wasn’t a compromise. It was me losing the ability to even daydream about something I think about every morning and every night. Being with a guy.”

You can daydream, just like I daydream about Moonsong.

“The rule being in place makes it impossible to even hope or daydream about it.”

Not a question, but a statement.

Byron felt Tristan’s head jerk in a firm nod.

“I don’t know if this computes, maybe I’m just fucked up-“

Yes.

“Yes?” Mr. Wall asked. A question, not a statement.

“It’s like, I had it in my head, Nate was just so neat, and I wanted to do something for him, right?”

“Sure.”

“And if I couldn’t put his dick in my mouth, then maybe I could show up by his hospital bed, and I’m still sweaty and satisfied with myself and Nate is pleased. Except it’d be because I personally kicked that asshole Paris’ ass, caved in his face, and made sure he ended up in Federal prison.”

Violence as a facsimile for a blowjob, Tristan? Nooo. Not fucked up at all.

“Have you seen him? In the hospital?”

Tristan shook his head. “I had it in my head that if I could kick Paris’ ass, I could go see him and be proud, be okay. As it is, it’s-”

Tristan clenched his fist.

“It sounds to me like you’re dealing with a lot of pent up frustration,” Mr. Wall said, but he said it with a smile.

Tristan smiled back. “I haven’t manhandled the ham candle in the last year, Mr. Wall. I’m fifteen. Frustration is putting it lightly.”

“No compromise there?”

“Byron says no, and whatever he thinks I was going to do that night with Nate… I’m not going to do that to him. I think I knew Nate was going to say no. I just needed to be able to pretend.”

“What if he hadn’t?”

“Then I would have stopped, asked for his forgiveness for leaving him with blue balls- easier if I’m already on my knees, and I would have explained our situation.”

I was there, and I don’t believe you.

“I believe you,” Mr Wall said. The man pulled his sleeve back to check his watch. It had a Team Reach logo on the face. “There isn’t long left in the session, but if it’s okay, I’d like to have a short conversation with Byron?”

Let me guess. Can you compromise? Tristan this. Tristan that. You’ve already been charmed by him, I don’t have a shot.

Tristan allowed Byron to have control. Byron shifted his position, fixed his pants where they bunched up beneath his ass.

“Hi Byron,” Mr. Wall said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Hi,” Byron replied. He placed his hands on his knees, sitting back, and he braced for it.

“Let’s talk about what Tristan is trying to express,” Mr. Wall said.

Guess correct, Byron thought.

As the remaining fifteen minutes of the session continued, the guess was reaffirmed and then some.

⊙

Tristan

“Byron, I really don’t want to end up in a position where I’m mediating the disputes between you two. Especially when those disputes involve your off time.”

“I don’t want this either, Mr. Vaughn,” Byron said. “But what am I supposed to do?”

“Have you tried talking to Tristan?”

“Every day since we could form partial sentences. I’ve come out with one win. One case where we disagreed and I got what I wanted or needed.”

Sounds about right. That’s your fault, not mine.

“Have you tried talking to him about this?” Mr. Vaughn sounded exasperated.

“I told him it wasn’t cool, it was dangerous. He shut me out. No response.”

“Tristan?” Mr. Vaughn asked. He did the ‘change’ gesture.

Tristan took the driver’s seat, felt his body take shape from the blur, felt the lurch of his heart starting after a long period of dark stasis.

“What’s your take on this?” Mr. Vaughn asked.

“It was a group of people we trust. Kay and Alison were there. So was Reconciliation from Haven.”

“You drank.”

“Yes,” Tristan said, even as he thought snitch, he willed Byron to hear the thought with all of the emotion he put into it.

“Underage drinking isn’t great, Tristan.”

“Yes, I know,” Tristan said. He drew in a breath. “It’s how I cut loose, Mr. Vaughn. I know Byron painted this as being a bad thing, but… it wasn’t that bad.”

“You slapped someone’s ass?”

“Yes,” Tristan said. He let out a huff of a laugh, trying to lose some of the tension that was building up in his chest. “It really wasn’t a big deal.”

“It was a guy’s ass?”

“I don’t see how that matters,” Tristan said. Byron wasn’t vague enough. Mr. Vaughn isn’t stupid. He can draw connections.

“Okay,” Mr. Vaughn said. “Doesn’t matter, then. But you passed out, Tristan.”

“In a safe place with friends close by.”

“You passed out in a strange place. I know Kay and you are close, but Kay has their issues. Alison is a damn good cape, but she isn’t someone I would trust my daughter to, if my daughter was out drinking. Alison works damn hard and parties damn hard.”

Tristan smiled.

“Some of those other friends you mention were from other teams. It’s not impossible that they’d want to see Reach come down a peg, especially with our recent ratings.”

“Not Reconciliation.”

“Tristan- okay. But… I think Byron’s right. This sounds more negative than positive. One photo from one bystander, head and face cropped out, matched to your selfless shots, and we have an issue. Potentially a legal issue, or one with the Youth Guard.”

Tristan felt a tightness in his chest. He wondered if Byron felt it too.

“No more drinking, Tristan. Not in excess. Have a beer with your friends if you must, but nothing like last night.”

That tightness became anger, impulse. “That’s- you can’t tell me that. You said before, it’s outside of work hours.”

“Tristan-”

Tristan brought his hand down on the desk, rising out of his seat. There was a tremor in his voice as he voiced his response. “No.”

“You drinking in moderation seems like a pretty decent compromise.”

“You can’t tell me what I can or can’t do outside of office hours. I’m a damn good cape, Mr. Vaughn. I earn for you.”

“You do. The fact that I’m letting the drinking slide should count for something.”

“I’m just trying to deal.”

“So am I. I’m trying to do what is best for Reach, and I’m offering you a compromise. Moderation. Please don’t fight me on this, Tristan.”

“What if I do?” Tristan asked.

“If you do, then I would have to talk to the staff about the possibility of having some random drug and alcohol testing for the team.”

Tristan slumped into his seat. He sat forward, elbows on his knees, head bowed.

“I don’t have much,” Tristan said.

“Would you consider talking to Mr. Wall about getting to a place where you have more? He’s very good.”

“I’m already talking to him,” Tristan said, around a lump in his throat.

“That’s good,” Mr. Vaughn said.

Tristan shook his head.

Well played, little brother. I guess you win another, with the tactics you learned from Moonsong.

“Do we have a mutual understanding, Tristan?”

Tristan nodded, quickly.

No passion, no wild abandon, no freedom, no time, and less and less fun. No life.

What was left?

He reached for an answer to that question, and a sizable part of him died when he couldn’t find much of anything.

When he opened his mouth to speak, it was more a fish gulping for air than anything else. He swallowed the failed attempt at drawing in breath, getting it past the lump in his throat.

“Please tell me we have some news on that asshole Paris.”

“We don’t, but you’ll be the first to know the moment something crosses my desk.”

“Please,” Tristan said. He raised himself to a standing position. He walked over to the door, and found himself unsure if he’d said it loud enough to be clear. More firmly, he told Mr. Vaughn, “Please.”

⊙

Byron

“Round fucking two,” Tristan said. He sounded so normal for someone who had had so much trouble sleeping the night before. “Furcate’s back in fighting shape-”

Furcate punched one gauntlet into the other. Chains jangled.

“And we’ve talked tactics. We’ve learned a lot, these past couple of months. Gear upgraded.”

“My second best suit is revved up and ready to go,” Steamwheel said.

“It’s really him?” Coiffure asked.

“It’s really him,” Tristan said.

“How’d you find him?”

“I…” Tristan trailed off. “I found him online, and I tricked him.”

You obsessed, you created an online persona, a convincing one, and you convinced him you wanted to hire him.

“Kickass,” Figurehead said. “I’m worried I’m not going to be useful.”

“There’s a chance he has backup. Just focus on the backup, support us where you can. If you can get a clear scan on him and go in for the critical hit, that’s great.”

Figurehead nodded. “If he has backup, though, and we couldn’t deal with him alone last time-”

“Last time was my fault,” Tristan said. “I was too caught up in doing it myself. Teamwork will make up the difference.”

“I hope you’re right,” Moonsong said.

“I’m right,” Tristan said. “I’m always right.”

Nobody disagreed with him, beyond a roll of the eyes from Moonsong, and it bothered Byron more than he cared to admit.

“We corner him, and we don’t let up the pressure. We’ve drilled on this.”

Tristan put out his gauntlet. Other people tapped gloves and gauntlets to it, with Steamwheel going low, putting her power armor’s fist beneath the group’s huddle.

The group split up, everyone finding their positions. The decoy car was black, parked in the middle of a concrete dock. Shipping containers surrounded the dock, and provided hiding spots for the rest of the team.

“Switch up rapidly,” Tristan murmured. “Like you’ve been talking about, like we did in drills. I want this asshole off balance.”

Tristan passed control.

“Yeah,” Byron responded. Then he passed control back.

Like a handshake.

“But please-” Tristan started. He paused, looking over at other members of the team who were getting into position. “Let me finish him. So I can tell Nate I did.”

Control was passed. Byron couldn’t bring himself to nod right away.

But he did nod, in the end.

“And if you’re going to hesitate like that, then just swap,” Tristan said, the moment he had control again. He fixed his helmet’s position. He didn’t extend control back to get a response to that statement.

It had almost been cool, Byron observed. This had almost been the way it should be.

Paris’ car made its way past shipping containers and to the dock. It stopped nearly a hundred feet away from the parked car. Doors opened, and Paris climbed out of the back, almost unfolding as he stood straight, because he was so tall that even a spacious backseat required some contortion. Tristan looked at the guy’s muscles, at the quality and condition of his costume. It had been updated since their last excursion.

The people in Paris’ car looked like ordinary staff for some rich guy. A chauffeur, with sunglasses and an earpiece, and a woman with a similar outfit of black suit, sunglasses, and earpiece.

The reality was that Paris just wasn’t around that much. He was a mercenary, an admittedly capable mercenary, and that meant he got work. When he came back, it was because this was home.

For whatever reason, coming home also meant attacking certain, specific people.

Tristan drew a spike in the air. As Paris paced around the car in his languid way, Tristan let it fall.

The wind impacted the spike’s course slightly, made the point veer so it no longer pointed straight down. It pierced the engine block with a crash that saw Paris and his staff practically fall to the ground. The back half of the sleek, professional car practically leaped up off the ground. Moonsong caught it with her power, and the residual impact of the hit saw the car fly up, spinning end over end, practically weightless.

Credit to Tristan that a professional like this fell for this.

But falling for it wasn’t as good as things being said and done.

Tristan passed control. Byron began drawing out his circle. He left it unfinished, in a way that tended to make his work unreliable in consistency. In this moment, he was pretty sure he could trust it.

The lines and dots solidified. There was a splash of water, but it was minor. The primary focus of his power taking effect was now ice. The area around the car was now an ice rink.

Immediately, Paris’ darts were thrown around that ice rink, dissolving it.

Still, it kept Paris from running for it. He could maintain his footing, turning around to look for attackers, but running for safety required more traction.

Where darts disintegrated ice, cracks spread between impact points. Paris used the cracks, running so that one foot was directly in front of the other, each footfall carefully settled on safe ground within the crack.

Steamwheel charged in, wheel spinning, steam venting, feet pounding with so much force that broken ice bounced up five feet with each footfall.

Paris leaped, feet going forward, like he intended to slide on the ice, arm going back as he planned to throw.

Byron passed control to Tristan. Ice became stone. Low traction became high traction. Paris went from a slide to a roll, a tumble.

Steamwheel vented steam after Paris, a heavy plume extending forward. Camouflage systems on her suit shifted tints and shadows, making her blend into the steam clouds.

Paris rolled, found his orientation, and sprung to his feet- springing too high as Moonsong caught him. A moment later, as he was still moving through the air, she brought her hand down hard. Low gravity became high. Paris fell in an awkward way once again.

And, barely taking any time to recover, he switched to the offensive. More needles were thrown, and the needles he’d set on ice were creating a storm of hail and rock shards. He barely seemed to care as they came down on his own head, but it impacted the others.

Figurehead apparently had a read, because he went after the driver, who had backed off, and the black woman in the suit.

When Figurehead could use his power, he was an action movie star in a movie with great choreography. Every strike was predicted, countered. Every step was a weak point. The woman reaching for a weapon saw Figurehead getting his hands on the weapon first, using the butt-end of a pistol to rap the chauffeur across the knuckles as the man threw a punch.

Coiffure lashed out. Her hair was longer, this time, her weapons that she’d woven into her hair now tailored for ranged strikes. Whips and chains. When Steamwheel wasn’t in close, Coiffure was lashing out, forcing Paris to dance. Tribute was focused on Coiffure. He would switch to the next person as soon as they took focus.

Paris began throwing darts at Coiffure. Steamwheel put on the pressure, this time, stepping from the cloud of steam to attack Paris from behind-

A feint. He was expecting her, and needles went to Steamwheel’s elbows and knees. She reacted by hunkering down, her wheel spinning, and producing vast quantities of steam. The steam was hot, hot enough that Coiffure had to back off, and Paris had to hunker down.

Moonsong hit him again. Furcate leaped down from a shipping container, splitting as they landed, and Tristan marched forward, leveling a glare at Paris.

We’re on a dock. If he goes for the water, I’m the answer for that.

Somewhere along the line, the choking gas had become water, and then the water had become ice. Where Tristan seemed static, remaining with solids with only slight nuance, Byron had evolved.

Byron liked to think it represented some growth within himself. Finding Brianna. Finding assertiveness.

Paris used his darts to create localized hazards, it was how he fought. He was athletic, agile, and he knew how to fight. As he threw down darts, Byron and Tristan took turns covering up the areas where the darts spat out geysers of bullets.

As the darts started getting flung in their direction, they swapped back and forth, closing the distance, forcing Paris to retreat further. Furcate flanked, because they loved flanking. Coiffure moved out to the other side, her hair creating limbs she could move on, chains and whip noisy against the concrete of the dock.

Paris stopped being quite so conservative with the darts. He threw them out in messy ways, toward Furcate, who split into two, toward Coiffure. They were lower velocity, landing in clumps, but the resulting sprays were violent and harder to work around.

Once again, Tristan created the spike, a fist-encompassing growth of rock laced with metal veins. Once again, Byron felt his nonexistent pulse pounding out its diffuse alarm into a darkness without bounds or perspective.

Tristan broke into a run to close the distance. The sudden movement drew Paris’ attention. Needles were thrown.

Tristan swapped out for Byron. The spike broke apart into water and ice shards, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that momentum didn’t carry over one hundred percent. Byron could pivot, run another direction, then swap again.

This is what I had in mind.

Their more unpredictable movements upped the pressure on Paris. Tristan materialized, created his spike. He had to abandon it a moment later, but he was a few steps closed by the time they’d swapped and changed direction twice in five seconds.

The next time he had a turn, on impulse, almost out of a weird gratitude to his brother, Byron set up the spike for Tristan. As Tristan materialized, punching out, the spike formed around his hand.

Byron felt the smile, almost more of a grimace.

Furcate was close enough to slash at Paris, who kicked them firmly in the stomach. The other two Furcates were on him a moment later, one with spikes on chains instead of claws.

Paris backed away, then moved his hands in a new way, slow, as if drawing a blade out of his sleeve.

Not a needle or a dart. This looked more like a railroad spike.

The spike was hurled toward the ground in the midst of the Furcates. The result was a detonation, not a geyser, scattering them.

Coiffure was next. She tumbled, her hair going limp.

No!

Tristan was silent.

Tribute fixated on Tristan. Byron could feel the strength, the increase in heart rate, and the way that cognitive processing sped up until the rest of the world seemed to move slower.

Tribute would be a sitting duck, dumb, slow, weak and fragile, so long as he was giving this kind of strength. One thrown attack like what Paris was pulling out of his sleeve would destroy Tribute.

But Tristan was slowing, changing course. He switched out to Byron, letting the spike at one hand fall away.

Byron could change direction, doing his best to add to the zig-zag, placing his feet carefully. He switched back to Tristan.

Tristan wasn’t focused on Paris.

Tristan looked at Furcate, at the Furcates, plural. When he looked back over one shoulder, he didn’t look at his teammates. It was at the ice.

Paris threw a railroad spike. Tristan ducked it, letting it detonate. Then, still in slow motion, still with some augmented power from Tribute, that power slipping away with every moment as Tribute went on the offense, Tristan charged.

Another throw from Paris, and Tristan twisted, absorbing the hit, before tumbling to the ground.

He was hurt, but he wasn’t hurt so badly he couldn’t get back up, press the attack.

What are you doing?

Tristan’s body roiled with emotion as he crouched there, head bowed. He kept a wary eye on Paris, who backed away. Tristan didn’t pursue.

Tristan!

The rest of the team was hurrying to catch up. The Furcates were picking themselves up. Coiffure was still down, and Tristan began to move in her direction, like he was in a daze.

“Stop,” Figurehead called out. He set a hand on Tristan’s shoulder. “Don’t move if you’re hurt.”

Tristan stopped moving. He turned to stare at Paris, who was still retreating, not turning his back on the group.

Moonsong and Tribute had caught up now. Figurehead was using his power to do diagnostics on Coiffure, which he would be bad at, since she was a known quantity. He eased her to a sitting position. She looked up at him and nodded, before wincing in pain.

And Tristan-

Tristan remained where he was. He watched as Paris climbed a set of shipping containers, making his escape.

“What’s going on?” Moonsong asked. “What the hell happened there, Tristan? You wanted to be leader, and you’re letting him get away?”

“He hit us,” Tristan said. “Direct hit.”

“What are you talking about?” Moonsong asked. Her voice was tight, like she knew exactly what Tristan was talking about.

“We were switching out, for evasive action. Then- then Byron didn’t switch. He kept running, I-I-”

Byron could feel Tristan forcing the sound, forcing his voice to break.

“No,” Moonsong said. “No, I don’t believe you.”

“I think he wanted to throw off Paris’ expectations. When he was changing, we were more him than me, and that cannon-shot of Paris’ hit us.”

No.

“I can’t switch to Byron anymore.”

No. Please.

“I think he’s dead,” Tristan lied, looking a now-anguished Moonsong in the eyes.

Gleaming – 9.10

A droplet of blood fell from Capricorn’s gauntlet. Amid the patchwork of glare and deep shadow that illuminated the prison, this droplet fell while he jogged through the light. I was hyperalert enough that it caught my eye, and it struck enough nerves to stay with me for far too long after the fact.

I was flying, which gave me some ability to twist around and rotate in the air. I’d been glancing to one side, checking our flank, but in the aftermath of seeing that droplet, I found myself flying backward, looking back toward the group rather than out ahead of us. It took Sveta meeting my eyes and a few simultaneous glances from the others to bring me back to reality.

Weird that she was talking to Rain like she was. Did I need to worry? I felt like Capricorn and I were more on the same page-

Worrisome given the blood and the flare of temper. Me back at the hideout. Him just now, with that Teachered Officer.

-But Rain and Sveta seemed a lot cooler about Goddess, and the protocols of proper caping were far less ingrained in them.

Tristan was talking to them about Goddess. About trusting protocols. The blind led the blind.

I wanted my own blind self to join in, but I didn’t trust myself to string coherent thoughts together.

Battle mode, Victoria.

Thinking about the ingrained things helped.

How many nights had the teenaged me gone out in costume? White costume with the dress and the skintight shorts beneath for modesty, gloves, knee-high boots, short cape, my tiara with its spikes radiating out. That was physical. I’d stretch, check on any injuries from the night before, adjusting my costume to cover any hints that I wasn’t invulnerable, and then I’d be out the door, running first and then flying. All of that was the physical, the external.

Internally, it was excitement, anticipation, reminding myself of all of Mom’s little tricks about how to present oneself when out in costume. I would be thinking about the recent crime maps, the online listings of last known sightings by villains, and mom and dad’s rules for my costumed activities.

The lines blurred at times, but it was very much a role I wrapped around myself, past and present. A mode.

It hadn’t been that long ago that hands tattooed in red, black, and gold reached out for me in a place I’d thought safe and mine. I was shaken. I remained shaken enough that a droplet of red threatened to bring me back to that wretched place where Sveta had been forced to grab me and stop me.

But routine left its- its scars, I supposed, even though I didn’t think of them as bad scars. It wasn’t just the bad experiences that left their mark. A route walked through the wilderness enough times became a dirt path, a scar through nature. Cities were harder to alter, but a cape or team of capes making an area part of their regular routine changed that area. A pair of gloves and knee-high boots could be washed and worn enough times that they came to fit perfectly. Scars and marks, impressions. Impressions had been the idea I’d been searching for, and I was glad to have it.

I had to be able to do this. I had to find that worn path, that image that I could wear as comfortably as any pair of gloves. I had to be able to settle into that mindset.

Any alternative to being functional was not okay. Not for right this moment, with so many people counting on us. Not for the long term, when it meant I might have nothing at all in the aftermath.

There were too many Welds, Crystals, Vistas and Major Malfunctions out there. Too many Jaspers, Gilpatricks, Yamadas, Natalies, and Darnalls.

A droplet of red, blood red fingers.

I pushed the image out of my head. There was a desperate edge to my thoughts as I forced myself back on track. Into that well-trodden mindset.

The head office of the prison and many of the administration buildings were toward the south end of the complex, with the yard situated at the middle-south, minimizing travel time from any of the cell block apartments. Those in the higher security cells to the north had to walk further, but I had to imagine they didn’t get yard time or they got less. Either way, we had two options, only one of which was a good option. The bad option was to head south, loop around the bottom, and make our way to the women’s half of the prison. That route put us closer to the prison entrance, where Lung currently was.

We would have to deal with that, with him, but not now. I was happy procrastinating on that particular encounter.

“Rain!” I heard the voice. It was higher, but it was from the guy’s side of the prison. “Crystalclear.”

The voice came from one of the apartment buildings near Rain’s. I flew up for a better view, and saw the man at the window. He was heavy, with the kind of double chin that hung over his collarbone. He had wiry stubble, and there wasn’t much helping to distinguish the end of the facial hair and the start of body hair. His hair was short and uneven, and it was greasy, which made the uneven spikes that much more noticeable.

Most notable was his mouth. He looked like he had chewed on an ink packet. His teeth were yellow-white, but the spaces between them, the lines around his mouth and his tongue were all black.

Coalbelcher.

“…and a villainess? Heroine?”

“Heroine.”

He gave me an up-down look that made my skin crawl. Still staring at me, he called down. “How are you out, boys? What’s this commotion about? I’m offended you interrupted my motherfucking meal, and I’m more offended you’re running around with two legs.”

“Special dispensation, since we used to be heroes,” Rain said. “Two masters are fighting over who gets to take over the prison, deactivate the ankle bombs and recruit everyone inside.”

“Yeah? Are we hoping they win?”

“One of them, maybe,” Rain said.

“Neither of them,” Crystalclear said, loud enough to be heard from the second floor. At a more regular volume, he said, “I think your judgment isn’t that good right now, Rain.”

“Neither,” I echoed Crystalclear, not sure I sounded like I believed it.

Crystalclear moved his arm, pointing, and Coalbelcher leaned over the railing to see him better. While the prison boss wasn’t looking, I gave Cyrstalclear a slight nod.

The others hurried on their way. I saw Coalbelcher practically twitch, seeing them leave without a goodbye. He was the boss of the men’s side, and he’d been ignored.

I could afford to stay. I had to think about the future, consider options. If we pissed this guy off, we could win today and see Rain suffer for it tomorrow. “They have to run. Time’s critical, and the guards are coming. We don’t know which of them we can trust.”

“Hm. I could be useful there. What do ya think about getting me some of that special dispensation?” Coalbelcher asked. He licked his fingers, then smudged the black spit around one eye. It looked more like grainy black paint than anything.

“I have trouble believing you were a hero,” I said.

His fingers dragged slowly down one cheek, smearing black there. Between the black eye socket and the cheek, it was the initial steps toward a skull face.

“A lot of trouble,” I said. “If you try to leave, they’ll take your leg. Sorry.”

“You sure? I said I can be useful, and I see fires over there,” he said. He pointed in the direction of the prison entrance. There was a diffuse orange glow. “I love fire. Maybe I save lives if that gets out of control.”

With guys like this, it was all about respect. It was hard, though, when nothing about his appearance merited it, and his vaguely lecherous approach shattered what little I was able to sum up. Still… “Our old teammate talked you up. He said you were the guy in charge, and we could use some of that to keep the prisoners under control if things get hairy. Would if I could, Coalbelcher.”

“Find a way, yeh?”

That kind of order felt vaguely like a threat. I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I simply nodded, then flew after the others.

A part of me had hoped for reasonable from the guy. I wasn’t sure if I’d made anything better, but I wasn’t sure I’d made it any worse either. Rain and Crystalclear running without saying goodbye had put the guy in a worse mood, but I wasn’t sure anything short of being part of the action would have put him in a good mood. I’d tried, I’d left a door open.

It would have to do.

Rain had used his blades to cut through the fence and the wall separating the two halves of the prison, and the group was through. Halogen lights were on and being manually operated, and the lights roved across the prison complex. I saw one start to move in the direction of the group and the hole in the wall,and I flew in that direction to intercept. If they had rifles-

The light stopped moving, then turned in the direction of the front gate, panning over the empty yard, over a group of officers who were hunkered down by a building, and then casting a light on the distant scene where, presumably, Lung was engaged in a fight.

I flew closer, just to double check it wouldn’t spin around, and I saw Sveta perched on the fence by the light. I stopped short when I saw the disjointed tentacles poised around her.

“It’s okay,” she said. My eyes were adjusting to the gloom, but the adjustment to seeing her face was helped by the fact her face was as pale as it was. I could see the black tendrils at her face and around her battle damage. “These are courtesy of Rain.”

It was what he’d been talking to her about on the ground.

The ‘tentacles’ were arm segments, repeated over and over. Black tendrils snaked through the connecting mesh, but didn’t snake out, which was the important part.

“Is it fragile?” I asked.

“No. Maybe.”

“Are you okay with it?”

“I want to be useful. I don’t have to be human-shaped.”

“You want to be human shaped.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s something Sveta gets, but Tress will have to put it off if she wants to operate at her best,” she said. She stood up straighter, moving the prosthetic tentacles in the weird, stilted way that I’d seen her walk when I’d first seen her at the group therapy session. She braced herself against the platform, then moved the tentacle down to the catwalk at the searchlight tower’s edge. She grabbed an officer and pulled him along the grating that was the catwalk floor, where the glow from the spotlight illuminated him. He was as young as either Tress or I, black, wearing a uniform. An earring glinted at his ear. “Can you check his cuffs for me?”

I did. One was loose. I tightened it.

“You’re unhurt?” I asked the officer.

I could see his nostrils flare, his lips pressed into a line. He glared up at me.

“Situation normal’s all fucked up. We’re here to help, really.”

No response.

This wasn’t being a hero in a neighborhood, even a hostile neighborhood like Hollow Point or the worst areas of Brockton Bay. We were invaders, people who didn’t belong. Whether it was guard or prisoner, we had few people we could count as true allies.

I met Tress’ eyes. She nodded.

We left the tower, heading in the direction the others had gone. Capricorn was leading the way to Ashley’s cell, the projector compass in hand.

Not that it was necessary. I’d been before.

As I flew closer, I could see the pair of Swansong and Damsel at the balcony. both wore the prison-provided coveralls, but Swansong wore a white undershirt or camisole under hers, the front left open. Damsel wore only a black sleeveless top, her coveralls tied at the waist. Fitting those claws through the sleeves would be very difficult. They gripped the railing, metal blades long enough for her to scratch her toes without bending over, a thin, ripped webwork of skin stretched over them.

It was only Swansong who hopped down from the balcony. Her blast interrupted her descent, and interrupted many of the shouts and calls from the woman inmates at the other doorways and balconies.

Swansong was as elegant as her raw, crude detonations of darkness and warped space were violent. At the same time, I could see the tension in Damsel as she looked down at us, claws gripping metal railing, her eyes wild. She looked like she could barely resist jumping down as well.

Capricorn and I were the first at the scene, as Tress dropped down to Rain’s side, touching one of her new parts.

It was Tristan and Byron, Swansong with Damsel looking down, and then myself. Our halves removed by one step, one way or another.

“Your… sister?” Capricorn asked.

“She’s stuck where she is,” Damsel said, referring to herself in the third person. She didn’t look like she could sit still, her claws moving, metal scraping metal.

“I could come. We’re on the same side,” Damsel made it sound like she was being intentionally insincere.

I met Swansong’s eyes.

“She watched the meeting with Goddess,” Swansong said, as if that summed it up. She tilted her head to one side. “Where are Cryptid and Lookout?”

“Lookout is with Goddess,” I said.

Swansong’s stare was level. Again, that curious stillness.

“Your little friend is in good hands,” Damsel commented from above. She smiled.

Everything in her micro-expressions was different. The degree to which she fractionally widened and narrowed her eyes in the course of a single sentence, the slight movements of her bladed hands, as if to create implications as she said ‘hands’, the intonations. All of it was keyed in a way that suggested an implicit threat or imminent action, like she was coiled up and ready to… blast with her power or lash out.

This wasn’t the Ashley I’d come to know. This was the Ashley I could imagine working with the Slaughterhouse Nine.

“Is she safe?” Swansong asked.

“She’s-” I started to answer. “She’s with Goddess.”

Swansong nodded, “And Cryptid?”

“Cryptid left. On an errand for Goddess with my sister.”

“He’s being more Cryptid-like than usual today,” Tristan observed.

“Of course he is,” Swansong said. She glanced at me. “Your sister?”

All around us, prisoners were noticing the scene. Women’s voices were raised. Pleading to be let out, threatening, commenting. Less lewd than the guys’ side had been, but there was still lewdness.

My skin crawled at the thought of Amy. My heart raced like I was only a step away from attacking Amy again, yet she wasn’t anywhere near here, and I wasn’t that angry in the moment.

“The less said the better,” I answered her, as diplomatically as I could.

“Then I won’t say anything.”

Rain and Tress caught up.

“Those are my arms,” Swansong said.

“What?” Tristan asked.

She pointed at Tress’s new addition. The black wire mesh connected individual cylinders… pale shells that would have once been parts of Swansong’s arms.

“Uh, yeah,” Rain said. “I wanted to do something more practical when we thought things were getting bad. I made a few prototype versions of your arms. With levers, switches, and wires inside, like the snapshots Lookout took of the inside of Tress’ suit.”

“Sneaky,” Damsel called out, smiling.

“There’s a limit to what I can do with your hands without leaving you worse off,” Rain sounded apologetic as he explained to Swansong. “And I had a few days where my tinker power was working better. Not that that is very tinkered up. Half and half.”

“It’s fine,” Swansong said. “If you’re going to use anyone’s arms as a model, you at least used tasteful ones.”

“I appreciate the thought,” Tress said. “And thank you, Swansong, for being okay with the use of your arms.”

“Your hands are okay?” he asked Swansong. “They’re working fine?”

“They’re sufficient for tonight, thank you. Let’s focus on Lookout and the prison, not me.”

“We have one more person to grab,” Crystalclear said.

Tristan held up the compass.

“I’ll get her,” Crystalclear said. “You catch your teammate up.”

He wants to tell her that we’re Goddessed.

That was fine.

Capricorn clapped his gauntlets together. I didn’t miss the flash of dark red across the back of one gauntlet. He spoke with authority and confidence, “Then let’s talk goals. Goddess, Lookout and Natalie are after the assistant Warden and the Wardens Teacher co-opted. Lung and Teacher’s soldiers are at the front and are presumably after Goddess. Prisoners are staying put, but we’re in a weird place right now.”

“Weird how?” Rain asked.

“It’s about confidence and doubt,” I said. “Prisoners could riot or test their ankle bombs if they get too agitated or overconfident, and that leads to either casualties or an unsalvageable situation. They could betray us if they think this situation doesn’t work out for them, you never know with all the powers we have around us. Officers don’t know who to trust, but they could start shooting people or people with the power could start detonating bombs if they panic.”

“That’s without getting into Teacher and Goddess,” Capricorn said.

“Or us,” Tress said.

“Or us,” he conceded.

I looked away, back toward where the fighting was worst. The fires extended from the hole Goddess had put in the wall to a nearby administration building.

“We support Goddess first,” Swansong said. “Get Lookout, get Natalie, get control of the situation. All four of those things are tied into one another.”

“I don’t entirely disagree,” Capricorn said, “But Goddess is complicated. Do you know what master-stranger protocols are?”

“No,” Swansong said.

“It sounds like the kind of thing the annoying Protectorate mooks would use,” Damsel threw out her remark from a distance, as if it was an extension of Swansong’s ‘no’.

“It is,” I said, my voice firm. “But let’s settle for saying that the situation is complicated. The nicest way I can think of framing it is that if we help her too blatantly, we hurt ourselves in the long run.”

“Why do we care? Deal with tomorrow when it comes. I know at least two of us are clever enough to come up with something,” Damsel remarked.

I wondered if we could or should just walk away. If we weren’t waiting for Crystalclear to catch up with us again…

“Maybe we think of it as a question of reputation,” Swansong said. “If we appear to be too subservient…”

“Mm,” Damsel made a sound.

“Mm,” Swansong echoed her. She glanced at me and rolled her eyes slightly.

“I don’t really care about status,” Rain said. “I want people to be okay, and… I want us to be okay too. I’m here for a reason, and I don’t want that to get flipped upside-down or screwed up along the way. I know that’s a crummy thing to prioritize when there are higher priorities, like people’s safety, Goddess, keeping the peace, and keeping Teacher from becoming the most powerful man on all the earths.”

“If he isn’t already,” Tress’s expression and tone were dark.

“It makes sense to go to Goddess,” Swansong said.

“It makes sense to split up,” Crystalclear said, as he rejoined us. “We have other issues.”

He’d returned from the apartment with the other undercover member of Foresight. The girl was short, her uniform not really fitting her, and she had improvised a mask of several pieces of paper and tape, several sheets forming a cone that encapsulated her face, with holes for the eyes that had pen scribbles surrounding each hole, darkening the perimeters. Sheets of paper were connected at one corner each to form ears at the sides of her head.

“Ratcatcher, meet Breakthrough,” Crystalclear said.

“I’ve theen thome of them around,” she said. “Thveta and I talked thome before I came.”

“Tell them what you told me.”

“A little friend of mine thayth that Teacher ith in the tunnelth beneath uth,” she said. She pronounced Teacher like ‘tee-shirt’ with a silent t at the end, and little like ‘liddle’.

“What’s in the tunnels?” Rain asked.

“Networking,” she said. She raised one leg, tapping the bomb. “Control and everything that goeth out of the prithon.”

“He’s turning to his backup plans,” I said. “We de-fanged the Warden and deputy Warden, the assistant Warden is on our side. The person with the control of the portals and the bombs effectively has control of the prisoner population.”

There was a detonation near the front of the prison. I saw the flame leap high.

“Fuck,” Crystalclear swore. “That fire is painful to look at with my senses being what they are.”

“Yeth.”

The fire. Purple flame.

I could connect the dots, even if it was a little belated. Multiple dots, now that I thought about it. Multi-layered plans and contingencies.

We were fighting a mastermind after all.

“He paired Lung and the Pharmacist,” I voiced my thought aloud.

“Who and who?” Ratcatcher asked.

“Teacher picked a mercenary tag-team who want to level the prison just as much as Goddess does. If we don’t want people to get hurt, then we’re going to need to step in. Lung is… an old enemy. Since half my life ago, about.”

“You know him?” Crystalclear asked.

“Yeah. More or less.”

“You handle that then, if you’re comfortable. I’ll go with Ratcatcher to the access tunnels.”

“We could use a thinker and a level head,” I said.

“I’m kind of under orders to be the level head for Ratcatcher, and I don’t want to go anywhere near that fire, in case I blow a mental fuse. I don’t think this is really negotiable,” Crystalclear said.

“Ugh,” Ratcatcher said.

Ugh is right. Crystalclear is just about the only person who isn’t Goddess influenced, who knows what’s going on.

“I can’t change your mind?” I asked.

“No,” Crystalclear said. “No, this is the network. It’s important.”

It’s important.

I connected to what he was thinking. The others, going by their faces, might not have.

The network. Possibly with the means of calling for help.

“Alright,” I said.

“You know the way, Rat?” Crystalclear asked.

“I do,” Ratcatcher said. “We’ll want more firepower. My friendth reported a few powerth.”

“Then I’ll come,” Tress said. “It’s- it has to be better than talking about master-stranger protocols and doubting myself or my teammates.”

“I’m still not sure I get those protocols,” Rain said. “But I’ll do what the team needs. Do you need wall-breaking power? Get past any secure doors?”

“No,” Ratcatcher said. “I can get through motht lockth quick. Or my friendth can.”

As if to punctuate that last statement, a mouse poked its head up from her prison uniform collar, followed by a much larger rat.

“You talk to rodents?” Rain asked.

“No. Not mush. Only crathy people talk to rodenth. But rodenth talk to me. Very different.”

“Handy,” Rain said.

“Yes. But we don’t need handy. We need firepower,” Ratcatcher said.

“Still?” Tristan asked.

“I’ll come,” Swansong said. “If the rest of you think you’ll be okay?”

The rest of us. Tristan, myself, and Rain.

“Why go?” Tristan asked.

“Because I trust myself more doing this than I do being near that.”

“Can you fight in tunnelth?” Ratcatcher asked.

Above, Damsel shook her head, as if it was already known.

“We’ll find out,” Swansong said, contradicting her ‘sister’. “But I know I’m very good at fighting brutes like Lung. Too good. I don’t want to put myself in that situation again, not this soon.”

“I… can’t argue with that,” Tress said.

“Take my phone,” Capricorn told Crystalclear. “We’ll stay in touch.”

Crystalclear nodded.

As a quartet, Ratcatcher, Crystalclear, Swansong, and Tress hurried for a spot at the midpoint between three buildings. If there was an access hatch, I didn’t see it. Women looking down from balconies hurled obscenities, complained about the delays for their dinner, and shouted to each other, asking what was going on with us being down here and the fires at the gate.

It left Capricorn, Rain, and I as the strike squad. When we reunited with the others, we would have Goddess and Lookout. If there was anyone at the other side of the portal, then we could sure use them too.

But Lung was a problem.

And- I moved as Tristan took a step forward. My hand caught him right in the middle of the chest. He stopped here he was, me in front of him, hand against his chest.

Lung was a problem, but so was Tristan.

My hand moved down to his gauntlet. I grabbed it and lifted it. Had we been on the other side of the portal, the gauntlet would have been cleaned by the freezing rain. It wasn’t cleaned.

“I think we need Byron,” I said, moving his hand so the light highlighted where the blood was. “We can’t have you acting like you did with that guard.”

“He had something going on mentally. Wouldn’t stop,” Tristan said. “It wasn’t as uncontrolled as it looked. I was just trying to apply enough force to get him to stop.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“You told me to rein you in. I’m reining. We need Byron.”

Tristan was still for a long moment.

Too long a moment. The fires were growing in the distance, and there was too much going on.

“No joking here, Tristan. Change.”

“You had to ask like that. Evoking the Tristan-Byron protocol?”

“Yeah?”

“If you ask, I’m switching,” he said. “Just- there’s no guarantee he’s on board.”

“We’ll trust him,” I told Tristan. “He recommended the protocols to me when he was clear and I wasn’t. I have to believe he’ll abide by them now.”

He nodded, and then he passed me the compass.

Dissolving into a blur, he shifted to become Byron. Lighter armor, in multiple senses of the word. No blood marked his gauntlet.

“Okay?” I asked. “We’re on the same page?”

“Master-stranger,” Byron answered.

We cut across the yard, with Rain using his power to slice through the fence. It looked like posts were now being abandoned because of the chaos at the front gate. Inmates were getting more agitated, and the guards weren’t at nearby towers or posts to tell them to shut it. People were heading to where the fires were, to put them out or put the causes of the fire down.

“Fill us in on Lung, since it looks like he’s our biggest problem,” Byron said.

“Lung is a changer, with powers hooked into the change,” I said.

“Like Cryptid?” Rain asked.

“Different than Cryptid. Lung changes to the same thing every time, slow progression, but a steady ramp-up the longer he’s in a fight. Metal armor, pyrokinesis, enhanced senses, physiology, quickness, added parts. He’s a warlord by temperament, but he was always missing something that let him take his gangs to the next level.”

“He has pyrokinesis?” Byron asked.

I nodded, content to let the scene that we were approaching serve as the more complete answer to Byron’s question. Fires, purple and otherwise, spread out across ground that should have been exhausted of all fuel sources. The heat was being turned up on the admin buildings and the entrance.

Teacher wasn’t the type to sic Lung on Goddess and expect a win. He was the type to sic the combination of a fireproof monster who manipulated fire and a person who set powers on fire on Goddess and expect a win.

Lung was already partially changed as we sighted him. He had enough scales that the officers who shot at him weren’t getting through, and he was big enough that the bullets that did make contact seemed to lack stopping power. Each couple of gunshots was answered by Lung throwing out a rolling wave of flames. The flames would travel a ways, hit one of the lingering purple flames on the ground, and then explode in size by three times. Whole squadrons of officers were sent running.

No Pharmacist to be seen. She was nearby, but it seemed to be the peeking-through-a-window nearby, not standing on the battlefield nearby.

No Blindside, no Kingdom Come.

Plenty of armed Teacher thralls.

Lung used his pyrokinesis, and purple flames swelled, billowing in his direction. The flames would draw close, then the Pharmacist would extinguish the flames closest to the brute of a man and his underlings.

Interplay.

Byron began drawing out blue motes. Rain created his silver scythes.

“Careful,” I murmured.

“Purple fire ignites powers,” Byron said. “I remember.”

His water splashed down on one of the worse blazes at the admin building. It had been the building where the Warden, his deputy and his assistant had all been set up.

It served to get Lung’s attention, pulling it away from Goddess and presumably Lookout.

“Dallon,” Lung growled the word. Still capable of speech. “Pests. Too many of you remain.”

They were hard words to hear put out there so casually. Words that made me think of Crystal’s family, of too many funerals in too short a span of time.

He moved one hand in an almost casual way, and the flames expanded, becoming a slow-motion, rolling detonation, with a sound like the thunder of a dozen lightning strikes. A lick of purple flame caught it and ignited the pyrokinesis itself, the purple disappearing in the rolls of blinding oranges and reds. Lung’s regular pyrokinesis manipulated those flames, in turn, expanding them.

No games, nothing held back. Only a wall of flame that could have swamped many houses and conventional buildings, produced in mere seconds. A ball passed between two people, growing with each toss, with us in the line of fire.

I saw it coming, braced myself, and activated the Wretch, positioning myself between the wall and my teammates.

For a moment, an eye-blink, I saw the Wretch outlined.

Byron had bent his head down, armored arm shielding his eyes. Rain was the one who seemed to suffer the most from the ambient heat, with no shield or barrier to protect him.

“Go,” I told him, indicating.

He bolted for the building. I saw Lung move, drawing a hand back with flame appearing in the palm. I pushed out with my aura, taking flight, with every intent of interrupting his throw.

A fast-moving spark struck the Wretch, leaving me without my defenses. Another hit me dead center in the breastplate, making me sag in the air as my body was momentarily paralyzed, my heart skipping a beat with the intensity of the shock.

Other shots were aimed at Byron, who seemed to endure, and at Rain, who didn’t. I saw Rain fall where Byron and I had withstood the hits, not making it to the door into the admin building before the momentary paralysis gripped him.

“Go,” Byron said.

I flew in Rain’s direction, while Byron stopped using his water to put out fires and started using it to get at Lung from oblique angles. Here and there, the water caught purple flames, and became gouts of the stuff. Wherever she was, the fires extinguished before they reached Lung.

If he was immune to it, there was no reason to continually extinguish it. It was very possible that the Pharmacist’s fire could ignite Lung’s fire immunity. But she had eyes on the situation, and she was keeping him safe from her power, while he thrived in an environment where fire and heat were so ready at hand.

Lung ignored Byron’s water, ignited or no, and threw out flame, walling off my access to Rain.

In the midst of it, I saw Rain using one of his lesser-used powers. I could see it only because I saw the purple sparks and the lesser purple flames in the grass swell.

Reinforcements had to be on the way. Crystalclear was working on it in the access tunnels. We had Cryptid on the far side. We had- fuck me, we had my sister, of all people. The people we’d lined up on the far side to delay Teacher were no doubt regrouping.

We had to survive long enough for help to come, while keeping the monsters like Lung from doing any real, lasting damage. If we could do that, then our lesser sins might be forgiven or looked past. The harm of guards, our means of gathering information. The false pretenses by which we’d arranged our visits, when we had a real stake in things.

We had to endure. We had to endure against a man-turned-dragon who would burn any normal individual to a crisp, and a hidden woman who would expertly burn the abnormal out of anyone else. Until reinforcements.

They were showing up now. Help. Assistance.

The first of them, unfortunately, were Lung’s reinforcements, not ours. A blood-spattered Warden and Deputy Warden.

Our reinforcements were worrisome in a completely different way. When Goddess lowered herself from the top of the building to the ground, voices went quiet in nearby buildings. She was essentially alone. Natalie and Kenzie were close enough to see, but they were apart from Goddess. They had the assistant warden with them. Our guy, who theoretically was able to detonate the bombs that were strapped to most prisoner’s ankles, or to leave them be.

It looked like he was closer to panic than not, for what little it mattered. He, Lookout, and Natalie were in the company of a woman who stood behind Lookout, hands on our teammate’s shoulders. Monokeros. The child-killing Unicorn IV.

And I couldn’t even afford to do anything about it.

Lung roared, as only a person with an enhanced physique could, and then he leaped forward.

Goddess matched him, lifting herself up, the purple fire catching and then tracing the invisible diagrams and forces that buoyed her, only a few feet behind her because she moved fast enough to outrun its pace. More fire traced other powers she was using, blinding her and burning away the invisible, abstract forces that reached out from her and toward Lung’s brain.

It didn’t seem to give her pause. She flew forward, no doubt straight into the convoluted trap that Teacher would have planned out weeks before.

I took flight, past flames and toward blue motes and lines, into that selfsame snare.

Gleaming – 9.11

I’d fought Lung before. He was the very first bullet point in a handful, when it came to the fact that some people really hated emotion powers. Which was fair- I still felt something small twist up inside me when I even thought about Snag’s feeling-of-loss attacks. But Lung was part of the handful I’d fought where I could input fear and get anger. Dean had run into the same thing, with emotions other than fear returning the same output.

Some people, especially those of a more feral stripe, just processed things in a different way. The upside was the tactical advantage in it, if I could adjust my expectations fast enough.

The downside was that I had to make that adjustment. Most of my costumed fighting experience was that my enemies would hesitate, get sloppy, or back off, but Lung, like Bitch, like the cooler but still dangerous Krieg or the seemingly unflappable Victor who would still act differently when under the influence of my power, attacking faster and more recklessly. They were the people who were angry at the world, or those with the natural predisposition to fight rather than fly.

It meant I had his attention. Even before I activated my aura, it still meant he was keeping an eye on me, because he had experienced it before. Actually using my aura helped, provoking him on an emotional level.

With just a little more provocation coming from the hot purple apocalypse my aura was spreading across our shared battlefield.

I flew hard, chased by a stuttering spear of purple flame and a staccato, rolling explosion of fire where my emotion aura pulsed out and caught fire. The aura pushed out, and the fires that caught traced in that direction, before flowing back in and toward me, stopping when the pulse ended. That was what I assumed was responsible for the rolling part of the wall of explosions.

There was a crashing sound. Goddess was dealing with the mooks, breaking the earth and then hurling that broken ground at them from one direction, while throwing other debris at them from another. They were forced to run for cover. Into the same building as Monokeros and Lookout.

I started to fly to pursue.

“No!” Byron shouted, barely audible given the distance and the hellscape of flame below. “Only… deal with Lung! You! I can’t!”

I wanted to argue. Lung wasn’t dealt with. Not by someone like me. Byron and Tristan were a better answer than a brute like me.

I stopped myself. Byron was already making his way inside.

I at least knew Lung.

There was a strategy in what I’d been doing, in using my aura. There were many strategies in this. Lung wasn’t used to being on the defensive, and he had to limit what he did, even stepping to one side as the purple fire swelled and the pharmacist was slow to recognize and react to the problem. Goddess hurled a metal beam at him, and he leaped to the side, where he was struck by a volley of something else. Slivers or spikes. Some impaled him, but they didn’t slow him down.

My eyes were open, and in the relatively dark area, Lung was bright and easy to see. Where he was covered in metal scales, the metal reflected the flames. The rest of him was more of a silhouette against the bright flames. I could see the dragon mask, different from the one he had once had, with chains cutting through short black hair, tying the mask to his head.

I’d hoped for a tell, that the easily provoked Lung would turn his head around and shout at the Pharmacist for her failure to be careful. That he’d look to a nearby window to make sure she was still alive, and that he didn’t have to worry about burning to death for-

I had no idea how old he was, I realized. No idea how long it had been since he’d had to worry about burning to death.

No idea, and no indication that he was looking to any specific location for the Pharmacist.

The other tell that I was looking for was in the movement of purple flame- it was why I was paying attention to the flame that nipped at my toes as it burned at the motive forces of my flight, and to the purple explosions that flared up each time I pulsed out with my aura. It was the approach I’d used when dealing with Mama Mathers. Cape out of sight? Watch their power instead.

With each pulse of my aura, the flames grew, and the Pharmacist dashed the flames, extinguishing a swathe of the fire around Lung as if throwing invisible water on the area. I could pulse it, see the response time, repeat, see if it changed. I could establish a rhythm, then fake them out. How fast did they respond then?

Lung started hurling streams of fire into the sky. Easy enough to dodge.

Still pushing with my flight to keep ahead of the trail, tracing a wide circle around the area, I pulsed my aura again. Was there a shape to the extinguished area? It wasn’t circular or neat. Did it vary? Why?

I was heading for a gap between two streams of fire when they ignited with the purple flame. It was as though the streams of fire were gas, and the gas had been ignited. With momentum already in play, I could only drop my forcefield, stop flying, stop using my aura, and let myself sail through the area.

Knees tucked to my breastplate, hands inside my hood, at the back of my head, elbows shielding my face, my hood pulled down, I hurtled through the purple fire. I was in a cannonball tumble, and felt the wash of heat around me. It was blinding in its brightness, so close to me, and the rest of the world was pitch darkness.

Setting fire on fire.

I opened my eyes, and the world was spinning around me as I tumbled head over heels through the darkness, still in the cannonball pose, still with none of my powers active. With the surroundings being as dark as they were, I had only glimpses of the world, of the swathe of orange-yellow and purple-red fire, of stark spotlights, of the lights inside apartments and windows.

I used the sea of purple fire to orient myself, the dots and slices of yellow and orange serving as my position-reference for where the apartments and staff buildings were, and put everything into that perspective frame.

I lurched to the side as if by some telekinetic force, found nothing recognizable, and glimpsed another sea of fire, of red and orange. Fear stabbed me in the chest as I tumbled through a world that made no sense. The sea of purple I’d seen before was dissipating, breaking up, and a wall of fire loomed before me, pulling me toward it with an insane, inviolable force.

I forced my frame of reference to shift again. I’d had everything the wrong way around. The sea of purple fire had been the residual fire from Lung’s attack, the dots of yellow and orange just sparks in the air, not the faces of buildings. A moment of dizziness, of disorientation and limited lighting.

In the moment that I made sense of the world again, I could confirm to myself that there was no purple fire near me. I used my flight to stop falling, and flipped myself around to the right orientation. My heart pounded. I was in a place where the air was cold.

I could smell burned fabric, but I wasn’t on fire. I had to check myself twice before settling on the conclusion that I was alright.

Lung’s focus was consumed with Goddess, now. She was dismantling the entrance building of the prison, using the components to mount her attack. Beams, chunks of rubble, volleys of- the slivers or spikes from before. They were pulled from concrete. Rebar.

I saw Lung fire out the long gouts of flame that pierced through the sky, illuminating the scant clouds above and turning them orange. He placed them all in Goddess’ vicinity, and she used her telekinesis to scatter the flame. The fires didn’t go out, instead licking through the heavy smoke in the air like slow motion explosions.

Lung was keeping the air aflame using his pyrokinesis.

In the moment that she turned to the nearby building, her focus wasn’t on Lung. He was still in action, leaping to a steel beam that had pierced the ground, his weight making it sink until it came to rest against a nearby fence. The burning smoke above swelled, the beams connecting again.

“Goddess!” I shouted. “Get away!”

Too far away to be heard. Rain hurled a scythe, and it sliced through the beam, tracing a silver line. Lung sprung from the beam, and the force of the movement made it sever.

While airborne, he slashed with one hand, flames at his fingertips, and fire moved in a similar pattern a dozen feet below and behind him. The movement of the fire connected one of the columns of fire he’d made near Goddess to a nearby patch of purple flame. It ignited, and Lung leaped back as the purple swept up the columns of fire, toward Goddess. She didn’t react in time, and the three expanding columns of fire grew to the point there was no space between them.

Lung’s landing in a spot of clearing was a heavy one. With the landing, the forces that were gathering the fire of the columns together began to dissipate. The purple fire had nothing to burn, so it went out too. I saw Goddess flying away from the point the growing columns had converged, on fire and not moving in straight lines.

My first impulse was that I had to help her. I thought of master-stranger protocols, but the only thing to cross my mind was that I still needed to stop Lung.

Lung marched through knee-high fire, grabbing one of his wrists, hauling on it. His shoulder came apart almost as if he’d torn it partially off, a gap visible in the flesh over where ball met socket. Spikes and scales spilled out, stabbing through flesh and filling the gap, layering the surrounding area. Rain’s silver blades curved through the air before hitting rubble, beams, and ground- by my vantage point, I could see that he was firing blind. One came within ten feet of Lung, and I saw Lung change course, striding into flames taller than he was. Disappearing into the fire, where he had cover.

There was something colder in him than I’d seen in any of our past encounters. The feral edge was still there, but the Lung I’d known wouldn’t have ducked into the flame to-

A column of flame stabbed skyward like an giant’s spear, forged of explosions. I flew out of the way, and the spear curved, following me. I tried to fly back toward the base of the column so that the ‘head’ with the momentum behind it would have a harder time chasing me, saw a light pulse within it, and I put some distance between myself and the column. The column expanded- regular orange fire, and not purple. He was holding back on the purple.

If he didn’t want it, then I would provide it.

I used my aura, with an eye on where the purple flames were still burning below. The purple fire on the ground expanded, touched other flames and spread through them. It was a domino effect, and one that Lung seemed aware of. He used his power to extinguish fires around him, a sharp intake of breath’s span before the purple fire spread to that area. From her vantage point, the Pharmacist did much the same, extinguishing more of the purple fire.

But the purple fire traced its way up the column that I was still getting away from. It put it out of Lung’s reach, because his power didn’t work on purple fire so much as it just fed a given area with more fire. The Pharmacist had the ability to manipulate the purple flame, but she didn’t have the versatility or strength to go with it that a leveled-up Lung did.

I’d knocked down the column, even spooked him. My use of my aura was a slap in his face.

He was colder than he’d once been, but he still got mad. I had his attention again.

Columns and tapered spikes of fire speared up without much warning or reasoning as to where they came from. Lung wasn’t near all or even most of them, but he fired, and the orange light illuminated me. As Teacher’s thralls had done with their anti-air guns, Lung was trying to box me in, caging me. Five spikes in a couple of seconds, all curving in the air as I changed my direction. One ignited, turning purple, and the ignition caught on my flight trail.

If I slowed enough to fly around instead of forward, that flame would catch me.

I flew forward, instead, full speed, with a column looming in my way. Nearer to the ground, I saw Lung connect it to purple fire, and that augmented flame climbed faster than I could fly forward. It would balloon in size before I got past it, and each pulse of my aura made those flames lunge higher.

I kept using my aura, all the same.

At the last moment, a change of direction, then nothing at all.

As before, I tumbled through darkness. No forcefield, no flight. Only a general arc of travel with me as a dark shape against a night sky. Sweat drenched me just from the ambient heat, and that sweat stung my eyes as my head rotated and the droplets traveled across my face.

I let myself fall, powers dark, the wind alternately freezing and skin-searingly hot as it whipped at my face, at my costume and my hair.

As I fell down, fire spiked up, aimed right for me. I flew, and purple flame below me and around me billowed out, swelled, and lanced toward me, depending on its shape, chasing that flight.

As I made my aerial maneuvers around flares that worked like explosions constrained within invisible cylinders, the heat in the air sucked all moisture from my mouth and eyes. Had I been running, the heat would have knocked the wind out of me, saw me crumpling to my knees.

My flight didn’t draw on any well of physical capacity like that. Where anyone else might have been drained, I was… I was drained of something closer to my humanity. I was my power in action, my focus, my battle-sense.

I was more a Glory Girl than the Warrior Monk right now, and that was okay. If the focus of a dangerous, barbaric teenage me was going to keep me in the game in a moment like this, I would tap that focus with no regrets.

Maybe wrong to think that within a few seconds of recognizing how I was letting more human, fair parts of me fall away.

His senses were improving, going by his ability to track me in the gloom. More eruptions were coming.

Frustration welled in my chest. I was fighting like Glory Girl and that kept me fighting, but she was someone who charged in, and that wasn’t a possibility in the now. The purple fire burned away powers, and Lung’s heat burned away… my reserves. I couldn’t fight in a battlefield this hot for that long, and the others didn’t seem to have many more opportunities, either.

When I’d played basketball, ‘giving 110%’ was the refrain, over and over again. With my mom, it had been to ‘give my all’. Even Amy-

Fuck. With the name, there were a hundred mental pictures, a hundred scenes and feelings, crashing in. Focus gone, the image in my mind’s eye so intense that my efforts to push it away only dragged it in closer.

Double fuck, I thought, as fire came down from above, far too close to me. He’d manipulated the fire of a spear of flame that extended high above me. The prickle of heat and the wave of it that seemed to soak into my core and take the breath from my lungs and the oxygen from my blood hit me harder than the last time. It was that staggering, fall-to-my-knees kind of heat, and it hadn’t been a direct hit. This time, even though there wasn’t a physical component to it, my flight wavered, my speed suffered.

All at a time it counted most.

Fuck, I thought, and it wasn’t an angry, forceful, empowered fuck, in defiance of the world. The fuck that I couldn’t even voice was the kind of sound that came out with a whimper, that made someone sound half their age, uttered just before they broke down into tears, slumped against a wall.

And even that image evoked half-formed images of my sister, hollowed out, harrowed, her hair greasy because she’d spent the last few days working on me. Her arms and her old costume had been crusted with bodily fluids, my bodily fluids. With dogs and cats, insects, and rats, probably, pulled apart into their constituent parts and used to build me.

To have it driven home that my weak point was this weak, this capable of breaking my focus. There were moments my emotions choked me up, gripped my throat, tied my stomach into knots, paralyzed me or made me agitated.

But to act as Glory Girl, to have Amy so easily take that away, all over again? It made me feel like my essential being, my heart, wasn’t even there anymore. That heartless emptiness inside me wasn’t anything new. But it had never hit me to this degree at a moment that I felt like I was functioning.

It wasn’t me that I heard or imagined with that small, nothing-left fuck, but her on the other side of a room, as someone banged on a door. A scene framed not by wood, but by a length of my body, by hands that reached up, groping at the air, toward her.

The moment after she’d let me start registering memories again.

I landed, and my legs buckled beneath me. I dropped to my knees, fires burning high just twenty feet away. A steel beam gave me a modicum of cover, but it had been lying in the blaze long enough that I could feel the heat radiating off the metal, which didn’t help manners.

One hundred and ten percent. Give it your all. Do your best, Victoria. An endless refrain I’d heard for far too long. From my mom, from my dad, from my teachers, from my teams.

I couldn’t figure out what mode to shift to, where I had that one hundred and ten percent to give. I couldn’t reach for the Scholar or the Warrior Monk in this moment and have it fail me. I needed something else. Something more raw.

Wretch, I thought. Forcefield up, I reached for the beam. My hands fell short, but the Wretch didn’t.

Glory Girl can’t win this.

So what does a one-hundred and ten percent Wretch look like, then?

I lifted up the steel beam, The Wretch dug fingers in with enough force to leave indents in the warm metal’s surface.

I took off. Lung was preoccupied, sending flame in the opposite direction from me. I had a moment, so I looked up, flying higher to where the air was cooler. A twenty-foot steel beam dangled from the Wretch’s hands, one end held firm enough that metal distorted in multiple places, the other end swinging below us.

In the cool air, looking up and trying to find my center, trying to tell myself I wasn’t making a mistake by bringing the Wretch into this, I could see the blue circles and lines.

A constellation drawn against the night’s sky, directly above Lung and the scene. The motes weren’t moving, though. It was being drawn.

I exhaled slowly, and my breath shook slightly in the process. A tension I hadn’t realized I’d had was released. If Byron was capable of doing this, then he’d confirmed Kenzie was okay. That situation was dealt with.

In the weirdest, most twisted way, it wasn’t even a good ‘dealt with’. That tension had helped in its way, holding me together. Now I had to deal with me.

So stupid, that a mere thought could take me out of the zone and lead to a critical mistake. That gout of flame that could have hit me, if I’d been a half-second slower.

Even when Glory Girl was at her peak, working with reactions primed and giving her supposed one-hundred-and-ten-percent, she had- I had been splashed with acid and enzymes, dissolved alive.

One hundred and ten percent Wretch. But I’d pause first before going there. A nod to the Warrior Monk, who was so tired, so beleaguered, her efforts frustrated. I pulsed with my aura, and I watched the aftermath, Lung’s slight head turn, the extinguishing and the shape of the extinguishing.

Goddess was back, and she had friends. People from nearby apartments. Goddess was shielding them as they got into position.

Are we there already? She’s just taking the people she wants, and the people with the ability to detonate the ankle bombs are… secured? Did she and Lookout get them all?

The Warrior Monk recoiled at the idea, recognized it as a cause for alarm, printed in black ink on white paper, all caps, underlined.

If she’d gone that far, if we were already there, it was possible there was no coming back from this. There was no getting through this night in such a way that things returned to square one.

That idea shook me. The Warrior Monk faltered. From sixty percent to fifty percent. ‘110%’ so far away it wasn’t worth reaching for.

Behind Lung and behind me, the building began coming apart again. Each chunk that flew away from the building flew toward Lung. Rain hurled his silver blades, but Lung was keeping an eye out for them.

He was big now, but he was nimble. A corner of the building hit the ground and rolled through the fires without breaking up. Lung leaped on top of it, then leaped to another point, the beam that Rain had sliced. It was just the tip, cut at a diagonal, and left leaning against the fence. Lung had one foot on the tip, another on the top of the chickenwire fence, barbed wire crumpled underfoot. No skin showed, his arms, legs, spine and neck were all extended now, and the mass along the length of his body was swelling steadily. He reached up with claws of steel, seized his mask, and tore it free, casting it off.

The face beneath was even less human.

Lung lifted one claw, moving it through the air. Fire swelled dramatically. I could see that the point where he didn’t even need the purple fire anymore wasn’t that far away.

And then what? Were we supposed to abandon the prison? Leave it for Teacher? He would find a way to seal the door, the prisoners would be trapped inside, and he would claim them, one by one.

No, I thought. With the Wretch out, the memory of the hospital was all around me. The helplessness, the lack of hope, the altered mental state. That was what Teacher wanted.

Goddess wanted-

I closed my eyes..

She was scarily close to what I wanted, and I wasn’t sure how much of that was the master-stranger effect that was supposedly in place. One hundred and ten percent. The study of powers. The authority, people organized and listening to her. Even now, she was sorting out the people she’d brought from the apartments.

Lung was leaving the area, moving toward Goddess. He would leave the area beneath Byron’s sword of Damocles, beneath the constellation of stars and the lines that wove them together.

Because it wasn’t enough?

I dove for Lung, the Wretch gripping the beam in a way that was not at all drawing it back for a big swing. I’d deal.

Twenty feet long, give or take, a foot and a half tall. I’d picked up cars before, always an awkward affair, and even this impressive chunk of metal was only a third or quarter the weight of those vehicles.

“Hit him,” I whispered the words. “Swing this at him. Come on!”

Lung was drawing out fire, sending it toward Goddess’ crowd. She was atop one of the damaged apartments now, her people organizing into battle lines. A forcefield went up, as did something that looked more like an energy gate or portal than a forcefield or wall. Off to the side, a lopsided, top-heavy minion made of slime or mud drawing itself out of the ground.

Goddess interrupted the first wave of flame. The second, laced with purple fire, spilled over. The fire ignited the forcefield, the minion, and the gate. The gate fluctuated, drawing the fire toward its center, condensing it into a brilliant point, with the edges vibrating more intensely with every second.

The gate crumbled. Free energy lashed out, and two people died. the forcefield went out, and people were forced into a retreat.

I reached past the Wretch’s hands to touch the metal, gripping the lip of the beam in my burned hand. I pulled, straining to draw it back. The Wretch didn’t obey.

A moment later, I was flying into flames, so bright and chaotic after the darkness above that I couldn’t breathe or tell purple from orange. It was almost like slow motion, seeing Lung start to turn his snake-like neck around to look at me with one eye that glowed like a drop of molten metal. A distended face broken up into five sub-sections contracted together in an alien grimace.

The beam wouldn’t hit. I canceled the Wretch, and let it hit the ground a few feet from Lung.

I hit the beam, rather than Lung. One end remained mostly in place, the other coming around to strike Lung. The effect was nowhere near what I would have achieved had I been able to swing the beam like a bat. As it was, it knocked him back toward the area that burned. Purple flames were extinguished in the moment before Lung could roll through them, and he sprung to his feet. Before I’d recovered from the act of striking out, he was on his feet, hands moving, and the flames around me swelled.

Rain was still throwing out his crescents. Many were being intercepted by swells of purple fire. It likely didn’t help that I was close.

I flew to the beam, grabbing it and trusting the Wretch to grab it on pure reflex. It was a narrow shield and a deflection that kept the worst of the flames from knocking the Wretch back out of existence. It was my weapon, to keep Lung at bay, to try and knock him down. This time we swung.

He caught the beam with both arms, feet skidding in dirt.

Then it was only one foot in dirt. The other came up, forward, and stomped down on the length of metal. The Wretch broke, and the end of the metal beam struck the earth with enough force to send dirt pluming over my head, above me and behind me.

His weapon now. He drew it back, adjusting his grip as he did to account for the lack of traction, ready to swing.

He was still adjusting when Goddess used her telekinesis on the beam. He was sent skidding back, tumbling into fire and the piles of wreckage that had been telekinetically hurled at him while he’d cultivated the fires around him and worked himself up.

“Capricorn,” Goddess said. Her voice wasn’t pitched at a level that would be heard with the distance between herself and him.

The water came down all the same. To say the water fell would have been wrong. It was directed down. Faster than falling water. It was sent down like it was shot from a gun.

Where the water hit earth, it became a geyser of mud, and if Lung hadn’t slipped away at the last moment, then he was being driven down as mud was sent flying up to heights taller than some of the staff buildings nearby. The purple fire caught the water and ran through it, more intense, not less intense, for the water.

It was loud, and then it was silent, the contrast so stark that it left my ears screaming.

Where there had been water, there was now a small mountain of stone, all spikes radiating up and out from the epicenter. The licks of purple flame were going out.

Look, I told myself. Put the desperate struggle aside for a second, focus on the objective. I’m proud of Victoria the scholar, the person who studies powers and keeps an eye out for the solutions.

Some purple fires lingered. Some faded. If I imagined that the spike of stone blocked the Pharmacist’s view, I could eliminate some positions.

“That was good,” I heard Goddess behind me.

“Was?” I asked. I shook my head.

“Is?”

She had her good points. She had her great points. She had her amazing points, even. This wasn’t one of them. I paused for a second, then decided it was endearing. Then things were good.

“I wouldn’t say for sure that it’s over,” I said. “And if it isn’t over, we won’t have much of an opportunity.”

“I’d use my danger sense, but the fires blind me,” she remarked.

“Understandable.”

“Teacher’s lessers went into the building. The tinkers, the thinkers.”

“Capricorn got them, I think.”

“Good. Then-”

She stopped speaking as something glowed deep within the stone.

“That’s Lung for you,” I said. I sounded calmer than I felt. I realized I still had the Wretch active. I hadn’t let it go. A good thing that Goddess hadn’t approached me. “He gets stronger over time. If we haven’t beat him yet, we might not be able to.”

“I don’t fucking lose or draw,” Goddess said.

The use of her telekinesis was wilder, now. It was hasty, geometric shapes cutting through mud and dirt, carving lines into the beams and wood that she lifted into the air. Like lines in something tightly coiled that had come free, the telekinesis struck out at random around the things she was lifting. Mud splashed and rubble was demolished.

One by one, she sent spikes of wood flying. She sent beams, sheet metal and corrugated steel crushed into lances and spears. They plunged through the stone, into the glowing heart. Each impact was an ear-splitting screech of metal on stone, of stone breaking, nails on a chalkboard with the volume turned up to twenty out of ten.

The volley was still going when stone cracked at the very edge of Capricorn’s stone fixture. Compared to the noise of the ongoing assault against the glowing center, Lung rising from the mud and cracked stone was almost quiet. The glow had been a decoy.

The fires around us had been mostly quenched by the cascade of water, but his scales were shiny. Black mud settled into cracks while the scales caught the orange light. His eyes seemed brightest of all, and they narrowed in pain as purple fire crept along his arm and shoulder.

The Pharmacist extinguished fire, but it seemed she was limited to extinguishing what she could see. Fire burned in crevices, crept out further with more and more speed. It hurt him, and where it hurt him, he healed, and the healing made it burn hotter. With the way it crept along the exterior of his body, she wouldn’t have been able to see all of the flame without being here.

Even with that, he didn’t go running to her. He turned toward us and he growled. The face with the multiple sections that could pull away or draw in had expanded, and the growth included his neck now, with sections that could pull back, revealing teeth within. There were spots that looked like they were scales that caught the light really well, but I was suspicious that they were eyes glowing molten.

Goddess sent the remainder of the volley at him. When he moved, it wasn’t as fast as before.

“Careful!” I voiced my alarm, even before I could articulate what I meant.

He was slow, but it was an intentional slow. As a steel beam slammed into his arm, crushing part of it, driving through flesh and scale, he didn’t look surprised or bothered. He lunged out of the way of the remainder of the volley, and then he seized his damaged flesh.

Where scales had been parted, he dug in claws, and he tore away the flesh that burned. Damage that would have killed another man served for Lung to have a handhold in his own altered flesh. He tore into chest and arm, the chunks burning like crimson rags soaked in gasoline.

I took flight before he could finish. I saw him tear away fifteen pounds of mass with blade-like scales embedded in skin, in muscle, and in one fragment of bone. I saw the blood spill to the ground by modest buckets worth, and he barely seemed to care. His focus was on the hand that he’d used to tear, that now burned.

Goddess was using the weapons she’d already used for her earlier volley. They were pulled free all as one, then sent out in another volley. As Lung brought his wrist to his mouth, the volley struck home. Spikes that were ten feet long impaled his legs and fixed them to the ground. Others caught him in the chest. One struck his face and knocked a mouth-part free, and sent the burning hand flying.

At his back, wings unfolded. He opened the various mouth parts to drool out the last chunks of his hand.

Wretch, one hundred and ten percent. I flew at him.

Fires swelled around him, faster and larger than before, and where purple flames still burned, they caught the fires and made them swell.

While Lung was missing half of his right arm, shoulder to wrist, a pectoral and his left claw, I had slim opportunity.

The Wretch seized one spike as we passed it. My first stab was uneven, mis-aimed because the Wretch didn’t coordinate. Lung swatted the point aside with a stump of a wrist at the end of a long limb. He exhaled, and breathed a plume of fire my way.

It swept over the Wretch, but it didn’t ignite her. As I passed over him, his snake-like neck let his head rise, point straight up, then point back, with no difficulty.

I landed at a point beyond him, boots skidding in mud.

The Wretch started with a shape like me, and it expanded to a different shape. I gripped a spear that had deflected off of scale, aware that fires around me were growing larger.

I turned the Wretch on, then off, on, off. It was an inconsistent, lurching strength, one where I was handling a metal lance that had to weigh more than I did and I was handling it with ordinary human strength, then a moment later hands that weren’t mine gripped it, and it might as well have been weightless.

I found the orientation I wanted, as Lung brought his injured arm down and made every square foot of space around us burn.

I flew through the hellscape of flame and smoke, where Lung was only a dim silhouette and a position I remembered. My grip on my weapon was a shaky one, one that alternated between me having the strength to hold the weapon and the ability to direct my posture while holding it.

Two seconds of flying forward, trying to keep the weapon on target.

A moment, caught between heartbeats, where Lung was suddenly visible, looming in my view.

And then another moment, as my racing heart contracted, where he gripped my weapon, catching it in one hand. Even with half of his arm missing, he managed to fight the Wretch’s strength.

He jerked the weapon to one side, his strength matching the Wretch or catching it off guard. The handle of the weapon tore through my forcefield.

There was no fire immediately around us now, but that was because Lung and the Pharmacist both wanted to keep Lung away from the purple fire. Both used their ability to extinguish flame to maintain a clearing.

Which didn’t mean it wasn’t roasting here. Sweat ran down my face in streams. My hair was wet against the back of my neck, and my body was drenched in it, armpit to ankle.

My body.

I have eight hands that aren’t Victoria Dallon’s.

I caught another fallen weapon, trusted the Wretch to catch yet another. While Lung’s hand was occupied with the lance I’d used, I attacked him with two more weapons, aiming to impale him.

His wings flapped, and he was working on freeing himself from the spikes that nailed him to the ground. The Wretch drove him back down, bringing two more points down to his position.

He reached out, breaking one- manipulating flame with the other, to drive me closer to him. I went up, back, and down to the ground again, feet sticking into sucking mud.

Tristan’s mass of spikes was an arsenal. The Wretch’s invisible hands gripped stone, gripped the spikes that Goddess had driven into the heart of this structure.

Fire washed over the Wretch. If it broke, I would burn or I would choke in the heavy smoke, but it was stronger against sustained onslaughts.

He pulled free of the spikes that impaled him to the ground. A tide of dirt caught him. Powers lashed out, from Goddess’ new retinue, and I could only see a flash of green through a haze of smoke, hear a crack, see the shadow of the top-heavy slime minion.

Work with me. Fight him. This is what we both want.

I moved my arm, flinging it forward, bidding the Wretch to do the same. It threw three. Two were thrown in a way that would have hurt him if they hit points forward, and one was on course to hit Lung.

He was occupied with Goddess, but he still had the ability to strike it aside.

I still held more. I closed the distance, spearing toward him with multiple points. These too he fended off, with enough force that the Wretch was broken.

To get away from any fire and away from the heat, I had to fly up and away, into choking smoke that demanded I hold my breath. My eyes watered.

Below me, a silver scythe-blade cut through the smoke. I saw it hit Lung.

“Hit him!”

I had the Wretch surrounding me again, and then was back in the fray. More weapons scooped up, my throws timed for when I thought I could land a blow. I could see the line of silver across Lung’s chest.

He ducked the volley. Claws dug for dirt in purchase, his wings thrusting him forward. Powerful, but not powerful enough to disturb that silver line.

My eye was on the line, and I knew I could well be killing a man if I connected a blow.

I still grabbed the shattered trunk of a tree that had been thrown at an earlier part of the fight, and swung it at him, aiming for an undodgeable wallop more than a decisive blow. I hoped it would connect and split him.

Goddess needed it to. We needed it to. If we couldn’t, Lung would kill us all.

The hit connected, and I saw the spray of blood as one side of his chest cavity opened. Sternum to lower rib. Sliced through the lung.

There was no humor in the irony, only a chill, as I saw blood fountain out.

In the midst of smoke, I saw him stagger. I saw him draw in a deep breath, his chest coming apart in sections, like twenty fragments breaking apart, then coming back together in another configuration. His back popped, scale scraping against scale as it extended.

Then the wind turned, and the smoke was heavier. It was pitch black out and the smoke made it even harder for the light we had to illuminate the scene. People on the periphery were unable to do much.

It hadn’t even slowed him down.

“Goddess!” I shouted. We needed to coordinate on this.

“She’s gone. Getting more help,” a woman’s voice cut through the smoke.

Too little, too late.

The Wretch wasn’t enough.

Even if I’d been one hundred percent coordinated, it wouldn’t have been enough.

The purple flames surged, diffuse in the gray-black haze of smoke. Lung’s eyes were molten white, larger than before.

I heard him chuckle. He knew. That we were past the point where we could do it.

Hollow words, to give my ‘all’. Hopeless words.

I’d needed this. I’d needed to be able to do this on some level. And I hadn’t been able to. It scared the shit out of me.

Water sprayed, cutting through the smoke, as cold as the air was hot. With that, there was a moment where others could see Lung, and Lung could see them.

Everything told me to run, that we had to evacuate.

Goddess- if the stories about her were to be believed, if the refugees from her world were telling the truth, then her world would suffer for her return. I couldn’t really buy it, the long list of ifs, but it was the most critical way of parsing things.

If Teacher won, if we couldn’t beat Lung and keep Teacher from getting what he wanted, then none of the worlds would be okay.

We couldn’t run.

Water splashed Lung, and water became stone. I flew at him, catching a large piece of rubble on the way. My aim was to fly by him, to smack him with two or three hundred pounds of concrete. Then I saw the blade of silver carving its way through the air, leaving a trail behind it, as it left its mark on smoke particles, making them more prone to splitting.

It caught Lung across the belly, and I closed in, ready to deliver the final blow.

Lung leaped up, wings flapping.

Disappearing into the smoke and darkness.

I flew after him.

By the time I found him, the mark on his stomach was gone. He cast flame down toward the ground, and this time there was no reason for the pharmacist to extinguish it.

To distract him, I flew at him. I used my aura, and it touched the purple fire on the ground. Where Lung’s fire extended down, purple fire raced back up, cascading up the trails left behind each blast, climbing higher, higher, expanding as I fed it with my aura, until he had to stop for a moment to let it all dissipate.

Then I had his focus. Two spears and one stalagmite of rock floated in the air beside me, gripped by invisible hands. One was gripped so tight it was going to break in the middle.

The others couldn’t help me here. We’d driven him to the air where only a few people could challenge him.

We. It was a corny thing, too belated when Byron had ducked inside, used his power from a window, probably. When Rain had been on the periphery, firing mostly blind into smoke and fire, and when Goddess had very understandably been caught up with the trials of directing an unruly group of prisoners.

But we’d been stronger as a group. We were too fractured.

I watched Lung, my eyes burning with contact on the air, no doubt more red than white after all the trace contact with smoke. The air was relatively clear here, and my vision was still bleary, my eyes like sandpaper. My mouth hung open, so dry and layered with films of smoke that I didn’t dare swallow, for fear of choking.

I saw his head turn. Then he dove.

I pursued. I had to.

One hundred and ten percent. Giving my all.

All of the Wretch- the moment his focus wasn’t entirely on me, I flew after. He flew with wings and power. I flew with something freer, impulse, something from within me.

The moment I was about to close, driving my spear-points into his wing, he tucked his wing in, rolling through the air. Eyes, mouth, and the cracks between the segments of his body glowed red.

Fire exploded through the air around him as he continued to plummet.

The Wretch heaved the spears at him. One hit him, the other two were duds.

It was frustrating but I accepted the frustration. Tears streaked my face from the smoke-stained eyes.

His wings unfolded, their breadth catching his weight, arresting his descent.

I plummeted past him.

One hundred and ten percent of the Warrior Monk.

I used my aura. Calculated, watching for the danger, where the purple fire was.

I provoked him, because I knew he was easily provoked, even in this state. As mighty as he could be, this got past scale and muscle and it bothered him.

He sent out another cascade of flame. I changed direction to avoid it, realized it was too wide in scope to escape, and let the Wretch absorb the blow instead.

Except the fire kept coming. I accelerated my downward plummet, heading toward the building where, in another situation, I could have hoped to use that building for cover.

Here, I did the opposite.

The fire chased me, filling the air around me and to either side of me. I headed away, headed down, the lip of the building’s roof so near to me that my breastplate periodically scraped against it. He cut off the fire.

I looked back, and I saw him maneuvering. He turned his attention to the others, to my team.

He wanted to stay near the purple flame. It secured him against most of the powers that could stop him. And… I had to let him.

He was a brute, and brutes had a way of forcing you to deal with them.

The thought made me think of Dean.

There was a strength in that, a part of that one hundred and ten percent. The Victoria Dallon part of me.

I’d never fought when I felt this low. Even at the community center, I hadn’t been as tired, as caught up in multiple things. At the Fallen camp, I’d had hopes, and I’d been more singular of purpose. I’d been able to focus on the others.

Here, the challenge was me. Figuring out how to be strong when I needed to be strong.

I went through a window, turning my back on Lung, aware that I might be letting Byron and Rain burn.

I tapped the Wretch, and I tore through a wall.

The scholar. I’d been trying to track where the flames were and where the Pharmacist operated. I’d been dimly aware of Lung’s favored position. He knew where she was and by operating within a certain area, he gave clues.

That had narrowed it down.

That he hadn’t been willing to throw out fire and hit this side of the building, abandoning his pursuit of me?

The Wretch came back. I went through another wall.

Bystanders. They were huddled together. A guard had cuffs on, binding him to a cot.

“Where is she?” I asked.

I saw them exchange glances. The guard looked back, off to the side, more in the way I’d come.

I flew back through the hole in the wall, then through the open door to the hallway.

I cut a path through the staff building, no running footsteps or pants of breath to impede my hearing. I swallowed and choked back a cough. Then I flew more, silent. My hand slapped against a wall as I used it to stop myself sooner, so I could fly down a different hallway.

I heard her running footsteps.

Me, the scholar, working out powers. The Patrol lieutenant, investigating, keeping an eye out for the troublemaker.

It wasn’t about finding that one part of me and executing it beyond perfectly. The Warrior Monk, the Wretch, the Scholar, the Girl.

All together.

“While you’re running, you’re not helping Lung,” I called out. I pushed out with my aura.

I escalated the pressure.

“He needs you!” My voice rang through the hallways of the staff building.

More aura. More fear.

Then I heard it, saw it. A flash of purple. The aura igniting. I canceled the aura, but that didn’t stop the fire that had already been created. In an enclosed space I had to duck, throwing myself around a corner, hood pulled down. My feet thudded against the ground as I stopped flying.

It swept past me.

“You just told me where you are!” I called out. I ran.

There was no fear aura, but there was more panic now. She cast fire out behind her, blocking the path.

I took another route, going out the window, around the side of the building. One window was open, and I flew in through it, muddy boots skidding on tile.

An electric whine caught my attention.

Teacher’s tinkers, protecting the woman. I saw her past them, looking at me. She’d learned her lesson from previous encounters, and she kept her fire put away. There would be no blowing it up with my aura, getting her minions in the process.

I flew away, instead.

Mom told me to focus on the objective. What does the enemy want?

She wanted away, to get back to where she could help Lung.

Lung wanted to be strong, to stay near the purple fire, to take over this prison for Teacher, presumably because he was getting paid, or because he was a Teacher thrall.

Out through the window, around the building… in through a window with a crash.

Another thrall, an older guy. He was slow to react, slower with my aura blasting out. I shoved him against the wall on my way through the door, and slapped his tinker gun away. The Wretch demolished it in passing.

The mission. There was a dangerous feeling of triumph when it felt like I was taking the bad guys down a peg, dismantling their plans. The tag team was disrupted. She was running, and I was catching up.

She’d gone downstairs, I realized.

My aura burned, pressuring her. “You’ve lost, if you’ve abandoned Lung. Does that mean you don’t get paid? Or will Teacher be disappointed? How does this work, Pharmacist!?”

“Shut up!” I heard her.

I lunged to one side, and then the Wretch tore through the floor. I came down on top of her, catching her while she was bent over, shielding herself from the debris that was falling down on top of her. I shoved her into the ground, hard.

I had spikes on my glove, that started at rings on the fingers and extended back toward my wrist, almost flat against my hand. The points now rested against the most vulnerable part of her throat.

I saw her expression change. Ten emotions in a matter of two or three seconds.

“Don’t even think about it,” I told her.

“More will come,” she said. “He has an army.”

“And we have you,” I said. I reached up to my shoulder, my finger tracing the spikes there. Nothing. I checked my breastplate, where tines radiated up from the icon just above my sternum. I found a loose one and snapped it off.

The point still pressed against her throat, I led her to a standing position. Then we walked, me holding the long spire of gold-layered steel against her jugular.

Fires still burned when we stepped out of the building, but the battle was over. Goddess had brought others, and they all stood by. Byron and Rain were sitting down on rubble, and Rain gave me a bob of the head in greeting as he saw me. There might have been a smile behind Byron’s mask.

I spotted Kenzie off to the side. Still with Monokeros. She gave me a small wave as she saw me. At the back, people were guarding Natalie along with the three heads of the prison staff. Two were Teacher’s. One was ours.

Behind Goddess… it looked like she’d collected most of the prisoners. I could see Seir and other Fallen. Coalbelcher and his second in command. I saw Damsel.

No Crystalclear. No Ratcatcher. No Sveta. No Ashley.

Lung stood by Goddess. He folded his arms as I brought the Pharmacist nearer.

Goddess approached, standing square in front of the Pharmacist. I lowered the point of the tine from the Pharmacist’s throat, then backed off.

The Pharmacist and Goddess stared each other down. Everyone around us seemed okay with this.

I started to approach Lookout. Rain got my attention, a motion of the hand, followed by a shake of the head.

I went to Rain and Byron instead, my arms folded. Breathing hurt. I was pretty sure the Wretch had filtered out a lot of smoke, but it hadn’t filtered out all of it. Even now, the smoke was heavy in the air.

“You serve me now,” Goddess told the Pharmacist.

“Yeah,” the Pharmacist replied.

“You’ll tell me about the drugs you brought into the prison.”

“Taken to the cafeteria, to be applied to the food. A berserker formula. Turning everyone he couldn’t use into ravening monsters.”

“She’s lying,” a woman in the crowd said.

I could see the Pharmacist tense.

“It’s a power nullifying chemical,” the same woman said. She stepped forward. Words were tattooed beneath her eyes, so they traced straight lines down to her jaw. ‘Crock’ and ‘Shit’. Colorful, for words in black ink. More ink put scales at her arms and neck. “Nullifying your influence, Goddess.”

“And you took some,” Goddess told the Pharmacist.

“She did. And she already got some to key prisoners,” Crock o Shit said. “The maximum security ones, who get meals delivered.”

Purple fire surrounded the Pharmacist’s hands. She reached for Goddess, and she made it one step before someone swung a guard’s baton into her throat. She fell to the ground, fire extinguished.

“If she doesn’t suffocate from that, let her live,” Goddess said. “The drugs will wear off.”

The crowd was pretty eager to drag the Pharmacist off. Goddess turned her attention to Lung. “Did you take the drug?”

He shook his head.

“Truth,” Crock o Shit said.

“He regenerates,” I said. “Drugs have reduced effect.”

Lung nodded.

Weird to be on the same side as him now.

“The guards are dealt with, but Teacher isn’t going to leave it at this,” Goddess said. “And we still have some loose ends to tie up.”

I didn’t miss the fact that she made eye contact with me, with Byron and Rain.

She was thinking about our teammates.

“Get organized,” she told us.

We hurried to obey.

Gleaming – 9.12

“Antares,” Goddess said.

I felt a little bit of fear and awe as I stopped re-wrapping my bandage and turned to face her.

“Good work,” she said. “You’re mercurial, but you can be pretty fucking useful. If you wanted it, I could bring you to my world, and give you a lesser country.”

“A country, wow,” Rain said, beside me.

“I don’t think I’m mercurial,” I said, frowning a bit. “And I’m grateful for the offer but… I’m a city girl. I’d rather help the Megalopolis, and if it comes down to it, make sure people here support you too.”

“It wouldn’t work that way. Something’s bothering me. So far you and your team have been on top of things. Tell me something about the current attack.”

“We didn’t get all of them. There are two more to deal with. Blindside- you can’t look at them. Can’t aim at them.”

“They would be the reason my danger sense is limited.”

“Probably. Stymied?”

“Interfered with. I can’t extend it past a certain range. It’s worse since I’ve moved in this direction.” A motion of her arm indicated the direction traveled.

“That’s the access tunnels, isn’t it?” Byron asked.

Our teammates. Teacher had sent Blindside straight there.

“We need to go,” I said.

“Stay,” Goddess said, her voice firm.

My jaw clenched. I nodded. “Sorry.”

“Tell me about the other,” she said. “Two of Teacher’s powered got through?”

“At least. The other was Kingdom Come. He detonates himself into a shower of blood and meat. Anyone who comes into contact with it is his puppet. He reforms after.”

“I think I’ve met him, or one of his bloodstained puppets. They wouldn’t align to my purposes. One of Teacher’s many counters to me.”

“He’s a mercenary. It’s possible that he might accept your offer of a country.”

“He sounds religious,” Rain said. “Name like that.”

“Could be,” I said. “We should go. If Blindside is in the access tunnels-”

“You’ll stay for a few minutes. I may need you for something else,” Goddess told us.

“The access tunnels are the communication outlet to the outside world. They may also be the override to the bomb anklets. This is important.”

“My danger sense, blind as it is, tells me we have other priorities. If your teammates were in danger, I think I would feel it. Stay.”

We had done more than our share of the work when it came to taking down Lung and the Pharmacist, and we were, putting it lightly, exhausted. I didn’t like staying, but I didn’t mind the chance to recuperate. I felt like I’d been wrung out, then baked too long over an open fire. I hadn’t even properly used my muscles, and I felt completely and utterly drained.

Goddess walked over to discuss things with Lung, and others were organizing into battle lines and squads, breaking away to go wrangle remaining guards and staff. I saw Natalie among the wrangled.

I hesitated a moment, wondering if I’d do more harm than good, then broke away from Rain and Byron. If I was close enough for Goddess to find, then that had to be good enough. But I couldn’t leave Natalie.

“I’ll be right back. Get my attention if there’s trouble.”

“Sure,” Byron said.

A reality with parahumans was that most who triggered were young – people as young as twelve could trigger, with the upper range being thirty. There was a possibility for a few years of leeway, trending more toward the rare parahuman being younger than a parahuman being older.

The guys in this particular prison clique were young. It was shocking to see people Rain and Chris’ ages.

“Don’t hurt or bother them,” I told the prisoners, my eye stopping on Natalie for a meaningful moment, trying to communicate something to her. That I was on her side. That if she had anything to say, now was the time to say it.

She said nothing. Maybe to avoid drawing attention to herself.

And the prisoners, for their part, were equally silent. I felt put on the spot, and I felt so drained physically, mentally, and emotionally that I could have been bowled over by hard words. Tension kept me upright.

I hadn’t gotten a response, so I elaborated. “Goddess may need them as bargaining chips, or to get access to parts of the prison. If you screw that up, touch them, or scare them and get them panicking instead of thinking rationally, then it screws us all up.”

Believe me, I put my heart into the mental command. Buy this, even though I don’t sound nearly as authoritative as I might want. Don’t make me use my aura in this volatile a place.

“I don’t see why you get to tell us what to do,” a boy said. He had the sharp chin, widow’s peak with a curl of hair at the forehead, and natural bad-boy glare of a classic kid’s show villain, but he had to be my age.

He also, judging by the group’s dynamic, had a few people under his wing. Underlings. He was the leader of this sub-clique.

“Do you really want to test me and find out?” I asked. I sounded more steely now. A bit more of my old self.

He stared me down, then dropped his eyes to my arm. I wasn’t sure if he was seeing an injury, a clue that I wasn’t invincible, until he gestured.

“That symbol on your arm.”

Worked into the metal at my shoulder was a golden circle inside another circle, centered at about the midpoint between bicep and shoulder. The five parallel spikes stabbed up from it.

“Gold Morning,” I said.

“Then you were there. That’s the thing people put on their sleeves, if they were there or if they played a part.”

“Some don’t put anything on their sleeves, but they were there. Lung, Goddess,” I said. “Why?”

“You put it there for a reason, right?”

“Everyone has their reasons for wearing the armbands,” I said. I worried I sounded defensive. Again, I asked, “Why?”

“I’m not going to test you or test her,” he said. “Out of respect for that.”

There were a few nods around his group. One or two looked unsure, like the stupider, less ‘together’ members of the group weren’t sure if it was for real.

I wasn’t sure I believed it was for real.

“Good man,” I said, deciding there was no way to hammer it out. I met Natalie’s eyes momentarily before turning away.

Nothing from her in the way of signals. Damn it.

I went back to Rain and Byron, walking past a group that was preparing for the possibility of a frontal assault by Teacher. Others were preparing to deal with the maximum security individuals who had apparently been given the Pharmacist’s drugs. An attack from within, an attack from the outside, and then there was Teacher, who had the ability to hit us from oblique angles.

I wanted to ask Kenzie for a status report, but that meant approaching Monokeros. I wanted to ask the boys, but they were talking to Coalbelcher.

I checked my phone three times in the course of a single minute, even though I knew that all communications were jammed. It was a force of habit, a creeping anxiety as we went longer and longer without any input from the other half of Breakthrough.

I had a lot of anxieties in this moment. The small-scale victory with Lung and the Pharmacist only went so far.

Byron and Rain exchanged a few muttered words as they walked over from where Coalbelcher was.

“You apparently made an impression,” Byron said.

I frowned. “With Coalbelcher?”

“He said you said you’d get him out. I thought we had a problem when he called us over, but he’s changed his tune. Us being right about the danger of the cafeteria helped,” Rain said.

“I didn’t say I’d get him out. But I let him believe it. It could have backfired, come down on your head, if he didn’t think I at least tried, if this whole thing wrapped up, and then he ended up frustrated, with only you as a target.”

“It worked out,” Rain said, almost like he was assuring me. Then, quieter, he said, “One of the few things that has.”

I followed their line of sight as they both turned back to look at someone. Seir in his civilian clothes, mask off. The man was of a similar type to Coalbelcher, but without the long stubble on his face sticking in every direction. His hair was longer with some gray already in it, the circles under his eyes were black for reasons other than the coal-spit facepaint. The tattoos gave him away.

“Seir,” I observed.

“He’s not a fan of us,” Byron said. “We’re all on the same side, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to get back at us.”

“At me,” Rain said. “I don’t think it’s an immediate problem, but if we have any choice in where we go, we should go wherever he isn’t.”

“Agreed,” I said, as I looked over at Lookout and Monokeros. They were with another group, Lookout hanging a half-step back while Monokeros talked with some scary-looking women. Monokeros was currently listening, as another woman did all of the talking. The talker was pretty where her skin was intact, but had what looked scars from a bad burn extending all the way down her neck. Another woman stood beside her, top already removed, torn up into shreds, and the shreds plaited into a cord. The cord was being knotted into a hangman’s noose.

The other two had noticed I was looking.

“What about her?” I asked. “Why did you not want me to approach Lookout?”

“Lookout came on a little strong with the Lady in Blue,” Rain said. “It made her suspicious. She’s suspicious of you too, you know, but she knows she can beat you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Monokeros though?”

“If you’ve got a canary you’re worried about and a cat that’s restless, and you’re really good at managing your animals, which we know she is, maybe you give the canary a cat babysitter,” Rain suggested.

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” I said.

“It doesn’t make us feel that much better,” Rain said. “But we can trust that the Lady in Blue knows what she’s doing, we know from what Swansong says that Monokeros is really messed up and touchy, and we don’t disturb that scene while it’s peaceful.”

I frowned. Monokeros was smiling now. I was creeped out by something in how she presented herself, but I couldn’t tell if it was because of something ugly in her peeking out, the contrast in her charmer attitude with the tattoos like the triangle at her forehead, making me think of- of certain individuals, or if it was because I knew that she’d gone full ritual killer, killing heroes, kids. Hopeful young Vistas, Shielders, and Finales. Kids who had faced the worst days of their lives and came out the other end wanting to help people.

“She was corporate, like Tristan and me,” Byron said. “Goldenrod.”

“Yeah,” I acknowledged.

Byron went on. “Started her own team, talked it up, but it never seemed to get off the ground. Too many kids went missing, but they still didn’t zero in on her. The masks, the secret identities, they make it so the kids cover up her tracks for her, making it harder to draw the connection.”

“Families too,” Rain said. “Uhm, Jessica said something about this to me at one point. That people with powers tend to have worse relationships with their family.”

“If they had good support systems, they’d be less likely to trigger,” I said.

“Yeah,” Byron said. “Exactly. They didn’t catch her until the second kid who left a message with people letting them know she was interviewing with a team. They brought a different thinker for the interview with her, second time around. The first one was an inquisitor type, sensed wrongs, guilt, saw memories that haunted people, used them or summoned them.”

“Summoned,” I said. “And she had nothing to summon.”

“Ah, you know the story then. I was wondering if it was just the talk shared between the corporate teams,” Byron said.

“No. It was the talk in general. Among capes, at least.”

A horror story among capes.

Byron nodded.

Monokeros smiled. It was the kind of smile that was practiced, then reused so many times it looked natural. A model’s smile. The smile of a hero who lived off of their brand, like the corporate and sponsored heroes, and maybe the small family teams with an up-and-coming generation of youths.

“She reminds me of- of someone,” Byron said. “Not all the time, but there-”

A crash interrupted him, and with that crash, a dozen powers nearby flared into effect. I was already in the air, flying up to where I could activate the Wretch without annihilating two of my teammates.

It was Goddess. With her power, she was tearing a building to the ground.

Once people realized it was her, they relaxed. I took their cue, floating back down to the ground and my two teammates.

“What’s she doing?” Byron murmured.

With the disorientation of the fight and the change in the landscape around us, it took me a second to place where we were, and what that building might’ve been. It was one of the prison buildings, but not an apartment, and given the proximity to the yard, equal access from both sides…

“The cafeteria. With all of the anti-Goddess meds in it,” Rain said. “That’s a bit of a relief. Simplifies things.”

I nodded, silent.

Better.

Goddess turned her head around until she found our group. She beckoned.

As glad as I was to stay put, I was glad to be moving. We had an objective.

While Rain and Byron walked, me floating just ahead of the pair, Goddess turned, beckoning to others. To Lookout and Monokeros. Then to Damsel, to Ashley’s ‘sister’.

I looked back for Natalie, and saw her in the company of the other staff that had been taken into custody. It was a dangerous atmosphere, with the guard-prisoner relationship reversed, and a lot of dangerous prisoners around. Monokeros was of a certain kind of evil, but she wasn’t the only evil person around here. If one of those people decided to hurt Natalie, would anyone stop them?

“Breakthrough,” Goddess said. She looked at Damsel, who was approaching. “In a sense.”

“Most of us,” Lookout said. Then she leaned over to greet Byron, Rain and me with a, “Hi.”

“You can have a luxury vehicle, and you can get your luxury vehicle with all of the extras,” Damsel said, raising her chin a little, claws moving at her side. “Both are good.”

“I don’t care,” Goddess said, annoyed. “My danger sense is telling me something’s coming, and it’s not the kind of danger I have a lot of experience with. Destroying the drugs didn’t help. I think Teacher is doing something, and you have the most information about him and what he’s doing. Solve it.”

“We need more information than that,” I said. “What is your danger sense telling you? How does it function?”

“My power is a feeling,” she said. “It can come from a direction. It tastes of intent. It has flavors depending on the kind of danger. This tastes hollow, and it feels big. There’s no direction to it. The opposite, the lack of direction is the danger.”

“Have you felt anything like this before?” I asked.

“I felt something roughly this big once. It was when the world was ending. The golden man.”

I drew in a deep breath, looking at the others. They seemed about as alarmed by that as I was.

“You said it’s big. World ending… but this is a small world. One penal colony,” Rain suggested.

“When I was pulled into a battlefield, that world was small too, Precipice. The scale is similar.”

“Broken trigger?” Byron suggested.

“The powers that have gone wild?” Goddess asked. “It could be. But even that would feel it has direction. An enemy, or a power source.”

“We’ve heard of incidents where one person became a very large-scale effect. The kind that would cover this whole colony, and then some,” I said. “I think the catch is that most precogs and danger sensers can’t see triggers coming, even broken ones.”

Goddess shook her head, but she didn’t offer anything specific that would clarify matters. I felt my heartbeat accelerate some, just from seeing her this concerned.

“I’ve felt this directionless threat before,” she said. “It was after I came into my power, before I’d exercised it and learned its limits. Someone came for me. A monster, but the bitch looked human. She sent me to Shin. To give this feeling a name… it’s inevitability. A doom through a nearly complete and total lack of options.”

“Inevitable doom, affecting this whole world?” Rain asked. “Hollow?”

“Hollow, with a bloody aftertaste. I’ve never felt a hollow doom before,” Goddess said. “Maybe one of you has. Figure this out, now.”

“I’m an expert in worlds ending, traps, and being doomed. Been hearing about it for years, sometimes my whole life,” Rain said. “Has it been inching closer all night?”

“I stopped looking when the purple fire blinded me, there was nothing before then. I started looking after, and it was there. Are there more questions? If you can’t give me an answer, I’ll ask others.”

There was a pause. We shook our heads.

Goddess used her telekinesis to lift herself off the ground, flying past the mud to another group that was at the admin building.

“No reports on Teacher?” I asked Lookout.

“No, but I’ve been distracted. Our guys on the far side are just about out of gas. He’s got guys massed but he’s waiting instead of sending them in.”

“Backup for the big gun?” I asked.

“Except not a gun,” Damsel said. She moved her hand, one blade extended, the tips of the other folding loosely around it. She winked at me. “Guns can be dealt with by bigger guns.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

“Could it be an Endbringer?” Rain asked.

“Jesus,” Byron said. “Don’t even joke. They’ve been dormant.”

“They can’t be predicted easily with danger sense either,” I said.

“I’m trying to think of things big enough. It’d be embarrassing to be the kid who grew up in an Endbringer cult who doesn’t think of Endbringers when we’re debating possible apocalypse scenarios. Seven plagues? The four horsemen?”

“I like Death,” Damsel said. “He has style.”

“Back when I was a hometown hero, my- we joked about the Undersiders being the four horsemen. Guy in black with the skull, girl with the locusts, girl with the howling hellhounds and spiked collar, and the guy who controlled people.”

“You lost me with that last one,” Byron said. “And I’ve actually read the bible.”

“Depending on interpretations, the guy in white is seen as either Conquest or Famine,” Rain said.

“Oh, like Conquest from the Toronto segment from the Maggie Holt series!” Lookout said, all excitement now that she was back in the conversation. She took a step forward, and Monokeros reached out, seizing her by the shoulder.

Everyone present reacted in some way to that. Even Damsel.

“You stay with me, camera girl. Goddess’ orders,” Monokeros said. She didn’t look the slightest bit worried that the rest of us were poised like we might use powers or throw a punch, given an excuse.

“Okay,” Lookout said, to Monokeros. Then she said, “I liked that book, even though a lot of people didn’t.”

“I listened to the audiobook,” Damsel said.

“Yes! Yes! That’s great, you’re great, and of course, I’m stating the obvious by saying that-”

“Of course. Glad to see someone with a brain.”

“We need our brains focused on figuring out what Teacher’s disaster scenario is, not in, uh, asserting the obvious,” I said.

“Two people with brains. I’m starting to see why she likes you all.”

I kept talking, “I’m glad you guys are developing a friendship, but let’s think. The sooner we work it out, the sooner we can help our teammates. That includes Swansong and Tress.”

“It might be famine,” Rain said.

“Famine?” I asked.

“She said it was hollow, and it was something Goddess never experienced or knew. Inevitable, if he sets it up right. And it destroys her. She was probably going after the feeling when she destroyed the food stock… but if we get desperate enough, people are going to dig out the food, contaminated, they’ll ingest the drug, and…”

“And Teacher gets everything he wants,” I said.

“It’s a siege. Not catapults and walls siege, but a starve the other guy out siege,” Rain said. “People back at the compound were always taking measures to plan for scenarios like this.”

“There’s nothing but wilderness around us,” Byron said.

“To feed an entire prison? Indefinitely? Knowing that you can’t roam too far when the bombs could reactivate at any time? Maybe, but I don’t think it’s that easy. I can totally see Teacher picking off people who go hunting with portals and hit squads.”

Okay, I could buy that. It made sense.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Lookout said. “I have the keys. He might have broken down the front door, but so long as I’m lensing the space-map, it’s my door. Any doors he puts down are going to end up fizzling.”

“It might be your door, but there’s nothing stopping him from dropping a mountain on top of it and then taking his time working out a solution later,” Byron said.

“Like you did with Lung,” Damsel said. “Clever.”

“That was my brother, actually, but- yes. Kind of.”

“We need Goddess,” I said. “And we need to deal with this without getting tied up with the max-sec guys, Kingdom Come, Blindside… I’ll get her.”

How do you defeat someone with world-spanning powers? You make sure she never gets a chance to fight.

I flew over to where Goddess was talking to Seir. I saw his expression change as he recognized me. I ignored it, focusing on Goddess instead.

“We have a guess about what he’s doing,” I said. “If he keeps us from leaving, there’s no food that isn’t contaminated. Everyone here starves… or we eat, and we might ingest the drugs that the pharmacist planted.”

I saw something in her eyes. Alarm. Bewilderment.

She took over an Earth. She… did whatever she’d done to take over her cluster, and that can’t have been easy. Then there was Gold Morning, but… the entire reason she was here and not in her world was because she had been pulled into the fight. I could one hundred percent understand how she might not have made many calls then. It could seem like a strange, bad dream, realer than existence in the years before and after, but so hard to parse that the mind turned away from it.

But this might well have been the first time she’d ever come head to head with the fact that she was well and truly outmatched, while she was well and truly in control of her actions, past present and upcoming.

“How does he do it?”

“We don’t know, but you said it yourself, it felt like-”

“No way out. We evacuate.”

“He has a small army ready on the other side of the door, we, the non-Goddess good guys, have multiple teams there trying to stall Teacher. The max-sec guys are probably under orders to attack us from the rear, if we try to run for it, and the access tunnel-”

“Stop,” she told me. “Fucking enough.”

“The access tunnel leads to a means to communicate with the outside, and links the prison resources to outside resources. It gives him a way to tap into the ankle bombs your army is wearing. My teammates, Goddess!”

“I don’t care!” she retorted. Her voice was less of a shout as she spoke again, more of a hiss, “We evacuate. Figure this out. Yes?”

I was still, my thoughts stuck as I tried to figure out a way to reconcile it. So many of the options available meant throwing away lives.

Her stare was cold.

She found world leaders and went after them one by one. She sank ships. She killed hundreds, even thousands.

The eyes of someone that had killed thousands.

All around me, killers, terrorists, kidnappers and worse were staring at Goddess and me.

“Figure it out,” she said, with more emphasis.

She stared into my eyes.

I was stuck, my thoughts tied in a knot, as I processed the options available to me. Follow the law. When the law isn’t available, do what’s right. When what’s right isn’t clear, ask for help.

The team? I could manage the team, we’d figure something out. But that did nothing about the people who were still in various forms of trouble. We still hadn’t heard from the A-team, down in the access tunnels. Natalie was still in the custody of Goddess’ squad. Lookout was still in Monokeros’ grasp.

This was the trap. All of the puzzle pieces from Teacher’s riddle were coming together in this. The nonlethal weapons. The anti-air weapon he’d employed against me, they could well prevent Goddess from taking flight and making a break for it.

And the attacks she’d described- multiple fronts, multiple angles, multiple levels. We couldn’t ignore the access tunnels and the control of the bombs they promised. We couldn’t ignore the front door, or our rear, or the issue of basic needs, like needing to eat.

“Give me an answer, Antares,” Goddess said. “Can you figure this out, or are you going to get in my way?”

“I’ll work on figuring something out,” I said.

She nodded slowly, still staring into my eyes.

“Sorry to be so intense,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “Which buildings are the maximum security buildings?”

“The short, squat ones at the far north of the complex,” I said.

“He fed his drugs to the people there?”

“They get their food delivered, and the guards make sure they take their pills,” Seir said, behind Goddess. “I’m borderline. Max sec if I’ve been anything but good. So I know.”

Seir was staring at me. He seemed to be amused that I was facing down Goddess like this and I wasn’t coming out ahead. That, or he was just enjoying himself, and he looked like an asshole as a separate, distinct thing.

Asshole.

Goddess, for her part, seemed to be focusing on the horizon, where the shape of buildings was only barely visible against the backdrop of sky and distant trees. Many of the buildings didn’t have lights on.

I could feel her telekinesis like a harsh blast of wind right after a vehicle passed by. The force in the air was even more pronounced along the course of the blast, lines and fractal images briefly visible as air compressed, moisture condensed, and light bent.

In the distance, one of the buildings toppled.

“That’ll get them moving,” she said. “Seir, gather everyone you know. Deal with them, knock down buildings and render this place uninhabitable as you come back from doing that. We burn our bridges behind us.”

I saw the smile on Seir’s face. I looked away.

I took off, heading straight up to where I could hopefully get my bearings, and where I wouldn’t have to see a Fallen who reveled in being Fallen being happy with the status quo. It made it easier to think straight and set my mind to the task at hand.

Below me, Goddess was joined by some of the prison’s heavier hitters. Not any of the heavy hitters I needed. Lung was at her left shoulder, his eye glowing a dull red as he glanced up at me. The scales had mostly receded.

I could remember Dean, in the hospital after Leviathan. I zig-zagged through the crowd, trying to see people in gloom and slanted lighting. I was looking for a specific body type, hair type, and face, but the prison coveralls masked physical shapes.

Master-stranger protocols felt so hollow in the now. The team was compromised, the medicated food was buried under a fallen building, and that food came from Teacher. I wasn’t sure I trusted it or the master-stranger protocols more than I trusted Goddess.

My zig-zagging journey continued, haunted by the memory of what had laid at the end of my last such journey. Then, I’d been searching for the one face who might be able to help, and I’d been crushed on so many levels by the failure to find.

In this, I wasn’t even sure the face was an answer.

I spotted the others. I landed, and in my current state of mind, I forgot how much the heat, the aerial acrobatics, and the earlier fight with the teacher hit squad and the Major Malfunctions had drained me. I nearly dropped to my knees. Nothing like my fancy landings of days past.

“What are we doing?” Byron asked.

“She wants to go out the front door, unless she gets another, better answer before she gives the order. Teacher’s going to be waiting for her. Byron, you remember the tools her people had. For dealing with fliers. Nonlethal weapons, that could capture the fallen.”

“And let Teacher get them under his thumb,” Byron said. “Shit. You’re right.”

“We need to get Goddess out unscathed somehow. From her tone, I think she’s willing to make any sacrifices necessary to save herself.”

“Makes sense,” Damsel said. “I’d be willing to do the same if I was in her position.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Not sure about that.”

“So how do we save her skin, ideally without sacrificing ourselves?” Damsel asked.

“You guys need to get to the others,” I said. “If they haven’t come back yet, there’s a reason. I’ll catch up. We get the team together, make sure we’re all on the same page, and then we make our effort to escape. We lean on-”

I almost said protocols. It struck me that Monokeros, as dangerous and deluded as she was, could very well know the protocols, know what I meant, despite my efforts to be subtle.

“-We lean on each other,” I said. “We know who we can trust.”

“Myself and myself,” Damsel said. She paused. “And maybe the little one.”

“Woo!”

“Lookout,” Rain said. “If we un-lens or whatever, is it possible that we could use one of Teacher’s doors to make our exit?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But just from what my phone says, I’m pretty sure he closed all the doors.”

I saw Rain grimace.

“Talk while you run, but time is short. Go,” I said.

“And what are you doing?” Byron asked.

“Looking for Coalbelcher,” I said.

“Coalbelcher?”

“I think we can use him,” I said. “Do you-”

The ground illuminated as though a spotlight was being directed at it, but the light was neon, the edges of things highlighted and then multiplied.

I looked around, and I saw the source.

The first of the max sec prisoners. The dangerous ones that needed to be kept away from gen pop. The ones who Teacher had reached out to personally.

“Go! Avoid those guys, avoid eerie glowing ground!”

“He went that way!” Rain raised his voice and pointed, as the ground began screaming. I took to the air, and I could see how the distorted lights were whisking and whirring against one another, like worms in a tangle. There were shapes like people inside, writ large.

I thought about going after the guy with the shaker effect. I decided it was too dangerous. Too easy for me to get bogged down.

Hit like Glory Girl, hold nothing back as the Wretch, judge like the Warrior Monk, problem solve as the Scholar, and don’t lose sight of who you fucking are, because that’s a metric shitton to keep track of, Victoria Dallon.

Rain had given me a direction.

I was being so unfair. Monstrous, even. I could remember times when I had been scared, even terrified. Gold Morning. Day after day in the hospital. After Crawler. The day Amy had triggered, when I’d been the one hurt.

I didn’t have a chance to finish the line of thought. I found Coalbelcher.

The head of the guy’s side of the prison had his soldiers with him, and they were gathering at the flanks, near the side of the entry building. Some staff would still be inside, probably behind the shutters, protected by thick walls.

Up until Seir came back, razing the place to the ground so the bridges would be burned and Goddess’ army of prisoners would have no way to go but forward.

I could count them. Seventy or so parahumans. The prisoner coveralls designated the security level and the building they belonged to.

It took a moment of hovering before I saw Coalbelcher. His face-paint was striking enough to make him obvious even in the gloom.

I landed, and he didn’t flinch as I appeared in front of him. I saw him smirk.

“You’re out of your cell, but you’re only partway out,” I told him.

“I’m just happy to be stretching my legs,” he said, in his godfather-high voice. “You come to talk to me for a reason?”

“To deal,” I said. I indicated a direction. “Not much time. Hear me out?”

We walked a few paces away. With the chaos and the max sec prisoners facing down Seir, there was enough volume that people wouldn’t be overhearing without sensitive ears.

Still, I’d have to keep those ears in mind. I knew Lung was out there, and he was Goddess’ left hand man at the moment.

“What’s the deal?” Coalbelcher asked.

“I did you a favor. I need something.”

“Something isn’t free.”

“I did you a favor,” I said, my voice tense.

“And that’s only good manners for a newcomer to my block. I like you, girl. Don’t make me change my mind. If you want something-”

The neon images the shaker had created before erupted skyward, a giant of flesh with a sea of snakes at his waist formed from dirt outlined in neon. Endbringer-sized.

“-You gotta give something. I’m being pretty generous as is, hearing you out, and in my assuming it’s not coincidence that other people got the Wardens and the bombs all stopped blinking.”

“My teammate. Our collective effort.”

“Great. I still want something. Convince me,” he smiled at me as he said it, meeting my irritation with sickly, black-spittle-between-the-teeth kindness.

“There’s a civilian with the Wardens. A pretty guy with a forehead curl here-” I gestured to indicate, “-was with them the last I saw. He led a group of late-teens, early-twenties guys.”

“Flense.”

“Fucking great, that’s not ominous at all. Flense, then. Her name is Natalie, she has a lot of inside information and connections. I need you to do for her what I did for you, in my roundabout way.”

“And?”

“And… you didn’t murder anyone, did you?”

“I had an unpaid ticket,” he said, sarcastic.

“I was going to offer you an exit-”

“We’re all getting an exit, girl. There’s no more prison, see?”

“With a bit more leeway and a helping hand in staying clear of Teacher’s control. Because that’s- that’s being brain dead and building ray guns or something for twenty hours a day, until he decides he needs your power.”

“You’re going to help me get free and clear, girl?”

“I was. But not if you’re a murderer. Not if you’re a rapist.”

“I wouldn’t be a boss if I was. I had a rival. They decided I didn’t get my second chance, came after me hard. I came after them harder. They played it up in court, said I went-”

A squealing interrupted him. The giant with a dress of worms was tearing chicken wire fence out of the ground. Metal scraped against metal.

“They said I went too hard,” he said. “Broke the guy’s jaw, which is true, it needed to be wired shut. I hurt his back, lifetime of pain, bullshit. I didn’t touch his back. His arm? No. Lung damage? Nah.”

I didn’t really have any time to spare. I knew he was probably playing it down. But if it wasn’t murder, was I really okay excusing that kind of violence?

It wasn’t lawful, right, or good to be the person who decided he got away for this crime. But if I didn’t do anything, everyone would get away, or everyone would be under Teacher’s control, which was worse than prison. It was having the mind shackled.

“I’ll check up on things after,” I said. “If you’re lying, I come after you.”

“I look after this Natalie as long as you look after me,” he said. “She knows how to get in touch with you?”

“Yeah. When the phones are back online.”

A monstrous thing to do, I thought, a continuation of my thought from earlier.

I could remember how scared I’d once been. When things had been worse than I’d ever experienced, when I’d been alone, more or less, or powerless.

Natalie was in that boat. I was going to lengths to give her the chance to do something, because she was one of only three people I could count on, with the protocols.

Monstrous, to put that on her shoulders, to demand something of her. But she was a teammate and the only other people we could lean on were a guy who didn’t know the protocols, talented as he was, and a girl who talked to mice.

Monstrous.

“Cryptid’s at the gate,” Lookout said, as I caught up with the group. The boys were already in the tunnel.

“At the gate? Near Teacher’s group?”

Lookout nodded. “Um. He brought company.”

“My sister,” I said, my voice tight.

“Oh, yeah, her,” Lookout said. “And Goddess’ missing person.”

Gleaming – 9.13

The tunnel was a concrete tube, stabbing in the direction of the front gate of the prison, bright lights arranged on the sides at roughly eye level, each pair of lights spaced out from the ones before and the ones to come, all contained within protective cages, many of which illuminated the spiderwebs that covered them and the moths that had found their way down. The matching pairs of lights made Rain and Byron cast two half-intact shadows, where they stood a little ways down the tunnel. In the ring of lights that surrounded the short ladder down, I cast a half-dozen. That half-dozen shadows narrowed to two as I approached the boys.

A heavy impact elsewhere in the prison complex shook the ground, and the concrete walls absorbed it. The effect was muted, diffused through the tunnel.

Lookout followed me down, hopping down from the short ladder with a ‘hup’ sound. She was small in the shadows of Monokeros and Damsel, who were right behind her.

“I hope you’re not claustrophobic,” Rain murmured.

I glanced at the walls of the tunnel. It was narrow enough that the lights on the left side were only six feet or so from one another. Because it was a tube, the path was only two feet wide or so, before it became a curved slope that couldn’t really be walked on.

No room to fly or to maneuver if it became a fight. No real ability to throw ourselves to the side if there was trouble. Dropping to a position where we were flat against the floor meant we’d be lying in a row, because the sloped floor would just see us rolling down toward the path at the center. No cover to be had.

If anything, the open space extending both front and back was more… concerning than the unyielding concrete and dense earth to either side, above, and below us.

There was another impact. Bugs fled cracks in the walls, tracing crazy paths in their search for hiding places that weren’t anywhere to be found.

“How are we doing this?” Byron asked.

“I have some experience in leadership, if you guys need some direction,” Damsel said, from the back.

“I-” I started, pausing to double-check myself. “I know the team better. I’ll give some direction, if that’s okay? I have ideas.”

I saw her shrug. Her gaze was cool, but her mannerisms nervous as she shifted her weight to her other foot, claw hands twitching.

“Byron,” I said, even as my thoughts were trying to judge that nervousness in Damsel. “If it’s okay, we could use Tristan right about now.”

“Sure. Why?” Byron asked.

“He can give us cover, and I know Blindside carries a gun.”

Byron nodded. He blurred.

“I could lead if you wanted,” Tristan said. “I led Reach for a while.”

“If it’s okay… given what we talked about just outside the headquarters, I’ll take point.”

“Because I said I didn’t trust myself.”

“Sure,” I said. I hadn’t wanted to just volunteer that, with so many listening in.

“Do you trust yourself?” he asked.

I hesitated. Then I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Ahem,” Damsel cleared her throat. She raised a hand, the claw-tips scraping the concrete wall. “I trust myself.”

“Uh,” I said. As Glory Girl and as a member of the Patrol, I’d occasionally run into situations like this, when dealing with people who were wholly unreasonable or hampered in their reasoning. They never got any easier to deal with. “…I’m mostly trying to aim for a happy middle ground between self-trust, being durable enough to be close to the front where we can see what’s going on, and knowing the members of the team. Even if we accept you’re confident, you can’t take a bullet.”

“Mmm. I suppose.”

“Tristan, can you make us shields? One for each of us? More like the shields SWAT teams and Patrol teams have than anything else.”

“It’ll be heavy.”

“Worst case scenario, it breaks in my hands.”

“Sure.”

I nodded, thinking. “Damsel- is it okay if I call you that?”

“Mm hmm.”

“If there’s trouble, can we count on you to give us a side area to duck into? If you put a hole in the wall, will it be okay? Do you know if it’ll make it more likely to cave in, doing what it does, swirling things around, or will it be less likely?”

“No idea. We don’t lose much by trying,” Damsel said. “Dirtying my prison-issue shoes?”

“Except a possible cave-in of the whole tunnel,” Rain said.

“Give me some credit,” Damsel said, her nose rising a fraction. “If the whole tunnel collapses, it’ll be because I wanted it to.”

“Great,” Rain said.

“And Lookout,” I said. “Any camera feeds down here? Drones you can deploy? The more we know about what’s going on-”

She was already shaking her head.

“No cameras down here.”

Lookout shook her head again. “Connecting down-here to everything would defeat the purpose. It’s a closed, secondary situation and a secret escape route for prison staff in case of emergencies.”

“Not a very good secret,” I observed.

“No. Um! Um, I don’t have any ongoing camera footage down here, but I can find the old footage from when they headed this way. Some of it’s dead and it might not have any fancy extra perks like thermal vision, seeing backward in time or physical representations of social relationships-”

“You can get your cameras to track social relationships?” Rain asked.

“She said she can take pictures of the past and you’re focusing on that?” Monokeros asked, dry.

“Uh, yeah,” Rain said. The rest of us nodded.

Monokeros seemed deeply bothered by that. If there was a question to be asked or something to be made of it, it was drowned out by Lookout talking, her voice insistent.

“I’m saying stuff like that. When it’s cameras I make a lot of the time I can get them to pick up other noise and waves and junk, and later if I want to toy with the feed or go enhance, enhance, enhance, then maybe I can.”

“Okay,” I said, interrupting before Lookout could get carried away. “Footage of these guys, as they make the approach. Maybe they brought something.”

“Oh, right, on it!”

“Victoria,” Tristan said.

I turned to look, and the orange motes he was drawing manifested into a shape. It was a little more triangular than rectangular, the point scraping the ground, but it had a bar across the middle and it had a hole in the front to peer through, if I kept my head at the right angle. Black stone, run through with veins of what looked like copper, gold, or a mix therein. It tipped toward me, and I caught it with my burned hand and my shoulder, before catching it with my other hand.

“Stand back,” I said. I glanced back to make sure the coast was clear, and then I activated the Wretch.

Stone creaked and strained as the Wretch grabbed it, and it bucked this way and that as hands gripping the top and then the side pulled at the edges. Part of the bar broke almost immediately.

Tristan did something cruder with his shield, drawing it small. He drew out more motes near where I was, and as I advanced, he advanced into the motes, putting his shield out so the stone would manifest and bond to it.

Once I knew he was doing that, I picked up the pace.

“Rain,” I said the word instead of calling it out, because the acoustics of the tunnel meant that sound would travel. “If Tristan and I go down, use your ranged power to stall and distract, don’t hurt anyone, get Lookout and Damsel clear.”

“Yep,” he said, like it hadn’t even needed to be said, didn’t even warrant a full ‘yes’.

“And me?” Monokeros asked.

“Your orders are the same ones Goddess gave you. Keep an eye on Lookout. Make sure she gets out safe and sound.”

“I meant he should rescue me too.”

She didn’t even get it, did she? That she was that ignorant, that fucking unable to see the wrong in what she did, that she might even say she’d do it all over again. A complete and utter monster, behind me, her footsteps running. She could use her power on me at any moment-

“He could,” Tristan said, behind me. He was the only one besides me who wasn’t a little winded by the running. Rain seemed to be doing okay too.

Hearing that voice, the firm shutdown of the monster, it helped.

Too easy to get pulled- sucked down a rabbit hole.

“Guys,” Lookout said. “My mask is fritzing out.”

“Your mask?” Damsel asked.

“I’m all wired up. I’ve got cameras for eyes, and they aren’t working,” Lookout said.

I floated in the middle of the tunnel, doing my best to orient myself in the air in such a way that if the Wretch started pulling the shield around to my left, I could rotate it back the right way. I looked back and saw Lookout scrabbling at her mask, pulling the reflective insert that ran down the middle of her face back. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were visible.

“Any special vision modes?” I asked.

“Not really. Picking up some of the visual noise as a supplementary thing. It’s wired so I can plug other stuff in or see through a video feed like I’m there.”

“But you could parse it if you took that recording back to your workshop and scanned it,” I said. A statement, not a question.

“Uh huh,” she said.

“Blindside,” I said. Far enough down the corridor that we couldn’t see them yet.

Lookout held up her camera, her expression serious. I didn’t have long to see before she lowered it for Tristan, then turned around to show the others.

It had been a video loop. Most of the cameras that were able to move had turned away. The ones that couldn’t, I presumed, had gone black. The images we had were of people at the very edge of the camera.

“What’s the takeaway?” I asked.

“Two people at the edge of the camera. Kingdom Come and someone else. A guy prisoner.”

Teacher had someone on the inside.

“No footage of the guy?”

“No. He was walking right behind Blindside, and whatever mussed up the cameras meant he wasn’t very visible either. He’s skinny.”

The Wretch jerked the shield to one side. I flew around, my arm extending to its full length, my fingers gripping the view-hole in the shield. Not wanting to fight it any further, I shifted position, ready to move on. “We push on. Save Sveta, get Ashley, get Natalie, make sure we have control over the bombs if we need it.”

“Go for it. I’m right behind you,” Tristan said.

“If you have to fight Blindside, swing something that won’t stop when your arm does. A flail, whatever. Or strike from an oblique angle. Switching elements might really work here.”

“Maybe. They could also risk drowning us or washing us away,” Tristan said.

“Yeah,” I said. The Wretch crushed a part of the shield, and I winced. “Yeah.”

I flew forward.

Blindside, Kingdom Come, and one unknown. Somewhere down this tunnel was a computer, console, or other network that allowed for communication with the other Earth.

The shield blocked my view, but that didn’t change that Blindside still blocked aim. I was flying on a course, and I couldn’t pitch that course to go cleanly over Blindside. I hit an invisible wall, my flight course altering against my will. I brought my legs up, feet planting on the wall, and then flew, strongarming my shield in Blindside’s general direction.

I hit the invisible wall and canceled out the Wretch. The shield carried on, slamming into the concrete wall and scraping a light clean away from its housing.

“Oh, it’s you,” Blindside said. They didn’t sound like they were so close they’d almost been hit by the shield. Had they scooted back?

Blindside moved, feet tapping against the tunnel floor, and I was forced to look away, turning toward the wall. I could gauge from the edges of my vision and judge distance using the angle I’d been moved at.

“Reminder: if your head turns too fast the wrong way, you might snap your neck. That’s not me trying to do it. I don’t want to do it. Believe me, it’s a problem, driver flies by, head turns too far to the left, car goes flying… if you go flying, actually flying, the same thing happens. I don’t want the blame for that shit.”

“What are you doing, Blindside? You work for Tattletale and Lord of Loss, got a heroine shot, and now you’re here, working for Teacher? I can’t picture those two working together. You can’t possibly think Teacher’s going to fix your problems and not enslave you.”

“Get this through your skull, Patrol girl. I don’t work for them. I don’t like either of them. I work for money. Cash. Dollars and dineros. Trading dollars and New Dollars, if you want to be modern. I’ll even take some nice horses for barter if I gotta. They tell me to guard the tunnel while they do what they do, I’ll do it.”

“Take it from someone who was a crime boss in an earlier life,” Damsel said. “Sometimes it’s easier to leave the help behind than to fork over the cash to pay ’em. You’re going to get left behind.”

“You weren’t that kind of person, right?” Lookout asked.

“I never did it, no. But power makes people callous. I might have.”

Blindside cut in. “You’re talking about Teacher? That man doesn’t want to be on my bad side. Half of what he does is make thinkers. The other half is making tinkers, some of which are still pretty darn affected by my power.”

“Power makes people stupid too,” Damsel observed. “We have exceptions, like Goddess and yours truly, but…”

“Someone like Teacher?” I finished the thought.

“He seems like the kind of person who’s so smart they do stupid things,” Damsel said.

“Maybe,” Blindside said. “But he’s at least smart enough to know that if he crosses me he’s going to have to watch his back. You know why he’s going to have to watch his back? Because I’ll be there, walking up to his front, grabbing his dick and balls, and cutting ’em off.”

“Ew,” Lookout said. “Why do that? That sounds gross and awkward to actually do. You’d have to get his pants off. Stab him in the chest if you have to do something.”

“Or be creative,” Damsel said.

“Or be creative, yeah!”

“Or don’t cut and stab people,” I said.

“The whole merry gang,” Blindside said, pacing while talking. “Should I be happy you’re distracting me from the boredom or annoyed?”

“Annoyed,” Tristan said. “Come on. You’re outnumbered, we just fought Lung, plus the Pharmacist, the woman who sets powers on fire. We won.”

“Yeah,” Blindside said. “Here’s the reality. I’ve had my power for a while. I know a lot of the tricks. I’m armed and all of you can’t hide behind one shield. You could win. But you might not. Turn around, leave, I won’t stop you. When we get what we want and we leave, we’ll bring your guys with. Happiest outcome.”

“I can’t lock on,” Monokeros said, from the very back of the group. “You guys are on your own.”

I saw orange motes start to appear in the corner of my eye. My head flicked around as Blindside ran beneath me, toward the group.

“Incoming!” I called out.

I heard Tristan’s, “Fuck!”

Blindside had slipped past the wall Tristan had been making before it had been confirmed. He dismissed the motes, audibly grunting as something crackled.

Voices overlapped. “That itty bitty thing isn’t going to-” “That’s a tas-”

From what I could gather, Blindside had realized their stun gun didn’t work on Capricorn and applied it to Rain instead.

Poor Rain.

Damsel’s power crackled, then flared out, the noise deafening in the close confines of the tunnel. Blindside shrank against one side of the tunnel, which meant I could turn my head to see three-quarters of the scene. Damsel had backed off a bit, and now held her claws out. The distortion of her warped space was being held within the confines of her claws, a roughly spherical shape of what looked like slices of space seen through very tinted glass, Vista’s warped space, slices and curls of total blackness, and crackles of black lightning.

I heard a gun cock.

“Shoot me, and this stuff I’m holding fills the tunnel,” Damsel intoned the words.

“And your team?” Blindside asked.

“They’re not mine. They’re a means to an end. Meanwhile, you’re an obstacle, which means you’re going to end,” Damsel said. She couldn’t look straight at Blindside, so she turned her chin up, arms out, holding the contained storm of shadows and blurs.

“If you think I won’t put a bullet in any of them-”

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t care? Haha, what?” Lookout asked. “You said I was cool! We bonded over a book! So much for you being cool!”

The gun cocked again. “I’m aiming at the kid now. Don’t think I won’t put bullets in her legs. I had to deal with the Tweens Between in New York, and that helps anyone get over the hurting kids thing.”

“What? Am I in upside-down world, all of a sudden? Damsel being hilariously uncool and people saying the T.B.T. aren’t the best?” Lookout said.

“Lookout,” Capricorn said. “You wanted to be on the front lines. You need to keep your head on the task at hand. Can’t get upset at Damsel and excited about some overrated hero group.”

“Okay,” Lookout said. There was a pause, then she muttered, “They weren’t overrated.”

“Put the power away. The noise is hurting my ears,” Blindside said. “I will shoot the kid if you don’t. In four, three, two-”

The power fizzled out. Damsel had to shake one claw to get one flicker of power to disappear, and in the midst of the shaking, her claw tip scratched concrete.

“Turn around. Go the other direction,” Blindside said.

At the front of the group, still holding his shield, Capricorn looked up at me, eye barely visible in the shadows behind the goat-styled helm. At one hand, his finger indicated the end of the hall.

Me? Going on alone?

I hesitated, glancing in that direction. I’d be dealing with Kingdom Come and a strange cape alone.

“Don’t even think about it,” Blindside said. “If you leave, Patrol girl, I’ll start shooting.”

We couldn’t fight them in close confines without hitting allies. Couldn’t use something like Tristan or Damsel’s power without affecting allies.

I did believe that they’d shoot someone.

“Alright,” I said.

“Two options,” Blindside told us. “You fuck off, or you stay until K.C. finishes what he’s doing and comes back. Which might be a while, because he’s taking his time. When K.C. turns up, you’re going to run because you don’t want him using his power on you. That’s a fast ticket to Teacher getting his hands on you.”

“Which means we might as well just fuck off,” I said.

“Good girl,” Blindside said. “You finally get it.”

“Our team,” Rain said.

“They’re in good hands.”

“Go,” I told the group. “Back the way we came. We head for the entrance, do what we can.”

“But Tress, and Swansong,” Lookout said.

Capricorn looked up at me. Then he switched. Tristan to Byron.

Was he thinking or hoping that Byron had a clever idea? If he was, he was inside Byron now, very disappointed that his brother didn’t have any more ideas than he did. Byron let the large shield drop, then headed back through the group, helping Rain and putting a hand on Lookout’s shoulder.

“I think dealing with Teacher is the kind of situation where nobody wins,” I told Blindside, flying above so that the limits of my field of vision kept track of where they were.

“That’s my problem to deal with.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“If you’re thinking about having the guy in the fish armor flood the tunnel, think again. I wouldn’t be letting you go if I thought that was going to work.”

I nodded, and then I flew after the others. My hand caught the ladder as I reached the wall, my arm catching some of my forward momentum. I grazed Monokeros on my way up past the ladder.

“We’re really abandoning them?” Tristan asked. He was already aboveground.

I looked down the hole. Monokeros glared up at me.

“We’re not going down through there,” I said. “Come on. We’re heading to the front gate.”

“I don’t like leaving them,” Lookout said.

“We won’t. Sveta’s my best friend and Swansong gave me an apartment with no strings attached. We won’t leave them, I promise you.”

Lookout nodded. “I want everyone together again. We get Tress and Swansong, and then we get Cryptid, and we’ll have Damsel of Distress with us as a bonus. Um, sorry. I’m getting distracted again. Usually Cryptid tells me to shut it.”

Cryptid. It was a disorienting thought, because there was so little about Chris that let me orient my thoughts where he was concerned. He was out there with my sister- and that last element was something that I actively didn’t want to think about. Disorientation and aversion both. Revulsion. Hate. Disappointment.

“Do you have an actual plan, or should someone else step up?” Damsel asked.

“I have a fucking plan, Damsel,” I said. “Ease up.”

Talking about leadership in the first place had been a mistake. I had to take a second, clearing my thoughts. There was a way to do this.

“Lookout,” I said. “We saw the tunnel. We saw where it goes. I know there’s no footage there, but is there any way you can map it out and help us figure out where the tunnel is, beneath us?”

“We’re going in from above,” Rain said.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think we could,” Lookout said. “Um. When I was lensing the space map, I wasn’t even thinking of underground tunnels, so I double checked before and-”

“Speed it up,” Byron said.

Lookout talked double-speed as she finished, “I have a strong guess and I can refine it. With what we saw down there.”

“Do it,” I said.

“Yes! Projector disc, Capricorn?”

He handed it over.

There was an outright war going on near the front door of the prison. I could hear the succession of noises, of distant detonation, pause, detonation, pause, rumble of something collapsing. The pauses were becoming fewer and shorter, and there were more noises that overlapped. Here and there, gunshots could be heard.

“We get to the terminal for the bombs, and we end this,” I said, keeping my voice low. “We sound off an alert for every ankle bracelet, and they’ll notice. Neither Goddess nor Teacher want to lose the prisoners. We can put an end to this fighting and make the prisoners stay put.”

“Some of the prisoners,” Monokeros said. “Some are leaving with Goddess. No negotiation.”

“Sure,” I said. I met Monokeros’ cold eyes, and I felt my skin crawl.

“I missed out on the Tweens Between,” Monokeros said, wistfully. “I liked them, from what little I saw of them. They had moxie.”

“Oh hey! Another fan! Moxie is a great way of-” Lookout said. She stopped working for a second, looking up. “No, wait, hey. That’s awful, haha! No!”

“Work,” Rain said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Tress and Swansong are counting on you.”

“Right.”

She was a kid, in the end. She was, as much as any of us, trying to wrestle with conflicting feelings, with tension.

I wrestled with my own feelings, trying to anticipate what came next, without letting my thoughts get muddled by the blood-and-bodily-fluid streaked elephant that was occupying one large segment of my thoughts.

For a moment, it was all I could do to just keep my equilibrium, stay calm, and try not to think.

One hundred and ten percent. It’s not about being the Warrior Monk. It’s about being all of it, getting to where every part of me functions and functions well.

“Got it,” Lookout said. She held up the disc, and lines sprung out, painting a fuzzy rectangle on dirt and grass.

Something struck with a sound like cymbals as large as a building, loud enough that every single one of us bent over, hands at or near our ears, wincing in pain.

“That’s Advance Guard,” Kenzie said, barely audible as my ears rang.

The heroes at the portal. If they were coming in, that was because the people they were trying to stall had gotten through, and the heroes were following after.

If the heroes were following after… Then Goddess had yet another massive advantage. Teacher might be losing this, and if he thought he was losing while he had control of the ankle bombs…

“Damsel, Rain, can you use your powers? Get us through the ground.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Rain said. “But I sever, I don’t really dig.”

“Whatever you can do,” I said. I looked over at Damsel.

“Only because you were good to my sister,” Damsel said. “What’s a little dirt on an outfit this hideous?”

“I’ll buy you something,” I said. The noise of her power tearing into the earth seemed like it drowned out the end of my statement. I raised my voice a bit, “I think I know someone who knows the kind of clothes you like!”

I saw a smile on her face before she started swiping out, tearing into the ground and creating a ditch in a matter of a single blast. People backed away as she widened it into a hole.

She did have control. It wasn’t just holding the blast as a localized storm of energy.

The power geek in me wanted to spend hours thinking about what that meant, drawing an analogy between Swansong and Damsel, and me and… something else. Was that something I could chase? Something I should chase?

“Hold up!” Tristan called out. Byron had switched out when I hadn’t been looking or focusing. “Give me a second. I’m going to shore this up.”

Damsel was panting for breath, animated, seemingly excited to be alive in a way that I hadn’t seen in Swansong or in Ashley. Sweat streaked the dirt on her face, and she was illuminated by the orange lights that spiraled around her.

Rain dropped to a crouching position, pulling Lookout down as people ran by. Women in red prison uniforms.

Pure luck that Damsel hadn’t been making noise as they came by. I held out a hand, indicating for the others to wait.

For Breakthrough to be at its one hundred and ten percent, we needed to get Tress, Swansong, and Cryptid. We’d help Crystalclear and Ratcatcher, we’d get to the console or terminal, and we’d get control of this situation.

I gave the go-ahead to start again, my eyes scanning the area for any prisoners running around.

“Another ten feet,” Lookout said, looking at the disc and the phone she was holding.

“Get us close,” Rain told Damsel. “I’ll get us through the last bit. Cleaner and quieter.”

Orange lights swirled, reinforcing the walls of the hole that was being dug, while Damsel stood at the lowest portion. She swiped out with her power, with no staggering or apparent pain, glanced up at Lookout, got a motion to go again, and repeated the process.

“Good,” Lookout murmured, peering over the edge. “One foot of dirt and one foot of concrete left.”

Damsel put a claw against the wall of stone, claw-tips reaching for purchase and finding none. She lifted a foot so covered in mud that the footwear was impossible to see, placing it on a spike, and then used a blast of her power to ascend to the top of the hole.

More control there too.

Capricorn leaned forward, catching at one claw with a gauntlet before Damsel could tip backward and fall the way she’d come. Damsel said something I couldn’t hear, walking away from the edge so the way was clear.

Rain threw his scythes, drawing a square. I looked over at Tristan, who nodded.

“You block Blindside. I cover the other end of the tunnel,” I murmured.

“We’ve got this,” he said.

I flew down, Wretch out, aiming for the center of the square.

It broke clean, concrete shattering only when it struck the floor. I followed it all the way to the ground, landing with one foot, both hands, and one knee pressing into the dirt atop the shattered pad of concrete. I had my orientation, which meant I was clear to go. I flew in the direction of Tress and Swansong, Tristan landing behind me the moment I was out of the way.

Into the underground bunker. Past a room with ten bunk beds, past a kitchen, and into the larger room.

Into the situation.

A man in a prisoner uniform sat in a modified computer chair, the chair’s back to the wall. He had the kind of brow that meant a perpetually furrowed glare, a mullet, and a thick beard. There were computers in the corner, and he’d opened the cases, strewing components around him. Many had been worked into the chair itself, turning it into something more like a throne.

He was their access to the console… just as Lookout was intended to be ours. Inconsequential.

Of far more consequence was Tress, who was partially out of her armor. Tendrils flailed around her, grabbing everything in reach, pushing some away, pulling others closer, flinging the rare one.

When the tendrils moved, it was with a speed the eye could barely follow. Something was whipped in our direction, and before I could see what it was, a crackle of electricity destroyed it, LEDs and boards across the tinker’s chair lighting up. I saw the tension ease in the tinker’s shoulders, only to return there as he saw me.

In another situation, I might have wondered if he was an opportunist who found their way down here. With the information from Lookout, I knew he wasn’t.

“Stop what you’re doing,” I ordered him.

Sveta’s head turned my way, by a rotation and flexibility that a normal neck didn’t have. Her face was streaked in blood, her eyes were wide, and she was lost in herself in a way that broke my heart to see.

That heartbreak stopped when I saw a grouping of tendrils move, but it wasn’t a good stopping. It was sudden, numbing shock that stopped all other feelings, thoughts and processes. The grouping of tendrils all grasped the same thing- a lump of a shape in black fabric. Blood streaked the smooth ground where the fabric touched it.

“What are you doing out of costume, Sveta?” I asked. I sounded so normal.

There was no response.

“Where’s Swansong?” I asked. Still normal.

She dropped her eyes to the ground. Tentacles flailed madly.

“Crystalclear?” I asked.

More tentacles bunched around the fabric.

I stepped forward. I felt the buzz of ambient electricity in the air. I moved my hand and felt it intensify by multiple factors. Something told me that if I reached the threshold where this invisible electric fence divided the room, the electricity would converge on a single point, aiming to repel me.

Tristan, Lookout, Rain and the others caught up. They stopped a few paces behind me, looking over and under my shoulder at the scene.

“Where’s Ratcatcher?” I asked.

Tendrils twisted at the black fabric. Something crunched inside.

She flicked it at me, limb snapping out like a whip. I activated the Wretch by raw instinct, and the Wretch intersected the electric field. An invisible hand caught the cloth, and the nimbus of electricity briefly drew an outline around the Wretch.

Better at dealing with sustained onslaughts.

Something crashed behind me. I turned to look, still tense as the Wretch held out against electricity and held the black cloth. Rain had kicked the tinker’s tech-upgraded chair.

Another kick, and the electricity went away. Rain and Capricorn both hauled the guy out of his chair, back and away.

I let the Wretch drop away. The fabric hit the ground, and immediately, tendrils began reaching for it. Unrecognizable bits of flesh rolled out.

“You did that on purpose,” I said.

She looked at me, and I saw nothing of Sveta in that face.

“Kingdom Come,” I said.

The black cloth- none of the others had been wearing black. They’d been wearing prison uniforms. The cloth was Kingdom Come’s own costume.

“He’s controlling her?” Lookout asked.

“He’s trying,” I said, my voice shaky with the relief. “But the thing about Tress is that she’s worked ridiculously hard to get to where she is. It takes a kind of strength, and that asshole doesn’t have it.”

Kingdom Come opened Sveta’s mouth, worked her jaw. No words came out.

She doesn’t have full lungs, Kingdom Come, I thought. For her first year or so, she couldn’t talk or explain herself, not that she even knew the language.

“Let my friend go. Reconstitute, end the breaker state,” I told him. “And show me where Swansong, Ratcatcher, and Crystalclear are.”

“They’re in the back,” Lookout said. She brought her hand forward, holding the disc. The compass had lines extending out toward a door. We’d have to get past Kingdom Come to get there.

Going for the exit at the far side of the tunnel? Is there one?

Kingdom Come reached out with tendrils, groping at the ground and at piles of things. He worked to drag her prosthetic body across the floor, putting himself between us and what looked like a large computer server with cables running into the ceiling above it. Loops of metal bound tendrils together, and more cables and loops bound the tendrils to the body. Only a portion were free.

“Let her fucking go,” I said. I floated closer. A tendril slapped into the ground between us, slicing through the air with a sound like a sword might make.

“Thane,” a crackle of a voice could be heard, from the mess of technology to my left. “Stop what you’re doing, pull us out. Tell Kingdom Come and Blindside.”

Kingdom Come crawled closer to the console, blocking it off.

Rain, scrambling to rummage through the tech, found the device. He pulled it free and hit a switch. He hesitated for a second.”Clarify.”

“Who’s speaking?”

I mouthed the name.

“Kingdom Come.”

Tentacles slapped against the ground.

“We give her nothing. Find your way back.”

Kingdom Come dragged himself closer to the server.

What’s he doing? I floated closer, and tendrils struck out, forcing me to retreat.

How did this happen? Sveta in the center of the room.

I could deal with her grabbing. I’d dealt with it as the Wretch, but she’d been careful to hold, not to strike out. It had been the product of years of work.

Orange motes began to circle her. I didn’t move a muscle, watching. Tendrils reached. Stone trapped them. I saw ‘her’ react, pulling away, pulling tendrils out and through the gaps provided. Others squeezed at stone, straining to crush it. More tendrils reached, even using the stone as a point to grapple and pull herself forward. More stone trapped them.

Others reached out for the server. On the wall, there was a plexiglass case mounted, with wires hooked into the server.

It wasn’t a fire alarm behind that case.

“Shit,” I said, realizing just how they intended to leave Goddess with nothing. I looked back at Damsel and Rain. I saw Rain look down at the bomb that was still at his ankle. The shackle that kept him in prison, currently quiet and black, but so easily it could become death or maiming.

Tendrils snaked in. I flew closer, and tendrils almost immediately shattered the Wretch. Orange lights danced around the tendrils at the case, but it was too late. The light solidified into a hunk of stone, encasing those tendrils, while more lights solidified into chunks of stone that kept Kingdom Come locked into position, unable to crawl away or mount an effective attack.

Still too late. Within that case on the wall, which contained an emergency button that might easily set off every single ankle bomb, I could hear the plexiglass shatter, crushed.

Beside me, Tristan took a deep breath. I met his eyes.

No time for words, no time for communicating a message, that message being received, the understanding.

Only the understanding.

Tristan became Byron. All of the rock he’d placed throughout the room, on the server switches and on Sveta became a rush of water, swirling and flooding the underground space. Her prosthetic body was shoved, twisted around, and the tendrils pulled away from the button.

Given the choice between every single one of the prisoners being executed and every single one of the prisoners living and being free, we’d made a call, because some of those prisoners were important to us. The server flooded with frigid water that quickly extended from floor to ceiling, and blinking lights went black. As connections were disrupted, lights all around us went out, leaving the space as dark and cold as death.

Gleaming – 9.14

I tumbled through darkness, and this time there was no frame of reference, even a wrong one. The water was numbing, the darkness all-consuming, and the water around me was moving, more akin to being in an undertow in a fast-moving river than a pool.

Was that only foreshadowing for what was to come?

The thought was eerily calm, disconnected from the danger and the chaos around me.

Fear was contagious, and the fear of the dark was something I’d inherited. There was something about having a mom who often slept with the lights on that made a small child insist on her night-light. When a first sleepover fell to pieces because of the night-light issue, that little girl’s parents had provided explanations. They were superheroes, their powers used light. That was why.

It would be a few years before that little girl would start to feel she’d been told a lie. Not a realization, but a feeling.

Fear paralyzed like cold water did. It shackled, limiting action, like debris stirred up by water, computer components and bits of metal hooking on clothing.

Two ways to deal. One could bend to it, succumb. It wasn’t a bad option, despite what one might think. Because the alternative was to fight, to push through, and any movement that followed from shackles and paralysis was liable to be rushed, to get other people hurt. I’d learned both of those things from my mother. I’d seen her on her patrols, heading into dark alleys with only her weapon for lighting. I’d seen her bend to the fear to the point it was an integral part of how she lived.

If I acted now, if I used the Wretch in a confined space when I didn’t know where my team was, if I flew, I could do a horrendous degree of harm. I flew in one direction, found a flat surface, and pressed myself hard against it, until I was grounded enough to have a sense of gravity. The water roared, someone was trying to shout underwater, but the sound was lost, dulled and muffled beyond recognition.

Something touched my leg, then pressed out, pushed, and I felt the strength of it. Not a human hand or anything similar. A tendril.

No sooner did I recognize it than I felt it pull away. My leg was pulled after it by the force of the water moving in its violent wake.

Blue lights began to fill the space. Motes of light appeared, leaving trails and lines behind them. The illumination was murky, everything cast in one or two shades of blue and more pitch black. Objects were unrecognizable, the side and top of a table ten feet away looked much like a folder of papers floating within my arm’s reach. Both moved violently – I hadn’t expected just how turbulent this water would be, or how much.

This time around, I had my orientation, but I didn’t have the ability to do anything with it. I exhaled slowly, letting bubbles slip through my lips, a way of measuring my time limit.

I searched through the oppressive, near-opaque gloom, a world of sluggish and violent movements, of chaos, and I saw nothing.

The movement of the water wasn’t as intense as it had been in the first few seconds, but for every small amount that it slowed and calmed, I felt waves of stress and strain, my breath pushing against the inside of my chest, wanting out and wanting more.

Not hard edges. Look, Victoria! Look! Where are they!? Look for human shapes, for the lines of the human body!

Motion caught my attention, almost invisible in a swirl of computer chips and boards. I moved to intercept before I’d fully verified who it was. Rain, swimming through the water.

I flew to him, grabbing him, helping him along. I saw his head turn, his eyes wide.

I could fly, and flying was better than swimming. Holding him, I flew us both toward the door, toward the tunnel where someone would have to swim further than the length of a swimming pool to get to the hole we’d made. They would then have to get up through that hole.

Tristan drew outlines, and made dense material that fit within those outlines. Byron drew outlines, but the condensed material was something that uncondensed, expanding out to fill space, vastly disproportionate to the outlines made.

Rain slipped from my grip. He’d stopped abruptly. I turned myself around.

He pointed.

Hair, floating free in the water, and a form that wasn’t really trying to swim.

I nodded confirmation, and Rain kicked, propelling himself toward the door, the eddies and flows in the water flipping him belly-up. Leaving me to it, even as my pulse joined the dull roar of water in my ears, each beat a delivery of a swiftly dwindling oxygen reserve.

More blue lights surrounded Rain, surrounded us. It still felt like two shades of blue and black, but the blue was lighter, the black filling less space.

I grabbed him and gave him a tug to help him on his way, and I saw a glimpse of Byron at the door. He was drawing out motes. Behind him, Damsel was already heading through the tunnel, visible more by the froth behind her, the water and debris turbulent.

Bubbles slipped through my lips. How long had it been? Twenty seconds? Forty? A minute? Two minutes?

I was ready to get to a place I could breathe now, and I still had too much to do. I pushed urgency out of mind, with a growing feeling that if I did start to panic, I’d be less able to handle it because I’d put it off.

The hair, as I flew to intercept, was Monokeros’. She wasn’t really trying to swim.

I saw flashing, and for a moment, I thought it was the server somehow still alive. Then I saw the shape. The side of someone illuminated by the flash, a line with slight curves that could have been someone’s leg or back. A human kind of shape.

I flew past Monokeros to the other shape. The flashing continued- Lookout’s flash gun, aimed at the wall. A signal. It was a steady series of flashes, until the gun ceased to work. I saw her smack the gun a few times.

She didn’t even realize I was there until I put my hands on her shoulders. Her head turned, and multiple round red eyes appeared in the dark, focusing on me, some narrowing like an old camera’s shutter. She raised her hand in a small wave, and some of the lenses went dark.

Somewhere in the background, there was a detonation. I could feel it through the water, muted as any sound or vibration would be. It still shook my entire body.

I drew her close, pulling her tight to my side so we might be able to move faster through the water, with less drag. The return hug was bear-hug fierce, shocking after the casualness of the wave a moment ago.

I took flight, heading back the way I’d come. I was a little less gentle with Monokeros, gripping her wrist in passing, wrenching it as I went.

Even approaching the tunnel was a complete change. The debris had flowed in this direction, and with the movement of water from a larger room to a narrower corridor, the churn was worse. It threatened to tear Monokeros from my grip. Byron was still there, waiting.

I didn’t get that far before tendrils gripped me.

Two living people in my arms. I couldn’t use my forcefield or strength.

The tendrils pulled away.

It was always Tristan who had done the hand gestures or motions to accompany the uses of his power. This time, it was Byron moving his arm, touching a mote, and then moving his arm toward the hallway we were aiming to enter.

Ah.

More water, I thought, as the power took hold, motes disappearing. The lines and dots of blue light winked out of existence, plunging us into a darkness where the two still-lit lenses on Lookout’s mask were dots against blackness, rather than anything illuminating. With that darkness came an impact, enough that it knocked the remaining gulp of air from my lungs.

It was cold, so fresh into our reality, and I had to fight the impulse to use the Wretch.

My focus was on the team. I controlled our pace by flying against the flow, tried to keep Lookout and Monokeros closer to the top of the tunnel.

I breached open air, and it was startling, because we weren’t anywhere close to the hole. Water was flowing out and away.

My hand hurt in ten different ways because of the burn and the fact that the water was soaking through the bandage and it was cold enough that it would have hurt on its own, much less making contact with a sensitive injury.

I saw the square hole we’d cut in the top of the tunnel, and I hauled the two up. In the moment I was about to take us up and out, Monokeros jerked her arm free of mine. Waking up, maybe, or- who knew?

Rain was still in the water, half-turned to absorb the flow. He was holding position and holding onto Byron, using his power to keep them both in place as rocks amid the overflow.

Tristan had walled off the tunnel, and up until just a short while ago, that wall had served as a dam, which was part of why the water had risen to the level it had.

Judging by the hole in the wall and the fact that the wall wasn’t intact anymore- Damsel had blown it up. Helping, kind of.

I carried Lookout out, then flew down for the others. Byron was next, heavy as he was soaking wet and wearing armor. Rain was easier.

“My tech,” I could hear Lookout’s lamentations.

“I thought it was waterproof,” Byron said.

“Water resistant, a lot of it,” I heard her.

I flew back into the hole. “Byron! Light!?”

The light was meager, but it caught the edges and foaming rises of water as it flowed over the dam, past debris that had been dragged from the room to here.

There was a hole in the wall. My first destination. Damsel was within. She’d blasted a hole that pointed back and away from the flow, forming an alcove she could stay within. Thane, Teacher’s tinker from the server room, was lying in the rubble and dirt at her feet.

“You okay to stay for a minute?” I asked.

“You okay with making a lady wait, when she can blast your head-” Damsel started. Her teeth chattered hard enough to interrupt her. “-clean from your shoulders?”

My own teeth chattered, partly because of a sympathy reaction. “Somewhere in there, there’s another lady who can do that. I’m really hoping she’s behind a closed door. I’ve got to help her.”

“If you must,” she said, before nodding in a way that didn’t match the words. “Save her.”

“Huddle for warmth for now,” I said.

She looked down at Thane and sneered. “I’d rather be cold. Huddling with me is a privilege.”

“Then see if Capricorn can make you a ladder.”

“Will try!” I heard Capricorn. Tristan now.

“Vic- Antares!” Lookout called to me.

I looked up.

She turned on a flashlight, then threw it down to me. A small one, bright.

“You’re awesome,” I said.

“Help my friends,” was the response. “I want us all together again.”

I wasted no more time. I plunged into the dark.

Sveta, Crystalclear, Ashley, Ratcatcher.

Kingdom Come, if he didn’t come part and parcel with Sveta.

The water had vented out enough that I could fly over it. I flew into the room with the server, and found it nearly empty of water, now. Debris at the door was damming it, and I destroyed that debris using the Wretch.

“Sveta? Kingdom Come?” I asked.

Tendrils whipped out of the water. They seized me. I activated the Wretch, then dismissed it a moment later.

Calm, I thought, as my heart hammered.

She hauled herself up. She was too coordinated to be Kingdom Come. Most of her was outside of her shell though. In a way, she wasn’t our Sveta.

Raising herself up to eye level, she brought her forehead forward, until it rested against mine.

“Rinsed him off?” I asked.

I felt the nod. “He’s over there in the corner, pulling himself together.”

“The B team is okay. Where’s the A team?”

“Downstairs.”

Downstairs wasn’t good.

“He covered the ceiling so he was dripping down on top of us. I saw it at the last second,” Sveta said. “I took the bullet, and tried to put myself where I would at least get in their way. Thane had to work remotely.”

“You did good.”

“I don’t feel good.”

I wanted to reply to that, but I knew the feeling one hundred percent.

One hundred and ten percent.

“Bricklayer’s mantra,” I said.

I felt her nod, her forehead against mine. “I’ve got me. You go get Swansong and Crystal.”

“And Ratcatcher?” I asked, turning around in the doorway I was already flying through.

She shook her head. “Ran. Get the other two.”

I nodded.

The light from the flashlight wasn’t quite sufficient for this kind of oppressive darkness. A single beam of light weighed against corridor after corridor, room after room of only darkness. I found the stairwell, and beyond the first flight, everything was obscured by the receding water, the level steadily decreasing.

I could hear something below. The terrible noise I’d noted earlier, a roar or great grinding.

As good a cue as anything.

The debris and the degree of the churn at the top level of the water made entry by flight difficult, with an obstacle catching my shoulder on one entry and a lack of forward movement stalling the second.

Then I was beneath, and the already small beam of light from the flashlight halved in size, diffused into dark, grimy waters. My skin and clothing were soaked through and gripped with the cold water.

The roaring I’d heard earlier was louder here.

Louder still as I flew deeper through the water, through a maze of things that threatened to catch at my armor and clothing, scraping at my arms. It was a morass of debris, old construction material left in the tunnel, where it could sit forever, and I couldn’t use the Wretch because doing so threatened to make things harder to get through. I’d only end up tearing things down and compacting stuff into barriers. I’d run out of breath before I got through.

I exhaled a bit, letting bubbles rise to the surface. I’d always found that trying to hold two full lungfuls of breath ended up being counter-intuitive. A steady release helped.

The current of the water became stronger as I got closer to the bottom, and the amount of sediment increased.

I found the source of the roar. Ashley, her back against the edge of a doorframe, stood knee deep in water. Her power was directed at the hallway, a steady, continuous blast, that bucked, kicked, and forced her to retain her control.

I thought of fighting the shield as the Wretch tugged at it.

I floated in water as it was churned by Ashley’s power. Some of what her power did was annihilate, but it was random, and most of what she was doing was holding it at bay, steadily removing some of the water from existence.

I was still trying to figure out what to do to help when she stopped. The blast ceased, and water crashed into the room she and Crystalclear occupied, the both of them just barely visible in the froth of bubbles and sediment before they were pushed back.

I flew into the room, and the force of water rushing in forced me to stick my feet out, hitting the wall opposite the door. I reached out, found Ashley’s head, and from there, found her hand. One hand burned, holding Ashley despite the pain, feeling how cold her skin was, well beyond the norm of a human hand in cold water.

I did much the same with Crystalclear’s head and hand. I could feel the chunks of quartz-like crystal studding each. I held his hand with the same that held the flashlight, awkward, the fierceness of our mutual grip driving the metal into the meat of my hand.

I led them through the dark waters, into the maze of wooden slats and fence material.

There was no roar anymore, no distant explosions as Damsel of Distress tore down a wall. Even high above, it seemed like the fighting had stopped.

Crystalclear helped to navigate. We found our way up, and when the coast was clear, I pulled them up at my maximum speed, hauling them to where we could all breathe again.

Dripping, panting, we all caught our breath.

I started to head forward, and Swansong reached out with one hand. It didn’t move well, and I could see her wince, before pressing her forearms against one another in an ‘x’.

“Sveta,” she whispered. “She’s compromised. Kingdom Come got her.”

“Sveta should be okay now,” I said. “Rinsed off.”

“Did you confirm with a password?” Crystalclear asked.

“Sveta’s one of the very few people in this world who I don’t need to,” I said.

“There’s a lot of people out there who probably thought the same thing and they regretted it later,” he said.

I nodded. I would have explained, but I didn’t have the words.

“Ratcatcher ran?” I asked.

“She went up one of the ventilation ducts that isn’t supposed to hold a person,” Crystalclear said. “We thought she’d get help.”

“We haven’t seen hide, hair, nose or tail of her,” I said. “Goddess won, we think. And we destroyed the server.”

“You destroyed it,” Crystalclear said. “You do realize that could have just set everything off?”

“They were going to set it off,” I said. “Given a choice between a certainty and a possibility of making it, they chose the second option. I didn’t disagree.”

“They were really going to go that far?” Crystalclear asked.

I nodded.

“Because Goddess won,” Swansong said.

“Yeah,” I said. I wanted to be happy about it, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Too many close calls, too many questions. My sister was out there, and I couldn’t avoid this… third confrontation. The third in one night.

One fucking long night.

“I think the situation is as resolved as it’s going to get,” I said. “Teacher loses, he can’t blow the bombs, Goddess has her army. The heroes are up there. I think- if there’s anything left to contribute to the situation, we help her keep the peace.”

“We help them,” Crystalclear said. “We help the heroes. This protocol, I’m invoking it.”

As if we hadn’t fought enough uphill battles tonight.

But I nodded.

The others had caught their breath. Ashley was rubbing her forearms, moving her hands with a little bit more in the way of dexterity.

We entered the server room, and Sveta was there, a face and tendrils that were barely visible in the dark. She was hunched, for lack of a better word, over her ball. A case of bulletproof glass with staggered ventilation, so that a tendril couldn’t worm through. A circular lock required some careful manipulation and a clamp of Sveta’s teeth to properly open, if help wasn’t provided from the outside.

But it collapsed into a flat position, and try as she might, she couldn’t coordinate to un-collapse it.

“Can I approach?”

“You got them?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You shouldn’t approach.”

I stopped where I was, floating.

“I can’t coordinate well enough,” she said. “I practiced before, but never in the dark.”

“Give it here.”

The hunk of interconnected slats of bulletproof glass struck my breastplate in what was essentially a ‘soft’ pass from Sveta. The noise made my much-abused ears hurt.

I squeezed the orb, using my forearm instead of my right hand, and hard edges scraped against hard edges. It slid into its spherical shape, two pieces of plastic nipping off a bit of my arm as they came together.

I opened the lid, and Sveta reached inside, before pulling herself in. Tendrils had to be coiled together, piled atop one another, filling much of the space. With my hands full, I had only a glimpse of her expression.

Sveta’s hell.

I locked her in.

“Thank you, Tress,” Ashley said. “Doing that. I know we haven’t always been on the same page.”

“I’m still glad you’re okay.”

“It was noble, Tress,” Ashley said.

“It was stupid. For an instant, I forgot what I was. And I can’t do that,” Sveta said. “Other people can’t afford for me to forget. I positioned myself as best as I could, before he… seeped in.”

I felt some violent motion within the sphere, as if a torrent of physical activity could illustrate the feeling.

With a very different tone of voice, Sveta said, “I’ll need my armor.”

“I’ll get it,” I said. I started to hand off the sphere, then stopped myself. “If you’re okay with-”

“Yes.”

I let Swansong hold her. A silent Crystalclear pointed the way to the armor, and I knelt by it, moving the debris that half-buried it. Most of that debris was paper.

“Can you-” Sveta said.

“What?”

“I’m sorry but can we leave the tentacles? The ones Rain made? Say they were too heavy to bring. His intentions are good, but…”

“Got it,” I said. I moved the flashlight to my mouth before figuring out how the new arms connected as part of the greater suit.

“If it’s a problem, you should tell him,” Crystalclear said.

“I will. But the last twenty-four hours have been utter insanity. We need to make sure people are safe. It’s going to distract him. I know this is bad and it’s against every rule in the superhero magazines and Saturday morning cartoon shows, but…”

“Lie?” Swansong asked.

“Please. For now.”

“He worked hard on that,” I said.

“I know, but-” Sveta said, her voice muffled.

“Can we compromise? Bring them, but have them detached?”

“The material is good, even if the intent is overeager,” Ashley said.

I heard a ‘tuk’ sound. Sveta’s forehead striking the lid of the sphere.

“I should, shouldn’t I?”

“Your body, your call,” I said.

“That’s the issue at its heart, isn’t it?” I heard her. With the muffling effect of the sphere and how quiet she was, it was hard to catch all the words.

A forearm of pale flesh, a loose length of dense black netting that connected it to another forearm of pale flesh, all in sequence. Some metal framework within provided a loose skeletal system with levers and pullies. The locking mechanism involved getting some concentric rings lined up and sliding a bolt through them.

I hefted it over one shoulder, holding it there in a fireman carry. with my free hand, I combed fingernails through wet hair. Wet costume, armor, and Sveta’s body were all heavy. Crystalclear lifted the tentacles, wrapping them around his shoulders like a scarf.

We reached the hole. Tristan had made a ladder. The group was huddled. Thane and Monokeros stood off to one side.

We emerged, each of us in turn, with me steadying Ashley so she could ascend with her hands both full and not at their peak.

Lookout sprung to her feet, and Monokeros reached out for her- missing Lookout’s shoulder.

She bounded to Ashley, and stopped short of giving Ashley a hug. Ashley adjusted her grip on Sveta, and pulled Lookout into a one-armed hug, arm at Lookout’s head.

Interesting, to see how Damsel observed that, the fidgeting with claw-fingers, eye contact not leaving that scene. I wasn’t sure if it was a terrifying interesting or a positive one. Figuring that out required resources I didn’t have.

In a similar vein, I saw Rain look at the tentacles Crystalclear carried. He didn’t remark at anything, instead turning to survey the situation, almost the opposite of what Damsel was doing.

The prison was quiet. Not a shout, no movement. Many buildings had been pulled down, the staff buildings in particular.

“We lucked out with the bombs, it seems,” Ashley said.

“Not luck,” Tristan said. He indicated Thane, who sat slumped against a wall, a short distance from Monokeros.

“The situation in emergency controls went bad,” Thane said. He talked like he had a mouthful of tobacco, all mush and sloppy syllables. “I had to work remotely. Not nearly so fast as I would be. But I turned off the fucking bombs.”

“Even though Teacher wouldn’t want you to?” Rain asked.

“Of course even fucking though fucking teacher wouldn’t fucking want me to,” Thane said, and he put enough clarity and emotion into each ‘fucking’ that it didn’t make a mess of the sentence. “I’m wearing one of the damn things.”

He shook his ankle to demonstrate.

“He told Rain and Byron when we took him back to lash him to a light fixture,” Tristan said. “Not that this is the best outcome.”

This. The bombs were ineffective now. The prisoners were free. United under an effective leader.

“We need to save Cryptid,” Sveta said, within the sphere. “And Natalie.”

“Yes,” Lookout said. “Please.”

I could look across the group and I could see the people who had very little fight left in them. Me. Ashley. Sveta. Rain had taken a bit of a beating, but that was usual.

By contrast, Lookout and Capricorn looked fairly eager to go. I knew that they had their own issues. That Tristan was on edge from earlier in the night, still battling some demon I didn’t know the name of. Lookout’s demon was named Lookout, accompanied by a yin-yang extension of that struggle, currently in the form of Monokeros.

“The worst of it’s over. Let’s focus our energies on those two, do what we can to minimize the damage,” I said.

“It’s not over,” Crystalclear said. “Let me… assert my authority on that.”

“Is that your vision?” Lookout asked. “Is it something you see?”

That’s not the authority he means, I thought. He means the master-stranger protocols.

I had to mentally reorient my perspective. This isn’t over? It felt over.

“…if my phone wasn’t broken, I’d really really like to get a reading of how your crystals work and how you see through them, and-”

Rain nudged Lookout’s shoulder with one elbow.

“-and yeah,” she terminated early.

“It’s not something I see,” Crystalclear said. “It seems pretty obvious, but I don’t know how to handle this. It’s freaky to see.”

“It’s not something you see, it’s just that you see as freaky?” Lookout prompted him.

“Yes,” he said.

“That doesn’t make sense,” she said.

“I’m going to handwave it and say my crystal-vision breaks the rules when it comes to seeing stuff.”

“Oh, duh.”

“You’re leader if you need to be, Crystalclear,” I said. Then, for Monokeros’ benefit, to cloud the master-stranger protocols, I explained, “You’re with Foresight, they were first on the scene. I’m okay following orders. You make the calls. If you say we should back off and make contact with our team another way…”

“I’m not going to say that,” he said. “That might be the way to go, I don’t know. I’m working with limited information, with a really distorted view of my own, and I hate that. What I do know is that the situation is unsalvageable like this.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“We need one sane person to report to people in the know. That means we get people out. ”

“If you’re talking about going against Goddess, we might have a bit of a problem,” Monokeros said, and her voice was low.

“He isn’t,” Tristan said. “The situation’s a mess. The prison is totaled, and some complete scumbags are now going to be free. We need to talk to the key people so they can rein those guys in. The guys who aren’t going with Goddess.”

He sounded so natural saying it. Not one hint of a lie or falsehood.

All the same, there was a pause as Monokeros locked eyes with Tristan.

“Woah!” Crystalclear barked the word, loud enough to startle us. He threw himself between Tristan and Monokeros. “What was that? You used your power on him?”

I tensed. Monokeros awed people, like my awe power turned up to maximum. She gained protections against that target, as well as insights into their personality and mind. It was that last thing she had used against Tristan.

“I wanted to see if he was being genuine,” she said. “He’s loyal but not genuine. I’m not stupid, Capricorn. You know deep down inside that everyone is going with Goddess.”

“Shit,” Crystalclear said.

“Once the dust settles, she will come for you and any others who aren’t on her side. As soon as it’s not pointing her to any immediate threats, her danger sense will tell her if there’s any corner of the world where enemies lurk. She will find them and bring them in line, starting with the closest or the most severe.”

I saw Crystalclear draw in a breath. Fingers ran along a crystal near his elbow, nervous.

“Do what you need to do, tell us what you need, and I, at least, will trust you,” I told Crystalclear.

“I wish I had a big plan. Maybe I’ll come up with one-”

“You won’t,” Monokeros said. She took a step forward, limping. She’d hurt her leg earlier.

Crystalclear ignored her. “But for now, I think my number one priority is making acquiring me as hard as possible. I’ll see who I can round up, you do what you need to do with your team, and whoever gets to the authorities first tells them everything.”

There aren’t even any good authorities to go to. The Wardens are in shambles, the major teams are either here or dealing with their own disasters.

“It won’t work,” Monokeros said. “You won’t get away.”

“I’m going to try,” Crystalclear said.

“Cryptid said we should decentralize,” Sveta said. “I think it makes sense. We’ve got Ratcatcher out there, Cryptid’s doing his thing.”

“When in doubt, when law and right and wrong don’t factor in, reach out,” I murmured.

“Yeah,” Sveta said. “Let’s reach out. Let’s get our guys and Crystalclear, you get your guys. Someone has to be able to find a good solution.”

“Goddess has,” Monokeros said.

“Please,” Damsel said, from the periphery of our gathering, still sitting with her back to a ruined wall. “Shut the fuck up.”

Monokeros made a small giggling sound. My skin crawled.

“It’s fine,” she said, sounding very cavalier. The whites of her eyes showed very distinctly as she lowered her face to an angle. It was a model’s pose for a portrait shot, a little out of practice, the hinges and bolts a little too loose in how she held herself together. But still a model’s look, meant for the dramatic effect. “You should run far, far away, Crystalclear. And I’m going to leave too. To report to my Empress. The rest of you should do what you want. It’s done. I’ll tell her you did good work.”

“Thank you for that,” Ashley said, her voice laced with sarcasm.

“Come,” Monokeros said. “Lookout, with me.”

Lookout didn’t budge.

“She gave you to me as a gift. It’s a little bit like getting a book as a gift with the cover ripped in half, I have to grin and bear it-”

The entire team tensed. I might have put out a bit of aura, but I couldn’t be sure.

“What the fuck?” Rain asked. “You did not just say that about our teammate and friend.”

“It’s okay,” Lookout said, her voice light. She took a step forward, and Ashley reached out for her. Lookout shrugged free of Ashley’s hand, spinning around. “It’s okay, really. Please don’t grab me like that. It’s okay if she does it because she’s that kind of person, but I know you’re better than that, Ashley.”

Ashley let her hand fall to her side.

“I’ve got to do this,” Lookout said. “And I want you to trust me that I’m okay doing this.”

“Okay,” Ashley said.

“Not okay!” Sveta raised her voice.

The rest of us voiced our own protests.

“Come,” Monokeros said, like she was talking to a dog. Lookout went to her with a bit of a skip to her step.

Tristan was quickest to close the distance. Monokeros stumbled a little as she turned around, putting a hand out to her side, indicating Lookout.

“She’s using her power,” Crystalclear said.

Tristan stopped in his tracks.

“I’m using my power,” Monokeros said. She lowered her gaze again, so the glower of her eyes was barely visible beneath finely plucked eyebrows, the ‘horn’ of the triangle tattooed on her forehead pointed at Tristan. She moved her hand, revealing a shiv that she had been keeping in the sleeve. “Lookout.”

Lookout took the shiv.

“You don’t want to do this,” Ashley said. “I told you what would happen.”

“If they move a muscle to follow us, if they say a word, if they use a power, I want you to put that shiv in your neck as many times as you can before they make you stop. I’ll be really, really proud of you if you do.”

The group was frozen.

“Really?”

“If you can get it in there and give it a good twist, get it in there so it goes in one hole you’ve made and sticks out another, then cut out what’s in between, I’ll be extra proud.”

“It doesn’t really work that way, though,” Lookout said. Her voice was small. “I do more than I’m asked for homework and the teachers get annoyed. I work hard on my projects and my team gets upset because I’m overworking myself. Every minute I’m working hard, and it is hard, there’s this feeling in the back of my head, like I can imagine the warm fuzzy feeling when they’re amazed and happy. I’ve made them happy. That’s what pushes me to do it. But it never works out the way I hope, because I hope too much.”

“You want to impress me, don’t you?” Monokeros asked.

I found myself shaking my head slightly, as Lookout nodded.

“You can feel me, big in your head and your heart. Hold onto that feeling, and believe,” Monokeros said.

Tristan started forward. Ashley stopped him, grabbing him with both hands to haul him back, force him to land on his ass.

“Close,” Monokeros said. She said it to Lookout. “He almost took a step forward.”

Lookout nodded.

“I want you to believe. If they step forward or give you any reason, and you do as I’ve told, then this will be the time that matters. Believe that.”

“I believe you.”

“Yeah,” Monokeros said, barely audible. “This one last time. Unless they let you and me walk away.”

The shiv fell from Lookout’s fingers.

Monokeros twisted around, but Lookout was backing off too. She drew her flash gun, pointing it at Monokeros.

“That-”

Lookout fired the gun. A bright flash that seemed to illuminate the entire side of the prison complex the pistol was pointing at.

“Won’t work, I’m immune to my targets,” Monokeros said. But she backed away a step, then lunged forward another step. Bending down for the shiv.

I was already flying. I wasn’t alone in my charge.

Monokeros hit me with her power. It took all of the fight out of me, blinded me, and sent my thoughts spiraling into irrational tangents. Instinct and impulse recognized people hurling themselves toward her, and a bizarre, white-phosphorous bright impulse made me not want to share that space close to her with them. I turned.

Lookout fired again, and the feeling went away as quickly as it had come, just an instant before I could lash out at anyone nearby.

In the wake of it, I felt like a small part of me died, burned away. Not because of any lingering aspect of the power, but because I hadn’t ever wanted to be influenced like this again.

Blinded, Monokeros kept a hand out toward us. I saw others react as she hit them in turn, firing blind.

But she could only affect one person at a time.

I put my hand around her throat. She hit me with her power, that white-phosphor, all-consuming feeling of being overwhelmed in a good way.

Again, the feeling of death as it passed. Swansong was there. Saying something.

“…if Antares lets go of you, I will take your head clean off.”

“Then do it,” Monokeros said.

“No,” I said. “No, we aren’t killers.”

I didn’t use my powers to force her to move. Shoulder to shoulder, my hand at Monokeros’ neck, Swansong’s hand gripping her by the ear, we made her walk backward.

She started to speak, and I squeezed until the words stopped trying to get out. She’d talked enough.

Her feet reached the edge of the lip of the hole we’d made.

“I’ve got it,” Swansong said.

“You’re sure?”

She nodded.

“Don’t just push her so she falls down to the hole and then falls through. That feels too barbaric.”

“I know,” Swansong said. Swansong held onto Monokeros’ ear, as the rest of Breakthrough formed a loose circle around the hole. Swansong had to crouch, one hand and both feet sliding on the slope as she got closer to the hole itself.

She let go. Monokeros fell through. Capricorn’s lights were already marking where he was closing off the tunnel.

If anything in this was salvageable, it had to be that we’d either tell people to watch out for Monokeros in the access tunnel, or that we’d just close the portal altogether, or leave it lensed.

Not a death sentence, but if we could put her in a world without people, without innocents, where there was only nature and subsisting on her own, I was okay with that.

“…my first genuine friend that doesn’t have my DNA, and you know that’s a high bar when it comes to quality.”

I turned to look at Swansong talking to Lookout. A small laugh from Lookout.

“…and if you want to know for sure when people are proud of you, when people think you’re amazing then you should know that this…”

I turned away, turning a deaf ear to the scene.

It was for them, not for me.

Sveta was in Rain’s hands. Tristan stood off to one side, keeping an eye on Thane. I turned my focus to Crystalclear. He was standing way off to the side, almost a hundred feet away, staring off into the distance.

“Shouldn’t you be going?” I asked him. “You wanted to get away.”

He shook his head. The crystals caught the meager light.

“No?”

“Over there,” he said, pointing. “That building?”

Three hundred feet away. The building had been hit by something that had caved in one wall, wiping out the floors that separated the first floor from the second, so it was just a husk.

“What about it?” I asked.

“I got that far,” Crystalclear said. “And then… it was like something major had happened. A turning point in history, you know?”

“I kind of know,” I said. I had a whole mess of mixed feelings as I realized what he was saying. Trepidation was about fifty percent of that mess.

“It came from you guys, but it bounced, because I get a feeling it started somewhere else. I can see it with my power.”

“She aligned you.”

“That’s a good way of putting it,” Crystalclear said. “Oof.”

“Oof,” I said. I gave him a light punch in the shoulder. “Come on. Stick with us, then. I wouldn’t mind the backup.”

We didn’t hurry as much, now. If there were moves to be made, then they would be leisurely or opportunistic ones. There was no use running, not when we were all tired, not when I was carrying a prosthetic body and Rain had a pair of prosthetic tentacle arms.

Besides, I really wasn’t looking forward to seeing one inevitable individual in particular.

We made our way past the shattered entrance building of the prison. Past looted rooms and parahumans standing watch over scared staff.

I saw the assistant warden we’d reached out to earlier and approached him. Parahumans moved to block my path. They seemed to recognize me and then backed off a little.

“We’ll do our best to help you out,” I told him. “Do you need anything?”

The look in his eyes was haunted as he shook his head. An inmate at his own asylum, with the patients as the wardens. And maybe, just a little, there was a lifelong fear come to life. That the Parahumans were taking over and there was nothing he could do about it.

“Keep your chin up,” I said.

Out of the portal and into another world. An interim world. Here, people were camping or laying out tables and other things they’d taken from the prison. There were a few improvised medical areas, and my heartbeat quickened on seeing them. I had to double and triple check to confirm.

No Amy, for one thing. That was ninety percent of it.

No friends, either. No Ratcatcher with grievous injuries. No Natalie. Not in the medical area, at least.

It was a short hike to get to the other portal. We were offered a ride by someone that had taken a guard’s car, but we refused. The group needed to stay together. It was what Lookout wanted and needed right now.

The prison had been burned to the ground. The interim territory was a camp, a place to fall back to.

This- this was a front line. All of the prisoners were gathered, organizing themselves. The heroes we’d brought along had come around to working with Goddess. I could place them by the teams they belonged to.

Most of them.

I saw Goddess, and I saw that she was talking to heroes. They weren’t heroes that had accepted our invitation.

She’d reached out, using her new power battery.

I saw Lookout wave, and I saw Natalie, gathered with prison staff.

I spotted Ratcatcher on my own. She was standing on the back of a pickup truck, ropes binding her hands to the spoiler. I got Crystalclear’s attention, nudging him, and pointing. I saw him nod.

There were enough parahumans around us that we couldn’t talk. The noise was too much. He tried anyway, saying something about how she was too big a pain in the ass.

No Natalie. No Ratcatcher.

Was it just the Wardens now, fractured and distracted?

Just us, who had barely enough of a sense of protocols to doubt this reality? We could say no to Monokeros, but were the others convincing themselves in the same way I was, thinking of how bad she was for Goddess?

On that topic, of Goddess, I saw Cryptid in Goddess’ vicinity, talking to- to my sister. He wore a monstrous form, narrow but with a chest and spine so distended that it was almost like he was a dorsal fin or clown fish with four legs extending from the sides and planting on the ground, like stout arms mid push-up. His body was writ in mottled pink flesh, with a row of boils down the back. Only Cryptid could be that weird. If I’d had any doubt about his identity, he wore the sash he usually did, to protect his modesty and carry his stuff.

What was unusual was that for the first time since I’d known him, he was changing where people could see. From this to something else. I saw flesh sag and slough, and it wasn’t this fin-shaped plague-disgust thing.

Goddess finished talking to the team she had just recruited. Arms folded, she surveyed her soldiers, and her soldiers, even the roughest of them, seemed to look up at her in turn. She turned her head and looked over to the horizon. Earth Gimel’s Megalopolis glittered.

I watched with a heavy heart and a growing feeling of trepidation as Cryptid and Amy joined a small handful of others, forming something of a line. Amy at Goddess’ right hand. Cryptid a couple of spaces over, growing black feathers, his neck extending. He looked at us, and then he looked away.

Mute, yet capable of saying everything with a single look.

I looked back at Lookout, and I saw that she’d been happy to confirm the others were okay, and now she was geeking out with Rain and another cape I didn’t recognize. They were pointing at the prosthetic suit of Sveta’s I still carried.

Only Sveta was really paying attention like I was, watching Amy and watching our teammate. She had been traumatized on a level by what had happened with the Irregulars.

That story was repeating itself, at least on one small front. Betrayal, inexplicable.

Communicated in one look: he was with Goddess, as we were, but he was no longer one of us.

Gleaming – 9.15

We had enemies here. We had put Monokeros in an extended time out, and there was nothing saying that any of our enemies here could decide to do the same thing to us, or worse. There were Fallen, tertiary members of Prancer’s group, old Birdcage villains like Monokeros who could be a danger to anyone, and any number of ex-prisoners who might have unkind views when it came to heroes.

The rain wasn’t as intense or driving as it had been before, but it was still a factor, still freezing most things. Prisoners were using forcefields to shield themselves, because they didn’t have jackets, and the prison uniforms, while warm, weren’t outdoor clothes. The ground was hard with frost and ice, except for where the passage of dozens of feet warmed it and turned it into mud.

I glanced at Goddess’ makeshift platform. The portal that led from Gimel to the interim world had been set on a hill with some lesser structures on it, the land leveled out. The platform was a large rock that had been cleaved in half, forming a flat sheet of rock with a crisp edge that would dull with a few more winters and rainy seasons. I could see the top half in pieces further down the slope, now serving as seats or perches for various capes in Goddess’ battle line. The rain traced a loose fractal pattern as it wicked off of Goddess’ bubble of telekinesis.

On that platform, beside Goddess, I spotted Amy, and I immediately looked away. On the train with Tristan and Ashley, weeks ago, I’d seen Presley out of the corner of my eye and it had reminded me of Amy. That had been enough to fuck with my mood and my head. Now she was here for real, not for the first time tonight.

In the corner of my eye.

Keeping her in the back of my mind weighed on me. Keeping her out of mind meant I was unpleasantly surprised when she came up. I could rationalize and reassure myself, and those reassurances about her character and the girl I’d grown up with fell to pieces when I thought about how she had repeatedly breached my boundaries. When she’d used her power on me in the first place – if only that, I could have maybe forgiven. When she’d used it on me a second time, following my explicit no, because I’d been scared and I’d been dissolving alive? When she had repeatedly, constantly showed up despite my express wishes?

There was a kind of fear where the heart raced. There was anticipatory fear where the heart pounded, a singular body-jarring thud at what felt like a slower rate, though it wasn’t.

My chest felt as though everything had seized up, and I couldn’t feel my own heartbeat in my own chest.

Enemies. Thinking about enemies was easier than thinking about… whatever Amy was.

Lung stood at the furthest end of the makeshift stage from Goddess, tattooed arms folded. Someone had picked up his mask for him, and he now wore it. The metal had dark mud still caked in some of the creases. and from the angle of his head, he was watching me with eyes that still glowed. He didn’t look pleased with his immediate company, which included Seir, and he didn’t look pleased with me, either.

To wait, take a detour, get medical care, or go straight to Goddess?

Straight to Goddess meant getting past the Fallen, and ‘past the Fallen’ could never be a thing that occurred without incident.

Straight to Lung, angry as he was.

Straight to Goddess, who we would have to tell about Monokeros.

Straight to Cryptid, who wouldn’t look me in the eye.

Straight to Amy, who stood at the edge of that stage, lurking in the corner of my eye, not looking at me. Going out of her way not to look at me. That didn’t make it better.

Crystalclear’s voice interrupted my thoughts. I’d forgotten I was with the group. “I’m going to go see if they’ll let me talk to Ratcatcher. I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on her.”

“Or a crystal. Keeping a crystal on her,” Lookout said.

Crystalclear smiled. “Yeah, I guess. Can you keep an eye out for Fume Hood, Antares?”

“I will,” I said. I floated a little higher, so I could see over just a few more heads in the crowd.

Crystalclear jogged off, costume boots tromping in the mud and the puddles that had formed on frozen dirt.

“I miss my gear already,” Lookout said. “I feel blind. I can’t believe I didn’t get any readings from him.”

Blind was right. It was still dark, even with the light of powers and the lanterns and freestanding lights that had been brought over from the prison. The storm above didn’t make it any better, diffusing the glow of all of the electric lighting.

“What’s broken?” Rain asked.

“Everything’s a little broken, or it’s moist. Half of it won’t work at all, diagnostics and reboots aren’t helping, and the other half doesn’t work well anymore. Water between lenses, balances and tolerances are off, uuugh. My phone doesn’t work, my flash gun is a fifty-fifty about if it’s gonna work, and my other stuff is on the blink, cutting out.”

“I know the feeling. I miss my body,” Sveta said.

“Oh, gosh, sorry! Here I am complaining, and-”

“It’s okay. It’s fine,” Sveta said. There was a smile on her face, and her voice was light. “Complain all you want.”

“You’ll fix it,” Swansong said. “You’ll both be fine.”

I turned to face the group and observe, glad to have my back to the stage. Freezing rain pattered on my hood.

Lookout shook her head. “I’ll fix some of it! Some. Some is broken forever. The broken-forever stuff is like my easier, cheaper work, like my mask, and less cheap stuff like my projector disc, but still, that’s a lot of work, and I don’t have my regular workshop anymore, so it’s harder to find the time and get stuff done.”

“You might have a workshop where we end up,” Rain said. “We don’t know where we’re going from here. Maybe we all end up with a small country to run.”

“That caught your attention, huh?” I asked.

“I-” he started. “I’ve kind of always fantasized about having a place of my own. Even my fantasies don’t ever get nearly that big, but it’s easier to imagine because I’ve imagined smaller scale versions of it. Give me a cabin or a quaint house with a good size backyard and I’ll be content.”

“Standards, Rain,” Swansong said. “Think mansion or tower. You need room for servants.”

“Uh,” Rain said.

“Cute young men in elegant black uniforms who run to obey when you snap your fingers,” Damsel said. Two claws clacked together.

“And young women,” Swansong said.

Damsel arched an eyebrow, “You think so? Are you more worldly now, or is this a strategy? Distracting male visitors?”

Swansong shook her head. “We’re talking about Rain. Rain would want women, I imagine.”

“You say imagine, but I cannot imagine Rain in a manor with maids,” Byron said. “Sorry, Rain.”

“No. I’m grateful you pay enough attention to know I’m not a maid guy, if anything.”

“It would be maids and a singular manservant. A Jeeves type, if you will,” Swansong said. “If you’re to go that route-”

“I’m really not going to.”

“-it’s a good idea to have a same-sex servant who has the right sensibilities when it comes to your hygiene, fashion, and other needs.”

“I don’t want any servants at all. I’m saying my standards are perfectly good where they are. A house just big enough for me. A whole country is an interesting thought exercise, but if Goddess wanted me to run a country, I’d still lean toward having a small house, and no servants. Servants rub me the wrong way, after some of what I saw growing up.”

Swansong made a disappointed ‘tsk’ sound.

“Um, so, hm… you wouldn’t want a Jeeves, that makes sense,” Lookout said, before her tone of voice changed to a maximum unsubtle, “What about an- um, a you-know-who? Wouldn’t you want room for at least one more person in your cabin? Even as a maybe?”

“You-know-who and I haven’t talked enough lately,” Rain said. He paused. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever really imagined myself having both a house and someone I really care about as part of the same scene. Well, once, but… that was special circumstances, and it wasn’t a happy sort of special.”

“Now I’m curious.” Byron said.

“I’ll tell you and Tristan later, I guess. Anyhow, I wonder if it’s because it felt like even that was asking too much.”

“Set your standards as high as you can,” Swansong said, while Damsel nodded beside her. “Then live up to them.”

“If I set my expectations low, then me being in prison is tolerable. Things sucked before, and the only thing I wanted was out. I got what I wanted and I’m happy about that. I am- was actually genuinely reasonably okay with being here.”

“And now we’re free,” Swansong said. She looked around. “Or something.”

Something.

They were talking about future and dreams, and all I could think about was the uncertainty before us.

Either the Chris thing was all in my head, or they hadn’t been looking at the right times to see it.

“We need to get through this first,” Sveta said.

Thank you, Sveta, for saying it.

She went on, “Look at Goddess. She’s tense. Teacher isn’t done, and we still have enemies out there.”

“We have enemies in here,” I said, my voice quieter. “And that’s something we need to be careful of.”

Rain looked over his shoulders. Lung’s end of the stage was closest to us, and the Fallen were closest to Lung. They didn’t have much of a ‘tribe’, exactly- the other gangs that they’d roped into their circle to defend against the good guys were too low-level to contribute much to the prison population. Dealers and bikers. It meant that they were mostly limited to a gathering of ex-Teacher followers.

“I don’t think they’ll start anything. You’ve gotta have balls and be stupid to pick a fight when the rest of the crowd could come after you, or if Goddess could get upset. Shitty as he is, I don’t think Seir is that stupid and that brave.”

The Fallen weren’t my only concern. I looked at Cryptid, who was still transforming. More feathers now. It was a form that looked pretty much exactly like his earlier shape. The twisted-up wingless bird with the hooked beak, and a neck that looked broken, head dangling. The point of the beak grazed skin where feathers were pushing through, more spearlike than featherlike as they were slick with moisture, and where the beak grazed, it left a line of oozing blood.

“What’s Cryptid’s form there?” I asked.

“No idea,” Sveta answered me. Others shook their heads.

“He likes birds for the grieving-sad-pensive-thinking realm of things,” Lookout said.

“I’ve never seen him change,” Rain said, observing. “And he’s changed a few times today. Twice earlier in the day, before anything even happened, then to this bird form, he changed later towhatever he was just a few minutes ago, with the ridge of cysts… and now back to this? Did he-”

Rain stopped mid-question, looking at me.

“Did he get help from Amy?” I asked. The word sounded wrong in my mouth. “Panacea? I don’t know.”

“He might hurt tomorrow,” Byron said.

“Maybe,” I agreed. It might have sounded callous to say it out loud, but the pain he’d suffer tomorrow was the least of my concerns. Every time I looked his way, I was trying to find some eye contact, some signal, anything that would suggest he was working with the group. I felt like I was seeing the opposite dynamic at play.

I saw him limp up behind Amy, the head swung like a pendulum, and he had to catch it with a talon-hand to keep it from hitting Amy. Amy said something to him.

My skin crawled.

“Lookout,” I said.

“Yes?”

“I know you hate being left behind, but-”

“No,” she said.

“It would make it easier to gloss over the Monokeros thing if you were with Natalie and not front-and-center in front of Goddess,” I said. Not my only reason.

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to split up.”

“Even if staying with the group in the short term means Goddess might get worried again, assigning you another babysitter?”

“Even if,” Lookout said.

I found myself a bit at a loss for words. I could argue logic, but this wasn’t borne of logic.

My issue wasn’t borne of logic either. Half of the reason I wanted Lookout to hang back was because I didn’t like how Cryptid was acting. If he was in a bad place, if he was thinking about hurting himself to try and do something, or if he really wasn’t part of Breakthrough anymore, then I didn’t want Lookout in the midst of it.

“She should come,” Sveta said.

“It’s best if we stay together,” Lookout said, sounding solemn and sincere. “But thank you for thinking about me.”

“Can I call in a favor?” I asked. I made a rectangle with my index fingers and thumbs. “Or use the it’s complicated card? Let me do this, let me explain later? I have a gut feeling about this.”

“I have a heart feeling about this,” Lookout said, stubborn.

It couldn’t be easy.

“Antares,” Swansong said. “She stood up to Monokeros. She’s strong.”

“I know. I’m not disputing that.”

“She stood up to Monokeros because she’s worked really hard with dealing with obsessive and overwhelming feelings,” Swansong said, her voice quiet. “And because she really wants to stay with the group. She wants the group together.”

I bit my tongue.

I looked over my shoulder at Chris. He still stood by Amy, growing taller and taller, the feathers filling in the space to the point that barely any skin showed, and the skin that did show had large goosebump-like growths on it that indicated the feathers pushing through.

Amy had her tattooed hands clasped in front of her, Dot on her shoulder. Amy’s hood had been pulled up and to the side, used by Dot for warmth. Goddess’ power kept them protected from the rain.

The group being together or not together was the problem.

“Stay close to Swansong and Damsel. Keep that emotional training in mind. This might be a tough situation.”

“Got it,” Lookout said.

I nodded to myself.

Fuck.

I ran fingers through my hair to fix it, then adjusted my grip on Sveta’s prosthetic body to ensure it sat squarely on my shoulder.

Of course the Fallen stepped into our way.

“Rain-man,” Seir drawled the words. “We were talking about you. I’m hurt you didn’t come say hi earlier.”

“Yeah, well, didn’t see the point,” Rain said.

“Respect is the point, Rain-man,” Seir replied. “We’re not people you want as enemies.”

“I don’t want the Fallen as friends either,” Rain said. “The respect thing is already decided. You don’t deserve any.”

The heavyset man smirked.

“We have business with Goddess,” I said, before Seir could answer. It was, in a passive way, my way of backing Rain up. More voices in the conversation made it hard to retort, to cut Rain down, and I wasn’t sure Rain was the best guy when it came to wordplay and coming off as intimidating with words alone.

“The lady says she doesn’t want any hassle. If we let just anyone up there, then everyone’s going to want to come by, say how they can be useful, try to elbow their way in.”

“It’s important,” I said, “And it won’t take long.”

It was Tristan who added his voice to mine. “Refuse us access and you can be the one to explain why she didn’t get the information she needed.”

When had they switched?

“The drowned rat in gold armor can fly, can’t she? She goes alone.”

Me? I could, but-

“We’re sticking together, Seir,” I said. “I don’t think you were even assigned this job. You’re trying to make yourself important, pretending to be a gatekeeper.”

“Do you really want to test me, little girl?” he asked. He locked eyes with me. “Rain-man, you should tell these ignorant fools to think twice about what they’re doing.”

“Why would I do that, Tim?”

“Because, Rain, you’d better believe we know where your slut friend lives.”

Tristan put a hand at Rain’s shoulder, as if to stop him from advancing. Rain wasn’t quite the type to charge forward to swing a punch, though.

“Some expert advice for ya. If you have one person you want to keep in line, Rain, then it doesn’t work if you hit ’em, take a belt to ’em, stick their head in a water barrel. Takes forever. But if you get them as a pair, sisters, mother daughter, man and his wife, boy and the girl that will forever be too good for his useless self, it’s easy. Tell the first one that if they don’t listen you’ll hit the second. Tell the second that if they don’t listen, you’ll hurt the first. Takes no time at all to break the both of them.”

“I think the fact that you have to do that makes you all look pretty fucking pathetic, Seir,” Rain said.

“You call me pathetic, I call you the same thing,” Seir said, and his voice was a growl. “Difference between us is that in a matter of hours, you’re going to be on your knees, sniveling and begging for us to stop hurting the girl. Could be that you’re there, could be that you’re on the phone. I won’t even ask, and you’ll still be begging to take back any insult you said about me. That’s how that is. And the other way around? There is nothing you can say or do that will change my mind about how shit you are.”

His words were followed up by some shuffling movements and chuckles from the four or five Fallen and assorted others that were keeping him company.

Rain started forward. Tristan’s hand was still at his shoulder, and it might have been what stopped him from doing something regrettable. Tristan became Byron, and Byron leaned in to say something to Rain.

“Can I shoot him?” Lookout asked.

“No,” I said.

“Can I?” Damsel asked.

I thought about it for a second. “No.”

“What’s going on here, now?”

Another person joining the conversation, with a retinue at their backs. Coalbelcher. He’d found clothes, and now wore a heavy jacket with a hood, zipped up all the way, a ball cap and jeans. I had no idea how he’d found anything that fit him, but he’d managed. A bit of black drool extended from the corner of his mouth to his chin. He was of a similar frame to Seir, but a little more put together, now.

“Family,” Seir said it like it was an epithet. “A boy not respecting his betters.”

I saw Coalbelcher’s eyes. He was crude in dress, in speaking style, and in apparent intent, but there was calculation going on there, as he assessed the situation here. He hadn’t earned his position as top man on the guy’s side of the prison by pure luck.

“Tell you what, Tim,” Coalbelcher said. “Let me talk to ’em. Consider it a stipulation.”

“Stipulation?” Rain asked.

“We still don’t know what’s happening next,” Coalbelcher said, “But they need to shore up numbers, and then there’s me and my people, all without a place to go.”

“You’re joining them,” I said.

“Maybe. Depends. If our empress there is giving us each a territory of our own, doesn’t make sense to. But if she’s grouping us together, could be we join in. Work with.”

“Bad idea,” Rain said.

“We can hold our own,” Coalbelcher said. “But I won’t be lowest of the low. I go in as an equal, and I bring six powered boys from the prison and one powered son with me, in exchange.”

“You want to be a brother of the family so you can tell me to back off and let you talk to these pukes?” Seir asked. “Seems like a waste.”

“Sure, it’s fine,” Coalbelcher said. “We have a pre-existing relationship.”

Seir shrugged. He gave one of his guys a push on the shoulder, and they walked off. They were still close enough to get in our way if they wanted, not necessarily in earshot.

“You kind of disappointed me, Coal,” I said.

“Disappointed? Must be we got our wires crossed.”

His higher voice had a wry, mocking tone as a baseline, as if everything he said was sarcastic. It was hard to tell if he was serious about the wires getting crossed.

“Maybe I was too subtle,” I said.

“You said you wanted me to do for her what you did for me.”

“And?” I asked.

“And you got me out. Or close enough. Now I’m really out, I’m bristling for a fight. It’s all good. Won’t deny that. Did I misinterpret your intent?”

“No. You read that right. Except she’s still there, with the other civilians. You didn’t get her out.”

“Natalie?” Lookout asked. She looked up at me, head craning back.

I nodded.

On the stage above, Goddess was walking toward us. Half of her attention was on the horizon.

“I let her go. She got away for a bit. Then they caught her. I can’t keep letting her-”

He stopped as Goddess came within earshot. All voices in the vicinity stopped outright or went quiet. Even the rain was silent, bouncing off of the telekinesis.

Amy stood at the other end of the stage, framed by Cryptid’s black feathers, his rear legs to her left, one of his front legs planted on the ground to her right, head dangling so that his beak was near her elbow.

Couldn’t get rid of her.

“I can’t seem to be rid of you,” Goddess said.

The weird alignment of thoughts threw me for a momentary mental loop. “Sorry?”

“This meeting,” Goddess said, indicating Coalbelcher and the rest of us with an extended finger- Seir fucked off just enough that he was too far away to be included in the group. “Two groups that concern me. Where the fuck is Monokeros?”

She wasn’t just tense. She was pissed and tense.

“She pulled a knife on Lookout. It was over the top and unwarranted,” I told her. “We put her in time out. Two of Teacher’s thralls are in there with her, Blindside and Kingdom Come. You should get them, carefully, and get Monokeros if you absolutely have to, but I really recommend keeping her there.”

“I will be retrieving her, but it’ll have to wait, there are other concerns,” Goddess said. “My danger sense is emanating from your group, from you in particular. It’s identifying Coalbelcher and his group in a similar way. Tell me why.”

“I don’t know why,” I told her.

“We may just be those types of people,” Sveta said, her voice slightly muffled. “A little closer to being dangerous than average.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Lookout asked Goddess. “You know, if you give me a computer, I can gather information, or I can pull up records on people you have here, see if we can find the right tool in the toolbox for your particular problems.”

“You’re among my problems, according to my danger sense,” Goddess said, her voice hard. “Teacher has more coming. Not an army this time, but a trap.”

“Mama Mathers?” Rain asked.

“Yes. I won’t put my hand into that bear trap. We meet strength with subtlety and subtlety with strength. Coalbelcher? I’ll have you as part of the army that sweeps over that part of the city. Destroy everything, and destroy her with it.”

“I can do that.”

“Work with Seir and Knock Knock. Keep them in line. Do this and I’ll reward you.”

“I’ll get everyone organized.”

“Be ready to move quickly. The Wardens may choose that time to attack. Once we know she’s gone, you’ll fold back, and catch the Wardens by the rear. Immobilize, don’t kill.”

“I’m not much of a killer,” Coalbelcher said. “I’m not much of an immobilizer either.”

“If you can’t do it, I’ll ask someone else.”

“I can do it. Let me find people. I think I know someone who can move large groups.”

“I assigned one to Knock Knock,” Goddess said. “City Slicker.”

“That’s the one I was thinking of. We’ll get it done,” Coalbelcher said.

Goddess didn’t respond, didn’t change in expression, or move her head or hands. She stared at Coalbelcher, and he shifted his weight a little, before raising his heavy chin, emulating a soldier standing at attention, if a soldier could be of the greasy, drooling-black, baseball cap sort.

“You have a choice, Coalbelcher. My power is telling me there’s something about you that I should be wary of.”

“I have no idea what you mean. You’re promising power, fame, fortune, a territory of my own, and a slice of normal pie after two years of living in this shithole we slapped together here? I’m all about that. I’m yours, I’m loyal.”

“Perhaps,” she said. She turned her head, found someone, and indicated for them to come.

It was Crock o’ Shit. The lie-detector. The tattoos of scales on her arms were standing out slightly in relief.

“Say it again. That you’re loyal, and that I don’t need to worry about you.”

“I’m loyal. You don’t need to worry about me.”

Crock o’ Shit nodded. “He’s fine.”

“He doesn’t feel fine,” Goddess said. “If something happens, Coalbelcher, if something occurs to you, a thought that you haven’t fully formed, a memory that surfaces, an idea you’re not quite ready to have yet, consider it very carefully. It may matter more than you think, and your entire fate hinges on the decision you make.”

“Yes ma’am,” he replied, his voice nasally. He horked up something and spat it off to the side. The spit was like a gunshot, silent but bullet-quick and violent, with a chunky black splatter that smoked visibly. His voice was slightly less nasal as he finished, “I’ll think carefully.”

She dismissed Coalbelcher with a sweep of the hand.

“I’m in alignment,” I said. “We all are, in Breakthrough, Natalie excepted.”

“Natalie?”

“Our lawyer, the civilian.”

She looked mildly annoyed that Natalie had even been brought up in that context. She glanced at Crock.

“They’re fine,” Crock o’ Shit said.

“They feel like an ambient danger,” Goddess said. “Stay where I can see you, Breakthrough.”

“You should know, we disabled the ankle-bombs,” I said. “Your army should be safe.”

“Mm,” Goddess made a noise, not even a full word. I could see a sheen of sweat, where hair was sticking to her head near her temple. More sweat shone at the back of her neck.

“Are you okay?” Sveta asked.

“This was easier the first time,” Goddess said. “A decision I made as a teenager, to take over, solve all of the problems. Eternal youth, through my cocoon man, beauty, endless wealth and power. It was fine.”

“It sounds great,” Lookout said.

“Then it was all taken away. Each and every one of my enemies expects me to take it back, which forces me to do just that, because a third of them would eliminate me, a third would enslave me to use me, and another third would castrate me and take… everything vital to me. All of my power. That castration wouldn’t guarantee I’m saved from the first two groups.”

We were silent.

“I feel it. My danger sense makes me aware of the proportions, and how close they each loom.”

“Do you want a hug?” Lookout asked.

“I want my enemies crushed and gone,” Goddess said. “Be ready to assist in the fighting if they get this far.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said.

“The Wardens will strike in a matter of minutes. They’re partially protected from me, so timing will be critical. Teacher will also time his attack, delivering the Mathers woman, in the hopes I stick my hand into the trap. Be ready. Maybe you could die in the fighting and simplify things.”

“If it helps, then sure!” Lookout said.

“I’d rather not,” I said, putting a hand on Lookout’s shoulder.

“I was joking,” Lookout said.

“Mm,” Goddess said. She fixed her hair and her collar- I wasn’t sure why, since she could look like anything and nobody here would mind, and then she lifted herself off the ground.

Wardens inbound.

“I hope it’s not Weld with the Wardens,” I said.

“Tell me about it,” Sveta replied, voice soft.

“Or Vista, or Miss Militia… or anyone,” I said. I grit my teeth. “Are you guys ready?”

“I don’t have stuff,” Lookout said. “Maybe if there’s a computer somewhere nearby, I can track things in the city, or do a quick repair of my phone.”

“We’ll check inside,” I said. “Capricorn, Rain, Swansong, Damsel, you guys handle the front line?”

“Leave me Sveta and the prosthetic body? I’ll see what I can do to get things working,” Rain said.

“Please,” Sveta said.

“No promises,” Rain said.

“So after I made a big deal about not wanting to split up, we’re splitting up?” Lookout asked.

I frowned.

“Sorry to be needy,” she said. “I just, you know, heh, I’m a bit weird after the whole ‘tear your throat out’ thing.”

“You’re a bit weird always,” Rain said. “But so are the rest of us, so you’re in good company.”

“Yeah,” Lookout said. “Listen, it’s okay, I”ll manage something somehow, I’ll get stuff fixed, and I’ll have a neat trick. Maybe I can supercharge my light gun and we can blind an entire attacking force. Then-”

“Lookout,” I interrupted her. “We’re short on time. Let me go get a computer from the entrance building. I will bring you tech. Good?”

“Good,” Lookout said, breathless.

Good.

I took off.

We were fighting the Wardens, now. We were fighting Mama Mathers. Us against the world, and it didn’t feel triumphant. It felt like we were up against the whole fucking world. Multiple worlds.

I was spooked, and I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like this, even as I could take it as necessary. We didn’t have a choice, just as Goddess hadn’t.

I saw Crystalclear with Fume Hood. I dropped to the ground. One foot slipped in mud, the other hit ice-hard soil.

“Five second recap,” I said. “Wardens are coming, be ready to fight. Teacher’s bringing in the big guns, one is Mama Mathers. If she doesn’t come from the city, it’s going to be up to all of us to deal with what she does, capture and kill her despite the insanity effect.”

Crystalclear made a face. He’d be vulnerable.

“Five second response,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me talk to Ratcatcher, but she seems healthy, if irritable. I tried to check on your lawyer, but again-”

“No contact,” I said. “I’m getting a computer and then I’ll be back.”

“Good luck!”

Natalie. I flew toward the building, finding Natalie while I was on my way. Lights were few and far between, so the entire group of staff was huddled beneath a lip of rock, one light shared by a hundred people. Natalie was fairly close to the front, near the assistant warden, her fingers pressed together and to her mouth for warmth.

Nothing I could do. I’d tried to create an opportunity.

Ratcatcher was easier to find again, since she was mounted on one of the trucks in a group that was being used to produce light, headlights cutting through the mist of freezing rain, people’s breath, and people’s body heat.

She saw me, and then she looked away, the rain-soggy cone of her paper mask making the direction she was facing abundantly clear. Similar to what I’d seen with Cryptid, with Chris.

A rebuke?

No, this wasn’t a rebuke. I saw the nose move as she angled her head to check where I was in the sky, looking askew at me, then the nose moved again.

Pointing. A staff building.

I changed direction.

She’d done something before getting caught. What? I didn’t even know her power for sure. Rodent control? It was supposed to be thinker.

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. My heart had been frozen in my chest for what felt like fifteen or twenty minutes, and now it pounded. The building interior was dark, with many lights burned out or broken, and the contents of offices, of trash cans, and the papers that had topped desks were now strewn everywhere.

“Hello!?” I called out.

She’d been in the tunnel, and she’d run. She’d gone through the vents and… she’d come here? A small building with offices and files.

Chairs, a bench, plants. No animals to be seen- no rodents.

I shivered.

Paperwork, file folders, filing cabinets, with drawers pulled out and thrown into walls with enough force to make dents and holes. Nothing about or in the dents or holes, that I could see.

More benches for sitting and waiting, with metal loops embedded in the walls for prisoners to be handcuffed to. Paperwork, more paperwork, another potted plant, a vending machine that had been raided, the chips and candies that hadn’t been eaten now piled on the ground beneath the shattered glass pane. A few feet away, there was blood. Not from the vending machine.

The blood was part of a trail of splatters leading to a dead guard, one of the metal loops for handcuffing prisoners now embedded in his chest cavity. I felt for a pulse, and I knew there wasn’t one.

My heart pounded harder than before, feeling the lack of a pulse.

What could he have told me?

I reached the end of the hallway, found the stairs, and flew in a zig-zag to navigate the flights. The building only had two floors, and the damage to the second was negligible, nothing strewn around, most offices locked.

I shivered a bit more.

Lookout was expecting me to deliver a computer. I was- I was chasing a vague hint from a girl in a paper mask, if it could even be called a hint.

“Hello!?” I called out, again.

Back down to the first floor. I stared down the length of it.

She’d left the tunnel, and she’d done what?

She’d been caught, just like Natalie. She’d caused enough of a fuss that they’d tied her up, despite the fact that she was aligned.

Was she aligned?

The tainted food- the drugged food.

Natalie had had her bound hands pressed to her mouth. Had she been warming her breath, or had I caught a glimpse of something in the way of a message?

They’d crossed paths, met, collaborated.

I flew down the hallway. The stuff from the vending machine. Bags of chip that were half air and half chip. Boxes of candy. Many were damaged. Some were dirty, in a way that could have meant they’d been walked on.

I held the candies, and I hesitated. It was hard to convince myself to. It felt disloyal.

Master-stranger protocols. I imagined Natalie with her fingers to her mouth, like it was a mimed order. Driven by an impulse, feeling like I was potentially about to take poison, I took the most dirty, most damaged package, opened a hole wider, and then tipped a few of the gummy candies back into my mouth.

In the distance, it sounded like Goddess was tearing a mountain out of the ground.

I chewed, tasting the chemicals and preservatives of the candy, something I’d never been a huge fan of, and… it tasted delicious.

I swallowed, turning my head toward the ceiling in the process, and I closed my eyes.

Was it just candy?

A part of me wanted it to be. A part of me wanted an excuse to feel less uneasy. The conflict was brewing and- and good people were going to get hurt. Goddess was-

⊙

-fucked in the head.

Fuck her.

Fuck this.

I hope your fucking danger sense is making your head spin, Lady in Blue.

I grabbed the other candies and chips, favoring the broken bags. When my hands were full, I speared them on the spikes of my costume.

Style be damned.

How had they managed it? The building had been collapsed.

Rats. Mice.

It might have been Natalie who gave Ratcatcher the direction, Ratcatcher who did the lifting. Had they known they were going to be caught, and laid this as a trap? Something that anyone coming through might pick up and share?

Coalbelcher would’ve been near Natalie, if he’d been protecting her or watching out for her as part of the deal. Had he taken some candy? Had he eaten some, or did he have it saved for later? Was that why Goddess didn’t like her sense of him? I could see him being loyal but not aligned, or aligned but carrying tainted candy. More the former, since he didn’t seem the type to save something for later.

I reached the first large group, near the interim portal.

“Chips or candy?” I asked.

“What?”

“There’s a big fight brewing,” I said. “We need to get energy up, and there’s not much food. Do you want chips? Candy?”

“Chips, fuck yeah,” a guy said.

“Share,” I said, with emphasis.

With luck, he’d have one or two, it would kick in, and he’d start sharing out of spite.

I sure was.

Another group. It might have been Auzure, though it wasn’t members I recognized. They’d come to help defend the portal and stall for time.

I just threw them the candy. The woman who caught it saluted.

“Share!” I said.

Goddess should be getting pinged pretty hard right now, if this is working like I hope.

Another hero group. I tossed them two small bags of chips.

Hopefully it got us another set of non-Goddessed allies.

There was a chance that some of this wasn’t treated.

I just had to hope that most or some of it was. We were picking a massive fight.

A small gang of criminals. I threw them something, and I didn’t wait for a response.

Rain streamed down around me, drumming against my costume, loud against the plastic of the chip bags and the bags and boxes that had the candy.

I saw my team.

“No computer?” Lookout asked. “Were they all broken?”

“Something better,” I said. I tossed her a bag of candy, then tossed another to Rain.

“Uh,” Rain said. “The sentiment’s appreciated but…”

“Eat. Energy,” I said.

“Mind trading, Kenz?” Rain asked.

“You don’t like grape?”

“Not this type, no,” he said.

“Only because I like you,” she said.

I felt like my heart was beating so fast it would give everything away. I focused on the distance.

“It’s bad,” Byron said. “You can’t see it right this second, but she’s altering landscapes.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I heard.”

There was another blast. Another sound like a mountain was being uprooted. The ground shook, and this time my feet were touching it to really feel the impact.

Not a mountain- a building, with some foundations. I saw it move. From a distance, it seemed to move very slowly. I knew that it would be moving at a dangerous speed if one was actually at the scene.

Kenzie, her mask still open so her eyes, nose and mouth were visible, her face otherwise enclosed by the helmet, looked up at me. I raised an eyebrow, and saw her nod slightly.

“Ash. Want grape gummies?”

“That sounds atrocious.”

“Atrocious in the best way,” Kenzie said.

Swansong took two. Damsel did the same. I watched as the candy was shared around. Kenzie cracked Sveta’s ball open to give her some.

“Nice fashion,” Swansong told me, indicating the packages that had yet to be delivered, speared to my shoulder. “I prefer less colorful accessories.”

There were few enough that I could pluck them free. I held the assorted packages in two hands.

“Ahh,” Swansong said. She met my eyes. “Good candy.”

“How the heck did you find this?” Lookout asked.

“Others did the legwork,” I said. Relief surged through me.

“Guys!” Sveta shouted.

The momentary peace was disturbed.

One of the buildings in the distance had changed trajectory. Two stories of apartment building flew end over end as it soared toward us, shedding a stream of concrete fragments.

“Look out!” I shouted, at the top of my lungs.

I put my arms out, and I flew. I caught Lookout and Swansong, and Lookout had Sveta. I almost had a grip on Damsel, but she slipped free, moving her hands to avoid slashing my hand and arm open rather than cling. My flight was uneven, and my burdens heavy and awkward enough that I didn’t feel confident flying up.

Tristan and Rain were running, trying to get clear.

It was already so dark, the night so chaotic, that I couldn’t fully process what happened as it hit. The casualties, the devastation, whether other teams had been caught in it. The rush of air threw me off course, and my grip on my team members was broken. Everyone rolled, tumbled, or otherwise sprawled. Damsel used her power to shoot at the incoming projectile.

I could see most of the team.

I’d dropped the candies. If only I’d kept them on my armor.

The Lady in Blue. It had been her, reacting to danger sense, hurling a building.

Now I could see her, flying toward us.

She landed, shaking her head as she did.

The dust seemed like too little for the impact and the size of the chunk of building. It might have been the rain, or the darkness obscuring some of it.

I could see Lung. Other teams, people I had definitely not given candy to, were converging on our location, supporting the Lady in Blue.

I could see Amy, in the background. She did nothing to help. She was silent, passive. A ghost to haunt me.

My costume shifted around me. The Lady in Blue lifted me into the air by my costume.

Not all people who could affect inorganic things only could do that. Sometimes just being adjacent to something organic made it hard to manipulate inorganic materials.

I fought with my flight. She held me firm. I activated the Wretch, then deactivated it as soon as I saw that Lookout was too close, just below me.

One by one, she plucked up the members of Breakthrough.

Her head turned. Dirt and mud sprayed sky-high as she used her power. Dealing with another attacker. Someone I’d given candy to?

The dirt and mud hadn’t even finished raining down when she used her power again. I saw the shape of him, leaping to one side. He was more visible in the cloud of dirt, rain and mud than he was ordinarily.

Black feathers on black background.

I could feel the dim impulse that she pushed out. The punctuation mark. The power to control.

He moved faster.

I felt it again. This time, he dropped to all fours.

“Harder!” Crock o’ Shit shouted, from the sidelines. “You almost had him!”

The Lady in Blue used her power again, more forcefully than before.

Cryptid leaped.

I saw the moment of hesitation, the moment of realization that there was nothing inorganic on him to grab. She ripped up the earth instead. He was thrown into the air, lost in the flurry of mud.

I used my power, hard. To distract, to break her focus.

Appearing sooner than should have been possible, Cryptid was right next to her. The ground broke under his feet, point blank this time.

It didn’t go any further than the cracking of ground. Cryptid’s talons found the Lady in Blue’s midsection. He tore her open, sternum to pelvis, and his talons hooked into vital organs. He pulled them free, and all of the strength went out of her.

For how much damage had been done, it took four or five surprising seconds before her power canceled out. We dropped out of the air, and I flew to catch Lookout before she could land too awkwardly.

All around us, people were shuffling closer.

Amy was among them.

Cryptid was at the center, his broken neck twisted around, his head dangling. His beak was like a curved blade, gleaming in the rain, pointed at the small of his back.

I could see what that was supposed to mean, now.

Crock o’ Shit hadn’t been telling the truth. Goddess’ power hadn’t almost worked. Crock had been among the people I’d given candy to, just before I’d reunited with the group.

Fitting.

I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy the irony.

“Chris,” Lookout said.

Cryptid looked at her, then seized his head. He moved it side to side. Shaking it in a ‘no’.

“Did Amy do this?” I asked.

“I didn’t do anything,” Amy’s voice cut through the dark and the patter of rain. “Organized. Struck a deal.”

I swallowed hard. “Deal?”

She wouldn’t look me in the eyes. “Everyone!”

I couldn’t remember her shouting. She’d never been one to do it.

“Everyone! You have a choice! We are going to Earth Shin! We are going to be an authority!”

I couldn’t bring myself to speak.

Sveta did it for me. “Amy!”

Amy shook her head, glancing at Sveta. “There will be rules! This means submitting to my power! It will not be as Goddess’ was! You’ll follow a code of laws, you’ll maintain control and peace, and you’ll protect populations. You’ll be reasonably good! Or you can stay here. You’ll be freer, but you’ll also be a target for heroes!”

She planned this.

I looked at Cryptid.

She planned this with him.

Dot was perched on her shoulders, clearly excited, but Amy’s expression was impossible to read.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

She met my eyes.

She looked almost angry as she looked away. As if she had the fucking right.

“Come with us or stay. It’s your choice,” she said. She looked at Cryptid. “Is that okay?”

Cryptid seized his head, and moved it in a ‘yes’ motion.

Amy’s expression was both angry and sad as she surveyed everything. Freezing rain streaked down her hood, and her breath fogged.

She met my eyes.

“Red Queen,” Lookout said, under her breath. “Dot called her that.”

My skin crawled.

The Red Queen started to walk away. Cryptid was at her side.

Some prisoners were fairly quick to leave to follow. Ones who knew her from the Birdcage? With them went followers, and once a critical amount had left, a majority followed. Only the heroes really stayed.

Only rubble dust, and mud, now. Scarcely any lights on this hillside.

“What? Chris?” Lookout asked. She giggled, sounding uncertain and Swansong pulled her into a hug, so Lookout’s face was buried in Swansong’s side. It would have been a full-body hug if Lookout hadn’t been hugging the orb.

What just happened?

Others were arriving now. Natalie was with the prison staff. Ratcatcher was with Crystalclear and Fume Hood. They seemed to be free of the influence of the Lady in Blue.

Who had been practically torn in half, now lying ten feet away from me. After seeing my- seeing Amy like that, the grisly scene was somehow one of the least shocking things in the midst of all of this.

“He was just waiting for an opening?” Rain asked.

“Shh.” Swansong.

The assistant warden drew closer. We’d been some of the people on point through all of this. He wanted answers.

I didn’t have any. Amy?

“We need to- to do something about this,” I said.

“Are you up for it?” Byron asked.

I shook my head. Images of Amy and the sounds of her voice were weighing on my mind, interrupting half of my thoughts.

I reached out for Sveta’s ball. Lookout handed it over.

“Sorry,” I told Sveta. I hugged the ball tight. “Sorry.”

I felt her forehead thunk against the side of the orb.

“Okay,” Byron said. “I’m officially passing the baton… we both know you’re good at this part.”

He blurred. Once I realized what he was saying, a second or so later than I should have, I could understand it.

I nodded.

“Yeah,” Tristan said. He started striding toward the assistant warden. Without turning to face us, he intoned the words. “Damage control.”

Gleaming – Interlude 9.z

Day Zero

As soon as the words left Tristan’s mouth, he regretted them. He saw the looks on the faces of his teammates, and the magnitude of what he had just done hit home.

“Liar,” Moonsong said.

Tristan had dealt with his share of adrenaline before, but in this moment, he wasn’t sure if he felt the adrenaline from the fight bottoming out or if he felt the adrenaline of this moment ramping up to a ridiculous extreme. The system shock, the shock of being called out, and the tension of the moment made him tremble.

“No. You’re lying!”

“Easy, Moon,” Figurehead said. He reached out and she pushed his hand away.

There were tears welling in her eyes, and he couldn’t even call them crocodile tears this time, because there were tears forming in his own eyes.

If he changed back now-

No.

The line had been crossed. If he took it back now, it wouldn’t change the fact that Byron would know. Byron would start thinking about what to do.

Tribute was filling others in. Steamwheel was mostly out of costume, wearing only her mask. Her suit had been disintegrated, hadn’t it?

Furcate stood off to the side, staring.

That hurt. It threw him.

He couldn’t tell Furcate, he realized. They’d never been someone he could really talk with, but they’d been an ally. He couldn’t tell Nate. He couldn’t tell anyone.

Figurehead dropped to one knee, hand clapping down on the metal of Tristan’s armor. The half-hug and supporting touch was walled off by thick, elaborately decorated metal, to the point he could barely feel it.

“Tristan,” Moonsong hissed his name. He could feel his heart stop. “Look me in the eyes.”

Tristan reached up, fumbling as he tried to pull off a helmet he had put on and taken off a hundred times. His movements were so ineffectual that Figurehead helped, and Tristan accepted without complaint.

There were no bystanders, and the group was clustered in close.

He looked her in the eyes.

“He was my brother,” Tristan said. “I love him, but- he’s not in here anymore.”

His vision momentarily blurred as a tear covered the surface of one eye. He rubbed it away. She didn’t rub anything away, letting moisture streak her cheeks beneath her mask, dark with makeup. He saw her expression – anger dominated it, and that anger terrified him.

Every survival instinct he had meshed with that quiet horror, seizing him. He pushed it to his expression, raw and unfiltered.

He had no idea what to do, and he let her see it.

The anger faltered.

“Try again,” she said. “Please?”

If he released Byron now, what would happen? They would both live in fear.

He could imagine the scenarios. Even the pair of them being out would be a hell of dread and mortal worry.

He tried to convince himself, to step to the edge of the cliff he was was expected to jump from. For his entire life, he’d made the jumps.

He couldn’t.

“I can’t,” he said.

Coiffure rose to her feet, ginger in her movements, and walked over to Moonsong to hug her. That was good. Coiffure was good. Naturally kind, heroic, and cool. Moonsong had her shitty side, but he didn’t want her to suffer. He especially didn’t want her to suffer alone. Nobody deserved that.

Byron.

“Tribute,” Figurehead said, interrupting Tristan’s thought. “Call the bosses. Call everyone.”

Everyone.

Something in that word crystallized the horror in Tristan. He shivered involuntarily. Everyone. The team, the staff, students and teachers, other teams. Hell, there was the girl at the pasta bar just down the street from Reach’s headquarters, who was clench for By, bringing her A-game for flirting. She’d been visibly devastated when they’d come in with Brianna. Byron hadn’t noticed that she’d taken their drinks, but hadn’t been around the rest of the night.

Teenager stuff, in the best and worst way. Tristan would have brought attention to it, but what good would it have done? Byron would have accused him of being underhanded and trying to undermine the relationship with Brianna. What would the pasta bar girl think now? What would she say? What would anyone say?

Family. The thought made Tristan go cold.

“Breathe,” Figurehead said. “Okay? We’ve got you.”

Tristan nodded.

Their cousins. Their aunts and uncles. The old ladies at the church.

Everyone was so many people.

“Deep breath, Capricorn,” Figurehead said. “You didn’t actually breathe when I told you to, you just nodded at me.”

Tristan drew in a deep breath.

They would ask. Everyone would ask.

The thought had crystallized and he was getting his head around the shape and the scale of it.

“They’re coming,” Tribute said, a phone still held to his ear. “Mr. Vaughn and the rest of the staff. They want to know if we need emergency services.”

“Coiffure?” Figurehead asked.

Coiffure shook her head. Her hair was still limp, trailing on the ground.

“No, then. Nothing-” Figurehead started. “There’s nothing we can do.”

There was a commotion. His first thought was Moonsong. It wasn’t. Furcate, clawed costume shoes with metal decoration scuffed against the road-top.

Furcate bodily collided with Tristan. Their arms wrapped around him in a hug. Again, as it had with Figurehead’s half-hug of support, the armor prevented Tristan from feeling the body contact.

Furcate moved their mask, pulling it so it sat sideways. The side of their head pressed against Tristan’s.

“I’m so sorry,” Furcate whispered.

The words shook him. Everything seemed to.

“Me too,” he murmured the words. They were honest ones.

He would have to explain to everyone. He would need… explanations. Expressions. Tones of voice. He couldn’t act. Acting could be seen through. He knew that.

It required something else. Tapping into real feelings and letting them show, as he had before.

Baring his soul, when he wasn’t sure he could bear to.

He was lost in thought, and he didn’t even realize that Furcate was stroking his head until they stopped. Cars were pulling up, navigating the potholes and other damage from Paris’ bombardment.

Mr. Vaughn had a driver, which he normally reserved for events and for emergencies. It let him get in the car immediately, getting ready in the back while the driver focused on the road. A touch of makeup, a change into nicer clothes, and preliminary phone calls.

Oh, this probably counted as an emergency.

Tristan accepted a hand in getting to his feet. He had the support of most of the team, Moonsong excepted, but Coiffure was looking after her, and she needed looking after.

He’d never, even after his trigger event, ever felt any emotion quite so terrible as what twisted in his midsection.

“Do you want me to handle it?” Figurehead asked.

Tristan shook his head. “No.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” Tristan said. The words felt overly mechanical in his mouth, at odds with what he was feeling inside. He had to insist, because he couldn’t imagine coming to terms with any crisis by letting others handle it.

Head on.

He had to take on the issue starting with the man at the top. If he could sway Mr. Vaughn, then others would follow.

The issue was with swaying Mr. Vaughn. The guy wasn’t stupid.

“Something happened to Byron?” Mr. Vaughn asked. “Are you okay, Tristan?”

“I’m not hurt,” Tristan reported.

“You didn’t tell him?” Figurehead asked. The question disoriented Tristan, until he realized it was aimed at Tribute.

“Tribute explained it,” Mr. Vaughn said. “I wanted to hear it from you all.”

He looked so grave, so serious.

Which wasn’t to say Tristan wasn’t also. He’d always related to Mr. Vaughn; Tristan had even imagined that if Byron hadn’t fucking strangled him and if they hadn’t gotten powers, he might have ended up in a similar position, doing similar work.

“Sir,” Tristan started.

“No need for anything fancy, Capricorn,” Mr. Vaughn said. “Tell me what happened, if you can.”

A conspiracy to start. They weren’t even explicitly supposed to be here. He had raised the subject of going after Paris again with Mr. Vaughn, and he had been given unofficial, deniable permission.

“We were scouting areas where we knew Paris might turn up. From our research, we know some of his patterns,” Tristan said, his voice still mechanical, hollow. “It was strict recon. His reconnaissance got us before ours got him.”

A conspiracy. Mr. Vaughn knew part of it was a lie, but he wouldn’t press. Reach would get in trouble with the likes of the Youth Guard if it sanctioned minors going after professional killers, as much as it wanted the credit for arrests. The rest of the team knew that part or all of it was a lie, but they didn’t want to get in trouble with Mr. Vaughn or Reach.

Both sides would want to keep this quiet for selfish reasons. Both sides would want to go to Tristan if they needed to keep the story straight, which would let him control the story.

“Byron got killed,” Furcate said.

“It was Paris that did this?”

“Later into the fight. He started hitting a lot harder. He had a trick, shooting giant nails like cannon blasts. Byron and I were in sync for a lot of the fight, and then we weren’t. I don’t know if he got disoriented, but he stayed a second too long. I can’t change.”

“Don’t you dare blame him,” Moonsong was heated.

“Calm down. It’s okay,” Coiffure shushed.

“I blame-” Tristan started. His voice quavered, and he had to steel himself. “I blame myself. I should have pushed to run.”

“You utter asshole,” Moonsong said.

“Come on, Song,” Coiffure said. “Let’s- we won’t say anything we regret.”

Moonsong shook her head.

“Capricorn,” Mr Vaughn said. He put hands on either of Tristan’s pauldrons, the elaborate ram’s head armor panels at Tristan’s shoulders. A light shake communicated the touch through the armor. “Why don’t you get in my car? We’ll talk privately there. Dr. Wall is waiting at the office, I’ve called your parents, and they’re on their way.”

“And Paris?” Steamwheel asked.

“Paris,” Mr. Vaughn said, and his voice hardened. “We’ll call the PRT. We’ll let other teams know too. He crossed a line. Intentionally?”

Tristan hesitated. Paris- Paris had been in the back of his mind as he’d made the decision. He’d known Paris would come up and the community’s way of dealing with Paris would change.

Thinking about it rationally, though-

He thought of Nate, miserable and vulnerable in the hospital room. Of Furcate getting hurt. Of the innumerable people who Paris might have interacted with in his day to day. The ‘little’ acts of hate.

“Intentional,” Tristan lied.

Mr. Vaughn nodded, his expression grim; none of the usual professional warmth was visible.

“We’ll talk things over in the car, Capricorn. I’ll walk you through everything. Everyone else, there are cars if you want a ride. It may be best, in case he comes back this way. All team activities, missions, and events are canceled until further notice. We’ll pull in the adult capes that we have on the roam and on commission.”

The effects kept on rippling out.

Tristan listened for a second more, realized he wasn’t really registering what was being said, and climbed into the car, closing the door behind him.

⊙

Present

The car door opened. Two people got out. Mayor Wynn and her assistant.

The rain still fell. Tristan wished he had Byron’s cold immunity, because he was starting to feel it. He had talked to the only person in charge of the prison who hadn’t been compromised, and he had talked to the hero groups.

Nothing set in stone. They were uncertain, and they wanted to talk among themselves. There was always a chance that things could go awry if the wrong voice was forceful enough at a time others were uncertain. Some would be waiting to see how this went.

“Jeanne Wynn. Citrine,” Victoria’s voice was quiet.

“And the Number Man,” Sveta added. “Cauldron.”

Tristan blinked. That was a name he hadn’t heard in a long time. “I’ve heard that name. The Number Man, I mean.”

“Supervillain banker,” Sveta murmured. “He bankrolled almost half of the villainous groups on Earth Bet, serving a secondary role as a broker, protector and distributor of funds, launderer. He was an assassin, acting as one arm of the ‘bogeyman of the cape world’ group. The Irregulars were keeping track of him for a while.”

Tristan looked at the assistant more closely. Not quite nerdy enough to be nerd chic, the man had a nice belt buckle, wore a peacoat and narrow slacks, with a muted plaid shirt beneath the coat. Strong chin with a cleft, boring hair.

No, not nerd chic, but he wore clothes that fit him damn near perfectly, helped by the athletic body beneath the clothes. When most guys didn’t wear clothes that fit them, even fairly nondescript clothes worn well could draw the eye. Tristan had always had a thing for dorky guys with shells that he could then crack open.

And then there was Wynn. Citrine. Her clothes were nicer than Kurt’s. The kind that wasn’t available on Gimel, unless people were willing to pay a premium for otherwise premium clothes from elsewhere. There were different tiers of ‘premium’, too. Stuff like a rash guard or nice pair of pants were expensive enough that they needed three to five days of construction work to pay for them. For a nice sheer top with a pattern on it in what looked like gold leaf? Admitting that he knew next to nothing about women’s clothing, he felt like it was a special case where barter was necessary, because Earth Gimel’s currency was still in uncertain territories.

Tristan tried to remain still and calm as he recalled all of the little details. Tattletale had dished on these guys, and so had Barcode. Victoria had talked about Citrine before, and the Number Man… well, he was a myth.

“That is one way to tie up a loose end,” Citrine noted, her attention on the body that had yet to be touched.

“Tying up this loose end may have created a hundred more,” Tristan said.

“As is always the case,” Citrine said. She extended a hand. “You would be Capricorn?”

He pulled off his gauntlet and shook her hand firmly. “Yes. Pleased to meet you.”

“I’m Mayor Jeanne Wynn. Good solid handshake there, Capricorn.”

“Ah, you too.”

“Thank you. I was raised by someone who would break a bone in my hand if my handshake was anything except perfect.”

“I’m… sorry?”

“He was the best thing for me at the time,” she said. “Sometimes we need a bit of decisive, pointed violence.”

Her hand indicated Goddess’ corpse. A pair of black birds flew down to feast, maybe ravens – they were large enough. An officer waved it off.

The awkward share had been a lead-in to bringing up that topic. There was something callous about that. Jesus. She wasn’t even pretending not to be a villain.

“Antares,” Citrine said, greeting the group. “Rain o’ Fire, Swansong, Ashley Stillons, Lookout. Natalie Matteson. And, of course, Tress. Sveta Karelia.”

“I hope you don’t mind,” the Number Man said. “I took the liberty of looking up your information. I remember the fact we didn’t know it was a point of contention last time.”

“It wasn’t a question of courtesy,” Sveta said. “I didn’t want you to look it up. I wanted you to know it.”

“Then I’m sorry,” he said.

“I don’t think you’re capable of feeling anything, let alone remorse. You don’t do what you’ve done if you have any remorse.”

“Not often,” the Number Man said. “Remorse is a funny thing. The mark it promises to leave can so easily be drowned out by the need we feel in the moment.”

“I think there’s an element of choice in that,” Victoria said. “Pretending there’s no choice and that it’s a force of nature sounds dangerously close to a justification.”

“If the strength of our needs justified anything, there wouldn’t be any remorse. If we were all capable of accurate self-assessment. If.”

Sveta spoke up again, audible through the reinforced ball that contained her. “I can’t escape the idea that if you were capable of accurate self-assessment, Kurt, you would have offed yourself politely years ago.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Opinion. I don’t think I’m capable of assessing you and coming to any fair judgment, I’m biased. You know, on account of how you turned me into a monster.”

Tristan met Jeanne Wynn’s eyes.

“What are you here for?” he asked her.

“Answers.”

“I don’t get the impression you’d buy any bullshit or white lies,” Tristan said.

“It would have to be very good lying. If I think you’re trying to pull one over on me, then I’m going to walk away, and I’ll get my information elsewhere.”

“If we’re honest and upfront, then that should count for something,” Tristan said. “Something beyond what we deserve for being experimented on, gotta give Sveta and Weld a nod here, and for being the ones to stick our necks out on this. Too many people held back. You, the Wardens, Tattletale. You were scared.”

“Not in the way you think. You want to make demands?”

“We want many of the same things you do,” he said. He let some latent frustration seep into his voice. “And I swear, if you take us for granted, we’ll leave right now. If you don’t think we will, you should be the one to walk away, because you did pledge to do it if I lied to your face.”

Citrine looked at The Number Man, then back to Tristan. “What do you want?”

“Cauldron studied powers. I want everything possible that you have on Case Fifty-Threes and on Case Seventies. If you have any clever ideas on undoing the damage, reserved for your high-end clients, you provide it.”

That got him a few surprised looks from his team. Antares folded her arms, eyebrows raised. Sveta was looking up at him.

“Alright,” Citrine said.

“Alright what?”

“Power research documentation from several governments. You may need translators. Our own field notes. There’s no reason to keep them in our back pocket. PRT power testing notes from all known Case Fifty-Threes and Seventies.”

“Can-” Victoria started. She looked at Tristan.

“Go ahead,” he said, shrugging.

“Can we get all PRT files?” Victoria asked. “My collection has massive holes in it, and I know the Wardens feel the loss.”

“Aren’t you greedy?” Citrine said. “I can provide the means, not the ends.”

“That’s fine. As long as I know they’re out there somewhere.”

“They are. I’ll point you to a server and give you the tools to access it. Distribute the information as you see fit.”

“In terms of mutual goals, we need backup from the city,” Tristan said. “I know it’s politically inconvenient, but we’re catching the worst of it on every front. The public, resources, information, lack of connections to people in power, the danger and the chaos.”

“We’re already making plans to elevate the other teams. The Wardens haven’t been in a position to be a public face or a middleman since the portal disaster. We can provide information when we provide it to the other teams, we’ll encourage the law enforcement and parahuman patrols to cooperate with you, insofar as the mayor can do that. Will that be all?”

She asked that last question like she was hinting that her patience was wearing thin.

“So long as you don’t throw us under the bus,” Tristan said. “Yeah.”

“Fill me in.”

“I’ve massaged things with the assistant Warden. I explained the sequence of events, and he was reassured by Foresight’s counsel at the scariest moments in the night. He’s on our side, except for the sheer number of prisoners they just lost. He’s scared. He needs reassurance.”

“He just lost his job,” Victoria said. “He’s worried he’s going to be painted as the villain or made out to be the scapegoat.”

“Understood.”

“We caught wind of the plot when we traced Cheit’s people and they turned out to be Teacher’s. He was responsible for the attack on the portals and for the attack on this prison. It didn’t feel like he went all-out, even if he did it smart. He wanted the prison sealed off so he could collect everyone within, and we think he wanted Goddess with them. She slipped the trap.”

“The collection process is using Mama Mathers and Scapegoat,” Rain volunteered.

“We know that much. He’s made several oblique attacks on key capes.”

“If he’s using the portals, I have a way to mess with him. I could make devices,” Lookout said.

“It could help. Keeping certain individuals out of his reach, for one thing. Thank you.”

“You’re-”

“No,” Tristan interrupted Lookout. “Not for free.”

“If you’re trying to look better in front of your team by driving a hard bargain, you should know that there are limits, Capricorn.”

“I’m not driving a hard bargain or trying to look better,” Tristan said, his voice rising. “We drove. We looked good. We put on a damn good performance out there, all considered.”

“We talked it over as a team,” Victoria said. “We agreed we’re willing to cooperate with you. So far, we’re only asking for information and cooperation.”

“You talked about that when you appeared on television.”

“Things are coming apart at the seams. We’ve got something resembling a needle, you’ve got thread. Can we please cooperate?” Victoria asked. “Even Sveta agreed it was necessary.”

Citrine drew in a breath. “I’ll help so long as it doesn’t hurt elsewhere. We’re interested in the devices that could block off Teacher’s portals. What do you want?”

“A pony?” Lookout asked.

Tristan felt a twinge of alarm. Kenzie being happy and laughing was all well and good, and even a joke where wasn’t out of place, but it seemed uncharacteristically young for Lookout, and when he paired that with the Cryptid betrayal…

He’d have to talk to Victoria, Sveta, Rain, and Swansong later.

Lookout laughed a little, “No sorry, I’m kidding. Um.”

“Funds,” Swansong suggested, as serious as Lookout was being silly. “Materials.”

“You have a person named The Number Man,” Tristan added.

“Funds. Easy enough,” Citrine said. “But the pony comment is a good opportunity for me to gracefully segue-”

“Oh no,” Lookout said. “Did I do something?”

Again, just slightly off. He didn’t consider himself a Kenzie whisperer like Ashley and Victoria seemed to be, but… he wanted to talk it over with them.

“On the topic of things little girls dream of, not a pony, but a unicorn.”

“Monokeros,” Victoria said.

“You know her. We’re interested. We’ll barter, if need be.”

“She’s a monster,” Victoria said.

“We can keep a leash on her.”

“A lot of people seem to think that,” Sveta said. “Goddess did. Teacher might have.”

“We’re confident.”

“And we’re sorry,” Tristan said. He shrugged, and then he lied, “We had to put a permanent end to her.”

Monokeros was still in the hole. The last they’d seen, as they’d collected Kingdom Come and Blindside, Monokeros had been trying to stack things high enough to reach the lip. When they’d left the prison dimension, Lookout had confirmed everyone was out, re-keyed the exit portal behind them.

The lie threatened to end the bargaining, to make Citrine walk away, to cost them the notes, the PRT files, the funds.

“Noted,” Citrine said.

If she’d noticed the lie -Tristan was fairly confident she would have had to read another member of the team to see it- she gave no indication.

One less loose end to deal with.

“Let’s talk sequence of events,” Citrine said. “Tell me what happened.”

“What happened and what we told the Warden differed,” Tristan said. “We thought it best to paint a picture that the mass control was briefer and more fragile than it was. It will sit better with the public. Breakthrough, by our narrative, was captured later and broke free more decisively.”

My narrative.

“Is that a problem?” Victoria asked.

“No,” Citrine said. “Walk me through it.”

Victoria handled the talking, focused on a task in a way that helped to pull her out of the mire, even as her body language was nervous and defensive.

Tristan looked over at Goddess. More scavenger birds were clustering close to the body. It looked like the medical examiner was at least preparing to collect it now.

Byron had compared Goddess to him earlier. It wasn’t wrong. Her fatal flaw wasn’t so different from his own.

Like a vehicle with no ability to reverse course. The only difference is that I was given a chance to turn around. You turned around just in time to get disemboweled.

⊙

Day Two

This would get easier, right? Couldn’t he harden his heart?

Mama sobbed. Both of her hands clutched his right hand, gripping it tight enough that it might have done damage if he hadn’t had that tiny boost of power. He could hear the pain, and he felt like it was killing him.

“We should go, Anita,” Papa said. “We’ll be at the hotel. We’ll see him tomorrow morning.”

“Come, Tristan,” Mama said. “Come to the hotel. There’s a cot.”

Tristan didn’t know what to say to that.

Papa was the savior. “He has had his fill of us, Anita. He’s grown used to his independence and he needs his own space and privacy to grieve, and- I want my space to grieve with you and nobody else.”

Mama released Tristan’s hand and pulled him into a hug. The gesture made his own tears fall free, just when he’d thought he’d run out.

“Eat, drink. Meet with your friends. We will meet in the morning and talk about the funeral.”

Tristan’s breath caught in his throat as he opened his mouth to respond. He saw something similar in his mother’s face.

Papa cupped the side of Tristan’s face in one hand.

“Mr. Vaughn offered to handle things,” Tristan said.

“We will do this as a family,” Papa said. His gaze lingered a moment too long, too hard.

That in itself almost took the air out of Tristan’s lungs. He swallowed hard.

Does he suspect?

“Tomorrow morning,” Tristan said. He dreaded it already.

He stood in the doorway to his room as he watched his parents walk away, raising a hand in a small wave each time they looked back his way.

Two days. Two days and not one minute to himself.

‘Himself’. ‘Independence’.

He knew why. They were concerned about him, about what he might do while he grieved.

He shut the door.

From the moment the door closed, it took about ten or fifteen minutes for him to pull himself together.

“Byron,” he whispered. “I had to.”

For Byron, it could easily be the first moment that he knew for sure that this was Tristan’s doing, and not a mistake or a glitch with the power.

Tristan crossed the room. On the bulletin board, amid notes from Tristan to Byron and Byron to Tristan, there were pictures.

He pulled one free, not removing the tack first. A bit of the picture tore. It was a small photo- smaller than standard. A young Byron was standing with a clear pout on his face, arms folded. He’d dyed his hair green, and standing beside him was a younger Tristan, hair a bright red. Where Byron had been pouting, young Tristan was grinning wide, posing by flexing his arms, tiny muscles standing out.

They’d been eleven. Byron had dyed his hair and Tristan had followed suit, and he’d done a better job with the bleach job prior to applying the dye. Byron had not been impressed with Tristan.

“I had to,” Tristan said, to the photo and to his silent company. “We were both- we were going to pieces. I was miserable, losing weight. I know you noticed I couldn’t sleep.”

He wanted to hit something and keep hitting it until he couldn’t move anymore, but he was so tired he couldn’t bring himself to move. He wanted to party and yet at the same time he couldn’t imagine spending more time around people.

More time around people while being completely, utterly alone. Completely and utterly by his own doing.

“And you…” he continued to whisper, out of a concern for bugs, because he wasn’t willing to rule anything out, not when the stakes were this high. “The self harm, By? The repeated, escalating self harm, starting with the pen? I’ll assume that was self-harm and not you trying to hurt me. But it was scary, By. One of us was going to lose it eventually. Do something stupid. The way you were going, I wasn’t sure you were going to last the rest of the year.”

No rebuttal. Only the exaggerated pout, skinny arms folded.

Out of a desire for words, for anything, he turned the photo over, hoping for a caption or note.

Nothing.

“I was thinking about it. I was thinking that maybe you were thinking about it. As you got close to Moonsong, I couldn’t help but worry that you were thinking more and more about the future. What you would have to do to have that future you wanted. House, white picket fence, dog, wife, and kids with really high chance of getting manipulative bitch genes?”

He paused.

“Sorry,” he amended his statement. “But I was thinking it and our thoughts are all we really have to ourselves. I don’t know what you were thinking, but you were getting more and more controlling. You were strategically taking out things I value. It’s hard to convince myself there’s not an endgame, and that we’re not in a cold war race to see who can find a plausible way out first.”

He pulled off his shirt, pausing halfway to dab at his eyes with the fabric. He pulled it off the rest of the way, balled it up, and threw it into the hamper. Nothing but net.

There was no joy in that small thing. Only an oppressive feeling, crushing down on his chest.

“I saw Furcate kill their other self during the first Paris fight. It put the seed in my head. I tried to shake it, but I couldn’t. By the second fight, I wasn’t planning anything. I thought about what the scenario might look like. I might have helped it along subconsciously. Then, in the middle of everything, I saw things line up. Nobody had visibility. Paris was… probably the best person to take the fall, because he’s scum…”

Please understand.

“It was an impulse. It was maybe my one and only chance, ever. A massive choice, my existence on the line.”

He smoothed out a wrinkle in the photo.

“I can’t take it back,” he said. “Because if you weren’t thinking about how to take one hundred percent control before, you have to be doing it now. It was about survival for me, and I’ve made it about survival for you, doing this.”

He looked at the bulletin board, organized into two sides. The things common to the both of them ran down the middle. The picture he held was among those things.

He touched papers on Byron’s side, as if he could find a line that matched up with what he wanted and needed to hear.

The silence weighed on him, condemning. No response from the photo.

He felt an irrational kind of anger at that. Slowly and methodically, motions out of tune with the flare of anger, he began removing tacks. Byron’s reminder about an I.O.U. for a movie choice on movie night fluttered to the table. Tristan’s hand struck it hard, the impact loud. Pinning it down. Both the violence of the motion and the noise had surprised even him.

He resumed work. One by one, he removed notes from Byron’s side.

“If it’s down to one of us surviving, I’ve got to side with me.”

⊙

Day Twenty-Four

“You’re really up for this, Capricorn?” Coiffure asked.

“I need this,” Tristan said.

“Alright,” she said. She smiled. She was wearing her training costume, the same general shape, but without the bells, whistles, and decorations- what Steamwheel called ‘tinsel’, the zig-zags of metal that stood out on the bodysuits.

Tristan didn’t have a bodysuit. His armor was all metal, all decorated. He strapped his armor on, setting everything in place in its proper order.

There was a ritual to it, and he liked the ritual. There were days that were rituals, each meal a single step in a larger pattern with a long-term purpose. Each point of hygiene. The phone calls to the parents on Wednesdays and Sundays.

Others came in, finding their seats at the end of the room opposite the door. Most had snacks from the vending machine. Steamwheel, Figurehead, Tribute, Furcate.

“Sparring?” Figurehead asked.

“Figuring out where my head is at. The fans are starting to ask where Capricorn is.”

“I’ve been wondering that myself,” Moonsong said.

Tristan’s heart skipped a beat.

“You took on a role as team leader. We got used to you in that role,” Moonsong said. She was keeping Coiffure’s kid brother company, the two of them eating the same candy. She paused beside Tristan as she crossed the room, reaching out to lay a hand on his arm. Her smile was an encouraging one. “Let’s get you back on your feet.”

Tristan nodded.

Moonsong headed over to the benches. Coiffure’s little brother sat between Moonsong and Furcate.

“Slow motion to open, speed up?” Coiffure asked.

“Sure,” Tristan said, smiling before he pulled his helmet on.

Crimson motes. They appeared freely and after his expectations that he would be badly out of practice, the ease with which they moved caught him off guard.

Coiffure produced a hair whip, freeing a flail -chain and spiked head- from her silver mane. The chain was lengthy and the hair itself long enough and strong enough to produce a lazy whipping motion. Tristan ducked beneath, though it was swung so high it would have barely grazed his helmet.

The little brother cheered for blood. Probably the most enthusiasm for cape stuff that Tristan had seen out of him.

It was typical for the team to warm up with a back and forth, speeding up as they went. Because it was a back and forth, it was his turn.

He materialized his rock, aware that there was no other form to swap to. Wherever he placed it, that was where it would be.

Coiffure’s hair-flail slammed noisily against floorboards as hair went limp. The sound echoed through the empty arena.

Spikes, jagged, like pyramid-shaped triangles drawn out long, some connected as one triangle after another to form the angular breaks where the lines had drawn curves. Some were connected in chains of three and four. All black, with crimson material visible through gaps, where one connected to another or wedded the spikes to a surface.

“That might be harder to sell to the design team,” Coiffure said.

Tristan couldn’t respond, his throat tight. Of course it changed.

“Holy shit,” Tribute said. He hopped down from his seat, approaching one near him.

Tristan felt it. “Trib! Back!”

Tribute reacted, stepping back. Moonsong used her power, and Tribute’s backward step became a bound.

The chain of spikes moved- the red bonds acting like muscle, the black spikes rigid, spearing, stabbing, and scraping at floorboard.

All through the arena, the spikes moved, scratching, reaching, stabbing in the direction of people they couldn’t reach.

Coiffure destroyed one, swinging out with her flail. The one she hit on the backward swing survived the hit, then stabbed down, pinning the chain to the floor. It yanked, pulling Coiffure closer to another spike.

Tristan kicked it. With the damage that was already done, a firm kick with a metal boot destroyed the spike, breaking it away from the ground.

He did what he could, but it was really the team that stepped up. Tribute gave strength, Steamwheel had a gauntlet in her backpack, and Figurehead scanned with his ‘first impressions’ figuring before wading into the fray.

Tristan fled the room. Down the hall, past the staff offices. Into his own room.

He gasped for breath and he couldn’t find it. He’d practiced techniques, but this- this was something beyond.

For just an instant, he’d been left to wonder if the intelligence behind those things was By, somewhere in there, gone mad enough he’d hurt his old friends.

Tristan looked across the room, trying to keep his breathing straight. All of Byron’s things were packed away into a single box, slid into a corner. Moonsong had taken some, on a night she’d visited to chat and reminisce.

A gasp of a laugh escaped. There were moments they were almost friends.

There was a knock at the door. Tristan looked up, and he saw K, mask off.

“It changed based on our relationship to each other,” Tristan said. “I did- I did something.”

“No. That was your power, and powers can be cruel.”

“I- it’s my fault.”

“No. Sometimes the powers do this. Sometimes I don’t get any good Furcates for weeks on end.”

“It’s not-” Tristan started.

What was he supposed to say? Any words he uttered, any proof he gave, it would be as good as sealing his own fate, and it would devastate K.

Could he hurt them that badly?

Irrationally, he knew the right thing to do, but with the small sorts of pain he would inflict so clear in front of his face, looking at him with worry, he couldn’t bring himself to say it any more clearly.

K unwrapped a candy. “Open.”

He opened his mouth. He made a face as he tasted it. “Lemon? I thought we got you onto something else.”

“We all need something to fall back to,” K said. “When we lose track of ourselves. If we run into a tie and we’re supposed to decide among ourselves, we have a fourth number we track. Physical health, mental health, girl-ness, and the tiebreaker.”

“The candy?”

“Reminds me of the woman who raised me,” K said, sucking on the candy “If I ever don’t like it or I don’t feel reminded of those days, I’m not me.”

“I don’t have anything like that.”

“Not Nate?”

“Not- no. I like him, but…”

But I killed the person I was supposed to fall back to.

⊙

Day 57

He panted for breath. In all of the fantasies, he hadn’t ever imagined it being quite this sweaty.

He didn’t even have his breath before Nate was kissing him again, pushing him down against the bed. His hand ran through the thin line of Nate’s chest hair. Nate smelled so good. No products really dominated, there wasn’t a heavy sweat smell. It was just Nate.

Tristan broke the kiss, panting for breath again. Nate leaned in to kiss him again, and Tristan had to pull his head back. “I’m out of breath. Give me a second. What got into you?”

“I missed you.” Nate’s fingers stroked Tristan’s hair.

Those words made Tristan choke up just a bit, which didn’t help with the fact that he’d barely had a chance to breathe.

Nate bit his lip, then reached down for the button of Tristan’s jeans.

A reversal of months ago.

Tristan helped with the removal of the jeans. He kicked them off.

The moment was very still. He felt Nate’s hand.

Nate leaned in close, kissing him. The hand moved to Tristan’s neck, instead.

“Sorry,” Tristan said, as the kiss broke.

“No pressure.”

“I can’t.”

“No worries,” Nate said. “It’s been a har- a tough few months.”

“It doesn’t feel right, I think. That’s why-”

“Shh. What would feel right?”

“It sounds lame, but… can we just hold each other?”

“Anytime,” Nate whispered, stroking Tristan’s hair. “Always.”

⊙

Day 60

Tristan knocked.

“Tristan! Come in. Please. Sit.”

Tristan obeyed, entering Dr. Wall’s office, shutting the door firmly behind him, then seating himself on the couch. Such a cliche, that there was an actual couch.

“I know we didn’t make an appointment.”

“My door is always open, provided I’m not already talking to someone.”

Tristan nodded. The fingers on his right hand trembled. He seized them with the fingers of his left, and the nervousness seemed to multiply. His two clasped hands trembled together. He unclasped them, and he smoothed down the lap of his pants before gripping his knees.

“What’s on your mind, Tristan?”

“Everything,” Tristan said.

“Well, that will only take about ten billion years to the twelfth power to get through. Do you have the secret of immortality? Or do you want to narrow it down some?”

It was said in a joking tone, but Tristan didn’t feel much like laughing.

“I did it,” Tristan said. He looked at the therapist.

“What?”

“I killed my brother.”

Dr. Wall nodded.

“Maybe you misheard me? I said-”

“I heard what you said. I’ve been expecting this visit for a while.”

Tristan shivered, whole-body.

“Survivor’s guilt, Tristan. It plays tricks on our minds. We replay scenes over and over again, imagining things with a different emphasis, or we exaggerate details. I’m honestly shocked that it took you two months to come here and say this. I’d even say it’s a mark of extreme emotional stability.”

Tristan laughed, incredulous. “What? No. No, I’m anything but emotionally stable right now. I’m saying I killed my brother. Deliberately.”

The smile fell from Dr. Wall’s face. With it, Tristan’s heart plummeted down to where his balls were. He’d expected this.

“Okay,” Dr. Wall said. “Serious talk. That’s a lot of weight to be carrying on your shoulders.”

Tristan was silent.

“How long have you been wanting to come here and say this?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a month.”

Dr. Wall nodded.

“I almost told Furcate.”

“It’s probably for the best that you didn’t.”

“Yeah,” Tristan said. He laughed, and it sounded fake to his own ears. “Yeah. There’s… there’s preparations to be done beforehand.”

“Preparations?”

“I can’t- he’s in here. He’s been in here for two months. I can let him out, but not before I’ve done something to ensure that it’s not going to get switched around, with me stuck inside for forever. I need to write letters, I was thinking-”

“Tristan,” Dr. Wall said.

Tristan swallowed. His head was shaking.

“You’re a promising hero,” Dr. Wall told him, his voice level and soothing. “And you’re clearly in a bad place. Anyone would start to fantasize after being so close to their sibling at the time of death.”

“It’s not a fantasy,” Tristan said, hands jittery, head jittery, legs jittery. He thought he might punch Dr. Wall, and he knew what a disaster that would be. He’d need cooperation to write the letters, ensure he was protected when he let Byron out.

“You’re a promising hero with a lucrative career with Team Reach ahead of them. I can tell you that nearly every hero that I’ve worked with has gone through a dark period. Their minds play tricks on them, they replay memories in their heads until the footage becomes distorted, and honestly, we don’t love talking about it, but the powers play their role. Yours recently changed. You’ve been adapting, doing okay in the field with the new power. We’re hoping it will change again.”

Tristan didn’t have a response.

“You don’t like the new power, I know.”

“No.”

“You’re still mourning your brother’s passing.”

“Yes. No- it’s not that he passed.”

“Listen,” Dr. Wall said, voice firm. “Anyone in your circumstance would want a magic bullet cure to what ails them. When people aren’t coping or are finding their way to coping, they construct fantasies. In yours, if this is a fantasy, you get your brother back, you have a resolution to a memory that would haunt anyone, and you can punish yourself for a situation what your unconscious is telling you is your fault.”

Tristan stared down at his hands.

“I can’t imagine anything more tragic than getting your parent’s hopes up, getting your own hopes up, bringing controversy to the team and your teammates, and potentially letting word get out that would give Paris an escape clause in his court proceedings for your brother’s murder… only for nothing to come of it, a trick your grief has played on your brain.”

Tristan shook his head. “Except I could let him out now.”

A noise made Tristan’s head turn. He was jumpy.

“Could you?” Dr. Wall asked.

“What?”

“Could you let him out right now?”

Could he? He’d shied away from that part of his power for so long he worried it had atrophied. It was hard to even think about it with all of the compounded dread, each day worse than the last. To think about doing it without the protection of a pre-existing deal, a promise from powerful people?

“Guess not,” Dr. Wall said.

Tristan shook his head. “I can, but I need precautions first. I screwed this up so fucking badly. I got rid of him, but he takes up more of my day, my thoughts and my routines now than when I gave him half of my time!”

“Sit down, Tristan,” the therapist said.

He’d stood up, and he didn’t realize it. He stood on the spot, the mechanical instructions for sitting himself down momentarily blank and blacked out.

He didn’t sit.

“If what you said were true, there isn’t a binding contract we could devise that would supercede the criminal charges. We can’t give you a magic contract that would protect you. You would likely see some form of punishment, including removal from the team. The team would no doubt be devastated. We both know Byron threatened to go to the media in the past, when he was concerned with your behavior. He would do it in the future.”

Tristan shook his head, eyes on the floor.

“Yes?”

Tristan stopped shaking his head.

“He would.”

“Maybe.”

“We know he would, it’s a pattern we’ve seen before.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a lot we need to talk about, and a lot of work we need to do, but we can get you to a better place, where this is well behind you.”

Deeply uncomfortable, Tristan started to turn away. “I’m gonna-”

“I think you should stay.”

“I’m going to go,” Tristan said.

“You have a bright, brilliant future ahead of you, Tristan. Talk to me or talk to someone here at Reach before you do anything. We’re on your side. You’re not alone.”

Not alone. He’d felt so alone for so long, even the words were a comfort.

He shrugged, then turned to the door.

It was ajar. He’d closed it on entering and now it was open.

He shut it behind him as he stepped into the hallway, pushing to make sure it couldn’t just pop open. Belatedly, he realized he hadn’t said a farewell to Dr. Wall.

It didn’t matter. Fear stabbed him in the gut as he looked around, checking around the corner.

When? When he’d shouted?

He’d heard a clicking noise earlier. Who was it? What did they hear?

Fear gripped his heart. If he didn’t own this? If he didn’t release Byron with all safeguards in place? They might condemn him.

A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face as he looked around. Nobody was in the exercise area, and why would an eavesdropper go straight there? No staff in the nearby offices.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Who?

Nobody was here. It was part of why he’d gone to Dr. Wall.

There was a distant noise. He jogged in its direction.

Moonsong. He felt his blood run cold. The light streaked down the hallway, illuminating the colorful tiles.

“Hey,” Moonsong said. “I didn’t know anyone else was around. Do you want something?”

She indicated the vending machine.

He stared at her.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

She offered him a sympathetic look. “I don’t feel okay a lot of the time either. I know we haven’t always gotten along, but if you ever wanted… to talk, or whatever. Go do something, reminisce, I’m okay with that.”

He shook his head, then realized how it might be taken. “No thanks. Not right now.”

“Take care of yourself, Tristan.”

“You too,” he said.

They parted ways. She went outside. He went to his room.

The television’s channel zero-zero was to the surveillance cameras. He found Moonsong and watched for a minute. She seemed normal.

Seemed wasn’t good enough.

He pulled his old laptop out from beneath the bed, coated in dust and hair, and put it into his backpack. Not a Reach laptop. Those might be monitored. He couldn’t use the Reach internet connection either. He’d go to a coffee shop or library.

Insurance. He’d need insurance.

⊙

Day 72

Helicopters cut through the air. Searchlights illuminated a squat industrial building. The light had a blue tinge, the building itself was terracotta.

Figurehead gave the orders. “We go in quiet. We move as Steamwheel orders from comms. Twelve gifted kids on a special trip with their study group, one teacher, and one guy with a weapon and a whole lot of anger.”

Figurehead used a stick to draw in the dirt. An overhead map, with the layout. He placed bits of gravel down to represent the kids, and then put down a quarter. He tapped the quarter. “Shooter.”

“Why us and not the police?” Tristan asked.

“Because when they sent a PRT hero in covertly, he blacked out. Same as what happens to anyone with powers is near anyone who gets powers. Given that the situation isn’t resolved, we have to assume it was the shooter.”

“Alright,” Tristan said. He looked at the others. He saw smiles and nods.

It took a minute before all instructions were given. Tristan was careful.

They probably talked it over beforehand, Tristan thought.

“Go go go!” Figurehead hissed the words. The entire group, Steamwheel excepted, ran down the slope and along the shadowy area where the fence-mounted lights didn’t reach. They reached the fence, and Coiffure cut the fence with her hair.

Figurehead likes to fall back on the playbook. When making up a crime, have the details be ones you already know.

He went with the group, and then they began splitting up, fanning through the building.

They asked each other if they’d talked about this one in front of me. They must have agreed that they didn’t.

They forgot that I’ve gotten drunk with most members of the team. I remember other people’s drunk stories.

Students on a field trip, during the day, not the evening. One person taking them and their teachers hostage. One of the kids triggered.

It was a training exercise or a trap. The trap made more sense.

The moment the group had fanned out enough that Tristan wasn’t in sight of anyone, he took a detour. Down to the basement. Personal cell out.

Backup. His insurance.

The intensity of the moment made the sick feeling faint and ethereal. The trap meant they suspected. If he could just distract, maybe things could go back to normal.

He had four names on his contact list. Three were local. Two fit for this situation. Bazilizk, ‘z’s instead of ‘s’s, and Throttle.

In the dark, the glow of the screen was painfully bright. He saw the first message pop up, and then the second.

He felt calmer than he’d imagined he would. As if everything going as wrong as possible meant he had nothing to worry about.

He’d already laid groundwork. The fourth name on his list was a tinker, one capable of behavior modification with needles. He’d already planted evidence around his room, changed his schedule.

If they really did suspect him because he’d been acting strangely, he could use that, create reasonable doubt.

The alternative to that was losing his Mama and Papa. It was losing Reach, Furcate, Figurehead, Coiffure, Tribute. It was losing everything.

Still, he felt calm.

Twenty minutes passed. Then thirty. There was no commotion. There were no gunshots or powers used. He heard people pass by, and he knew they were looking for him.

Come on.

Another minute passed. His screen glowed.

They were here. The insurance.

He texted them his location in the building.

They’d give him an out, an excuse, and time, all of which were things he needed. He’d get away, then he’d figure out his next steps.

The sick feeling was bad enough he thought he might throw up. The costume and the armor helped, more than anything. A wall between him and the rest of the world.

“Are we going out the way we came in?” Bazilizk asked, his voice a whisper cutting through the dark.

Tristan turned. “Is there a better way out?”

“Not really. Usually people don’t hire me unless they want someone to die, and going out that way will be quiet,” Bazilizk hissed.

Bazilizk was as tall as Paris, but had very broad shoulders, with elaborate decoration at the face, hands, and feet.

Throttle was more unassuming, a guy with tousled hair, a helmet that looked like wood wound around a stump, gaps left for the eyes. His clothing was mundane and ragged, and he carried a rope.

He would be Tristan’s excuse.

“They’re expecting me to run. They may cut us off. If that route works, it works. Just be prepared for an incident. You remember the outline?”

“You want plausible deniability. We make it look like you’re captured.”

“Yeah.”

“Do I kill anyone?” Bazilizk asked.

“No,” Tristan said. “Not unless-”

He imagined the tables being turned. Losing his mind as Byron lived his life. Moonsong and the white picket fence, and the two kids with creepy Moonsong personalities.

“Not unless absolutely necessary. No. Scratch that- just… let’s just get out of here.”

“I want an answer,” Bazilizk stated. “I don’t like gray areas or unclear jobs.”

Tristan thought for a long second.

It felt wrong, that Bazilizk would be that insistent. But everything felt wrong nowadays. Everything felt like a trap, a statement left unfinished. Hollow.

It was as if he was playing a slow, careful game of chess, moving his pieces while only guessing as to the state of the other side of the board.

Were they even playing? Or playing at a high level? Could he make a decisive move, or confuse his opponent?

What they never showed in the movies was that these games that masterminds played went with stomach-churning degrees of stress and consecutive nights without a wink of sleep. Performance faltered. All it took was one mistake.

“No deaths, no killing. Lead the way.”

“I’d better make it look like I caught you,” Throttle said. “It also makes it easier to make a fast escape if I have my rope on you.”

Strangulation and fast movement, and he’d gone with Throttle. The rope and ‘throttle’ name didn’t mesh, but the guy was supposedly competent.

“I’ll do without for now. Just lead the way. I’m the one paying you two.”

He saw the hesitation.

He ran. Crimson motes painted the area around him, providing dim illumination. Spikes like razor-tipped insect legs manifested just as he passed them.

Throttle wasn’t fast. Or if he was, he wasn’t using his speed.

Bazilizk, fortunately, wasn’t using his killing sight.

His mercenaries had been bought out by someone else, and he knew who that someone was.

He had to get away. Boots tromped on hard floor. He didn’t get tired, even running in armor heavier than any medieval knight might wear, but there wasn’t much he could do about the noise.

Like an array of stylized drum beats, boot struck hard ground, metal armor rose up, settled with a series of metal on metal sounds, rose up, settled. His heart hammered in a loose accompaniment.

Until his foot came down, and he went too far up in response.

Moonsong.

Silver strands barred his path. Coiffure.

And then there were the others. An entire hallway was blocked by Steamwheel’s mech.

And behind him- he couldn’t do anything except draw out spikes, buy himself a few seconds more of existence. Just a few seconds.

Throttle reached him. The rope, now a hangman’s noose, went around his neck.

Through that rope, he felt a power seize him.

Motes appeared, and he didn’t summon them. His hand moved, and he hadn’t moved it.

“Ahhuh,” he made a sound, involuntary.

“Can you do it?” Moonsong asked.

Before Throttle could figure out how to make it happen, Tristan used his power, and he shifted out, slipping into the void within Byron.

Because, whatever else happened, however narrow the margin, he wanted to be able to tell himself he managed it in the end.

“I’m sorry it took so long, Boo,” Moonsong’s whisper cut through the dark, anguished.

Byron’s answering scream tore through the throat he and Tristan shared.

Tristan’s cut through nothing. Limited to a dark void.

⊙

Present

Tristan was patient. It was Byron’s turn.

Irony of ironies. Barcode hadn’t brought their cape to test for brainwashing.

“All clear.”

“Thank you,” Byron said. He reached into a pocket.

I have it.

Byron swapped out. Tristan reached beneath his armor for an envelope, then handed it over.

There was something of a relief in the fact that they’d established something of an income stream. The Number Man would fund them. They’d answer the favor with cooperation, a continued supply of information, and some of Lookout’s devices.

Without that income stream, this would have been harder to sustain over the long term. Especially with the dropping dollar.

“Gonna count. Give me a minute.”

“Sure,” Tristan said. He leaned back against a wall. The Barcode hitmen walked over to where the light was stronger, and tore open the envelope to begin counting the contents.

“By,” Tristan murmured. “I was thinking about… everything that happened, two years ago. Been thinking about it a lot tonight.”

He swapped out.

“Mind whammies always bring up those days. Dark feelings,” Byron said. Swap.

Tristan, as soon as he had control, replied, “I don’t think you’ve ever given me a straight answer about why.”

Swap.

“I’ve given you answers, Tristan,” Byron’s voice was so quiet it was barely audible.

Swap. Each finished statement was followed by one.

“Not satisfying ones. Why? Why didn’t you push for harsher punishment? Why… let me go? Why not press charges? They wanted to arrest me for attempting to murder you. If it hadn’t gotten snagged in the courts, interrupted by Gold Morning…”

“Your time in jail is my time in jail. I don’t think you’re going to do it again.”

“Not with this. Barcode. Prevention.”

“This was always more for your sake than for mine, Tristan.”

“Is your punishment going to be you being frustratingly vague for the rest of the time we’re stuck together?”

Byron shook their head. “You punished yourself enough. I don’t want to dwell in that time, so I’m letting it go. I forgive you, little brother.”

“Little? Don’t be that fucking cliche, By. Minutes.”

“I thought it’d get your goat.”

“Uuugh. Torture, torture. How is it that we get along best when everything’s gone most thoroughly to shit? Gold Morning and we reconcile. You decide to give me this weird pseudo-forgiveness. Tonight, prison breakout, mind control, and we have a nice chat.”

Tristan swapped. There was a moment of thought before Byron shrugged their shoulders, then switched back.

“So vague,” Tristan grumbled.

“It’s not pseudo-forgiveness, Tristan. I have days when I’m angry and days I’m not dealing at all. You know I have nightmares, I freak out. But that doesn’t make it pseudo. It’s forgiveness, little brother. I might have hated actually going to church, but that doesn’t mean I hated the lessons.”

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be that easy.”

“It’s not, Trist. Let it go before I change my mind, you know? It’s an ongoing work, but it’s a work I do for me as much as I do it for you. So… take it without arguing.”

Byron switched to Tristan.

Tristan didn’t argue.

“We’re good,” The barcode guy said. “We’ll see you soon, then? Unless you need something else?”

Tristan paused.

“What?” the guy asked.

“I was thinking we might be able to do business… but I need to talk it over with my brother, first.”

Gleaming – Interlude 9

The tower extended from the floor of the valley to the stratosphere, a gleaming testimony to the power of patience, persistence, and inhuman nature.

Most would have expected the structure to be sealed, or for the layers of overlapping metal along its exterior to be welded to one another. It wasn’t the case here. The entire facility was channeling heat, air, and atmosphere up, while it channeled the lack of those things down, and the design of the facility caught the air in the same way the curvatures of an airplane’s wings did. The edges of the tower seemed to glow, even, because of the air that ran concurrent with the fanned-out plates that stabbed upward, concentrating atmosphere and heat around the tower exterior, as well as its interior.

High above, where the sky was transitioning from the light blue of day to the near-black of night, the peak of the tower was topped with a diffuse, flower-like bloom of the lighter blue. The exhaust or output. The peak was so high as to be invisible, but the venting wasn’t.

As though it had stabbed through the perimeter between sky and space, and the wound bled a light blue.

It roared, because the vacuum it gathered in its squat base drew in atmosphere and air. It screamed, because the very design of the facility defied physics, and the alien metals that formed the panels that caught the air or channeled ambient heat upwards were still bound by some laws of physics.

Bound and tortured for their disobedience, she thought.

“I don’t think that’s going to help you.”

She turned toward the voice, arching one eyebrow.

“Sorry to break the spell. I meant your helmet,” the guy said. He had a costume, more sleek than most. The mask around the eyes was hard, but the back was flexible, tied in a knot at the back of the head, the two lengths of fabric loose and billowing in the strong influx of wind the tower generated. The costume was a similar mix of hard segments flowing naturally into loose, flowing fabric, all red with gold trim. She couldn’t help but see double when she looked at him, and his double was badly wounded, his costume torn.

She decided she would call him the wounded man.

She was holding her helmet in both hands. It was crafted of another alien metal, different from the tower’s sweeping, overlapping panels, and had elaborate wings at the sides, sleek and pointed back. She couldn’t remember when she’d taken it off.

In reverence, as someone would when approaching a holy place? No. She wasn’t reverent. Her god was dead.

She had wanted a better look at the monster that loomed before her, a beast that screamed, roared, and made the sky bleed.

Glines, the Switch-Thrower, she thought.

The shadow manifested to her left, as if it was stepping in from another room, its feet still planted firmly on the ground. Young. He folded his arms, and in the shroud of his indistinct form, the lines between costume and flesh were blurry. He could have been a reptile, covered in thick layers, with sleek, broad bands.

“Hi,” the wounded man said.

Glines gave him a small nod of acknowledgement, before turning his full focus to the tower.

Valkyrie could have asked the shadow a question, but she didn’t. She let him study the distant tower, and she turned her attention to the hero who had noted her helmet. One finger tapped the metal, producing a sharp sound. “These things are more important than you would think.”

The wounded man smiled. “No offense, Valkyrie, but I don’t think that, whatever it is, is going to bop you on the head. If it does, that bit of metal won’t change the outcome.”

The man in costume was nervous, she realized. He’d been here for at least a day- she looked back in the direction of the camp, where tarps and tents were erected, positioned where they could watch the tower, still far enough away that it would take twenty or thirty minutes of driving a conventional vehicle to get close. At least a day that he’d endured the roaring, the screaming, and watched as the Earth’s oxygen was slowly and steadily pumped away into oblivion, to no seeming point or goal.

“I don’t think it’s about to strike me across the head,” she said. And this is still important, for other reasons.

“You know what it is, then?”

She shook her head slowly, turning her attention briefly to Glines, who was still studying the thing.

“No,” she admitted.

“Uh huh. That’s reassuring,” the wounded man said.

The helmet was heavy in her hands, and it felt even heavier as she shifted it to one hand, so her other hand was free to adjust her hair, pushing it out of her face.

It was possible that events could have unfolded in such a way that the masks and helmets weren’t necessary. But some of the first capes, including Vikare, who had worn a costume very similar to her own, had wanted to protect their identities.

Somewhere along the line, the masks and helmets had become synonymous with identity.

With her hair sufficiently adjusted and pushed out of the way, she set the helmet down on her own head. Anchor-heavy.

“You look so calm,” the wounded man said. “You’re not freaked?”

She raised a hand, holding it flat. The only tremor or movement was because of the wind, as air flooded in the direction of the vacuum-driven vortex the vacuum at the tower’s base. She was calm.

“No,” she said. She unfurled her decorative wings, then wrapped them around herself for warmth. She stood straighter, chin raised. Her heartbeat was much as it always was. If her breathing was any different from usual, it was because the tower was stealing the air. “I’m not especially worried.”

“Some of the guys called it a space elevator. Which, you know, super cool, except it’s clearly not helping us, and it has defenses to keep us out.”

“No,” Glines said. “Not a space elevator.”

“Jesus, they talk?” the wounded man asked.

“What is it?” Valkyrie asked her shadow.

“A gun. That’s the barrel,” Glines said. He extended his arm to indicate the length of the tower.

“What the son of all fucks would they need a gun that big for?” the wounded man asked.

“Dunno,” Glines said. “But I don’t think the target was important. If I were making a gun that big to deal with a specific enemy, I would have paid attention to targeting. Any attention at all.”

“The target could be so large that targeting doesn’t matter,” Valkyrie said. “If it filled half of the sky as it made its approach?”

“Uhhh,” the wounded man said. “That’s a thing?”

Glines, though, was nodding. “No need to worry about aim if you’re aiming at the broad side of a barn? Dunno. Maybe. But if you were building a gun to shoot the side of a barn, wouldn’t you want enough firepower to hurt the barn?”

“You would.”

“Uhh, please tell me this sky-filling enemy is hypothetical.”

Valkyrie shook her head. “It’s real. But it’s not an enemy we need to worry about again. When they came the last time, they left markers, to ensure none of their kind wasted effort coming to the same places. To go against that procedure and habit would run contrary to their entire being. It won’t happen.”

“You said these guys are building a giant gun to shoot at things on that scale, and this is the gun.”

“No,” Glines said. “I don’t blame you for getting caught up in the attention-grabbing details, but we didn’t say for sure that this is meant to shoot at anything. The ammo they’re using isn’t sufficient to hurt anything that big. The ammo is the point.”

“What’s the ammo?” the wounded man asked.

“Explain,” Valkyrie said.

“The air.”

“Someone built a fucking thirty-one mile long airgun?”

“Technically, I guess,” Glines said. “Less technically, it shoots all of the air. Each shot is one earth’s worth of atmosphere, gathered up into a ball and superheated.”

The wounded man was silent, his eyes wide.

“One shot, and Earth whatever this is is emptied in about two seconds, everything dies well before it can suffocate, with the sudden atmospheric and pressure shift. The next shot empties the adjacent earth, probably.”

“Earth Bet,” Valkyrie said.

“Sure. Home, huh?” the shadow asked.

Valkyrie nodded.

“Then the next closest earth, or a share of all the connected earths. Enough to do widespread damage.”

The wounded man sat down heavily on the grass-less hillside.

“You said the ammunition was the point.”

“The best analogy I can think of is the idea we had of putting all garbage on a rocket and shooting it into space, so we don’t have to have landfills. This guy is shooting in the same way.”

“Disposing of atmospheres,” Valkyrie said the thought aloud. “That helps. Thank you.”

“No prob. That’s really all I’ve got. Oh, and if you’re going up, you want to go up through the tower, not outside of it. Most defense is aimed at protecting against external attack.”

“Thank you.” She dismissed the shadow with a thought.

Do you need anything? she thought, pushing the thought into the space where the shadows lived.

No, came the distant reply.

I’ll get to you soon.

I don’t mind. I was never very good at asking authorities for help. I got patient.

“Why?” the wounded man asked.

“I intend to find out. Will you walk with me?”

The wounded man nodded, falling into step beside her. Behind them, the tower continued to bleed out atmosphere, screaming the cry of a hundred thousand metal panels straining to their limits, roaring with the rush of wind and internal tinker technology.

He was the first to say anything, “We’ve got sixteen parahumans and twenty non-parahuman staff at the camp here. Nerves are shot, morale is nil. Nine of them got seriously injured trying to investigate. I need to know what to tell them. Telling them that a team of tinkers or whoever are aiming to shoot all of the earths’ air into space isn’t going to fly.”

“Tell them nothing except that their job is done. My team will handle it. If I can’t resolve this, there won’t be anything your coalition can do. Eat the good food you were rationing out, drink. The more you consume, the less you need to take back.”

The wounded man nodded, but he looked worried. He hurried forward to get to the gate and hold it open for her.

The main tent was a gathering place and a dining hall both. People were gathered out front and at tables within. Out front was fine, with only a few oddities, like a handful of people in costume standing up as she approached.

Within the mess tent was a different story. The tension in the room was palpable. The capes on duty took up three quarters of the tent, sitting at their tables or standing nearby. Cards and some of the food from the were scattered across the surfaces. There wasn’t a buzz of conversation, and there was a noticeable gap between the people at the three tables and the denizens of the last table, furthest from the tent’s opening.

Silent stares accompanied her on her way to the far table, aimed at her from both sides.

The people at the far table were hers. Not hostile, but not necessarily talkers, either. They wore uniforms with a fair degree of cohesiveness running through them, but they were more united by the masks they wore.

A woman with striking tattoos around the eyes, in black, red, and yellow, the colors too solid and bright for an actual tattoo. She had been one of the heroes that had come after Valkyrie, back when Valkyrie had been Glaistig Uaine. Glaistig Uaine had broken the woman until she was only barely on the cusp of life, and then pulled the woman’s soul from her body.

A skinny man with no hair on his skeletally gaunt head. She remembered him having hair when she had watched him die. A goon in the Birdcage who had made a mutinous bid for power and lost. He had been turned away by each cell block leader in turn before venturing into the depths of the Birdcage, where prisoners too dangerous for a cell block had been put. He hadn’t survived his first run-in.

A handsome black man had a mark on his face, akin to vitiligo, but not quite the albino white that came with vitiligo. A loose representation of a skull, drawn on his face in a lighter brown.

There were others. Some had more extreme touches than others. A consequence of how information was stored. Longer-term storage reduced things down more, put information such as what people wore on their skin into the same categories as the skin itself.

And there was no storage longer-term than death.

“Cleo, Naja Haje. Voltrage, Third Execution. Edgeless, Forward Facing.”

The capes in question stood. Cleo’s eyes glistened with opaque teal-green moisture, the fluids leaking out and weeping regularly, the brilliant color a striking contrast against her olive brown skin. Where she dabbed with the corner of her sleeve and napkins, the fabric was bleached or eaten away entirely. She wore extra layers, including a scarf to keep her hair out of her face, a shirt, sweatshirt, and jacket, possibly just to have the extra fabric, and possibly because she had other physiological issues.

The sad fact was that they weren’t Valkyrie’s. She didn’t know them, beyond what she’d seen the last time she’d had them. She couldn’t know their needs.

Voltrage was a recent piece of work, pale, with paler, drier hair than he’d had in his first life, a perpetually angry expression marked with arched brows and a pointed beard. He was skinny, his shoulders especially bony, collarbone sticking out a bit more than was natural. He’d ripped the sleeves off of the sweatshirt he’d been given, but had later donned a white long-sleeved shirt.

Edgeless was older, unfortunately bearing more of a mask than a face, a consequence of a lack of personality in life- which was why she’d made him one of the first she experimented with. Dull in many senses of the word, he was big, bearing a combination of muscle and fat, and he obeyed orders.

“What about the rest of us?” Milk asked. She was the heroine with the too-bright-to-be-tattoos marks on her face.

“Stay. Do you need anything? You’ve been fed? You’re entertained?”

“We’re telling each other stories for entertainment,” Milk said.

Valkyrie looked at the other tables. There were cards there. Not at this table.

To ask or demand would be a power play. She wasn’t interested in that.

Waggish, Twelfth of the Fabricators.

The shadow appeared, short, with dirty, blemish-covered skin everywhere but his face, where he’d once worn a mask. The face was frozen in a serene smile, blemish-free.

Waggish had to hop up onto the bench to reach the things on the table. He snatched up a piece of trash, then reached for another. Some people nearby began sliding him things.

With two hands that were disproportionately large for his small frame, Waggish pressed the collected debris in between his hands. There was an acrid, burning smell as it reconsolidated. She could see the power work in the movements in the air.

Waggish set two decks of cards down on the table, holding one up for her to see. Custom card faces, the upper left and bottom right of each card featuring a minimalist illustration of someone from around the table.

“If we don’t return in three hours, assume we’re dead or trapped. Use thinkers if you can, verify our status, then mount a rescue or leave, as you see fit.”

“Understood,” Milk said. She had already picked up one of the two decks, fanning it out so people could see. She plucked one free and held it out. Milk’s own. “Thank you for the cards, Valkyrie. And can you tell whatshisname thank you for not going the cliche route and making me a hearts card?”

“He heard,” Valkyrie said. She glanced at the three she had picked out, then started toward the door. They fell in step behind her.

Nobody else in the mess tent spoke. Except for the idle chatter from the table she had just supplied with the cards, discussing rules and bets, the only noises were the buzz of the lighting that had been rigged up at the top of the tent, the flap of the wind against the taunt tent fabric, and the distant screeching and roaring of the colossal gun barrel.

“Cleo, stay safe. Voltrage, Edgeless, clear the way once we’re inside. There are traps.”

“Tinker?” Voltrage asked.

“Tinker, at the very least.”

Her phone buzzed at the side of her utility belt, where pouches and pockets were hidden by the armor that covered her upper body.

Dialback.

The specter appeared.

“My phone,” she said.

“The Wardens,” Dialback said. “They said their thinkers read the situation here as critical, and want to know if there is any news.”

“What they want is good news. Let them know I’m busy, and that we’ll contact them shortly with that good news.”

“They’ve complained in the past about my use of my power to communicate. It reads as slightly corrupted, and trips flags.”

“Then ignore them,” she said. She waited for the rebuttal, then dismissed the shadow.

Mushroom, Leadletter, Esclavage, Knallen.

The four shadows appeared in a half circle behind her. Cleo, trailing behind, found herself right between Leadletter and Esclavage.

The burly Mushroom exhaled a dot of light, which flew forward. It traveled the quarter-mile to the base of the tower, hit the closest thing the base of the tower had to a door, and blew it wide open. Valkyrie could feel the rush of the wind from the blast. Leadletter opened fire, drawing her guns and shooting at the fragments of door and frame that still hung on, to exaggerated effect.

Esclavage couldn’t act until they were closer. The leather-bound villainess produced bands of metal from her wrists, each studded with spikes. She wrapped the bands around pieces of rubble, and then flung them to one side.

Turrets began to spring out of the side of the tower, while drones began to emerge from the hole in the front. Some of the drones set to repairing, while yet others advanced, weapons leveled at the group. There was laser fire.

She had a functional team working in concert. Voltrage’s electromagnetics caught the incoming fire, redistributing energy and stopping bullets. Edgeless simply tanked the shots, while providing some loose cover for Valkyrie and Cleo with his power.

“What am I doing?” Cleo asked. She tensed as weapon fire struck the dirt a foot and a half to her right.

“You’re here if I need you.”

There was a rolling explosion, as Knallen used her own power. Waves of the defensive and repair drones were obliterated, hot scrap metal scattered at the corner where the edge of the tower met flat ground, and along the interior floor, where they’d been sent flying back through the open door.

Inside, there was vacuum, which the group had to fight past, using handholds and powers. They reached the stairs and climbed up a floor before air was available again.

The interior was hollow, with complete floors at set, clearly planned intervals. A staircase ran up the side of the tower, while a vortex of airless void plunged down the middle, as if the lack of air was a force unto itself, filling the bottom floor as air was forced out.

The waves of defensive drones were apparently endless, minimal in their design, with only two or four legs and a basic weapon each, sometimes with their ‘brain’ circuitry or batteries exposed, and often with some of the alien metal used in the tower’s construction as extra armor.

What was the distance they’d said? Thirty-one miles? Then this was an ascent that could require them to travel for thirty one miles up.

With drones every step of the way. Ten or twenty on every flight of stairs, and the firepower she’d brought to bear with Knallen and Mushroom threatened to destroy stairs, making the climb more dangerous.

She dismissed them. Two others. Thirty-Eight and Gobsmack. Thirty-Eight almost immediately matched up with Leadletter, the pair of them shooting in concert, trading off drone executions.

An uphill battle, in a sense. Edgeless took the lead, not out of any specific intent, but because he was the only one who didn’t need to slow down, as he pounded the villains with soft, doughy hands that could batter but which could easily struggle to finish even a lowly drone off.

Voltrage, however, could collect debris and absorb incoming fire, letting his electromagnetic shield charge up, and then release it all in a burst that wiped out a whole flight or two of drones.

One flight clear. Four hundred and thirty more.

She dismissed Esclavage the Rack, and called up Goose Down. A supportive ex-heroine who could buoy the team. She would climb four hundred stories on her own, if she had to, but the shattered remnants of drones threatened to sprain ankles or cause people to fall.

With the lift Goose Down provided, they moved faster. With a bit of time, they got better at dispatching the drones. The things were fragile and stupid, prone to repeating the same behavior without learning from the destroyed drones. The feint and kick combination that worked against one worked against another.

Beyond the stairwell, she could see daylight and the rush of the heated, condensed air along the tower exterior, being swept up and channeled by the design of the tower.

Zappatore the Underminer.

The shadows she’d already called out felt the appearance of the fifth of their kind. They would feel a fraction weaker and slower. The net loss was much greater, but she did have Cleo, Voltrage, and Edgeless.

“Bombs?” she asked. “Traps? I don’t want the tower to self-destruct when we’re at the top.”

“Guarderò”

“Grazie,” she replied, in her accented Italian.

The drones were numerous enough that they could come down the walls, now, or fall between stairs and land on stairs below, with just enough surviving the fall to be a problem as they attacked from the rear. Cleo threw a knife at one, knocking it over. Three more appeared at that same step a moment later.

It was bad enough that Voltrage wasn’t able to release his shield, because the incoming fire was too incessant. The group would be riddled with holes in the one second it took him to regroup and bring his shield back into place. As it was, the lightning barrier rippled to the point it was hard to see past it.

“Niente qui. Vai su?” Zappatore asked.

“Up,” she replied. “Be ready, Voltrage. The moment we stop.”

Away with Thirty-Eight the Eye. She called on Yonder, the Gatherer.

Yonder needed to gather power. When they did, it was to gather everyone in a bubble of air. Beyond that bubble, the electromagnetic shield kept most of the enemies at bay.

The bubble lifted the group, with a suddenness that made the stomach lurch. They flew up ten stories, and then they stopped. The bubble caught them again, as Yonder prepared to move them again – a good thing, given the mile-long drop beneath them.

Here, undisturbed, the walls were so covered in the blinking lights of drones that a human couldn’t put a hand flat against the wall without touching one of those lights. At least one light to each drone, no drone any larger than a medium sized dog, many as small as a gourd.

Voltrage released his power. Electricity and the stored accumulation of bullets and other weaponry was flung out in every direction. It crackled against railings and against the machinery inlaid in the interior walls.

“Sideways,” she instructed.

The air bubble floated over to the wall, and the assembled group was deposited on the stairs against that wall.

Already, there were more drones making their way down to fill the void. It was getting hard to breathe, because the burned electronics smell, the ozone, and the burned air from the laser fire the drones output was so noxious.

“Oh my god,” Cleo whispered.

Zappatore shook his head.

“Take us up further,” Valkyrie ordered. “Or this will take forever.”

Forever. Even with shortcuts taken, it took half an hour for them to reach the point in the tower where an attack had been made by heroes looking to halt construction. The tower, barrel, space elevator had nearly collapsed, but enough infrastructure had been at the top to hold it up until repairs could be made. She could see the scars, and the effect it had on the air running along the exterior.

Up another hundred stories. Her people were getting tired, so she tapped other resources. Diaspora served to turn drones against one another, while masking the group’s presence. Mudstreaked slowed the drones down, turning nearby surfaces into goop the finer or less nuanced legs couldn’t work with.

But there was no substitute for good violence, at least sometimes. In the absence of the gunners and mass-destruction capes, the drones soon pressed in, until they were up against the electromagnetic field again. Voltrage was getting tired.

“This is worse than the fucking world ending!” Voltrage screamed the words, amid pants for breath. Where his hair had stood on end before, sweat now slicked it close to his scalp.

“No it isn’t,” Valkyrie answered him, her voice nearly lost in the chaos.

“What can I do!?” Cleo shouted.

Valkyrie wasn’t able to answer, because the noise rose. Yonder was signaling that he was ready for another air bubble.

Up another hundred stories. Zappatore signaled for the group to go back down another ten stories, because he had identified the collection channels, which captured particulate matter and carbon from the air, for the purposes of making materials. Centrifuges were sorting that material by atomic weight.

Voltrage seemed happy to destroy something that wasn’t replaced a moment later. The debris flew into the airless vortex right down the middle of the tower, and was cast straight down.

The air was getting thinner as they ascended. Yonder’s air manipulation turned toward ensuring the group had enough to breathe.

The final twelve floors. Machinery tore free of the walls- robots, loaded to bear with higher-end weapons, and covered from head to toe in the hardest armor this structure seemed able to provide. Cleo’s thrown knife and slip of paper seemed to glance off. Voltrage’s power rocked the military robots, but it didn’t damage them.

Edgeless threw himself into the fray, pummeling. Alone, the muscle-bound brute was able to keep two of the robots from turning their weapons on the group, though he couldn’t stop them.

Valkyrie added her own strength to the affair, unfurling the living wings that one of her creations had attached to her costume, then drawing her weapon.

Her blade plunged into the first robot’s head, and as she pulled it free, she used the force of the blade coming free to sink it into the neck of another robot.

Relentless, dangerous, but ultimately lacking in imagination.

She had an idea of what she was up against by the time her squadron reached the workshop floor. Drones were adding layers to the wall, gathering hot metal in beads, that they laid into gaps as the workshop floor rotated above. With the continual rotation, gaps were exposed, and the platform steadily ascended.

She pushed the door open.

Not a conclave of mad tinkers. No lesser Endbringer.

The man was small and broken. Tinker technology riddled his body, not as a cyborg might do, but as an invasive organization would. As a tree shifted its branches to work around an unmoving object like a fence or hydrant, the man’s body had worked around the technology.

His belly faced the sky, and he was almost naked, but for the catheters and other tubes that festooned his nethers, much as they did nose, ears, and heart. He was moved as a quadruped moved, arms extending back as far as they would go, following the limping gait of the greater construct.

There were shackles that were clearly bolted to bone, the flesh angry around where the bolts had gone in, and some of those shackles served as places for tech to hang off of, including clusters of miniature arms and manipulating devices.

He or it was gathered around what looked like a motherboard, one arm hooked into a complex array of wires that stretched taut or ran between walls and from ceiling to floor. The small arms and tools handled the finest details, like soldering spots on a computer board, the rigging of wires helped make the larger movements almost instantaneous, and the tinkertech festooned hands covered the remainder.

A human eye watched them as the body worked. He called for no drones, drew no weapons. Still, Valkyrie knew she had to be careful.

The entire body tensed. The man’s body arched, belly reaching toward the ceiling, and then he gagged. With choking coughs and a smell of burned flesh, he deposited white hot metal onto the floor of his lab. Mechanical hands slid it across the floor.

The Scholar, Valkyrie thought, before she even properly looked. Scion had been the warrior, but he hadn’t been alone.

The Scholar was long gone, but the fragments that had made her her were still out there. There were some with a more malicious design, intent on breaking their hosts. Specific, dangerous hosts.

It was hard to divorce her line of thinking from the way she’d used to think, faced with one of the dangerous ones.

She wasn’t worried, she wasn’t afraid, and she hadn’t been for the entirety of the climb. Stressed, yes, but only that.

Now… pity. The man’s back was arching again. Valves in the tangle of catheters and other tubes were switching. It wasn’t urine that was vented out, but something colorless and cloudy. Long after it had finished venting, the man spasmed and twitched as much as he was able. His legs and arms were moved without his permission, dragging him here and there so the other limbs and parts could work.

Turned into his own workshop, his resource supply, and apparently provided all the care the agent could provide that would keep him alive.

A tinkertech tower, thirty-one miles tall, created by one monster of the most inhuman nature. Past a certain point, he would have created things like the resource collection vats, that distilled carbon from air. He would have automated the creation of drones.

“Cleo.”

Cleo stepped forward. “This is why you wanted me?”

“Whoever or whatever it was, if they were angry enough to aimlessly destroy worlds, they needed to be put down.”

Cleo nodded. She drew a knife from beneath one layer of clothing, tested its weight in one hand, then spat on the blade. She threw it at the man, the blade sinking in where neck met shoulder.

Flesh almost immediately began to die, turning black. The tinkertech set to work, gathering resources, kits of regenerative bio-agent, making injections, and excising damaged flesh, all at the same time.

The poison was faster.

Valkyrie waited, listening and watching.

There.

The broken man. She could identify him now, see the power he was given.

When she created him as a shade, he was a man again, without the technology hanging off of him. He did stand with a hunched back, knees close together while feet were planted further apart, knobby-kneed. Even like this, existence seemed to be painful for him. Lingering psychic effects.

“How long were you working on this?”

“Ah,” he made a noise.

“You don’t have to answer, idle curiosity only.”

“Three years of preparation. Two years of work,” the broken man answered.

“Were there failsafes or traps built in?”

He nodded.

“Show my people,” she said. She called up the Mad Bomber and The Man Who Stands Atop. “Explain to them. Disable it.”

The broken man nodded again.

“Broken trigger?” Cleo asked, dabbing at one eye. She had cuts on the side of her face, but they were small and shallow.

“No. Nothing broken.”

The group was left to recuperate, the tinkers working on disabling the tower before anything untoward could happen.

As she waited, standing silent, her helmet removed and resting on the edge of a desk beside her, she reached out to Dialback, where he had a position deep inside her.

Phone?

The Wardens need help with things, and they’re worried about your silence.

Tell them I’m fine. What do they need help with?

The Simurgh, was the reply.

Almost instinctively, another spirit deep inside her shifted, agitated. Eidolon. David. The man’s battery was nearly spent, and the cost of replenishing it was high.

Stirred to life by the mere mention of his long-time opponent.

“That,” she said the words aloud, feeling the weight of them, “Would be the opening act of a tragedy.”

Heads in the area turned her way, curious at how she’d suddenly started speaking to nobody. She waved them off.

They agree, came the response. The Wardens don’t want you engaging with the Simurgh. But they need help covering other crises and targets while they focus on her. They know you’re tired, but-

I’ll go, she answered.

⊙

The effect fluctuated, barely visible in how it distorted the air. When looking at any person or thing closely enough, the light distorted around the very outline of that person, shining brighter or appearing darker than it was. This was like that outline, wrapped around a wide area.

People in very drab clothing were gathered as a mass nearby, wary enough that they huddled together, parents gripping their children to keep them from approaching or getting too inquisitive.

Two people had gone inside the effect, fallen, and couldn’t get up. Attempts to rescue with tools had failed.

Shadows bubbled forth, emerging just enough to use powers or prod at the edges of the effect.

This Earth had diverged a hundred years ago. It was very lightly settled, and even there, it was largely by accident. Disease had hit just a touch harder during some critical years, and the population had floundered.

Now she appeared before these people as something akin to an angel.

“Time,” came the answer, from a member of her greater entourage. “Slowed time. It’s easier to enter the field than to exit. The fit barely notice, but the sick and elderly can’t push out.”

She had a wide collection of shadows at her beck and call, and a strong squadron of other capes supporting her otherwise.

It was a question of finding the right ones. At least here, there shouldn’t be any wounds to tend, nothing to delay her.

This was better than a mercy kill, tinkertech left unattended, a power run rampant.

She had other work to do. There was a source to this effect.

She walked away from the scene, listening and watching. Two of her servants followed as bodyguards. Milk was one. Cleo was another.

“Ma’am,” someone called over.

She motioned for her bodyguards to stay where they were. She approached the woman, an elderly matriarch.

“Yes?”

“What can you say?” the woman asked.

“A small fragment of a… very mighty creature, that died two years ago. It touched this place,” Valkyrie said. “Did you see golden light in this world, two years ago? Followed by devastation.”

“We heard it struck on the far side of the ocean here.”

Valkyrie nodded. “That was him. A piece of him fell. Like a drop of blood, but he was complex and intricate enough that a single drop of blood could be a living, wanting thing on its own. That droplet could be divided even further, and each division would be a life unto itself.”

“Like gods of myth.”

“A very small piece touched here, and it found root. The effect is slowing time. It grows with every passing day, little by little.”

“Is there anything that can be done?”

“Yes. You can come if you want. I can’t promise it will be pretty or easy.”

“I should, shouldn’t I? I’m in charge here.”

Valkyrie walked through the quiet town, one metaphorical ear to the ground. The woman walked beside her, and the two bodyguards walked a distance behind them, talking to one another.

The old woman looked back. “Uncanny in appearance.”

The words were accompanied by a visible shiver.

“Touched by specks of blood, which found root in them.”

“As I heard it, the Wardens that we broke bread and cracked drink with were the same.”

“They did a good job of explaining things, then.”

“They weren’t so uncanny, Ma’am,” the old lady said.

“These ones…” Valkyrie started, searching for the words. “They died, and I brought them back, with some help. In exchange for this life, they’ve agreed to provide me with assistance. Some strangeness is to be expected.”

In another circumstance, they might have been the worst or most alarming words to say.

Here, the old woman seemed to take it as matter-of-fact. What was a resurrection, when an active attack from an apparent god and visitors from another world were only two years fresh in one’s memory?

“Here,” Valkyrie said. “I feel them over here.”

The path was a circuitous one around a house, knocking and getting permission to enter, and finding nobody else within.

It was only when Valkyrie and the now-impatient old woman stepped out onto the porch that Valkyrie had reason to pause.

Machinavelli.

The specter took form.

“No traps,” she instructed. Then she pointed at the porch. “We’ll want to put it back the way we found it, or better.”

Machinavelli nodded, mechanical mask switching between modes each time the head stopped moving.

Nails were pulled free and boards were uprooted. In a matter of seconds, the porch was in its constituent pieces.

Beneath it all, matted and wet, was a large dog, breathing hard. She could view it with a kind of double vision, and she saw the rush of images, the flickering, and a collection of impossibly tall people with the faces scrubbed away.

“I’m sorry, girl,” she murmured.

“The dog?” the old woman asked.

“Things aren’t as they should be. Power fit for beings of myth are falling here and there like litter. Sometimes it dissipates. Other times it swells.”

“And other times it finds it’s root?” the old woman asked.

“This beast is the cause of your mysterious deaths and incidents. It couldn’t know what it was doing.”

“The massacres?”

“I would guess it trapped prey by accident, and driven to the edge by hunger, it ate pieces of the accidental victims.”

“I see.”

Valkyrie had to pick her way through the foundations of the porch, with concrete settings for pillars- the pieces that couldn’t be uprooted. She knelt by the dog.

She could tell almost immediately. “Too far gone. Even if it wasn’t, it’s incapable of using the power it has. More would die.”

Settling down, sitting in the mud, she coaxed the dog closer. Stroking it, she spoke to it in a soft voice, keeping her awareness tuned for any power use or flickering from the animal.

“If I could conscience it, I would bring you with me, brave girl. How scared you must have been.”

The tone was more important than the words. She lapsed into her native tongue, and the dog seemed to like the sound of those words better.

With her awareness of powers, she studied the dog as thoroughly as she could manage.

The dog was fast asleep when Valkyrie snapped its neck. She could feel a tension release over the entire area, as the ravelings of time came undone.

The ones that had been slain by this accident of nature wouldn’t be coming back, either way.

The mess was tidied up, a means of communication established, and farewells said.

She actually used her phone this time, rather than relying on an intermediary.

“Chevalier.”

“It’s Valkyrie. I found the culprit.”

“They’re not blaming us? We’re their new neighbors, they have reason to be squirrely.”

“No blame. They thanked us and invited us back.”

“That’s a relief. Thank you, Valkyrie.”

“Chevalier. It was a dog.”

“Pardon?”

“A dog with powers. I tried to feel around it, see why or how. I looked at the moment of the trigger. The poor beast had a refrain of human words running through its head at a critical time, and the agent was damaged enough to try meshing with the animal, sick and diseased as it was.”

“How much do we need to worry about this?”

“One in a million chance. But it’s a chance, and that chance may grow.”

“I see.”

“It’s handled. I killed it.”

“Damn,” Chevalier said. The disappointment was so palpable she could have laughed, if it weren’t over a dead animal.

“Take my word for it, Chevalier. Whatever fun you might imagine a dog with powers to be, it would be the opposite in reality.”

“You think I’d imagine it to be fun, Valkyrie?”

“I think you have the traits of the best of little boys and the greatest of men, Chevalier, with courage to spare besides. I can imagine the thought crossing your mind.”

There was an amused sound on the phone. Then, more somber, he said, “It’s shit to have to put a dog down. I’m sorry, Valkyrie.”

“It’s our mission.”

“Staying sane and on the level is part of that mission, so we don’t betray what we stand for. That means acknowledging the shittiness of it. You hear me?”

“I hear and understand,” she said.

“It also means taking a break. Return to the city. Rest, unwind. You’ve fought an army of ghosts, staved off a potential world-ender with the atmosphere gun, hunted down and dealt with an exponential class-S threat that had gone exponential, you had a week off where you were supposed to be resting, but you decided to hunt down the breaker assassin instead, and you went straight from that to this, a dog with powers.”

“This was easy,” she said. “A touch sad, but easy. You were dealing with the Simurgh.”

“She was restless but we can’t figure out what she was actually doing. It was scary but it was easy, as you put it. You can’t keep going like this. Why don’t you go back to the city and relax? Sit around in your comfortable clothes and watch movies. Go hang out with friends- I know you have a standing invitation from an old friend of mine.”

I’ve never watched movies, that I can remember.

I’ve never ‘hung out’ with friends.

And the city…

“I’ll think about relaxing,” she said. “But I’m fairly certain I’ll come to the same conclusion I have before. That I need to do this.”

“Valkyrie,” he said, voice stern.

“I’m fairly sure I’m older than you, Chevalier. Don’t talk down to me. I need to do this. To help, to make up for past acts, and to gather the resources and contacts to attend to my flock.”

“Your flock. I thought you had to stop.”

She looked back in the direction of Milk, who was talking to Edgeless.

“I did. I want to find a way forward, regardless.” She seized on the word like it had a deeper meaning, a power to it she could draw on. “Regardless! If I were to put my needs aside, I believe the rest of the world needs me to do this. Too many of these incidents are ones only I have the ability to handle.”

“I could refuse to give you any information.”

“You could. You won’t. You and Legend work through injury and sickness, exhaustion and mild insanity. You’ll let me do the same, because you recognize the need.”

He was silent on the other end of the phone.

“Is there something you need for me to handle, Chevalier?”

“There was a prison breakout in the city. Frankly, we could use some eyes on that situation until things settle down for sure. Shin is… stuff’s happening, Valkyrie.”

“I halfway suspect that you’re telling me that out of connivance, Chevalier. Has the job corrupted you so quickly?”

“I am many things, but I’m not conniving.”

“To get me into the city, for a task where there is nothing meaningful to do, leaving me nothing to do but rest?”

“I have a very hard time imagining that there would be nothing to do there.”

“Something else, Chevalier. Send me somewhere else.”

“They’re going to forget what you look like. I think they’re already talking about you like you’re a myth or a memory.”

“Something else. Please.”

“The battlefront, then. The Tyrant Kings.”

Africa, Bet.

“I’ll go. Cote D’Ivoire for headquarters?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll contact you when I’m there.”

“Good luck. I may see you and your ‘flock’ there.”

He hung up. She put the phone away.

Her ‘flock’ was waiting for instructions.

“Everyone on duty is on rest mode. Head back home, relax. Everyone at rest is with me. Prepare for war.”

⊙

Clouds of silvery poison gas rolled across black sand. Soldiers in gas masks ran up a hill and slid down the other side, to where rocks provided some cover.

Valkyrie walked through the poison gas, protected by shadows that had granted her boons before fading away. Her eyes teared up slightly, but that might have been the silicate dust rather than the chemical weapons.

Her flock was in step behind her, their feet scuffing in the fine sand. Her shadows were likewise in step, but they made no sound, left no tracks. They had their own boons, but some had decided to wear the gas masks regardless. They wore no uniforms, but there was a commonality that tied them together, because their clothes had all come from the same stores at the same stops, or because they’d all come so close to the foot of the mountain that was her power and then they’d come back.

Subdued, but not submissive. Quieter, not quieted.

Each and all of them remembered dying. Many remembered dying at her hands. It was a select few of those that she had brought into her flock.

Nineteen individuals, favoring the young and disciplined, the powerful, and the needy.

Then she’d been forced to stop. The umber horse Disaster had reared her ugly head and made her imminent presence known.

The soldiers that had gone down the slope were none the wiser. Valkyrie approached within fifteen paces of them, then raised her rifle.

It was only right that she kill, when expecting it of her soldiers. She knew which of her flock would kill and which might aim just off to the side, so they could claim loyalty and let their consciences rest easy.

She had brought the killers and capturers.

The skirmish that followed was quick and brutal. They were matched in numbers, but Valkyrie’s number included ten parahumans, eight being members of her flock, and six shadows, the power shared out among them to allow for greater number, intimidation and distraction, at the cost of less raw ability.

The opposing group was twelve or so Europeans who had hired themselves out as mercenaries. Scum who enjoyed hurting people, pillaging, and looting to the extent that they were staying on Bet for it. Staying despite dwindling food and climate, health risks and diminishing numbers.

Scum with powers. She scanned her eyes over the glimmers. Images of violence and pain. For five individuals in the group, the images were closely mirrored.

One of the groups that had figured out how to create triggers.

She identified the powers as best as she could, by looking at the glimmers and identifying the agents by name and title.

The Solemn Child. A tall, broad shouldered man with a red sash. She aimed to take fire, and someone on the enemy side raised a wall.

“Shoot the one in red first!” she ordered.

The man could undo powers. Given a moment’s opportunity, he could undo hers, and her power wouldn’t be the same again.

There was a small measure of satisfaction as she watched the man die, the top of his head removed as it poked over cover. She avoided collecting him, leaving his power where it lay.

As others died, one by one, her own side holding firm while the enemy dwindled, she inhaled and exhaled steadily. Calm in the storm, in the endless thunder of more than thirty weapons going off. Then twenty weapons.

Her hand was steady, her aim true.

She had her rifle in one hand and a shield in the other, and she held her ground, shield out in front. When there was a pause, she brought her rifle around, firing off a series of shots. A bullet came close enough to touch her costume, though it left her untouched.

One of her shadows was being cheeky, letting them get that close. She felt no fear. Her flock protected her, and her shadows warded off the harm.

One power remained on the enemy’s side. She saw the glimmer, and she drew out her power, bringing her shadows closer, raising them into the air as floating images, fully clear.

If he aimed at me and shot me in the heart, if the shadows I’ve instructed to protect me move too slowly, I could die right here.

The glimmer proved to be truth when the man raised himself up, surrounded by a storm of black sand. Painfully bright slices of light lunged out of the ground and closed around him, with more sprouting out of the ground to make approaching him difficult.

Of the sixteen powered individuals with her, none seemed able to break or disrupt the shell. The prism slowly rotated, its pointed tip aimed at the horizon. As it moved to the side, the ground under it was made jagged with razor slices of light.

If he got away with this message, it could mean the local warlord was alerted about what he was up against. Not disaster, but it could mean that the captives in the warlord’s possession could become hostages or negotiation fodder. Better that he didn’t know what was taking out his forces and forcing him to keep his armies closer and closer to home.

He can’t get away.

I want to fly, she thought. A shadow lurking within her responded, and it lifted her up.

The crystal jolted into motion, going from zero to two hundred miles an hour in an instant. She only barely intercepted it, her fingers grazing the surface, bending painfully and burning at the brush with the light.

But she made contact with something. She held onto that something with her power.

He flew away, and a part of him stayed behind. He made it a few hundred feet before the power quit on him.

His body tumbled into the sand, the gas mask coming loose. He didn’t reach for it, scramble, or gasp in pain at the poison he was inhaling.

For all intents and purposes, he was in her grip. She’d taken his life the moment she’d made contact.

She let that glimmer of life and the simulacrum of power and personality settle into being. A shadow.

“I need you to tell me where the captives from the raids in Rome are being kept,” she said.

The shadow shook its head.

“Tell me what you know about the people who can create the triggering moments.”

She saw and felt the surprise. He knew something.

Again, a head shake.

“You’ll realize your position soon,” she said. She looked to the parahuman that had come with her group. “Any others?”

The woman shook her head.

As they prepared to leave the area, walking through the sand and checking the bodies for any identification, Valkyrie plotted a course that took them past the body of her shadow. She made sure that he saw the corpse and the face.

This is what you have wrought, she thought. But we will return to Gimel, that land of second chances, and you may, given time, have yours, as I had mine.

There were other squads, roving a village that had been evacuated in advance. Motley groups, they used chemical weapons to make fighting back in response impossible, then roved through the vulnerable areas, where the only ones alive were gasping for breath.

Three more squads. There were more parahumans among them, but it was closer to conventional, with the normal soldiers outnumbering the parahuman auxiliary. She didn’t collect the fallen.

Valkyrie’s group had two captives, bound and firmly sealed with powers, and those captives took the bulk of the preparation time as they prepared to leave, figuring out how to carry them out. Once the job was done, the group organized, powers were gifted and shared out, and they flew as a squadron, so close to the water that their toes could trail on the surface and the spray of mist both drenched and concealed them.

She breathed air with no traces of poison in it, and she felt faint anxiety.

She drew nearer to the Warden’s base in Cote D’Ivoire and that distant anxiety drew nearer by equal measure.

On the horizon, a fan of blue-white lasers rained down on a territory. It was Legend who had arrived, not Chevalier.

The portal to Gimel loomed as the centerpiece of their destination, well before they were able to set their feet down on solid ground again. People scattered, with places to go, showers to take to get poison off, and minor wounds to tend to.

The city needed help, but she couldn’t do anything to help it. She could do this, ensuring that no one person would amass the power or the army necessary to seize a portal, this portal, and come through to raid the one lucrative settlement on Gimel. They would have to bring boats through, but there were boats here.

There were too many human rights abuses, too many cities worth of people being prevented from leaving. There were pockets like this all over, and as winter approached, things looked grimmer and grimmer.

“Did it go okay?” one of the capes on duty asked. A PRTCJ uniform.

“It went fine,” Valkyrie answered. “No casualties. Some captives. We’ll get information on the powers they’ve been using. I have the spirit of one, and I think he’ll tell me what he knows soon.”

“Wow. That’s pretty crazy creepy,” the PRTCJ officer said.

“Perhaps,” Valkyrie replied. “Excuse me. I need to rinse off the poison before the adaptations fade.”

As she walked away, she could hear a whispered exchange between the PRTCJ officers.

“You can’t just call them creepy when they’re Valkyrie, Crystal.”

“Oh, just stole a soul, gonna interrogate it, nothing wrong about that.”

Valkyrie paused.

“Oh, shit,” the not-Crystal PRTCJ officer replied, before ducking away.

“Don’t just run and… hi again, Valkyrie,” PRTCJ officer Crystal said.

“You don’t like it? You’ve been on the front lines here, in the northwestern American states, and in Russia. You’ve seen what we’re up against. We need information.”

“I don’t like it,” Crystal said.

“It will be more lives saved in the long run.”

“It’s capturing someone’s very essence. It’s deeply, deeply uncomfortable. If you’re capturing guys on our side with permission and bringing them back like I’ve seen, I’m okay with that. Otherwise, I’m not cool with it. I’m not going to shoot you or fight you or anything, but… not cool.”

“I’ve had at least one of these conversations every day for the past few months,” Valkyrie said. “Different points, different particulars. I have people telling me to take time off, but this– this is what wearies me.”

“Am I wrong? What am I missing?”

“You might be right. I just find that having the question constantly put before me is… it’s hard. If I hadn’t taken his life and automatically drawn him into me, he would have notified key people, and we would have lost the element of surprise. Many more would have suffered and died.”

“I don’t believe in the ends justifying the means, sorry. I think once you start thinking that way, you stop looking for those hard-to-spot answers. But I’m a flying blaster girl. Pew pew. It’s shitty of me to judge you when I got the easy, awesome power, and you got the power with the built-in moral dilemmas.”

Valkyrie smiled. “I’ll think carefully before I press him. Can I ask, before we part ways? A fiddly question.”

“Surrre,” Crystal responded, drawing out the sound in a hesitant way.

“Why ‘Crystal’? Your power doesn’t match, as far as I can see.”

“I… I could be a flying shoot-crystals girl, for all you know,” Crystal said, almost defiant now.

“But you aren’t. If it’s an issue, I can leave you alone.”

“No. It’s not an issue. It’s just weird you know. Crystal is my name, Valkyrie. My birth name. It’s not a secret.”

“Of course. Of course. I feel stupid now.”

“Nah,” Crystal said, smiling a bit.

There was a small sort of rescue as Legend dropped out of the sky, spotted Valkyrie, and then flew over.

“Suddenly very intimidated,” Crystal said. “Wow. Hi. I’m going to… walk away.”

“You’ve been doing good work, Laserdream,” Legend said. “Take care of yourself.”

Mute, Crystal nodded, before flying off.

Legend sighed.

“I have one captive. My team has two more,” Valkyrie said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Legend said.

“What doesn’t?”

“The warlord of this area is surrendering. We still need to see how the politics fall down, but they think the army will return to its prior state, and they’ll serve the state, not the challenging party. There’ll be some tidying up to be done, but they will protect the portal.”

“We’re done?” she asked.

There was that faint anxious feeling again. The fear.

“The Wardens? No, the Wardens aren’t done. But we are. They don’t need people who can level armies or subdue errant nation-states. They need attention, resources, time, and a careful eye. We can keep things tidy here with a skeleton crew,” he answered.

“And turn our attention to other things.”

“For this specific moment, Valkyrie?” Legend asked, “There’s nothing. The monsters are quiet or dealt with, the armies are hunkering down for the cold weather, the unrestrained power effects seem to be restrained and quarantined for now. There is only the city, which is seeing its first snow, just days after freezing rain. They’re trying to find their equilibrium, and they’re counting on our help.”

She pressed her lips together.

“I know you don’t want to take a break, Chev told me, but I assure you… there’s a lot of work to be done there. It won’t be a break.”

“I think…” she started. She saw his eyebrows go up. “If things are quiet everywhere else, I may take that vacation I’ve been told about.”

His eyes searched her face, looking for the lie or the catch. “Hard to imagine. It would be healthy if you did.”

I have errands to run, she thought. If there are no monsters to slay, warlords to oust or towers to topple, there are still things that need attention.

“I’ll leave my flock with you,” she said.

⊙

A week.

A weeks of searching, of flying through worlds with only her shadows for company and assistance. Of finding the meat and vegetables for her own meals, including tubers and edible roots found in nature that were dim substitutes for things found on supermarket shelves. Her shadows prepared and cooked the meals while she rested.

A week. A week, a day, and four hours, and she found the first settlement. Shattered buildings had been repurposed. Graves were laid out at the far side of a field. Water, food, and shelter seemed to be secured.

There were cheers and cries of excitement as they saw her. An eerie feeling, given that they were people from the city. The Megalopolis.

And the questions. They came one after another. They wanted to know what had happened. The portals had expanded and then things had connected. People had been cast through, but they wanted to know why. They wanted to know about the city, and if the city was okay.

She felt as impatient as she ever had and she forced herself to answer in as patient and measured a way as she could.

It might have taken ten or fifteen minutes before there was a break in the conversation long enough for her to ask her own question.

“The Wardens? Did their headquarters come through here?”

“Yes, actually,” came the response, from a younger member of the group.

But that answer was less of an answer than the exchange of glances, the silence from the people who had been so talkative a short while ago.

A finger pointed the way, and Valkyrie flew in that direction, buoyed by shadows.

Had the two sites switched, the remnants of the Warden’s headquarters serving the hundreds who had come through on the other site, the remnants of the one or two apartment buildings lying on their side for the patch of people situated here, it might have seemed more fitting.

She released the shadow that was allowing her to fly, and stepped to the edge of the Wardens’ site.

Riley was here. So was Rinke.

There was a thinker who had been kept in isolation, because he found stimuli to be too much, and there were five members of the Warden’s office.

Again, she was pulled into conversation, when she only wanted to ask. Questions about the state of things, and that sing-song rhythm that Rinke and Riley could pull her into, where they played off of one another and seemed so natural, in a world that felt so hollow, shadowy and unnatural. A siren call.

Because they were Rinke and Riley, it took even longer for the gap in the conversation to happen. After twenty minutes, Valkyrie couldn’t effectively interrupt. Rinke wasn’t making goblins, he was making homonculi, and he felt that was an important distinction, because they didn’t have personalities and they existed purely for labor. Riley had questions and answers and she’d been experimenting to figure out options. Rinke had things to say about being king or not being king.

But Jessica appeared, knees and hands grimy from gardening or farming on the small scale, and Valkyrie abandoned the conversation, quite likely offending the king-who-wasn’t.

“Ciara,” Jessica greeted her, smiling wide. “You found us.”

Ciara nodded. Emotions welled up, but she managed to keep them from overflowing.

“I’ve only had the chance to seriously look for a week,” Ciara admitted.

“A week you’ve been away from the city?”

Ciara nodded.

“Still keeping your distance, I see. Venturing this far away from home when you could be there?”

It was meant to be joking, light, observation, not admonishment. But Ciara wasn’t used to showing weakness.

The tower and the atmosphere gun. The Simurgh. The power effects betraying convention. Broken triggers. Ghosts. Tinker devices left unattended. Chemical weapons. Mutants. War. Being hated or treated as alien or creepy everywhere she went. Being judged for tending to her flock. Being judged for failing her flock.

She could deal with that. She could stand tall and she could face it down. They were comfortable unknowns and question marks.

“The city. We’ve talked about it. Why I’m… staying comfortably away,” Ciara said.

“The biggest threat,” Jessica said.

“The biggest threat. Yeah. I’m terrified, Jessica.”

Polarize – 10.1

“It’s hard to know where to draw the line sometimes,” Sveta confessed.

We were standing at the crosswalk. We’d just met near the station, hugged, and were heading down toward the city core. I’d just come from my physical therapy for my arm and having a doctor look at the burn on my arm, and I had the buzz of the recent exercise, the endorphins from the pain, all on top of the feeling of being freshly showered and toweled off.

No costume- only a sweater, jeans, boots, and a gray wool coat with overly elaborate buckles. I did have my bag with me, but I wasn’t packing the costume inside. No equipment, but with the buzz, clean feeling, and endorphins, I had all of the emotional armor and preparation I could pull together for seeing family.

Snow fell lazily around us, but the vehicles on the road and their hot exhaust were generating just enough heat to keep the streets wet but clear snow and ice. The sidewalks where pedestrians weren’t active were getting covered by a layer that sat just over top of the ice that lingered from the on-and-off freezing rain of the past two days, adding to its slickness. Sveta’s hair, my hair, and our coats were dusted with snowflakes.

“Sveta,” I said, giving my friend a careful look, trying to think of how I could diplomatically phrase my response, “You have better lines than most people I know, and most people I know are superheroes. What the fuck are you talking about?”

“With you,” she said. “Sorry. I don’t know when to stop myself or when to keep going, because I haven’t had a lot of friends over the years. I’m not good with friend dilemmas.”

“Ah,” I said. I paused. “I didn’t want to put you in the middle of a dilemma. Whatever it is.”

Sveta squeezed my arm. She was leaning on me for balance, as her body wasn’t quite in perfect working order and the sidewalks were slick. “It’s not a thing you did. Um. Sorry, I don’t want to get too deep into it, which is part of it. I don’t want to bum you out.”

“We can talk. I trust you.”

“It’s more-” she started. The light changed, and after a second, we started forward. “We’ve seen each other at our worst, right? On the baddest of bad days, when we just needed a shoulder, we helped each other out.”

I nodded.

“And I know where you come from. I knew and believed what you were saying when you brought up your sister.”

“Yeah. You backed me up when I didn’t trust myself to say anything to her.”

“Even with that, I don’t know where that line is. People have their boundaries, usually, and they draw them out behind them through a hundred signals, some really subtle, and some obvious. And yours is… very hard to identify until I’m in contact with it or you’re already in that very bad place. All of us are actually pretty bad about it, but yours is especially tricky because I care a shitton about you.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I won’t argue that. Thank you. I’ve actually been thinking about that, actually. How the team is dealing, the past couple of days, post-Prison.”

“Turning on the heaters, turning on the televisions and radios, and watching the news with a dull, sick feeling.”

“…Can’t argue the sick feeling either. But we seem to be doing reasonably well,” I said. “Not great, but that wasn’t a situation that was going to be great for anyone. I think we’re getting distracted.”

“A mass breakout of the emergency prison, mind control, your sister showing up and her leaving with Chris? Yeah, distracting. But go on.”

“I’m thinking about how we deal and how we adapt. The lines, the boundaries and the secrets. Jessica wanted me to look after the team, and… Chris happened.”

“You can’t blame yourself for failing to help someone who actively resisted help,” Sveta said. “You tried. You showed up at his place, asked his guardian some questions about how he was doing, and she responded with worry? He blew up, and I think he blew up because he wanted to keep you from looking further. And it worked. Whatever he had going on, he somehow decided we weren’t the answer. He heard what you had to say about your sister, and he still went with her. Fuck him.”

I was trying to be tough, but something in that final combination of words tested my resolve. Maybe it was the emphatic ‘fuck’, so close to the mention of her.

I’d deal. I had to, because it tied into what I wanted to push forward to the group.

“We’ve done that thing a lot of teams end up doing,” I said. “We had that one tough fight. That one scenario where we’re outmatched or we go up against the person who tests or breaks convention. For my family it might have been Marquis. For the Major Malfunctions, it might have been turning up for a routine surveillance job and getting a literal army of mind controlled thralls teleporting into their neighborhood.”

“Going through hell and making it out the other side with the team.”

“Yeah. For varying definitions of hell and ‘making it’. We’ve had our trial by fire. We have our first real loss after losing Chris. All of us have had cause or reason to reveal some deeper stuff.”

“You especially.”

I shrugged the shoulder she was leaning on. “I don’t know. All I’m saying is… we might have to shift how we do this. We’ve protected and defended each other having secrets. We had that ‘it’s complicated’ card that we could always pull. It might be time to stop that. To have no more secrets.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Yeah. But if we can’t trust each other-”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Sveta interrupted. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m anxious about the team, and it’s been worse since… everything those two nights. Not just Chris, but getting a live-action roleplay, complete with all of the feelings of betrayal, as you end up acting like my enemy?”

I could hear the anxiety in her voice at that last line. I gave her a jostle, before shifting my grip to put my arm around her shoulders. She leaned her head against my shoulder, in a way that might have made walking hard if she’d had an ordinary body and balance.

She continued, “It would be nice to not have to wonder as much.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We do this thing where we prove we have the chops because we can win fights, but the group gets a little shakier where things are already shaky. I’m not omitting myself from that, either. I want to have the chops and not be so shaky when doing it.”

“Yes. Absolutely yes,” Sveta said. She lifted her head up from my shoulder. “Speaking of shaky…”

She pointed at our destination.

We’re here.

“Yeah,” I acknowledged her.

“Hey,” she injected fake cheer into her voice. “Upside! Teeny-tiny upside.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You get to watch them eat crow.”

I sighed. I shook my head.

“No?”

I shook my head.

The office building was packed. There was a lobby, and I saw two young employees sitting on the floor, papers around them. Overall, given the hour of the attack, the issue with the portals had done far more damage to real estate than it had done to the population. As people had resumed work, they’d needed to go somewhere, and this was one such somewhere. A building that now overflowed with people.

I craned my head a bit before spotting my mom. My dad was a short distance away, and he’d at least tossed the athletic-fit sports clothes in favor of something nicer, like a thirty year old guy might wear out to dinner. He wasn’t thirty, but I’d take what I could get.

Someone had pointed us out, because he turned to look, my mom following, once she noticed him looking.

Neither smiled.

It had been two days since the prison breakout. One day to recuperate and lick our wounds. Medical care for me and Rain, prosthetic body fixes for Sveta. Rain, Ashley and Damsel had needed to get some baseline things squared away with their sentences.

Needed, but hadn’t gotten. It was a big, ominous question mark floating over their heads now.

One day for that. One day to catch our breath after that. Because recuperating and healing was work. The second day served to let us ground ourselves again. Kenzie had maintained contact with people online, but as part of our unofficial, unspoken ‘taking care of ourselves’ day, it made sense that she would take care of herself by reaching out.

This was our day three. Our day to consolidate. I’d been talking about that from a distant, logical perspective, new rules, approaches, or policies, but I would have to tackle the more emotional, vague perspective later.

And, in another kind of ‘consolidation’, of focusing on bonds and promises and all the things that tied us together, I’d have to deal with a team of a much different sort. The sort that virtually everyone was born into.

“You didn’t answer your emails,” my mom scolded me.

Right out of the gates.

“I answered some. If I didn’t answer any, I wouldn’t be here.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’m glad you were willing to meet,” my dad said. “Hi Sveta. It’s so good to see you again.”

“I love the coat,” my mom said.

“It’s borrowed, actually,” Sveta said. Her coat was one of my spares, for when I’d had to spend long durations outside during my stint at the Patrol, during the winter that I’d lost fifteen pounds and had suddenly found the cold very much affected me. Bulky and nondescript- not a coat that one would ‘love’. Moms.

“Do you want to go somewhere private to talk?” I asked.

“This way,” my mom said.

She led us outside, then down the street. “This is the cafe we visit when we have to have more private meetings. The board rooms at the office were converted into more offices. It’s quiet here.”

Quiet was one way of putting it. Typically in the late morning, delis like this could be counted on to be transitioning from breakfast to lunch, with a few people having extended brunches. There was one other couple in the place.

We found a booth and sat.

“I know you probably have questions,” I said.

“We’ve heard a lot about what happened,” my mom said. “The bullet points. That includes your sister, though, she isn’t mentioned much.”

“She wasn’t there much,” I said. Why was this so hard? “The Lady in Blue had a danger sense, and my sister was so nonthreatening that she didn’t trip it. She didn’t do anything until it was ninety-five percent over. Then she was the final five percent.”

“We heard about that,” my dad said. “She sent us a message before disappearing to Earth Shin.”

“And?” I asked.

“She says she can do more good there. You wanted her to leave and to give you space and she’s doing that,” he said.

My mom leaned forward over the table. “She was optimistic she could play a part in repairing human-cape relationships and use her power as a bargaining chip to broker peace and better relationships between Shin and Gimel.”

“Ah,” I said.

My dad chimed in, “Being as objective as I can, she’s doing something good. She knows we’re in for a hard winter, and if she can promise peace and stability in exchange for some surplus food being sent our way? It could save an incredible number of lives. Millions. And she’s doing it while giving you your space.”

“Space? Two nights ago she tried to catch me by surprise and touch me. It was a meeting she requested that set off all of the worst events of that night. I’m supposed to smile and accept all of that?”

“It’s not an all-in-one package, Vicky,” my dad said. “We can celebrate the good things while working on the bad.”

I shook my head. Frustration was getting the better of me, despite my earlier resolve.

“If I can-” Sveta jumped in. “I know this is a family matter, and I’m not family.”

“You’re close enough,” my dad said.

I could see Sveta was a little taken aback by that. Enough that she lost whatever it was that she had planned on saying.

He went on, “You looked after Victoria when she was in the hospital. I’m so grateful that you were there for her in times we couldn’t be. If you ever wanted a place to go for a holiday, if you wanted a say or a vote, I think you earned it.”

“Well said,” I said to my dad.

“Stop,” Sveta said, flustered. “You’re making it hard to think.”

I leaned back in my seat.

“Mr. and Mrs. Dallon. I understand that Amy can do an incredible amount of good, if she puts her mind to it. If it were Vicky in that position, I would trust her to do it. But it’s not Vicky.”

“You know Vicky well,” my mom said. “You haven’t had the same exposure to Amy. She had years of helping people under her belt before she broke down. In the face of the Slaughterhouse Nine.”

“I know Vicky but I’ve seen Amy’s work. Can we try a thought experiment? If you don’t mind?”

“I don’t mind,” my mom said.

“Pretend that we had the same timeline, starting from now. Something like three years of her helping people, a tremendous amount of help. Giving her all-”

“Burning out,” I said.

“Burning out, yes,” Sveta added my bit. “Feeling pressured, feeling desperate. Pretend it was three years of that, and then she comes face to face with a monster. And she breaks down again. What if she ends up repeating the cycle, and she repeats it while seven point three billion people are at her mercy? What then?”

It was all I could do to just keep my mouth shut and stay at the table. I didn’t like pretending, even though I’d tried to put it out of mind.

“That’s entirely unfair,” my mom said.

“Why?” Sveta asked, her eyes wide. “We all relapse when it comes to our bad behaviors, and when dealing with someone like her, we have to use past experience to judge how she might act in the future. If that sounds unfair, keep in mind, that’s how I deal with thinking about myself.”

“People change,” my mom said, giving each word its own emphasis.

“People change, but if you knew someone who negligently discharged a handgun, if their core behavior hadn’t changed, would you really trust them around children with a gun?”

“It would depend on context, and your definition of core behavior. I know you mean well, Sveta, but there is so much more to this.”

Sveta shook her head. She tried to tap a metal finger on the table, but the hand kind of splatted out instead. She didn’t seem to mind or pay much notice. “Keep in mind that it’s not just one child at stake here. Seven point three billion people, that’s how many kids?”

“Roughly twenty-five percent,” I said. “One point eight billion kids.”

“One point eight billion kids. We haven’t seen that she’s changed,” Sveta said.

Carol shook her head. “There’s more at play than core behavior patterns. If that person had a support network keeping a close eye on them, when they hadn’t before? Caring parents and a sister? If she proved willing to listen to outside input, including a therapist?”

“She wasn’t listening the other night,” I said.

“To be frank, young lady,” my mother said. “You were under the influence of a power.”

“To be frank, mom, she was fucking why!”

“Quiet now,” my mom said, all composure. Her voice was infuriatingly calm. “There are other people in the room.”

She had a slight smile on her face as I sat back, reeling myself in.

That seething fury found its way into my voice as I kept the rest of my words level. “I wasn’t under the influence when she was meeting up with a tyrant in the weeks leading up to the prison breakout. Not Marquis, by the way. She’s hanging out with him too, but I’m going to assume we’re conveniently ignoring that-”

“Let’s,” my mom said.

“She’s keeping the company of some pretty scummy people. She has a fucking miniature devil on her shoulder, like some villain from a feature length kid’s animation. That’s where she’s at in the past and present. Future? We weren’t under the influence after the tyrant was killed, when she said ‘flock to me, villains, come and submit to my control, we’re going to Shin to take power!’ ”

“That doesn’t sound great, and it was left out of the call,” my dad said.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not the exact wording, but it’s-”

“It was close to that,” Sveta volunteered.

“It was close,” I finished my sentence, echoing her.

“Past, she was overworked and we failed her,” my mom said, her voice stern. “All of us failed her. Present, she’s alone except for the company of those villains because she’s scared to maintain contact with us. She’s scrabbling for support structures, and she seems to be maintaining good standards and goals. That’s commendable. Future? That’s up to us. People are defined by the supports they have around them. If we don’t give her something to come back to, then she’s going to stay with them. Her perspective will skew, because all perspectives warp when there’s nobody around to help keep them straight. Don’t use the past-present-future framing of argument on me when I taught it to you.”

“Somehow, in all of this, we aren’t holding her accountable for her own actions?” I asked. “Because I kind of remember this dynamic of a teenage girl bouncing around and being passed around to wherever she could be useful until she passed briefly into some ugly Slaughterhouse Nine hands and lost it. Lost it with casualties in the process. Me. Herself. But also me. Then she gets to fucking act like herself for one singularly stupid, horrifying-”

I choked on my words, too pissed to form a sentence.

“One act,” Sveta said.

“Or chain of acts. Or one act that sets her on a road where her choices are all bad. I don’t know. But she still chose,” I said. “And she had opportunities later, and she made more bad choices. Ones with casualties.”

I heard my mom sigh. The restaurant was so quiet, the city outside even quieter than usual because the cold weather meant people weren’t venturing out as much, it was crunch time at the various jobs around here, and it was still a bit too early for lunch breaks. The light snow had its faint effect on the sound of the outside world.

It was so easy to imagine we were all in this place, and there was nobody else in the universe.

My mom spoke, “If Amy took it upon herself to touch villains and alter the broken reward cycles, if Amy wanted to give them a conscience, or if Amy wanted to fix whatever was broken in their physiology that made them aggressive, I’m not about to say no. If there’s any risk to the-”

I dropped my eyes to the table. The ‘Amy’ refrain was endless and the song was one I didn’t want to hear. Amy, Amy, Amy, Amy. It was like a rock against my skull. Not necessarily enough to penetrate with the first blow, but chipping away, giving me a headache, and so fucking crude, stupid, and raw.

And, worse, it was a refrain that echoed my mentality those two years ago. Amy. Amy. Amy. I need her, I want her. It had been my mind for all that time.

Sveta touched my arm, rubbing it. A bit of physical reality to bring me back to the moment. I nodded to a question unasked.

“-thinkers will be able to detect it,” Carol said.

Sveta cut in, “I don’t care what your views are on how villains are treated, except, I’m sorry, but maybe I do, wow, and no. Or your willingness to put civilians in the hands of your other daughter, who has blood red tattooed on those hands for a reason, which is more wow. I’m sorry, but what-”

“Sveta,” my mom interrupted her. “I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing for-”

“-and I don’t care,” Sveta said, more intense, talking over my mom now. “I don’t care, I don’t care. You’re sitting a few feet from your daughter who spent years with an altered mind because of Amy, and you’re talking about how you’d be perfectly okay with Amy altering brains left and right? I’m sorry, what? What?”

“It’s the matter at hand, Sveta. It may well be happening as we speak. We have to figure out how we respond to it.”

“Mom the fuck up! That’s how you respond to it!” Sveta raised her voice. That turned heads at the other end of the diner.

“I’m trying,” my mom said, sounding as pissed as I’d heard her in a while.

“You’re trying to help one daughter who might be beyond help, and you’re fucking up with the daughter who needs it.”

“Stop,” my dad said. “Let’s end this here? We’re not getting anywhere, and I think we’re talking past each other.”

You barely talked. You let mom talk and you nodded here and there to show you were listening and taking it in… and you didn’t say yes or no or judge.

“…and Victoria looks like she needs a break.”

Well, at least he paid attention to me in the midst of it.

“If we step away without actually communicating, then it’s going to be a long time before we talk to her again, she’ll get ideas in her head, and communicating next time will be that much harder.”

“We end this here,” my dad told her. “No debate. We’re probably bothering the diner’s owners.”

My mom looked over at him with the most unimpressed look. When I rose to my feet, my dad did too, and Sveta started on the process of extricating herself from the booth.

My dad and I offered her a hand, each of us taking one hand. She accepted without complaint. My mom remained in her seat, leaning back, one arm extended all the way forward, five fingernails resting against the surface of the booth’s table.

I was so ready to go. It struck me only now that we’d been sitting in the booth and nobody had come to take our orders. Maybe we’d scared them off with the latent hostility and argument.

“Let’s go meet the others,” Sveta said.

The others. Oh. I turned back toward my mom, and put my bag down. “Can I ask about Natalie?”

My mom smiled, and she acted like we hadn’t just had a heated exchange of words. “She’s well. Healing from that chest wound while spending some time away with a friend.”

“When is she back?” Sveta asked.

“She said she would be gone for two days, and she told me that yesterday. She would have emailed you.”

“She probably did, but it would have been lost in the tide of feedback and questions we’re getting.”

“I remember those moments. Use them. People ask and approach because they’re interested. You want that interest.”

“Not today,” I said. “Today is the day we consolidate.”

“Is today a special event?” my dad asked.

“Only that it’s been too long since we’ve done it,” I said, “And we really fucking need it.”

“Damn straight,” Sveta said.

“Can I give you something to pass on to Natalie?” I asked my mom.

“Of course.”

I put my bag down and fished inside. “A bit of a thank-you for looking after Lookout and an apology for her having to put up with us while we were mind controlled. She did well.”

“I have an eye for exceptional people, Victoria,” my mom said.

“You do.”

I handed over the package, gift wrapped as best as I’d been able with the supplies I’d had.

“Stay in touch?” my dad asked.

I drew in a deep breath, then exhaled, looking at my mom, who still sat with her arm out, her other hand resting on the tidy little package.

“I can’t keep doing this,” I said. “Sticking my hand into the fire and getting burned.”

“We’ll talk, okay? You and me?” my dad asked.

I shrugged. My mom looked annoyed at that offer from my dad.

Irreconcilable differences, really. There wasn’t a good way to handle this.

“You know where I am,” he said.

We said our muted goodbyes. The door of the diner closed behind Sveta and I, and we stepped into the cold. My breath fogged. Sveta’s didn’t.

“The good news is that my dad extended an invite to Christmas, if you want company.”

“Ha ha.”

“Come on,” I told her. “Let’s go find our teammates.”

The snow was whipping around us as we returned to the main street. I could see a guy across the road, smoking a cigarette while he leaned against a store window. He watched the snow not with wonder, but the opposite- a lack of light in his eyes.

People would die as the weather got colder. But that would be then. The future was in the future, and that future had an Amy-shaped shadow somewhere across it. The past was misery.

The present? Today? I could focus on today. We would consolidate.

All together. Strength and knowledge.

They’d already departed the train when we arrived. I’d figured the talk with my parents would be intense and problematic, but I hadn’t expected it to be long.

It was Byron with a guy with shaggy black hair and scraggly facial hair, and Erin, all sitting on the railings at the top of the stairwell. Erin gave me a wave.

Kenzie was bundled up, with pink earmuffs, hair not done up in buns, but parted, the vast majority of her hair at one side of her face, along her temple and cheek. She had a black coat, with a nice looking flannel scarf, pink and black – more bundling than was necessary for the weather.

Behind her, two women were talking- thin, both in feminine clothing. One had tan skin and light clothes, with a pixie cut, and the other had long black hair, matching clothes, and pale skin.

She spotted us, and she sprinted, running down icy steps, barely touching the railing.

“Careful!” Sveta called out.

Kenzie reached the bottom stair and threw herself at us, arms wide so one arm caught me and the other caught Sveta. Sveta slipped and, despite my efforts, ended up on the ground.

“Sorry!”

“It’s okay. I’m glad to see you too,” Sveta said. She made her way back to her feet, then parted ways with me, seizing the railing and heading up toward Erin.

“See my work? I thought we’d need to protect identities,” Kenzie said, looking up at me, her chin touching my stomach. “So I made people projection things. It keeps your body type so you can still see what clothes look like, without it getting wonky.”

“That sounds work intensive.”

The guy with shaggy black hair would be Rain then. The two girls would be Ashley and Damsel.

“It was. It is. But I couldn’t sleep anyhow, and I thought I’d do something productive while I lay in bed. And then it became a habit, I’d work until I fell asleep at my desk or until I got tired. Now working on this project makes me tired. How are you?”

“I’m okay. Tough conversation with my parents. My mom, specifically.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She broke the hug. “I’m so happy everyone’s here.”

“Speaking of,” I said. I lowered my voice a bit. “Was there a rule you told me about hugging?”

“Oh. Um…”

“Listen,” I said, and I lowered my voice even more. “I don’t want to be the bad guy-”

“You aren’t.”

“-or make you feel like I’m not happy to see you either. But if you had a rule about hugging, then we should keep to that rule, okay? At least until we hear different.”

“Okay.”

“Do you have other rules?” I asked.

“Yeah. A bunch.”

“Are you following them?”

I saw her look around, like there was a way out. I didn’t want to trap her or act like my mom, but… if this was deemed important then it was important.

Part of consolidating like I wanted to meant avoiding the lies. It meant sticking to the rules and keeping things from getting shaky around the foundations.

I had my own shake. But Kenzie was especially shaky. Especially now.

“Come on. Let’s make this a good team day. We deserve one,” I told her.

She nodded with twice the energy that was necessary, no smile on her face. I reached for her shoulder, to guide her on the way up steps with ice on them, and she seized my hand in hers instead. Quick as a camera flash.

“You’re here,” the long-haired Ashley said. “After leaving us standing around in the cold for as long as you did, you really should buy us something. Tribute.”

Okay, that was Damsel then. Hair length matched. Easy.

“It’s a joke,” the other said. “You might have guessed, but we’re not really here. We’re sitting at the apartment, wrapped in blankets. We have cups of cider beside us, and a plate of those gourmet chocolates and biscuits on the coffee table.”

“That’s not fair,” I said. I looked down at Kenzie. “That’s not fair at all.”

“Do you know what’s better?” Damsel asked. “When we go buy our clothes, they’ll fit perfectly.”

“I scanned them for measurements, head to toe,” Kenzie said.

“That’s not fair at all,” I said. “That they get to stay at home with blankets and treats, and they get to go shopping?”

“Having our cake and eating it too,” Damsel said. She touched fingers to her lips and made a smacking kiss sound.

“If it’s any consolation,” the guy with the shaggy black hair said. Rain, obviously enough. “I’m here for real and I’m freezing my butt off.”

“You’re in good company,” Erin said, her arms wrapped around her body and tucked into the opening of her jacket, her body hunched over. She gave Rain a sidelong glance. “I feel weirdly disloyal, hanging out with this random guy with black hair and chin scruff.”

“I’m way cooler than that guy,” Rain-in-disguise said.

“Nuh uh,” Erin responded.

Inch over half a foot, Rain, and put your arm around her, I thought. Warm her up.

“It might help with the butt freeze if you weren’t sitting on a cold metal railing,” Sveta said.

Rain hopped down, straightened with a stretch, and then shook his head. “Yeah, no, that’s not better. Let’s get where it’s warm.”

“Let’s,” Erin said.

Byron, a little off to the side, was smiling, perfectly content in the twenty-three degree weather.

“Let’s go,” I said. “And let’s talk mission plan.”

“Is this a mission now?” Rain asked.

“Only if it keeps us organized. We’re splitting up, but I want to touch base, especially before any big purchases. That’s partially so we don’t lose track of each other. And also because I’m really, really curious what some of you are after. As far as split-up teams go, I’m with Sveta, because I owe her and we’re ridiculously overdue for this.”

“Yes,” Sveta said.

“I’m with the boys,” Erin said. “They wanted help because they’re hopeless.”

“And I’ve got the best two people to keep me company,” Kenzie said.

“Perfect,” I said. “We have practical reasons for this and those reasons include updating our costumes for the winter. You do that, we can dip into the team funds, consciences clear. Within reason.”

There were nods all around.

“Let’s stay out of trouble,” I said.

Polarize – 10.2

“Here,” Kenzie said. She held out her hand, and I took the little gift.

I turned it over in my hands, as Kenzie skipped over to Sveta, to pass Sveta something similar. A hair-clip. Mine was sun-shaped. Sveta’s was a sea-shell spiral. The others were walking and talking, as we all headed into the mall.

“I thought since you guys are sort of recognizable, you might want to keep things subtle. Yours isn’t very fancy, but it should change up your look a bit, like we did for the others. Sveta, you should take one of these packs. I gave one to Rain, and I’m carrying one for the Ashleys.”

“A pack?”

“We’ll go to the bathroom so you can change serptish- surveillish-”

“Surreptitiously?” I asked.

“Yeah. I’ll give you something, or I’ll give it to Victoria, and you can stay close to Victoria.”

“Okay,” Sveta said, leaning on me

“You aren’t overworking yourself?” I asked.

“Only a tiny bit. These are easy, it’s tech I already had. The issue was getting somewhere I could work on it in peace, now that I’m at the institution. I ended up going to the headquarters.”

“Alone?” Sveta asked.

“Yeah. Turns out I can do what Chris did, leave and nobody asks questions. Part of it is that they think I’m a good student and I’m obedient so it’s okay.”

“Yeah, that’s… not Chris,” I said.

“No, I know. He was creepy-scary when he wanted to be. I’m creepily good-nice. Same thing in the end. It just feels kind of lonely, you know? Bathroom’s this way.”

“I can see it being lonely, yeah,” I said.

“I’m really missing him. That’s part of it. The other part is realizing that there’s so much you can get away with because most adults are so busy trying to live their lives and deal with a group of kids that one kid doesn’t matter. I think I’d be happier if I couldn’t get to my workshop at all because they were paying a lot of attention to me.”

“I can see that,” I said.

“It would be more happiness for a very short time,” Swansong said. “Then it might feel hollow. I’m glad that your work means we can spend time together like this.”

Kenzie nodded, excited and sudden. “Right!?”

Silent, I pushed the door to the unisex bathroom open, holding it for the others. Rain, Byron, and Erin hung back in the mall’s concourse while the rest of us went in.

There were people inside, a husband and wife with a baby that they were wholly focused on, taking up three sinks between them. I hung back until they were gone, as the Ashleys headed to the sinks furthest from the door, standing side by side as they peered at their reflections.

I hoped that Damsel wouldn’t be a bad influence on Swansong.

The parents left and most of the stalls were left empty. Only one stall to watch for, and we could situate ourselves where we weren’t overheard.

“There’s a dial built into it, you might have to tilt it to see,” Kenzie instructed. “That controls the scope of it. I would have liked to have two dials, because you can do an awful lot of exploration with two dials. Double-tap the surface to turn it on. Oh, let me help you!”

Kenzie helped Sveta with the hair clip. I took the moment to figure out my sun-shaped device. The dial required my fingernail to adjust. I double-tapped it to turn it on, and my world was swallowed up by a faint checkerboard haze, a transparent screen falling into place around my head and hands, where skin and hair were visible. The haze snapped out of existence as the device seemed to figure out where my eyes were, creating eyehole-shaped gaps in the screen, while instead creating greater-than and less-than blurs of shadow to frame my eyes.

A moment later, the checkerboard and the shapes were gone. My skin tone changed along my hands, my fingernails now artificially painted. In the mirror, I could see hair with darker roots and brighter highlights, twisty as if every lock or length had been wound tightly around a pencil or pen, not treated with heat, but guided in shape all the same. The eyes that looked back at me seemed more open.

“I went through online videos and for each pin I picked out fifty people who looked similar enough to each of the people I’d be giving pins to, then averaged it out. When the average was too close to you guys, I pushed it out away from the norm.”

It was so close to being me, to the point that I could believe someone could get a witness description of me and think this face fit the bill, and it was wholly not me at the same time. I changed my expression in the mirror, seeing how the face moved. Moving the hand with the pin one way and moving my face another created a brief visual distortion, like what happened when trying to take a panoramic picture that included something moving.

Reminiscent of things, enough that it got my heart rate going.

“And- yeah, Victoria, you don’t want to do that. It helps if you actually wear the hair clip, duh. You shouldn’t run into problems if you do. And Sveta, I put together two options, but I’m not sure how well option two will work. I didn’t have you with me to try it and test it, so I had to guess, based on things. Let’s try smooth.”

“Smooth?” Sveta asked.

“I made this one a necklace. Here. Bend down and I’ll put it on.”

Sveta bent down, leaning hard into the sink for balance as she did. As Kenzie fiddled, Sveta looked up at me, her eyes searching my face.

“There. Double-tap.”

Sveta did, moving her whole hand to tap, instead of moving fingers as someone else might.

As had happened to me, the white-black checkerboard pattern overlaid her, loose and hovering over her skin. It slowly moved to the appropriate surfaces, and then settled. The change was minor, but it was because Sveta was bundled up in a huge coat. Her face had more skin tone, the features less different from her usual face than my current face was from mine. Her hands looked normal. She stared down at them.

“Maybe take that off, so we can be sure,” Kenzie said, poking at Sveta’s coat.

When Sveta nodded, I helped her out of the coat, folding it over my arm. The necklace took a second to adapt, the checkerboard wrapping around her arms and hands.

When the checkerboard map was settled, it became skin. Flesh, from shoulder to fingertip, tattooed heavily down the arms in a design similar to the forest green backgrounds with orange animals that Sveta had painted onto her arms. Unlike the paint, however, they’d faded out as any year-old tattoo might.

“Can you move your hands around? I’m wondering if the smoothing works.”

Sveta turned her hands over, looking at the palms. She didn’t move her hands.

“Svettaaaaa,” Kenzie said. She gave Sveta a bit of a push. “Come on! I want to know if this worked.”

“Oh. Okay. What did you want?”

“Move your hands. Do stuff.”

Sveta did. The movements of her hands didn’t have the mechanical quality.

“I did that for Ashley Black, and I thought I’d do it for you too. I just wanted to see- I’m going to take your hands…”

Kenzie reached out, grabbed Sveta’s hands, and them moved them around. There was a clear disconnection between where Kenzie’s hands were and the slow, almost dream-like way that the images of Sveta’s hands moved.

“Yeah. I worried about that. It’d look weird if you picked something up or if someone moved the map around. Next time! Here, let me change it. Bend down.”

Sveta obeyed. Again, she looked up at me, while Kenzie used her fingernails to turn the tiny dial at the underside of the clip.

“I have other tattoo maps loaded into my phone, if you’re interested. Um, just off the top of my head, lotus flowers, pink and green, and um, watercolor birds and branches… skulls and roses? Do you feel like a badass? Or I can get rid of the tattoos.”

“It’s skulls and roses or nothing, as I see it,” Ashley Black said, from the other sink.

“This is good,” Sveta said, and her voice was small.

I looked over my shoulder at the Ashleys, raising an eyebrow.

“I know this is a super minor project that probably doesn’t matter much at all, but I was still worried about how it would turn out, because a lot of what I do is I get really good images, but then when I do stuff like projections, I’m trying to find use-sensitive ways of printing those images. It’s like those super old fashioned cameras that would spit out a photo as soon as you took it, but I’m spitting all over you. I had to find videos with a really good coverage of certain body parts, so what I ended up doing was setting up cameras to scan for those and-”

“Kenz,” our Ashley said, interrupting. The interruption might have been rude, but the reality was that Kenzie kind of mandated them when she got going, because she pressed on and she left no gaps.

“Yeah?”

“If you get caught up in this, we’ll spend the entire shopping trip in here, fiddling with your tech.”

“Oh! Oh, shoot, I imagined this taking twenty seconds in my head. How long has it been?”

“Not twenty seconds,” our Ashley replied. “Come on. Let’s leave them to it. I’ve got to figure out what I’m doing with my costume.”

“Let Sveta and I hit one or two stores,” I said. “We’ll loop over and catch up with you? If there’s anything you want a Victoria opinion on, have them hold it at the counter and we’ll go back.”

“Do they do that?”

“That is a thing they should be willing to do, yes,” I said. Not much retail experience.

“You can tell me how I’m supposed to wear a costume with a dress built in, when the temperature is below freezing.”

“I can try,” I said. I glanced at Sveta, who was now staring into the mirror. “You might have to wear leggings.”

She made a face, then looked at Kenzie.

“I can do a thing, don’t worry,” Kenzie said. “I’m going to have to invest in better battery packs though. Speaking of-”

She fished in her bag, then came out with a satchel. It was barely bigger than a fanny pack, but it looked like it had a double-size brick in it.

“Wear, or have Victoria carry it and stay close. It’ll keep things charged, so you don’t burn out at an awkward time.”

“I’ll carry it.” I reached out and took it. It had to weigh twenty pounds.

“Bye!”

“Bye, Kenz,” I said.

The door banged closed.

Sveta and I stood at our individual sinks, looking in the mirrors.

I wasn’t Victoria Dallon. I’d been Victoria Dallon of that Dallon family since I’d been born. Famous enough to be recognized even when visiting Boston or Portland, not famous enough to be a true celebrity outside of my hometown. At school and during events, even in my sports, I’d always been the daughter of superheroes. Things had eased up after Victoria Dallon had ‘died’, but even after, in hospitals and in the Patrol, I’d still had the looks, the remarks.

In a way I’d liked it, I’d embraced it, but…

I wore a mask to be a civilian, and I felt the lifting of a burden I hadn’t realized was there.

The door opened, and a middle-aged guy entered the bathroom. He didn’t spare us a glance as he hurried to his stall. No double-check of a look for Sveta.

What I was experiencing couldn’t be a tenth of what Sveta might be feeling.

She dragged her fingers along the length of her arm, and there was a slight distortion- slight enough that I might have explained it away as skin stretching on contact. I saw her turn her arm around, examining elbow, then craning her head around to try to get a better look at the shape of her shoulder.

In the midst of it, she seemed to get a glimpse of me, and I could see that moment where the spell broke, she didn’t recognize the person standing next to her, and then realization set in.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s perfectly okay.”

“I’ve got you holding everything. My coat, the bag with- was it a battery? Let me take some of that.”

“Here. Take the coat.”

She nodded. When she took the coat, it was to hug the mass of damp polyester against her front, both arms wrapped around it. One of her hands pulled away, the wrist still holding the cloth in place, and her eyes fell on the moving fingers. Without the ‘smooth’ setting, they moved like her prosthetic fingers did- a subtle difference.

“Super minor project that doesn’t matter much, she said?”

She bit her lip, nodding.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got a glimmer of that same feeling. And I think we should take that feeling and run with it.”

“Run how?”

“You and I are two completely different, unrelated people, with none of the baggage and history, none of the current worries, and all of the great taste.”

“I’m not sure I have taste.”

“I think you do,” I said. I reached out for her arm, and my finger touched the hard surface, while appearing to depress the skin that was being projected there. The tattoo was there, with bold outlines and flat colors. “You’re an artist. Come on. First stop is winter stuff.”

She let me lead her out of the bathroom and into the mall concourse. Kenzie and the Ashleys were already gone, but Rain and Erin were at a kiosk where books and movie DVDs were set up on revolving stands, each of them with some candy and a drink. Rain seemed oblivious to us as we passed them, but Erin managed to get it after double take, before shooting us a thumbs up. Rain said something to Byron, who was deeper inside the kiosk.

“You don’t get cold, right?” I asked.

“Not as much. I kind of get brain freeze, but I have to be pretty cold for that.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah. Once I get it, I have to warm up the rest of the way to get rid of it. But no, cold doesn’t usually bother me much.”

“That lets us be more flexible, then. Thrift store?”

“I was thinking I’d be willing to buy a nice coat if I’m going to be wearing it outside the next few months.”

“We’ll keep that in mind as an option, but, as sad as it is, a lot of people sold their extra things when money was tight, and the thrift stores are currently a gold mine.”

“Okay.”

“You seem to gravitate toward the hippie, bohemian, surfer style? Flowy, cascading, loose, long, printed or patterned?”

“I guess? I had to pick a few things that I liked, after I got a body, I rushed my choices because I was shopping with Weld and I didn’t want to keep him forever, so I just went with stuff, half of it was stuff he liked. Then when I get new clothes, I get clothes that fit with what I already have.”

“But do you like it?”

“I do. I’m just worried I’m letting something that happened almost by accident become my style, and I don’t know better.”

“I’m sure there are lots of pieces of art where someone’s been painting, they make a mistake and in the process of adapting to it, they find something better.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll dig around. Try new things, see what works.”

Sveta nodded.

The collection of coats was eclectic. I found bomber jackets, including ones with pads at the elbows- definite no from Sveta. There were jackets covered in patches.

“I kind of like that, except it’s someone else’s patches and story, and I don’t like the jacket style.”

“And it’s a jacket, not a coat, which you could get away with, theoretically-”

“Except it’d draw attention if I did.”

We broke apart, each of us searching different racks. I pulled out a long coat, with a material like suede, with shaggy fur around the collar, down the front, and around the end of the sleeves, seams standing out in relief.

There was a coat that would run ramrod straight from armpit to knee, with a tidy, neat folded collar in what might have been described as preppy if the rest of the coat wasn’t so un-preppy, and a bold blue curlicue along the hem and down one sleeve. The fabric was blue that faded to an almost acid-wash blue-green toward the parts the curlicues were. There was something grunge and something fantastical about it.

Sveta hadn’t picked anything out.

“Not enthused?” I asked.

“I’m not finding anything. And you’ve already found two things?”

I showed her.

“Oh, wow.”

“Good? Bad?”

“Really, really good. I could see buying either of those and being happy. How did you even find it? I’m sorry, but there wasn’t anything like that over here.”

“I’m betting there was something, maybe you second guessed it, or you were looking for something specific, and your eye passed over it because it wasn’t what you were looking for.”

I passed her the two coats I’d found, and I went to the rack she’d been browsing. Women’s coats, sorted by size.

It wasn’t as good of a series of racks, but the sunk-cost fallacy kicked in, and I found myself pressing on.

“Number three,” I said. I pulled out a wool coat, cut like a trench coat, but with even more flare at the bottom. The coat was predominantly gray, but was defined by an arrangement of quilted patchwork, the dense wool coming in overlapping squares and rectangles of different, bold blues and greens, with an isolated yellow-green gradient taking up a sixth of the coat starting at one shoulder.

“It’s pretty out there.”

“It is,” I admitted. “It’s also very you.”

“I like it the most, I think,” she said. She reached out, dragging fingers down the front of it. Prosthetic fingers, I had to remind myself- it was less a test of the softness of the fabric and more of a… I couldn’t be sure. “I don’t know. Would you wear it?”

“No,” I said.

“Never?”

“Probably not.”

“Okay then.”

“But I’m me,” I said. “I know what I like. I think you wouldn’t feel at home in your clothes if you borrowed my wardrobe for a day. This suits you, I think. Try it on?”

She tried on each of the coats in turn. I could see the indecision, but prodding wasn’t too successful in getting her to open up.

It didn’t help that she was as distracted as she was with the appearance of her arms and face.

“We’ll put it on hold, try another store, see what the high-end options look like,” I said.

That got me a nod, a small smile that I couldn’t read.

“Sweaters and scarves?” I asked.

The nod was more enthusiastic, this time.

“If I’m bossing you around, you can tell me to quit it.”

“I like you bossing me around,” she said. “I’m happy, even if I can’t seem to pick anything.”

“Good,” I said. “You hunt over here, I hunt over there?”

The hunt was easier when it came to sweaters. Looser so they would be easier to pull on, or layered, often long in the body, to the point that they reached the hips or qualified as dresses. She found an electric blue turtleneck she liked. Scarves allowed for more color and patterns.

The more clothes we found, the more I could see the reticence break. She was smiling, less caught up in the distraction of her hands and arms, and more focused on the hunt for clothes.

The winter coat somehow remained as a sticking point.

I tried on a couple of sweaters of my own while she changed in the next booth over.

“Ah,” I heard her.

“Problem?”

“Not a problem. I’m not sure there’s a word for this kind of disappointment and relief.”

“Uh?”

“Come in.”

I finished pulling off my sweater, meeting strange eyes in the mirror as I pushed the changing room door open, and visited Sveta in the next booth.

She was topless, sweater and the shirt beneath pulled free. The projected skin that draped over her arms, shoulders, neck, and collarbone extended down to the area that would be her cleavage. It stopped there, with a ‘v’ shaped wedge of flesh that terminated between two undefined metal breasts.

“On a level, I’m really relieved that Kenzie didn’t give me any details here-” she said, gesturing at that area. “That would be ten kinds of concerning and weird.”

“Agreed. Based on what she said, she could have left her computer to run and collect information.”

“A part of me hoped, you know?” Sveta asked, almost plaintive. “and that part of me is really disappointed. It’s even more disappointed because there’s no way I could ask. Because it’s creepy, concerning, and weird to ask an eleven year old to search through videos to make a complete body.

She stuck a leg out, hiking up her skirt. The projection ended mid-thigh.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go talk where we won’t be overheard.”

She nodded, gathering her things to get fully dressed again. We went to the cash, and Sveta bought next to everything we had picked out, the coats excepted.

Burdened with bags, we headed to the front door. The snow was keeping most people indoors, but in the space between the two sets of doors, it was warm and quiet. The air circulation was a steady thrum.

“Can I talk to you, without the thing?” Sveta asked. “Talking about personal stuff to a stranger’s face feels weird.”

I reached up, found the pin, and double-tapped it.

Taking off the mask.

Sveta, bags in one hand, kept one hand at her shirt collar, prosthetic fingers near the projected collarbone. She didn’t switch to her old self.

“Feeling incomplete?” I asked.

“My boyfriend is coming home as soon as things wrap up at the front lines. Crystal should be too.”

“Yeah. It sounds like it wrapped up, but they’re doing cleanup, which is ominous.”

“Ominous, yeah. But they’re coming back and… I like him, I love him. I want to make him happy, and whether it’s cooking or, um, other things, I can’t seem to ever make it happen. He doesn’t taste because everything’s muted. He only really likes music, but I can’t sing. I can’t do the other things because I don’t have a body.”

“There are things you can do for him that aren’t sensory.”

“I try, but there’s something about making food for someone I love and seeing them go for seconds that would make me feel like I have something to give. And I want to give myself to him and have him go for seconds for that, too.”

“Does he feel?”

“Dulled feelings. But even if I got past that, Vicky, I don’t know guys. I can use my tendrils and squeeze hard enough to bite into the metal and deform it, but I don’t think he’d like that.”

“I wouldn’t do that. Not without communicating a lot beforehand, and during. Probably after.”

“He’s a red-blooded guy, Vicky. He likes women. With the relationship he and I have now, I feel like his kid sister sometimes.”

“I don’t think you’re his kid sister, Sveta.”

“Aren’t I, though? We’re close but we don’t do anything. I’m half mad scientist and half clown when it comes to the kitchen stuff, because I’m trying to find something that works for him, but I’m not getting any wins there. He does have to help me with some things, even though I’ve gotten more independent.”

“There’s more to it than that, though,” I said. I suspected it was futile, because Sveta was letting something out that she’d bottled for a while.

“He’s coming back and I’ve seen how he gets after he has the hard missions. Tired, but not in a way that he lets me see, and he hinted that this was a bad one. What if he comes back and he has to do his part to take care of kid sister Sveta, and what if he says he’s too tired for that? He’s given me so many good days, and I’m not sure I’ve ever given him one.”

“Not the vacation trip, hunting for your homeland?”

“That was for me, though.”

“He seemed pleased as punch to see us reuniting at the group meeting.”

“Again, that’s me. If I could just- if I could make something and have it taste good or new or interesting to him, then that would be happiness originating from him, his thing. A breakthrough for him. If I had a full body that I could show him, that looked right, if nothing else, maybe that could be nice for him. There’s supposed to be equity and I don’t think I’m holding up my end.”

“Sveta- no.”

“No?”

“Not equity. What you want is balance.”

“Same thing.”

“No. Equity, to me, feels like a transaction. One for me? One for you. I give you something, you owe me something? With balance, it’s about… I hate matching and folding socks. He hates cleaning the bathroom. So I’ll always do the bathroom and he’ll always have the socks folded.”

“Okay. But even there, what am I giving him?”

“It could be that it’s really, really important for him to have a friendly, loving face to come back to. I- I kind of feel like I’m betraying Dean by saying this, but I think one thing he taught me was that guys tend to be more disconnected than girls. Girls more often have support networks, or they can use the network they have more than guys can use their networks. Guys like Dean or Weld? I’m not sure they ever really have a shoulder to cry on. I mean literally cry. Except sometimes a girl they’re close with.”

“Did Dean?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Only a couple of times… still feels like a betrayal, confessing that. Which is maybe the problem or mindset that feeds into why they can so rarely do it.”

“We could change the topic.”

“No, it’s just that maybe that’s what Weld needs. Love, trust, caring, sharing, and that intimacy that isn’t only about mashing stuff together. It can be about being someone’s shoulder.”

“And the other stuff?”

“You can only keep trying with the cooking. I don’t know if I have any advice to give when it comes to bedroom stuff-”

“What advice would you give me if I had a real body, like this?”

“Communicate, set expectations, communicate. The first time will be embarrassingly bad. If it’s the right person, then that doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah. I think he’s the right person.”

“Sveta,” I said. I reached out and touched her arm. My fingertips hit hard surface before they hit the skin that was projected. I gave her arm a slight waggle. “We have a bit of cash flow. We have contacts. We’re in a position that matters. I wouldn’t rule out options. You could pursue other options like Capricorn is.”

“In group, Tristan talked about how he’s lost hope. I don’t know if he’s pursuing any more. We chase these bright lights that our powers give us, but in reality, Scion was just the glowy ball on the forehead of an angler fish- so much bigger and more vicious than he appeared to be, and he was strong, before. The problems we’re dealing with are the same. Two people stuck in one body. One person stuck in a monstrous body. A bunch of powers being shared around and tossed together. They aren’t small or insignificant, really. But they’re nothing compared to the massive, powerful engines that are behind them. They’re decoys, the pinkie toes of giants.”

Outside, the snow was blowing harder. There wasn’t much traffic.

I built on her statement. No use denying it. “There were people who had good glimpses and who remembered them, after Gold Morning. Mountain sized, island sized. Maybe continent-spanning.”

“And they’re like computers. They’re limited but they aren’t stupid.”

I shook my head. “Not stupid, but not genius either. It’s a specific kind of intelligence and focus. They make mistakes or miscalculate. There are capes who do nothing wrong who get screwed over by their power-”

“Ashley. Me. Chris, maybe.”

“And capes who, if the agent had more sense, wouldn’t have been allowed to operate like they did. Khepri. Though Khepri was a special case.”

“You know the story about Khepri?”

“I heard from Amy,” I said.

In the instant, still feeling the glow from seeing Sveta enjoy shopping earlier, and even feeling okay as I tried to talk a friend through a tough relationship snarl, I’d let Amy’s name slip without the snarl of negative thoughts that usually accompanied it.

They did follow after, though they didn’t take root. I gathered my thoughts again. “They are intimidating enemies, but they aren’t perfect. If you want this, and I think you do, then maybe it’s worth going down that road.”

“Beating our powers? The agents?”

“Yeah,” I said, and my voice was quiet. An older man came in through the one door, entering the mall. The warm air rushed out, the higher pressure in between the sets of double doors serving to force the cold air out. When the old man was gone, the other set of doors closed behind him, I continued, “Yeah. I’m getting tired of being out of control. I’m tired of being surprised. I’m tired of the betrayals, big and little, from family and teammates.”

Sveta nodded emphatically, her expression serious, lips pressed together into a line.

“Not just being out of control, but being controlled. I just- no way can I tolerate that. Not Valefor, not Amy, not Mama Mathers, not Kingdom Come, in your case, not Goddess. Before the prison attack brought things to a standstill, we were building something. Based on some of the emails I’ve skimmed, we can mostly pick up where we left off.”

“You could talk to the team about this,” Sveta said. “You’re bringing it up with me, first. Like you did with your forcefield.”

I nodded.

“Why?”

“To gauge. How far do you want to go with this? It’s weird, but I know what the others want by now. You… I get the impression that you could find one or two key things or key answers and you could be truly happy. You have the second coolest boyfriend ever, you’re beautiful, you’re artistic, you’re compassionate, and you could hold your own in any team.”

“You might be overselling me.”

“But if someone could wave a magic wand and grant you one wish… you’d be okay, wouldn’t you? You could settle down and be happy?”

“One thing? There are things on the side I care about. Um, beyond my own issue, I care about the Case Fifty-Threes. I kind of want to find out where I came from.”

“But if you had a magic wand with one wish, those are things you could still handle, right? You could donate to charities or support an organization. You could travel on your own, once things settled down.”

“I might have too much of the hero bug in me to stop altogether,” Sveta said. She leaned into me, her head resting on my shoulder.

“Good to know, then,” I said. “The reason I ask, and the reason I’m asking you first, is I wanted to know how far you’d be willing to go?”

“In what way?” she asked.

I tried to articulate it, and then settled for shaking my head.

“That’s not an answer.”

“We left Monokeros in that alternate Earth. We put her in a hole she could get out of, and… she’s in a prison without people or exits. She’ll finish off the food there and then she’ll have to hunt or forage. It’s a stopgap, until we have another alternative. Except Tristan lied and said she was dead. He lied and said she was dead, knowing full well that if he was called out on the lie or discovered for it, we’d lose the funding, files, and other things Mortari had promised us for our cooperation.”

Sveta nodded.

“Do we do that again? With more people? Keeping in mind that it’s a world where we don’t have a place to send them, and building that kind of a place is so intensive a project that it might be years before we’re there.”

“We didn’t start at the shallow end and work our way forward,” Sveta said. “Gimel went straight to the deep end.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “And some of the worst bad guys ended up leaving for Shin. But there are a lot of others here. We have resources, we have contacts. How hard do we go after them? How hard do we go after answers? Between the cases, the systems like Rain’s cluster or the Lady in Blue co-opting her cluster, all of that and the broken triggers… we might have to start paying attention to the elephant in the room.”

“The agents.”

I nodded.

“Do I have to answer right away?” Sveta asked.

“No, absolutely not,” I said. “But in a short while we’ll be back at the hero stuff. I want to have a game plan.”

“You had other things you wanted too. No secrets, no lies.”

“If we shift or narrow our focus, we might not be able to afford either.”

Sveta nodded. I saw her eyes search my face.

I raised my eyebrows.

“I’ll think about it. I might talk things over with Weld, if that’s okay.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you for talking this out with me,” she said. “I still have, like, a hundred awkward questions about boys. I know you’re not an expert-”

“I had a long-term relationship. I’ve earned my stripes.”

“Okay, but one guy, and he was easy mode because he could read your emotions.”

“That’s hard mode, Sveta. In a lot of ways, it’s hard mode. Capes don’t get easy mode.”

“Touche.”

“Pick on me for inexperience after you’ve asked me a question I can’t answer,” I said. “Until then, let me have this bit of pride.”

“Okay,” Sveta said, smiling a little. “You hold onto that pride. It’s mostly deserved.”

“Mostly?” I asked, smiling.

She reached up, hesitant with the motions of her arm. She tapped a metal finger twice against the hairclip I wore by my temple.

“While that girl who just left the room holds onto her pride, you, strange person, promised me that you’d find me a coat, or that we’d go back to get one of the other ones.”

“I did,” I said. “It might not be a good idea to split me into too many personalities. I’ve already got enough going on.”

“Maybe,” Sveta said. But she took my wrist and she gave me a tug. I didn’t fight, instead catching her at my right side with my arm around her back. Supporting her and half-hugging her at the same time.

Back into the mall, toward a nicer store. I could one hundred percent get why Sveta had wanted to shop in a place like this, to get something that lasted, and that had that extra degree of craftsmanship. Part of the reason I’d had her go to the thrift store with me first, though, had been to get her in the mindset of thinking about possibilities, so she would pick something fitting to her style, even here where things were more in line with one another.

The coat she and I ended up agreeing on as most suited for her wasn’t one I would have worn myself. It was a heavy coat, but worn more like a poncho, top-heavy and Cashmere. A good base to work off of, worn with a nice scarf or nice boots.

“I believe my coworker told you before, our apologies, but we do not allow children in this store.”

I turned around. The Ashleys and Kenzie were on their way in.

“This child is the best behaved child you’ve ever met,” our Ashley said. “I’m a customer, you need customers. Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the manager said.

“It’s okay,” Kenzie said. “If you take my bag and take my hair clip, you can talk with Ashley, and I’ll go find Erin and the boys.”

“Hang close enough for us to watch out for you,” our Ashley said. She was keeping an eye on Damsel, who was browsing dresses.

“Got it,” Kenzie said, bouncing on the spot before heading to the front of the store, hands clasped behind her back.

“We stopped in here earlier, I found some things I liked. Do you want to give a final verdict?” our Ashley asked me.

“Sure,” I said. We passed by a shelf with thermal clothing, and I grabbed a good few packs of it. For wearing under the costume. Ostensibly my reason for being here.

There was a jacket, too, that was form-fitting and sleek enough that I was pretty sure I could wear it under my costume.

Ashley’s selection of dresses were more for events than for casual wear, but they were good. A halter cocktail dress with an angry flare of white feathers at the collar, a slimmer dress that almost completely covered one leg, while leaving the other bare. All in whites, or white with black or gray decorative elements.

“It’s an aggressively crisp, put-together look. Are you willing and able to dress the rest of yourself up to match?”

“Naturally.”

“Then go for it.”

“No condemnations? No calls for more color?”

“Nah,” I said. “I know what you’re capable of.”

“That I could take your head clean off your shoulders if needed?”

“More like I know you can live up to a style this severe.”

“Um,” Sveta said. “Sorry to jump in.”

“We forgot about your coat. Do you want to buy it?”

“I thought about it, and I think I’m going to go to the other store for the patchwork one.”

I smiled.

“Don’t be smug,” she said. “I’m taking Kenz.”

She took her battery pack too. Leaving me with the Ashleys and their battery pack, just heavy enough to be obnoxious.

I gathered up the dresses we’d liked, and took them to the counter. The Ashleys were holograms, so they couldn’t carry, and one of my hands was burned.

“Only reason I’m going to condemn someone for what they’re wearing is if it’s offensive or if it’s clear they could do better. The first gets the hero in me acting up-”

“Terrible, terrible,” Damsel said.

“-and the second is going to make the inner coach in me antsy. Nothing quite so infuriating as being witness to someone doing something just slightly wrong or a lot wrong, regularly.”

“I feel that way about almost everyone, doing anything,” Ashley said.

I looked back over my shoulder, toward the store where Sveta and Kenzie had gone. I could see them at the counter, the dress draped over the end of it.

“They’re good. I like them,” Ashley said.

“Is she okay?” I asked. “Kenzie?”

“No,” Ashley said. “She’s almost as bad as when I first met her. Better in some ways, but in others…”

She didn’t finish the sentence. I wondered if she was expecting her twin to finish it.

“We’ll keep an eye out,” I promised.

“Please.”

Sveta and Kenzie emerged, Sveta now wearing the jacket. She flickered slightly as Kenzie bolted ahead to where the Ashleys and I were.

“Rain went to the food court,” Kenzie said.

“Are you surveilling Rain?” Sveta asked, mock stern.

“No. I saw him walk that way,” Kenzie said. “No, I’m kidding. Yes, he has my tech on him and I’m keeping an eye on that tech, so I know kind of where he is. But I’m keeping an eye on my tech, not on him, specifically.”

Ashley gave me a sideways look.

“I saw that, Ashley Swan. Don’t do that.”

I put my hand on Kenzie’s head, wobbling it left and right before pulling her closer, so my hand was on her far shoulder, her other shoulder against my side. Sveta was on the other side of me, looking as pleased as punch with her coat, her other coat and bags held under her other arm.

Erin, Byron, and Rain were gathered in the empty food court. Some of the stalls were only just now opening or re-opening.

More distracting was the lingering decorations and setup from an event that might have happened a day ago. It looked like this spot had been a gathering place for one of the big anti-parahuman groups. They hadn’t properly discarded of their signs or messaging, with much of it left stacked or leaning against a wall in the corner, along with some black trash bags.

“Jesus,” Byron said, as we drew closer. He added some Spanish words I didn’t know. “That’s a lot of stuff.”

“Because they’re doing it right,” Erin said. She sat on a table, her feet on the stool next to the one Rain was seated on. He looked a little worn out.

“I got a few t-shirts, some other shirts, some socks and underwear, and a pair of jeans, and I thought that was a lot,” Byron said.

“Did you get costume related- nevermind. You don’t need thermal underwear.”

“Not really. Got a pack for Tristan.”

“And Rain?” I asked.

“We got stuff for Rain,” Erin said. “We would have got more, but we decided to take a break.”

“Turns out malls make me pretty ridiculously anxious,” Rain said. “Stupid.”

“We all have our hangups,” Byron said.

As a group, we got ourselves sorted across two sets of tables. Bags were deposited in the middle section.

“Are we keeping this light and fun, or do we talk about more serious things?” Sveta asked.

I kept my mouth shut. I was up for either, but I didn’t want to steer things too much.

“Hard to keep it light with that hanging over our heads,” Byron said, indicating the anti-parahuman signage.

“Well, to be fair, they’re right,” Rain said. “Parahumans suck. We do crummy things. There are scary ones out there.”

“We could talk business now, then go back to fun, if you guys think you can do that,” Sveta suggested, almost hopeful.

“Are we eating?” Kenzie asked.

“I’m eating right now,” Damsel said, sitting at the furthest seat away, in our cluster of two tables. “Tea and sandwiches.”

“If you’re hungry, we can eat,” I said.

“I’m going to go get a taco or a wrap,” Kenzie said, heading to the place apparently dubbed ‘Hell Taco’.

“Business it is,” Byron said. “I’ll swap out to Trist, as he has more to say. If nobody’s looking?”

Nobody was.

The change was subtle, as Tristan was wearing a black coat, same as Byron. Tristan punched Rain lightly in one shoulder, and Rain gave him a half-hearted smile in response.

“While the munchkin is getting her food, is there anything we need to talk about, that isn’t for her ears?” Tristan asked.

“That’s the first place your mind goes?” I asked.

“I thought I’d bring it up. Kenzie’s away for a few minutes. Is there anything we need to work out?”

“Chris is gone, she’s bummed and not at her best, so we watch out for her and we watch her,” I said.

“Succinctly put,” Tristan said. “Are you swinging by the institution at some point to check on her?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Are we going to talk about Chris?” Ashley asked.

“Hard to do until we have more information,” I said.

“Okay,” Ashley said. “You’re going to have files, right? From Mortari.”

“Not on Chris, I don’t think. But yes.”

“Alright,” Ashley said. “Then do we warn people? Have we informed the institution that was looking after him that they may need to change things around?”

“If he’s in Shin, he’s in Shin,” I said. “And there’s not much use warning people, except for the Wardens, and they already know.”

“It doesn’t feel good enough,” Ashley said.

“You’re bothered by this,” Rain observed.

“Yes. And I’m bothered in a way I don’t want to pass on to Kenzie. I’m glad to be talking about this now. This is serious, and it’s related to us.”

“It’s a kid running off because Victoria’s sister is his best bet to get healthy. He’s no more a concern than any of the many, many prisoners that were here that just got dumped on that world,” Tristan said. “Except he’s young and stubborn, and he’s kind of our responsibility, as you said.”

“You think this?” Ashley asked. She leaned back. “This is… group consensus?”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“Is it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Shave off the serial numbers, and that’s essentially my take. It’s serious, don’t get me wrong, but… there’s a lot of serious going on. Why?”

“Your sister is powerful,” she said. “I’m sorry to bring this up, but it’s important.”

“She is,” I said.

“Do you think she’s going to do something to his power?” Tristan asked.

Fuck. Ick.

“No,” Ashley said, clearly annoyed.

“Go easy, Tristan,” Sveta said.

“No,” Ashley said, again, louder. All eyes went to her. “What I think, and I’m saying this as someone who pays attention to power, authority, and leadership, I was listening as they talked at the end, before they left. Amy made her announcement, remember?”

There were some nods around the table. Rain murmured something to Erin, clarifying.

“Do you remember at the end?” Ashley asked. “She turned to him, and she asked him, ‘Was that alright?’ or something like that.”

“Something like that,” Tristan said.

I felt uncomfortable in a way that didn’t necessarily have to do with Amy’s involvement.

“I would stake my reputation on this,” our Ashley said. The other Ashley was nodding slightly, as if already acknowledging or corroborating. “The tone, the timing? She asked him because she is subordinate.”

Polarize – 10.3

“Back!” Kenzie announced. “Incoming, clear a space!”

I exchanged glances with some of the others. Sveta. Ashley. Tristan. Rain. An unfinished, sensitive topic still hung over our heads.

“Back with a shitload of tacos,” Tristan observed. “Brain fuel for a tinker brain?”

“No, geez. I don’t think I could eat all of this without exploding all over the place. I thought I’d get extra and share,” Kenzie said, as she set the tray down, lifted it up, leaving a second tray on the table, then set it down beside the empty tray. She began dividing stuff evenly across the two trays, taking extra care with drinks.

“I’m not complaining,” Tristan said. “Let me pay you back for what I eat.”

“You don’t have to. I have a stipend, and we’re getting some money now.”

“You’re a tinker. You’re probably paying for your stuff out of pocket. Paying you back means we’re keeping it fair for the team.”

“M’kay, won’t complain,” Kenzie said. She worked her way into the space between the two Ashleys. “What are you guys talking about?”

I met our Ashley’s eyes. She nodded just a fraction.

This wouldn’t be easy.

“Chris,” I said.

“Oh,” Kenzie said. I could see her register that- no hurt on her expression, only a quirk of an eyebrow. She flashed a smile at me, before lifting her taco with its hard, blood-red shell to her mouth, taking a big enough bite that her expression was unreadable.

It might have been fascinating if it hadn’t sucked so much to see.

“We’re going straight to that?” Tristan asked me.

Kenzie held up a hand until she’d finished chewing and swallowing. “To what? Chris? Why not? Because I’m here?”

“Here’s the deal about us talking about it when you’re not here, Kenz,” I said. “We don’t want to leave you out, and I want to minimize the secrets we’re keeping, but this is tricky. So we touch base with each other. We ask each other how best to do this kind of thing.”

“Uh huh,” she said. She took another bite, turning her head sideways. Before biting, she said, “I got you iced tea, by the way. I dented the lid.”

Deflection after deflection. The bite of food, pointing out the iced tea. Would Sveta register that Kenzie was off? Would Rain? Tristan? Erin?

I leaned over. Out of the drinks she’d balanced across the tray, the plastic lids had little buttons that could be depressed to show what type of drink it was. I grabbed the iced tea and didn’t think too hard about how Kenzie might know it was my go-to drink. I’d think on it later.

“We checked with each other before bringing it up. Just like you guys probably talked about how you wanted to keep Amy’s involvement with Goddess a secret at first, because it would have been awkward and unnecessary.”

Kenzie nodded.

“That was fine for me. We wanted to figure out if it was fine for you. It needs to be talked about. Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Gotta talk about it. One hundred percent. So long as we’re fair. I know he did something weird and betray-y the other night, but I think he would have had to have good reasons.”

“He’s always kept things close to the chest,” I said.

“He had a lot of secrets,” Tristan said. “But when someone like him tells you who they are, believe them. He told us what motivated him. He wanted to dive head-first into the intense, powerful cape stuff. He was grumpy about being left out of the visit to the W.H.Q., and he was perfectly happy to be in the midst of the Fallen thing. Now he’s maneuvered to be in the midst of the Earth-Shin thing.”

“I don’t like that interpretation,” Kenzie said.

“Why not? It’s fair,” Tristan asked.

“Because it makes it seem like he schemed his way through it all. Isn’t it better to give him the benefit of a doubt and be wrong, than to not and be one hundred percent worse than we could pretend he is?”

“Honestly, I like giving him the benefit of a doubt,” Rain said. “I know how shitty it can be to not get it.”

“I’m not painting him as the bad guy here,” Tristan said. “Okay? There’s no need for doubts or benefits of the doubt. I’m laying out basic facts. This is what he always wanted, and this is what he was open about, and it’s what he ended up doing, apparently. Going to where the powers are.”

“The reason I don’t like it is that if you put it that way, it sounds like we were only a means to an end, and I refuse to believe that.”

“That-” Tristan started. I moved my hand, indicating for him to stop.

“Let’s take five,” I said.

“Sure. Sorry Kenz.”

“It’s fine,” Kenzie said, with a shrug.

I’d been able to see Tristan starting to get riled up for a debate. I’d seen it a couple of times before, and my gut feeling was that when it came to facts against feelings, and the facts came from someone as convicted and die-hard as Tristan, the feelings from, well, Kenzie? There was no way it would end well.

Others were taking food from the tray. I waited until people had made their choices, then took a wrap.

Erin and Rain ducked out, heading to one of the other vendors. A burger place had just opened for lunch. ‘Patty’s Patties’. That took me back – if I had to go back to earliest memories, then fuck, one of my five or ten earliest memories of Amy was from a family trip – would have had to have been, since the franchise wasn’t in Brockton Bay. She had been outright weeping because she’d been so bothered by the decorations around Patty’s – whole herds of tiny cartoon cows marching off assembly-line style through the process of getting carved up and served, then dining on burgers.

Sure enough, the cartoon design had been updated to something more clean around the edges, but right beside the store’s sign was a cartoon cow with knife and fork, disembodied upper body floating over the pelvis and legs, a slice cleanly removed from its middle. Because of the design, it had no expression, only vertical lines for eyes and two circles inside an oval for the nose.

Of all the things to survive the end of the world.

Rain ventured partway back, with Erin hanging closer to the counter. Order put in, and he was close enough to listen in while waiting.

Kenzie took another bite of her food then sniffled once, before reaching for a napkin. She dabbed at the corner of one eye, then wiped at her nose.

“Kenz,” Sveta said. “You okay?”

“This taco is really, really spicy. I had no idea,” Kenzie said, her voice distorted by the spice. She made a small cough, then thumped her fist down on the table.

“It really is,” Tristan said.

Reconciliation? Middle ground by way of hell tacos?

“I was worried you were really upset,” Sveta told Kenzie.

“I don’t get weepy,” Kenzie said. “I am slightly annoyed. Chris had a hard time with people, but he showed he cared in other ways. He cared about my stuff, he listened to me blab on about my work when others would run away. He always was up-front about calling things out the way he saw them. That’s how he cared. Even when things got nasty, he’d usually step in and pull it back to say something nice after taking it too far. He wouldn’t do that if he didn’t care.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Damsel-Ashley said.

“Don’t you start. You didn’t even know him,” Kenzie said, jabbing her partially-eaten taco at the projected Ashley to her left. “When he was nice he was so nice. So clever and thoughtful. There was something in there, that he had to keep protected and secret.”

“She’s not wrong. I’ve told you that you have to watch out for people like that,” our Ashley said. “When someone treats you badly nine times out of ten, and treat you really nice the rest of the time, that means they’re bad for you. It’s easy to fake being nice the one time out of ten.”

“He wasn’t nice only one time out of ten, okay? Please and thank you,” Kenzie said. “He was the first friend I ever made that was close to my own age, who stayed with me more than a couple of weeks. He listened to me geek out and watched stuff or read stuff because I mentioned it. He’s one of only a couple of people I ever knew who understood what it was like to be one hundred percent lonely.”

“One hundred percent lonely?” Sveta asked. “I think a lot of people have experienced that.”

“I don’t know exactly how to put it. A bunch of people here probably get it, or they got a taste of it,” Kenzie said. “You don’t get powers unless you don’t have anyone to turn to, or something? But there’s a difference between being totally alone the once and being totally, one hundred percent alone because that’s the way things are, or it’s the way you are, and it’s a pattern. And because it’s a pattern you’ll probably be this alone again in five years or ten years. It’s a loneliness that’s lonelier because there’s no way it can get better.”

“I think you’d be surprised how others relate to that,” Sveta said.

“I guess so,” Kenzie said. “I haven’t thought that much about it.”

“I hope you know that pattern ended here,” our Ashley said. “I’m with you.”

“Except you promised me that and you went to jail,” Kenzie said. She stopped herself, then smiled at Ashley. “Sorry to say it like that. You did stay in touch but you did go to jail too.”

I saw Ashley digest that, then nod.

“Um. Anyway, that pattern? There’s more to it. Chris gets it, I think. He welcomes it, encourages it. We’re different because I don’t want it, but he and I have that common ground. We’ve both nosedived into big projects that you can only really do if you don’t do anything else, and we can talk about those things. That was a me and him thing.”

“Hobbies?” Rain asked.

“‘Hobbies’ feels like too much a group thing. Anyway, I was talking with him about it not all that long ago, especially over the summer when there wasn’t school, and I remember thinking it would be so nice to do that for a long time. It made so much sense because we had that common ground, right? I kind of fell in love with that idea and I fell in love with him at the same time. Not regular love, it was a bit different this time. Maybe crush-love.”

Ah. So that was what she’d been getting at.

“Aw, hon,” Erin said. She’d returned a minute ago, and I hadn’t noticed.

“He said no, by the way,” Kenzie added. “He said we’d never get along and he’s right.”

“Can I squeeze in there?” I asked Damsel.

She stepped back from the table. I slid across, and took the seat beside Kenzie, putting my arm around her. She leaned into me hard.

“There’s a possibility he needs help,” I said. “I know you guys got the basics from him in group. Normally we’d want him to share it on his own, as he feels free, but he obviously can’t do that now. I don’t know his background, but I think we need to make sure we all have the information.”

“You want his story?” Tristan asked. He leaned back into the cheap food-court seat.

“Please.”

All around us, the seats were empty. The only people were way off to either side, in the spaces where lines would form, walking to the food stalls, where skeleton crews were working.

“I guess since I’m one of the people who knew him best, I’ll cover this?” Rain asked.

Tristan shook his head. “It’s tricky. He’s dropped contradicting details. I think when he did tell us stuff, he changed particulars around. Keep in mind there might be some misleading details in this.”

“Yeah,” Rain said. “Something like that. I think to hide particulars about the people he had to kill on the way.”

“Multiple people?” I asked.

“His first memory, the way he explained it in group, is that he was changing back from one of his other forms. It was a dangerous form, and a third party was reactivating him.”

“Reactivating him?”

“Yeah. Keeping him in a loop of changing into a senseless, dangerous form, letting it start to lapse, and then getting him back in that form by giving him a new target or something before he had his senses again. For a while. A while.”

“Why?”

“This is where we have to read between the lines,” Rain said. “He does really interesting things with biology, and apparently it’s things that outside parties can use. He creates extra mass and stores it elsewhere, he has tissues that heal quickly, he has natural weapons, and he can have materials in his biology that are as durable as a steel alloy. He dropped a hint once. That it was a tinker that sold him or rented him out so others could study his power, or a tinker enclave that kept it all in-house. I don’t know.”

“He talked about brain scans,” Tristan said. “Also the feeding- the forced reactivation I mentioned before.”

“Yeah,” Rain said. “The initial change or manifestation of powers- I won’t call it triggering because I don’t think he remembers triggering, it broke his brain. He doesn’t have much in the way of old memories. He might have tried to survive on his own for a bit, but he got caught and used by third parties.”

“He never fully recovered?” I asked.

“Nah,” Rain said. “But he was working on it.”

“There was a girl from my hometown who got caught and used for her power. I missed the chance to be there when she got out, and I never got to talk to her,” I said. “I hope she ended up okay.”

“It might be happening a lot more than we imagine,” Tristan said. “Resources are scarce, the wealth divide is pretty nuts. Some people got lucky, like Byron and me, we had stuff from back home we were able to salvage and sell in lots, and a lot of that got spent on, uh, insurance. Most others started on the ground floor, wealth reset to zero, and people like some of these monsters out there, they hate being on an even playing field. They’d prey on others if it meant an advantage.”

I took a bite of my neglected wrap, thinking.

“Does he want revenge?” our Ashley asked.

“He never gave me that impression,” Rain said.

Tristan drummed his fingers on the table. “We should keep an eye and an ear out for creeps like that. The kind of people who would traffic in changers for their power, catch tinkers like that girl from your town, Victoria.”

“She was a thinker, but yeah.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe we can get some answers in retrospect. Figure out how to deal with him if we cross paths again. Give him some peace of mind, if it’s eating at him, or get a better idea of who he is and where he came from.”

“Seems risky to pick up prisoners like that,” Sveta said. “Prisoners trigger or second trigger. Or escape. Chris escaped.”

“Yeah,” Tristan said. “Thing is, money? If you have it, it’s easier to make it. If you have more of it than most people, then your money will grow faster than most people’s. Right?”

“Meaning that if we wanted to keep an eye out for people who might know what happened, we might keep an eye out for people with money,” Sveta said. “Or a lot of resources. Like Mortari.”

Jeanne Wynn and her assistant. Citrine and the Number Man.

“Or Teacher,” I added.

“Which kind of dovetails into what we were talking about before,” Sveta said. “If- is that okay to bring up?”

“Yeah,” I said. Let’s minimize the secrets.

People were paying attention, finishing off their meals if they’d been doing a lion’s share of the talking, as Kenzie and Tristan had, or picking at their fries and sides, if they’d been mostly quiet.

“Let’s talk about shifting gears,” I said.

“Shifting gears how?” Rain asked.

⊙

Foresight. Shepherds. Advance Guard. The three biggest teams that acted as teams. The Wardens might have counted, but the Wardens weren’t present, and I wasn’t sure they were a team by definition.

There were smaller teams too. The Major Malfunctions. The Lone Wolf Pack. Paint Fumes. Super Magic Dream Parade. The Keepers of Peace. Green and Bear It. The Homonculus Three. The High Road. The Fifth Brigade.

This had started out with just a discussion with Foresight. We’d cooperated the most in the past. They’d been there when Amy had left with the prison population.

From there, it had been a question of selling things to the Shepherds, led by Moonsong, who had her doubts about Tristan, and to Advance Guard, who had their doubts about me.

Once we had the big teams on board, it had been a question of figuring out who would accept, and who would refuse. The Major Malfunctions were easy. Eager, looking to help. Others?

Others were scared.

These guys, who were approaching to stand in front of me and the rest of Breakthrough, looked scared.

The leader was hardest to read, because his bodysuit was skintight, capped off with a helmet that hugged his head, an opaque black visor covering his face. The decoration was also the wiring that connected his nervous system to the enormous portal that he wore on his back, the size of a pair of motorcycles. It was only by the device’s hovering capability that he was able to venture indoors with it, though the pack did scrape up against the sides of any door he passed through. A young teammate of his had a tall, musclebound brute projection around and above her, carrying the weapon that went with the portal. The third member of the group wore a bodysuit that was so heavily decorated that the theme was lost in the jumble, all whites, reds, blues, and oranges, with some revolving segments. The mask looked like a door knocker, complete with a heavy metal ring.

“This is ominous,” Accession said. The machine at his back whirred, as if reacting to his emotions.

I held out the pamphlet we’d put together. One for every team.

“You’re a mercenary group,” I said. “Heroes for hire. You take bids for the most pressing jobs and you do your best to achieve them. If you fail, you refund. Right?”

“Right. We have a pretty decent track record, considering the difficulty of some of these jobs.”

“I would like to improve that track record,” I said. “You’re a tinker, right? You didn’t get the tech from someone else? I know some tinkers do that to stay out of trouble.”

“It’s my tech.”

“Page seven,” I said.

The representative members of the other teams were all gathered, listening and waiting.

“Tinker notes,” Accesssion said. He twisted around to show his teammates.

“Doesn’t mean anything to me,” Mamori said.

“It’s nice,” Accession said. “But you wouldn’t have everyone here if you wanted to trade tinker work.”

“If you think that’s something you can use, you can have it, courtesy of Lookout here. You can also have a turn at looking at the tinkertech of every person here. If you get on board, agree to some rules, you can get an edge.”

“We make okay money. This is stuff I can buy,” Accession said. “I can get it without selling my soul.”

“No soul required,” I said. “Only cooperation and information. We’ve already set up an infrastructure, some loose jurisdictions. We’ve grouped teams by who they’re willing to work with and the ground rules they’re willing to follow. If you’re violent vigilantes, fine. So long as you’re working for the good guys. We’ll pair you with the other violent ones and we’ll leave you to it as long as you aren’t crossing any critical lines.”

“We’re not violent,” Accession said.

“No. But if you’re willing to shoulder your share of the city, we’ll pair you up with people you can get along with.”

“Other mercenaries?”

“No. Mercenaries are competition,” Tristan spoke up. “Volunteers. Selfless guy heroes who are willing to lend their help to ensure a job is completed all the way.”

I glanced at Withdrawal, who was standing off to one side, glowing teal tonight, not pink. He’d welcome the chance to get some experience, to help out good guys. Hopefully we could get him contacts.

“What’s the catch?” Accession asked.

“If you arrest any of the massive scumbags? Anyone on our lists? Let us interrogate and disappear them.”

“Disappear?”

“One of our teams has the means of imprisoning them indefinitely. Reasonably safe, reasonably humane. But we’re not sharing. The more people know, the more they can figure out how to break ’em out or try to capture them like they did with the parahuman prison outside of Greenwich.”

“That’s it?”

“We also require information,” Swansong said. She raised her chin a fraction. She was alone- Damsel was back at the apartment. The lingering influence from her other half still seemed pretty darn apparent. There was more of the imperiousness I’d seen in our initial interactions.

I added my voice to hers. “We’re reconstructing old case files and databases. We’ll need something at regular intervals. It can be old information on current threats, it can be secondhand information, bought from others here and contributed with your own hand. You will have access to these files and databases.”

Swansong added, “You will briefly lose access and other benefits of signing if you provide incorrect information. You’ll permanently lose access and benefits if you provide misinformation.”

She was good at sounding intimidating, at least. I’d have had to use my aura to achieve the same effect.

“Can we look this over?” Accession asked. “Talk it over as a team, discuss with our manager?”

“That would be a good idea,” I said.

⊙

The floor of our headquarters had a Capricorn-created pad of flat ground near the door. From my altercation with Amy. The building felt smaller than it once had, and I wasn’t sure if it was because she had been here, instilling a claustrophobic effect.

We’d reached out to every team that would listen. We’d used the teams that had been willing or interested to get others to the table. Hours of meetings, of handing over packages where rules and tech were outlined. Erin had been in the back with Rain, printing out and binding the next pamphlet so it would be ready for the next people to come in.

Formalizing deals we’d made in abstract before.

It was done. We were tired, and some of us still had our shopping with us from earlier in the day. Others, myself included, had been weathering the initial storm, re-forging connections.

“There’s not much I can do with my stuff broken,” Lookout said. She undid clasps on her helmet and pulled it off- the helmet itself had been re-styled, doing away with the buns. Even with more allowance in the helmet’s shape to let her hair hang free, it now stuck to her face and scalp with sweat.

“Whatever you can do is great,” I said.

Sveta looked anxious as she passed me, making her way to her station where her things were.

“And I should get back to the institution before it’s too late. They might not care much where I am, but-”

“Curfew,” I said.

“You know, I’d be safer at my old place. I have surveillance over there. I’d just need to find some conventional weapons I could hook up to that surveillance.”

“I think that sounds like a dangerous way to deal with more home intruders. For now, let’s just endure. Let’s get online, make sure we have the sites up so people can contribute info.”

“We don’t have the crazy power outages we were having before,” Rain said.

Tristan was taking off his armor. “It could be because the Wardens are coming home. That means Weld and Crystal.”

The computers were booting. One cube was by the desk, but the other was back in Kenzie’s old workshop, at her parent’s house. The cube lit up and began humming.

There was a clatter as Rain moved a box of his spare parts. Traps, blades, mechanisms and housings for his arms.

We were home again.

“Connecting,” Kenzie said.

The laptops were booted, the screens online. Without the projector system in action, we were limited to the real, actual screens.

“Overlaying to satellite image of the area.”

On the largest screen, a map appeared, just large enough to have the New York district in its bottom left and Brockton Bay in the top right. Icons with their own abbreviations worked into them were scattered across the city, many flowing from the same general point.

“Good for now, but before we stumble onto anything too sensitive, we need to put the unwritten rules protocol in place.”

“I can’t promise it’s going to work perfectly,” Kenzie protested.

“It’s okay.”

She hit a key, and the screen went dark.

We’d brought Foresight on first. Foresight had thinkers, and their thinkers could read people for trouble. We’d scanned all of the heroes coming in, and we, through tags on the pamphlets and tags surreptitiously placed on people, had established a way to track movements for the next few hours.

The screen slowly illuminated again. The map was back, but the moving dots and labels were gone.

“We should get you back for curfew,” I said. “Can we leave the computers running and come back to this in the morning?”

“I might stay,” Sveta said. “You’re coming back, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“We’ll hang out, get sorted.”

“Sure,” I said. I smiled.

“Aw, I want a sleepover.”

“There won’t be any sleeping here, Kenz,” I told her.

She sighed.

She was still mock-pouting a bit a minute later when her hand went up, finger pointing at one of her screens.

One circle with initials was back on the screen. It flashed periodically to draw attention.

Accession, or one of his subordinates.

Kenzie hurried to the computer keyboard, and began hitting keys.

The images that came back were blurry, monochrome. Taken from discreet omnidirectional cameras in the notebooks.

“This one was flagged for us because the camera recognized money,” Kenzie said. She tapped the screen.

Accession. He was meeting with someone. Young, female, with a coat worn over a bodysuit, a mask on her face that blurred the shadows around eye socket and brow into a singular black blob. The cash sat on a table, the face of the bills barely visible, obscured by the pale band that encircled each bundle.

“They’re mercenaries,” Tristan said. “Cash is the norm.”

“Yeah, but if you’re a heroic mercenary, you don’t get paid in bricks of cash,” I said. “You crowdfund or you get paid by legitimate channels.”

I knew the silhouette pretty well.

“Besides. Look at that person there. We know her.”

People turned their heads, striving to get a better view of a two-tone picture.

“We wanted to traffic in information. Were we baiting her?” Rain asked.

“No, not really,” I said. “Where is she having this meeting?”

“In the city,” Kenzie said. “Coffee shop.”

“No sound?”

She shook her head.

“Tattletale’s in play,” I announced, for those who hadn’t seen or recognized the blurry face yet. “Always has to make the hard things harder, doesn’t she?”

Kenzie hit other keys, moving around the snapshot to see different angles and mark light and shadow. Breakthrough was gathered, shoulder to shoulder, leaning toward the screen.

“Nothing else that’s useful,” Kenzie said. “That blur might be Chicken Little.”

“You can’t enhance-enhance-enhance?” Rain asked.

Kenzie shook her head. “My tech isn’t all that right now.”

We broke away. I saw one or two people rubbing their hands together and blowing on them. It was an issue with the rushed constructions, that so many lacked good insulation. The snow was coming down outside, and the snow would insulate some, if I remembered right, but I was pretty sure it would have to be a lot of snow.

We’ll have to buy heaters, I thought. I wonder if Tattletale is comfortable where she is, or if there’s a reason she’s this far from home.

“I can take more pictures, but it’s going to burn out the tracker by the third or fourth,” Kenzie said. “Also, it might cause radios or walkie-talkies to sneeze.”

“Sneezing is a funny way of putting it,” Rain said. “If we’re laying low and keeping an eye on things from here until we’re needed, I need a project. You’re okay, Ash?”

“I’m fine,” Ashley said. “No sparks, no twitches, the fingers move like they should.”

“Sveta?”

“Oh. The tentacles?”

“Yeah,” Rain said. “Do you want something similar? I can adapt. Obviously, I’m limited.”

I was silent, watching the monitors. One with the map, the single blinking icon, moving slowly across the map. Another with the two-tone snapshot of Tattletale meeting Accession.

“Not tentacles,” Sveta told Rain. “What about… something more human?”

“I might have ideas. They’re going to have to wait. The powers are rolling out randomly, ebb and flow, and Cradle got most of them last night. I’m working with baseline Rain tinkertech.”

“I’m not in a rush,” Sveta said.

“I’ll come up with something. For now I’m going to work on arms for myself, but I haven’t forgotten.”

“It’s okay, whatever you do, I’m fine. I’m grateful.”

I watched as the dot continued moving. Faster this time. Car?

Dog?

“Let’s wait and see where she stops,” I decided.

Kenzie was packed up. The others were settling down, breaking into the weeks-old snacks we’d stockpiled, and unwinding from the day.

Erin was keeping to the background, but when she wasn’t staying quiet while we conducted team business, I could see how animated she was, and how she smiled. I could see, too, how Rain was almost revitalized. He had courage now, opinions, almost a new man. Some of that ‘new man’ veered into jumping to assumptions about what Sveta would want, but that was manageable.

I could see it in Ashley, with her clothes obtained. Her hands were working. She was free. There remained a question about what would happen in the future, but for now, things were good there.

It was Kenzie that was hurting. Sveta needed help.

I’d come here to be a coach and I wanted to guide. I’d come to help the city and I wanted to do that. To pull things together.

As I kept an eye on the others, I kept an eye on the icon. I saw it stop, and I saw it remain stopped for several minutes.

“One more snapshot, while she still has the pamphlet,” I said. “Then we take you back to your place, Kenz.”

One more snapshot. She hit the key.

It was Chicken Little, face close to the camera, making a silly face directly at the lens, cheeks sucked in between teeth, lips puckered.

“Of course,” Tristan said. “Of course.”

She was on to us already?

“Come on,” I said, biting back my disappointment. I’d hoped to have a slight edge in this. “Let’s get you to bed, Kenz.”

She didn’t budge from her seat. She reached out, and she hit the arrow keys.

Slowly, the view panned. It was an omni-directional image, and the image could turn away from Chicken Little’s face.

“Do we know what’s at that address?” Sveta asked.

Kenzie kept the key held down while navigating with her mouse. “Hotel.”

Hotel.

The camera panned. Chicken Little wasn’t the only kid there. There were others. Younger girls and boys, most with dark, curly hair. All with masks and costumes.

Bags.

And finally, her back partially turned, Tattletale talking to another woman, who might have been Bitch or might have been Foil- only a sliver of the woman was visible.

“She brought troops,” Tristan said.

“Heartbroken,” I said. “And luggage. They’ve left the New Brockton area.”

“Were they driven out?”

I had trouble imagining another reason for them to be gone. New Brockton was their territory. They’d put everything into it for years and now they’d left it? What had happened there, or what was happening here that was pulling them together?

Worrying to imagine, that my old enemies might be cornered or desperate.

Polarize – 10.4

I had been trying to build connections for weeks now. It had started at Hollow Point, inviting teams to come in, putting ideas like taking credit second to letting other people have their share of the glory. We had shared and asked for favors, and that we had asked wasn’t that bad a thing, because people tended to like helping, and they felt stronger in knowing they could call in a chit and have some extra powers on their sides.

We’d put our necks on the line for the Fallen fight. Some ups, some downs. We had earned some nods by getting ahead of the portal thing and keeping it from being quite as bad as it would have otherwise been. We’d done the neck-to-line thing again by going on television. Then the prison.

None of it had gone perfectly. Three team members lost along the way, two partially recovered. Raised eyebrows and questions about the television program. Others had questions about the prison thing, but they weren’t going so far as to ask those questions and we weren’t offering details.

Now? Consolidation. Reinforcing our team’s ties to one another was only one part of the consolidation. Reaching out to other teams and doing something more formal with our relationships to them was the other half of it.

I stood in the center of the open floor of our headquarters, surrounded by whiteboards that were littered with notes and personal details. My arms were folded, my still-burned and bandaged hand resting against my bicep, where the bullet had passed through. My costume top was in the laundry, so I only wore a sleeveless black undershirt with my costume bottoms.

My eyes were on a projected screen on the wall. Most projector images didn’t really have black as a thing, which meant they didn’t work so well in areas with lots of windows or light. Kenzie’s cameras projected black, making the text distinct.

Three names, white text on the black background: ‘Mapwright (AG)’, ‘Gong (AG)’, and ‘Bullhorn (IV)’.

Chris’s old whiteboard was in the back corner, furthest from Kenzie’s workstation, across from the bathroom and by the technical front door of the headquarters that we never used, because we always came and went from the fire escape, if we weren’t using the building’s laundry unit or heading into the basement to flip the breakers if Kenzie didn’t stagger out the startup processes of her tech enough. It wasn’t Chris’ whiteboard anymore. Byron had taken it over.

Icons blinked on the screen. I could have gone to the computer and used the mouse to click one, or tried my hand at the voice recognition program and asked the computer nicely. One icon to bring up a map and show where in the city this was happening. Another to bring up pertinent details on each of the people – many ‘details’ were blank, filling in only as fast as people found time to spare. There would still be some misinformation.

I left it alone, my attention split three ways, between looking around the headquarters, watching the unchanging text on the screen, and hoping. It was nine in the morning, hardly prime time for villainy.

The text on the screen changed, so quickly it almost tricked my eyes. Two new lines. ‘Assist: Withdrawal (MjMf)’, ‘Assist: Finale (MjMf)’.

“Hey guys,” I whispered the words. I was alone in the headquarters, but saying it at full volume felt like it would have been an entirely different thing.

I hadn’t expected them. I hadn’t known if anyone at all would show up, but them least of all.

In a way, I almost felt like the Major Malfunctions wanted what I wanted more than anyone else. Breakthrough had their own diverse needs and wants. They had since the beginning. My parents and my mom in particular? Way off in left field there. The big teams had their ideological divides, with strong views on how everything should be handled, not just the cape stuff. Most of the little teams had their own individual focuses.

The Major Malfunctions wanted to help. They wanted to work with others. They wanted to get up to speed. That they were involved made just about every emotion I was feeling go up two notches on the dials. My hands gripped my upper arms.

“Come on,” I whispered.

Again, the screen change. I’d been staring at it for so long that the text lingered in my vision after the point it had disappeared.

Two man Advance Guard patrol against independent villain Bullhorn, Major Malfunctions assisting for goodwill. Capture and arrest, custody pending.

I punched the air. “Yes!”

Two weeks of lead-in for this. The fight hadn’t been a hard one. Gong might have been able to handle it on his own. Advance Guard might have intentionally gone out early to pick a fight they knew they could win, which skewed the results.

We’d told other teams that we’d have our system online this morning, and Kenzie had set it up to go online at ten. Advance Guard had multiple members out on patrol at the time the imaginary starting pistol had fired.

That was just who they were.

But it was a win. So long as I didn’t look too much into it, investigating the particulars of the fight, how the public tied into it, whether there was property damage, it was a clean, cooperative, perfect win.

I would, of course. I’d get the details further down the line. This was an experiment, and it would be for nothing if I closed my eyes to everything that took away from my desired result.

I flew across the room to make a note on my whiteboard, because I would’ve been risking a Kenzie-like happy skip or bouncy walk if I was using my feet to travel.

Already, another Advance Guard team was reporting to the network that they were entering an area with known villains. Spright and Flapper against Eclipse Arc.

To them, being first and being on top were things that mattered. I wasn’t going to complain.

My skin prickled with goosebumps as the door to the fire escape opened, cold air flooding the space. Alternate-identity Rain and Tristan. They both set to kicking snow from their boots and shoes, respectively.

“Did I miss the start?” Tristan asked. “Did we win?”

To him, being first and being on top were things that mattered. I smiled.

“You missed it, and we won. Advance Guard, Majors assisting. Bullhorn.”

“That sounds one-sided,” Rain said.

“That’s part of the idea,” I said, turning to look at the screen. Spright and Flapper had already retreated from the scene. They were putting out a call for assistance. If they hadn’t been way out on the end of the city closer to Brockton Bay, I might have flown out.

I went to my computer and opened the page, adding in details on the fly because it looked like people were looking up the particulars. Eclipse Arc were serious, as villains went. Good costumes, good powers. There were ‘heroes’ out there who got themselves labeled Vigilantes because they crossed lines or shrugged off law and convention in their pursuit of the bad guys. Eclipse Arc were the opposite, a pair of villains walking a ‘Robin Hood’ line where they really only preyed on those who deserved it. They supported convention rather than flouting it, tending to go after villains where possible, and among those villains, going after those that had broken the unwritten rules first.

They were big time enough to warrant being a serious target of heroes, but by walking the line they did, they made it very easy for others to gloss over them or leave them alone in favor of other targets. Too big for Prancer’s old group of B-list villains, too small to be important. Too villainous to be worth reaching out to, too noble to be a target people could feel especially good about dealing with.

Except the unwritten rules had broken down and Eclipse Arc were out being assholes, robbing people who didn’t deserve it. Hopefully Advance Guard would steer them back onto their old path.

“Are you going?” Tristan asked.

“They’re closer to Boston. No. The fight will be over before I was out the door.”

Rain walked up until he was beside me, double-tapping and removing the necklace that powered his identity, and setting the backpack with its heavy battery onto the table by the door as the second ‘skin’ fell away. Now his ordinary scruffy self, he ran fingers through his snow-damp hair. Odd, to see him with no visible scrapes or scuffs, no lines under his eyes. He looked simultaneously younger and older. He also, I noted, had a bit of stubble, and it wasn’t sixteen year old wannabe stubble. His jacket was lighter than the weather warranted, but he wore multiple layers- a mix of clothes I’d seen him in before and new ones. He met my eyes.

“You look less tired than before,” I said.

“I’m really tired,” he said. “Always am. The daylight hours aren’t as harrowing now, but the dreams haven’t stopped, won’t stop. Love Lost was restless last night. Angrier for some reason. I honestly wouldn’t be shocked to see her gang on that screen.”

I looked at the screen. A few new encounters had appeared. Eclipse Arc had apparently run for it, and somehow Spright and Flapper and two members of the Lone Wolf Pack hadn’t been able to give chase. I’d have to know more before I chalked it up as a draw or as a win.

“Is it going okay?” Rain asked. “I know Kenz was upset that she was going to be away and offline when this test run went online.”

“Tech-wise, I think we’re okay. The map wasn’t working that smoothly when I last looked, and the surveillance options are just showing black screens. I don’t want to touch it in case it’s more tinker than tech. In terms of our early encounters and victories…”

Four patrols were active. In addition to that, one non-parahuman incident of crime had been foiled, Eclipse Arc had been scared away, and Bullhorn was now in the hands of the authorities.

“We should be out there,” Tristan said. He’d taken off his coat and shoes and now carried his luggage bag of armor. “It’s going to look bad if we’re absent.”

“Soon,” I said. “If we went out now, it would be a fishing expedition.”

“Fishing is fine,” Tristan said.

“We can do more later, when we’re organized,” I said. I floated over to my keyboard and opened my image folder. Images from last night.

Our IT person was both eleven and a tinker, so things had a way of getting weird or inconsistent if she wasn’t around and keeping everything upright. I tried my hand at using the ‘second monitor’ function with her temporary projector box, and was glad to see it worked.

The images were surveillance images of Tattletale and her gang. Their group was gathered by the back of Tattletale’s rented vehicle with the trunk open – on the one side, guarding the open trunk, it was Tattletale, Imp, the crowd of Heartbroken kids, Chicken Little, and Tattletale’s bodyguard Snuff.

They were with a group of ten people who were standing as a loosely organized group. For most of the ten, there was something in pose and posture that made it absolutely clear what their backgrounds were. Feet were planted a certain distance apart, many had arms folded or behind their backs, their backs ramrod straight. Most were exceedingly fit, or had the builds of people who had once been exceedingly fit and had slipped one way or the other with Gimel’s food stores and quality being what it was. A lot of them looked like they shopped at the same stores, but a few broke the mold.

The pictures I’d saved didn’t include the image that we’d gotten of the trunk’s contents before Chicken Little’s birds had chased Kenzie’s one working camera drone away. A plastic tote of guns, heavy enough that the back end of the truck had been heavy- Rain’s note.

Tattletale had fled Brockton Bay with the other Brockton-Bay Undersiders, namely Imp and Imp’s gang, they’d stopped at one place to regroup and wait for the stragglers, and then had immediately set to getting themselves prepared. Hired mercenaries, bought not with cash, but with a store of weapons. From there, they’d met up with Parian and Foil, retiring for the night, all packing up together in a manufacturing area for Parian’s clothing line.

They weren’t bad clothes, either. I had a sweatshirt dress with a watercolor-style image of Brockton Bay on the front that was by her, and another regular t-shirt with the watercolor image in negative, on a black fabric. She had similar designs for most of the major cities. I’d bought some out of a kind of solidarity, and because they were actually kinda nice.

“Question is, what is she up to today?” Tristan asked.

“Yeah. That’s a question,” I said.

In my images, I’d omitted the shots where Tattletale had been making repeated and pointed looks at cameras and other surveillance. She knew, fine. I’d known she would know from the time she’d caught Kenzie’s camera tracking our conversation while it was a mere speck in the sky.

There was still nothing she could do about it. We could keep tabs on her, and all she could really do was have Chicken Little send birds flying after our cameras. I suspected it annoyed her, but that was fine by me. She was on our turf now.

Things might get harder if she decided to have Foil take shots at the cameras, but sending that kind of projectile flying out over a populated area didn’t seem like the kind of thing the Flechette or Lily I’d known would do.

“Another win,” Tristan’s voice pulled me away from my musings.

“Parahuman or civilian?” I asked, walking back to the pair.

“Non-powered. The Grower’s Court?” Tristan asked.

“Sounds vaguely familiar.”

“Farming collective kind of like what the Fallen had,” Rain said. “They decided they wanted to keep everything they grew, they didn’t want to pay taxes or give a share to the city, didn’t want anything from the city-”

“-Ignoring that the city gave them the seeds, machinery, and tools, built the roads, and provided material for the homes.” Tristan said.

“Sure,” Rain said. “Yeah, I guess so, didn’t hear that end of it, but it’d have to be the case, right?”

“It was,” Tristan said.

“Them deciding to hoard was a thing last spring, after the long winter. They holed up, everyone with a rifle, and city eventually said it wasn’t worth it. Then this summer, in the middle of a lot of the craziness, they blocked off a section of road, raided a truck, and took the stuff back to the Grower’s Court.”

“And?” I asked.

“And a month and a half later, the Shepherds got enough people behind them to deal with it,” Rain said.

“They’re civilians, but that’s a win that might go in the papers,” Tristan said. A smile crept across his face. “We could reach out to the papers. Promote what we’re doing.”

“Shepherd’s win, their choice what to do with it. But you could let them know.”

“Uh, Rain can. While Moonsong is in charge, I’m leaving the Shepherds alone,” Tristan said. “In the meantime, I’ll get changed, and we’ll plan to go after your nemesis, instead?”

“No on both counts,” I said.

“No?” Tristan asked, hefting his bag, stepping toward the bathroom. “There’s a sign on the door that says ‘death’, with really awesome drawing of a skull.”

I heard a shout of greeting from within the bathroom.

“Sveta’s in there,” I said. “She wanted to rinse off and clean her stuff.. She’ll be out soon. Like I said, no on both counts. No changing, and no, we aren’t going after Tattletale.”

“You’re paying attention to her.”

“Damn fucking straight I am,” I said. “She’s not someone you ignore, but she’s not someone we pick a fight with either. That’s a whole two squads of trained soldiers that are trading off shifts to support and guard her team around the clock. She also has twice as many parahumans on her team as we have on the full Breakthrough roster, if we pretend Chris is still on the team and we include Damsel.”

“She’s not, you know,” Rain said. “Damsel won’t join.”

“She’s tertiary. If someone comes after Breakthrough as a whole, they’ll have to account for her.”

Rain seemed to consider that. “Yeah, sure.”

“We’re not going after Tattletale. The Undersiders held their own for years. We can’t pick a fight with that.”

“We can try,” Tristan said. “Get some people together.”

“Nah,” I said. I thought about it. “Fuck no. There are other ways.”

⊙

Kenzie was done with her classes. Ashley was through with her appointments. I felt bad that we’d dragged them straight from that into an extended road trip.

Kenzie had her parents’ van, black, sleek, and sturdy enough to carry what she could bring from her workshop. Some of the components that we’d strapped into place were serving as desks, Rain and Sveta leaning over papers as they sketched out loose ideas. Ashley was in the back, sitting opposite me, while Kenzie sat next to her with her feet propped up on a case, laptop on her lap in a way that let them both see the screen. Here and there, the remnants of lunches and snacks from the fill-up station littered the area.

Byron drove, because he was just a bit more secure driving on ice than Tristan was. I had the passenger seat, though I was twisted around to watch the others. My own laptop sat closed on my lap, still warm from when I’d had it on. I didn’t have a power cable that plugged into the car, and that last twenty percent of battery was more valuable than having an easy way to fill the time.

Listening to the idle chatter was kind of nice on its own. Sveta and Rain collaborating.

“What kind of scale?”

“Um, I have to lift it with my own strength, right? Not that big. Not giant mech big.”

“Good. Because I don’t have the materials for a giant Svetamech.”

“Mecha-Sveta!” Kenzie chirped.

“I’m already mecha-Sveta.”

“Double size? Triple?” Rain asked.

“I had a friend who was larger than usual when I was with the Irregulars. The square cube law is a thing, isn’t it?”

“Less a thing if you’re working with tinkertech. It’s part of why mechs are doable. Double sounds like an okay starting point, though. How do you want to sketch this out?”

“What if we start really broad-stroke, and do this?”

“That’s calligraphy broad-stroke. Really broad-stroke.”

“For the shape. See? Top-heavy, hourglass…”

Ashley talking to Kenzie in a quiet voice.

“They went into my room. They went through my things. Some were tinker things, but I don’t think they realized.”

“Off with their heads.”

“I wish I could take their heads off. I don’t usually get mad, but I had a nice house and a nice workshop, and now I have to be there, and the people who should be protecting my things when I’m not there aren’t.”

“If you can’t take their heads, why not scare them?”

“Ashley,” I used a warning tone.

They seemed to leave it at that.

In the distance, past a light but constant snowfall that was stirred into violent flurries by the existence of nearby portals, I could see the skyline of the New Brockton area of the city. Intervening buildings spoiled the view a bit, as did the mountain range to the west of the area.

“Didn’t you tell Tristan that you thought the Undersiders would win in a fight?”

“In a fight?” I asked. “I don’t know. I don’t think it ever comes straight down to a fight, though. There’s other stuff. Information, misinformation, money, resources, having reinforcements, and protecting yourself. Those are the things that decide a fight before it even happens, or that cause horrible, long-term damage to you or places you care about, in a win-the-fight, lose-the-war way.”

“Things our team isn’t great at,” Byron said.

“They’re better than us at it, but they were at this for six years. It’s where they specialize and it’s where they’ve been developing their skills and abilities since Kenzie was half the age she is now. Robbing casinos, stealing tech patents to ransom back, robbing stores and flying under the radar the entire time. Then they recruited a new member to kidnap that thinker I mentioned before, and sparked off two wars with parahuman gangs while using her, another local crime-boss thinker, and Tattletale to get enough of an edge and come out consistently ahead. Some people think the Endbringer attack was because of all that conflict.”

“Jesus,” Byron said.

“That’s pretty darn close to what Weld described,” Sveta said, behind me.

“In fairness, we did compare notes and sit in on some of the same meetings,” I said.

“Fair,” Sveta said.

I turned back to Byron. “That was only the start of it. They’re villains, and while I’m talking fairness? They aren’t. They don’t play fair. Tristan suggested picking a fight, and I think it’s a bad idea, because we could get every hero in our coalition to go after them and the Undersiders might find a way to make the fight unfair in their favor.”

“The reason I brought it up is that I have to wonder if we’ve collectively lost it, because as strong as they are, they ran. We’re heading towards what they ran from.”

“We won’t enter the New Brockton area specifically,” I said. “How are we doing on your end, Kenzie?”

“I’m still getting the occasional blip. We’re on the right road.”

“What if we get this far and there’s nothing?” Sveta asked.

“Then we spent some time driving around and talking. But going by what Kenz reported with the timeline-”

“They went somewhere,” Kenzie said.

I opened my laptop.

9:41 PM, two vehicles with Undersiders inside are seen at the New Brockton area limits, leaving.

9:55 PM, two more vehicles are tracked leaving.

10:24 PM, all four vehicles are seen moving together. Judging by speed limits and where they are spotted, they were not traveling for the full duration.

“Tell us when we’re close,” I said.

“Oh, we’re close. Five more minutes.”

“Gear up,” I said, folding up my laptop, sliding it between the seat and drink holder.

I had washed and laundered my costume, but my costume was fabric with decorations that Weld had fashioned for me before he’d left, a higher quality than nearly anything I could have had made for a reasonable cost. I’d removed the pieces to wash it all, and there were still some to replace on the costume. My hood had a thin length of metal running through the edge of the hood to keep it from slumping off to one side, and I did have to thread that through.

Two minutes of work, to do that, don the ten finger- and thumb-rings that had spikes sweeping back, resting against the backs of my hands, and fix the decorations at my shoulders so they were straight, connecting them to the armor, because designing the costume so the metal hung off the cloth would have had it pull down and drape weird.

The van pulled to a stop. We all opened our respective doors.

A truck rest stop. Dirt road, shoulder-high concrete barriers to guide any errant or out of control trucks, and a fair amount of open space. There were a pair of portable toilets with bright yellow sides in the corner, and a diner-style restaurant a two minute walk away, but as I turned to Kenzie and pointed at the diner, she shook her head.

“Did she con us?” Sveta asked.

I held out a hand, telling them to stay put, and then I floated up and over the battlefield. It was still early afternoon, and the light was good. I could see where boots had scuffed the frost-hard dirt, and I could see spots of blood.

“Blood,” I reported.

“Truck stop? I bet guys bleed here all the time,” Rain said.

“More blood,” I pointed out. I indicated points on the ground. “Something hard hit the ground here. Hard enough to break the frozen ground. And… a blast.”

“Blast?”

“Come on, take a look for yourselves. I wanted to keep the ground reasonably pristine for a first-look, in case there was anything. No need now- I’m pretty sure some trucks came through today.”

The group fanned out, searching the perimeter. Once they got far enough, I showed them where the ground had been gouged by something. The gouging clustered in areas.

“I found bullet casings,” Ashley said. She’d veered furthest from the group. Way off to the side, where the dirt gave way to the still-new, pavement of the highway, she’d found the casings. Bending down, long skirt blowing against her bare calves, she used a finger to prod one casing.

“Careful you don’t taint the evidence,” Rain said. “Victoria’s right.”

Ashley stood straight, her chin rising in that imperious way. She approached Rain at a slow walk.

“Hee,” Kenzie made a happy sound.

“I’m missing something,” Rain said.

Ashley nodded, holding up a hand.

“I’m… fuck. I’m the prosthetics tinker, and I forgot about your hands. You have no fingerprints, no skin oil.”

“There we go,” she said, smiling. Her left shoulder brushed his as she walked past him, then brushed against his shoulderblades as she walked around behind him.

“That is the fucking smuggest I’ve seen you, Ashley,” Tristan said. He and Byron had apparently swapped out to share notes as they’d done their own walk of the scene. “That’s cat with the canary smug.”

“Nuh uh! She’s not smug, she’s happy.”

“Same thing,” Ashley said. “I’m happy my hands are this good.”

“Food particles, though?” Rain asked, turning around to face her, a little obstinate now. “We just ate, and we didn’t wash our hands.”

Ashley let her power flicker around her hands, making a sound like a snarl as it washed over the prosthetic limb. “I cleaned it earlier.”

Rain sighed. “You win.”

“As it should be.”

One vehicle with a crate of guns, to later be used to purchase or barter for the services of mercenaries. depending on timing, the Undersiders would have had two vehicles worth of people here, or they would have had four.

Assuming they were running, the attackers would have come from the northeast. The Undersiders would have been fleeing the southwest. The bullet casing came from the Undersider’s end of the scene.

“I think we’re ready,” I said. “we should get going before we get in trouble for camping out at a truck stop.”

“Awesome!” Kenzie said. She drew her phone, then selected the program.

The van bucked visibly as the machinery in the back kicked to life.

“I was able to speed things up just a bit, because having everything in the van meant I was able to bring extra batteries, and I could box it up a bit.”

“Box it up?” Sveta asked.

“I do two things. Like a tinker who does jets and does, I dunno, radiation. They can make jets or they can make radiation, but radiation-powered jets are their best work. For me, it’s cameras and boxes. Box-cameras are best.”

“Inconveniently sized boxes,” Rain said.

“I made this camera inconveniently big for regular carrying. Let’s give this a shot.”

“Let’s be careful not to put images in the middle of the highway,” I said, indicating the cars that were flying past us on the other side of the concrete barrier.

“Done.”

The past-camera kicked into life. All around us, the space began to fill out with dots of color. If she was going to be aware of when we watched her in the present, we would shift our focus from her to her past.

The snow did make things more difficult, each flake becoming a lone thread, with threads joining together into an opaque curtain that marked the wild commonalities in how the air moved, reacting to the passage of cars on the other side of the divider, and the constant outflow from the portal.

Then, much as they’d started to appear and get drawn out, the snowflakes were undone, each trail disappearing one by one. All of the rest of the images started to come together, each one a caterpillar, a long blur that traced the paths the individuals had traveled. The passage of vehicles were like the strokes of fat, crude brushes that crossed out whole sections of the picture.

“I’ve got some data on the Undersiders already,” Kenzie said. “We can narrow this down. I’ll pick some images to lock down by the points in space.”

Tattletale was first. At the Southwestern end of the clearing. Ducking down. She was wearing a coat and earmuffs, alongside her mask and costume. Slowly, the figure right behind her began to fill in. Snuff, standing right behind her, shielding her with his body, one hand extended toward the source of whatever he was shielding her from.

The car was next, filling in. Door open, as Tattletale ducked inside.

All around us, figures were appearing. The kids with dense black waves and curls of hair, most dressed in black, all with masks of their own. Heartbroken.

Imp, stumbling as she tried to shield the kids. One of her arms was gone.

“Any loose arms, Kenz?”

“Weapons?”

I pointed at Imp.

“Eew. I’ll try searching for it. Can’t be too hard to find.”

The rest of the group was so quiet that it was almost grim. There were so many people.

Not far from the Undersiders, with an armored vehicle of their own, three people. The shooter responsible for the gun casing, a man, and a woman.

The red-haired shooter would be Shamrock. The man was Gregor. The woman, though she wasn’t fully drawn yet, and though her dark costume was concealing enough to muddy things further, was likely Faultline.

How desperate were you, that you went to her? I thought, looking at the image of a retreating Tattletale. The Undersiders had met with the Palanquin mercenaries, despite the fact that Tattletale’s feud with Faultline was common knowledge. I’d heard it had something to do with Tattletale getting beaten out by Faultline on an early job, and then never really getting an opportunity to even the score after. I wasn’t sure if that had been pure speculation from Crystal.

“Getting a whole lot of mess while I’m looking for the arm. Hold on,” Kenzie said. “Lots of power effects to fill in, and they’re messier than people.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “This is really good, Kenz.”

I saw her bob her head in an excited way, pacing around as she held up her phone. Here and there, she erased progress or shifted something so it was loading a figure at a different point.

This wasn’t a moment in time. It was well over a dozen things being captured at critical moments.

At Snuff’s left hand, a black-gray blob, taller than he was, the air distorting at the edges.

At one point in the ground, a plume of dirt and pavement.

In the air, Imp’s arm. A silvery thread connected to it, and that silvery thread traced its way to the attackers.

“Sorry,” I whispered, whispering because it was a kind of tacit acknowledgement that she couldn’t and wouldn’t hear me.

I did feel sympathy, but I didn’t feel bad, exactly. They’d brought a mess down on their own heads somehow. They’d made enemies and they’d answered for it. I had no idea what we’d do or how we would handle it if it came down to it. I couldn’t see us standing by and letting cape fights happen, but it didn’t feel right to take the Undersiders’ side either.

Or maybe…

“Sveta,” I said.

“Mmm?” she asked. She was standing near the still images of Faultline’s crew.

“The Undersiders played a part in saving the world?”

“Yeah,” she said.

Still didn’t feel right to intervene on their behalf, but by the rules, at least, by the unwritten laws? Maybe.

Uuuuuuuugh.

Snow blew around us. I was aware of cars on the road that had slowed to see what we were doing. Standing in the middle of a firefight that made no logistical sense, as each piece of the puzzle was frozen at a different time and place than the others. Powers were flying, bullets in the air, people mid-motion, and none of it jibed. Jibing would have to be puzzled out in another way at another place. That was if there were clues to be gathered there.

“It’s going to be another few minutes. These people are all packed in together, and I can do things like take a snapshot of EM levels, or brainwaves, or DNA, but I keep getting cross-signals. I’m having trouble pulling them apart. But we will! We will figure out who you all are, mysterious attackers!”

“I know who one of them is,” Tristan said.

“We know them,” Rain said.

“You- you saw enough details to do a visual? You must have a power if you did, because my onboard camera isn’t getting a good lock.”

“Not a power,” Rain said. “Passing familiarity.”

“Do tell,” Ashley said.

“That right there?” he indicated the people who were gathered as a mass. “That’s messy because it’s a cluster. And right beside it?”

“What?” Kenzie asked.

“Another cluster,” Rain said.

“There’s another,” Tristan said. He indicated the gouges in the ground with the earth spewing from them. “I know this one. He wasn’t at the Fallen fight, but there’s some old history.”

“Paris?” Rain asked, his head snapping around.

Tristan nodded. “Or one of his cluster. But that silhouette looks right.”

“Oh,” Kenzie said, hurrying to type out a word on her phone. She aimed at the center of the back, and an image flickered across the spaces she was aiming at, its head trying fifty different orientations before finding something suitable. “Then this is-”

“March,” I said, an instant before the image of her ‘hare’ mask and the brimmed hat with the masks’ ears poking out the front came into solid, crystal-clear focus.

“She recruited,” Ashley observed.

“Yeah,” Rain said.

“She didn’t try to recruit you?” Sveta asked.

“I was in jail. Maybe she tried?”

The Undersiders hadn’t gone running to Parian and Foil for refuge. Or maybe they had, but it wasn’t necessarily the primary focus. They’d gone there to protect them.

Polarize – 10.5

“Oh no,” Swansong said, her voice deadpan. “It’s the fuzz.”

“Oh no!” Lookout echoed Swansong, her voice anything but deadpan. “Are we in trouble? What do we say? What do I do?”

The cop cars were pulling into the truck stop from the highway. They saw the scene and slowed down. Two cars, each with two cops. Since identifying March’s group, we’d been moving the scene around a bit to investigate and see if we could work out any details. The plan had been to leave in another minute or two, after Lookout’s data had saved.

“Start by calming down,” Sveta said. “We’re good guys.”

“I’ve had serious talks with police officers nine times, and it went bad seven of those times,” Lookout said, her eyes fixed on the cop car.

The officers had come to a complete stop at a point before the concrete barrier properly started. It gave them the ability to hop in their cars and turn off onto the highway. They emerged.

“Can you take down the images?” I asked. “The cops seem intimidated.”

“Not without losing the data. Do we want to lose the data?”

Split second decision: get shot or lose the data?

“Keep the data,” I said.

“What if you dim it?” Rain suggested. “Make it look fake.”

“That I can do. Opacity down. Doing it. Please don’t make me talk to the cops. It always turns out bad.”

All around us, the images of Tattletale’s group, Faultline’s trio and March’s multi-cluster shifted tint and became see-through.

I raised a hand, holding it over my head as I walked toward the officers. Capricorn followed, while the rest of the group hung back a bit.

“Hi guys!” Capricorn called out. Tristan. “We’re on your side!”

The cops didn’t relax. We continued to approach until one older officer who had his gun drawn raised it a fraction. Not quite pointing at us, but if we approached another few steps, then it might well be. A good thirty feet of distance separated us from them.

“What the hell is all this?” the older officer asked.

Tristan turned his head to look, his hands still out to his sides. “We’re heroes. We were trying to track down some rivals, used some power stuff to see if we could see what they were doing at their last reported location, here, and found this.”

“It’s a bit of a mess that we’re trying to puzzle out,” Capricorn said.

The younger guy by the old officer’s side turned around, taking it all in. His back to us as he looked over in the direction of March’s truck, he used the most innocent of tones as he said, “You were the ones on television a few nights ago.”

“We were,” I answered him. “I remember talking about how we wanted to share information and enforce cooperation. If you want, we can give you a tour of this scene, catch you up.”

“No thanks,” the old guy said. He looked at the younger cop that I presumed was his partner. “They’re heroes?”

“Yeah.”

He broke his stance, no longer ready to drop into a firing position, gun no longer almost pointed at us. He didn’t put it away, though.

“You were part of the prison thing too,” the young guy said.

“Yeah,” Capricorn said.

The old guy took a step to the side, leaning in close to his buddy. He asked a question under his breath, clearly not intended to be heard by the pair of us.

I caught ‘clown’ in the middle. It was answered with a half smile and half-shrug.

Ass-clowns. Great.

“One of the reasons we went on the show was to force some hands, flush some birds out of the bushes,” Capricorn said. “The people who pulled the prison breakout were the birds.”

“Tried something, you failed, and the rest of us suffer?” the old guy asked. There was an edge to his voice. “And here you are, trying something else?”

“We succeeded,” I said. “Birds flushed out, birds stopped or temporarily neutered. The problem is, the way things are right now, we stop two big villains, and there are two more in the shadows, ready to step out and take advantage of the situation. We’re poised on a crumbling ledge, and we’re… trying to keep it all upright.”

“I’m not one for the poetics,” the old guy said, staring across the distance at me. The other two cops seemed to think the situation wasn’t escalating, and were walking over to the March multi-cluster hologram, investigating. “Birds and crumbling ledges.”

“You’re not giving her a fair shake,” Capricorn said, “Officer…?”

“Senior Trooper Littlejohn.”

“Sir,” Capricorn said, “With my last team, I did some ride-alongs with officers. I heard their frustrations again and again. I know it’s a thing: whether you’re a paramedic trying to stay ahead of a drug epidemic, a trooper or senior trooper trying to deal with gangs, or hell, a teacher trying to save young minds, you run into the futility of it all, it’s the same. Score a win today, and tomorrow it can seem as if nothing changed.”

The old guy was quiet. The young guy looked over his shoulder, his attention divided between us and the still images.

Capricorn, sensing he wasn’t going to get an answer, added, “Don’t do to us what I’m betting hundreds of people have done to you. Don’t tell us we didn’t make a difference when you weren’t there to see.”

Littlejohn didn’t respond for a second. He did look at his partner, who shrugged, unsmiling.

“Sure. I won’t tell you,” Littlejohn said.

Nicely, neatly ambiguous, as responses went.

“Over there,” I said, indicating Tattletale’s group. “Undersiders. Took over Brockton Bay. They were running New Brockton. They did some scummy stuff, they helped save the world. It’s complicated.”

“That’s her, huh? Tattletale in the flesh?” the younger officer asked. “We keep hearing her name.”

“Tattletale, but it’s only a… very advanced simulation of a scene from last night. Hologram. Beside her are mercenaries from Palanquin.”

“Don’t know them,” the young officer stated.

“You have to get into murky waters to get a good answer there,” I said. “June twentieth, twenty-eleven. The day that the PRT broke. An event in Brockton Bay. Everything classified, but there was a mass exodus of heroes from the Protectorate and Wards program. It was the day the portal appeared in Brockton Bay.”

I looked over at the horizon. The portal had warped, distorting, and New Brockton had been cleaved in half. A slice of sky that was different from the rest.

“And?” Littlejohn asked.

“Palanquin started traveling the world, opening portals for buyers. They have ties to the Undersiders, not necessarily friendly ties. But they’re tied into it all.”

“And the third group?” Littlejohn asked.

I was so tempted to say ‘ass-clowns’, to borrow his phrasing from earlier. I gave it a fifty-fifty on either winning him over or souring the dialogue, based on my read of him. Not good enough odds.

“Can’t say for sure, but they seem to be the people who are stepping in to fill a recent void, picking up where the last set of troublemakers left off. We were figuring it out when you came,” I said.

“Always something, huh?” Littlejohn directed the question at Capricorn. “I never took the ‘capes’ seriously. Endbringers seemed too far away. It was too many masks and nicknames to keep track of, all kid stuff. Then, y’know. All at once, it was all too serious.”

I nodded, pushing thoughts out of my head and trying to maintain a poker face. The ‘all at once’ for me wasn’t the one he was thinking of.

“Yeah. I don’t blame you. When this stuff is great, it’s goofy,” Capricorn said. “When it’s bad, it’s bad enough you don’t want to talk about it. Most of the time, it’s like I said before. We’re trying to improve things a bit at a time, even when it looks like it’s not getting us anywhere.”

Littlejohn turned his head and whistled for attention. The two officers who had wandered off returned to us.

“Nimmons, move the cars to block off the stop. Park them both so it looks neat and calm. Be ready to move if a truck needs to roll in. Alves? Up on that concrete barrier. Keep an eye on traffic, keep it moving. You could try holding onto a notebook, act like you’re taking down license plate numbers of the ones who are moving too slow.”

They listened and obeyed without objection.

“We got called in because something was up. Reason we’re staying is that it’s a truck stop, and you’re not trucks, you’re obstructing,” Littlejohn told us.

“We can be gone in a minute,” I said.

“If you need to look around more, then do that, just don’t take too long doing it. If these loons are the next ass-clowns in line to cause trouble, it’s better we get them before they’ve figured out which way is up.”

It’s a little more complicated than that. They’ve figured out a lot more than which way is up.

“Sounds good,” I said. “Thank you, sir.”

“Explain some of this to me as you go. I should know more than I do.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Geez, where to start?”

“Why does this all look wrong to me? Doesn’t look like it meshes together.”

“It doesn’t,” I said, as we walked back toward the rest of the group. “It’s the puzzle we were trying to put together: what goes where. We can ask Lookout- she’s running the simulation. We froze a few key scenes that we worked out.”

“Show me? These are people from my city, apparently.”

“They were. We were in the middle of trying to figure out if they’re leaving because someone worse scared them away, or if they left to go protect some people elsewhere. Lookout! Scene one!?”

The scene around us shifted. The moment where Tattletale was mid-meeting with Faultline, Chicken Little and the Heartbroken sitting on the front of the parked cars, where headlights illuminated the light snow. Trails marked where snow clumps had been rolled against the ground to form snowballs. They had been stacked into miniature snowmen. Chicken Little had two birds in the snow on either side of what looked like a failed snow-bird, the outstretched wings having crumbled under their own weight.

I pointed at that, then spun around to point at the other end. The headlights of March’s vehicle were sweeping into the lot as it pulled in, but March wasn’t waiting that long. She sat in the open window of the car, leaning over the hood with a rifle in her hands. The frozen scene had captured the muzzle flash. Even from a distance, there was something in March’s eye- she wore her mask so it covered half of her face, her left eye peering through the right eyehole of the mask. The adjustment of the mask freed her to look down the rifle’s scope.

“Page us through slowly?” I asked Lookout. No need to raise my voice now that we were closer.

A matter of ten feet from us, the image of Tattletale had shifted, and was mid-reaction, the bullet having connected. A bullet to the back of the thigh. The other thigh had a fresh wound on it. The reason there hadn’t been more blood on the snow was that most of the gore had hit the side and interior of the car. The only thing that kept Tattletale from going straight to the ground was Snuff’s grip on her arm.

“Eliminating the competition?”

“Honestly? Probably not. But depending on how this works out, she might as well be. It’s just going to be someone crazier and more dangerous than the one who dresses up as a march hare and shoots with kids in the line of fire.”

“Costumed kids. Heartbroken, I think?”

“Yeah. Heartbroken and Chicken Little. But kids are supposed to be off-limits. You go easy.”

Littlejohn nodded.

There was a scene between this one and the first one we’d started to piece together. Shamrock opening fire. Gregor slinging a blob of slime. Snuff was practically throwing Tattletale into the vehicle while his power blocked out an area in front of him. Not as much of a dark blob as we’d originally thought- that had been the overlapping of multiple effects.

“Shamrock shot one of March’s people. March’s person immediately reacts, lashes out- Lookout?”

We caught the scene from earlier. Dismemberment. The kids now on their way to the vehicles. March had been disarmed by Shamrock’s shot, the rifle broken at the wooden base just a half-inch from March’s hand, but March had other people leaning out the windows and over the vehicle.

“Who’s the bridge troll?”

The question came from Littlejohn’s partner. He indicated Gregor the Snail, who was shielding some of the Heartbroken kids with his body as they got into one of the Undersider’s vehicles. He was wearing full costume, and his body visibly steamed, though the projection didn’t catch all of the steam, making it look cut off or jagged in places.

“That’s Gregor,” Sveta said. “From my very limited exposure to him and everything I’ve heard, he’s apparently a gentleman.”

“He’s wearing a fishnet shirt in minus-something weather. Doesn’t seem gentlemanly to be around kids like that.”

“They don’t seem to mind,” Sveta said.

“I’m a kid and I don’t mind. He looks huggable.”

“I like it,” Swansong said. “Dark, bold.”

Littlejohn’s partner scoffed a bit.

“And they’re kids who hang out with supervillains,” I pointed out. “Heartbroken and Tattletale’s protege. Playing in the snow while the adults talk is probably as kid-like as things get for them. I don’t think fishnets are even on their radar.”

“The one with the bird mask is the protege?” Littlejohn asked me. I nodded my confirmation.

“Maybe he likes it,” Sveta said.

“You can relax,” Littlejohn’s partner said. “You’re making more of a deal of it than I meant to say.”

“His wife probably likes it,” Sveta said, indicating Shamrock.

“No shit?” Littlejohn’s partner asked. “I kind of hate him now.”

“Funny thing is, I think you could say that to his face, and he would just accept it,” Sveta said. “I think we should stop here before I get pissed off.”

“Woah there,” Littlejohn’s partner replied.

“Let’s end it,” I said, and I said it quiet, where only Littlejohn and Capricorn could hear.

“Troy,” Littlejohn said.

‘Troy’ stopped, going silent, and looking at his partner.

“Head on over to the other end, near the cars. See if you can’t spot anything about the truck the attacker is driving, or the people inside.”

Troy seemed eminently unbothered as he shrugged one shoulder, heading over to the truck. I found myself wishing he’d looked more annoyed or hurt about being sent away.

Sveta would be annoyed and hurt. I knew that much.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Tell me more about this,” he said. “Who are these people?”

He’d indicated Imp. In the last scene we’d pieced together, Imp had an arm that replaced the one that had been torn away. The new arm was a different skin tone and had a bad bullet wound.

I was starting to explain when Lookout showed something on her phone to Ashley, then to others. I trailed off, motioning for her to show me and Littlejohn.

“I got enough detail to map it out. We have license plate and vehicle serial numbers on the frame of the vehicle.”

“Whose?” I asked.

“Faultline,” Lookout said.

“I could check databases,” Senior Trooper Littlejohn told us.

“I think I’ve got it already,” Lookout said.

“But thank you,” I added. “Listen, we were pursuing a lead when we got this far. This is your territory. Do you want to take jurisdiction over this scene? Use of weapons, cape stuff?”

“Fuck no,” Littlejohn said.

“It’s okay if we handle it?”

“Probably not. Except this looks like a steaming pile of mess, and I want no part of it. You want to own this?”

“We can’t pin them for a crime, but we can try to keep this from becoming a string of incidents, and we can keep you in the loop.”

“We’re going to go talk to Palanquin?” Sveta asked, and she wasn’t quite able to hide her excitement.

⊙

Tristan leaned back, a phone pressed to his ear. His helmet was in his lap.

I saw his eyebrows go up as the person on the other end answered.

“We’re not new clients,” he said. “We’re parked a block away from you. We’d like to approach, talk, see if we can’t both help each other.”

The phone dropped from his ear.

“They hang up?” Rain asked.

Tristan shook his head. “They’re checking.”

A voice on the other end cheeped through the phone’s speaker. Tristan raised it to his ear.

“How did we find you?” he asked.

“We followed Tattletale’s path to the bus stop. There was camera footage that had the license plate on it.”

Tristan repeated it, then covered the mouth-part with his hand to repeat, “There were no cameras at the location. They checked. Do we tell them?”

“We have very good cameras,” Swansong said.

“We have good cameras,” Tristan said. “We’re not trying to be ominous here. We want to talk and get ahead of whatever is going on.”

A pause.

“Yeah. We’re Breakthrough.”

Tristan glanced at me, then put the phone down. “We can approach.”

“Can we get a camera in the air?” I asked Lookout.

“Yep! I’ve got just the one!”

She pulled the football-sized flying camera out of the case she’d been resting her feet on.

“Is that ‘just the one’ because it’s special, or because it’s your last one?” Rain asked.

“Both! It’s both.”

Sveta opened the door. Rain and Swansong were putting their masks on. Circuit-board face, with circuits cutting fissure-like zig-zags, gloves doing much the same, all black, with lines that glowed dully with a red light from within. A slight change from before. A hooded costume top covered his hair, which wasn’t new.

Using three arms, he slung a satchel-bag over his shoulder as he hopped down onto snow-wet road.

The Palanquin mercenaries were organized in a line along the front of one nice, modern looking building, looking like professionals with how they held themselves, though it was a very different thing from the hired mercenaries we’d seen around Tattletale.

Faultline, Gregor, Shamrock, a thinner-than-realistically-possible Case-53, and a woman I didn’t recognize, with bangs cut straight across her forehead.

I’d expected the lines of no-man’s-land to be drawn out as they had with the police visiting the scene. Instead, Sveta just kept walking.

I could see Faultline’s entire lineup tense at that, that the line was so flagrantly being breached.

Then the recognition from Gregor.

He strode forward, and though he wasn’t much taller than an average guy, he still picked Sveta up, hugging her in a way that had her feet dangling.

No man’s land effectively shrunk. There weren’t twenty feet of distance, but instead it was us standing close enough that we could talk normally, not so close that our two large groups became a huddle.

Faultline had updated her costume, I noted. Tinkertech. Tinkertech from outside one’s own team was generally very expensive, because it was temperamental, and there was only one person who could soothe that temper or fix it if anything went wrong. Yet none of her people looked like tinkers.

As soon as she was out of Gregor’s arms, Sveta hugged Shamrock.

“I take it you vouch for them, Gregor?”

“I vouch for Sveta.”

“And I vouch for them,” Sveta said.

“Not quite that easy,” Faultline answered. “We’re on a job, we have clients to safeguard. But Gregor likes you, Sveta, and I trust Gregor with my life. We’re going to move, because being out in the open exposes us to danger. We walk with your team in single file. You’ll come with us, no fast movements, no tricks, no powers, and nothing finds its way to your hands. We’ll also need to search you.”

I glanced at Capricorn, only to see that the armor had a blue tint. Tristan had backed off for reasons unclear to me.

“Okay,” I said.

“Whippersnap, could you check them? Please stay still. Arms up, feet spread.”

I raised my arms, holding them apart.

Whippersnap was the literally broomstick-thin Case-53 with skin stretched too tight across a half-width skull, large, juicy eyes bulging out of eye sockets to either side, to the point that it looked like he could literally look backwards. The eyes were slow to move, scraping against the sockets, but they moved almost constantly.

He was at my side with an audible noise on arrival. With a disconcerting speed, his hands touched and lightly slapped me, starting at my collar and hood, then working down.

It felt more invasive than an ordinary strip search, because it was so fast and thorough I felt like I was being laid bare.

He was a speedster, but he looked and felt a damn sight like a bio-speedster. There were breaker speedsters like Velocity, who shifted into an alternate state to access reality on a different level, there were ones who had a great deal of propulsion, ones that manipulated the environment, and then there were the ones who just had biology that alien – usually through changer powers.

“Hi Whippersnap,” Sveta said, as I was left alone, the full search moving to Byron, for a full search of Byron’s armor.

With a sound like a whipcrack, Whippersnap moved faster, closing the distance between himself and Sveta. The sound had come from him extending an arm, pointing at her.

“I’d like to put all of the bad stuff behind us,” Sveta said.

“Tch.”

“Is this going to be a problem, Whipper?” Faultline asked.

“Neh,” Whippersnap replied.

He took only another twenty seconds to search the rest of the team before stopping at Sveta. “Can’t search her without dying.”

“I vouched for her,” Gregor said.

“You could cork her with a mucus plug,” Whippersnap said. “Seal that suit closed.”

“I will not do that, I’m sorry.”

“Real nice, Whipper,” Sveta said.

“I’m being nice,” Whippersnap said, his voice a hiss. I could see veins stand out through the too-tight skin. Cords and muscles bulged at the corners of his jaw. “I could have said no vouch, anti-vouch. You betrayed my team. But I am new, but out of respect for Brother Gregor and the boss, I’m quiet for now. I am a professional.”

“We can talk at the next chance we get,” Gregor said. “For now, Faultline, any feelings?”

“No plug or sealing her into her suit. Follow, before we’re out of time,” Faultline said. “Stick to my rules. Be good. March has enhanced accuracy and advanced timing.”

“Like Flechette,” I said. I winced. “Foil.”

“Different. Timing is her main power. Situational, big-picture. Operation-level.”

“She was good on the small scale too,” I said, following Faultline. “Is that stronger because she used what she told us about? The thing that let Goddess take all the power?”

“No comment, not on that,” Faultline said.

We were walking now, not into the nice building that they’d gathered by, but down side streets. This was not a car area. It was hilly, with a lot of single-lane roads, and two rivers cutting through it that bottlenecked existing traffic across a finite number of bridges. It was nice, in a quaint, quiet way, no noise of trains or boats tooting their horns.

If I hadn’t been able to fly, I might have taken issue with the fact that everything in this area seemed uphill or downhill.

Faultline went on, “I can’t elaborate because It’s pertinent to my client’s needs and focuses, and it’s for her to share. What you need to know is that March is someone with near-perfect accuracy, timing isn’t a consideration, and yes, these two things are linked when you’re talking about shooting at moving targets. She knows how to use a sniper rifle. What’s more dangerous is that when she sets things in motion, she has a sense of what’s going to end up where.”

“In a timing sense?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“My old nemesis,” Lookout muttered. “Time in the day. Timestamps. Recording by clocks and timers. It’s madness.”

“It waits for no man,” Swansong said.

“The jerk.”

“What makes us safe now?” I asked, raising my voice just a bit to drown out the background chatter. “I assume we’re safe now.”

“We took measures, but they’re time-limited, which is why we’re walking to a confidential but safe place instead of talking any more out in the open.”

“We’ll follow your rules, help keep to your time limit,” Byron’s voice was soft.

Rain, meanwhile, was absolutely quiet at this point. I wanted to ask questions, but I didn’t want to complicate things with the already tense, no-nonsense vibe that Faultline was presenting.

She was a decent mercenary. This was her in her professional mode.

“-Newter?” I heard the tail end of Sveta’s question to Gregor. She was leaning into him hard, like she sometimes did with me, unaware of her own particulars of movement or balance when she wasn’t managing it all herself. “Or Scrub?”

“It is best if I do not share our team’s strengths and weaknesses. Not without more thought. I am sorry, little cousin.”

“I understand. I really do. Maybe it’s better that I don’t know. Sorry.”

“It is better you do not know.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Shamrock said.

“This way,” Faultline said.

The street had a corner, and past a lip of concrete preventing any errant cars from going down, there was a set of stairs leading down to a street further down the way.

We took those stairs, circled around one building, and then headed down another set of stairs to what looked like a basement area.

A headquarters. The stairs went down a long way, enough to leave the space expansive enough for ceilings at twice the usual height.

We were led down to the base of the stairs, before Faultline instructed us, “Wait.”

We did, settling in to lean against walls. Sveta was talking to Shamrock and Gregor. Shamrock was saying something about places she’d visited or seen- possibly related to Sveta talking about her summer with Weld.

Whippersnap had wandered off, except wandered was the wrong word, because it implied meandering. Saying he’d run off was wrong too, because it implied running away.

Well, maybe that was right. It just didn’t seem quite appropriate.

Rain and Byron were talking, and Rain used all four arms as he gestured unconsciously- no, he was gesturing to illustrate what he was saying about weapons, and what he’d need to do to use them well.

“Lookout,” I said, lowering my voice.

“Yes?”

“How is that camera of yours in the sky doing?”

“It’s fine,” she said. She pulled out her phone, and she showed both Swansong and me, then Rain, who was leaning over. “Looking down. Nothing strange.”

An overhead view of the area.

“Anyone that could be following?”

“None. If they followed, it was with a power.”

“If they followed,” the woman with the bangs said, “They won’t give you a chance. March will shoot, she will maim you if she wants to maim you, and she will kill you if she wants to kill.”

“What dialed March up to eleven?” Rain asked.

“A combination of things. She’s excitable, and someone excited her.”

Faultline returned, alone. There were two more mercenaries with her. “Situation blue.”

“Medical emergency?” I asked. “The hospital code?”

“What? No,” she told me. Then, not to me, she said, “I’ll leave it to you to interpret.”

“Good,” the woman with the severe bangs said. “Excuse me.”

She walked away from the group and across the room. As she did, her body started to come apart in ribbons. As the ribbons came away, they revealed someone beneath.

The ribbons came together, forming a complete, different person, and then opened up once more. Another person beneath.

So it went. Each layer was something of a close relation with the one before it. By the time she was on her fourth layer down, the first woman had recovered enough to get up and walk away.

The fourth layer down, as it happened, was Tattletale. Two of her bodyguards seized her before her weight could come to rest on the legs that still had bloody bandages on them. She was moved to a chair, and made a face as she sat down.

The rest of us remained gathered in the lobby.

“Gotta stick your nose in, huh, Vicky?”

“Trying to stay on top of things,” I said. “What did you do?”

“That’s a pretty aggressive way of looking at it, Vicky,” Byron said.

“It wasn’t entirely me,” Tattletale said.

Of course.

I saw Whippersnap again, keeping company with a Case-53 of the same age, just a bit younger than Sveta. The girl was her overly elaborate lace dress and veil- the lace was her skin and the skin had a million intricate holes in it, with just a hint of red around the largest ones, where they looked deep in enough to see past tissues and look at raw flesh.

“She’s been recruiting,” Tattletale said. “Capricorn, you know Paris. Most of the recruits are singular actors from multiple clusters. Most, it turns out, are being brought in by a promise. She tells them that she knows how to leech power, as Goddess did. If they join her, she will tell them, after they’ve helped her achieve her goals. If they don’t, she tells one of their cluster-mates. With me so far?”

“She made that offer to me,” Rain said. “But I think she ran into trouble. Of the two who are still alive, one won’t work with her, and the other is filled with too much rage to cooperate with anyone. They just want me dead.”

“Precipice, she’s making the offer to Cradle. After Snag? If you don’t reach out and take her offer, she’s going to give Cradle that knowledge. You can see where your hands are tied, don’t you?”

Rain’s mechanical hands strained a bit, metal on metal, as he clenched his four fists.

“Yeah, all four of them, there you go. She used that, gathered some people, and she made it clear she wanted Foil. That’s where I came in.”

“How do we know it’s not a bluff?” Swansong interrupted.

“She has proof, kind of,” Rain said.

“Because, Swansong, she was a member of a cluster of three. Timing, accuracy, and Foil’s trademark weapon enhancement. March found and drained their cluster’s third.”

“She’s very strong compared to Flechette, now, and that’s her proof,” Rain said.

“Goddess dying answered a few lingering questions she had, things which were holding her back,” Tattletale said. She turned around, and flagged down a mercenary. “Painkillers. Something not too addictive, thank you.”

She turned back our way and sighed.

“What did you do?” I asked, again.

“She went after my teammate, and I told her that if she didn’t stop, I would take away her bargaining chip. I’d figured it out myself, I would tell key members of the different multi-triggers- the enemies of her new ‘recruits’, if you will, how the draining works.”

“And?”

“She thought I was bluffing, and I wasn’t.”

Polarize – 10.6

“You threatened her and she forced your hand? This is why you can’t play games with dangerous lunatics,” I said.

“I can. It’s doable,” Tattletale answered me, leaning back in her seat, sticking her tongue into her cheek so it poked out. “Doesn’t always work out.”

“The issue is when others suffer because of the games you’re playing,” I said.

“Here we go. Sanctimonious heroes being sanctimonious,” she said. She rolled her head back, heaving out a sigh.

“I’m not arguing for morals, Tattletale. I’m arguing for sanity.”

“Yeah. That’s overrated too.”

Was it possible to respect the fact that she’d been capable enough to take over and keep a city, and yet have zero respect for her as a person?

I knew she prioritized sanity – or she prioritized stability. She’d gone into laborious depth about how she was working to those ends when we’d first met in New Brockton. But now, because she was hurt or because she was petty, she shrugged it off and pretended it didn’t matter. Tongue in cheek, joking, but still so tone-deaf.

“What else do we need to know?” Rain asked, stepping up because I hadn’t followed up. A small part of me had been content to let the awkward comment hang.

Tattletale sat up straighter. She saw her henchman coming, carrying a tiny paper cup like the sort used for ketchup in fast food places and a regular paper cup for water. She took both, drawing out the pause before she gave her response. “You, Precipice, need to make a decision when it comes to March.”

“I picked up on that.”

“I’ve had to deal with her more than a few times, because that’s the price of having Foil with us. As a professional she is efficient, dangerous, and dramatic. She’ll almost always be in the right position, she’ll almost always hit, and she’ll almost always kill whatever she hits, provided she wants to. Her underlings support her well. She combines that professional effectiveness with being petty, unhinged, and lopsided in her focus in non-professional things, and lets the two things bleed into each other.”

Gee, I wonder what it would be like to talk to someone like that, Tattletale, I thought. There might have been something in the look I gave Tattletale, because she rolled her eyes slightly.

“Unhinged in person, still dangerous,” Rain said.

“I’ve had to deal with some incredible pains in the ass in the course of my villainous career,” Tattletale said. “Some were on my team. March? She ranks up there. Trust that I know what I’m talking about when I’m telling you this stuff.”

“Sure,” Rain said.

“My advice? The thing you need to know? If I were in your shoes, with the same relationship to that bunny-eared train wreck, I’d suck it up, say goodbye to your little team of damaged, overzealous heroes, and join March’s group.”

“No way, that doesn’t make any sense at all,” Lookout said.

“It really doesn’t,” Rain said.

“She doesn’t make sense. She’s this fixated on Foil, and Foil has barely interacted with her. She actually did you a huge favor, Precipice, getting involved when she did, providing sanctuary, and saving you from the Mathers witch. You owe her and if you give her an excuse, throwing that debt you owe in her face and ignoring her? You will become her focus.”

“Is this your power talking or is it just you?” I asked Tattletale.

“Both. It’s always both, and anyone who tells you it’s one or the other is lying to your face. The powers always tie in.”

“If everything you’re saying is true, it seems like it’d be more dangerous to stick with her,” Rain said.

I respected the ‘if everything you’re saying is true’ part. It showed he wasn’t getting sucked into Tattletale’s vortex.

“Hon, she hunted down and recruited the Graeae twins for a Foil-related reason. I’m certain of that. Let your imagination run wild as to why. Think of the most sketchy of the ‘kiss’ applications of that power, I’m sure Victoria can come up with something if your imagination fails you. Then think of the most sketchy ‘kill’ application. Start with how she can functionally keep Foil alive forever. Then combine the two ideas. That’s when she likes Foil. If you cross her, Precipice, then she won’t like you.”

Victoria can help you come up with something. The words went past barbed to being something else. Bitter, even monstrously ugly if I considered that she’d been there when I’d been eaten alive by acid, and she knew what had happened after. She hadn’t been able to resist getting the dig in, for cleverness’s sake.

Chris had been the same, when I’d first met him. Jessica had warned him.

No wonder that she was alone at a time she was this hurt. There was no friend at her side to make sure she was okay or to get her her medications.

Dwelling on that was easier than dwelling on the words themselves. Things were just a little bit less ‘turn around and she could be there’ than they had been in recent weeks, but nothing was fixed.

Rain leaned back- he was still at the foot of the long staircase to the high-ceilinged basement area, and leaning back meant resting his tailbone against the end of the post that was the railing. He didn’t talk, and with his mask on, his expression was hard to read.

“I can’t help but feel you have ulterior motives for approaching this this way,” I said. “What was it you said about having multiple reasons for everything you do? That’s how you have to operate at your level, isn’t it?”

“It would be, but maybe I’m not in charge of New Brockton while March is on the warpath, and maybe I’m operating on two fewer cylinders.”

Her hands gently touched her knees, indicating the injured legs.

“‘Maybe’ is such a weak word, and you used it twice,” Swansong said. “Be straight with us.”

“I’m being remarkably straight, considering you came here of your own accord and possibly led March to me – we’re going to find out soon,” she said. She winced. “I should have asked for more pain meds. I did have multiple motives, yes. I’ll be straight: when you do what I do, you end up playing games of chess with other masterminds, and that’s its own thing, but you also end up playing five simultaneous games of chess with lesser players. March doing what she’s doing has forced me to stand up and take my eyes off the boards. If you want to be on top of this, you need to be on top of that.”

“Watching chessboards?” Swansong asked.

“No. The moment I had to stand up and walk away, they got to make their moves, knowing I couldn’t respond. Big plans can unravel.”

“Your plans,” I said. “You’ll have to give us more details if we’re supposed to think that your plans are our priority.”

“Ashley knows how a sudden void in the criminal structure can shift the landscape. If I’m not there to supply key information or resources, then others will. People will move into New Brockton, and they won’t be as nice as I am. Other people are going to move outward. This will have ripple effects, and when a city is held together with yellow duct tape, ripples can rip.”

“You want to use us to protect your position?” I asked.

Tattletale sighed loudly. “I didn’t invite you to come here. If you want my opinion, you want to use yourselves to protect my position. You want to protect the status quo, keep things sane, as you put it. You brought up how I aimed to do multiple things at once. Apply that to yourselves.”

“You think we aren’t?” Swansong asked.

“We’re in the middle of other things, and this plays into it,” I said.

“I know what you’re in the middle of, and you know I know. You’re organizing the heroes, sharing information, making sure that the city still has a way to deal with the real threats, when thrown-together prisons don’t have what it takes. How well do you think that’s going to go over when you take the initial steps and then the crime rate jumps three hundred percent?”

“And clearly the answer is to throw our lot in with yours and help you,” I said.

Tattletale put both hands on the seat, lifting up her upper body a fraction so she could adjust how her ass rested on the seat’s surface, her face momentarily screwing up. She eased herself back down. “Clearly it’s going to happen whether you help me or not. But if you work with me on this, then I’ll point you in the right direction, so you can work against the ripples. You can get ahead of this problem.”

“And we finally see what she’s after,” I murmured, keeping my voice barely audible.

“It’s not the worst deal in the world,” Sveta murmured back. “It’s sharing info, which we wanted. And we know she’s good.”

“It’s sharing select info,” I kept my voice quiet. “If a police chief has his officers focus on majority-black neighborhoods, those officers end up acting in support of someone else’s bias. If we target specific criminals that Tattletale points out for us, what does that mean?”

“It means we get some easy catches,” Rain whispered. “We’re not locking ourselves into anything.”

“It’s not that simple or easy,” I murmured. At a normal, louder volume, I addressed Tattletale, “It can’t be you listing them one by one and us picking them off. You give us the information, we decide what to do with it.”

“It’ll take me a bit to pull together. I can do that, with one caveat.”

“Caveat?” I asked.

“What does Caveat mean?” Lookout whispered Ashley.

“Stipulation.”

“Rule?” Lookout whispered.

“It’s a condition, a drawback,” Tattletale said. “I’m going to give you that full list, that’s fine. Known locations, associations, some details on powers. You’ll have it as soon as I’ve finished typing, and you can distribute it to your team. But.”

She placed emphasis on the ‘but’.

“The caveat,” I said.

“I’m going to give you all one very strong suggestion for who you specifically go after first. Take it as motivated or me serving my interests if you want. You can think it over for the next few days, ask a thinker to double check, whatever, you’ll find it really isn’t. It’s just sensible.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Love Lost.”

“Why?” Ashley asked.

“Because if March tells Cradle the quote-unquote ‘secret’ to taking over the cluster, Cradle has two options. One is to go after Precipice, who is expecting it, with an organized group at his back. The other is to eliminate Love Lost and co-opt that power.”

“She has a team at her back,” Ashley said.

“Disorganized and reveling in that disorganization. And Cradle can get close enough to bypass that team and stab her in the back. Her team is also violent and swiftly rising to the top of the public’s most wanted list. They’re just high profile enough to grab attention, they’re striking from a visual standpoint, they’re noisy, they cause property damage, and they’re vaguely reminiscent of the old Slaughterhouse Nine. People want them gone.”

“And getting them gone wins us points with the people?” Byron asked.

Tattletale shrugged.

“What’s the secret?” Rain asked. “You said you told people. How are the Lady in Blue and March breaking the balance of their clusters?”

Tattletale smiled. “I could ask for a favor or payment for this information.”

“I’m going to find out somehow,” Rain said.

“You might find out because Cradle or Love Lost use it on you. Knowing helps you to avoid it.”

“Tattletale,” I said. “If we’re helping you by taking out your potential rivals and leaving you alone, you can throw Precipice a bone.”

“When I first met your team, Vicky, I commented on Precipice and how I don’t think he’s a great person. Cradle is twisted up inside in a way I’d need a whole lot more time to wrap my head around. Love Lost is an emotional wound so open that the contents pour out to people nearby. And Snag is dead. All thanks to him. Through his inaction, he condemned people to die. Children died.”

“You act outraged, you have morals, but sufficient money, favors, and-or necessity let you put that outrage and those morals aside?” Sveta asked. “That doesn’t seem right.”

“Are you trying to convince me not to help him?”

“I had to face down people like that once. At least have the decency not to act. Do the victims that much respect,” Sveta said.

“It’s the other way around, Sveta. Tress. Garotte. I am bothered. I don’t trust him. I’ve seen his type before. If I’m going to give a teenager of that particular type access to a whole new level of parahuman power, I need to double check things.”

“Then why ask about money or favors?” Rain asked.

“Cauldron sold vials with powers in them. They created things like Sveta, Weld, Gregor and Whippersnap on their way to making those vials. The vials were expensive. Why, when they had a man like the Number Man working for them? He could conjure money from thin air.”

She’d named a few of the other case fifty-threes. I looked- Gregor and Shamrock had long since moved on. Faultline seemed okay leaving just the mercenaries who were hanging around the area to watch us.

“Why?” Tattletale asked again, for emphasis, her right eyebrow piqued.

“It limited things to the people who really wanted the powers,” Sveta said.

“Yes, but it also ensured that the people who got the powers respected the impact of it. If your team is willing to pay my price, then I know they’ll walk away from that payment just a bit more mindful. Every time the pocketbook smarts, you should think of him.”

“How much?” I asked.

Tattletale paused. Her eyes searched me. “Not money. You seem fairly confident you can pay. That’s interesting. Do you have a sponsorship?”

“What do you want, Tattletale?”

“I’d ask for access to your information network-”

“No.”

“No,” she said. She nodded. “I want a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”

“No,” I said.

“Let me clarify. You have a way of imprisoning the parahumans we all need gone. ‘Disappearing’ them. Fine. Undersiders are exempt.”

“Scared?” Swansong asked.

“Yeah, a bit,” Tattletale said. “Vicky has a grudge, and I wouldn’t one hundred percent put it past her, in a theoretical future where this worked you streamlined the process, and you had me at a disadvantage. Frankly, the idea of teenagers being the ones to arrest, judge, and condemn should scare anyone. And yes- let me interrupt you before you get started or figure out if you’ll say something. I know you’re not making all those decisions. I know you have lawyers and you’re talking to the city. I also know who some of those lawyers are and the kind of people we have running the city right now.”

That last line was punctuated by a serious look Sveta’s way.

I saw Sveta nod slightly.

Tattletale continued, “It’s still scary. I want exemption for my people. If we help you here, you don’t do that to us.”

“We don’t do it to you?” I asked. I thought for a second. Most of the Undersiders could go in a regular jail. In a theoretical universe where the villain team that took over a city was well and truly arrested. Take Rachel away from her dogs, put Imp in a sealed cell with the right kind of monitoring, put Tattletale in jail and limit her human contact, limit Parian’s access to materials…

I looked at the others. Byron nodded slightly, then switched out to Tristan, a nod.

“Can’t guarantee that another team won’t push for it,” I said. “You meet us halfway. Stay out of the kind of trouble that makes people want to ‘disappear’ you.”

“Okay,” she said. “You have twins and a clone on your team. You should know how shards map things out.”

“You’re talking about agents? And they use DNA.”

“The Corona and the tendril of shard-ness that the shard extends to the person are kind of the real-time location tracking. It’s as if they’ve got a hand on your shoulder, and if you travel halfway across the world, their hand still on your shoulder, they have an intuitive sense of where you are. With some exceptions and special cases in there. But the DNA? That’s the bar-code for the verification check.”

“I’m supposed to put my DNA inside them?” Rain asked.

I looked at Sveta, who was next to me, raising a hand to draw her attention to the line. She only nodded solemnly.

“That sounds way more kiss than kill,” Tristan said.

“Huh?” Rain asked.

“I’m pretty sure Rain doesn’t like boys that much,” Lookout said.

“Oh, ugh,” Rain said. He looked at Tristan. “Um, not ugh because boy-boy, but because Cradle.”

“I get it.”

“Also, pretty sure Love Lost is twice as old as I am.”

“I can’t believe I got Capricorn’s line before Precipice did,” Lookout said.

Tattletale butted in, “You’re getting ahead of yourselves, little miss precocious especially, you’re about three years too early to be getting that.”

“Two years maybe,” Lookout said.

“Whatever. Back to the subject at hand. Step one is confusing the signal,” Tattletale said. “Location? Close proximity, for a long period of time. Think staying within arm’s reach for days, even weeks. Probably with no interruptions, breaks, or time apart.”

“The Lady in Blue got one member of her cluster back and the transfer was immediate,” I said.

“Signal was already confused. The means of transferring power were already established. When shards kick down doors, through second triggers, some trump effects, whatever, the doors never go back to the way they were.”

“So step one is kidnapping someone and keeping them close for a long time,” Rain said.

“I can see why Foil wasn’t interested,” I said. “Sleeping next to March for a long while?”

Tattletale smiled. “Step two? DNA. When they check their paperwork and see that one person has four different powers, they check the bar-code. You want them to get the wrong ones and kick down the doors. The go-to method seems to be a blood transfusion. That’s if you’re lucky enough to be compatible. If you’re not, then you can try doing the Bathory thing, go full cannibal, you can try other things to confuse the signal like borrowing skin or other tissues, or you can be patient, and hope the signal confusion occurs without you going that far, though by the time you’ve spent weeks with someone like that, you might be ready to end it and wrap yourself in their skin, bathe in their blood instead.”

“Jesus,” Tristan said.

Tattletale shrugged. “Helps if you leave the other guy weak as part of what you’re doing. Means they can’t fight it, they dwindle, and you grow comparably.”

I nodded.

“I don’t think I could do that to them,” Rain said.

“No, probably not,” Tattletale said. “But they might be willing to do it to you, and now you know what to look out for.”

“Thank you,” Rain said.

“Don’t thank me. Just don’t throw me in that alternate dimension of yours and lock the door behind you. And unless there’s something more pressing… let me get my Russian nesting doll back. These gunshot wounds hurt enough that I’m willing to dilute my existence down and kind of not exist.”

There wasn’t anything more pressing. We all had food for thought, and we had things to do. We left her be.

It was like a weight came off my shoulders, leaving an underground meeting with Tattletale, even though it had been a brightly-lit, high-ceilinged base of operations.

The snow was swirling around us, and the air was cold, but it was a refreshing cold. Below, with heaters going and a winterized costume on, I’d been a touch on the warm side. Now I was finding a happy middle ground. I’d probably find myself on the cold side when the light sweat chilled, but for now I was happy enough.

Our breath fogged around us, with Sveta as the exception.

“Gregor had to go somewhere. Do we have a pen and paper?” Sveta asked. “I’d like to leave him my contact information.”

“I’ve got some,” Lookout said. “My scratch pad for tinker ideas. Give me a second.”

Lookout rummaged and then took dictation. The others joined me, leaning against a bike rack that wouldn’t see much use for another few months. Tristan in his Capricorn armor, Rain, and Swansong.

“Deal with the devil,” I said.

“As the resident expert on devils, I don’t think she’s a devil,” Rain said.

“You’re the resident expert on a lot of things,” Tristan said.

“Yeah? I fucking earned it,” Rain said, without any hostility in his voice. “And before you get annoyed with me for going easy on her, Victoria-”

“I’m not ann-”

He didn’t stop talking, despite my interruption. “-I’m also the resident expert on shitty human beings. And I don’t think she’s a great person. But she’s trying in her own way.”

“You’re an expert on that too, hm?” Swansong asked.

“I’m- aren’t we all?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Difference is, I’ve never known her to apologize or acknowledge the things she did.”

Sveta joined us. Kenzie had run off.

I had my concerns about that- Kenzie ducking out of sight into a hive of villainy and mercenary tendencies. We’d talked very recently about how tinkers were prime targets for that sort of predation, being used for their powers.

Sveta seemed to notice. “She ran off as soon as I said I was done, sorry.”

I nodded.

“What do we think?” Sveta asked.

I looked in the direction of the stairwell. “What she said about the power dynamic? I can believe most of it. Location and DNA? It fits with things we’ve seen before.”

“Things like Byron and Tristan,” Sveta said. “Proximity.”

“And twins and clones,” Tristan added. “Same barcode.”

Swansong nodded.

“You said most,” Rain said.

“Who?” Sveta asked.

“Victoria. She said she could believe most of it.”

“She said the process works best if the person being drained is weakened. Bled out, skinned…”

“You don’t think so?” Tristan asked.

“I think it makes sense if you don’t think about it. I also think that powers tend to target the disadvantaged. Victims. Trigger events target them. Second triggers do. When your power fluctuates because you’re in a mindset aligned to your trigger? It’s rewarding that mentality.”

“Tattletale misled?” Sveta asked.

“Or she was wrong,” Tristan said. “How sure are you, Vic?”

I had to think about it. “Fifty percent.”

“That’s not helpful,” Sveta chided me. “That’s the opposite of helpful.”

“If we ever find ourselves in a position to consider doing that, we should be aware of the risk. Weakening one person risks a second trigger, and it might work the opposite way.”

“Great,” Rain said.

“There’s an upside!” Sveta said, encouraging. “If they get you… you kind of have a chance, whatever they do?”

Rain snorted.

From the stairwell, Lookout emerged. She had Chicken Little with her, as well as Whippersnap and the lace girl. I could see the defensive body language in the two case fifty-threes. Whippersnap folded his arms, while the lace girl stepped a bit behind him. Her hand found Whippersnap’s.

“…shot a target and all of the smashed-up bullets came out looking like birds,” Chicken Little said.

“That’s crazy. But you know, that’s a trick of the eye sometimes. Like when you look at a cloud and it looks like something? I remember when I was really young, in those good old days when you were automatically friends with whoever was the same age?”

“Yeah,” Chicken Little said. “I remember those days.”

“Yeah! So we were pulling bits of concrete away from this ruined wall with cracks running through it, and every single piece had a pattern in the broken side that looked like a face. That’s the effect I’m talking about. I experimented with it, when I was working on my cameras.”

“I think I have one of the bullets in my pocket. It’s sharp so it’s sometimes useful. Here.”

Chicken Little reached into the front pocket of the coat that had been built into his costume- it had tails at the back like an old fashioned coat, but the tails had a feather-like cut to them, like a bird’s folded wings. His mask was full-face, with beady black eyes set fairly low, in a way that made the forehead and the crest at the top stand out more.

He produced a bullet, like a soft slug pried out of a wall or floor, or out of a bullet-proof vest. Sure enough, it had broken up into a shape that looked a hell of a lot like a robin in flight, the splits separating head from wing and wing from tail.

“Oh wow. That really does look like a bird.”

“So do all the others. If I catch her going to the range again I’ll see if she can do another.”

“Or other things,” Lookout said.

“Oh yeah! Like an elephant! I like elephants.”

“Imagine if you controlled elephants. That’d be nuts.”

“I couldn’t, though. They’d get hurt and that would suck. Aunt Rachel’s dogs get hurt or die a lot and it sucks.”

“Aunt Rachel?”

“Bitch, or Hellhound, but she doesn’t have a secret identity, obviously-”

“Nonono, obviously. Yes, I know her name and everything, I get it. I just blanked.”

“Chicken,” Whippersnap said. “We should let them go. They’re waiting and they have things to do.”

With eyes that bulged out, each looking like there was too much moisture inside them, to the point they weren’t quite round anymore, he still managed to glare.

“Okay,” Chicken Little said.

“You’re lucky that you have people around your age to hang out with here,” Kenzie said.

“Maybe you could come here and hang out sometime, and-”

There were noises of protest, muted and not, from more than a few corners. Whippersnap was louder. Sveta, Ashley and I were at different places on the spectrum of dissuading and the more logical pointing out of issues.

“-or not,” Chicken Little said.

“Security issues,” Whippersnap said. “And we’ve heard enough about her to know she’s a walking infosec breach.”

I really liked how the young teen was using words like ‘infosec’. The company we keep.

A bummer, that Kenzie couldn’t meet up with a potential friend.

“Maybe neutral territory,” I said.

Whippersnap’s focus seemed to remain primarily on Sveta.

“What’s your name?”

Swansong, addressing the lace girl.

“Does it matter?” Whippersnap asked. “What do you care?”

Swansong shrugged. “I just like the dress. It’s pretty, and I’m a fan of the style.”

As if to indicate, Swansong’s fingers brushed against her own skirt. White fabric, like the lace girl seemed to be covered in. Swansong only had a bit of lace, though.

The lace girl nodded, lips set into a firm line behind her veil. Her hands looked like they’d been covered in gloves, then had the lace pattern punched in repeatedly, passing through glove and flesh both. Most of her looked that way, and the parts that didn’t just had extra layers, with only hints of it.

“When a case fifty-three can’t choose their appearance, pointing out even the parts you like about how they ended up can be disconcerting,” Sveta murmured.

“Sorry then,” Swansong said.

“I did make it myself,” the lace girl said. “Most of it. Thank you for liking it. I’m Chantilly.”

“Swansong.”

Chantilly smiled slightly.

Whippersnap shielded her with his body, as if we had guns and she was in danger. He looked at Chicken. “Come on. You should go downstairs. You’re a target too. Tilly, let’s go.”

I saw Lookout start to take a step forward, then stop herself, rocking back on her heels. I put a hand on her shoulder.

“Hold on,” Swansong said.

The trio stopped.

“Do any of you want to share emails, phones? So you can see about the meeting on neutral ground?”

Chantilly shook her head, quickly.

“I will,” Chicken Little said.

I could see Whippersnap’s active impatience, as Chicken Little wrote down a number or email on Lookout’s scratch pad.

As soon as he was done, he was ushered away along with Chantilly, Whippersnap continuing to be protective, shielding the lace girl from us as if from a physical danger.

“I know your rules say you can’t ask or push contact on people,” Swansong said.

Lookout nodded. “I wanted to so badly.”

“It’s good you made a friend. That looked like a good conversation.”

“I didn’t talk too much? Or say anything weird?”

“Nah,” Tristan said, from the side. He looked at me. “We should go.”

I nodded. “Things to do.”

The snow continued to fall, done its frenzied dance higher above, where our proximity to various portals and the weather they stirred up made the snow travel in wild courses.

“How do you feel about going after your friends?” Tristan asked.

“Friends?” Rain asked.

“Swansong, going after the members of Love Lost. If that’s what we end up doing.”

“It’ll be nice to see them again. Nicer to show them what I’m made of.”

“That simple, huh?”

“Not simple, but I like where I am.”

“I like where you are too,” Lookout said. “And I like that Chantilly liked you too. The white dress comes with its upsides, huh?”

The conversation continued. Tristan asking Lookout if she had a map, so we could find her family’s van. She had a tracking chip inside it. Because of course.

Tristan swapped out for Byron, because Rain had asked a question, and I heard my name, a ‘Vicky’ tossed into it – a question aimed at Byron. On answering, Byron swapped out, and Tristan said something about how quick that had been.

My focus was more on Sveta, who was staring off down a side street.

“Sveta,” Tristan said.

“Hm?”

“What do you think? Love Lost?”

“We can. We’ve fought a lot of them before.”

“Tonight, you think? Or do we plan more?”

“I’m fine with whatever. Weld gets back super late. Crystal too?”

I nodded.

“It would be nice to tell him we scored a big win.”

“Tonight then,” Tristan said.

“Okay,” Sveta said. She looked off to the side again.

“See something?” I asked. I saw the mild surprise on her face. Before she could answer, I said. “Come on. We’ll check it out. If we’re being followed, it’s important to know.”

“Do you need help?” Swansong asked.

I shook my head. “Stay put, or go to the van and wait there. Keep an eye out.”

At the nod, I took Sveta’s hand, and I pulled her along with. She used her tendrils, reaching out and grabbing things, hauling herself further down the way.

Once she was on a rooftop, she waited for me.

I looked back at the others, who were smaller in this new perspective.

“Come on. We’ll loop around.”

“I didn’t see anything.”

I brought her along with. She gripped my arm and in the doing she held my injured hand.

We stopped on another rooftop.

“I thought we could use a break,” I said. “Get away.”

I saw her expression shift slightly. The slip, the facade going back up.

“I’m sorry that sucked. Whippersnap. Chantilly.”

“I barely knew him. He was a kid in the group. But he was supposed to be like a brother to me. Like how he said brother Gregor.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“He was supposed to be mine, not possessive or anything… but they’re the only family I get and I don’t get to have them.”

The facade slipped away.

“And Chantilly, yeah.”

“Yeah! Fuck!” Sveta said, angry.

“Fuck,” she said, sad.

I hugged her, and she buried her face in the crook of my neck, mumbling now that she was talking into cloth. “She wears a white dress and that gets her points with Chantilly, but I’m the outsider? I’m the odd one out? What the fuck.”

Yep. Better that the anger get out now than in a release of bottled-up feelings. Especially when we were going up against an emotion manipulator.

I had tears in my own eyes, now, just listening.

“And she shows off her hands? I’m happy for her, I really am, I’m not that much of a bitch that I wouldn’t be, really. I’m sorry.”

“You’re not a bitch at all,” I said.

“But she’s smug and showing off about how they’re practically indistinguishable from regular ones and what the fuck!”

There was a thud at her chest, then a thousand more. A hundred fists striking against the shell, the inside of the cage, protesting, unleashing pent-up feelings. It was only my grip around her shoulders that kept her upright.

Polarize – 10.7

Video played on our laptop, a cartoon animation of a beautiful woman with black skin, dreadlocks, yellow stick-on nails, and a canary yellow boa in a tropical paradise. A skinny guy with rings of tribal tattoos on his arm and ‘DJ’ on his bicep sat with his arm around a curvy young woman in a bikini, with sharks tattooed at her sides.

Every character was stylized, to the point it could be hard to keep track.

“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing at a guy in the background. “Were we introduced to him?”

“We saw him in the background earlier. He was putting the gun on the jeep,” Rain said. Rain wore the trinket at his neck, which changed his appearance to the scruffier, dark-haired alternate look. He sat with a similarly disguised Sveta and me on a curved couch, his boots resting on his bag, which was on the quarter-circle shaped table in front of us. The couch and table setup were one of twenty-five, each arranged so it was a rotation from nearby tables and couches, placed in the lounge area of a larger building.

The building was something of a hybrid: a dining hall, library, social area, and market all in one. At this end of the greater building, the smells and noise of the food court were muted by an intervening bottleneck. On the floors above, I could see the bookshelves of the library. Individual chairs, beanbags, and study nooks were up there, away from the light conversation of the lounge floor.

Twenty-five tables on the ground floor, a crowd, and then two floors of library on three sides, a wall of thick glass on the fourth side. Circular lights high above us glowed blue, pumping out the UV light.

This was Lyme Center. When the last winter had rolled around, things had been bad. Suicides had peaked as the winter went long, and isolation had been a part of that. Being cold and hungry was one thing. Being cold, hungry, and alone? The inorganic way that so much of the Megalopolis had sprung up had led to whole groups and clusters of people in isolated pockets being left with no contact with other people. There had been places where people could gather that had been crammed with those seeking human contact from dawn until well after dark, and there had been places where there just hadn’t been anywhere to go and talk to other human beings that weren’t neighbors.

Lyme had been a tent city a month ago, and past the big windows of Lyme Center the construction was continuing well past sundown. Snow, bright yellow construction vehicles, and dark skeletons of pre-fabricated buildings being put together. No plumbing, not in the original sense, just fat tubes set into ditches just deep enough that gravel and dirt could be piled over top and packed down.

“What show?” a guy asked, leaning over the back of the couch. He looked twenty-five or so, and from his jacket and the bag he had slung over his shoulder, he had the look of a tent-city denizen who hadn’t quite let his guard down.

Not so different from a homeless person who kept everything they valued within arm’s reach.

“Blood Atoll,” Sveta said, adjusting her headphones so the one wasn’t covering her left ear.

“Never heard of it. Seeing people in bikinis is making me wish I was someplace warmer, I’m not sure I could stand to watch that.”

Rain chuckled.

“Is it good?”

“We’re not far enough in to know,” Rain said. He hit the pause button. The scene had the woman with the boa looming over ‘Parker’, the youngest person in the house.

“I’m dying for something to watch. Is it in the catalogue?”

“Offworld French animation,” Rain said. “It might go in the catalogue if we can figure out how to convert the video file types.”

“That’s always a nightmare. But if you upload it straight, it can be emulated.”

I leaned back, “We talked to a few people about it and got different answers each time. Some people don’t like how messy it gets. If it sucks it might not even be worth the hassle.”

“Odd animation. Rotoscope?”

“Yeah,” I said.

An icon was flashing yellow on the laptop. Rain cycled out of the window and into another one. A simple video game, with two towns, each with a nine by nine grid on it, each icon on the grid having a series of buildings. Hospital, house, farm, carpenter’s, and police.

Rain centered the laptop across his knees, clicked on the house, cycling through images until a frowning old lady appeared, peering over the little fence. A series of red ‘-100’ and ‘-200’ popped up in neighboring zones.

Above the other town, a face like the one I’d seen drawn on Kenzie’s whiteboard popped up – a circular face with only eyes and mouth, brown skinned, black hair parted with two buns, contained within a speech balloon. Her eyes closed into half-circles, mouth wide in a smile that took up half of the circle. A thumbs-up icon followed.

I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I followed the logic of the coding system, but Rain seemed to. I could get the general sense of it though. In the other town, there was a police officer shouting at someone outside of the police station, curse words in the speech balloon.

I pointed at it. “She’s okay? No points lost?”

“Random event,” Rain said. “They’re fine. She’s still ahead by… seven quintillion points. Literally.”

I looked over my shoulder. There were police officers and people in patrol uniforms wandering Lyme Center. The nooks and reading areas were regularly visited.

In ‘our’ town, the police were just walking around their one-ninth of the grid.

The guy who had been watching our screen over our shoulders walked away. Rain finished typing out a message, fixed the orientation of the laptop, and resumed the video. He leaned back and took the ear bud from my hand, sitting closer as he put it in.

On the screen, ‘Parker’ was throwing a fit. The woman with the boa took it unflinching, until the first few objects were scooped up from the nearby cabinet and thrown.

We had two audio jacks plugged into the laptop. Sveta had a hair of headphones. Since I was sharing the ear-buds with Rain, I had audio only in the one ear, which was fine with me, since it let me keep an ear on our surroundings.

In my right ear, Parker’s swears matched up with the subtitles on the screen.

“Shit,” Sveta said, with a serious expression on the face she wore as camouflage.

The thrown objects marked the point it stopped being a teenager’s tantrum and became something else. The lady with the boa gripped the edge of the counter, staring Parker down. Others stood from their seats.

‘Fuck you and suck on frozen shit, you act like you’re all that, but you’re a mess! I can’t believe I actually looked up to you for a minute there!’

‘She gave you a place to live.’ This from D.J..

‘She gave me fucking slavery! I joined up to have fun! I wanted to drink and fucking actually do shit and instead I’m your bitch! I’m done!’

‘You can always leave,’ the girl with the shark tattoos running from armpit to waist said. ‘We won’t get in your way.’

‘Nicky might,’ D.J. said.

‘Nicky isn’t here,’ Shark girl said. ‘If you’re gonna leave, now’s good.’

Parker swayed on the spot, as if leaning hard enough to one side could be the motivation to go. She looked at the woman with the feather boa and then immediately looked away. ‘Can I collect my pay?’

The woman with the feather boa shook her head slowly.

‘If you leave, you leave all the money you’ve earned on the table,’ D.J. said.

Parker became visibly agitated at that.

“Walk away,” Sveta murmured under her breath.

Parker didn’t.

“Do we intervene?” Sveta asked, quiet.

“What we’re watching is out of date,” I said. “We’re… six minutes behind on the broadcast, because we keep pausing.”

We were only free to pause because the other group was staying current. Rain skipped ahead, catching us up. Visual glitches muddled the screen. As it resolved, the squares and blocks of text falling away, Parker could be seen in the kitchen, cleaning up, downcast.

Rain flipped backward a bit, giving us one-frame glimpses of the outcome. Parker subdued, resuming her work in the kitchen. A few seconds before, we had Parker with a stricken expression on her face. A moment before that, ‘Nicky’ was at the door.

Played in the right order, ‘Nicky’ had come back, and the fight had gone out of Parker.

Of course, Parker was just a superimposed image. Nicky wasn’t a tanned blonde with cornrows at either side of her face. D.J. wasn’t a surfer dude, the girl with the shark bite tattoos wasn’t his side chick, and the woman with the boa wasn’t the silent leader of the group of pirates.

Love Lost had settled here in Lyme. We had some surveillance, but positioning ourselves was a task. Ninety percent of everything that wasn’t part of the old tent city was under construction. The other ten percent was like this – crowded, patrolled, and potentially monitored by moles and agents in league to Love Lost.

We’d tried to set up and operate out of the van, where our supplies were in easy reach and our team was together. We’d struggled to find a parking spot in the happy medium between being close enough to Love Lost to act, and far enough away to avoid attention. Within two minutes, we’d had police knocking on the door of the van. Every spot was pre-claimed or, as we’d been told, subject to the whims of the construction teams that were moving large amounts of material through.

Our attempt to get out of the van and set up somewhere as a team had been similarly stymied. With that, and after seeing just how closely monitored and claustrophobic the emerging community was here in Lyme, I was prepared to give Love Lost some credit.

She’d either been insanely lucky to stumble onto a location like this, or she’d had the sense to find it. I was betting on the latter.

Our only options had seemed to be setting up in the next area over, with a twenty minute travel time to get here if we needed to do something, or setting up close and dealing with constant hassle, with civilians peering over our shoulder and potentially reporting back to Love Lost.

Except Kenzie had had an idea. Old programs. One to superimpose images, and another that let her tech put the game together based on a description. We’d watched for ten minutes before the game popped up in a mostly working fashion.

“What do we know about her?” I asked. I reached forward and hit the arrow keys, since there wasn’t a lot happening on-screen. I stopped when we had an image on the woman with the canary feather boa on screen.

“Heavy question,” Rain said. “She’s angry, but I think most people picked up on that.”

“Silent,” Sveta said.

“Nearly silent,” Rain agreed, nodding. “She was law enforcement. Detective, I’m pretty sure. I saw a flashback where she won an award, her daughter was in the audience. So I think she was a pretty good one. I remember, uh, another flashback, she had a child, but her child died. Was killed. Senselessly.”

The sentences were more fragmented as he went. I saw him clench his fist, white-knuckled, before wrapping his other hand around it and cracking the knuckles manually, his eyes on the screen.

“And she turned into a… pirate?” I asked, mindful that people might overhear. “Using all of that expert knowledge from her past life?”

“Something like that,” Rain said. “The vicious anger is a running theme. Anger at the criminals, anger at her ex. She drank. She seems to avoid it now, which I find a bit surprising.”

“How was she with her child?” Sveta asked.

Rain resumed the video, then skipped forward and backward a bit, looking.

It was a point we’d paused the video before, when the guy with the overloaded pack had interrupted. The woman with the canary feather boa looming over ‘Parker’. With the scene, someone’s voice from the background was represented on screen with the subtitles. ‘…don’t want to step into the ring here, Colt honey.’

As the word ‘Colt’ came through the earbud, it was auto-changed to Parker on the screen, in the subtitles. Colt was the kid from Cedar Point who had been roped into joining Prancer’s group as a henchman. She’d apparently been there when Kenzie’s place had been raided and Natalie had been hurt.

Rain seemed to want the image to stand for itself. Our painted-over picture showed Love Lost leaning forward, staring down Colt. No words, only intimidation.

“Angry?” I suggested.

“Messy, I guess,” Rain said. “Does it matter how she was with her kid? Because I think she loved her child with all her being. Doesn’t that count for something?”

Sveta frowned. “I’m so tired of dealing with parents like K’s, Vic’s, and now this mess.”

“I can’t really comment,” Rain’s voice had dropped, almost like he was falling away, but his gaze was intently fixed on the face on the screen. “Nobody deserves to go through what she went through. What she’s going through, every minute of every day. She’s carrying that now, while she’s dealing with, uh, Parker.”

“Do you need to sit this one out?” I asked.

“Before, I had pretty strong feelings, but I could think about the big picture. Now that I’m closer, the feelings are bigger, and I think the feelings are winning. Ask me again later?”

I nodded.

That didn’t make the situation any easier. If Rain sat this one out, then we had Sveta and I as part of this group, and Swansong, Capricorn, and Lookout as part of the other group.

Love Lost had more capes than that, and she was entrenched in this area. This was her turf.

We could call others in, but they would face the same problem we did. There weren’t any good places for capes to lurk. Set up too far away, and response times would suffer. Get too close, and they could be spotted.

I had my phone. It wasn’t camouflaged like the feed on the laptop was, but I was reasonably sure that whatever I browsed would be dismissed as idle reading, provided I scrolled past images quickly enough.

I sent a message to Advance Guard. They had some people with mobility who could swoop in.

The icon on the screen flashed, indicating that the ‘game’ had updated.

It was the little Kenzie face in the speech balloon, with no smile. Eyes wide. An Ashley face was laughing with a hand in front of the mouth, the ‘ha ha ha’ floating away. Tristan’s face popped up, green and barfing a thin stream that pooled on the roof of the building below the speech bubble.

Rain went back to the video feed and caught us up to the present, where a faint arrow indicated what the other team was watching.

‘…between my teeth and cheek. For an hour, hunh? Whaddyasay?’ Sidepiece.

‘Why’d you have to say teeth like that? Teeth are ten kinds of fuck no.’ D.J.

‘Not even a nibble?’

‘Never a nibble! Never!’

‘I’ve known people who liked being nibbled on and nipped.’

‘You know fucked up people, Side.’

‘What if I tucked it somewhere safe and warm instead, hmmm? We could go catch a movie, and then I’ll give it back. How fun would that be?’

On the screen, Sidepiece cozied up to D.J. He seemed to accept the cozying, but said, ‘Safe and warm for you is an inch from nitroglycerin for me.’

Sidepiece made a sound that was about fifty percent snort, forty percent nasal snort overlapping the first, and ten percent laugh.

‘I’m attached to it,’ D.J. said.

‘Detach it. I want it to play with for a while. We could have so much fun.’

On the other window, Kenzie was marked as away, a candy emote over her head. Going to get snacks, while Sidepiece and D.J. potentially got R-rated? Tristan was with her.

Rain hit a key and the subtitles disappeared. I saw him glance back and looked out of the corner of my eye. A guy in a uniform that could have been a security guard or cop was standing off to the side, looking in our direction.

‘You’ll lose it.’

‘Nuh uh.’

‘I’ve seen you lose your keys, your favorite top-‘

‘That shit was stolen, no fair.’

‘-your phone, twice, your banking card-‘

‘I was really drunk when I lost the card.’

‘-your pancreas.’

‘Grows back!’

‘Slowly!’

‘But it grows back! And I didn’t lose it exactly, okay!? I had a snowfort pile going, y’know?’

‘What the fuck is a snowfort pile?’

‘What the kids do with snowballs, all stacked up neat and ready to throw? And then the ground shook and rattled the table, and it all blew. Ovaries are such cluster-fuckers, all loaded up with those eggs. I did pretty fuckin’ good finding as many of the pieces as I did.’

‘You lose shit, Side. Admit it!’

‘No! I had reasons and other shit going on! I’m not going to get carelessly drunk if you give me a toy to play with!’

‘That’s what you do every day! Toys and drugs and drunk!’

The two started play wrestling on the couch in their… I wasn’t sure if it was a headquarters or home. The tropical overlay did mask some essential details. There was a key to make the overlay drop away, but that risked letting bystanders see the feed.

Spright and Shortcut were on their way. Shortcut wasn’t my first choice, but I wasn’t about to look this horse in the mouth.

Colt was in the next room, though she might as well have been in the same room as the frisky pair, because the wall that separated kitchen from the living room space had a massive window in it that things could be passed through.

Love Lost was moving. On the screen, the lady with the feather boa was pulling on a light jacket. The camera zoomed in as she slid something up her sleeves, attaching it to her wrists.

Claws.

“Going to battle,” I said.

Rain used his feet to pick up his bag, dropped it a bit, then got it on the second try, passing it to his hands.

Love Lost snapped her fingers. All activity on the ground floor stopped – which amounted to ‘Parker’, Sidepiece as the girl with the shark-bite tattoos, and D.J..

“Do you need us?” Sidepiece asked.

Love Lost indicated Colt.

“We’re going out?” Colt asked.

“Yeah,” Nicky said, as she came down the stairs. She grabbed her own top and hat. “It’s a meeting. Bring everything.”

“So long as it’s not washing dishes,” Colt said, sullen.

The scene on the screen shifted, the camera pulling away. It gave us an overhead view of the ‘Blood Atoll’ – a ring of beach with a pirate bay contained within. Other lenses on the camera began to pull up scenes and things of interest. One dominant picture was of the jeep beside Love Lost’s headquarters. A machine gun was mounted on top, covered with a tarp, an x-ray image showing the loose position of the gun.

I looked around to make sure nobody was staring at our screen, and reached over for the key combination, checking with Rain and Sveta that I was good to go. They did their own check before nodding.

Just a second.

The Atoll became Lyme, the dirt from where ground had been flattened out forming the ring around the exterior, construction ongoing, the layout of boat and beach became building and snow layered over dirt and rock.

The jeep with the machine gun was now a truck, and instead of a machine gun, it was something tinker-made. The tinker leaned against the side of the vehicle, smoking. He did wear a mask, soft with goggles built in, a spike of metal extending from the connecting piece between the two goggles, up the forehead, and arcing back over the head, giving a silver line to the part in his greasy, copper-colored hair. The mask didn’t cover his throat, and I could see the hair there, almost an unbroken line from neck to collarbone to chest hair. He wore a heavy flannel shirt, a workman’s jacket, winterized work gloves, and jeans. Low-key as tinkers went.

Other scenes showed our position. The hourglass-shaped Lyme Center had Kenzie, Swansong, and Tristan in the noisier area. On the other side of the bottleneck was us, marked with tinted dots. Yellow-white for me, green-blue for Sveta, and dark red for Rain.

Love Lost, Colt, and Nailbiter stepped outside, Nailbiter distorting into her narrow form to stab the upper half of her body into the backseat before the seat was even moved forward to let people back there. Her lower body was withdrawn in, narrowing and disappearing into the space. Colt climbed in normally, before pulling the seat back to its normal position to let Love Lost in.

There were graphical glitches as the program struggled to come up with ways to coordinate the very different vehicle types.

The tinker drove, with Love Lost in the front seat.

“We could intercept,” Sveta whispered, leaning in close. Rain leaned in to hear, and we had a huddle.

“Against an unknown gun? The four of them?” Rain whispered back.

“We have two Advance Guard guys on the way,” I whispered. “Spright and Shortcut.”

“Ew.” Sveta made a face. “Not my favorite person.”

“They’re quick enough to get involved when we need involved,” I said. Rather than use the laptop, I pulled out my phone. Time to make sure everyone was in the loop.

Tracking Love Lost’s group to unspecified meeting. They’re armed for a fight. Known violence in records, two of the four people en route are on our list of major threats to the city. AG sending two to assist. I punched the short description of our activities into my phone and sent the message.

Database back at headquarters notified. We were in the system, and other heroes knew what we were doing.

Capricorn, Lookout, and Swansong were ready.

Spright and Shortcut were at the very edges of Lyme.

Two more bases to cover. The first went into a much cruder queue. The icon switched rapidly between ‘sending’, ‘sent’, ‘queued’, and then ‘read’.

We got a message back. ‘What are their names’. No question mark.

Nailbiter and Love Lost.

‘Not going to say no. Be safe – Nat.’

My eyebrows went up. Was she back? Or did she decide to get involved?

The second to last wasn’t as smooth. The ‘loading’ symbol played over the final bar, which was simply labeled ‘Wardens’. The option grayed out, a line struck through it. Then it shifted. A crown icon.

A crown for a monarch? An emperor? It was uncomfortable, but I doubted Kenzie had put that much thought into things.

Doubly uncomfortable that they knew what we were doing now.

Citrine or one of her employees sent their reply. Permission given. Good, to meet the self-imposed requirement of a thumbs-up from the higher-ups. Negative, on so many levels, that the higher-ups were who they were.

“The others want to meet up. They’re heading our way, since we’re closer to the car,” Rain said.

“They’re packed up and moving already,” I said.

“All energy and forward momentum.” Rain smiled.

“What do you think?” I asked him. “Any doubts?”

He didn’t have an immediate response for me.

“It’s okay to say no.”

“I’m-” Rain started. A group of people walked right behind the couch, one of them holding a bag that brushed Rain’s head. Sveta’s head craned around a bit more than a head should, studying the people. She dismissed them as normal.

“I’m thinking of how Ashley apparently backed off, the other night. She said she didn’t want to do the one thing, she knew she was bad at it and it was bad for her.”

“Yeah.”

“I respect that. I’d want to do that if I was more sure about anything. I’m pretty sure the three of us that are left are going to kill each other.” The last few words were whispered.

“But?” I asked.

“But I also feel pretty sure that if I don’t stop her, she’s going to hurt other people. I know her pretty well by now.”

The other three members of the group were at the second floor stage, looking down. They started the walk around to the stairs.

“Should we pack up?” Rain asked, hand on the lid of the laptop.

“Wait,” Sveta said. “Look.”

It was the cartoon overlay of things, showing the truck. Heading to the Lyme Center.

At the back of the truck, the roof and side had been slid away, revealing the gun within. The gun was lighting up, crackling with electricity, and slowly swiveling. Aiming at the camera.

My head snapped around to Lookout. She was at the top of the stairs, oblivious. I raised a hand, trying to get her attention.

“Shit,” Rain said.

She was too enamored with Ashley, chattering up a storm. Tristan had a hand out to make sure she wasn’t going to fall down the stairs, but he wasn’t looking at us either.

Phone out, I started to type. I knew it would be too slow.

“Powers?” I whispered.

Rain shook his head. At the same time, Sveta stood up. Her fingers, appearing like skin with the projector image that was on her, fumbled for and found her anchor necklace. She worked at the dial on the back.

“Sveta?” I asked.

“Please work,” she said, one hand gripping the wrist of her other arm.

The hand of that arm flickered and moved in a slightly out-of-sync way, before closing into a fist.

Above Sveta, I saw a line flash out, briefly appearing. One tendril, loosed to reach out. Aimed not at any person, but at- at the metal of the railing closest to our heads. It struck with a force that made a sharp ‘tang’ noise, followed by a duller echo of the same sound.

Anyone that had looked or seen would have seen just the briefest instance of the tendril going out and in- and it looked like she’d arced it well overhead, using the cloak and prevention of her necklace’s setting.

Nobody was shouting ‘parahuman, parahuman, danger!’ – there were no shrieks. Only people on the stairwell and near the railing who looked concerned, like the metal might fail as something came loose.

And we had the group’s attention. I indicated the laptop, and Lookout whipped out her phone.

Quick enough to see, too late to do anything.

The lights in the Lyme Center flickered and dimmed for a moment. The laptop we’d been using went black. From the look of Lookout’s reaction, she’d just lost her phone.

She’d have lost her last good flying camera, too.

People were still reacting to the sudden motion and the sound. Slowly, they settled, looking a little less at ease than before. Heads periodically looked skyward, as if assuming that some wire or cable had ripped loose and then been reeled in.

No eyes on us.

“Relax,” I said. “Take it easy. We draw more attention to ourselves by freaking out.”

Lookout, on the stairs, was clearly upset, all but stamping her feet in impotent anger.

“She has an emotion sense,” Rain said. “If she comes here, she’ll sense our emotions.”

“All the more reason to relax, take it easy,” I said. “Everyone here is a bit emotional.”

“I can guarantee you that I’m in the top two percent here. I have some pretty strong regrets when it comes to how things happened.”

There was no more way to tell how far away Love Lost was. The camera and laptop were dead.

The other three were still near the top of the stairs. I motioned for them to hang back, and then turned my eyes and my attention to the tunnel that led from the second floor of this half of the hourglass-shaped Center to the second floor of the other half.

Make sure you have an escape route.

We had our stuff packed and ready to go, the escape routes in mind. Above us and to our left, Kenzie, Tristan, and a disguised Ashley were leaning against the railing, looking out over the lounge and social area. The center of the hourglass and the passage to the other side were right behind them.

Love Lost arrived in civilian clothes. Her tinker had stayed behind. She wore a coat with a velvety texture, ankle-length and tailored to fit her figure, drawing in at the waist and then drawing in slightly from the hips. Her winter boots had platform heels, and I could see traces of metal along the boots. Claws ready to deploy.

I had snacks in my bag that I’d saved in case we’d ended up doing an outdoor stakeout or surveillance from the van. I found a bag of chips and opened it, sharing out the contents.

“What are you doing?” Sveta asked.

“Acting normal,” I said. “Don’t stare.”

Rain bit down on a chip.

Love Lost, Colt, and Nailbiter were weaving their way across the floor. Love Lost whispered something to Nailbiter, with Colt in earshot. Immediately, the other two started peering over the crowd more intently.

They knew we were here. They’d planned for the camera- no doubt because they knew how we’d operated in Cedar Point. She’d studied what we brought to the table and recruited a counter to Lookout.

Does a detective’s awareness of their environment and an emotion-senser’s ability let her pick us out from a crowd with any effectiveness?

I was trusting no, extrapolating from how Dean had described things. I was trusting that if it came down to it and she did see us, then they wouldn’t try too hard to get us. This was their territory, and as much as they seemed willing to shit where they ate, I had to assume that they wouldn’t slaughter the people in their own neck of the woods.

“Why is this working?” Rain asked.

“Emotional soup. There might be enough people here that feel just as awful as you do.”

“Really.”

I looked out over the crowd. “Only takes five or six.”

Love Lost found the people she wanted to talk to. It was maybe the biggest collection of people in the lounge area. With twenty-five seats, they had members of their group split across five or six. Right beneath Kenzie, Tristan, and Ashley, who peered down from the second floor railing. It might have been the third floor on another building’s layout, but this center had been built tall, open, and grand, so it might feel less claustrophobic in the midst of a harsh, hungry winter.

The anti-parahuman citizens having a face to face meeting with Love Lost. Pretty clear that they knew what she was, because they seemed pretty stone-faced until Colt arrived, acting as an interpreter or representative.

“They might have faced the facts and realized where they stand,” I murmured, before turning my eyes back to my chip bag. “They’re anti-parahuman, but there’s a limit to what humans can do. They might be hiring help.”

Love Lost took a seat. Colt was doing the talking, of course. Nailbiter hung back. The enforcer in this situation.

“Why?” Rain asked. “Something big?”

“I’m focused less on what and more on who,” I whispered. “What the hell would they be up to, that they’re hiring the parahumans they hate so much, and they’re hiring the most violent and reckless of them?”

Polarize – 10.8

We were on a villain’s turf and I was getting a sense of what that meant, as I marked face after face that now seemed serious and focused enough that they seemed to grasp what was going on.

A pair of officers in uniform had been keeping the peace in the place, patrolling and watching out for trouble, telling the occasional person to go outside to smoke, or grilling twenty-somethings about what they were drinking. Now, for lack of a better way of putting it, they were standing guard, both a set distance from Love Lost’s meeting with the anti-parahuman guys.

They weren’t watching Love Lost, but they were watching the anti-parahuman group. One stood in the middle of a walkway, which meant that a group of people who were getting up from a table had to walk the long way around, instead of cutting right past the talk in progress.

There were others I was less sure about. A pair of people like the guy who’d butted in and asked about ‘Blood Atoll’ were milling around now, with an aura like they owned the place… or like they were working for the person who did.

“In the game we were playing,” Rain said. “I don’t think we got to it, but there’s a second stage, right? The monster?”

“We talked about it briefly,” I said. “I didn’t pick up on all of it. I figured I’d learn by doing, or let you guys do it.”

“I was always more of the gamer,” Sveta said.

I nodded.

“We’re managing our little town, nine by nine grid, then the monster strikes,” Rain explained. Even wearing a projection, his expression was problematically serious. He glanced at Love Lost, emphasizing what he was talking about. I worried that she would see him and see something in that expression. Fortunately, she sat so we were two couches away, her left shoulder pointed at us, her face only visible from the side. She sat so her platform heel was propped up on the table’s edge.

“Sure. The monster,” I said.

“We have to account for where the monster was, and where it was poised to act.”

“While K gets an obnoxious number of points,” Sveta said. “Elbow him for me.”

I elbowed Rain. He looked at Sveta, who was smiling a bit, and forced a smile onto his own face, the projected image translating it.

“Accounting for things like, say, the monster having its claw around the station?”

“Yeah?” Rain asked.

With my eyes, I indicated the pair of officers.

Beside me, Sveta reached for a chip. She took one in her fingers, and in the course of moving her hand toward her mouth, accidentally snapped it in two, the pieces landing in my lap.

I picked up the larger fragments of chip, popping one into my mouth.

“Hey.”

I held up the other half of the broken chip between two fingers, while Rain took over at the laptop, nudging my hand aside so he could do his thing.

“Give,” Sveta said.

I popped the half of chip into her mouth.

“Thank you.”

“Station in its clutches. Right. That’s… a danger. Lots of points to be lost,” Rain said.

“Already lost points, as I see it,” I answered. “Foregone conclusion, before we even started playing today.”

Rain’s knee bobbed up and down. “I might need to take a walk soon, get some air.”

Which translated to him potentially needing to make a run for it. Though if it came to that, I wasn’t sure he really had any good options. Sveta and I were mobile. Tristan, Ashley, and Kenzie were closer to an escape route. Rain, though? We’d have to cover for Rain.

“If you go, we’ll watch your stuff,” I murmured. I leaned back, shifting the chips over so they sat between Sveta and me. “Make sure you’re covered.”

“Thanks,” Rain said.

So much of this was hidden behind veneers and translations. The signals we were using, the language, the false faces.

Nailbiter, roving and investigating as she roved, wandered off to one side, where she joined a group of the tent city thugs. I didn’t really have a better term for them – the people who’d been in the tent cities for long enough that they’d seemed to adapt to the new environments. Almost like homeless people, almost like survivalists, but with a mean edge.

She seemed to know them, and after speaking with them for ten or twenty seconds, they got up and started fanning out, searching.

Love Lost looked very relaxed, her coat removed and folded over the back of the couch, while she talked with anti-parahuman people at the next couch over. It was clear they weren’t very keen on her, but they weren’t cussing at her or acting on their apparent dislike. What they were feeling seemed to stop at frowns and perpetual scowls.

Above, Kenzie, Ashley, and Tristan were talking, while leaning over the railing. They were doing their own surveillance.

“Where did we leave off before the game ran out of battery?” I asked. “Monster due to arrive?”

“Arrived just as,” Rain said.

“Station in its clutches, and… house in clutches.”

“Yep,” he said. “You nailed it.”

He’d watched what Nailbiter was doing too. Good.

What else was there? There were other icons for other fixtures of the area. A town hall, drawn like an old Washington capitol building, flag above it? I had to assume it was co-opted, but it wasn’t relevant here. A hospital? No medical needs.

Business? Not here. But I saw a couple of the library’s staff at the fringes, standing by the public access computers, watching the lounge and the active meeting more than they were watching the library. A matter of fifteen or so feet from our couch, I could see one burly guy with a shaved head, folded arms, tattoos, and a librarian’s apron on. I wasn’t sure why the library staff had aprons, exactly, but it was so. The guy looked very menacing while wearing a denim-blue apron with a book embossed on the chest, a small notebook in the pocket.

Standing guard, like the police were doing. There hadn’t been any apparent communication.

“Business?” I asked.

“Is there business in that quadrant?”

“I dunno. Maybe a bookstore?” I asked.

“Yeah. I get you now. I wouldn’t be surprised. Question is… what do you do if things have gone that far? Panic?”

“Stay out of our game monster’s way,” Sveta said.

“AKA: panic,” Rain said.

“Staying out of the way is prudent, not panic,” I said. “Panic is dangerous in its own right, and it leads to mistakes.”

“Yeah,” Rain said.

Nailbiter’s squad of tent city thugs were still making their way across the floor. One walked down the aisle beside us, and I tried to act nonchalant. Rain and Sveta seemed to do okay too, because the guy passed by without incident.

Across the lounge, past a sea of couches shaped like quarter-arcs and quarter-circle tables, I saw Nailbiter continuing her own investigation. A teenager had her hand over her head, drawing out a line with an extended finger.

Talking about Sveta’s whip.

They had to know we were here, now.

The discussion was ongoing, and we didn’t have ears on it. We had no surveillance tech that really sufficed, now, no camera overhead that could detect sound waves or however the ‘sound camera’ worked. We had to operate by context, reading body language while trying not to look too obvious.

The problem was, Love Lost seemed utterly unbothered. Cool, calm, collected. Steely, even. I could look at the apparent leader or negotiator of the anti-parahuman group, a woman with very black eyebrows, blonde cornrows at either side of her head and a thicker braid along the top, and I could see her frustration, but without a good read on Love Lost, I was only seeing one side of the conversation.

Seeing Love Lost just as frustrated would suggest they weren’t finding a common ground. Seeing her possessed of her usual calm would have suggested she had the upper hand in whatever they were negotiating.

There was something in this situation that made me envision the situation at the time I’d left Brockton Bay. A feral lunatic at the fringes, driving her dogs to attack civilians. Others seizing their own territories, capturing the locals, capturing the police, capturing businesses.

I’d been fighting to correct that. I’d had a lot of issues, then. The pain of losing Dean, of losing Uncle Neil and Eric. Dad being sick. I’d been a little brute of a Brute-class cape, and I wasn’t sure if any of those things had been on their way to getting better. But my city had been changing around me, and before I could do anything about it, the Slaughterhouse Nine had appeared.

This? It reminded me of that scenario. The slow, subtle capture happening behind the scenes. Being on a villain’s turf and getting a dawning sense of what that meant.

I got my phone out and typed a message to Shortcut and Spright, keeping an eye out to make sure nobody was looking over my shoulder.

Me:
She’s on scene here. Meeting with another group, all unpowered. Our cameras and some of our communications are out. She knows we’re here. Has pawns in police, civvies, and library as guards or underlings. Two of her capes at her HQ, one in parking lot. Others in our area. Stand by.

I showed Sveta, then Rain. I got a nod of confirmation, then sent it.

Love Lost was reacting to something. She shook her head, then put her arms out, draping them along the back of the couch. With her coat off, she wore a long-sleeved sweater, and I could see the equipment along her arms, beneath the sleeves. It looked like the blonde braid-cornrow woman did too. Her head rested against the back of the couch for a moment, and she looked up.

Tristan, Kenzie, and Ashley were doing their best to look nonchalant. Love Lost didn’t seem to pick up on anything, turning her attention to Colt instead.

Colt sat on the corner of the couch, one foot on the ground. She was doing the talking, but with her position relative to ours, and the fact the couch was a quarter-circle in shape, her back was to us. I could only hope the others were following what she was doing.

Love Lost turned her head the other way, apparently distracted, and looked at Nailbiter. The outstretched hand to her right moved, fingers curling like she was making a claw-shape with each, simultaneously cracking her knuckles.

Or making a beckoning gesture.

“She saw them,” I said.

“Did she?” Sveta asked.

I looked up at the group. Tristan looked down at me, and I opened my eyes wider.

A second later, Tristan, Ashley, and Kenzie were stepping away from the railing, heading down the corridor to the other half of the building.

“We should go,” Rain said.

“Don’t hurry or look rushed,” I said.

Rain nodded.

We packed up our stuff, getting our coats on- only Sveta didn’t have to, because she hadn’t taken her quilted-pattern long coat off before sitting down.

There were police, civilians, and business owners keeping an eye out for trouble. A good number of them were watching us, as Nailbiter reached Love Lost’s couch.

I wasn’t sure if Love Lost said something or if some other signal was transmitted. If it was a statement, it was one or two words. Nailbiter stood straighter, made a gesture, and then stalked off in the direction of the ground-floor corridor to the other side of the Lyme Center.

Tristan’s group on the second floor, passing through the center of the hourglass-shaped building. Nailbiter and her growing collection of people a floor below, a few steps behind. If the layout on the far side was like the layout on our side, then this group could and would easily intercept the others as they reached the bottom of any staircase.

I used my phone to send a warning to Tristan:

Me:
Inc.

I got my reply:

Tristan:
go

Go, not come?

Okay.

Nobody was coming after us as we headed to the door. It seemed like a lot of the people who were undercover henchmen for Love Lost were responding to the threat, giving chase to the other half of our group.

“Are we meeting up with the others?” Sveta asked, managing to sound ninety-five percent casual.

“They’ll catch up,” I said. “They’ll send a message if they need it.”

I wished I could be more sure. I wished it was easier to wrap my head around just what we were dealing with here. I’d compared it to the situation in Brockton Bay, but was this more of a Hellhound thing, where people were in danger, being controlled by fear? A Regent thing, where the villain backed up local infrastructure because he benefited from it, but was otherwise as much a player in conflict and strife as any interloper?

A ‘Tattletale’ thing, where drugs and crime had been treated like hunters being handed out hunting licenses? X allowed per week in her territory during the warlord phase? X in Brockton Bay and New Brockton, after things had settled? Technically not as bad as we’d once had, but worse in so many other ways, because it represented giving up on better? Halving the number of overdoses, but then giving up on reducing it further, because changing things meant having to work past her artificial rule of law, or waiting for a villain with too much on her plate to find the time to talk about it and implement the changes?

Hearing anecdotes and seeing evidence that the crime rate was slowly getting worse, that drugs were more and more of a thing, and wondering if she was losing her handle on it all or if it was intentional on her part. Wondering and not being able to ever know for certain.

Things couldn’t work that way.

Love Lost… I had no idea where she fit on the spectrum, but I detested so much of what Tattletale represented, and I had a hard time believing Love Lost would be any better. Ex-law enforcement or no.

The air was cold as we exited Lyme Center and emerged into the parking lot. Nobody followed, nobody seemed to pay us much mind. It was Tristan, Kenzie, and Ashley who were evading Nailbiter right now.

“We’ll distract,” I said. “See if we can’t pull some attention away from the others, or make them lose out if they don’t.”

“What’s the strategy?” Rain asked.

“I’m thinking… the moment there was trouble, they probably made a call to Disjoint and Sidepiece. Probably a few others.”

“Not Kitchen Sink or Hookline,” Rain said. “They’re on Love Lost’s shitlist right now, going after a kid.”

“I’m going to put Spright and Shortcut on Sidepiece. Us? Let’s look for that truck they were driving, with the tinker gun on it.”

“I like that. Fan out and find it? Covered truck?” Sveta asked.

“Yeah,” I said, drawing my phone out of my pocket. Beside me, Sveta motioned, and Rain nodded.

Signals exchanged, Sveta headed left. Rain headed right.

The parking lot was dirt, the individual spaces marked out with lines of yellow-painted stones, some of which had been kicked around or moved by the passage of tires. With the ice and the snow, the dirt was hard, and as packed as it had been, it had still been disturbed, then left to freeze disturbed. Every step was a hazard for the ankles. It slowed Sveta down in a visible way. Rain had a slight benefit from his power to steady himself.

I had my flying, but I couldn’t be too obvious. I waited for a car to pull out of a space, before I resumed walking, my flight only partially on, keeping my step lighter.

Me:
Villain reinforce probably approaching Lyme Center from 1:00/NNE
Disjoint guy, white, skinny disconnects and teleports body parts
Sidepiece, girl, white, curvy, hurls explosive chunks of her flesh. V. dangerous.
May be driving patchwork hatchback or walking.

No messages from Tristan’s group yet.

I got my reply from our reinforcements:

AG:
We know who they are what they do

That would be Shortcut, presumably.

I focused on looking for the tinker. He’d blasted our camera. A gun that big couldn’t be easy to put together. It was a weakness of tinkers, that they could lose their stuff and they’d be that much weaker. Things got broken. There was wear and tear. There was a need for upkeep.

Kenzie’s current status emphasized that much. So capable, but so capable of being knocked down a few pegs, with an arduous recovery if she was.

I heard a whistle.

Yeah. A large truck, with a covered back? Easy to spot. It hadn’t taken long.

Sveta and I found Rain. And we rounded a group of cars that had been parked haphazardly, where yellow stones had been partially buried by early snowfall. The truck had been parked at the back of the lot. The tinker was inside the cab, letting the engine run, presumably to stay warm.

“I’m thinking… let’s not give him a chance to reach for any weapons,” I murmured. “You deal with Tinkers by denying them access to their stuff.”

“I could pull him out through the window,” Sveta said. “I don’t want to cut him up though. Sorry.”

“Car windows don’t break like that,” Rain said. “But they don’t break that easily if you punch them or hit them with a baseball bat, either. Let me set up, you follow up. One two punch.”

“One two three,” I said. “Let me get in position, then we go.”

That got me a pair of nods.

I hurried forward, ducking down beside a car. I looked back in the direction of the Lyme Center, worrying a bit about the others.

We’d trust them for now.

I gave the other two a nod.

Rain created a silver crescent, holding it in his hands. He was far enough back that I couldn’t hear him, but I saw him mouthing the words.

He flung the blade. It slammed into the door of the truck, drawing out a glowing silver line.

In the dark, Sveta’s hands were hard to see. One seized the car door, tugging. The other followed a second later, reaching through the gap in the same second it appeared.

The guy had his seatbelt on, and that delayed things for a second. I saw him scrabble, reaching for something. Then Sveta had him, tugging him away and beneath the seatbelt- his feet got caught and he slipped back, head moving in the direction of the ground, while his feet were on and near the seat.

She got another hand on him, and when she tugged on him this time, he moved at a velocity that kept his head from scraping against frozen dirt.

I was there to catch him. My aura blasted him while he was in transit. I was ready to slap or catch a weapon out of his hands, but he was unarmed.

Sveta pulled him close, her feet skidded on hard, icy ground, and she nearly toppled, taking the guy to the ground with her. Rain caught her, his body behind hers, then produced a silver blade, holding it to the guy’s throat.

The flannel shirt tinker wore a mask, soft fabric, bright blue lenses, a spike extending over his head. The fabric stopped where his facial hair began, but the look just really didn’t work. It rarely did, unless the beard was magnificent.

I could see him huffing for breath. The emotion blast had been to put him more off balance, and to mess up his coordination in case he had a weapon as Sveta pulled him close.

I left them to it and headed to the truck.

“Be careful of traps,” Rain called out to me.

“Will do,” I said. “Thanks. Costumes on.”

I double-tapped the sun badge I wore. The projection around me fell away. I pulled my two segments of breastplate from my bag, where they protected my laptop, and set them in place.

Behind me, Sveta had dropped the human shape, and wore a mask. Rain had donned his circuitboard mask.

I hoped the other group was doing okay.

The truck still hummed with activity, the heaters blasting out warm air that steamed up the windows.

There were a bag fast food, a cell phone, and a sketchbook on the divider between the seats, and what looked like a laser rifle was resting with its butt-end on the floor in front of the passenger seat, the length resting against the seat itself. The weapon he’d been reaching for.

No apparent traps, no wires, no ominous noises. I reached for the cell phone and picked it up. No trap, no shock.

The phone was at the lock screen. The sketchpad- I flipped through. Tinker notes.

I could confiscate that. Set him back a bit. If he wanted to work with villains, especially villains who’d been noted for hurting people? Killing? He could lose some ground, suffer a bit for it.

I walked around the truck, heading for the covered back. Let’s see this gun.

I didn’t get that far. I heard a strained grunt, and I turned around.

Rain had collapsed, and Sveta had caught him.

The tinker’s right arm had a band around it, encircling the bicep. Everything past the band was electricity, in the rough shape of a human limb.

I flew to them.

He reached out with the electric arm, touching Sveta. I saw Rain jerk, while Sveta seemed to endure it.

“Doesn’t work!” she grunted out the words through clenched teeth. She let Rain slump to the ground and reached out, catching the guy by the one still-human wrist.

A metal band flared at his left arm, the electricity melting the fabric of his coat around the ring, and taking the sleeve with it, as arm became more electricity. Her hand slipped away.

Immediately, she was reaching again. This time seizing him by the neck.

He had a collar on. As the collar flared, his head dissolved into a localized storm of electricity, the ‘forks’ of electricity serving as hair, something flatter and more interconnected for the mask. Where the lenses had been a bold electric blue before, they were now two dark ovals against the backdrop of frothing energy.

Where energy arced from one of the rings to the other, it traced lines across his body and turned flesh to this alternate state.

Using tech to go breaker.

A shame that his head was breaker-state, because this time, me using my aura didn’t even make him flinch.

I brought out the Wretch, as he ducked around me. His arms were longer like this, and as he swung one in my general direction, he came into contact with the Wretch.

I saw sparks and arcs highlight the Wretch’s general shape, just for an instant. I saw him see it.

He reached out, checking the coast was clear, and again, came into contact with an outstretched arm of the Wretch. Again, highlighting its shape, and that it had moved.

His belt flashed, electricity crackling in a ring around his midsection. Then his legs were gone- he was a torso with a head of electricity, two lash-like limbs, and a tail of lightning, floating in the air. The electricity that crackled along his chest and stomach left flesh temporarily phased out in its wake. I could see veins against a backdrop of bright lights tracing similar forking lines. I could see raw, red flesh where the ethereal lightning form cut through physical meat.

He changed direction instead of trying to go through me and toward the Lyme Center. His movements were more unpredictable now, faster. He didn’t fly or teleport, but arced, bouncing off of a car, then lunging toward his own vehicle. I flew after, Wretch up.

Heading for his big gun?

For the gun in the passenger seat?

He chose the latter, lunging toward the open truck door. His movements stuttered, as he darted fifteen to fifty feet ahead, stopped, reoriented himself, then lunged forward again.

It took three such movements to get himself to the truck. Faster as an energy breaker than I was as a flier.

With lightning hands, he held his laser rifle. He twisted around, weapon in his arms-

A silver blade flew past him. Rain’s crescent of light didn’t touch the arm of energy. It did cross the body of the weapon.

The guy aimed at me, then fired.

Sparks showered, geysering out through the line of silver. Lightning jumped out, wild and white, tracing along the ground with no apparent rhyme or reason.

Rain was still on the ground, but he was already creating his next silver blade, ready to throw it if needed. The tinker threw his broken rifle aside, then headed directly for the Center. I flew to intercept, and he threw himself at the ground, bouncing off of a frozen puddle and toward the same block of cars we’d used for cover.

I positioned myself to keep him from going over, ready to move to either side if he tried to go around.

He went through. I could see the arcs of energy crackling around the bones of the car he slammed into, as he conducted himself through it. He leaped out and into the next car, chaining his way through.

“Sveta!” I called out.

He emerged from the far end of the block, stopping to orient himself again, looking around. He turned to stare at me with those black ovals, then darted for the cars nearest the front door of the Center, Sveta hot on his heels.

She was faster for short distances and when traveling where there were handholds. In this environment, though, I could see how she was regularly going for a grip on something and slipping off, or taking a second longer to slide to a stop and be able to reach out again.

Even with that, she was faster than me. She collided with him, and even though he was ninety percent energy, he reacted, conducting along her metal body, and he sprawled with her.

He was faster to recover. No arms and legs to manage.

“Anything that conducts!” I shouted.

Which would hamper and slow him down, but didn’t stop him from making progress.

“Tress!” Rain hollered her name. “Here!”

Having to stop and reach for whatever he was offering or throwing her way slowed her down. I passed her, chasing the guy down.

With Sveta’s extended arms and what looked like folded metal blades in each hand, Sveta made the tinker’s form distend, stretching out as it automatically clung to the metal, then snapped back in a way that seemed difficult for him.

He twisted around, using his lighting hands to seize the blades. The pair engaged in a brief tug-of-war, which I interrupted by diving at him, Wretch active. He flashed in the instant before I made contact.

The Wretch’s hands and feet stabbed into the earth, cracking the frozen ground.

He’d darted away, letting go of the blades. Sveta swung again, and he dodged, moving further away.

Further away, but still making incremental progress toward the front doors. The truck had been parked in the far corner of the parking lot, as large as the parking lot of any mall I’d been to, and he was four-fifths of the way to his destination. There was a real risk that Love Lost would see the flashes or hear the noise and respond.

The primary danger, though, was that if he feinted one way and moved another, it might mean he could reach the doors and pass through, surrounding himself with a few hundred hostages, and a dozen more escape routes.

He was functionally a breaker, and I had a limited sense of what worked and didn’t work for breakers. I’d met and talked with Velocity, and I’d met and talked with Shadow Stalker. I’d read up on others.

He was also a tinker, and I had some idea of the tools that served against tinkers. Not that I’d fought many before Gold Morning. Leet and Bakuda, really, and Bakuda only in that I’d been trying to evacuate people from a series of tinker bombs going off. She had been nowhere nearby.

Still, the others needed the distraction.

Sveta caught him, swinging the blades through his electric body. It bought me a few seconds to look, as I flew down, putting myself between the tinker and the cars.

Cars- I couldn’t use them as weapons. Because destroying people’s property in a lower-stakes encounter like this would do more harm than good, because I wouldn’t hit him anyway. He was too fast, too on guard for it.

The road was dirt, but dirt wasn’t useful.

The building itself? No. If things got that far, he was out of reach.

I could see the artificial speed bump in the road. A hump of dirt, painted yellow.

My eye fixed on that. Yellow paint where the dirt sloped up against sidewalk, to mark the rise, to let people know to watch their step, and-

I retreated, flying over the cars. The tinker broke away from Sveta, saw me heading one way, and started to take the long way around, the front door in his sights.

I dove for the ground, and I had the Wretch dig its hands into the earth. I couldn’t rely on it to do as I wanted, but I could do something else. Faced with a second me that reached out and lashed out mindlessly, I could deny it, I could allow it to work…

Or I could at least make it lash out in a predictable way. I could lean on the fact that the Wretch outlasted a sustained hurt better than it outlasted a sudden, sharp kind of hurt.

I spun. Each outstretched arm swiped at the earth. A sustained battering, spread out across the Wretch’s limbs.

I carved my way a few feet into the ground near the speed bump, drove my hand into the fissure that cracked the hard earth there, and found my prize.

The tinker had escaped Sveta, and he had escaped Rain. He found his orientation, and he lunged.

I lunged too. Wretch active, I tore the flexible pipe out of the ground, flying along it, so the Wretch skimmed along its length, raising it up. The hump wasn’t just a speed bump, but earth covering the pipe that had been set in a shallow trench and then covered. Water or power to the Lyme Center.

A tripwire for my quarry.

The tinker grazed the pipe, and the tinker conducted across it, stretching out ten or fifteen feet to the left, and an equal distance to the right. I knew Shadow Stalker had trouble with electricity running through walls, with rain and even things as simple as smoke thick in the air. I knew Velocity had his own issues, a reduced ability to affect the world, to the point that mundane obstacles and barriers like closed doors could hamper him. Other breakers had their difficulties. The uncommon hazards.

I dropped the Wretch, which let me easily drop the pipe. While he was disoriented, I was free to fly in. I smacked into his midpoint, and the Wretch helped to scatter him again.

Inside the building, the power flickered and died. All was black for a long moment, the only real light was cast by the tinker.

I reached out and the Wretch found a grip at one of the arm-rings. I let the Wretch break it, and the tinker’s arm snapped back into reality, with ripple effects of real-self tinker appearing across his body.

He dropped to his knees, in apparent surrender. I remained stock still.

“We should go!” Sveta called out. “Rain’s already going!”

To my left, the lights were coming back on. A backup generator had come on, or the break in power had been a temporary disruption in the line more than an outright shutdown. I could see Love Lost on her feet. The claws had dropped out of one of her sleeves, a wire and rod framework that tipped each finger with a two-inch claw. Her other hand was pressing the mouthgear down over the lower half of her face.

We should go.

It was good that Rain was getting out of here. It was harder for him to move.

We backtracked, moving faster than Love Lost could easily chase. Back to the truck, where the engine was still running. Rain was approaching it.

Byron, Swansong and Lookout were there. Lookout was in costume, and wore a jacket and pads along her legs, along with her bodysuit. Swansong looked like she should be cold, but wasn’t.

“Love Lost is coming,” I said.

“We outnumber her,” Ashley said.

“Not if she has half this settlement working for her,” I said. “Let’s disable the gun and regroup.”

“I can blast it,” Rain said. “Except it could blow up, apparently.”

“Let me,” Lookout said. “A gun like this has to have targeting, and I can work with targeting.”

“I have tinker notes,” I said.

“Give it to Rain. Let him look. I’ll fiddle.”

“You have forty-five seconds,” I said.

“Got it!”

Swansong lifted her up onto the truck bed.

I turned to Byron. “You guys good?”

“We ducked into a store. My brother swapped out for me, Swansong and Lookout switched looks, since they’re wearing the disguise pendants. Nailbiter passed right by us. Trick was getting out without looking suspicious.”

“Good,” I said.

“Tristan’s idea,” he said. “Electricity tinker?”

“Something like that.”

“Lookout!” Rain said. “Found the pages. Here’s targeting.”

She reached down as he reached up, passing her the book.

A glowing screen illuminated the pane of her helmet as she leaned over it.

“We’re good!” she declared. “But this isn’t our last stop.”

“We can’t dawdle,” Swansong said.

“Remember what I said about guns?” Lookout asked.

“Guns?” I asked.

“Come on!”

We hurried in the direction she’d pointed.

“I think I got a read on what they were saying,” Lookout said. “On the surface, this was a weapons deal. They’re providing Love Lost’s group with guns and other weapons. She’s supposed to help them when they demand it. Any target they name. If Love Lost wins, then it’s good. If she loses, then it’s another cape out of the picture. Right?”

“Makes some sense,” I said. “I’d have a hard time believing that’s the full picture.”

“They were getting pissy because she was saying some targets were off limits. Well, she wasn’t saying much of anything.”

“Colt was,” Ashley said.

“Yeah,” Lookout said. She huffed for breath. She wasn’t out of shape, but she wasn’t a runner either, and we were far enough out at the edges of the parking lot that the lot hadn’t been fully cleared of snow or debris. Just a little more effort for those putting boot to muck, especially when she had shorter legs.

Sveta, at least, seemed to be doing okay. She was still holding the two folded bits of metal.

I checked to see if the coast was clear, and I saw Love Lost. She stood on the hood of a car, back straight, hair and coat moving in the wind. Not chasing, not using her power. Just staring.

No Nailbiter at her side. Her tinker was a little worse for wear, and her reinforcements hadn’t yet arrived.

“Here! These sedans,” Lookout said.

A person stepped out from between the cars, hand at his waist, reaching for a gun.

He saw the size of our group, and he raised both his hands instead of drawing his weapon.

“You’re with them?” I asked.

“Fuck you,” he said.

He’s with them.

Byron took the guy by the shoulder, leading him to the side, where he was made to kneel on the frozen ground, hands at his side. Byron divested the guy of his weapons. A knife and a gun.

“How did you know it was these?” I asked Lookout.

“Because I was keeping an eye out for trouble using the Center’s surveillance before it all went hinky. We saw the anti parahuman dorks show up, except we didn’t know it was them then. These are their cars.”

“Tail ends are low to the ground,” Rain said. “Heavy weight in the rears. Did they bring the weapons with?”

“Fuck you,” the guy said.

“If you’re going to be mad, be mad at yourselves,” Swansong said. “Your laziness.”

“That’s a good eye, Precipice,” Byron said. “Can we check? Tear it open, Vic?”

“No, don’t break it. You could damage the contents,” Swansong said. “Sveta. Pick it.”

“I don’t know how to pick locks.”

“Do you know what raking is? You should be capable.”

Sveta frowned.

“Come. I’ll show you.”

In the distance, Love Lost only watched. I saw her clench her claw. Nailbiter had appeared, standing behind her, and I saw the electric flicker around the tinker, who was wholly human again. It was broken gear that was crackling.

They didn’t attack or approach.

“This is the cheap and dirty way of opening a lock,” Swansong said. “You want to jostle the pins. Go back and forth, as soon as you feel them, pop them up. Keep pressure so the lock is turning-”

“Already doing that,” Sveta said. her hand was removed, and tendrils were groping at and around the lock. “I have to use my smallest tendrils, which are also the shortest, which is awkward-”

The trunk popped open. I saw the surprise on Sveta’s face.

Inside, packed in cases with foam inserts separating them, rows of weapons. Not Gimel or Bet weapons, at a glance, or at least, not from any country I was aware of. The script was blocky, and it looked like it had been stamped on.

“Taking photos,” Lookout said, tapping the side of her helmet.

“How did you know how to lockpick?” Byron asked, quiet. “You couldn’t when you were a villain.”

“I study,” Swansong said. “It’s the kind of thing I watch before bed.”

“It’s cool,” Sveta said, and her smile seemed genuine. “It’s neat to know I can do that. Thank you.”

“Mm hmm.”

The enmity, the frustration- it didn’t seem as bad now. It helped to have other focuses. Three nondescript cars with trunks packed with munitions, instead of jealous relationships.

I picked out some samples- things we could show others, as well as a slip of paper and a lid. I held all three.

I met Swansong’s eyes. I jerked my head a hair toward the trunk.

Everyone stepped back as she reached forward. Her power licked out, and it bucked and kicked, flaring to its full range as it twisted, tore, and annihilated everything in the car from back windshield to bumper, including some of the rear tires.

She did the same for the other two cars. We opened each, and then we destroyed the contents.

When I looked back, Love Lost and her retinue were gone.

“She’s gone,” Byron observed.

“No,” Rain said. “It’s not over. She wouldn’t leave things the way they are now. Her losing, especially to me.”

“There’s something more going on,” I said. “Something she’s doing, people she’s working with.”

“Yeah, probably,” Rain said. “But I’m more concerned that she’s so willing to back off now. She wouldn’t back off. Not unless she was absolutely sure she could do something meaningful soon.”

Polarize – 10.9

Sveta was out of her armor, and her tendrils flicked out with enough force to crack ice and send the hard crust of snow flying overhead. As she approached, one of her tendrils whipped out and caught me, seizing my forcefield.

It let go a moment later. Forceful as the grab had been, it hadn’t disrupted the field.

“Sorry!”

“My fault for getting too close! Keep it up!” I called out.

In the gloom, even with the snow reflecting ambient light up, and with Sveta’s face being pale, it was still hard to make her out. She was more easily detected by the loose ring of whipped-up snow and flecks of ice than by anything else. I could judge the maximum range of her tendrils and look at the ring to estimate the center of it. The origin point.

I floated, keeping one careful eye on the ring while my eyes scanned the snow. It wasn’t easy to find what I was looking for. Holes that animals had dug, depressions, and shadows cast by distant objects all looked the same.

As a group, we’d fanned out, moving over the field, the road a hundred feet to my left, the streetlights casting a yellow pallor over the field.

“We might have to call it quits!” Tristan shouted.

“If you’re going to wimp out, switch to Byron! The cold doesn’t bother him!” Rain.

“I’m switching to him, but it’s not because I’m wimping out! He might have seen something, and he deserves a turn!”

“Yeah! Sure!”

“Also, just saying, he’s got the crampons on his boots, and I’ve got the boots for running indoors! He’s better equipped for the snow!”

“Sure!”

“Stop saying that!” Tristan called out.

“We need to meet Spright too!” I called out. “It’s about time. Five more minutes!”

“It’s no big!” Kenzie. “I don’t want anyone getting cold! We could go now, really!”

“We’re going to find it.” Ashley, in a firm statement that I could only barely hear.

Sveta continued her patrol, edging closer to me. I ceded the ground to her, flying up and back. I could see a crop-circle style swathe that had been cut through the field in her wake.

I was rooting for her, really. With her going to this much effort, the recent spell of frustration, and her needing to feel included, I wanted her to score a win doing what she was good at.

I looked skyward for a moment. Snow was falling, which wasn’t helping our efforts. High above, the barely visible clouds were clashing with one another. We weren’t even that close to any portals. I was glad to have the Wretch encapsulating me, keeping the worst of the wind off. It made the cold something more insidious and subtle, than a blast that left me drained.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. With gloves on, I fished it free. Spright with a meeting place.

I didn’t respond right away, holding the phone in both hands instead. My eyes scanned the terrain. If I were all business, I’d have said time was up, that we should give up and meet our allies.

I glanced over at the section of field where Sveta was tearing things up. Reaching, groping, finding a small tree to grab, or just standing herself up on some tendrils while reaching out with others. A herky-jerky progress across snow with grass and rocks jutting out from it.

I crossed two numb fingers, looked down to look at the snow below me and tried to tell holes from rocks and shadows.

We were making the Advance Guard guys wait, but some things were more important.

“Found it!” Rain called out.

The tendrils stopped the thousand-flag-grab attempt. There was only stillness, the dark tendrils invisible against a dark backdrop, the shape that was Sveta’s head too camouflaged and small to see.

Well. Rain needed some wins too.

I floated over to Sveta as she returned to her body, which was sitting on a rock, the front and back halves of her torso hanging apart, a gap marking the divide. I waited, quiet so that she wouldn’t be spooked and lash out, her coat folded over my arm.

Her arms and legs shifted slightly as she found grips on wires and the loop-pulls. The handles, for lack of a better word. She was still working her way back in when she looked up at me. “Sorry I yanked you. Did I hurt you?”

“No. Forcefield, not me.”

“Good,” she said. She pulled the two halves of her torso together, craning her head around to keep tendrils from getting pinched. Clasped could be heard from the inside, and then her prosthetic hands reached up to do up more mundane clasps on either side of the neck. “I was pretty sure. My head plays tricks on me sometimes, and I am just a bit numb.”

She eased her way to her feet, moving slowly, periodically thumping around in her body as she lashed out within the confines of the suit. and rearranged herself.

“It’s been a long day and a long night,” I said.

“Is it that obvious that I’m tired?” she asked. She stood straight, and she lifted her chin to encircle her neck with a band of metal that had been hanging loose around the collar. Metal clicked as it cinched tight. She did the same with another band, closer to her neck. Binding all of the tendrils into a ‘neck’ that was one solid cord.

I steadied her with one hand and held her coat so she could slide her arms into the sleeves. “You wouldn’t be the only one that’s tired and cold. But I think we’re doing okay tonight.”

“Don’t jinx it. Weld and Crystal are supposed to get back late tonight, and if you keep talking like that then something’s going to get in the way of our reunion.”

“Mm, yeah. Not sure what Crystal is going to say. Knowing her, she’ll just go straight to sleep.”

“I’m looking forward to sleep,” Sveta said. “Half of me wants to see Weld and talk for a straight week, and the other half wants to say nothing at all, to avoid overwhelming him. Go back to the apartment, and curl up in bed. Make myself a pillow nest on his chest and have him do this thing he does where he puts his hand at the back of my head, tendrils and stuff through his fingers, and puts that gentle pressure down on me. Pushing me into the pillows and his chest with the weight of his hand.”

“You put way more effort into describing one of those things. It sounds like you have a preference.”

Sveta smiled. “I’ve been thinking about it lately. But doesn’t it sound bad if I don’t want to talk to my boyfriend after not seeing him for a while?”

“You want to be close to him. That’s, ah, I envy you having that to look forward to.”

“It’s weird to picture someone envying me.”

“Nah,” I said. I bumped her shoulder with mine as we trudged over in the direction of the main group. “Weld’s one of the truly good good guys. And so are you, for the record.”

She shook her head.

“So are you,” I said, for emphasis. “And you two deserve each other in the best way. If you’re stuck on what to do, you could let him take the lead on how to reunite,” I said. “If it was hard or ugly where he was, he might want to just cuddle instead of getting super into it.”

Sveta gave me a one-armed hug.

“I wanted to ask,” she said.

“What?”

“Ashley. She showed me the lockpicking thing. Was that because you said something to her?”

“No,” I said.

“Was it because… I hate to ask, even. I shouldn’t ask. Benefit of a doubt, right?”

“Did Kenzie listen in and share with Ashley?”

Sveta made a face.

“I think that was just Ashley.”

Sveta nodded.

The others were huddled. Rain blew on his hands for warmth, then clasped them together, before folding them inside another pair of hands that stuck out of his sleeves. Ashley didn’t look dressed sensibly for the weather, but as far as I could tell her hands didn’t get cold, and she was putting on a brave face, her back straight, hands in her pockets. Her nose and ears looked visibly red in the gloom, though, and I strongly suspected she would be annoyed at the fact.

Byron was fine, of course, entirely in his element, and Kenzie had the stuff with her to dress for the weather. She had the camera that Rain had found clasped in her gloved hands. It looked like Byron was trying to free a bit of fabric from a sharp bit of metal without damaging the glove too much.

“How’s the camera?” I asked.

“Broken in six different and major ways. But it’s nice to have the parts. Makes fixing it way faster.”

“That’s good,” Sveta said.

Kenzie nodded.

“Spright wants to meet,” I said, showing them my phone- more to just indicate the glowing screen than to hold it out for them to see the text messages. “If anyone wants to opt out, go home, warm up, recharge for tomorrow, build stuff, I don’t think anyone’s going to hold it against them. Having some people who are a little more refreshed at the start of tomorrow could be good.”

The statement earned me some blank stares.

“I heard the emphasis on building stuff,” Kenzie said. “You don’t have to shoo me away or anything.”

“I’m not. I’m just offering an out,” I said. “For a lot of us, this conversation could be personal or difficult.”

Rain made a sound, creaky and low in his throat, as if he was chewing on the idea. “It’s because it’s personal and difficult that some of us have to show.”

“Then let’s go talk to Sidepiece and Disjoint,” I said.

⊙

“Fuck you,” Sidepiece said, turning to Swansong. “The short hair looks good, hon, but you looked way better in black and fuck you.”

“The white is growing on me,” Ashley said.

“Is the ‘fuck you’ growing on you too? Go fuck yourself with the business end of a broken bottle, yeah?” Sidepiece retorted. She turned to Rain, “And while I’m at it, fuck you, kid killer. You think she didn’t mention that detail? I hope you shared with your team.”

“I did, actually,” Rain said.

“Did you share all the gory details, kid killer? Did you tell them about her having to watch her daughter’s face get cracked open on a table every time it’s her night?”

“Yeah. I explained some of that pretty early on.”

“Then fuck you, that’s secret identity shit, you asshole. You act like you’re all for the rules and then you share that stuff? Fuck you.”

“I left out the details pertinent to-”

“Then fuck you for leaving out details and not owning up to every last bit of it!” Sidepiece said.

“Fuck me either way, huh?” Rain asked, his voice quiet.

“No,” Sidepiece said. “No, no, no. Fuck you one particular way, okay? Take the narrow end of the broken bottle I told her to fuck herself with, stick your narrower pecker into it, and break the neck off while you’re inside it. Then fuck it.”

“There’s a kid here,” Sveta said.

“Fuck her! Fuck that surveillance state fucking tinker bullshit unblinking creepiness!”

“I think she’s pissed,” Capricorn said.

“Fuck you! Fuck off!”

“I don’t think this is going anywhere,” Shortcut said. “We’re not going to get anything useful here.”

“Waiting on a text,” I murmured.

“You really like making us wait,” he said. “You let your guys go and now you want to benefit off of our catches? Do you think we’re going to go home and let you take the credit?”

“They totally do,” Disjoint said.

“Shut up!” Shortcut barked.

“That’s not what we’re doing,” Capricorn said. Byron.

“I guess I’m supposed to take your word for it?” Shortcut said.

“Shortcut,” Spright said. “People don’t like capes right now. Who are we supposed to be getting credit from?”

“Everyone,” Shortcut said.

I kept my mouth shut for the moment. On my phone’s screen, Nat had left me with only an ‘asking around’.

Our group was assembled in a garage, for lack of a better word. It was more like a shack, with sliding barn doors and a way through wide enough for a car to drive in and park, with the doors closing in front and behind. The gas, tools, and other things had been carted away by whoever operated the place during the daylight hours. The space was oil-stained concrete floor and thin wooden walls, the only decoration a table that was a wooden door and four planks for legs, and a pile of engine parts in the corner that clearly violated the rules that had been put up on the wall.

Sidepiece and Disjoint were by the wooden table. Disjoint had a loop of something connecting him to the flimsy plank leg of the table. Sidepiece had her hands cuffed behind her head. She wore her partial, phantom-of-the-opera face mask, white with a ragged edge that had been beaded with what looked like red nail polish, to look like blood, black hair covering the part of her face that her mask didn’t. She was curvy, except everything between the ribcage and the pelvis had been picked clean- her stuffed polyester coat covered most of that up, but blood stained the belt-line of her jeans.

Disjoint, meanwhile, was black, with a ‘blindfold’ band of white across his eyes, a mask at the bottom half of his face, meeting with the line of white facepaint. More bands encircled his arms, not touching the spaces which were decorated with tattoos. He wore a costume top, and regular black jeans. His coat had been removed by Spright and Shortcut before we’d come, and it had the same lines painted on the sleeves.

“I’m saying everyone counts when it comes to getting credit. Because rep matters,” Shortcut added. “Stupid fucking kids join them because they have the rep and we don’t. Because they seem ‘cool’.”

“Damn fucking straight,” Sidepiece commented. “I’d tell you to fuck yourself too, but you already did, wearing that fucking awful, uncooool costume.”

She drew out the word, with vocal fry amped up and it sounded like she was belching it.

Leaning against the wall, her arms folded, Swansong looked away to hide her smile. Despite herself, Sidepiece smirked. She corrected the smirk and spat onto the floor.

“This costume is focus group tested, moron,” Shortcut said. He reached up and flicked one of the circular discs that seemed to intersect his costume, like Halloween knife-headband combination that kids could pay a dollar for, to make it look like the knife was stuck through their heads.

“So were the Jeep Rockaybe, the Roundphone, and the second Iron Giant movie, so good for you, you’re in shit company,” Sidepiece retorted.

“You’re not going to win this one,” Swansong said. “Not if you get into a knock-down, drag-out back and forth. You’ll lose.”

“I agree,” Spright said.

“Fuck that,” Shortcut answered.

“I will kick over this chessboard, shit on it, and I will strut like the pigeon I am!” Sidepiece said.

Ashley pointed at Sidepiece with both index fingers, as if to say ‘that right there’.

“And fuck you all!” Sidepiece added.

“You’re giving me a headache,” Disjoint said. The table wobbled as he brought his head back to rest against the leg. “Can you turn down the volume two clicks, ‘piece?”

“Aw, I’m sorry baby,” Sidepiece said. She stuck her foot out in the direction of his foot.

Shortcut’s weapon came down, embedding itself in the concrete between the two feet.

“What the fuck?” Sidepiece reacted, going straight back to a maxed out volume knob with the ‘what’ and bringing it to a near-whisper by the end of the ‘fuck’. “You almost took my toes off.”

“No touching.”

Still no response on my phone. I knew it was a lot to ask, shooting questions Natalie’s way, but in our recent contact, she’d asked that we continue to loop her in. I’d brought up where we were, and now she was phoning around.

Well, couldn’t hurt to try asking. Maybe one of the two would answer.

“Why did Love Lost want the guns?” I asked.

“To shoot shit?”

“I said this was a waste of time ten minutes ago,” Shortcut said. “I think I’m right.”

“You are so right,” Disjoint said.

I bit my tongue.

“She’s dealing with an anti-parahuman group,” I said. “How does that make sense?”

“Pretty sketchy,” Sidepiece said. “I wasn’t about that. Stayed home, diddled my boyfriend.”

“Don’t say diddled,” Capricorn said. Tristan, this time.

“Sketchy and it doesn’t make sense,” I echoed her words.

“It’s sketchy. That’s all. It makes plenty of sense, even if I don’t agree with it. And no, I’m not sharing no details, so go fuck yourselves. I don’t love what Love does all the time, but I respect her enough to keep my gob shut or otherwise occupied while she’s doing the shit I disagree with.”

“Sounds like a compromise,” Swansong said. “I thought you didn’t believe in compromise, only conquering?”

“Fuck you! I also believe in fucking class, which is why I gave your skinny white derriere the benefit of a doubt. It’s why I’m behind Love all the way.”

“You’re white too,” Capricorn observed.

“And I have an ass.”

“Betrayal and undercover action is fair in the game, Sidepiece,” Swansong said. “But the guns aren’t supposed to be part of it. You know that.”

“The game’s done, Damsel. The game got fucked backwards when the world ended. And you, doing this? You’re fucking it worse.”

“How does that make sense?” I asked.

“Coming after us? Look at what’s happening everywhere! Fucking heroes banding together under the Wardens? You’ve got the four teams that nobody really cares about, some corporates, some mercs who are the only ones I could maybe respect. You assholes. And then the villains. Everyone under one banner, and the ones who aren’t signing up with Brattletale, Goddess, Teacher or the evil Mayor? What do you think happens to them? To us?”

Her toe moved, indicating Disjoint and herself. Shortcut’s weapon moved in reaction to the toe moving.

“Us,” I said.

“Fucking you! Fucking heroes! Leaving us no choice but to band together with the top tier organized crime. They’re the groups that know who to put where and how to stay out of your sight or keep their people out of the way. And the rest of us get picked off. You wanna fuck us? Then you perpetuate a survival of the unfucked!”

“I did miss you,” Swansong commented.

“Well fuck you, it’s your own fault you don’t get any of this for company.”

Sidepiece wiggled on the spot. Shortcut moved his polearm in a warning.

“I missed your brain and your wit. That belongs to Disjoint,” Swansong.

“This belongs to me.”

“I stand corrected.”

Spright cleared his throat. “Let’s get back on track.”

Looking at Shortcut, I could see that his face was visibly red. He was that steamed. I would have suggested he take a breather, but I was pretty sure that if I did, he’d be pointing that weapon of his at me.

He didn’t like the digressions. Which meant he was falling one hundred percent into Sidepiece’s trap. After being warned about it.

“I want a lawyer before we go any further,” Sidepiece said. “Oh wait, they’re all dead. The fucking world ended. So let us fucking have our fun and kick some ass and go focus on the stuff that actually matters.”

“You’ve killed people,” Capricorn said.

“Allegedly. And in this alleged situation I might have tossed a bit of spinal sheath into a moving vehicle and allegedly killed a bunch of people who got high off of my drugs that I’d already paid for. They tried to give me seven tenths of what I ordered and tried to pass it off as all the tenths. Allegedly. They didn’t deserve to draw breath.”

“I didn’t think you used,” Swansong said.

“Only a bit, and never my own supply. But I’ll sell if people want. It’s more samaritan shit than what you fucks are pulling right now. Letting some poor, hurting people numb the pain for a while.”

“Allegedly,” Disjoint said.

“Allegedly,” Sidepiece added.

“Those aren’t magic words that absolve you of guilt,” Rain said.

While they chattered, I checked my phone and I saw the series of replies- I hadn’t noticed the buzz.

Natalie (Lawyer):
I asked people about taking in s.piece or joint.
There is no room. Jails over capacity. Homes and apartments in populated areas being used as temporary accommodations.
Do not want minor villains unless lasting injury or murder AND ironclad evidence that can rush them thru system.
Gang leader yes s.piece or joint is a no.
Sorry.

I got the attention of the others and showed them. Capricorn and Sveta first, then Spright and Ashley.

Jesus. This was Wild West shit. It just kept getting worse.

“News?” Sidepiece asked.

I beckoned for Rain to come, and I showed him.

“What am I missing?” Sidepiece asked.

She wasn’t even shouting or swearing as much now, but her voice. The vocal fry, the weird enunciation, like every word was trying to grab attention? It was giving me a headache, like Disjoint had complained about.

I typed out a message in the text box, while Rain was beside me. I let him read it, then showed Spright.

Confirmation from both.

“Sidepiece,” I said.

“Fuck you.”

“You’re kind of right.”

“Fuck y- of course I am. About everything. And fuck yourself.”

“What you said about the gangs? People picking off the ones who aren’t folding themselves into organized crime?”

“You’re amping it up to a hundred today, based on what I heard. You heroes.”

“You were right,” I repeated myself. “The reality is that when we showed up at the Center tonight, it was because we wanted to communicate with Love Lost.”

“Love doesn’t really talk, you know that right?”

“How does that even work?” Spright asked.

“If it’s important, she writes it down, prints it out, and hands it out. Game plan. If it’s not, why say it? We know she’s all class and she’s professional as shit. If she says jump we jump and it works out.”

“So far,” Swansong said.

“Oh go fuck yourself. You can’t even talk. She beat you and scared you off. That’s why you’re talking to me and D.J., you got lucky and you got us after you rolled our car off the road and I sprained my lower back.”

“You don’t have a lower back.”

“Fuck you.”

“We came to talk to Love Lost,” I said. “Because we have it on good authority that Cradle is likely to take March’s offer.”

“Offer?”

“I’m willing to bet Love Lost got the same offer. She’ll know what it means.”

“Not if you don’t tell her, and she’s not going to accept a meeting with you assholes.”

“When we said we were bringing you here to talk, we meant it. We’re letting you go,” I said.

“Bullshit. Trying to soften me and D.J. up.”

“We wanted to get a message to Love Lost. You’re going to take it to her,” I said.

I saw Shortcut stand a little taller. Behind his mask, his eyes went wide, intense.

Yeah, this was never going to go over well with him. I’d left him out of the loop as I’d filled in the others, and Spright had too. I felt pretty validated that Spright was tacitly agreeing with me here.

“If you want to stir shit up or make this harder than it needs to be, then we could just send the most cooperative of you two. Or try leaving a message with one of your crooked cops.”

“Sensible cops-”

“Allegedly,” Disjoint added.

“You keep using that wrong,” Lookout said, almost plaintive. “Stop.”

“Am I allegedly using it wrong?”

“Yes!”

Sidepiece leaned back. “We’re talking sensible alleged cops who recognize that the only towns that have a shot at making it are ones with protectors. And not pussy focus-tested superheroes or asshole freaks like you all, either. Actual make-your-enemies-go-away protectors.”

“Allegedly,” Disjoint said, again. Lookout crossed her arms, trying to look tough.

“A-guaranteed-ly, ackshully,” Sidepiece said, with a dangerous tone. “It’s what we’re about. There can be no allegedly about if we’re going to grant any protection there.”

“Take our message to her,” I said. “No guns. No ground to air lightning cannons. Keep it simple. But right now, you’re right, there’s bigger fish to fry. She should keep her head down, be careful about how she’s treating those enemies. Cradle might be after her.”

“She’s not the head-down type, you know.”

“Her funeral, then. The authorities do want her. But for now we want to avoid disaster. Cradle coming after her and winning would be a disaster. She’ll know why.”

“Uh huh. What’s the catch here? Trading us for info on the new recruits?”

“You’re not a priority,” I said. I wasn’t even lying as I said it. If I had my way they’d be a priority, but I wasn’t about to get my way. The courts were falling behind. Or they had Fallen behind- the overburdened system had become most noticeable when the compound had been raided. “This is about information and it’s about keeping the peace. We know Love Lost is after Precipice. We know what March is doing. But if she’s willing to back off, so will we.”

“She doesn’t back off,” Sidepiece said. “Don’t want to jeopardize my being freed, but I’d be disrespecting her if I pretended she might.”

“It’s fine. We’re making the offer regardless. I’d rather crack down on the masterminds and big threats.”

“While siccing other teams on all the fodder and bottom feeders?”

“They’ll do what they do. We’re just… organizing better.”

“Fuck that.”

Spright bent down. He undid cuffs, freeing Sidepiece’s hands from behind her head, and Disjoint’s limbs were uncuffed. We’d cuffed ankle to ankle and ankle to table leg. The hands had been cuffed in a way that kept them in view. There wasn’t anything he could do that was faster than the spear-tip at the head of the halberd could be.

The two were freed, and they climbed to their feet. The shitty table nearly broke as Sidepiece leaned on it to stand up.

“You’re really letting us go?”

“We’re letting them go?” Shortcut asked. More red faced and pissed off than before.

“Never let it be said I never do anything nice for you,” Swansong said.

“You can still go fuck yourself,” Sidepiece answered, venom in her voice. “But you can leave the bottle out of it.”

“How gracious.”

“Yeah, huh? I’m a sweetheart like that,” Sidepiece said. “This isn’t a head-game? No tricks?”

“Go,” Spright said.

“No tricks,” I said.

“The creepy camera girl didn’t put trackers on us?”

“No. My stuff is broken, thanks to you guys-”

“Don’t give the enemy information,” Swansong gently admonished.

“-and I don’t need trackers to know everything you do. I kind of wish I didn’t know everything you do.”

“Creepy as shit little kid,” Sidepiece said.

Capricorn pulled the sliding door open. The battered vehicle that Sidepiece and Disjoint had been driving before being intercepted was parked out in the snow, ice and snow covering the various windows. Cold air blasted into a space that had only been tolerably warm because we’d had so many people inside it. Now with the door open, it was cold again.

“What the fuck?” Shortcut asked Spright. I imagined he thought he was being quiet about it, but he was naturally abrasive and loud enough that everyone could hear.

“Why?” Lookout asked. “Why are we letting them go? Because if I was actually supposed to put trackers on them, I didn’t.”

“They don’t have room for minor villains,” Capricorn said.

“They aren’t minor,” Shortcut said.

I actually agreed with him. Places, times, and groups where the more violent enforcers had been active in the last two years had seen more than a few people die. Some had been blatant – but only a few of the people responsible for those blatant deaths were still around. Nailbiter was a major one. A lot more of the deaths had been ambiguous.

Beast of Burden had been active in some out of the way spots, and in the wake of his demise, little things were turning up. Deaths that had been missed in the midst of a lethally harsh winter.

Well, a winter like any ordinary one, but it had been a winter we hadn’t been equipped to deal with. And in places that Beast of Burden and his gang had been throwing their weight around, taking protection money, an awful lot of people had gone out in the cold and died there.

Was it Disjoint and Sidepiece? There was no telling. Nailbiter was a killer, and her way of killing people left enough of a trail that if we got her we’d be able to send her straight through to a jail… where nobody would be able to hold her.

Which meant that if we got her, we’d check with the authorities, sketchy as the woman at the top might be, and with some luck Nailbiter would cease to be a concern.

I didn’t love it, but I was really hard-pressed to think of a better solution.

“We’re going,” Spright said. He produced his grapple-tendrils, floated up into the air a bit, and the air began to ripple around him.

Off to the side, I saw Sveta scowl. I rarely saw her outright scowl.

“Thanks for this,” I told Spright. “Sorry it wasn’t for much.”

“Not very forthcoming. Some hints on how they’re operating. Motivation. Gives us ideas on how to take them down next time.”

“We’ll compile our notes and share,” I said.

“Sounds good.”

I shook hands with Spright, and then we watched as the two of them took off. They skated away, leaving ripples behind them, Spright using tendrils to haul himself forward.

“I can’t stand him,” Sveta said.

“I hear you,” I said.

“Stealing my power without asking and then being better at it than me?”

I nodded. I took her hand and gave it a light shake.

“I can’t help but notice that we’re making deals with Tattletale, and we’re making deals with Love Lost,” Rain asked.

“They’re not really deals,” Tristan said. “They’re pretty hollow. We say we’ll leave Tattletale alone unless she does something that deserves being brought in.”

“Which means nothing,” Ashley said. “Why would she accept?”

I flexed my hand. The cold was making the burned and bandaged skin sore. I was overdue for a debriding.

When I spoke, I was staring out at the distant city. “She accepts because she wants to know that she can do what she’s currently doing without being brought in by us. And maybe she gets an edge if someone else brings her in and she mentions the deal. Makes us look bad. But it’s worth it, to get the information, flawed as it might be. She probably had other strategies in mind.”

“Or she’s high on painkillers and her head is fuzzy,” Sveta said.

“Or that.”

“And this?” Rain asked.

“Laying groundwork for later,” I said. “I want to keep an eye on things now. The pressure is ramping up as the hero teams organize, and I’m really curious to see how Love Lost, Tattletale, and March all react to the current state of things.”

Interlude 10.x

A space heater hummed by her feet while her eyes stared at a glowing screen. The room had gone dark as half of the streetlights turned off outside to conserve power, and though the one lamp and computer screen were now insufficient to light the space she didn’t rise from her chair or look away from the screen.

Her hand crushed a plastic chemical packet, activating it. She rolled it between her hands as it warmed up. Fingerless gloves so she could type and a chemical hand warmer helped her hands, the space heater warmed her feet, a blanket warming her legs, and she liked to imagine her power warmed her head. The rest of her was cold.

The person who had the camera would be colder, she knew. She still wished whoever had built this place had been more mindful of insulation.

Most of the mega-city was asleep, but if she imagined the screen was a window that she could open and walk through, then there was a small festival happening just twenty feet away.

People were standing in groups, parents with kids working their way past clusters of friends to get closer to the front. The space was sterile, with black and white tile along the halls that had been sourced from the same places that cut-and-paste bathrooms all across the mega-city used and blue-bright fluorescent lights on the ceiling and walls. The floors were white resin, but were caked with grime and salt.

Grime and salt, past knowledge that sixty-seven thousand people pass through in one day, scheduling, past knowledge of staff, knowledge of attention to detail in security; floor cleaners are mechanical, work-

“No,” Tattletale interrupted her power, not taking her eyes off of the scene. “Don’t need that.”

Her head pounded softly, making her very aware of her heart rate and the flow of blood through her brain, as if the ‘no’ had been a hard physical strike to her forehead.

Things here were just a little harder. There was no stock of snacks, her headache pills were in a leather carry-on bag, not that they helped much, and nothing was where it should be. The heights of chair and desk were limited, the screens limited to that of her laptop and the monitor she had had packed, and her emergency server for her computer was all the way back at home.

March had been gunning for her. The attack had been a virtual guarantee, and with her own power and March being who she was, the risk had been that March would blow up half of New Brockton. She’d done similar things in past altercations. The fucking nightmare.

Retreating meant being strong as a group, protecting New Brockton, and ensuring they couldn’t be picked off one by one.

Which meant that Tattletale and the rest of the Undersiders, Rachel excepted, were here in Faultline’s territory. Blocks of an out-of-the-way coastal city that had been put up in anticipation of a rush to get property, with the company going bankrupt after people had been warned to stay away. Plumbing so faulty that there were rooms the water ran down the wall from ceiling to floor, no insulation in many buildings, and, as was the case with many ghost towns, the lack of residents had meant that businesses opted out of setting up, and without amenities and businesses, the residents had become even more scarce.

Faultline was laundering mercenary money through the area, and was inadvertently revitalizing portions of it. The boom of people needing to get out of tents and into warm places helped.

Tattletale moved the chemical hand warmer, sandwiching it between her hand and the mouse while she used the keyboard to check different sites and scenes.

Trading Dollar rose 2.1%, rose 1% yesterday, past knowledge that New Dollars are under attack; currency market stabilizing.
Level of stabilization, consistency of rises, actors in this field include Number Man, Dido, Semiramis, and Little Midas; one unknown actor is engaged in this playing field-

Her lips mouthed the word ‘no’. Police scanner?

Series of riots and other incidents in Providence, police pulled from the Boston area, area is behind in shelter, resources-

“I can draw my own conclusions on that one. People have nothing, it’s cold, they’re bitter and scared,” she whispered. She switched back to the video feed.

Level of apparent excitement, staff movements, knowledge of usual schedules, weather-

Don’t need it to be exact, she thought, pushing that thought into the jumble of details and knowledge.

–; More than twelve minutes, less than twenty minutes.

There were other things. News. Status of Class-S threats…

Sleeper; active
Machine Army; 4.83% growth since last check, active
Endbringers; one dormant, one active, others dead or unknown locations.

Active Endbringer. She zeroed in on that. A few mouse clicks brought her to a site that tracked the Simurgh.

The activity was only a renewed cluster of sightings. Not an attack. The Simurgh was somewhere near Bet’s Indonesia. Not flying as she’d once done, either. Floating around. Facilities and factories in the area had been repurposed into accommodations. People in the area were hunkered down, enduring life on new Bet instead of moving on to new places, leaning on some risky non-tinker tech advances. Going the sci-fi route in tackling what Bet was going through. Those same people were responsible for the flurry of reports about the Simurgh, which had led to her being flagged ‘active’.

As if it had just happened, Tattletale pictured the mental image of the Simurgh just past a window, floating like she dangled from a noose, a moment so close to the end of the world…

Rex.

Rex; dead.

The lights in her room flicked on.

Foil.

“Lily. How nice of you,” Tattletale said, before spinning her chair to face the door, hands clasped together. The dramatic effect was lessened by the heating packet she held between them.

“Why are you sitting in the dark at this hour?” Lily asked. She leaned against the doorframe. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt, black with a sabertooth tiger leaping out of a rectangular frame that helped to give the image three dimensions. She had pyjama bottoms and slippers, to boot.

Sleep clothes, length of pyjama pants strings, choice of t-shirt color and size; gained weight, 5-10 pounds
Gained weight, 5-10 pounds, athletic disposition; unusual, other causes are in play.
Gained weight, comfort, relative ease, wearing girlfriend’s design; leading a more relaxed, domestic life.
Gained weight, isn’t out on patrol, is at ease; out of the habit of cape stuff, carries out general duties, bodyguarding, engages for regular incidents.
Leading more relaxed, domestic life; is happy.

She doesn’t look happy. March?

At relative ease but not happy, history of past relationship with Tattletale-self; strongly dislikes Tattletale-self.

Still. Still dislikes Tattletale-self. Me.

A series of fleeting thoughts and connections, flying through and into her mind in eyeblinks.

Scarcely missing a beat, she answered, “Conserving power. Shutting out the rest of the world to limit information intake. Monitor as good as mine, doesn’t strain anything to look at it in the dark.”

Tattletale smiled. Lily didn’t smile back.

“Do you want me to turn the lights off, then?” Lily asked.

“Leave it. Someone else might notice and flick them on again. Not that I don’t appreciate the little gesture.”

Not a gesture.

“Okay,” Lily said. She didn’t leave.

She wants something.

No shit, Sherlock.

“How are your legs?”

Tattletale raised her feet, closing one eye slightly in a wince. “Ninety percent better. Turns out taking untested, black market drugs have their merits.”

“Bitter Pill?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s mercenary. Doesn’t give anything for free, calls in favors and calls hard.”

“You know her, huh?”

“Reached out to her after Sabah and I ran into a kid in a bad place. Kid’s powers didn’t do anything to fix their body issues, and really complicated conventional methods to fix it. We thought Bitter Pill could do something.”

“Too expensive?”

“Is your power telling you that?”

Common sense. Bitter Pill did temporary work, but that work could be a lot of things. The only ways it would work were to pay for regular doses over the long term, or pay for her to drop everything and research something long-term.

“Yeah,” Tattletale said.

“She’s dangerous. We’re pretty sure she was looking to get the kid in a position where they were taking regular doses.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“And get a kind of control over him. Fucked up, and it says a lot that she was willing. There was so little to be gained. With you?”

“I get it. I know how she is, and there’s no need for warnings. Yeah, sure, she’s demanding and she’s really hungry to gain some ground right now, but I like having legs.”

“Your funeral.”

Dismissive, word associations: death, endings, ceremony; strongly dislikes Tattletale-self.

“No need to apologize or anything,” Tattletale said, leaning back, checking her computer screen. Nothing had happened yet. “Not like I took two bullets because of your whole psychotic rabbit girl thing. Imp lost an arm.”

“We’re hoping we can get it back,” Lily said, before sighing. “We’re all nervous, but you seem fine. I was hoping you knew something we didn’t, and you could reassure us.”

“Huh,” Tattletale said. She turned herself around. There was a quick protocol for it. One keystroke pinged all of her teams. She saw the messages come in. Each of them got a text, if they were on phones or undercover, and buzzed in a certain way on walkie-talkies if they weren’t. One by one, a long column of circles in a table switched over from yellow to green.

Response times; fine.
#1 responding slower than before, has anger issues, sleep issues; post-

Tattletale shook her head.

“Problem?” Lily asked.

“Mild headache. Let me see…”

She sent a message to Fish. He was handling the active surveillance of March’s group. The faint icon appeared, indicating that he was typing. She turned back to the screen, pretending to look at it while she considered what her power gave her.

March behavior history, current team response times, current movements of capes, March’s connections to others; March is recruiting and preparing right now. Will sleep in after a late night of work.

She turned the idea around in her head. Not as instantaneous as the flicker-fire of information flowing through her head as fast as she could think it, because it meant paying attention to what pieces of information were provoking each output. Something smaller, using only some segments of information, see how that changed the result…

March behavior history, current team response times; March is stalking, closing in.

Okay…

March behavior history, is stalking and closing in, our current precautions and help from Faultline; March is stalking, trying to close in. Lacks resources to succeed within six hours.

Another tack, playing with different segments of information…

March behavior history, her connections to other groups; March is out recruiting right now.

Fish had his response. March’s group wasn’t nearby. They were out on the road.

“We’re fine,” Tattletale said. “Tell Sabah she can sleep easy. If she is out there and closing in, she won’t manage it anytime soon.”

“Thank you,” Lily said.

“It’s what I do.”

“Good night, Lisa.”

“Good night.”

Lily was slow in stepping away from the door. Meandering. Tattletale raised an eyebrow, so the expression was already on her face by the time Lily turned to face her again.

“I am sorry,” Lily said. “That you got pulled into this.”

Says she is sorry, halting words, phrasing ‘I am’; lying.
Lying, says she is sorry, halting words, phrasing; connotations of ‘you owe us this’. Believes that Parian’s criminal activities are Undersider’s fault.
Is factor in mild but persistent resentment of Tattletale-self.

“It’s fine,” Tattletale said, shrugging it off.

“I appreciate this.”

The information started to come in, taking apart the words. Tattletale shook her head, denying and dismissing the information as she did it.

“It’s what friends do,” Tattletale said, though Lily had already left.

She turned back to the screen.

The train had arrived. Soldiers returning from deployment. Capes wore civilian uniforms and casual clothes, and blended into the crowd. Her power identified the ones familiar to her, that she might not have otherwise recognized with their masks off or the obscuring details between the camera and the returning people.

Cinereal
Weld
Golem
Tallboy
Laserdream
Rocketround
Typhlosis
Vista
Stank Bank

That last one was someone she had tracked before Gold Morning. She would have changed her name now that she was a hero. She wouldn’t be one of the players in the financial scene, that was propping up the Trading Dollar, but still worth keeping an eye out.

She warmed her hands with the packet and got her feet warm where they’d been pointed away from the space heater for the duration of her conversation with Lily.

She would watch this to see what information she could glean, check some more things, communicate with her teams, and then go to sleep. Under the covers, she would be warm. Whoever had made this apartment had skimped on insulation, but Faultline hadn’t ignored the luxuries like good beds and blankets. Even the one on Tattletale’s lap now was comfortably warm for how thin it was.

Tempting, to imagine going to bed. To disconnect.

She watched Victoria Dallon weave through the crowd. People had parted as Weld reached the crowd. Avoiding the monstrous case-53. Victoria and a Garotte with flesh instead of armor moved into the gap the part had made.

The video had no sound, but Tattletale could parse it.

Garotte, body language, clearly nervous; says, ‘it’s just a hologram’
Weld, smiling; says ‘you look good. wow’

The awkward pause lingered after.

Ten feet of distance between them, awkwardness, timing; a divide. Emotional distance.

What did it say that she wanted them to fail? What did it mean, and where did that feeling come from? Was it strategic, that it would get them off her back for a little while, make them a little weaker?

Her power supplied nothing, and she wouldn’t have trusted it if it had.

The distance between Garotte and Weld closed. Garotte said something.

Garotte, cognizant of nearby people and watching eyes; ‘I’m so glad you’re okay.’
Weld, smiling; ‘I’m indestructible.’
Garotte responding, closing distance to keep the conversation private; ‘I know that isn’t true’ followed by another sentence segment; ‘Your body is tough but your heart can break.’
Weld’s silence, head moving; looking at the hologram
Garotte, Hand at one elbow, standing askew; ‘It’s not a problem, covering up my differences?’
Weld, taken aback, shaking his head; ‘no’.

Tattletale watched as the pair drew close enough to touch one another. She watched Weld kiss Garotte.

Victoria, a short distance away, was smiling. Her cousin was close to her, exaggerating how dead she was on her feet.

Capes tired, soldiers tired, moderate casualties, no major figures lost…

She started tallying up the observations, her attention on other things in the scene.

Victoria Dallon hugged her cousin. They talked, and Tattletale kept her focus on the details of the scene. The reason she’d wanted to tune in, had a man on the ground, camera ready. These fleeting moments where people were together provided the clearest image of what was happening offworld. Places utterly disconnected from the world and dimension she inhabited.

If she’d anticipated this, set up more infrastructure, if she’d hammered it all out-

Victoria and Garotte passed by the camera, distracting her. Sveta was talking to Weld, all excitement, animated. The ice had been broken.

So easily formed after a short time away, Tattletale thought.

The scene gave her a glimpse of Weld’s face.

Fondness.

Back to business. All information pulling together…

Mood, tempo, body language individual and collective, differences between cape and civilian; war. Fighting humans; foreign humans, divide marked between them and intervening Warden and paramilitary arms; Warlords.

War involving African warlords, mood, tempo, body language, and everything else; war won, with casualties. Situation unresolved.

Crowd thinning out; Train empty.
Train empty, capes seen; Valkyrie gone

Valkyrie gone, past knowledge that Valkyrie is ignoring Gimel for reasons, past knowledge that Valkyrie’s reasons include high-level threat, stronger, more numerous, past knowledge that Valkyrie feels small against this threat;
Valkyrie alive. Scouting, procrastinating.

The screen showed a message. Her cameraman, wanting to know what he should do. She sent him instructions to follow the crowd outside, getting as much footage of the group as possible. This was intel on capes she didn’t get a chance to interact with much, it was intel on the situation, on the public mood, on the struggling authority that managed the Wardens and subsidiary teams…

She yawned.

The man with the camera had followed the crowd to the area outside the station. He watched the crowd and in the doing he watched Weld and Garotte, Victoria and Laserdream. Vista had approached the group.

The camera went black. It was a good thing the lights had been flicked on, because the room would have been plunged into darkness with the screen off.

Her heart pounded. She was left to wonder if it was one of the breakers, the computer plugged into a different switch than the lights of her temporary accommodations.

Lights on the computer blinked. It wasn’t a power outage.

She was halfway to the mouse when the screen lit up. Pink against a black background. An emoticon, with hearts for eyes and a dash for the mouth.

The face disappeared, turning into a single ‘hi!’. Tattletale’s power kicked in, but it was one of the rare instances where she was faster than the blink-of-an-eye power. She hit the big red button.

This time, the power did go. Everything from monitors to computers went black, the entire system thudding audibly as everything came simultaneously to a halt.

Is there danger? Kid’s behavior, past knowledge of her misdeeds, past knowledge of her conversation style; the first thing she did was say hi.

Fucking tinkers.

Fucking kid.

Tattletale rose from her seat, wincing at the pain in her legs. When she moved, it was with one hand on a nearby table or piece of furniture, to steady herself.

Her phone had died with the press of the big red button.

In the darkness, the stream of everything now cut off, no means of communicating with her squads or contacts, and no means of seeing what was going on out there, she had only her thoughts.

Her first thought was that she should take every single piece of tech she had in her room here, drop it into the dumpster, and set the contents alight. She might have, if her legs had been fully healed, and if it wasn’t so late that it would draw attention from Faultline.

She’d been on the opposite side of too many hackers and tinkers to not have taken precautions. Some of those precautions were at home, like the emergency server.

Epeios had been the reason for the emergency server. He’d been a friend once, or he had pretended to be, and she had let him pretend. He’d found a way onto her computer, forcing her to find a means of stopping a computer tinker with resources from looking at her stuff.

The emergency server was four feet tall and four feet deep, only two feet wide. Too large to pack, too niche in use. It was where she stored her notes too comprehensive for the regular systems and too complex for her own brain to wrestle with on a long-term basis. It worked by creating millions of deceptive copies, forgeries, and variations on documents, and then randomly shuffling her files into it.

Epeios had been baffled, had hired thinkers to try and decode, predict, or surveil her means of picking the true files from the false ones. There wasn’t one. The only means was to use her power. To intuit her way through a thousand haystacks.

She had other resources. Other jury-rigged traps and tools. Some were still packed.

She would have to get her stuff and set up her security, verify there was no virus in a closed system… ugh. The kid could probably set up a virus to take a snapshot and communicate by cell lines or ambient electricity.

Her power bar doubled as a signal detector. If there was activity on any of the connected systems, it would sound an alarm.

No, nothing to do but go to sleep. The other issues could be tackled later.

She climbed into the bed that Faultline had offered her. A luxurious bed with fine blankets in a shitty apartment. The bed was wide enough for three people to sleep in comfortably.

Her head pounded as she lay her head down.

Her hands and feet weren’t even that warm, but in the core of her chest, she felt numb.

She was so tired, so tired. But as the hours ticked on, all she could do was digest the information she’d collected, plan, and remain aware of how dark and cold the room was.

⊙

This? This was alright.

She leaned on her cane, walking with her bodyguards flanking her. More mercenaries were inside nearby buildings, looking out for trouble. Bryce was on a rooftop with Jaw and Bitters. If March decided to come at them by plane or helicopter, then Bryce would get an education in the use of surface to air missiles.

Snuff was in her orbit, following up the rear of the group, maintaining a conversation with one of Faultline’s non-case-53 dorks. Faultline followed the larger group from even further back. Keeping an eye on everything.

Probably staring holes in the back of my head, Tattletale mused.

Faultline position, history, current situation; wary concern, especially of the kids.

The kids. Samuel and Chastity were herding the monsters. Samuel had a muscular arm draped around his shoulders, which he didn’t seem to mind at all, focusing more on the intellectual, emotional challenge of keeping the twelve to fifteen crowd from being at each other’s throats. Juliette, the recently renamed Roman, and Aroa. Coldblooded, hot blooded, and sadistic, respectively.

If she was ever asked to pick a ‘best guess of X kills Y’ pair, choosing from members of the expanded Undersiders and staff, then she really had to narrow it down to something like Rachel and Siemens, Foil and Kirby, Juliette and Roman, or Roman and Juliette.

While Samuel had his hands full with that, The unfortunately named Chastity flirting with the youngest soldiers while tasked with keeping the younger Heartbroken in line. Flor, Nicholas, Amias, Candy, and Darlene.

For every last one of them, she could picture Alec in at least one moment or scene, doing or saying something that fit that one Heartbroken so well. A look on his face, a thing he had said.

The feral under-twelves were fanning out, and Chicken Little was in their sights. He looked back at Tattletale, nervous.

“Don’t look at me,” Tattletale told him. There was a part of the sidewalk that dipped, causing her foot to have to travel a short distance further, which meant her legs had to adjust her weight. She winced at the adjustment, the pain driving through each of her legs like a phantom movement of the bullet through the tissues. “You wanted to go out in the field, Chicken Little? Show us what you’re made of.”

“We could take him apart,” Juliette said. “Drumstick, thigh, gizzard, the gross leftover bits that get processed and put in chicken nugs.”

“I’d rather keep my gross leftover bits where they belong,” Chicken Little said.

“You’re showing weakness, Chicken Little,” Samuel called out. “I told you not to do that if you want to hang around these guys.”

“I want to hang,” Chicken Little said. “They’re cool when they’re cool, but-”

“But if you act scared then you’re in for it.”

Flor cackled, edging closer as the assembled group walked to where the vehicles were parked. She glanced back at Chastity, checking that her babysitter was still focused on one of the soldiers.

Tattletale watched that with some wary interest as well. If the soldier couldn’t stay focused…

“If I stay put then they’re going to get me.”

“Figure it out,” Samuel said. “Do it fast, because you actually are in danger now.”

“Um,” Chicken Little said. “Chastity. Help.”

Chastity didn’t take her eyes off the soldier she was talking to. He at least had the grace to notice something was up and draw his gun, holding it low.

“What the hell are you doing, Chicken?” Roman asked.

“I’m asking for help. I know what I’m made of and some of that is someone who asks for help when he needs it.”

“Soft,” one of the little ones taunted, as they moved closer, encircling him.

Birds were congregating nearby. Tattletale felt wistful, seeing it.

A group of crows cawed, with others taking up the cry. It slowed some of the young ones, but Nicholas and Amias weren’t that into this particular game.

“You, soldier,” Samuel said. “For the kid’s sake, you’re going to need to draw your gun. If I give the signal, shoot the kid I point at. Only if I give the signal. If you fuck this up, all the rest of us will come after you.”

There, in the midst of the game. That was when Samuel most looked like Alec had. He was the most like Alec anyway, years younger than Alec had been, with longer blond hair in the classic ‘naturally wild’ Vasil look, but he had a similar face, a similar way of standing. Alec twisting the knife and enjoying it, despite his usual cold nature. That was what Samuel was doing here.

The soldier closest to Chicken Little looked back at Tattletale.

She nodded.

Flor, who was in the top two for most likely to get shot, if anyone had to, didn’t even seem to care. She looked at Samuel, then grinned, eyes wide, all teeth showing, except for the gap where one was missing. She gave the soldier the same look.

The collection of birds drew nearer, moving in a blob. No control, no ability to move them and sense through them at the same time, and the senses are limited.

Too slow, too careful.

All at once, Flor, Candy and Darlene broke into runs. Coordinating with Darlene’s power, no doubt. The soldier Samuel had told to be ready to shoot had his weapon drawn but not pointed, and with no signal given, Chicken Little ran for it, and the scene was eerie to see, with people who were just now spotting the kids at play reacting with amusement.

Reminding Tattletale that she really wanted all of her team members to spend some time around the Heartbroken, so they would know it was rarely a laughing matter.

The birds were on their way, swooping in low. They didn’t reach Chicken Little before Candy and Darlene did.

They bowled him over and began kissing his mask. The birds that had been flying in now scattered.

‘Kissing tag’ with Heartbroken. Which was not without its danger, because Flor, among many other things.

Flor looked ready to just jump on top of the heap of three kids. Chastity, barely looking, flicked out her bullwhip, catching Flor by the neck.

Nothing to do with Chastity’s powers. She really liked whips, was all. She set to reeling Flor in, pulling the whip’s length in by handfuls. Flor tried to free her neck, helped by the fact that it had encircled part of her jacket collar, and shed herself of the length of leather, stumbling as she came free.

The whip cracked out again, striking her in the rear end. Even through layers of petticoat, winter dress, and a wool jacket that hung down low enough to be a barrier, Flor yelped.

Surprise, not pain.

The commotion had slowed the procession down. People stepped in and freed Chicken Little from the two girls that pinned him.

“Jerks,” Chicken Little said, huffing and brushing himself off. “Making me look bad.”

“I think you look nice,” Candy said, sounding sweet as anything.

It was Darlene who looked crestfallen by how upset Chicken Little was. The girl wore bold lipstick despite being Aiden’s age, and it was that lipstick that marked his mask over and over places, even as he tried to look noble and normal.

Seventeen kisses to Candy’s nine.

I really don’t care.

“Can I make it up to you?” Darlene asked.

Chicken Little shrugged. Sullen. Darlene’s shoulders fell a fraction.

She likes him. Childhood crush.

Tattletale sighed.

Chicken Little continued trying to make himself look presentable, not aware of the lipstick am. He shook himself off and threw his hands out to the side as part of the end of the motion. The birds that circled in the air above squawked, cried out, and scattered.

Presentation and flourish were one of the safest things Tattletale could train him in. But he did need other lessons.

“You could have backed out, called it off,” Samuel said. “You knew it was kissing tag?”

“Yeh,” Chicken Little answered.

“You know Tattletale set rules. No powers-”

“Only the mask, only if I’m game, I can call it off any time-”

“And you didn’t? And here I thought I scared you. Are you tougher than you pretend to be, Chicken L?”

“No,” Aroa said, snorting. “Not that brave.”

“Or were you smart enough to know it was a game?”

“That was a game?” the soldier that had been tasked with killing a child asked. He looked between Samuel and Tattletale.

“Test,” Samuel said, sounding dismissive.

“No, I didn’t figure it out,” Chicken Little admitted. “You did scare me.”

“Not badly enough that you backed off.”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to show weakness,” Chicken Little said, defensive.

Defensive, as if it was all his fault. But Tattletale met Samuel’s eyes, and she saw Chastity’s smirk.

Yeah, it wasn’t on him. They were sending mixed messages.

Mixed messages weren’t the worst thing in the world. If push came to shove and that kid found himself in a serious fight, there’d be more mixed messages than this. The trick was making sure that they were teaching him to deal with them, not putting those mixed messages in his head.

It left a sour taste in her mouth, all the same.

She could see moments, expressions, and recall feelings that reminded her of Alec. Here and there, there were ones that annoyed her, made her cringe as she thought of them. Times Alec had embarrassed her, preyed on her pride, or mocked her and made her lose her cool.

This bad feeling was similar to that. But it wasn’t Alec she thought of, as she looked at Chicken Little and regretted how she’d done this.

Her legs were at ninety-five percent, but that five percent was adding up. The vehicles that were delivering them and their stuff were just pulling down the road now, navigating an urban area that had been built into a rolling landscape, instead of waiting for the landscape to be flattened or managed in any real way.

Every move she was making right now cost something, and these trucks had not been cheap. She wasn’t making any real money for as long as she wasn’t in New Brockton, but she couldn’t go to New Brockton because March was circling that area.

And all the while, the local power structure was shifting. That was their next stop, but they would have to be careful.

“Wait,” Chicken Little said. “Something’s- what the what is in that truck down there?”

Tattletale smiled.

“Tattletale?” he asked.

“Come on. Walk with me. Snuff comes, but let us have our talk.”

“Yes ma’am,” Snuff said.

She left behind a scene where Faultline was hanging back, bewildered at a scene that Tattletale continued to call a ‘good day’. Samuel was physically putting himself between Juliet and Roman, Chastity had cowed Flor into an approximation of obedience and in the process had managed to scare away the soldier she had been flirting with earlier.

They walked past the line of trucks that were pulling over at the side of the one-way road. Drivers were getting out at the left side of the street, but the right side was just for Chicken Little, Tattletale, and her cane.

“Are you okay?” Chicken Little asked her.

“Uh huh. Gettin’ by. But March is going to realize I bounced back fairly quickly. She’ll realize the resources I have and she’ll hurt me worse next time. Be ready for that.”

“I’ll protect you.”

Tattletale smiled. “No you fucking won’t. You get somewhere safe. Just don’t panic. Be ready for it to happen.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m going to bring you along,” she said.

She saw his eyes widen.

“But-”

“Tell me now if you’re not ready.”

“I failed my test. I got scared and I was too slow.”

“You lost to the Heartbroken. Samuel wanted to see what you were made of, I didn’t say no. Maybe that’s not fair, maybe his idea of a good test is screwed up because the asshole that spawned him was flinging him into situations against capes and cops before he could even read. Most of the rest of them are like that. They were cannon fodder, they were punching bags, they were slaves to make and bring food… nothing about that was healthy or good for anything except making them very, very dangerous.”

“I like some of them,” Chicken Little said, pronouncing ‘some of them’ with a mumble that turned it into ‘sumblum’.

“And some of them like you. Which makes them more dangerous, if anything.”

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“Why?”

“Why look after me? You don’t seem to like anyone, you’re busy, but you make the time for me. You- in this truck?” He pointed down at the truck parked near the end. A slightly different make than the longer trucks with storage containers in the backs. Most of the storage containers were set up as armories and quarters. A moving base, so they could relocate whenever March drew near. After, it would be a way to set up her mercenaries in any location.

“You have lipstick on your mask,” she pointed out.

He checked the coast was clear, turning his back to the trucks, pulled off the mask, and turned it around so he could look at the front. Hard, round, circular, with two back dots for eyes, a red crest at the upper center, and a small beak. Covered in red kiss prints of various degrees of fadedness.

The redness in his face crept to his ears.

“We’re showing up with numbers,” she said. “You’ll be one member of a crowd, and so long as we have the Heartbroken bolstering our numbers, we’ll be looking pretty strong.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “Also, I don’t know how to clean this. I don’t want to smudge my sleeve with lipstick.”

She drew a tissue from her inner jacket pocket and handed it over.

“Thank you. Please answer my question.”

“Why you?”

“Yeah.”

“I could say you remind me of Taylor.”

“Imp says I’m nothing like Taylor was. Foil and Parian said something similar.”

“I wouldn’t say nothing like. You’re careful.”

Aiden looked up at her, one gloved hand still rubbing the tissue in circles on the mask. “Didn’t she… never ever act careful? Whenever they tell me stories it’s always Taylor got hurt or Taylor threw herself into a crazy situation.”

“You caught me,” she said. She smiled. “No. Not that kind of careful.”

“I don’t get it.”

She smiled.

“Are you bullshitting me?”

“I could tell you now, or I could offer you a trade, my little chicken.”

“What trade?” he asked. At least he sounded suspicious.

“If you agree to think on it and then give me your best answer, I’ll open the back of this truck now and show you my birthday present to you.”

“You forgot my birthday.”

“Four month belated birthday.”

“Isn’t it six months?” He started counting on his fingers. “September, August…”

She pulled her hand back away from the handle at the back of, the truck, moving it in fits and starts as he went from August to July, July to June…

He stopped, looking up at her with the mask in one hand. She smiled down at him.

“Four months, yeah,” he said.

At least he was learning wit and a good poker face.

She opened the back of the truck. He had to climb up onto the back bumper and up to see over the ledge and into the truck proper. As he climbed, she stuck her cane out, giving him a bit of a push where he needed it. Sure enough, he almost fell backward once he saw. Only the cane at the center of his back kept him from tipping back.

He stared in quiet amazement.

It was good, having people around. Even the people she was used to were more alive as the group was more complete. It was tempting in a dangerous way, to know that a crisis brought everyone together, and she could so very easily, consciously or not, play her role in creating them.

Not that there was any need now. Even beyond March, they had other concerns.

“We’ll be taking the lead truck. You’ll want to get yourself tidy, look over your costume. Make sure you look good,” she told him.

He nodded, not taking his eyes away. The question he’d asked was long forgotten.

“The sky is definitely going to fall,” he said.

⊙

This wasn’t a moot. It wasn’t a Somer’s Rock, and it wasn’t a gathering of world powers in the dark room.

Chaos. Concern.

No. She had to give the white hats more credit than that. There was a note of fear here. Fear of heroes and fear of the expanded Undersiders. She’d wanted to show strength and in doing so, she’d made a mistake. Too much strength.

Villains had assembled in Sherwood Span. The area was sparse, spread out. Some buildings were in construction, but it looked like that had stopped. Mostly it was scattered houses.

The major players were notably absent, though Tattletale was keeping an eye on the spies.

A disorganized mob consisting of two- and three-person gangs, solo operators, mercenaries, the blacklisters that fought over internet rankings, the burglars, kidnappers, the enforcers and killers. A handful were notable in their own way, like Little Midas.

They’d all gathered out in the middle of an open space that could have been a plaza, a parking lot, or a market space in the summer months. Now it was covered in snow. It was cold and there had to be a dozen places across Sherwood Span where people could gather, but nobody wanted to be the one to wuss out, so they stood in the cold, ankle or calf deep in snow.

The wounds in her legs made her think of Bitter Pill. She looked for the woman and found her off to the side, talking to Bluestocking. Blue had been hurt in the Fallen raid. It looked like she was back in action.

Seeing Tattletale looking, Bluestocking gave her the finger, along with the dirtiest of dirty looks.

Few were quite as bold as that.

She leaned over to Snuff, and she bid for him to bend down. In his ear, she whispered, “Tell the others to scatter.”

“Scatter?”

“Our individual cells, sub-groups. Heartbroken in one group, our guys in another. Our mercs can hang out as their own group. Send Foil and Parian off on their own. Faultline should be close but not with us. We’re too big a mob and everyone’s staring.”

Snuff communicated the message. Where they’d been an army, her forces dissolved.

Everyone disconnects.

They’re more comfortable like this.

The interjection of her power was the kind of thing she was trying to be alert about. The times it chose to jump in, the things it said, and the idea, as old as Gold Morning, that the alien behind it was looking to shape and encourage certain behaviors.

It’s all so much easier when I’m out using my powers instead of working from my terminal. Less headaches, less interjections.

A steady, low level thing, that had ground her down for years now.

She was aware that sending her mercenaries away left her with very, very little. Men she was paying, who weren’t technically hers. Even the most loyal of them would leave when the pay stopped.

Snuff made his way to her side. She was paying him, but he had other motivations. He was after her, and not in the romantic sense. No, he knew her too well for that. She’d come to terms with the fact that her lack of interest in the romance or the physical stuff wasn’t because of one excuse or the other. She was pretty sure it wasn’t because her power preferred her this way. It was just her.

No, Snuff wanted her for the status. She had a place in the city and in the cape dynamic, and he was cementing a role as her enforcer and bodyguard.

She had him, but there would be no long chats, no exchange of birthday presents, ironic or otherwise. He was with her only in a sense.

Aiden? Chicken Little was behind her, and his mask turned her way as she looked back to check.

The Eagle of Haast was with him. Delivered from another world, it was thirty-nine pounds of prehistoric bird with eight and a half feet of wingspan. Her belated birthday present to him. Other birds collected nearby, including a raven on Chicken Little’s shoulder.

He was with her, but he hadn’t even struck puberty yet.

And Kirby. On the surface, he was indistinguishable from the mercenaries. He wore and carried the same gear. Coil’s man- she’d kept more than a few of those. Among them was an excellent sniper team, qualified leaders, experts in various fields, and two cape hunters that had earned their name stalking and killing capes for kill order money.

Kirby wasn’t like those others. He was always apart, always keeping his head down, because everyone hated his guts enough that they would take the slightest of excuses. He’d gone from military court to release on a technicality, straight to Coil’s employ, where he’d worked as a manservant. Driving, running errands, and keeping all of Coil’s secrets.

Now he kept Tattletale’s. The arrangement was more or less the same. As all of the mercenaries shuffled off, he remained where he was.

This wasn’t Prancer’s deal. This wasn’t an alliance. An alliance would never work. Capes in large groups tended to tear each other apart.

This wasn’t that, and if it had looked like it was going to be, she wouldn’t have attended.

March hadn’t arrived, she noted. Her power fooled her there- she’d been eighty percent certain. Was March up to something?

She would have asked her power for input, but she was conserving it- had been since the group had gathered and moved out, ready to board the trucks and head to this… gathering. She’d wanted to have everything available for when she saw this.

Gathering was the wrong word. A riot without the riotous action?

“I don’t give two cents about what you’re all doing,” Little Midas intoned, his voice loud. He was obese enough that he had a team to carry him, his mask and armor gold, shaped to cover his prodigious belly and face. “This is irritating I’m going to stop holding back.”

‘This is irritating’; couched emotion. Recently had a big loss. Asset forfeiture.

“It’s only going to get worse,” Tattletale said.

“I’ll end them,” Little Midas said. “Then it won’t.”

“It’s going to calm down on its own. If you guys have any sense-” Tattletale tried.

But her words were drowned out. Angrier, louder voices.

A little more riotous now.

The current situation wasn’t all that different from the way it had been with the PRT. There were heroes, there were villains. One would fight the other. Most would go through the revolving door, unless they committed an egregious act or fell down a slippery slope and found themselves at the bottom with an enemy clear in their memory.

Breakthrough was one such concern. She had struck a deal with them, and how that deal was treated would tell her a lot. Hopefully that would be in time Hopefully

The words and noises were escalating in volume. The tranquil scene of a snowy, flat field was disturbed, the furthest thing from tranquil.

The frustrations being spoken of now were bottled up ones. They were being afraid one’s home wouldn’t stand for more than a few years, that the winter was already proving to be an utter bitch, and they’d had barely a day of proper snow.

She caught the word ‘kill’, and she didn’t pursue it with her power.

With two years of relative low consequences now over, the petty villains were facing a return to something like that old status quo under the PRT. A firmer response, real consequences for the worst offenders. It had been inevitable, guaranteed to happen if society rebuilt on any level. Tattletale had expected it a year from now, and she’d been wrong.

But of course, to this population of small villains who hadn’t thrown their lot in with the Red Queen, Teacher, or other warlords, this return to order was now intolerable, the response anger. This wasn’t a tidy group, not an organization like Prancer’s. Only a hundred or so capes who seemed to agree on nothing at all except that it was looking like a time to start getting mean, to draw blood and scare off the heroes.

It wouldn’t be that simple, of course, but blood would be shed.

She’d hoped to steer it if it came to this, but she had to wait for the loudest voices to grow hoarse. She was losing optimism by the second. She’d come at this from the wrong idea of what it was going to be.

She looked back at Chicken Little.

When she had brought him under her wing, she’d told herself she would do it right. She would help him, save him and save him from himself, if she had to.

She was zero for two. If she couldn’t get it right and save him, at least, then what?

A hard thing to say to his face. In some ways, he was doing so well. In others, she worried.

In this situation, she worried. A careful retreat might be needed, to avoid being at the fringes of a firefight or any violence.

She was so tired.

Tired of fighting her shard. Tired of managing.

She kept an eye out for Chicken Little, and an eye out for some of the Heartbroken. She met Foil’s eyes, and Foil folded her arms.

Scared.

Parian-

Out of her element. Against this. No halfway, no negotiation.

March, monsters in her own ranks, monsters over the next horizon. There was the balance of things, trying to do her part to keep the city upright. The pain in her legs, the years of not wanting anyone romantically but feeling like so much of her day was empty, no matter how much she did. She was worn out in the face of everything that she needed to do.

Quietly, she came to a resolution.

This anger that threatened to stoke the worst fears of the anti-parahumans, and empower and vindicate the do-gooders? She would let it happen. It was an inevitability in response to an inevitability.

She had moves to make elsewhere.

Polarize – 10.10

“Bluuuuurggh,” Crystal said, as we left the station.

“Blurgh,” I responded. “Cold enough for you?”

“It was seventy-four degrees out where we were stationed! What is this? Why can’t it be warm all the time everywhere?”

I smiled- not just because Crystal was being silly, but because I could see the crowd filtering out of the station. I was pretty used to the looks a cape got in public, and Weld, Laserdream and I were all costumed or known capes. It was pretty obvious when I compared the attention we got from some compared to the lone individuals who didn’t give half as many shits.

The latter group had either worked closely with capes for a long time, or they were capes themselves.

“So,” Crystal said. “How you been, cuz? Because I can’t help but notice that you went and hurt your other arm. Hand. Whatever.”

“We ran into a parahuman who burns powers. Sets forcefields and auras on fire. That was a thing. And Lung was there. I don’t suppose you had any access to Gimel news? TV?”

She shook her head. Her expression was nearly blank, but her eyebrows were up toward the center, creating a line of wrinkle on her forehead.

“Don’t make that face.”

She reached up and adjusted her hair a bit, so the part that swooped down over one half of her forehead and one eye now covered the eyebrows and some of her other eye. Still making the face, just hiding it.

I elbowed her while she was still adjusting, and her hair came loose of the hairband.

“It was a thing. Goddess against Teacher. Gimel caught in the middle. Monokeros, you know her? She was a thing a while back.”

She took a second, bending over so her hair draped down, so she could then comb it with her fingers and arrange it, before fixing her hairband into place to lock its position. A single finger helped adjust the curve of hair to where it tucked behind her ear.

She straightened, and then gave me a serious look. “You know what you sound like right now, right? But it wasn’t a dream! It was a place! And this guy was there, and her, and him, they were all there! But they couldn’t have been, Auntie Em!”

Crystal put her hands to her cheeks as she finished it.

“I wish it was a dream,” I said. “It was a mess. I’ll fill you in on it later.”

“Great.”

“Or not. You could find out by browsing the web-”

“Blegh, internet.”

“-finding a video of our tv appearance-”

She perked up. “Oh hey! That’s good! Neat!”

“Not good,” Sveta commented. “Necessary, but not pretty.”

“Oh no,” Crystal said. She’d gone from excited to crestfallen in a second. Even borderline horrified. “Because ‘necessary‘ always means good things. We just finished a stint of necessary.”

“They were pulling a media hit job on one of our team members,” I said.

“Who is they? What group, or what show?”

“No idea and Hardboil. On Lookout.”

Crystal made a face. “Even if it was them, why wasn’t it pretty? You’re supposed to be good at this stuff, cuz! And you have Capricorn! He’s done media appearances before, and he’s good at it!”

Someone looked him up, I thought.

“Sorry to butt in,” Sveta said. “Didn’t mean to get you in trouble, Victoria.”

“No,” Crystal said. “No, you’re fine. You can butt in all you like. You’re as good as family.”

Sveta blinked.

Weld put one arm around her. “I heard about the TV show. The prison.”

“It’s nice to know they keep you in the loop,” Crystal said, sticking out her tongue at him.

“Leave that group of yours and join the Wardens. We’ll take care of you,” Weld said.

“Tempting,” she said. “Prison?”

“It was one thing among… a lot of things,” I said.

“I’m glad you’re not too badly hurt,” Weld said.

“Somewhat traumatized, but we’re mostly fine,” Sveta said, hugging him back. “We lost a teammate. Cryptid. Not- not dead. But he left.”

She’d stumbled over her words in her haste to clarify that ‘lost’ wasn’t dead.

It put me in mind of the Leviathan attack. ‘Losses’. The word had haunted me for a while, until other moments and things had taken over. Such a horribly ambiguous word.

“Half of you didn’t have names when I left,” Crystal reminded us.

“One of the younger two. Not the camera tinker. Our changer.”

“I vaguely recall. I might be sharper if it wasn’t nearly midnight.”

“It’s past midnight,” Sveta said.

“Fucking time zones. So you were on television and you fucked it up-”

I elbowed her again. “It wasn’t great from a PR standpoint, but we did what we needed to. Got heroes on our side, saved Lookout from being the focus.”

“Fine. Conceded. But you fought our hometown dragon boy and lost, judging by that burn-”

“Won. I did pretty fucking awesome, actually.”

“You won against Lung. Right. Really helping your case, here, Miss ‘this wasn’t a fever dream’.”

I moved to elbow her again, and hit a square of forcefield.

“Fought Teacher, fought Goddess. I have a hundred texts from Aunt Carol, who was no doubt trying to see if she could reach me and use me to steer you back on course-”

“No comment,” I said.

“And twenty texts from your dad, who was interpreting Auntie C’s actions or crisis managing.”

“Fair bit of crisis managing, I think. I saw Amy,” I murmured to Crystal.

“Oh,” she said, and the levity where she’d been making fun of how hectic we’d been and complaining in good fun was all gone. “How was that?”

A very careful, neutral question.

“Not well. She left.”

“Left…?”

“Gimel. She and Marquis left to take a leadership role in another Earth. With Cryptid.”

Crystal nodded. “Your dad said Marquis was active on Earth N. It would make sense for him to take a firmer hand, go to Earth N-”

I was shaking my head. Sveta added a, “No,” for good measure.

“Another uninhabited Earth, using the skills he learned, then.”

“Inhabited,” Sveta said. “Shin.”

Crystal’s uncovered eye bugged out. “That’s Goddess’.”

“Was. Amy, Marquis, Cryptid now.”

“We don’t know how far they’re going with it,” Sveta added.

Crystal didn’t have a retort for once.

“It’s okay,” I said. “That’s a mess that’s going to have to be dealt with sometime, but not today. As shitty as it is to say, it’s a load off my mind that she’s not here.”

“I don’t think it’s shitty,” Sveta said. “You’ve been more at ease since all that.”

I shrugged and gave Sveta a smile. I turned more attention to Weld, who was apparently pretty content holding his girlfriend, his attention half on us and half on the crowd. He saw me looking.

“Vista.”

I perked up, looking.

“She’s just talking to her dad now. She was with her mom earlier, and her parents can’t stand to be in the same place at the same time.”

“And even when she sees each of them separately, it’s about who she saw first, who she saw longest… I guess that’s not better?”

Vista was out of costume. She looked so different. Her hair wasn’t straight, she had eyeliner on, and she had a fair number of freckles – more than usual. No waterproof makeup covering it up and changing her complexion, nose, and brow shape either. There wasn’t a trace of the old green and blue of her costume in her outfit, either. She wore a black sweatshirt over maroon scrubs that might have been medical scrubs, and wore a jacket and scarf over that. Given her age, she would be pretending to be part of the medical block student group. Helping out with supplies and first-aid for special credit?

Whatever the excuse or story was, she looked just enough like someone with a job that it didn’t draw attention, and the job wasn’t one that got in the way of her personal identity.

It sucked to see that her dad was showing so very little joy at seeing her, though.

She looked our way and I gave her a little wave. I didn’t want to break her cover, but-

-But apparently that was excuse enough for her to break away from her dad. She hurried off, and not toward us. She nudged some other people, and they headed our way.

These people- not familiar to me. I was left trying to guess who they were. A guy and a girl.

Browbeat? Browbeat was dead. Couldn’t and wouldn’t be Chariot. Too young to be Trainwreck. He looked military-esque, but he was also… sturdy. Not so fat, tall, or muscular in a way that I could point to any one of the things being responsible for my estimation of him, but a fair bit of all of those things. His choice of clothes didn’t work against that, either. Beanie, a leather jacket that was less fashion and more the kind of thing a blue collar worker bought if he expected to work outside, jeans that weren’t slim-fit or even regular fit, and heavy boots.

And he looked wholly comfortable in all of it.

His lady friend was a stark contrast. She wore a white wrap coat with gray fur trim and a silver chain extending along the front like a piece of jewelry that had been built into the coat. There were other decorative elements at the wrists. Black jeans, and gray suede boots that I could hear as they tapped on the ice and road. Her hair was in a ponytail, but I could see wisps of black hair escaping. It was rare to see hair that fine and that black.

“Hi big V, hi Crystal,” Missy said, after she had dragged them along enough. She was still fairly petite, though far less than she once had been, obviously, but it stood out with the company she kept, especially the guy. It didn’t help that the two were so straight-backed, and Missy was hunched over against the cold.

I hugged her. She smiled as she broke the hug. “Hi Missy.”

“You can call me whatever. This is, uh, Theo and Ava. I just realized I didn’t ask first about identities.”

I put out my hand to shake theirs. Theo accepted first.

“Glory Girl, hi,” Theo said. “I was a fan when I was a kid. Laserdream, wow.”

“I think I win,” Crystal whispered. She threw up a forcefield, expecting a jab that I didn’t bother to deliver.

“I’m Golem,” he said. “And I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t know the name.”

“I know the name,” I said.

“I know too,” Sveta said. “But if I said how, you’d think I was weird.”

“Weird why?” Theo asked.

“If I said J.Y., would that mean anything to you? Staff?”

“Yyyes?”

“She was one of a very small number of people who looked after me. So when she said she went to a town, I looked up the teams there.”

“Ahh,” Theo said. He wrinkled his nose. “Not too weird.”

“I’ll settle for that,” Sveta said.

“Cuff,” Ava introduced herself to me and Sveta. At Sveta’s handshake, she extended a look down. “That’s quite a hand… shake.”

“You’re the Chicago Wards,” Sveta said, matching Ava’s tone of intrigued surprise.

“When a lot of people make that connection, they’ll add something to it,” Ava said. “Chicago Wards, Weaver’s team. Or Chicago Wards, the people from the New Delhi video.”

I shook my head. “Chicago Wards, did what few teams besides New York were doing and organized a roster with a strategy.”

“That was in the New Delhi video,” Ava said. “I’m pretty sure.”

“If it was, it was something you guys were doing before the video, before Weaver, and I was paying attention back then.”

“Well, on behalf of Tecton, I’m touched,” Ava said.

“It’s tough. Damned by association, like Brockton Bay and the Undersiders,” Missy said. “Theo’s from Brockton Bay originally.”

“When did you get out?” I asked.

“Around the time the Slaughterhouse Nine arrived.”

“Good move,” Crystal said.

“I like getting together with all of the old Brockton Bay people,” Vista said. She huffed breath into her hands, then adjusted her scarf. When it didn’t adjust the way she wanted it to, she warped its dimensions. “Feels like I’m putting a puzzle back together. Everyone always has questions they never got to get answers to, you know? Except Rachel Lindt’s one of the people I keep meeting up with, and she’s not a question and answer kind of person.”

“Tattletale’s the one I keep running into,” I muttered. “She is a question and answer kind of person, and it sucks.”

Vista smiled. “Doesn’t it? I tried to reach out, get her in on the reuniting thing. Offered my hand in friendship, and she went straight for the jugular. She seems happy being a villain. Same type as Shadow Stalker, I think.”

I shrugged. There were a hundred things I could say to that, and figuring Tattletale out was something I could see a whole lot of merit in, if Vista ever wanted to get together and compare notes, do what she was talking about and getting answers. But that felt like a whole-day thing to unpack and figure out. Not a well-past-midnight thing.

But on the surface? I’d known Shadow Stalker briefly, and she had been kind of nice to be around when she’d had reason to be nice. I could believe that Tattletale was the same. But I knew just how shitty they could be when upset- Shadow Stalker broke faces, and Tattletale destroyed psyches. Shadow Stalker stuck relentlessly to a path and as shitty as she was at her core, however easily or excellently she could be a villain, she valued being a vigilante-type, and from what I knew about her, that wouldn’t change, however she was tempted. Being a vigilante served her ends, it served her ego, and it validated her at her core.

Tattletale had helped the city and in some twisted world where the chips had fallen down differently, she could have been a hero. There was a distinction, even, that she cared about shit that wasn’t herself a lot more than Shadow Stalker ever had. But being a villain served her ends, it served her ego, and it validated her at her core.

The others were chatting. Talking about the travel. Vista looked happy, and Sveta seemed very content.

Amusing to see that Theo was just a little bigger than Weld in physical dimensions. Weld was usually the heavyweight in the room. He still was, by a wide margin, but someone squinting their eyes wouldn’t have known it.

“Do you guys want to go somewhere warmer?” Crystal asked. “I bet we could find a place willing to serve us drinks-”

“I’m still too young,” Vista said.

“Coffee then? Anyone?”

I saw Sveta and Weld exchange a look.

“I’m looking forward to getting home,” Weld said. “Getting warm.”

“The cold bothers you?” Ava asked. “I didn’t think much did.”

“Slows me down,” Weld said. “A little stiff in the joints.”

“Let’s get you home to a heated mattress. I got everything out that we set up last winter, tested it, made sure there were no shorts in the wiring,” Sveta said, breaking away from the hug, taking one of Weld’s hands in hers and swaying a bit. “Some heated blankets with metal plates, music.”

“Please. You’ve got to catch me up on what I missed.”

“I’ve been saving stuff, mister,” Sveta said. “As requested. Doing what little I can to look after you.”

Weld pulled his fist close to his chest, and with Sveta holding onto it with both hands, drew her close enough that he could put his other arm around her. He looked to Crystal. “Drinks another time.”

“Another time for sure. When’s your birthday, Missy?”

“Not soon. May fifteenth. But I’ll be eighteen then.”

“Let’s do a Brockton Bay reunion then.”

“We’ll take you for a first drink,” Crystal said.

“That sounds nice. I know this is a weird question, but what would you think if I invited Rachel Lindt?”

“Do you think she’d accept?” Theo asked.

“I don’t know. She might only swing by if I bribe her. But I think it would be important if we could show her that we don’t have it in for her.”

Missy looked at me as she said the last bit.

“You’re vouching for her?”

“Yeah. And Miss Militia would too.”

“Then sure.”

Missy smiled.

Sveta and Weld said their goodbyes.

“I am catching a ride with… someone,” Vista said. “Procrastinating on that decision. No coffee for me. I’m just glad I get to say hi.”

“I wanted to say,” Theo said. “Victoria, uh… thank you?”

“For what?”

“This is a weird thing to bring up. But back when I was just in my first year of High School, you went after the gangs pretty hard.”

I winced.

“The Empire in particular?”

“I regret how I went about that,” I said.

“You shouldn’t,” he said. “You know how you can be raised one way, and you don’t second guess it until you have a reason to?”

I thought of Rain. I nodded.

“I was raised by those guys,” he said. “I don’t know how much I believed, but I went along with it for a while, because I was still in that kid state of mind, where you think if you don’t get something and the adults act like they do, they’re probably right?”

“Sure,” I said. “I think I can relate to that.”

“I remember when one guy, Thor, no powers, he just changed his name from something lame like Lester, he got carted back with a few broken bones.”

“You were that close to their operations?” I asked. I connected two thoughts. His power- “You’re second gen. Allfather? Or would you rather not say?”

“I don’t mind saying. Nah, not Allfather, that would have been weird. Kaiser and Heith.”

“Oh yeah. I guess I pictured the older guy having a kid instead of the… twenty year old, I guess? Thereabouts?”

“Yeah. Thereabouts.”

“Sorry, I’m getting nerdy and… inaccurate.”

“Very inaccurate,” Crystal said.

“It’s late,” I said. “Sorry. You were saying?”

“The guy came back hurt and I was happy about it. Fucker deserved it. Realizing I was happy wasn’t when I realized I didn’t like the Empire. But it was step seven or eight in ten steps? I don’t know how I would have ended up if I hadn’t had that. If I’d missed a step or two or three.”

I nodded.

“Some of them ended up in the Shepherds, y’know?” he asked.

“Yeah. That came up at one point. I haven’t run into them yet, but I did have a run in with the Shepherds.”

“I remember you geeking out one time,” Crystal said. “Remember? You were telling me all about how Masters have interpersonal problems and Shakers have issues feeling secure-”

“Ahem,” Vista said.

“-and tinkers dwell…”

“You got shakers wrong,” I pointed out. My phone was buzzing in my pocket, so I pulled it out, without looking at it. “What are you getting at?”

“Maybe. I’m starting to think you’ve got a Brute thing going, Victoria. Because you have run-ins with everyone and crash through everything. Everything.”

I rolled my eyes. I checked my phone. Kenzie.

“Gotta take this,” I said.

“Yeah, you know I got your goat.”

I waited until I was mostly out of earshot to answer. “I’m here.”

Kenzie’s voice came across with both enthusiasm and a slight hush, like she didn’t want to wake up someone nearby. “Hi. Sorry to call so late, but I see you’re still at the station, and something came up.”

I looked around for the camera.

“Seven and a half o’clock, if the station entrance is twelve.”

I turned myself around, looked, and spotted it.

“What happened?”

“Okay, so um, first of all, Tattletale was peeking in. I tried to say hi, open a dialogue, and she went dark. But I thought you should know.”

“Watching us? Okay.”

“Watching everyone, I think. The camera wasn’t too interested in us, and when it looked like it was, I thought I’d do the digital handshake. I might’ve stepped in sooner but I was changing for bed and brushing my teeth.”

“You need to go to sleep sooner.”

“I know! But I wanted to organize my stuff, take apart my broken camera and sort the components away, and I got carried away.”

“What’s the other thing?”

“Dead bodies. Heroes from your tracking program.”

I found myself holding my breath. “Who?”

I didn’t want to hear. I didn’t want to know.

“Slingstone, Nailfarer and Scaffold.”

“Navigators. That’s not far from Brockton Bay. Tell me where.”

“I can give you coordinates. I’ll send it to you and you can click the link to have it go up as a flag on your map exec.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m glad to help. Um, and Victoria?”

The tone suggested she was preparing to deliver more bad news.

“Hit me with it.”

“There’s chatter on the lines. Villains know it happened, and they seem split on what they’re going to do about it.”

“The game. I know it doesn’t count for much these days, but… there are rules we all follow.”

“That’s the chatter. Some like the decisive action. Some hate it. They’re calling a halt to all activity for now and they’re going to hold a meeting tomorrow to figure out how to handle this. Whether they allow it.”

Or encourage it. We need to figure out how -we- handle this.

“Thanks, Kenzie. But you should really be in bed.”

“This is important. I was going to ask if I should stay up. I can be comms.”

“How long would it take you to get a message out to all the teams?”

“A minute.”

“Tell them to stand down. If the villains are going quiet, it should be fine.”

“Can I say it’s an emergency?”

“Yeah. Might be good. Have someone who’s awake double-check what you wrote before you mass-send. Not Sveta. Let her have her night with Weld.”

“Got it.”

I rejoined the others.

“You look serious,” Crystal said.

“Some capes got killed. Heroes. We were trying to interconnect, share information, figure out a way to deal with the villains, now that the prison is gone.”

She cleared her throat. “Gone?”

I sighed.

“I’ll come.”

“You just got back from-”

“From classified,” she said. “I’ll come.”

She wasn’t the only one who wanted to.

⊙

We were close to Brockton Bay, and a part of me had hoped we’d run into Senior Trooper Littlejohn again. I’d at least established some rapport with him.

Police cars had been stopped around the site, and though the sirens were off, the lights did flash. The scattered parts were lit up with the stark glare of headlights from one side and strobing red and blue from another.

It was only thanks to Vista that the truck could keep pace with Crystal and I. We’d arrived on the scene as a group. I was out of costume, because I hadn’t really planned to get into any trouble. I floated, so I was an obvious cape, but that was it. The others had changed.

To a horror scene. People butchered. Cops standing by and trying to stay warm while the wind whipped aggressively past us, some techs were pacing the field, planting little yellow flags by each piece of a body, and the lights being almost solely from the cars made the scene an isolated image on a page otherwise painted black.

What did it say, that of Vista, of Laserdream, of Golem, Cuff, and I, we’d seen bad enough things that an unrecognizable assortment of human parts wasn’t enough to shake us?

“Who’s in charge?” I asked.

Fingers pointed.

I floated over, so my feet wouldn’t contaminate the scene. A new face, a new set of expectations and prejudices to wrangle.

“Can we look?”

She seemed to take her time considering, until Golem flashed his Wardens badge.

“Be my guest,” the woman said. “We’re taking our photos and our notes, but this looks like costume on costume crime. We’re not equipped for it.”

“They were heroes. These ones were good guys who saved lives,” I said. “They worked with the system, they worked with police.”

“I’m sympathetic, I really am,” she said. “But we’re not equipped.”

I was left kind of speechless. A shift in the light drew my attention- Vista was enlarging the car headlights, and it looked like she was bending the beams, illuminating the scene.

“I’ll put it back before we go,” she told the officer driving the car.

No response.

The Navigators had passed through Hollow Point briefly. They’d been just far enough away that we hadn’t had much more cause to interact with them. Too small, too narrow in their focus.

Nailfarer had a weird name, but it was based in legend, and she’d been candid in interviews about why. She had talked about her trigger event at a time when such things had been discouraged. Her parents and aunt had boarded a ship to America, convinced by shady individuals that it was by legitimate channels. Mock tests, mock papers, and fair amounts of money. They had boarded a ship and then been shuttled into a cargo container. One of several.

She and her family members had been let out to work the ship or provide services to the crew. They were slated to be slaves, and this was a beginning to their new lives. She saw her oldest family members die, heard from others that they’d been thrown overboard. She’d seen younger family members die too – alive but dead inside.

She’d gained powers, she’d fought, and she’d lost against sheer numbers. She’d been beaten into submission and made to serve for three months as an enforcer before fighting her way out.

For ten years, she’d been a hero. Her name more a reference to where she came from than her ability to turn dead tissues into doors.

“Fuck,” I said, as I looked over the scene. She’d been torn into fifty pieces. Some were in the branches of a tree above, now brightly illuminated after Vista had adjusted the light.

“Found a murder weapon,” Golem said. “Shovel, wooden handle. It’s buried.”

Police officers jogged over to investigate.

Didn’t narrow things down, I was pretty sure. Nothing jumped to mind.

Slingstone… he hadn’t been as cavalier about his background. He’d gone after the big guys. He was ex-Haven and hadn’t been open about why, and he’d dodged the Shepherds, presumably being close-mouthed about his decision there. He was ‘boring’ by how he looked on paper. A blaster, a single shot at a time, softball sized ‘stones’. They flew in straight lines at high velocities and were really, really good at breaking through and shattering the inorganic, including armor.

But he’d fought Endbringers, traveling overseas to do it. A year before Leviathan had hit Brockton Bay, Slingstone had been hurt in an Endbringer fight, and he’d taken a break. He’d resumed activities just in time for the world to end.

The individual pieces of his body were mixed in with Nailfarer’s and Scaffold’s. Streaks of blood suggested the directions by which they’d been thrown.

Multiple sizes of footprint suggested that members of the team had waded through the gore of the first one to die… or that there had been multiple attackers.

“Cuff, do you have any metal? I need a chunk you don’t care about,” Laserdream said.

Cuff tossed something to her.

The team hadn’t been much of a cape against cape group. They’d focused more on mundane gangs and criminal organizations, with Slingstone being the one to go up against Endbringers and challenge the powered enforcers.

In a lot of ways, they’d been closer to police than capes. They’d been offered positions in the Guild, an international organization rooted in Canada, very cause-driven and mission-focused. They’d turned it down, allegedly because it was still too much about image, and they just wanted to work.

Who or what came after you, and why?

The location was important. That I’d been pretty fucking close to here in the last twenty-four hours was important. I knew it was bad to decide who the culprit was before all the evidence came in, but Love Lost’s group had members who were willing and able to do something this savage, and she wasn’t situated that far away.

March’s group could blow people to smithereens and take people to pieces, and they’d been close, earlier in the day.

“Victoria,” Laserdream said.

I flew over in her direction. Below her, Scaffold was more intact than the rest. Head and torso were impaled on the mangled architecture that he’d created with his power. His parts were strewn about as the others were, red and glistening.

Created and altered building layouts. Slide a wall this way, raise up a wall where there was none. Trapdoors and cover as it was needed.

General use wall and forcefield powers, as I understood it, came about most often from trigger events that involved ambient, environmental threats to people or things the trigger victim wanted to protect.

Aunt Sarah had it as a power. So did Crystal. So had Eric.

Me and my mom? Not so much.

Well, I had something closer to my cousins than anything, now. It had changed. I couldn’t quite allow myself to think it counted.

Scaffold had been in a bad place and wanted to protect someone from the place or situation. Probably. He’d dedicated his life to going up against gangs and criminal organizations, though he’d been alone in the group in being as vocal as he’d been about corrupt governments, police departments, hero groups, and school administrations. He’d been the original reason the Guild had reached out; they liked causes.

Laserdream had Cuff’s piece of metal set in a bowl of forcefield, and was firing a laser at it. The metal glowed white hot, and she had her hands cupped around it with the one middle finger pointed more in than the others, to supply the laser.

“The cuts,” Laserdream said. “Those are claw marks.”

I flew closer to see, while she floated above, warming her hands with a grim look on her face.

“I know your eyes aren’t as good as my one eye, but I see footprints, Victoria.”

“Point?”

She provided a thin beam, laser pointer style, to indicate.

These footprints weren’t human. Long and two-toed, pressing deep into the frozen ground like the source was heavy.

“Minion?” I asked.

“Could be. Could be, um, do you remember mentioning that Prancer was bringing in some Case-fifty-threes to screw with Sveta?”

“It’s possible. A bit of a reach- they didn’t come to the Fallen raid and I think they left.”

The shovel. One had had a shovel. Sveta had mentioned her, but hadn’t mentioned if she’d lived.

I winced. Cross that bridge when we came to it.

Scaffold had been lifted up, and thrown down onto his namesake construction. Had he been clawed before or after? If it was before, then this had been for the drama of it, to create a show. If it was after, it suggested something personal, retaliating or expressing anger in a futile way.

One claw swipe had practically severed head from upper body.

Finished off? Given a merciful death?

I saw how red the blood of the wound was.

I looked at the cops, many hunkering inside their cars or by the doors, trying to stay warm. At Crystal, who was holding her hands above the heated metal.

“How long has the scene been like this?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard by the woman in charge.

“We arrived half an hour ago.”

The blood was too red. It hadn’t frozen. Snow had collected on it, but it hadn’t frozen.

“Shit,” I said, with enough vehemence that just about everyone stopped in their tracks.

I flew straight to Scaffold. I put my hand over his mouth.

No breath, but I could feel the warmth.

At the wound in the neck- there, I could feel the breath.

I touched his face, and I wiped the snow away from the eyes.

“Hey!” This from the woman in charge.

I ignored her. My eyes were fixed on him. Scaffold, half his stomach, one arm, and everything below the waist missing, his jaw unhinged, crushed his eyes closed, then opened them. His eyes met mine, wavering like he couldn’t really see me half the time.

“We need medical attention!” I shouted. “He’s alive!”

Oh no, I thought. He’s alive, and he has no power that’s anything like that.

He had no right or ability to be alive, which meant-

Horror surged through me as I flew over the field. People were rushing to Scaffold, and I was rushing to find a piece of meat that I could recognize.

A quarter of a human head, a fragment of mask clinging to it by stubbornness and the stickiness of gore more than by mechanics. A single eye.

I turned it, so the eye faced the headlight. The pupil narrowed.

“They’re all alive!” I shouted. “It might be every piece!”

They’d been hanging back, everything happening slowly, sticking together for numbers against a parahuman threat, and to provide light. Now they were acting, everyone in motion. Nobody with any idea what to do.

The woman in charge had to shout at people who were heading to the bushes to throw up, because pieces had been strewn so far and wide across the field that there might be some in the bushes.

When she was done shouting, and when most people had their orders or had decided they’d be useless, the woman was left leaning against the hood of her car, hands in her pockets, her eyes wide.

“They said something was off,” she muttered. “I figured powers, right?”

I pressed my lips closed, watching. At this stage I wasn’t sure what to do that wouldn’t put me in the way.

“What do I even do?” she asked.

“We see if we can put them back together, or if we can give them mercy,” I said.

“I meant… this is going to be a nightmare, with everything that’s already going on.”

I could picture Love Lost’s group. I remembered Sidepiece’s words about the state of the itinerant villain.

“Don’t tell anyone anything yet. Get your guys to keep quiet,” I said, my voice low and quiet. I met her eyes, incredulous eyes, and then I explained just why it was necessary.

Polarize – 10.11

“B. Alright. Which half? Again. Alright. T, u-. Alright. Ambulance? Ambush? Ambush it is. I’m going to write that down.”

My voice didn’t sound like mine, as I went through the steps. Robotic, methodical, motivated rather than cheer. No, cheer was the polar opposite of the emotion that touched my voice. Harrowed fit better. My finger shook as I moved it to the screen of my phone, to the point where I missed the ‘A’.

Beside me, Crystal rubbed my shoulder and back. “Do you want me to take over?”

I shook my head. Stubbornly, I backed out of the special characters bubble and returned to the keyboard. I hit the ‘A’ with more deliberation.

I looked up from the screen. A white cloth had been laid out in the emergency tent, between a plastic sheet and a stretcher. A black outline marked a loose human form, and the parts that had been found and identified were laid out on the stretcher. The area of the plastic sheet outside of that outlined figure was littered with rows and columns of unidentifiable segments that had been attributed to Nailfarer specifically.

“You didn’t see their faces?” I asked the segment of Nailfarer’s head. Only one third of the head sat on the white cloth, but with the way Scaffold’s architecture had impaled his head, this was one of only two segments we had that possessed its sight and hearing.

There was so much hair attached to this segment of head. It would only be shoulder-length if everything were back the way it should be, but with this part of the head being so small, it seemed like a lot.

My question was answered with two belated blinks.

“You didn’t see their faces. Did they touch you when they used their power?”

Three blinks.

“Unsure? Alright.” It would have been so useful to know if the power had involved touch.

“Why were you out here?” Crystal asked, jumping in. “Did they invite you?”

“Hold on,” I said.

“Sure,” she said.

“Nailfarer. Daiyu. I asked these questions before and I’m going to ask again. Do you want to keep going?”

Blink. Yes.

“Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

Another ‘yes’ blink.

“Alphabet?” I asked. I swiped my phone, showing her the crude drawing- A-L on one side and M-Z on the other.

Blink, and after a moment’s delay, a movement of the eye, looking off to the left of the phone.

Without turning it around I swiped the phone left. A-F and G-L. Again, a look to her left, my right. A-F.

“A, B, C- alright.” I repeated the process, ignoring the commotion as people came into the tent. “M, N, O-. ‘Co’. G-H-I-J-K-L-. Cold?”

Blink.

“They set up heat lamps here, we’re getting you warmed up as best we can. After this you’ll be moved to a hospital and you’ll be warmer-”

Two blinks. ‘No’.

“You want the cold,” I said.

Blink.

“It might help if it numbs things,” Crystal said.

As I turned to look at Crystal, horrified, I almost missed seeing it. I turned back to Nailfarer. “Again?”

A blink. Confirmation.

“One of us should go talk to someone in charge, then. It might be the same for Scaffold and Slingstone. Do you need a break?”

I shook my head.

“I’ll be right back,” Crystal said. She flew to her feet instead of climbing to them.

I took a deep breath, before meeting Nailfarer’s eye. “Do you want your head chilled too?”

Two blinks. No. Then there was a pause. Three blinks followed.

“After?” I guessed.

One blink, slower than the ones before.

“After, then. We’ll keep that eye of yours mobile and get the information to get these guys?”

The blink was firm, followed by eye contact as steady as anything she’d managed up to this point.

Outside, there was still a lot of commotion. Many of the body parts had been found but not identified. I was pretty sure that was what Slingstone was doing.

“Anything else you need?” I asked, putting my hand to the left, then I extended my right hand off to the side, “Or back to the questions?”

Questions.

“We can stop at any time. Four blinks, I’ll know you’ve hit your limit. Anything you can provide is useful, but if you need to back out, you don’t need to worry. We have a tinker device we can try using.”

Two blinks for no.

“Do you have something to volunteer?” I asked. I still didn’t recognize my own voice. I was trying to sound gentle, but I worried I sounded like someone on the cusp of screaming or crying instead. I extended the other hand. “Or should I ask my questions?”

My questions.

“I’d like to rattle off some possibilities, is that okay?”

One blink for yes.

“You were out here when they attacked. Did they bait you?”

Yes.

“Did they call? Email? Leave a message? Message. Through a messenger or courier? Paper? Electronic. Electronic, alright. You had a website, I think, was it through that? Another website? Yes, okay. Parahumans Online?”

A message asking to meet with them, through Parahumans Online, baiting them here, where they were ambushed and taken apart, left alive and suffering.

I verified the information I had thus far, recapping it for her. One blink for yes.

Information confirmed by our witness, I sent a message to all cape teams in our network, warning them to be careful of anything similar. I added further instructions to warn any independent heroes they knew.

I left out the particulars of what had happened to the Navigators.

“The bait, was it anonymous? A guest account? Alright. Were they posing as a fellow hero? A person in need? A villain? Someone with information?”

One blink to confirm on ‘information’.

“Was it information on your enemies? Allies? The city? Other Earths?” I asked. Nothing. “Do you want to spell it out?”

One blink, then three. I got my phone out and set it back to the starting image in the gallery. “Tell me what you need to say.”

C. O…

“Cold?”

A yes. I could see it in her eye, how it were more active, but there was a wildness to it. Distracted.

“It’s getting worse? The pain?”

A yes-blink.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. I headed to the opening of the tent and flagged down a doctor.

The woman came inside. She looked spooked. Justifiably.

“Did Laserdream talk to you?”

“She’s talking to other doctors.”

“Nailfarer wants the heaters turned off- we’ll leave the one on by her head. She’s anxious about it.”

“The cold-”

“Isn’t hurting her. I don’t think the individual parts can even be truly damaged at this point. But it’s uncomfortable, and she would prefer to be numb. I get the impression drugs aren’t helping-”

The doctor shook her head. “Localized to certain parts, as far as we can tell.”

“Can we?” I asked, indicating the heaters.

In the end, the answer was a ‘no’, but it wasn’t a fearful or malicious no. They were wanting to load up the three victims and get them somewhere safe. I made my arguments, and after the doctors consulted, they settled on using a collection of ice boxes.

As the ice boxes were used, I could see Nailfarer’s eye and the area around it shift and change, her face reacting in small ways. When we’d found them, they had been paralyzed by the cold. That was only part of it, however. The parts that had been thawed could move, think more clearly, and felt the connections to the other parts elsewhere, but they didn’t always have the necessary parts. Nailfarer didn’t have every muscle and nerve that would communicate to parts around her damaged tissue.

“Keep the head and the right hand out of the coolers,” one doctor said – not one I’d been communicating with.

“She’d prefer to have her hand in the cooler, I’m pretty sure,” I said.

“I want her to be able to signal and gesture to communicate. The hand has some limited mobility. If she needs something she can raise her hand.”

“I have a communication system, I can stay with her and interpret-”

“Just keep it out of the cooler,” the doctor said, brusque. “Excuse me.”

I nodded, getting out of his way.

I looked around. I saw Vista, standing off to one side, stoic. Crystal was talking to the woman in charge and some doctors. Golem and Cuff were with Slingshot.

The atmosphere was heavy. It was an entirely separate and distinct feeling from the claustrophobic feeling that had settled in over the course of the last-

I checked my phone.

-the last thirty-five minutes. It had only been thirty-five minutes?

“Are you comfortable enough?” I asked Nailfarer.

Three blinks.

“Not with the situation being what it is, obviously. But is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

Two blinks.

“Just let me know,” I said. “I’m staying close.”

The fingers moved clumsily- not like a hand should. One finger tapped hard against the metal pan it had been laid down on.

One tap equivalent to one blink?

Crystal wrapped up her conversation, with Golem, Cuff, and Vista in the general orbit of that meeting of paramedics and police. The policewoman in charge was still organizing the grid-like search of the field and the area around the tree.

“Hey cuz,” Crystal said, sounding very tired. Not just fatigue- she was heartsick. “We should look at getting you home.”

“I’m going to stay with Nailfarer,” I said. “I think we worked out our communication system pretty well.”

One sharp tap on the metal pan. Cuff jumped.

“Yeah. Pretty well,” I said, my heart breaking a little.

“This isn’t good for you,” Crystal said.

“Doesn’t matter. They need someone to be their advocate. Slingstone and Scaffold can’t talk?”

“Not much,” Vista said. “Scaffold’s head is a mess, but he’s still alive somehow. Slingstone broke down. They tried to put him under and it seems to have worked.”

“Then I’m going to stay with these guys, see them to the hospital. I’ll make sure they don’t need anything.”

“I can do that,” Crystal said. “I know how your communication system works. I did it with- I’ve done it before.”

I saw her glance at Vista. Vista had some idea. Golem and Cuff- not so much.

“You did it with me. Yeah, I know.”

“Trust me? Let me help.”

“You’re freezing, you just came back from a classified misson, and my dad is expecting you at your apartment.”

“I’ll warm up at the hospital, your dad is in the top one percent when it comes to understanding ‘we had a hero thing’ as an excuse, and I might have just come back from a warzone-”

Golem cleared his throat.

“You didn’t hear that.”

I shook my head.

“…But a classified mission is one thing. You just picked fights with Teacher, Goddess, and Lung.”

“Holy shit. Lung?” Vista asked.

“Wow,” Golem said.

“And Goddess!” Crystal said, wheeling on them. “And a guy who was in the Birdcage for very good reasons, who is now at the top of his game! Major people.”

“Lung is major,” Golem said, defensive.

“Lung was major in our city! These people are major on multiple inhabited worlds!”

“I didn’t fight Goddess or Teacher directly,” I said.

Crystal reached out and gripped me by the front of my coat, only a few inches away from having her hands around my neck.

“If you forced me to go home, I wouldn’t sleep a wink anyway,” I said, raising my eyes from her hands to make eye contact. My voice had that harrowed quality to it again. Robotic, more emotionally dead and hollow than emotional. “I need to make sure they’re okay. Go home. See dad, sleep. Relieve me in the morning, swing by and take over.”

“Then you sleep,” she said.

“Yes. Then I get my team together, and we work on figuring this out.”

“You don’t have to get involved with it, Victoria,” she said.

“I can’t imagine a world where I’m not,” I answered.

Crystal folded her arms. I folded mine, staring her down.

“There’s something else. A complication.”

“I’ll need to find out eventually.”

“I would rather it was after you’d slept, digest what’s already happened. Or better yet, walk away from this.”

I didn’t budge, staring her down.

“There were still pieces of Nailfarer missing, weren’t there?” Vista asked.

I set my jaw and nodded.

“They were seeing if they could find all the relevant pieces, put the people back together like a jigsaw,” Vista added. “All three are still missing parts from the midsection. Heart, one or both lungs, ribs, other vitals. Slingstone couldn’t deal with it.”

“They took parts, so we can’t put them back together,” I concluded.

Vista nodded, her face grim, lips pressed together so hard they were white.

“Good to know,” I said. “Complete and utter monsters, but… it fills out the picture.”

“You couldn’t sound less honest if you tried,” Crystal said, stabbing a finger at my chest. “Filling out the picture. Don’t pretend you’re objective about all of this.”

I looked away from her, and I saw her huff, annoyed. I asked the others. “You guys are going home then?”

“It was really nice to catch up some,” Vista said. “I’m sorry it’s always sandwiched between horrible stuff.”

“We’ll meet up, do something easy.”

“Yeah, please. And take care of yourself, big V, please? If your cousin is worried then I’m worried.”

“We grew up in Brockton Bay,” Golem said. “We can make it through this.”

I shook his offered hand. I did appreciate the support.

Crazy to think he was Kaiser’s kid.

“…Even if it is fucking horrific,” he added.

“It is,” I said. I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to say more, in case I got emotional.

I shook Cuff’s hand as well.

“Keep us updated,” she said, before she let go. “This is going to haunt me.”

I squeezed her gauntlet in confirmation.

Vista began shaping the environment, pausing only to fix the cop car that hadn’t entirely receded to its original shape. A shortcut back to their area of the city.

The doctor got out of the back as I got near. She headed straight off to the other ambulances. Slingstone and Scaffold.

I entered the ambulance, and I sat beside the fold-out tray with the various pieces of Nailfarer’s head on it. The arm was on a metal tray, which in turn was on a non-slip material, which rested on the coolers.

“Whatever you need, Daiyu,” I told her, my voice low. “Let me know. I’m going with you to the hospital, and I’ll be with you for a while after. I’m your advocate and your hands until we get something better in place for all three of you… If that’s okay.”

One blink to confirm.

“Can I touch your hand?” I asked, indicating with one hand, reaching, I stuck my other hand out the other way. “Or not? I don’t want to thaw you out any faster, if that makes it hurt.”

Her eye moved in the direction of ‘touch’.

It was like picking up a mannequin’s hand. Cold, detached, strangely light. I held her hand in mine, and felt it move, holding firm.

Three blinks to ask a question. I used my left hand to fumble for my phone. A little clumsier. We worked through the alphabet, but it was quick with so many letters being at the start of lists.

T-E-A-M.

“Scaffold is insensate, I think. They put Slingstone under for a while. I think they would do the same for you if they thought they could.”

Blink blink. ‘No’.

“You don’t want to. You want to answer questions?”

Blink.

Such a fucking tough cookie.

A paramedic came to the back of the ambulance. He paused as he saw me.

“You’re coming?”

I nodded.

“You know her?”

“Getting to.”

The hand moved. I held the wrist instead of the fingers, and held the hand up so the fingers wouldn’t be scraping and bumping againg the surface. The hand was heavier than the length of arm it was attached to.

She shook so much- with effort, with stress, and probably with emotion.

One thumb partially extended, fingers drawn most of the way in.

“Good enough,” the paramedic said.

Someone else got in- another paramedic, while the guy who’d been at the back headed to the driver’s seat.

The guy sitting by Nailfarer seemed at a loss for what to do for her. He busied himself making sure the coolers were secure.

“Where were we?” I asked. The emotions I’d been repressing were getting to me, and my eyes were welling up. It was either cry, or find myself in panic mode. I didn’t fight the crying, instead focusing on my phone. “By my notes, we left off while talking about what they used to bait you out.”

Blink.

Hard to breathe.

I blinked, and tears streaked down my cheek. I turned to one side, holding up the phone at Nailfarer’s eye level. Daiyu’s eye level. It put the paramedic behind me, able to see the screen as I showed Nailfarer. I hoped it meant he didn’t see the tears.

If he did, he didn’t say anything.

⊙

I was quiet as I let myself in. The place was dark, but light was just beginning to stream in.

Ashley and Damsel had fallen asleep in the living room. There were two wine glasses on the coffee table, a bottle of red wine, as well as a cutting board with a quarter of a baguette, some assorted meats and cheeses, and a number of vegetables – not terribly exotic, but supply lines and international farming wasn’t what it had been on Bet. They hadn’t finished the vegetables, bread or meat, but there was a plate I was fairly sure had been set with chocolates.

Damsel had fallen asleep with her head in Ashley’s lap. Ashley had pulled four or so throw-blankets over herself, trying to stay warmer, and slumped over to the side, head leaning on the arm-rest of the couch, feet pulled up and pressed into Damsel’s belly. Clawed fingers draped off the side of the couch, curling up as much as they were able as they pressed against the floor.

The food had been sitting out for a while, but I didn’t really care. I’d managed to keep my stomach for the worst of the evening, I’d endure whatever food poisoning gave me. I hoped.

The baguette was a little stale, the cheeses tacky with the moisture that had leeched out. The meat had a crispy quality at some of the edges, when it hadn’t been cooked.

I took what I could. I thought I hadn’t made noise, but as I straightened, Ashley had her eyes open. She hadn’t moved the rest of her an inch.

“How bad?” she asked.

“As bad as it gets without being S-class.”

“Endbringer class?”

“Basically.”

“You didn’t call us out.”

“Not that kind of bad. I’ll explain tomorrow, best as I can. For now, we keep our mouths shut.”

“Why?” Ashley asked.

Damsel had her eyes open now too. She didn’t move either.

“Too dangerous. It’s the kind of thing that blows up. It has to wait until we have more information.”

“Nothing’s going to happen in the meantime?”

“I warned people to be wary. All hero teams should be standing down, villains are holding off until a meeting tonight.”

“Then we have to do something before then.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m thinking I get three or four hours of sleep, then we wrangle the heroes. Organize something, see what info we can dig up.”

“Then we annihilate them,” Damsel said, half asleep. The blanket that Damsel had put over her legs was pricked with a blade-point, then moved so it covered her head, as she turned her face away from the window, still using Ashley’s thigh as a pillow.

“No annihilation yet,” Ashley replied.

“If you get around to it and you don’t send me an invitation, I’ll have to annihilate you instead.”

“Naturally,” Ashley said. She put her head back and sighed in a way that looked like she was trying to get back to a place where she could fall asleep again.

I made my exit. Back to my room, grabbing my bag and then simultaneously trying to juggle food and bag all at once. Finding it too much, I checked nobody was looking, then altered my body’s orientation to be horizontal, placing the things across my belly and lap. I swam-floated in the direction of my room and got myself set up there.

Computer, food, water. I tore off a hunk of baguette with my teeth and ate it on its own. Wood smoked, and flavorful enough that it was actually fine and enjoyable like that, even stale. I booted up my computer.

The staler end of the baguette eaten and chewed, I tore off pieces and combined them with cheese and meat from my plate.

A message from the Wardens. I’d sent something from the hospital, asking for details on the bait-message that had gone out to the Navigators.

My reply came from Dragon.

Finding the internet address the message had been sent through wasn’t the hardest thing in the world, though obfuscation had been used. Dragon could do that.

But while she and I were talking, she wrote, she had two subjects she wanted to raise. One was Jeanne Wynn’s pledge to me, that she would get me access to the files. Dragon was her intermediary in that.

She was less keen to provide details on the other. It was something that Dragon felt could only be discussed face to face.

⊙

The information. Spell it out. Trust.

Vista and Golem were in attendance along with Cinereal- and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one. On any other day, objective, I would have said she was the perfect person for the role. She was serious, focused, and she had an angry edge to her, but always controlled. Controlled anger was, in my opinion, perfect for the current crisis. She had been a heavy hitter in Atlanta, which hosted a major arm of Watchdog, unusual in that she didn’t tend to leave her city, even for Endbringer fights, because her power was best if she stuck to one location.

But Cinereal was scary as shit. She was almost scarier than Alexandria in pure attitude and disposition, and Alexandria had been the Protectorate’s enforcer, their scary woman in black and steel. Cinereal had no steel and wore ash grey and white. She had no spikes and no hard edges, no weapons in plain view. It was the look on her face, upper half covered with a mask, and it was in how she held herself.

I could imagine all of the angriest, most fucked up corporate capes and Wards I’d run into over the course of my adolescence. The kids who’d been angry and frustrated, got powers, joined a team, and got worse, not better. I knew that they got second chances, they were coddled to, and inordinate resources were spent on them.

Seeing the natural resting bitch face, the posture, and the natural menace, I was pretty sure that Cinereal was one of the PRT’s success stories, when it came to transforming the tougher Wards into good heroes. She’d never been meant to be a leader, much less of a major city like Atlanta, but her predecessors had died, she’d taken up the position by order of succession in a crisis, and I imagined nobody had been brave enough to ask her to leave the role, after. To her credit, she’d never given them a reason.

Still, it was distracting that I felt so on guard against her. She was as bad as Ashley when Ashley was touchy, but she didn’t rant.

I’d asked Vista to come and to corroborate, and to be our liaisons to the Wardens. All of the other hero team leaders were here. Brio from Foresight, Mayday from Advance Guard, and Moonsong from the Shepherds.

Smaller team leaders were present too. Houndstooth, Recycler, Danger Ranger, Withdrawal and Caryatid, Lark and Dido, Cacophobic, and Sweet Justice were gathered. Some had sat out. I was glad that Super Magic Dream Parade had.

I had Swansong and Capricorn with me. Capricorn sat while I stood, one of his hands casually resting on the laptop keyboard. We were connected to Lookout.

It took a while for everyone to get settled.

“This shouldn’t leave this room until we’re all in agreement,” I said. “I talked to the police deputy on the scene, and she thought it was sensible to be careful on this one.”

“The Navigators got hurt,” Mayday said.

I nodded.

“It was bad,” Danger Ranger said.

He was with the Wayfarers, and the Wayfarers were loosely connected to the Navigators. They’d worked together on major missions, but Ranger and his team were usually okay to play things much more ‘street level’ than gunning for America-side groups of international gangs. Nailfarer had wanted to reach out to him once things were settled. Before she’d managed to fall asleep.

“Twelve hours ago,” I explained, “The Navigators were sent a message on Parahumans Online. It was very targeted, telling them that there was a group of families that had been captured and held on a tinker vessel. They’d escaped on Gold Morning and were looking to reconnect with their families. For those of you who know the Navigators, this is like offering a million dollars to mercenaries or an international shipment of someone else’s supply to a drug lord. It’s what they’re about.”

There were some nods. Most knew this. Withdrawal was sitting in a chair, his agility frame folded up, under and around the chair so it had some spring to it, adjustable on the fly. A notebook was pressed against his knee and he took notes as I talked.

“They used knowledge about the team to bait them, and when they attacked the Navigators, they hit hard. All three members are in the hospital and we don’t know if they’ll recover.”

All faces in the room were deadly serious. Cinereal, already and always serious, drummed her fingers.

Swansong spoke up, “This was either personal or it was meant to provoke. The reason Antares is urging caution is that we can’t be baited by the provocation, and we can’t let emotions cloud our search for the personal.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“What did they do?” Mayday asked.

“They were taken to pieces,” I said. “Cut, torn, dismembered, fingers removed, teeth scattered. A power was used to preserve them before it happened. They’re aware and feel every piece, they aren’t succumbing to exposure, sickness, or blood loss.”

“They were made immortal and chopped up?” Moonsong asked, her eyes wide behind her mask.

“Chopping would have been tidy,” Swansong said. “Pieces were torn off.”

“I’ve talked to Slingstone and Nailfarer,” I said. “They both said that they were attacked by multiple individuals. They were hit hard enough and fast enough that by the time the power use came into play, they weren’t able to discern any particulars. One attacker was large, with a frame like a bear, either Changer, minion, drone, or Case-53. Another was more precise.”

I hit keys on the keyboard, showing images that the cops had taken, as well as a few that Crystal had spotted with her keen eyesight. It started with the footprints, the shovel, streaks of blood to show how far the spray had traveled, and gradually got to the full show- pictures taken of the gore.

“Dragon identified the source of two messages that went out last night,” I said. “The first was to the Navigators. The second to Super Magic Dream Parade, shortly after.”

“They’re absent,” Cinereal noted. “Are they scared?”

“They’re fearless,” Lark said.

“They’re staying in a secure location. They apparently don’t check Parahumans Online often. They found both the warning email and the message on PHO this morning, on waking up,” I explained. “The bait was a query about a magazine shoot.”

“The first issue of the revitalized Nippon Dirge,” Tristan noted.

I nodded. “Both came from a library terminal in Boston. They bounced the connection across the city, using a non-tinker hack, and by the time we traced it back to the original source, they had cleared security cameras and other footage from nearby locations. We couldn’t look back and try to trace their steps or search out anything weird.”

“It’s possible they have some connection to government, or to part of the city’s infrastructure,” Tristan said. “They knew the servers they were working with, the library, the library terminals, and they came prepared. Dragon said she didn’t see any signs of attempted and failed intrusion that had the same signatures or style. Either they jumped from amateur hour to professional or they got it right the first time. Getting it right the first time requires powers or foreknowledge and familiarity.”

“You’re ignoring the obvious clue,” Moonsong said.

“The power they used?” I asked.

“How many powers are there that fit that crime scene, with the victims left alive?” she challenged.

“The Graeae Twins, under March. Bitter Pill is a theoretical possibility. Bonesaw would be a possibility.”

“Your sister,” Lark said. “Sorry to bring it up, but if we’re covering all the bases…”

“She’s being monitored carefully,” Cinereal said. “For now she’s playing nice and organizing a balance with Shin’s governments, to get food to Gimel to help us get through the winter. For now.”

“She can manipulate biology. She could create a body double with identical DNA to her,” Lark said.

“She could make something close, but not identical,” I said. In trying to sound controlled I might have sounded pissed. I tried to dial it back, explaining, “Manton rule. If she gave something her own DNA or something close enough to it, she wouldn’t be able to affect what she was creating.”

“My point stands,” Lark said. “She could create something that looks like her and then slip through.”

Swansong snorted. Her tone was all venom as she told him, “She could make pigs fly, but I’m not going to start carrying an umbrella yet. Baseless speculation doesn’t get us anywhere.”

“Conceded,” Lark said, folding one leg over the other, placing his hands together on one knee. He wore a heavier suit than he had for our last meeting, but the expense of it was clear in how neat the creases were. His open-book-slash-bird mask with the bookspine beak dipped.

“We’re sure we have an eye on her,” Cinereal said.

Had she said it like she was saying it to me? Huh.

“Thank you,” I said.

“There’s one more possibility,” Tristan said. “But I don’t think it narrows anything down. The power fits perfectly for what we’re dealing with.”

“Who?” Danger Ranger asked.

“Barcode,” Tristan said. “They have someone who can take you to pieces without risking death.”

“That sounds pretty fucking narrowed down to me,” Danger Ranger said. “You didn’t bring this up before?”

“They’re mercenaries,” Tristan said. “If we want to figure out their reasoning, it starts and stops with the money. We’d have to get them, then get them to tell us who hired them, and they don’t do that. They set up contingencies.”

“Barcode, March’s Graeae twins, or…”

“Tinkers,” I said.

“Broad,” she said.

“Tinkers are the most complicated factor, in narrowing down who we’re after. Even if we recognize a power, we have to remember that tinkers can scan a parahuman power and adapt their tech to replicate or use an aspect of that power. They can share gear or steal ideas, which can functionally be like scanning. We have to be careful, second guess ourselves. ‘A tinker emulated it’ is just one possibility.”

“It sounds like you’re walking back what you said when you wanted to get everyone on board,” Houndstooth said.

“Which part?” I asked.

“Being strong,” Houndstooth said. “Doing this in a decisive, organized way.”

“You talked about disappearing capes,” Moonsong added her voice to things.

I couldn’t deny it. “I did. Both things may be necessary. Strength and having a way to eliminate the worst offenders from the equation.”

“Now you’re quibbling. We can’t ever be sure because it might be a tinker, or it might be… what?”

“Frame job,” Swansong said.

Moonsong shook her head. “Not good enough. You said you wanted to limiting this serious step to dealing with the worst of the worst.”

“Yes,” I said. “And we should.”

“Except this looks like the worst to me, and it feels like we’re getting a little wobbly when it comes to the follow-through. Making excuses before we even start hunting them.”

“If this is provocative, we can’t snap up the bait. If this is personal and done this smart at the same time, then we have to be smarter and cooler-headed.”

“They took some of our own to pieces,” Mayday said. “I’ve seen teammates die. I’ve seen what happens when heroes aren’t firm enough. We just set them running with our first day of organized hero work. They’re running to the same places.”

“They are meeting tonight. But if we come to a decision and coordinate in a calm, effective way, we can get out ahead of whatever they decide to do,” I said.

“The prisoner’s dilemma,” Brio said. “Isn’t it? If we play a soft hand and the villains go hard, more of us are going to end up like the Navigators. If we go hard and the villains play soft-”

“We’ve dealt with the problem,” Mayday cut in.

“We’ve eliminated the wrong people,” Brio said. “I’d rather end up like the Navigators than send an innocent man to… wherever we’re disposing of the worst people.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You didn’t see how they were,” Danger Ranger said. “How bad it was.”

“We investigate this thoroughly,” Brio said. “That’s my vote. I trust my team to stand behind it.”

For a few moments, the retorts and the people trying to speak over one another made understanding any one person impossible. Team captains and leaders rose from their seats.

“Enough,” I said.

The word wasn’t enough. It did stop some people, but those people were more on Breakthrough’s side than on the other one. More respectful than angry.

The overlapping voices continued for a second, until the people deferred, allowing one voice to take the lead.

“Investigations are about time,” Mayday said.

“We have a time camera. We have thinkers. We’re flexible.”

“We go after possible suspects, we put the word on the street,” Mayday said. “We round them up and take action to discourage and scare them before the villains meet and decide that they want to protect and encourage the lunatics who did this.”

“Please tell me that there’s a thinker in the room who can tell us decisively that this is a bad idea,” I said.

There wasn’t.

“Speaking for Advance Guard, we’re on your team. We’re still willing to be on the network and make it work, if you’ll have us. The only point of contention here is this particular point of policy,” Mayday said. “I’ve seen too many of my Wards and Protectorate capes suffer and die. I can’t abide by it any more. Not a good team like the Navigators.”

“Give us six hours to gather information and figure out where we stand,” I said. “Make the villain meeting the deadline. Sweep up the possible culprits while they’re on their way in.”

“We’ll have this done in six hours,” he said.

Moonsong was with him. Maybe the only time the Shepherds and Advance Guard had ended up on the same page. A part of me wondered if she’d be taking the opposite tack if Tristan were on the other side of the argument.

Kings of the Hill. Too closely linked to Mayday, they were friends and they were of like mind.

And of course the Wayfarers. Friends of the Navigators. This was both personal and emotional.

All rose and prepared to go, ready to begin the hunt.

“Mayday,” I said.

He stopped.

“We’ll keep you in network, but you have to keep the details about the Navigators secret. If it gets out, it might encourage others. It’ll scare the public, it’ll disturb the peace, and it’ll cloud any investigation we do.”

He only gave us a nod.

When those teams left, Foresight, the Wardens, and the miscellaneous minor teams like the Major Malfunctions remained.

“We have to be neutral in this,” Vista said.

“We’ll see,” Cinereal said. “I’d rather both approaches get all the support they can.”

I nodded.

“Only way we course correct here is if we get out ahead of it. We investigate before they disappear someone undeserving in their own way,” Tristan said. “Yeah?”

I drew in a deep breath and sighed. I conceded, “Yeah.”

“Well, then. Game on, motherfuckers,” Tristan said.

Polarize – 10.12

My boots hit the snow-dusted ground. With the impact, I made the transition from being weightless and able to move myself in any direction at will to feeling gravity assert itself on me once more. I felt another weight, the kind one referred to when they spoke of heavy hearts, burdens, and social pressure.

Eight hours of intermittent snowfall hadn’t covered up all of the blood.

The fact that the ground was hard and had ice here and there made the footfalls seem that much heavier. Ice crunched and I could imagine boots coming down to crack stone. Even dirt, which should have absorbed impacts, allowed for audible footfalls in the relative silence. The only noise came from the wind and the light midday traffic, on a road that would take three or four minutes to walk to.

Foresight had sent four of their ten members to us. It might not have sounded like much, but they were good.

Brio had his standard look going, pirate and ninja combined, without any of the explicit signifiers of either, all with gold veins running through it. He was all presence, loping swagger, and casual competence. I’d seen him before in coat, eyepatch, and far too many belts, and seeing him now I realized that he’d been dressed casual then. He had more belts, including some strapped to his leg and arm, and every one of them had a use, keeping a small arsenal in place. His right hand and forearm were through the bars of a steel riot shield with a viewport like a Foresight logo, and his left hand rested on two weapons- index fingers extend out at the base of a gun, and the heel of his hand at a sword. His side of the riot shield had a decorated sawed-off shotgun fixed to it, pointed at the ground, and some ammunition strapped in.

Crystalclear was keeping Relay company. Crystalclear had updated his costume, and it looked good- the black of it made the quartz-like crystals that jutted from him look that much more distinct. The crystal growth was more exaggerated than before, but I was assuming the simplest explanation – that the crystal was better than skin and scalp being exposed to the cold.

Relay, meanwhile, was wearing a more ‘cloth’ costume, the long sleeves mostly separate from the body, a series of overlapping folds extending down his body to the ankles. There were a lot of gaps in the cloth, and through those gaps I could see the sheen of metal, form-fitting enough to be chainmail. Single spikes were visible here and there, when he moved in the right way- one at the gap where the sleeves would have met the shoulder, another at the blindfold, extending up the forehead, and another at the wrist, like a blade hidden up his sleeve. He was the ‘rescue’ combo-teleporter and long-distance communicator.

As they got closer to the scene, walking over from the road, Relay hung back, breaking away and ending the conversation with Crystalclear.

I expected Crystalclear to join Anelace, since the two had to be closer in age, but Crystalclear headed straight to Brio.

The stragglers were taking longer. They were less of a ‘march forward’ bunch. Recycler and his teammate Retouch were talking to the Major Malfunctions, and Fume Hood was tolerating a conversation with Sweet Justice.

I could have gone to that group, checked that they were okay, touched base, warned them about the details they might see. Especially with Finale in the group, it might have been warranted. At the same time, her teammates were with her, and I couldn’t see a good angle to approach and join the conversation without outright barging in.

That, and I wasn’t sure I had it in me to manage too much more. Having the heroes split over what to do had taken a bit out of me, as had the late night at the hospital. I needed a breather.

I’ll warn Finale before they see anything bad.

What are the odds that any those heroes who acted outraged over the treatment of the Navigators even visited the victims or the crime scene? Wayfarers excepted.

I felt petty and annoyed, and I wasn’t sure I trusted myself around the wide-eyed heroes.

I walked over to Anelace, instead. He watched me despite wearing a mask without eyeholes – only the white lines of an illustrated dagger on the side, the center of it marking the eye. His coat was form-fitting and shorter than Brio or Relay’s, showing just how narrow his waist was, and his costume bottoms were similarly slimming. A little edgy, being all black, but there was enough variation and decoration that it looked more like its own style than anything forced.

Maybe Ashley was rubbing off on me.

“Your team okay?” Anelace asked.

They were late, and he was asking diplomatically. “They had to pick up another teammate. Tress went to the hospital to ask some follow-up questions and get some answers from Scaffold, now that he’s talking. She knows the communication forms necessary to talk to Nailfarer and Slingstone.”

“I got Brio to request and pull some of the crime scene and medical photos,” Anelace said. “I was curious about the weapons used and the way the damage was done.”

“Personal interest?” I asked, my eyebrow raised.

“Never wanted it to be,” he said. “But powers don’t always give us what we want.”

“Fair,” I said. I could read between those lines easily enough. He was a thinker, and thinkers were especially prone to being pushed into the mental states or dilemmas they were in when they triggered. It made me curious, but I wasn’t about to push. Anelace had been decent to me. “What did you find out?”

“They traded off attacks in quick succession. You described it as a blitz.”

“Yeah. Surprise attack, all-in.”

“And the attackers swooped in. One hits, and before the person they hit is even finished reacting, the next hits. Coordinated.”

“That makes me think tinker or master minions. Or thinkers, even someone like Teacher.”

“Or Occam’s razor,” the guy with a blade theme said, “simplest solution and everything. They could be a team that has spent a lot of time fighting alongside one another.”

“I’m not sure on that. How many people are this strong, this experienced, and yet complete unknowns? I feel like we know enough general details that it would click and we’d snap our fingers and say it’s this team or that team.”

“Could be they aren’t from America.”

“True. Or Bet,” I said.

“Whoever they are, they’re coordinated but I think they might have individual personalities. The big guy with the claws tried to mercy kill Scaffold, maybe after the others in the group had walked away, but it didn’t work.”

“He didn’t like how far that went.”

“Seems not,” Anelace said.

“Good. Thank you. That little detail about the throat cut was bothering me, and this narrows things down. If there’s that kind of personality involved, it might rule out things like minions and tinker drones.”

“Teacher thralls?”

I made a so-so gesture. “I think they have some personality. I could see this scene playing out as described. Either way, thank you. It’s a good interpretation of things.”

“You’re welcome,” he said.

We stopped walking, or rather, he stopped before I did, because we were at the very edge of the scene now, and going further risked stepping on bloodstain.

I turned around, so I faced Anelace again. He was oriented with the bloody crime scene ahead of him, and I faced the distant road, as well as our straggling teams that were still heading to the site.

I saw the distant constellation of orange lights before I recognized the Kenzie van. A ditch lined the sides of the rural road, and the orange lights created a bridge for the car to pull off the road and drive straight onto the field.

“I’m less sure on this one,” he said, his eyes scanning the scene. “I saw some of the injuries. One of the attackers attacked from above. Blades or talons going straight down, getting caught on the flesh. Some weight was behind it, angle was too straight. I’m really curious about that one.”

“Weight behind it- a whole body’s worth? If someone flew and then came down without flight?”

“No,” Anelace said. “That much weight would have pushed the cut all the way down, or pulled the victim to the ground. They stopped themselves, or held themselves back.”

“Good,” I said. Did that mean high control? Or very low control, flapping wings? Did they not want to touch ground? “Trying to visualize that.”

“Can’t say more until I see more. It might mean there’s a fifth attacker in the ambush,” Anelace said. “You counted them by footprints?”

“Police did, with the heroes helping, yeah.”

“Yeah. This is bigger than the pictures suggested.”

I nodded. Worse in daylight. The darkness where the headlights didn’t shine had created a sense that the scene was smaller. It was possible the officers had parked on or over parts of the scene, now that I could see just how far the blood had been scattered.

“I don’t want to insult your teammate or your friends over there, but can these guys handle this? Your tinker is a kid, isn’t she?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s the only one who can operate this camera, though. We talked it over, see if we can’t strike a balance. But she was insistent on doing it. She’s- she wants to help. She’s a hero at heart. Even when it’s not good for her.”

“All of us are insistent,” Anelace said. “And none of us would be here if we were concerned about the sacrifices involved. What about them?”

He indicated the collection of stragglers.

“The Major Malfunctions?”

“Recycler and his teammate too. The hooded woman- she was from the community center attack.”

“Fume Hood has other experience. Low-level, but a good few years of regular activity.”

“Good to know.”

“Major Malfunctions… new. But I know two of the three can handle themselves. Teacher threw an army at us, and they all held their own.”

“Respect.”

“I think it was his B-listers, to be fair. He saved the real soldiers for the prison.”

“If you fought an army, take credit for fighting an army. Give them that credit. What about the eco heroes?”

“Recycler and Retouch are veterans in their own way. I’m less sure about them.”

“Why?”

I frowned, pausing to raise a hand in greeting as the van pulled up at the very edge of the scene. Byron had been driving, with Swansong of all people in the passenger seat. Precipice, Lookout, and Sveta got out of the back, with Precipice carrying the bulky time camera. Byron jogged over to help, switching to Tristan, who said something.

“I haven’t fought alongside them. That’s part of it. The other part is that Recycler and Retouch are from Dryad Project 3. Sponsored,” I said.

I gave Anelace a look.

“I heard of some incidents. I didn’t pay much attention there,” he admitted. “Other focuses, I was new to my powers, and I didn’t have any reason to investigate some group in another state with nothing to do with me.”

“Nah, it’s fine,” I said. “Most of it was covered up. It was a slow motion train wreck. It makes me wonder if I should assume they learned from the team’s mistakes or if they’ve become lasting casualties of them.”

“What kind of train wreck?”

I sighed. I didn’t want to be unfair, but I did want to paint a full picture. “I mean, they’re sponsored, not corporate, so they had someone paying the bills and all they had to do was hero. And they were pretty good at that. The sponsors? They started it off on the entire wrong foot. Way too much promotion and way too much money pushed into a team with self-imposed mission of saving the planet.”

“Not a bad mission, considering how we ended up.”

“That’s the issue. It wasn’t saving the planet from Endbringers or other threats. It was saving us from ourselves. Pollution, deforestation, ecology all things that have their validity… on Earth Aleph. People didn’t buy it. And if people aren’t buying, how do the sponsors get the money they invested back?”

“Bad management decisions, then.”

“Hired a bunch of bright, genuinely cool heroes, diverse, all good, but few of those heroes cared about the mission before they joined the team, some didn’t care after, and the ones who were really gung-ho got sidelined-”

I paused to indicate the pair.

“Ah ha.”

Was it unfair to stress that the two were really hyped and serious about the ‘green’ thing, when we’d had bigger concerns? It was true, but I wasn’t sure, and I had no idea if it factored into their judgment or their ability to handle situations like this.

I shrugged. “The lack of care from sponsors and the hired-on heroes seemed pretty obvious to most. Then the team got on the wrong side of the Youth Guard, broke or toed the line of just about every damn rule in the book when it came to costumes, school, friendships, throwing kids into violent situations… Two pairs of parents were saying they hadn’t seen their kid in weeks.”

“That was the part I heard about.”

I smiled. “Yeah. And the shitty thing is they had some good heroes. Recycler and Retouch weren’t hip in a way that worked for Dryad Project Three, but they’re strong, they’re pretty capable with potential to place themselves in the public eye, and they’re earnest, which is really important.”

“Those two seem to have come out of the train wreck okay.”

I held my tongue, because there was some stuff that I’d heard third-hand. My mom had talked and had drinks with a woman from a costume company at one point a while back, not long before Leviathan. Tipsy, the woman had confided things that weren’t hers to share, and my mother had told me, because she’d thought I needed to know what to watch out for.

I didn’t want to continue the chain of rumor mongering when it came to stuff that was that personal. The names we chose and the costumes we wore were so important. On her move from the bench to the main team, Retouch had been given a new look. Makeover, name, no more time with her boyfriend. She’d been transformed from girly girl to athletic tomboy in image and told to play a role, say certain things.

At fourteen, just three months into that new position on the team and the life that came with it, she had torn out an entire fistful of her new short hairdo in the midst of a public meltdown and then retired from being a hero, indicating there was a lot more going on behind the scenes. Worse still, despite her voicing her retirement, she was pulled back in, mandated by contract, made to make appearances and attend events.

“Seems so,” I said.

“What happened in the end? Gold Morning?”

I shook my head. “Two members of the other serious or semi-serious members joined a villain eco-terrorist group. The team was barely staying afloat with money from sponsors, after a hundred fines from Youth Guard, court cases, more promotion and marketing, and then a reporter dropped an expose. The sponsor wasn’t a saint in the eco thing, with cover-ups. The heroes were a distraction.”

“Everything that could go wrong went wrong,” Anelace said.

I nodded.

The time camera was set in place. We’d been outed on the time camera use when the police had come through. They’d written it into reports, and a few of the team leaders read the cliff notes on any and all reports, just like some patrolling heroes listened to the police scanners. They’d asked, and we’d told, as part of the attempt to get people on board.

Anelace’s voice interrupted me while I was in the midst of forming the thought that I should say goodbye and go warn the more innocent members of the various groups that things were about to get ugly.

“I wish you’d joined Foresight.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Thank you. Or- I’m not sure what to say to that. Came out of nowhere.”

“We’re talking about teams, and I’m seeing all these different teams. It’s important. Who we’re with.”

“Yeah,” I said. “One of the most important things.”

“You’re okay with them?”

Swansong was guarding Lookout, ensuring she sat with her back to the scene that was slowly unfolding. The lines of falling snow were dominant, blocking much of the view. Sveta made her way over to help, and bumped shoulders with Ashley as they formed a two-person wall to block Lookout’s view. They exchanged words, and they seemed at ease.

They were very, very different people, but they could talk, and they seemed to enjoy the moment. More than that, Sveta seemed to be in a reasonably good mood, considering the scene that was slowly being mapped out.

Tristan and Precipice were talking. Precipice -Rain- had transformed. I knew he still carried a lot. I wasn’t of the opinion that he should be freed of that burden. But he was helping, he was doing good, and if he ever worked off that burden, truly worked it off, then he deserved to be free of it.

Tristan was explaining, indicating the images. Red peeked through cutains of streamer-like tracks that the snowflakes had made. People hung on his words rather than the images, and that might have been merciful.

“I like them,” I said.

“Some good ones in there,” Anelace said.

“Are you angling at something there, Anelace? It feels like you’re talking around a subject.”

“Every time I say something I’m thinking about five responses I could make before I decide on one I’m not entirely satisfied with.”

“You want to join?”

He shook his head.

“Because the alternative is you’re going to say something really nice or really awful, and you’re working up the courage.”

“It’s not too nice or too bad, Antares. I was talking about keeping good company, and I think my team screwed up by not taking you when you interviewed. Everything you said when you were talking about your strengths and your vision was on point.”

“Thank you. But your teammates weren’t wrong. I wasn’t in a good place.”

“Better place now?”

I shrugged. “Much.”

“If you ever want company, patrolling, minor mission, surveillance-”

I turned my full focus to him, and he stopped talking.

“Yeah,” he said, terminating the prior thought, then before I could respond, he added, “It’s an open invite. You caught my attention when you showed up to a superhero job interview in business casual, and I’d like to get to know that person better, whether it’s a work relationship, friendship, or something more.”

I drew in a breath, pausing a second to try to formulate my thoughts.

He jumped in before I could, “No pressure. I know capes have hangups, I know we’re all busy, and we’re all still kind of mourning-”

Dean, I thought.

“-I won’t be offended if you say-”

I interrupted him, “I’ll be offended if you don’t let me get a word in.”

He made an amused sound, shifting his footing.

“Maybe,” I said. “I’m working through stuff, and like you say, I’m working on all of this.”

He nodded. He looked very at ease, all considered.

“Whatever I end up deciding, I’m flattered. And I think you’re a good guy.”

He looked away, studying the distant New Brockton and the portal that loomed above it.

“Earlier, you said I was dancing around things,” he said.

“You were.”

“I was. I don’t want to dance about this. It’s heavy and I know it might spoil the mood or fuck my chances, but there’s never going to be a time to mention it.”

“You’re not a good guy?” I asked. He was right, the mood had shifted a bit.

“I know a bit about the Asylum.”

I winced. Ah.

“My friend ended up there. I know ex-staff from the place, and through them I figured out some members of your team came from there. Lookout for a very short time, Tress for a long time, you. I can make an educated guess that the rest of your team came from there.”

I shook my head.

“No?”

“Nah,” I said.

“I won’t talk about it, it’s safe info with me, even when I have a team that likes to pry. But I didn’t want to hold onto it and not let you know I knew.”

“How’s your friend now?” I asked.

“Gone. Long gone. Which is a mercy.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Open invite,” he said. “No pressure. I should go look after my team.”

“Same here,” I said. I gave him a light punch in the arm. Arm’s length, but physical contact. Safe as I could manage.

I had a lot of thoughts, but I suppressed them. I wasn’t sure he was my type, but he wasn’t a boundary pusher, except for bringing up the hospital, and I had mixed feelings about that. It raised my guard and it lowered walls at the same time.

All of the thoughts were cast in a weird, distorting shadow, because thinking about the hospital even in passing was putting me in a frame of mind where I could remember being the Wretch and having the recurring thought and feeling that I’d be alone for the rest of my life. The default way of thinking about myself and thinking about the possibility of doing anything with anyone were all switched over to that, because it had more weight than a hundred years spent like I was living now.

Not easy and not worth thinking about for now.

Sveta was smiling a bit as I caught up to her.

“No,” I said, pointing at her.

“I can’t tease you?”

“Maybe another day, when I’ve had more sleep.”

“You can tease me,” she said. She smiled wider. “I had a good night. I know you told Kenzie not to call me and you kept me out of the loop so Weld and I could catch up. I have mixed feelings about that-”

“Me too.”

“-But the good feelings in that mix are very good.”

I gave her a hug.

“We figured something out,” she said. “It was nice.”

“I know I shouldn’t ask,” I said, “But I’m really wondering… how?”

She smiled and she didn’t give me an answer.

I knew that when Kenzie was happy, she bounced. When Ashley was especially pleased she had small smiles and she looked like she was queen of the world- brimming security and self worth. Tristan had a light in his eyes, and Byron came out of his shell. I’d never seen Rain happy, though-

That was a mental joke to myself. I’d seen insecurities and hangups that had tortured him for a long time just fall away.

Sveta in this moment was all of those things.

Seeing her happy made me just a tiny bit of all of those things.

I had moisture brimming in the corners of my eyes, seeing that. A pan- a cure all for the creeping sentiment that had come with the mention of the Asylum.

“Since when are you a crier?” she whispered.

I hugged her with one arm, tight, then shook her. “I thought you weren’t going to tease me.”

“Not about that. About this? Definitely.”

“Lookout,” I called out. “Rescue me from Sveta. Tell me how we’re doing.”

She called back with her answer, “I’m being asked to make this work without looking, which is dumb, and it’s slow as anything. That’s how I’m doing. How are you doing, Antares?”

I let go of Sveta, and she smiled as I pulled away. “Tired but hopeful. Last time you added extra batteries to speed it up, didn’t you, Lookout?”

“They’re attached. But there’s a ton of on and off snow that’s not going straight down or down at an angle, thank you giant portal over there, and that’s taking time to calculate and render. And every time the wind blows it moves snowflakes across the ground, which is all stuff I have to filter without looking at it. It’s dumb.”

“If I could unsee what I saw last night, I would,” I told Lookout.

“But when I get this done, you’re going to look, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Have to.”

“I have to look too! See? Same!”

Fume Hood and Crystalclear were talking off to one side. Catching up, it seemed. Past them, I saw the trio of Malfunctions with the duo of eco heroes and Sweet Justice. It looked like Caryatid was still shielding Finale from the worst of it.

“Victoriaaaaa,” Lookout complained.

“You’re in a mood, huh?” I asked.

“Because this! Because I miss my old workshop, and the living situation when I’m out of costume is so crowded and so annoying, and nobody pays much attention to me. And because this!”

She punched a button. A screen on the face of the box lit up, displaying a line drawn out by pixels, hot pink on an electric blue background. The line started normal, then doubled back, then traced a bizarre path, corkscrewing.

“That color scheme hurts my eyes to look at,” Swansong commented.

“It hurts my brain to think at,” Lookout said. “That’s a Witten particle flying around like a balloon with the end undone. Because life has to be hard, right? They don’t do that.”

“Witten?” I asked.

“Gravity particle.”

“Oh. In the past?”

“Yup.”

“That’s got to be Vista.”

Lookout turned slowly, then stared up at me.

She turned back to the screen, brought her head back, and swung it at the flat face of the cube.

Swansong caught her head before it made contact. Her voice was low. “People are watching.”

“It mucks everything up. There’s a giant smear in the middle of it and it’s impossible to pick things out.”

“Work around it,” Swansong said, her voice still quiet. “As much as we don’t want it to be true, others define us by how we act when we’re at our lowest and our worst.”

“I’m not that low,” Lookout said, typing now. “I’m frustrated.”

“Frustration can bring you down as easily as any other sentiment,” Swansong said.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

“Do we have any time travelers here?”

“Pretty sure we don’t,” I answered.

“No way to go back in time and tell Vista to not smear my crime scene recreation? Why did she even do that?”

“Headlights, to shed some light on the scene.”

“There are other ways to do that!”

“Voice calm,” Swansong said, her own voice quiet and firm. “Even when angry, we restrain ourselves.”

“Do you, though? You kind of rant sometimes,” Lookout said.

“When was the last time?” Swansong asked.

“This morning,” I said. “You didn’t like how your clone pierced the teabag when she put it in your cup.”

“In her cup,” Swansong said. “She pierced the bag she was placing in her cup and then she gave it to me while taking my cup.”

“Scandalous,” Lookout said.

“Do you know how I know it was my cup? Because hers is chipped and scratched from top to bottom. I thought she forgot and gave her the benefit of a doubt, that cow abused that graciousness, and she did it with a smile.”

“You don’t need to tell me,” I said. “I heard the entire thing while I was getting out of the shower.”

“I apparently need to tell you because you didn’t get the full picture. That weakling has died eight times and it wasn’t enough to teach her any sense.”

“By that definition you died too,” Lookout said. She was back at work, sitting on a case, keyboard in lap, typing. Apparently she could hold a conversation and work at the same time.

“No. Death is the province of failures. Between the two of us, I am doing fine, and she is the failure and eternal disappointment. Do you know how I know?”

“You have a better fashion sense,” I said.

“No- Yes, but that isn’t the defining element. I know because I do not fuck up tea, and I wouldn’t connive to hide my shame and my failings as a parahuman being if I did.”

“Are things going to be okay if I step away?” I asked.

“Yes,” Lookout said. “I’m going to work around the smudge. Maybe we can get something from the edges.”

“Wasn’t what I was worried about,” I said.

“It’s fine,” Swansong said. “Worry about what my dear clone has coming to her.”

“Ooh,” I said, mock serious. “No tea? Oh, no treats with the tea?”

“Thin ice,” Swansong said, pointing a finger at me. “You’ll see who gets no treats.”

“I so want to sleep over sometime,” Lookout said.

I left them to that conversation.

Brio was walking through the storm of still images. Here and there, he would lean into things, squinting as he got in close – not that it was much use. Most of the figures were especially distorted and existed in continuum. I stopped at the edge.

“Technical difficulties?” he asked, as he emerged. He looked at Relay, who was off in the distance, then at Crystalclear, who nodded. Anelace, without looking, raised a hand in response to some message.

“Some difficulties. Sorry. I wanted this to be a better launching-off point.”

“We don’t have much to go on,” he said. “Anything we can get.”

“Did Crystalclear’s patrol of the area-”

A distant crack interrupted me.

It took me a second to place where the sound had come from. There weren’t many good places to choose, with so much flat ground around us, and it was really only the road that worked. My first impulse was that cars had collided. Even that they’d hit our parked cars, that had pulled off the road.

No. It was a gun.

Relay was way out in the field, and I could see the divot where the bullet had hit ground, sending dirt flying out to land on otherwise pristine snow.

I took to the air, trying to get a sense of the scene and what we were up against.

Relay teleported to where Brio had been. There was a moment where there was only a shimmer of light around Relay, who twisted, casting out an arm, pushing the shimmer out. Then Brio materialized at the head of the shimmer, fifteen feet away, bringing his shield up just in time to block another bullet.

There was a second’s pause, and then I felt the impact as the Wretch went down. I flew back at an angle and down, then changed direction before touching ground. I skimmed the ground, hoping that the humps of snow here and there would provide me some cover.

I saw a fence up ahead, barring my way, and headed straight for it.

Who were these guys? Guns, accurate fire at a distance- my first thought was March.

The Wretch hit the fence first, and I canceled it in the moment I noticed the contact. My gloved hands caught the fragments out of the air. Slats of wood with broken ends.

I paused, a shattered plank of wood in each hand, taking one second to grasp the situation and make sure that nobody was crossing the field and attacking the more vulnerable members of the group.

Not nearly enough people were standing, and people were gathered around some of the people who had crumpled to the ground. Some of my guys had gotten shot. Allies. Possibly my team.

Traffic had been stopped by two vehicles that had turned sideways to block both lanes. Dark figures I couldn’t make out were behind our cars. Our van. Using the vehicles for cover while they unloaded real munitions.

More blood on this already bloodstained field.

I took flight, straight up. The Wretch absorbed one shot. If there were others, I didn’t hear or see any sign of it.

I was coming straight back down, and if I had any say in things, it’d be their blood that would be shed on this field, not more of ours.

Polarize – 10.13

The gunfire continued below me, and if there were any shots that passed through the air as they took aim at me, I didn’t hear them. There was the noise of the wind rushing through and around the Wretch, faintly different from when it was brushing my skin and touching my ears. A distortion, a whistle.

A plank in each hand, I raised my arms to my face, burying almost all of it in my arms, the crook of the elbows at my nose and mouth, the planks out and in line with my body. I let the Wretch drop as I disappeared into the cloud cover and against the wind.

Cold, and worse because it was a moist cold.

I flew in a slight circle, dipping lower until I could see the general outline of things below. There were tears in my eyes from the sting of the cold, but I could make out the truck, the way the cars had stopped, and the clearing by the tree with Kenzie’s van parked by it.

I shifted my grip on the planks, and then I let them fall. Immediately, I flew horizontally, skimming the cloud line, still feeling the cold press in on me as if from every direction, grabbing at my body and reaching toward the bone. My speed, moisture, wind and cold all compounded one another, and the snow that blew around me collected and bound to the surface.

I dove. They came into view as I came down, what looked to be civilians or improvised soldiers in dark clothes, with what looked like used body armor. Two people with masks, standing off to one side. Not people I recognized.

One plank fell into the ditch. Another struck the pavement and broke. The plummeting objects made heads turn, which was my intent. The black of my costume had collected a frosting of white that made it a little less obvious.

Anger sharpened my focus. I didn’t use my aura as I landed, knee and one foot on the ground, hands helping to add some spring to the impact and reduce the noise.

It wasn’t enough to keep some of the people from seeing me. That was where the sharper focus counted. Two in front of me, one off to the left, two off to the right.

The lone guy to my left that had noticed me turned to his friend, who was leaning over the back of one vehicle, shooting.

My target.

Flight gave me speed and velocity that I wouldn’t have had while running. The people in the middle and at the far right of the group turned weapons on me. One fired and landed a hit in the moment before I threw myself at the guy on the left and put the unaware between them and myself. One more gunshot among many.

No aura- them being off balance was good, but them being blindsided was better. I had my choice of where to hit him, and I had to dismiss all of the training Gilpatrick had imparted. A strike to the back of the neck, to the temple or throat could do too much harm.

The heel of my right hand met the right corner of the jaw, where it connected to the skull, the blow timed so my arm extended and added to the impact beyond just what my flight offered. With speed, timing, and a target that was turning his head, I was ninety percent of the way to connecting it the way I’d wanted.

Ninety percent earned me a gristly feeling as my hand smashed the soft area between jaw and skull, pain in my hand and pain down my forearm with the force of the impact.

He collapsed on top of his friend, who’d been shooting and not paying nearly enough attention to the warning.

The guy to my right reacted. I threw myself and my elbow at him. I aimed for his jaw, hit his teeth instead. I saw a moment of blood against grit teeth, saw him reacting by twisting his head around and reaching for a weapon shorter than the rifle he held, and hit him again He wouldn’t simply stagger in pain and retaliate, this time.

Hurting people without the benefit of a forcefield hurt. Every impact had its equal, opposite reaction. I was hitting people hard, but that energy transmitted itself into my hand, into my elbow.

The guy who I’d hit first had fallen atop someone with a gun that wasn’t a rifle- or it was, but it was an automatic. I punched him in the face as I threw myself on top of him, grabbing the weapon. He fought me, wrestling with me over it, and I couldn’t afford to take the seconds to try and win.

I pushed out with my aura, and I saw his expression change- bewilderment, not fear. He didn’t let go, though, and I had to turn to using the Wretch.

Just a burst of power, taking a moment of strength. As far as I’d been able to tell, when I activated my forcefield, it came from me. It hugged me, but only for the one tenth of a second that it was in contact with my skin and costume. The trick was using it in the moments before it unfurled. One instant of strength that could lift a car or punch through sheet metal.

I tore the rifle from his hands, then gave it back to him- one of my hands gripped the barrel, the other the stock, and I smashed the middle part into his face.

Couldn’t go forward without going into the firing line. Couldn’t go back without the same issue. People were turning on me, concerned with the immediate threat in their ranks. I saw some backing away from the line of people that had formed alongside the parked cars, trying to get a clear shot, and I saw them get shoved or pulled aside.

Two capes. A man and a woman, in dark costumes with utilitarian masks- hard white, covering mouth and nose, bridge of the nose, and the brow. Both masks outlined the eye sockets but didn’t block peripheral vision.

She had a cloth scarf wound around her head and neck, white armor built into her gloves and an otherwise black uniform with body armor. He had the same look, but no gloves, his hat was a simple beanie, and he had a neck warmer on. His body armor had shoulder pads and bracers that extended over the back of his hands, and he carried a long-handled axe, like the kind emergency workers used to chop through doors.

I didn’t want to get involved with that. Unable to go forward or back, unwilling to go up in case it exposed me to them, I decided to go the Manton route. Powers came encoded with limitations, and the most common limitation that laymen and bottom-tier cape geeks associated with the term was that powers worked on inorganic things only, or they worked on organic things only. The chief example of a hundred possibilities, but it was what I decided to use.

In brief: through.

I threw myself into the mob.

They would be my Manton protection. With another burst of strength, using the rifle’s butt and my burned hand, I shoved at the non-cape woman in front of me so she would bowl into the people behind her, then grabbed the guy to my right and used another burst to throw him in the general direction of the two capes. He landed near the guy with the axe, and the cape hopped over him before the flying man could collide with his shin. When the cape landed, though, he didn’t have good footing that wasn’t stepping on the man that had fallen, he tried to step on snow, and he slipped to his hands and knees instead.

I kept the people around me, using strength to grab them, force them to stumble, and keep them between me and the capes. I saw the guy getting up, while the woman was retreating, crouching low to the ground, and threw the next guy toward the masked guy.

Or I tried. I extended my arm in the throw, and he jerked violently. I saw gouges appear in his cheap, duct-taped body armor, close to the heart, and then his arm broke. The break got worse, twisting-

I canceled the Wretch and let him fall.

The uneasy, unsure satisfaction that came with finding a way forward had its backlash, ten times the negative for any positive I might have found in it.

He hit the ground and fell against my leg, which added to the pressure and the lack of elbow room. I used flight to keep myself upright, but people were pressing in, and I gave them a second’s pause with my aura. It made them stop, staring, and little else.

Stop fighting me, Wretch. Whatever you want, we can get it by working together. Don’t fuck me on the fear. Don’t fucking tear people apart when I have a cape I need to stop!

The Wretch had practically torn his arm off, I could see it as I tried to handle stuff, and it distracted at a moment I needed my focus.

I’d hurt someone, fuck me. Couldn’t do this- couldn’t escape without easily exposing myself. I’d bought others a chance to breathe and I wasn’t sure it mattered.

Someone grabbed for the assault rifle I was holding in one hand, and I drew my free hand around to use the spikes that laid across the back of my hand. With my hand in a fist, the spikes stuck out, and I could rake his hand. Just enough harm to do what I needed and free myself, no more.

In the time it took me to do that, two more people had grabbed me.

I twisted, used a burst of strength to hurl them away, and flew up, aiming to put myself over the top of the car that they’d been using as shooting cover.

I had a glimpse of the masked woman with her hand raised. She made a quick beckoning gesture and something in me went.

I hit the top of the vehicle I’d been meaning to go over. A second had passed, I’d stopped flying, I’d dropped the Wretch and I’d let go of the gun I’d been using as a club.

Stupid, I thought.

People grabbed me. I twisted away and tried to roll over the trunk of the vehicle to the far side, and I found myself as weak as a baby.

Fly. I forced myself to fly, and it did take some forcing. Not because my power was weak or gone, but because my head wasn’t all there. My thoughts were as weak as my body.

I’d bought some time. People on our side who had been pinned down by gunfire were getting closer. Brio, Anelace. I didn’t see Capricorn, Lookout, or Ashley, but I saw Rain, who was hanging back, a silver blade in hand that he wasn’t throwing.

The strength I’d lost was quickly returning. My thoughts returned. The sinking feeling that had started when I’d seen that people were gunned down and quintupled when I’d hurt the guy in the middle of the fighting lingered.

“Who are you!?” I called out. “Why do this!?”

There was a bang at the back of the car. I looked up just in time to see someone vaulting over. The man with the mask, holding up someone’s bulletproof vest as a shield between him and the heroes.

I flew away, Wretch up, and I saw the world I was flying to go dark. The ground beneath me illuminated, sweeping out like a ripple extending from the point of his landing.

My flight died, and I skidded to a landing, my still-frost-stiff costume skimming on a snow-slick road.

I tried to use flight to stand, then remembered I didn’t have it. I climbed to my feet, wary. The man tossed the shield aside, then rolled his head around, cracking his neck.

The cars were nearby, the ditch, the road beneath me. But there was no wind, and I didn’t feel the cold anymore- cool air, but not cold. The ground had a glow to it, like there were dim lights just beneath the snow. That glow was more intense toward the edge of the circle.

A ring thirty feet in diameterand past those thirty feet, there was nothing. Some of the cars and trucks had been cut apart, but the cut pieces still stood.

Not white, not black, not gray or anything neutral. It made my head hurt to look at it and to think about it.

I panted for breath, feeling the lingering weakness from the woman’s power, and I could tell that the air here was thinner. I’d experienced thinner air by flying especially high.

I couldn’t fly now. I didn’t have my aura- I reached for it and found nothing there for me.

I felt a mix of emotions at that.

“Why?” I asked him.

“For Noontide and me? Money.”

“Mercenaries.”

He nodded. He tested and shifted his grip on the long-handled axe he carried.

“If you help anti-parahuman types like this, they’ll take advantage of your help now and then they’ll try to come after you later. It’s what happened in Russia, when they tried to control the parahuman population.”

“I’ve been to Russia. Contracted there. I’ve seen it. The before, the after, the attempts to make parahumans into military. Each one assigned to a squad or special force. Pit against each other. There’s nothing you can tell me about that kind of reality I haven’t touched with all five senses.”

“These anti-parahuman guys-”

He scoffed, sharply enough to interrupt, the noise muffled by the mask that covered his lower face. “If you’re saying that to try to bait me into revealing something about who hired me, save your breath. You’re making yourself sound stupid.”

I felt more like myself as I tried to assess the situation. I had to trust that my teammates and Foresight were handling things and keeping the gunmen from going on the offensive, now that the way was clear. There was nothing I could do to break this effect.

“People who would hire you to go this far are going to turn on you. I know the unwritten rules stopped applying over the last two years, but the behavior of people, from good people to the scummy sorts that would sign off on this? That still applies. It will always apply.”

“Are you finished?”

“That’s up to you,” I said, ducking my head a bit. I needed to look smaller. Less dangerous. Talking was making me run out of breath, the thin air working its effect on me. But talking was better than the alternative. “Power nullification?”

“Everything nullification. No powers, no outside help. You, me, and the arena.”

I wanted to pace, to encourage him to do it too, to maintain an even distance between us. It didn’t happen. That kind of pressure and maneuvering required a roughly equivalent power. I had to be something more than a twenty-one year old woman, unarmed, against a man five inches taller than me who was armed with an axe.

Maybe a Trump power, but I wasn’t betting anything on it. I knew Trump powers tended to arise, though not always, when a person triggered in relation to power-based stressors. I knew they tended to feel disconnected from humanity, much like breakers did, just like how movers reported being chronically restless or having trouble setting down roots.

Shaker power, yes. Area or environment focused. Changing the battlefield. Shaker powers fell roughly in line with contextual or environmental threats. They were mindful of those things, usually. Context. Environment.

“The city can’t take much more of this. Don’t- can’t you see that if all of this goes to shit, there won’t be anything nice left for you to spend your money on?”

“It’s handled,” he said. “I’d fret more about myself, if I was you.”

I wished I still had the assault rifle. I’d let it slip from my fingers after ‘Noontide’ had knocked me out for a second. I backed up a bit, reaching out to the side. The bounds of the circle were like a solid wall.

While I focused on that, he was looking around, studying… the cars? Why?

I didn’t know what to expect here.

Slowly, he nodded, as if he’d assessed the situation.

I felt weirdly okay, de-powered. My heart was pounding, but I felt focused, and all of the emotions that had surrounded things were gone. It was as if the power effect cut me off from all the pains and suffering of the rest of the world.

The-

Rain. There’d been no onset, and I was naturally resistant, but I’d felt the emotion creep over me. Doubt, frustration, regret for my failings in the moment.

Was that why people hadn’t felt the fear aura in the same way? Had Rain’s power diluted it or added some lavender into the mix, diluting the dark green?

He took a step forward, closing in on me, his axe in one hand. As I ducked left, he moved to cut me off. I headed the other direction, toward the cars he’d been looking at, and he took a step to the side, ready to block and take a swing if I tried it.

The cars that had concerned him – he’d been looking around them. Was there a way through? Through a window, past the boundary of this circle? It didn’t feel like it made sense, but I looked anyway.

He took that opportunity to reach for something at his belt.

A canister of something.

I hurled myself at him. I felt battered and sore and clean emotion ran through me as I threw myself into the jaws of the lion.

The ground was slippery. I almost lost my footing as I ran.

I saw the axe move, brought back to swing, and kept one eye on the ground. I couldn’t afford to lose traction in a key moment. One of my feet touced on secure ground, in the track where tires had melted ice, the second following, landing further down that same line. The third- it had to be where the Kenzie van or one of the other vehicles had turned off, because snow and ice had scattered and been pressed down.

He was watching as much as I was. He timed his swing for when I closed the distance. I could hear it cut through the air. When I ducked, using my footing on still-clear ground to adjust my position and half-throw myself to one side, he brought the canister to his axe-hand. As I scrambled to my feet, he spared a finger to pull the pin, and then let it tumble from his fingers, dropping to the ground at his feet.

“No outside factors. Stuff like guns and explosives are a bad idea, so don’t think of surprising me with one. The sound and shock has nowhere to go but inside you. The circle probably thinks it makes it a level playing field,” he said. “Your problem is gonna be that I don’t believe in level. This is my arena.”

Something was hissing out, but I couldn’t see the vapor of it. Invisible gas.

“Take your time, time I spend in here is time I don’t have to be out there, and my side’s winning,” he said, his eyes narrowed as he reached with his free hand to get into his neckwarmer. He pulled out a tangle of tubes, with what looked like a pacifier sans bulb and a nose piece.

He began to put the breathing apparatus under his mask when I started forward again.

I’d fought big before. I’d grown up roughhousing with Uncle Neil. Manpower.

He took one swing as he backed up a step, in a way I would have called casual or lazy if it hadn’t been fast. No aim in mind, timing didn’t matter, it just forced me to get clear and get away. Keeping the distance between us while the gas accumulated. It bought him the time to get the breathing apparatus on. His thumb flicked something beneath the neckwarmer, and then he tucked it beneath his body armor.

I would have done something about the canister, but we were inside a confined space.

His weapon required reach. It had been the case with Uncle Neil when I’d been twelve, when he’d been grown, strong, and capable of keeping me at arm’s length.

My goal was to get inside that reach. I started forward, saw him react, ready to chop at me from the side. I found good footing, and lunged for real this time, a second after the fact.

He swung from the side, aiming for my midsection, and I dove, going low.

His foot came out, stopping me as I skidded on the surface that made footing so difficult. He shifted to a two-handed, overhead swing- and I went after his legs, tangling mine with his.

He’d expected that much, and shifted his footing, but he hadn’t watched his own footing as much as he’d watched me and mine. There was just enough slip for me to get one foot to skid a short distance, to topple him.

I wasn’t willing to wait for him to get his bearings. I used the spikes on the back of my glove like an ice climber might use an ice pick to get leverage while on a tough climb. Burying them into his leg, possibly getting more armor and padding than I got leg, I was able to spin myself around, so my feet were pointed closer to his face. I’d hoped to get a boot to his jaw, but he twisted away, his back flat on the ground.

He still had the axe. He still had it in roughly an overhead position, and with his back flat on the ground, he was in a position to swing. He brought it down and at me, and I brought my foot out, kicking at the hands, before the axe could come down.

It broke his grip and interrupted the swing before it could reach peak momentum. It didn’t disarm him, though, which meant I didn’t have time.

It was a short, desperate scramble before I could leverage my way forward, bringing my face closer to his, while he grabbed me, trying to keep me in place so he could swing one-handed. I spiked the grabbing hand, threw myself on top of him so my shoulder touched the bicep of his axe- arm and limited the ability to swing, then reached for the neckwarmer, tearing the tubes away with the reversed claws. Tearing them away in a way that destroyed them.

It cost me. He brought the axe down, but with my face being closer to his and the limited swing range, he couldn’t bring the blade down to make contact with me.

He did bring the metal end of the axe down. The butt end had a spike on it, and the end glanced off my mask and caught me at the side of my head. I felt the sharp crack of something hard touching bone without any cushion in between, and then there was blood in my eye.

I didn’t dare breathe. He was strong, bigger, and my only benefit was that I had spikes on my gloves. Even that was matched, because he had bracers with jutting bits at the front that hurt like hell when he jabbed me and hit me with them instead of with his hands.

I’d been going after faces for a reason. If these people existed out there, anywhere in the city, I wanted them to be recognizable. I wanted destroyed jaws, broken noses, and black eyes, if not claw marks or anything else.

Anger drove me. The image of all those people lying on the bloodstained battlefield and what had happened to the Navigators was flashing through my head as I fought for what it took to keep going, keep hurting him.

He shifted, and he got one knee or one foot between myself and him. I could feel the flex, and I knew he was going to kick me off him. I couldn’t afford to let him. I brought my hands down and hooked the spikes into the sides of his neck, closer to the spine than the front. The action and my center of gravity brought my face close to his. Blood dripped down from my scalp wound onto the white mask.

Each of his hands found my forearms, and struck my arms out and away from his neck. I might have nicked him, but I didn’t take much flesh with the motion. My center of gravity being what it was, with me on top of him, my face smashed into his. The scalp wound shed blood straight into his eye.

His footing against my midsection shifted, one closer to my chest, and he kicked out, leveraging me away.

I hit road, and cold wind blew past me. I took in half a lungful of air, and the air burned my nostrils, mouth, and throat.

There was noise all around me. The circle was gone. I started to rise to my feet, reaching for my flight, and more coughing overtook me.

Again, I felt something in me go. Again, I blacked out, except it was longer than the one second this time. No flight, no movement at all. I came back to, took the start of a breath in, and again, I felt the burn. Reflex actions.

Noontide.

“Victoria!” a voice. “Behind you!”

It took all of my energy to turn to look behind me, the direction I’d felt everything go. Noontide was in one of the vehicles, wheels spinning to find traction.

Then the sedan had its traction and it lunged. It was aimed straight at me and at the ditch. It lunged as it took over.

A hand grabbed me. It was Sveta who pulled me clear. With all the strength and energy Noontide had sapped from me, I wouldn’t have been able.

The car continued on its way, to where Tristan had made the bridge that had let them cross the ditch and get to the crime scene. It was only just reaching that bridge when bridge became water. The sedan struck the edge of the ditch nose-on. Airbags inside inflated.

“What are you doing!?” Sveta raised her voice.

I thought it was me. Then I realized Rain’s effect was still in place. The guilt, the easy switch to self-blame.

There were still people with guns. Sveta held onto me and dragged us to cover.

Anelace was still in the midst of it. He’d brought knives to a gunfight and he was winning. There was a choreographed pace to how he fought, like he anticipated every bullet. He fought to stay in close, to make it so one person that was fighting with him was a harder shot for everyone else.

“They have two rocket launchers, Victoria,” Sveta said. “Saved for the hard targets. They clipped Brio and they got the camera.”

I set my jaw, tried to summon the strength to move, and ended up coughing. A bit more summoning and I managed to move, holding myself up.

“I’m trying to keep them from shooting, but they split up. Help.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

No questions about whether I was okay. There were more pressing concerns.

“One cape hiding in the traffic off to the side,” Sveta said, indicating with one hand. “He’s a mover, made some of their injured disappear!”

Then she was gone, pulling herself away.

I had to assume the other person with the rocket launcher was at the opposite end of the crowd to the end that Sveta had headed to. I wished I had a better sense of what was going on. I wished I could see, with the stinging blood weeping from my scalp to my eye, beneath the metal of my mask.

With the chaos, people trying to get clear of Anelace and his knives, and the fact that everyone in the field was either shot or behind cover, there wasn’t as much focus on shooting anymore. They were organizing. Groups of this haphazard militia consolidated, forming ranks to protect key people and groups. The capes didn’t count- nobody was going to help Noontide, but they were gathering around the two-man team with the rocket launcher.

The time I spent looking was time they spent noticing I existed. Some raised rifles, handguns, and other weapons to point at me. I flew for cover, one of the parked cars by the side of the road, close to the field.

Wretch still out, I put my hands on the car and I pushed. Wheels resisted more than they skidded, the Wretch broke a window and tore at the metal, and I thought the vehicle might roll- too much.

A shift to one side helped- and the back end swung their way. With that movement, the front end moved some too. I’d hoped to ram them, disabling the majority, but instead they scattered.

“-clear!” I heard a voice.

The rocket launcher.

I flew, putting myself in the way of the rocket, Wretch active.

They fired. Pulling the trigger when a target presented itself, instinct more than smarts.

It was loud, but the upper ends of the sound were dampened by the forcefield, making it sound more like a loud noise from a television that couldn’t be set to an ear-hurting volume. Heat and fire rolled around the Wretch and surrounded me, and as the Wretch went down, the air exchanged that had been protected along with me mixed in violently with the hot air immediately beyond it. My hair stirred and I was reminded of how much my mouth, nose, and scalp hurt.

The blast had been unexpectedly close to them, I was pretty sure. Most of the people in that group were reeling now.

I used my power, intent on keeping them reeling. My aura pushed out, and I saw the reactions on their faces. Bewilderment. Eyes wide.

Again, that mix of emotion? That fear and regret could somehow mix into something else?

No… was it actually awe? In a twisted, upside-down world, my powers warped, my enemies looked up to me and my allies feared me? Was that how it worked?

No. Only in this scenario.

Something was fucked up. I kept the aura burning as I stalked closer. None raised their weapons against me.

“Tell me who you are. Who sent you?”

“We’re spear team two,” came the response from one wide-eyed woman. “We’re with-”

“Tracy,” a man barked. I loomed, using my flight to draw in closer. He cowed, then said, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Tell me.”

“Can’t,” he said. “Can’t.”

“Teacher?” I asked. I didn’t see a glimmer of recognition. “Cheit?”

Nothing. I saw the man clench his jaw, eyes unfocused as he stared into the sun that was my aura. The clench and his stance suggested he’d found some grit, and it would take some arm twisting to get him to talk.

Arm-twisting. I looked for the man I’d hurt, letting the Wretch nearly tear his arm off. Gone already.

My head snapped around the other way as I heard the sound of the other rocket launcher going off.

It sailed toward the center mass of our team. Ashley, one hand at her middle stood straight, putting herself in the path. It was Byron who supported her to minimize the recoil.

She wasn’t directly in front, so she had to shoot off to the side. She produced a blast and sustained it. The blast caught the projectile, destroyed it, and ate the worst of the detonation. Fire laced through the darkness and spilled out from gaps in licks and tongues. People near her shied away.

Byron eased her to the ground, presumably in the same way he’d lifted her up. The white of her costume looked half red with her own blood.

How had they shot? Sveta-

Sveta was unconscious, with Noontide on the quick approach, a knife in each hand. I took flight.

I passed by the glowing bubble where the guy I’d fought was presumably fighting Anelace, and I could see their blurry outlines within. Hand to hand combat.

A bullet clipped the Wretch, and I dropped down low, still closing the distance.

Sveta roused, just in time to see Noontide moving her hand around, ready to use her power again. I wasn’t close enough.

I saw Sveta’s neck thicken- unfurl. A clasp had been undone. Shorter tendrils reached out and seized Noontide’s face and arm.

“Don’t!” I called.

She turned her head to look at me, eyebrows knit together, eyes wide. Scared. Then Noontide moved, and the tendrils reacted. The narrow ones cut into skin as they constricted. Larger ones twisted and dug in. The mask broke as tendrils stressed it.

I could see the wince on Sveta’s part at the sight, seeing what had just happened.

She let go of Noontide as quickly as she’d grabbed on. The body slumped to the ground.

“Sveta!” I called out.

The agitation was bad enough that she couldn’t bring the tendrils together to cinch the neck-clasp back together.

“She’s fair game, okay!? She and the guy with Anelace right now are killers for hire! The non-capes aren’t! They’re under the influence of something!”

I saw the nod, jerky. She was still fighting it.

“Easy. Bricks in a wall, remember?”

“I made the choice, Victoria,” Sveta said. “I undid the clasp.”

“You defended yourself. I talked to the other guy in this trio. Trust me when I say it’s okay. They’re fucked up, dangerous, and effective enough to exercise both of those other things to their full capacity. Okay?”

I saw the agitation settle some.

“Trust me,” I said. “I saw all of it. I talked to him. She would have left you no choice.”

The agitation settled more. Sveta buckled the strands in. Hands fixed her hair.

I glanced at the bubble. It had popped – no noise, no fanfare. The guy who’d fought me was backing up, clearly bloodied not just by me but by a number of knife slashes. Anelace slumped against the side of a car instead of pursuing.

There were several others with guns in the vicinity. Anelace didn’t budge as they approached. I tensed, ready to act-

It didn’t matter. In front of Sveta, Noontide’s body went up in smoke. One by one, the people who’d been shooting at us began to disappear. The retreating arena man. Shooters. Rocket launcher people. The awed people that hadn’t picked up a gun or returned to being aggressive since I’d talked to them.

Leaving one- the teleporter, who apparently couldn’t teleport themselves. I flew after them, but Crystalclear got to him first. The guy, skinny with ‘troll’ hair in a gelled point above his head, thin beard and mustache, had something in his hand.

Sveta staggered to her feet. I steadied her. Together, we hurried to that scene. One more person.

I pushed out with my aura. The teleporter spooked in a visible way, and Crystalclear found enough of a grip to pry the guy’s hand open. A capsule pill, that Crystalclear quickly stepped on.

“I couldn’t blast him while he was weaving through real people,” Crystalclear said.

“It’s okay,” I said. I wasn’t sure it was. There was so much about what had just happened that wasn’t okay.

I looked at Sveta, and I saw thin traces of crimson along one side of her face, forming little diamond shapes because different tendrils had slapped against it from different angles.

I touched my scalp. Stitches would be needed.

“You got this?” I asked.

Crystalclear nodded, the crystals on his head catching the light with the movement. “I’ll call for help.”

I flew, and I turned in the air as I did it, surveying. The battlefield first- all traffic still stopped. Civilians scared and scattered. The attackers gone. The cars that Foresight and our other heroes had come in had been trashed. Rain’s projectiles had chopped up some of the enemy’s cover, forcing them into tighter places.

A surgical strike. Capes who, as far as I could tell, had been hired with the role clearly in mind. Weapons, tools.

Finale’s wail formed the bulk of the background noise. I spared a glance, even though I didn’t want to see. Her teammates were hurt, not dead. They looked as concerned about her being upset than she was about them being shot, but they didn’t have a lot of strength to communicate to her when she was this loud. I could see Recycle and Retouch peering around the wall Tristan had made, currently badly chipped from bullets. They looked kind of shocked that things had stopped.

Guns were scattered around Brio, but he wasn’t the one who had used them. Relay sat on the cold ground, staring up at the sky. The weapons had been pulled from Brio’s person and used by Relay. No efforts were made to stem Brio’s blood loss, no efforts made to watch his vitals or talk to him, and Relay had no ability to tend to others. Maybe he told himself that they were all already getting help. Maybe there was more to it.

The camera box was missing a good quarter of its components, because it had been hit by a rocket, or by the edge of the blast. The box and the tree had been used as cover, even though the box wasn’t that large. Fragments of Byron’s wall littered the area.

It meant someone could lie behind it and maybe not catch a bullet. Swansong lay in the snow and dirt with her back to the others.

“How do I look in crimson?” she asked.

“Shitty,” I said, and my voice was rough from the gas. “Don’t ever wear it again.”

She didn’t smile. She pulled a hand away from her neck.

“Put that hand back,” I said, my voice hushed. I pressed down on her hand with my own. “It’s not bleeding as much as it could be.”

She didn’t respond or smile. I approached the box, floating closer, and I saw Rain and Byron huddled over.

“Look after her?” Swansong asked. “I don’t trust myself to get close. I want to, make sure to tell her that.”

“She heard,” Rain said.

“Yeah,” I said. I stepped around the box and around Byron.

Rain had supplied fabric to form the improvised bandage. Lookout wasn’t moving much, lying on a bed of Tristan’s power.

“Tristan caught a bullet,” Byron said, quiet. “He should hold until we get to a hospital. He’s in stasis where he is right now. It didn’t hit any vitals.”

“Good to know,” I said, my voice tight. “Hey Lookout.”

I saw her move her hands a bit. Her face wasn’t visible with the mask she wore.

“What are you doing getting shot?” I said. “I don’t advise it.”

“You got shot before,” Lookout responded, ghost-quiet. “Arm.”

“I’m speaking from experience, aren’t I?” I asked. “What do you say I fly you to a hospital?”

“What about Swansong?”

“Come on,” I said. “Swansong’s tough. You’re not.”

Lookout didn’t fight me as I scooped her up, Rain and Byron helping.

“Warn the team with Advance Guard and the Shepherds,” I told Rain and Byron. “I think the people who attacked were compelled, under the influence, or something, and they weren’t team one. The other team’s at risk.”

“They might not believe us,” Rain said.

“Try,” I said. “You comfortable, Lookout?”

“As comfortable as I can be with two bullets in me,” she whispered. “How was I the only one who got shot twice? I’m a small target?”

I talked to her as I floated up. “I’m going to need you to keep talking to me the entire way there. It’s going to be how I know you’re still alert, okay? Let me know if you get cold.”

“Oh kay,” she said, like it was two separate words. “You have to ask me to do something I’m bad at, huh?”

“Talking a lot?”

“Yeah. I’m joking. I’m not very funny. Blame the bullets. Maybe one hit me in the funny bone.”

“Ha ha,” I said, without humor.

As I took flight, turning my body so I caught the wind and the eleven year old in my arms didn’t, I had a view of the bloodstained field. I shifted my orientation and my grip, and set my eyes on the wound in the sky where the portal in Brockton Bay had been ripped open wide.

That would be the direction we were going.

Things had changed. From a city of gold to a city of crimson.

⊙

“I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you face to face, Victoria, and that you had to take a detour. Other things are demanding our presence and focus.”

“Trust me,” I said. “I totally get it. Things are bad right now.”

I approached a window. The streetlights were on, and the city beyond was dark.

Evening- no. After dark.

“Can I ask how your team is doing?” Dragon asked.

“I’m too used to Lookout, because my first impulse is to be surprised that you didn’t look it up on hospital computers first.”

“Admitting that sort of thing gets you in trouble,” Dragon said, over the phone that I’d set to speaker. “I asked because I wanted to hear it from you.”

I looked away from the window, and at the old computer with the round monitor and its slightly fishbowl screen. Green text on a black background flew across the screen. My device on the desk was more modern, with a red light flashing violently on the top as it accepted the data.

“In surgery, recovering, in for a third surgery, worrying, waiting in the dark, recovering, and… attending this meeting, I guess. It’s a mess.”

“Hopefully things will level out.”

I shook my head. “Advance Guard killed villains who had been hired to ambush that coalition. Our warning got to them too late, that this looked set up. It’s agitated things pretty badly- at least on our end there were some civilian witnesses. There’s a lot of question marks. People are scared.”

“I wish I could do more. I’m being watched too carefully to intervene in subtle ways, and the only unsubtle help I could provide would be deploying my machines. I don’t think that would calm the public.”

“No,” I said. “Knowing someone’s out there who has our back is… really nice. It’s appreciated.”

“It looks like we’re halfway done,” Dragon said. “Then you can get back to looking after them. I’m sorry that the timing is awkward.”

“This will be helpful for my looking after me, if nothing else,” I said. I was so tired. “Something to read on all the nights I’m not sleeping.”

I could see the files as they disappeared into my storage drive. DEPT_26.fold, DEPT_27.fold, DEPT_28.fold. Folded files that each supposedly contained the notes and pertinent details of major PRT departments.

“How much of this is redacted?” I asked.

“Some,” Dragon answered. “Enough to protect identities of heroes.”

“And identities of villains?”

“Very few. If you need access to something redacted, you can ask me. We’ll discuss. I imagine you’re thinking of Tattletale?”

“I wasn’t thinking of anyone particular.”

“She’s the one you have the most history with, who is most active and in opposition to you.”

I saw my reflection in the window as I turned my head to look out at the city. I touched the stitches at my scalp. “Is she? Redacted, I mean.”

“No. But if you did open that file, I’d wonder what your motivations were.”

“Answers, I guess. Who she is. Why she is the way she is,” I said. “What she wants. What the hell happened to my hometown.”

“In the eyes of Mrs. Wynn, you earned the right to know. You bartered for the files, you get them. In my eyes, our eyes, if I include Defiant, who is beside me right now, being in Mrs. Wynn’s favor isn’t necessarily a good thing, but we’re willing to extend the trust because you’re doing what you’re doing for good reasons.”

“Thank you. And thank Defiant for me. I appreciate the faith.”

“Done. Be careful around Mrs. Wynn, Victoria,” Dragon said.

“I will. I know.”

“We’re almost done. I’m including some files I found in my backups. I don’t know if Lookout kept track or managed those things, but it’s notes for her old work that she submitted to the PRT, and the specs from the testing division.”

“She was enough of an unknown for the testing division?”

“The director wanted to cover all the bases.”

“I hope she likes it,” I said. “Getting shot’s a bit of a downer. Having your friends get shot, allies die, your work destroyed, and the investigation stalled is pretty devastating too. Missed our deadline.”

“I can’t tell if you’re still talking about Lookout,” Dragon said.

“Any word on the villain meeting?”

“It went as one might expect. They’re angry. If the culprits of the attacks last night and today are there, they’re in good company.”

“Or they’re fostering the dissent. Any idea on who is taking point? Where Tattletale stands?”

“On leadership, no. Tattletale has declared herself neutral in this. In the revenge, dominance, asserting of strength that the other villains are intent on.”

“Good for her,” I said.

“Not quite,” Dragon said.

A voice came through the speaker. It took me only a second to realize who it was.

“I’m still available for sale, but prices are tripling, because I have other things to focus on. Normally I’d try to steer this ship, but if you guys want to set things on fire… have at it.”

“What are the prices?”

“If you have to ask, Hock, you’re not in a position to pay.”

“Fuck.”

“Any takers? Hands up so I know…”

I frowned.

“We don’t have visual, but we do know there were takers,” Dragon said. “Cradle was one. I know he’s a person of interest to your team.”

“Cradle and Love Lost are at odds, and Tattletale was telling us to help Love Lost. Maybe she’s pulling something,” I said. I made a face. “Things get so much messier when she’s involved.”

“You’re not wrong,” Dragon said.

“Thank you for this,” I said. I’d noticed the light had stopped blinking.

“Again, I’m sorry for the timing. I know you’d rather be at the hospital.”

“No,” I said. I looked out the window. The person in my reflection looked more angry than weary. “I’m so tired of hospitals. A break is good.”

“What’s next?”

“Investigating. We’re not done. The deadline passed, but we still need to figure out who these guys are and how it factors in. Advance Guard’s group is still out for blood, and others are following their path. Turning into vigilantes more than they are heroes.”

“I can try talking to them.”

“If you think that’ll work.”

“Defiant is telling me he might try it. He might be more on their wavelength.”

“Cool,” I said, feeling anything but cool. I was feeling heartsick, if anything. “I’m feeling like we should just cut through this Gordian knot. Screw the secrecy, screw decorum. Just… go after the masterminds.”

“Others have tried. It’s trickier than it might seem.”

I sighed.

“On that subject,” Dragon said. “My apologies for the awkward segue-”

I winced. I knew that Dragon had invited me for a reason. She had something she’d wanted to talk to me about that she couldn’t share over the lines.

“-I’m putting one last thing on that drive,” Dragon finished.

I saw it flash on the screen. One line. Another .fold file. Neatly compressed.

Using the trackball, I navigated to the file. I selected it.

As the pages loaded in, I saw glimpses.

“Ah, you just opened it,” Dragon said. “You can see why I couldn’t risk others seeing.”

Killed brother. Murder charges…

Fallen, with relations to the McVeay…

Blackmail, individual already in compromising position sought counsel, but this message was intercepted…

“She said that if something happened to her, and if it looked like she might not return, then she wanted at least the truncated notes to go to appropriate people. For your team and other things. I tried to find people who would take on these cases and take appropriate steps. Your Dr. Darnall was one.”

“He said no?”

“He said he couldn’t. The team with your friends Weld, Sveta and Vista returned last night, and it doesn’t look like anyone in particular is still looking, or if they are, they aren’t broadcasting it.”

“It’s a bunch of staff that only matter to a narrow selection of people, and a few reformed monsters like Bonesaw and Nilbog. It doesn’t compel people to put themselves out there,” I said.

“I cut down on the particulars. Only a few points that, if you weren’t already aware of them, you should be.”

Suicidal ideation…

Potential bipolar diagnosis…

“I don’t know,” I said.

Pervasive feelings of betrayal, lack of trust, including in herself…

“I shouldn’t be looking at this,” I said.

The screen went black.

“You should,” Dragon said.

The screen came back. A different page, closer to the end of the document.

Chris, I realized. I read some of the general notes, clicked a button, and read another page.

“Fuck,” I said.

Interlude 10.y

The world greeted him with a chitter and a dozen spidery legs prying at his upper body and face. Legs hooked onto teeth, where he had teeth, and onto gums, where the teeth were absent, bottom and top row, prying his jaw open until it cracked and he wasn’t sure it would close again. It shoved its face between the legs, into his face and his mouth, and the texture of it was like wet sandpaper on cold, naked skin.

Its head narrowed, a spear or a wedge, and it tried to force its way into his mouth. Its shell was like scales, oriented so that passage in should be easy, the grit of the sandpaper and the slant of the shells making entry smooth. To go the opposite way was to have the sandpaper texture scrape and the scales catch.

It couldn’t enter, so it withdrew, and it gouged chunks out of him in the process. It thrust in again, and he fought it now. His hand -his only hand- dug for an opening, sliding across scale without finding gaps. It tried to grasp the spider leg, and found it thorny.

His enemy pulled free again, and the slant of the scales resisted, design resisting the effort. Scales caught on some of his only teeth and with the creature’s legs and body straining, pried them loose where they weren’t pried out altogether.

He fumbled, searching for eyes to gouge- and found a smooth, slightly convex surface, that small fingernails couldn’t scratch or find purchase on. He fumbled again, his hand momentarily paralyzed as the creature fought its way forward again and caused him to nearly black out, and found the shoulder of the thing. A mess of cords and tendons beneath a cupping of shell. He tore, dug fingers in, and did what damage he could.

He fought a machine of a thing, all instinct, and it wasn’t a machine that learned. It sought to continue doing what it was doing, but as it fought to open his mouth wide and shove itself within, it tried to use the leg that was now damaged, pulling and throwing its weight to one side. It lurched, lost some of its hold, scrabbled to retake its prior position, and did it again. Each time, it scraped, scales dug, legs scrabbled and scratched, and the part of it that he could damage was only in his reach for a second at most- a second where his vision doubled and everything was slick with moisture and fluids. An acrid, chemical smell flooded his world.

He did enough damage to the shoulder that the limb hung on by a thread. The shoulder was like a knot and the knot came free, so he started digging within. To scrape for something vital, in a chest cavity larger around than his own, to scrape at connecting tissue that held shell plates together, and when that failed, to take handfuls of fluid from where they belonged and drag them out.

He found something that bound an upper half of his enemy to the lower half and held on, twisting and wrenching until it broke. That gave him a chink in the armor that he could consistently use; a gap now ran between head and shoulder, opening and closing like gnashing teeth or two blades as the creature rocked and moved its body, but if he chanced to put his fingers or hands inside he could reach the parts that connected body to head.

His other arm was only a flipper, if it could be called that. Too broad and rounded to be blade, too hard to be a fin, not long enough to be useful. Its scrapes to find purchase on the ground beneath him were what told him that he wasn’t just lying there with a monster perched on top of him, but something monstrous lay beneath, dead, a staring and unmoving eye as large as his head staring up at the sky that was depositing so much of the moisture on the scene.

It took three tries to get at the neck-bundle. The second try saw the two pieces of shell come together and slice at two of his smaller fingers on his hand.

In getting his hand on it and tearing, he killed the monster that had been fighting to get inside of him. He felt it go still, its legs curling up, releasing his ruined mouth.

In the stillness, moisture splashing down around him, he became aware of other movements. His eyes weren’t good, and it was hard to make out more than silhouettes in the dark.

There were ten more of the things he had fought, some twice the size. There were other things. Dead things like the one he laid on. There was no ground, only a sea of hostility and death.

He laid there, aware that his fight was one of several he’d have to engage in. His mouth was open and wouldn’t close and he was glad for it, because it could catch some of that moisture.

Survive, was the imperative.

The imperative gave him the strength to dismantle his attacker further, to work the gap open and to tear what he could free. Already, another hostile thing was scratching idly at the body of the dead thing he laid on. It might have been seeking entry. It might have been seeking him.

Much of his enemy was hollow, the space occupied by fluids that were easily displaced or lost. He tore what he could and worked his way inside, his hard nub of a limb doing some of the work. His head was heavy, and following the imperative meant that he had to stop taking that meager water from the sky and put his head within.

It was not an easy fit, and it was one that took some effort. The roles had been reversed, and it was him that sought ingress. Him that had to retreat, then try again, fight and scrape away.

He worked most of himself within the shelled carapace, then stopped to rest. He couldn’t close his mouth, but with his reaching tongue pressing things to the roof of his mouth, he could suckle and pressure. Dangling bits of meat provided moisture, sustenance.

The world of scales and moisture around him shuddered, and he flipped over, fluids spilling into the cavity he occupied, then quickly draining out. They tasted as before, chemical, acrid, filling his nose and coating the back of his throat with the smell, leaving his head pounding.

He’d been buried. Ensconced within a borrowed shell, he couldn’t see the black-gray expanse of sky overhead anymore- only writhing and struggling scale, plant life, and the occasional twitching limb.

Survive.

He gathered his strength. Time passed, and he remained alert for the scraping of the things like the one that had attacked him. Now and again they prodded and crawled through the forest of living matter, but they didn’t bother him while he was shelled.

The world turned upside-down again. Not to add more, but to separate. There was more noise as they were separated further, and with blurry eyes, he watched while a massive figure brought a weapon down, severing the head of a living, writhing thing. The action injured the shelled thing that had taken up residence inside, and the weapon killed that.

Through the gap, he watched as other shelled things made their way closer to the monstrous figure. He watched as the figure stepped on the shelled thing, killing it, then killed another with the weapon- a blade on a pole.

It wasn’t that the figures were large, he realized, but that he was small. They were covered in protection like he was, but it was made to fit their form, covering every part of them while moving easily. His protection limited him as much as it walled off the outside world. This was their world.

Small meant vulnerable. Vulnerable meant that it was best to stay quiet. Quiet while they killed. Quiet when they struck him with the blade, not to kill, but to move.

The dead life and plants were put separate from the living, and the living was steadily killed or taken away. He’d been taken from the dangerous writhing jungle to a dead one, of shells and smooth, cold scale.

The dead weren’t to be left alone. Off to the side, a great light burned and consumed, fed regularly with plant life, and it reduced the dead to odors and tastes that made him salivate, before reducing them to char that made his face wrinkle.

He waited, watched, and listened to them communicate in grunting and sibilant sounds. When the great light illuminated the transparent coverings in front of their heads, he could see their faces, see how those sounds were huffed out and mashed into shapes with lips like his own mangled lips, with teeth that were intact, and with tongues like the one that he used to suckle.

Survive, the imperative demanded.

He played dead, limiting himself to suckling for moisture and then chewing when he felt like he could move his jaw enough. He watched, saw the pattern, and when he judged he’d waited as long as he could before that blade found its way under him and turned him into a blackness that made others drool, when he judged the way was clear, he pried himself free and crawled his way into the darkness, where plants pressed in on him from every direction.

⊙

“You don’t remember anything before your trigger?” Rain asked. The guy was trying to look disarming, but there was scratch that traced the line of his eye socket and turned his lower eyelid black, just swollen enough to make the eye squint in a suspicious way.

Define ‘trigger’.

The rest of the group was paying attention to him now. Eyes trying to get past the shell he’d erected around himself, see parts of him he wasn’t comfortable revealing. He trusted Ashley’s cold, uninterested look more than he trusted Kenzie’s small smile and wide eyes. He was glad for the eyepatch he wore, because it meant he didn’t see Kenzie staring and studying him.

“Nothing before,” Chris said, shrugging. He wouldn’t tell them about the bonfire, the bugs, the quarantine crew.

“I don’t remember anything either,” Sveta said. She was always quiet, trying to sound gentle and nonthreatening. She said ‘sorry’ a lot, stared at the ground. She went on, “But I dream. I’ve tried to paint it, to take those fragments of dreams and put a puzzle together.”

“Do you dream, Chris?” the therapist asked. Prodded. Pried.

“No,” Chris said. He had nightmares regularly, and even though he considered those ‘dreams’, he wouldn’t share that. It was knowledge that could be used to trace his background.

He saw her scratch words onto the notebook that laid on her lap. She avoided looking at him as she wrote.

“I dream,” Ashley said. “Ms. Yamada told me that dreams may be important to parahumans.”

“Do you keep a dream diary?” Sveta asked.

And the conversation moved on. Chris was aware of the therapist glancing at him more than she glanced at the others. Her pen rested on the page by the note she’d made.

⊙

Second imperative: migrate.

Surviving meant eating, and eating gave him the strength to walk instead of crawling. He was growing, and the rate of growth made his entire body hurt.

Eating meat was hard, because it required catching that meat, and eating enough vegetation to keep himself going required constant eating, which conflicted with the second imperative.

It also meant that he had to experiment with eating different things. He’d eaten some shoots last night, and had spent his usual sleeping hours enduring stomach cramps and a forced evacuation of everything he’d eaten and then some. Now he was delirious, thirsty, and having to stop because his stomach was contracting and cramping so badly.

He needed to keep moving, both because it was imperative and because he needed water and there wasn’t any here.

He found himself slowing, taking more breaks. To do otherwise would have meant collapse, but stopping and not reaching water or destination meant death or-

Or nothing. There was no alternative.

Five hundred breaths of walking. Three hundred breaths of sitting, resting.

Then four hundred breaths of walking. Four hundred breaths of sitting, resting.

Two hundred breaths to walk. Six hundred breaths to sit.

All measured out. Forward progress was the only option. The weather was wet and cold and he felt like the warmth in him had died some time ago. The plodding forward was monotonous – he no longer looked for danger or for food. He breathed and he marched. The breaths were even, in and out, and they were his clock.

Fifty breaths of walking- he had to stop, his stomach cramping. He lost count of his breathing while gasping in pain. He imagined it was close to a thousand.

A hundred breaths of walking. A thousand breaths of rest.

A hundred breaths of walking. A thousand breaths of rest. He wanted to rest longer, and he couldn’t let himself.

A hundred breaths of walking, not toward his destination now. His heart hammered in his chest as he took those hundred breaths and the steps that went with them, because he now knew the danger he faced.

He put himself in the most open space he could. Predators would see him here, but if he didn’t choose this location, then the scavengers would get him.

He collapsed, and the exhaustion and pain that ran through him was enough that the feeling of hitting the dirt didn’t even reach his thoughts.

He faded in and out from there. Cold and wet, then cold and dry. Then movement. Covered in a soft wrapping- too soft to be any protection. His half-formed left hand gripped the material.

When he came to again, he felt better. He felt nourished, and he felt rested. There were few aches and pains, no longing for water. He moved the material that covered him aside, and found a distance between the soft material he had been resting on and the ground below.

He landed, and he fell, but he made little noise.

Second imperative: migrate.

They caught him before he could get there. People like the ones that had been killing and burning, but without the coverings that were the same color and material from head to foot. Bigger people.

He struggled and fought, heard their utterances and knew no meaning in it. He saw their kin- a long, long line of people all migrating in their own way. To the wrong place. People with belongings gathered, moving at a crawl, unwary of the hard-shelled things that traveled along hard surfaces, so close to them.

He tried twice more to get where he needed to be, and on the third try, two of the people decided to confine him, imprisoning him in a large shell, with soft material within. This shell moved, and once he saw that it moved in the direction he needed to go, he relaxed. When they stopped he pointed with his fist, insistent. He knew the destination by heart, even though he knew so little else.

A deserted place, of shelters like the tents, only hard stone. Some towered high, others were squat and low.

His destination was down stairs. The grown ones with him tried to stop him, because now they were wary. He fought his way free, and he ran.

Down the stairs. A door, and a panel on the wall. Each bump on the wall produced a note when pressed, and they had to be pressed in the right order. It was imperative.

The door opened, and a world of manufactured concrete stood out before him. There were more metal doors, more panels, but all the doors were open. Shells and guts of metal, crystal-clear containers that housed fluids with things within. Shells meant to be worn, now draped in a covering of gossamer, courtesy of the tiny shelled things that swarmed them.

The grown ones followed, and they looked scared. They picked up their pace, to reach him before he could reach the chamber he needed. They were just in time for the light.

A single light, focused on each of them, blinding, so they all covered their eyes.

When he looked, he saw that the light that shone on him had turned green. The one that shone on them was the red of bodily fluid, of injury and pain.

He didn’t jump when there was a sound like there had been when people had been doing the killing. A sharp cracking sound, as boot came down on blade, severing life.

No blade here- it was a series of narrower things, so fast they were invisible. Both of the grown people collapsed.

He advanced, reaching the destination. His hand mashed the raised markings there, and the markings depressed as the ones on the panel had.

Things lit up, and the face he saw on the other side of the clear glowing panel was of a grown man, teeth crowded toward the front, hair brown and tousled into a mop, eyes wide in a dangerous way. He moved like he was afraid, moving things, putting fluids in things, and making utterances in a quick, nervous way.

What he said didn’t matter.

Migration done. He instinctively knew what he had to do. The scene on the panel continued as he found everything that seemed familiar and made sure it was in place. By the time he was done, the scene was repeating itself. The same sounds, the same movement.

Third imperative: download.

Feelings were just chemicals in the body and the brain. On the glowing panel that showed the repeating sequence of events, he could see some of those chemicals. Running through clear artificial veins, or residing in cases and shells.

Metal tips pressed against his flesh until they pierced through. He turned the segment, and chemicals flowed into his arm. From his arm, they traveled through his body. They were meant to evoke a specific situation, a specific instance.

Something slowly began to shift, his head pounding, and he understood what he was doing. He understood the chemicals and he understood the machinery around him. It came in waves, of increasing clarity.

The memories came after. He could put names to what he was looking at.

He could remember the shape of the the moment he’d ‘triggered’ -the word ‘triggered’ popped into his head amid the stream of memories. And he could remember everything that had come after.

He had a name for the person on the screen, now. A name for himself.

PRT’s second most wanted, 2003. Seventh most wanted if counting international threats. He’d fought the PRT’s headliner team three times. One win, two draws- he’d lost both those times, technically, but he’d gotten away, and he counted that as a draw.

Then they’d caught him, found him mid-experiment. He’d been a prisoner in a regular prison, until they’d grown lax.

Then the Birdcage. Baumann Parahuman Containment Center. Seven years of cameras and eyes watching his every move while he was contained. He could imagine the fingers tapping on the glass. Dragon handled the announcements, but he could imagine the other staff watching. No one woman could do all of the watching. A hundred eyes…

The memories were overwriting and overshadowing the creature he’d been, that had fought so fiercely and wrapped itself in the shell of one of Breed’s spawn. He’d been dredged up along with them while, presumably, people had been looking for heroes in the wreckage after everything had gone wrong at the oil rig.

He reached out to touch the screen, feeling a kind of dread. He didn’t want to be that. Him. Himself. He’d spent a long, long time not wanting to be himself, but now it was imperative.

As if responding to that thought, the man in the recording turned to face the screen, still talking, chattering.

Lab Rat.

⊙

“You lied to the group.”

Chris slumped back in his seat, staring at the therapist with his best ‘are you for real’ face.

“About a lot of things,” she added.

“You said I needed to do this. You didn’t say how.”

“How are you doing this, then? I’d love some insight on your approach.”

“I’m protecting myself.”

“I guessed that was the case. Can you elaborate?”

He let out a long, belabored sigh. People were so much more trouble than they were worth.

“Name a statement, anything I said, and I’ll explain why.”

“Your background.”

“It can be used to track me. If they know where I came from, then they know who and what I am. That matters to people.”

“You think certain people hold grudges?”

“I think certain populations hold grudges. Riley Grace Davis, imprisoned and made to do work for your organization-”

“I’m not affiliated with them.”

Chris snorted. “Whatever. Tom Moss? Dead. They didn’t put much effort into investigating that one. Ricario D’Alleva, imprisoned. Akemi whatshername? Imprisoned.”

“She seems reasonably free and happy by all reports I’ve seen.”

“Led around like a dog, watched constantly.”

“That strikes me as the kind of thing that you’re very conscious of. Being watched, observed, manipulated.”

“Eh,” he said. “If you haven’t picked up on that already, you don’t deserve your credentials. Jamie Rinke, imprisoned. Meadows? Dead. I can’t even remember which of the other Slaughterhouse or Class-S threats are alive still, but for most it’s because they’ve been dead or imprisoned for so long that we’ve mostly forgotten about them. Which is my point.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, you’re all over the place here.”

“I mind,” Chris said, frowning. He’d let himself get agitated. “And I’m in one place. These are the dangerous ones. The ones they wanted to get rid of but couldn’t. The lovely Ms. Webb? Imprisoned-”

He saw her open her mouth, and quickly added, “-until released by Benjamin Terrell. Who is public enemy number one, and I would guess is either going to die before the year is out or live to be two hundred.”

“Fair assertion. He has a lot of resources at his disposal.”

“Speaking of? Your Valkyrie? Ms. Ciara? Imprisoned.”

“You have a very loose definition of ‘imprisoned’, Chris.”

“Dog, leash. Monitored, fretted over, limited in what she can do. If they could have done better in locking her down I think they would have.”

“She’s free and she’s helping. I think most have earned and are exercising their second chances, Chris, and she’s more evidence for my belief than evidence against. Why are you so fixated on this?”

“It’s too dangerous to tell the truth! Even if they forgave my past, they won’t overlook my potential. Tinkers get kidnapped. So I say I’m a Changer.”

“Why Changer?”

“Because it makes sense. I can sell it. I can fake it. And because changers are second to last on the good ol’ PRT priority list. Everything else being equal, changers get left alone while the thinkers and masters get gunned down first, tinkers are probably next in line if they can’t be disarmed, and then you get rid of the bog-standard break-shit types. Changers come after all of that.”

“Which is why you lied about that,” she said, and he saw her take her note as she said it. A mark on the paper, something to keep track of. A continuing study of him.

“Survival is always going to be my first priority,” he said. “The way I see it, half of the parahumans out there are doing it wrong. They aren’t protecting themselves. They aren’t making the right moves. They aren’t optimizing, and optimizing has to start with staying alive and keeping from being exploited. Which they are all really fucking bad at.”

“I have many patients who I wish were still alive right now. I wouldn’t put it in quite those words, but… it’s a scary world.”

“It is, and those patients were idiots. Your current sitting-in-a-circle ring of patients that you made me sit with? Idiots.”

She seemed exasperated now. “We’re all doing our best. Did you get anything at all out of the group session?”

Chris snorted.

“If you put a little bit more of yourself out there, then maybe you’d get more out of it.”

“I told them enough. What did I say? Tinker got me, experiments, abuse, fucking asshole kept me for a while.”

“You didn’t mention that the tinker was you, Chris.”

“Would’ve kind of given away the show, don’t you think?” he asked, as sarcastic as he could manage.

“I get the impression that when you came here, you were irritated,” the therapist said. “You were already plotting how you would tell me you didn’t want to attend. Yes?”

“Yes,” he said. He smirked. “I like the word plotting. Fitting.”

“Can I negotiate with you?”

He shrugged.

“Keep attending, and-”

“Why?”

“Because I think there’s value in it. I think if you give it time, it’ll be easier to talk and to share.”

He snorted again. “You think that’s going to help?”

“With therapy? Careful guidance and attention? Yes. I believe that. But you have to want it.”

He reached into his pocket to pull out his phone. Not nearly enough time had passed.

“Agree to this, and I’ll talk to the institution. They can relax the disciplinary measures for your outbursts, give you access to your things, and give you the freedom to visit your workshop. Provided, of course, that you keep it safe, sane, and sensible.”

His fingers drummed on the phone screen.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“I don’t need the institution.”

“You’re a young teenager with nowhere to live.”

“I’m a thirty-two year old man in a body that was meant to grow fast, not well.”

“It’s not quite that defined, Chris. You seem to enjoy that it’s not defined, because if I approach you as a juvenile, you claim you’re a man. If I approach you as if you were a man, you retreat to being the teenager. Petulant, sarcastic, immature-”

“So flattering,” he said.

“And clever, independent, with varied interests. A far cry from the person described in the write-up for Lab Rat. A distinct, natural personality of its own.”

“We could debate it all session. Oh wait! We have! Multiple times!”

“By your choice. I think you like that you resist labeling as one or the other. A circular argument is safe ground to retreat to when you don’t want to discuss other things.”

He shook his head.

“When the institution isn’t upset with you, it’s not such a bad place to be, is it?”

“Noisy, chaotic, tons of test subjec- kids running around.”

“Not funny.”

“It sucks.”

“It has food, power, televisions, running water, internet-”

“Crap internet.”

“There are amenities. I know your supervisors have remarked that you had fun playing video games with peers.”

Supervisors. He felt a frustration well inside him. People that tapped on the glass, peered in. That thought they knew him.

“They are the furthest thing from being my peers. I outclass them in every way. They suck at the games, they can barely spell…”

“You had fun,” the therapist said, firm, like there was no room for disagreement. “It’s easier, isn’t it?”

“…I definitely don’t need the group.”

“I picked members for the circle because you have common focuses. I can see you perk up whenever tinker-related talk comes up. Rain, Kenzie. I know there are parallels between yourself and Ashley, that you aren’t the originals.”

“She’s a legitimate clone. My predecessor got creative.”

“There are parallels, aren’t there? If you talked to her about your dreams and she talked to you about hers, I think you could teach each other something about what’s going on and what you’re going through.”

“I’m still not going to share. Weighing the values, I get more out of keeping it secret than sharing.”

“Optimizing?”

“Exactly.”

“And the side effects of your transformations, and your insistence on transforming yourself? Is that optimizing too?”

He shook his head. No snort, no laugh, no dismissal. In a way, it was as grave a thing as talking about a family member dying.

Not that one more family member dying would have been such a bad thing in his case.

“That stuff’s for fun,” he told her.

The therapist offered no immediate response to that. But her pen marked it down. He wondered if she was doing that on purpose, to let him know she knew.

⊙

Cortisol, epinephrines, and noradrenaline flooded into his arm along with a mess of acetylcholines.

Third imperative: Download.

Every two to three days, depending on how long he could hold out, he ‘downloaded’. Powers and agents, as the literature called them, had a way of connecting better to the hosts when the host was in alignment with the moment they triggered. It was at this time that the agent performed its deepest study of the host, the context around the host, and all necessary things relating to the power.

With a specific feeling derived from a specific balance of neurotransmitters that he pumped into his system, his brain hooked up to a machine to read the various levels, he replicated the feelings of one specific length of time, then the moment that it all came to a head.

A slow ramp up- his finger adjusted the switch, slowly sliding it across the dusty, cracked terminal. He watched the cortisol levels rise, felt them rise. Stress.

He could visualize the scene clearly now. It was the most intact of his memories. He had been forbidden from entering his sister’s office, which had once been his dad’s workshop. He’d entered. He’d seen. A few seconds of horror, which had sent him spiraling into self-destruction. Bed wetting, smearing feces on the walls of the school bathroom, and picking fights without realizing why. Anything to feel like he could make the world make tangible sense again. Anything to get the image out of his head.

A teenage guy, lying on a table. She’d removed the gag and the guy had managed a brief yelp before the plastic covered his mouth- part of a hose and tube assembly, connected to a canister. The contents of the canister had been released, and they’d vented out explosively- so explosively that it erupted from the teenager’s nose, a thick foam.

He’d snorted, failing to get enough foam out to breathe. He’d struggled, his back arching with the force of his desperate attempt to pull arm from restraint. The arms had been injured, marked. There were cuts with blue ink smeared into them and onto the skin around them. His eyes had rolled back into his skull-

And the boy that would become Lab Rat had fled, feet stomping because he hadn’t thought to be quiet. His sister didn’t follow or make any mention of what had happened.

He had broken down. He had tried and failed to make sense of a scene that made none. He had had nightmare after nightmare and he had sat with his brother and sister at the dining room table, eating the meal his sister had made and trying not to think about that scene and the role she had played in it.

Years later, he summoned the courage to tell his sister he knew. He’d expected to find some strength in it, to disarm her. Something. All he had achieved was to allow her to be less careful about what she did, on those days she found a hitchhiker or homeless kid willing to follow her to her home.

He couldn’t tell anyone, because he was already the delinquent by that point. She was the angel, the twenty-one year old who had taken custody of her two kid brothers, who put up with him when he’d acted out so much after their parents had died.

He adjusted dials. More cortisol. Heavy noradrenaline. The moment of panic, the culmination-

The memories. Everything had flowed from that point, and everything that had followed was now clearer.

Every two to three days, he inserted the needles, and he hit the switches. Imperative. Half of the rest of the day was spent both reeling and trapping small animals so the requisite hormones and neurotransmitters could be harvested. Rats, ironically.

It was sheer ego, helped along by the panic of a very limited timespan, that had made the original demand this kind of adherence. If there was going to be a legacy or an emergency out, then he needed to ensure that the process was repeated until the memories and personality were as close to real as possible. Except they never could be.

So long as the imperative held, he couldn’t stray far from this bunker.

⊙

Chemicals. He gathered what he could.

Six minutes to rig an extraction gun.

Ten minutes to extract from every animal in the shelter. His hand was heavy on the top of the cat’s head. The machine pumped at the back of its skull, extracting. It died in bliss, which was better than most would get, the way this was going.

The inter-dimensional door opened nearby, and wind whistled in. He made a face.

“You’re working so small,” String Theory taunted him.

With more force than necessary, he plugged his machine into another cat. The machine bucked as it kicked in, nearly throwing the cat from the table.

“You’re not working at all. We barely have time.”

“They found a way to give us time. Time manipulators have been allotted to each of us. If we can give a convincing elevator pitch.”

“Our reputations should be pitch enough,” he rasped the words. In the lead-up to everyone getting out of the Birdcage, he’d spent far too long talking and negotiating, smoothing tensions and ensuring that if there was any hassle, it wouldn’t come from his block.

So long as he was a rat in someone else’s maze, he’d give them what they wanted and he’d get his cheese.

After… was after. He just had to get there. He had to get through the next day.

“What are you making?” String Theory asked, sticking her head between his elbow and his body.

He dug his elbow into her back, hard, and she squirmed her way out.

“Let me be your rubber duck,” she said.

“Shouldn’t you be building something impractically large?”

“I set my servos to build. Tools in motion, engines heating up. I’ll go back in… two minutes and thirty one seconds. But I clearly need to make fun of you before then. What can you even do with that?”

He had no plans. Or rather, he had a hundred. He’d spent seven years thinking about what he would do when he had a chance, a real chance that didn’t use food byproducts and what he extracted when he performed procedures on his cell block inmates. The mentally ill, the suffering. Take from one, give to another, level out serotonin, reduce aggressive urges. Now and then their parahuman overseer would get upset at him for building up too much of a collection, demanding he dump it. Until then, he had some freedom.

He kept a cell block of people quiet, when they were of types who had no reason to be quiet, and in exchange, they left him alone six days out of seven. Another of the seven days was reserved for dealing with disputes and talking to other block leaders.

Now he was out, all of those notes in his head, and with a hundred ideas to pick from, he had no ideas.

Not that he’d tell this grinning runt of a woman.

“Better seen than heard.”

She smirked, and it was a really punchable smirk. She slouched and rather than straighten up to smile at him, she twisted her head so her chin craned up, looking up at him with overlarge glasses and a forced smile on her face.

Somehow more irritating than if she’d been looking down at him. Not that he would punch that punchable face. Maybe in the right situation, he could do something more creative. Take the right formula, the right form, and claw that face off.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Before I go… a bet.”

“What?”

“Which of us makes the biggest difference?”

“What are the stakes?” he asked.

“Existing,” she said. Her watch beeped, and she turned around. “Take me back to my lab.”

He watched her saunter off, through the portal that opened. He could see the scale of what she was building, saw her turn to smirk at him in the moment before the portal closed.

He was left in the animal shelter, the lights dark.

This wouldn’t do.

He was thinking small and he hated that she was right almost as much as he hated her guts in general. Yet however much he hated her and however much she claimed to detest him, they ended up together, over and over again.

This- it had been her saying goodbye.

Couldn’t think small. Couldn’t let the runt win.

“Give me a portal in the ceiling… someplace bright.”

The portal opened. A square of light that illuminated the interior of the shelter. Animals shuffled in cages and kennels, their cries overlapping.

“So that worked,” he said, his voice a quiet rasp. “Give me a portal to… where the confiscated PRT tech ends up.”

The door opened.

He smiled. “Stakes are bad enough you’re not even going to say no?”

It would be a start.

Ensuring he had the last laugh would be the next part of it.

It meant surviving.

⊙

Imperative: download.

It was instinct and preprogramming that forced his hand, that made the routine of the procedure something that he could stall but not stop. No more than he could stop from sleeping.

Needle in, dials adjusted, fluids loaded.

Replicating a feeling, then experiencing everything that had flowed from that point. The him that he’d been, small and stupid as it was, had been him.

⊙

Elephants were scared of rodents, or so the story went. Dogs ate cats, cats ate rats, and rats scared the elephants that terrified everyone.

He knew he was put together weird, as though none of the pieces of his body fit with the other. If anybody had ever really liked him, his little brother excepted, then they’d never let him know… and his little brother wasn’t around anymore. The last victim of the so-called ‘angel’, his sister.

Now he was alone. For a moment, there were only the eyes that watched him, waiting for him to ask for a portal.

He put on his coat, he gathered his crate and a backpack, both full of injectors, the housings procured by way of a portal to a medical supply company, and he grabbed the ball. His emergency out, quickly cobbled together.

“Portal… to where the fighters who won’t be fighting at this next battlefield are.”

The doorway opened. There were people gathered. Some would be friends and allies of the people who were fighting front and center in a matter of minutes.

Quickly, he handed them out. No time for explanations, and he knew he was untrustworthy enough by reputation and look that explanations wouldn’t help much. If they wanted one, they could take one.

He’d get as many out as he could. Maybe one would matter. Maybe all of them would.

A rat could scare an elephant. A thousand rats could kill one.

Heroes, villains. Some stared at him. He’d never taken off his Birdcage sweats, only put stuff on over it.

“What is it?” someone asked. A girl in a gray horned mask with slanted eyes, a scarf, and a black bodysuit.

His voice was still a bit of a rasp. “Wear it. It activates when you’re hurt. Maybe keeps you in the fight. Makes you strong in a desperate moment.”

The girl tossed the small box up in the air, then caught it. “Okay.”

He handed others to people nearby.

“Can I have one for my dog?” one of them asked.

He looked at the ‘dog’. Grown large, monstrous, clearly some kind of growth effect in play.

He would have liked to study it. He would have liked to see the interaction. Would it fizzle?

It stirred up his tinker brain, and he had to suppress it. He’d had some experience in suppressing those thoughts, in all his time in the Birdcage.

“Go nuts,” he said.

“Then I want some for other dogs.”

He pushed a handful into her hands. She nodded, satisfied, and began putting them into the pockets of her baggy jacket.

He considered his next move, who he should approach next, thought twice, and dropped the crate. “Find someone to hand these out. I should be there.”

“You’re going huh?” the girl in the gray mask asked. “You don’t need your badge things?”

“Injectors. And this bag is full,” he said. He patted the backpack. “Give me a portal. Last stand.”

The portal opened. He could see the oil rig, and everyone assembled there.

So many strangers, and he didn’t necessarily like the people who weren’t strangers.

“Look after the people there,” the girl with the thing about dogs said.

“That’s the intention.”

That got him a nod.

He was greeted by a man in power armor he couldn’t place by name. Quizzed. Then he was handed an assortment of other things to hand out with the injectors.

String Theory, too, greeted him at the door.

“I’ve got you beat,” she said.

“A thousand rats can kill an elephant,” he said.

“What are you even talking about? Did you snort something, to help you get through this? I wouldn’t blame you. I know you’re a coward at heart.”

His voice rasped, “That’s rich, coming from the runt of a woman who keeps her location secret and hides from the authorities while her weapons do the work remotely. I know you’re not very bright, but put the pieces together. It’s not a one man show.”

“One woman,” String Theory said. She looked around. “Sad, that Lustrum isn’t in earshot for that. It would have got me points with her.”

“You’re so far into the negatives with her that it doesn’t matter. We have eighty people with powers here. Think for once. I aim to multiply that power, or at least keep it in play.”

“You’re underestimating how big my gun is. We’re not rats, you know. We’re ants. Little winged insects, buzzing around him.”

He handed out devices to the people who were taking the opportunity to file into the portal to the oil rig. Armbands, earbuds, and injectors.

“My plan, my approach, it acknowledges that we’re ants. The trick is to realize that because we’re ants, we can operate like termites. We bring the building down, and we can kill your elephant. All it takes is the right timing.”

“Termites aren’t ants,” he said.

“Same family, Rat.”

He shook his head slowly.

“When you’re dying, Rat, die knowing I win our bet. I made a knockout punch, you made knick-knacks.”

He gave her a pat on the head as he passed her. He knew she hated it.

Onto the platform, where things were mercifully quiet.

He handed out the armbands and earbuds as well as the injectors. He wove his way through the crowd.

A girl with a bug costume. Tinted lenses. Either symbolic, given the recent conversation, or the universe mocking him.

He drew the equipment from his bag, then hesitated. Something more fitting. A bug in a box for the girl with the bug costume. Maybe she would be more comfortable that way.

⊙

Imperative: Download.

It pressed on him. The need to return to memories, refining them to perfection when the agent in his head would never provide a perfectly clear image. He knew from those memories that he’d intentionally designed the system so he could only break the loop when he was ‘himself’ enough to figure out an escape.

Until then, a kind of torture.

He had other projects in the works, cobbled together from pieces of confiscated PRT tech in this emergency bunker. As he succumbed to the imperative, dropping what he was doing to head to the station, to inject the needle and set up the emotional state that put him closest to his agent, he left a burner on. A chemical burned.

Cortisol steadily cranked up, and his knowledge of what was coming made the stress worse. Even the limiters that were supposed to adapt the incoming dosage to his current stress levels weren’t doing a lot to help.

He was mainlining stress while watching bubbles rise to the surface with an increasing intensity.

The glass detonated, and the contents sprayed across the room. It aerosolized, and he inhaled it.

Twenty breaths.

The drug found its way into his system. His cells multiplied, and they multiplied with a design in mind. Other DNA took over his DNA, and with the change, the tinker knowledge dropped away.

He’d needed to make himself strong, and he’d needed to make himself angry. Angry enough that it overrode the lesser imperatives. Not so angry that it overrode the first imperative.

Muscles expanded, and skin stretched. His hands became more like hooves as the fingers cloyed together. His face, too, changed.

With fists, he destroyed. His face was a blunt object as much as his hands were, and his body was simply muscle, and a vehicle for allowing him to smash.

Computer screens, the looped recordings. Terminals. Armor that he’d repurposed to scan body parts. He destroyed, changed further as he drew in breath, panting, and destroyed more.

It was meditative, even freeing.

It was even more freeing as the effect faded, roughly twenty minutes in. He gradually took his juvenile form again. The machine was broken, the equipment lost, and even with his memories mostly intact, he’d had no idea if the imperative would still be in effect. Would he be forced to build and rebuild endlessly?

He felt for it, and he felt nothing. The only feeling was the pain from the spots all across his body where glass had dug in. The change had helped to heal, but only partially.

Maybe when he was looking for artistic inspiration, he would do something similar to this form. No need to tie things down, but if he was going to pretend to be a changer, it would be best to appear like someone who didn’t have all of the choices in the world.

Slowly, steadily, he packed up his things. Then he set out on his journey to find where people had escaped to, if there were even any left.

I win, he finally allowed himself the thought. He walked past the bodies of the couple that had taken it on themselves to see if the naked, malnourished boy that they’d found had any people he was so insistently trying to return to. In the time he’d been here, the bodies had dried up.

Already, instincts were kicking in. Another imperative. He was much happier with this one.

Imperative four: Take action, and whatever it is we do, it needs to be big.

⊙

He found her crying.

Amelia Claire Lavere. Marquis’ daughter. Victoria’s sister.

The Rinke creation sprung to its feet as he drew near, prowling with long legs and a sleek, long body. It brandished a box-cutter at him.

“Lab Rat,” Amelia said. She sat up straight and wiped at her eyes. “You followed me?”

Found you.

Already, he was changing back. He’d timed his arrival, done one circuit around the area.

“Come. Let me touch you,” she said, trying to sound steely and failing. She was still very close to returning to sobs.

He allowed it. He approached. The Rinke creation leaped onto his leg, then up to his long neck, where it held the box cutter at an area where the blood pumped hardest.

The hand was warm, with his scaled body soaked with the freezing rain.

He’d called this piece of work ‘Fleeting Memory’. Fast, thus the fleeting, and Memory because it reminded him of the time he’d been born. Not reborn as Lab Rat- he’d told the others about that. But when he’d been birthed onto a bed of scales and Breed’s bugs, dredged from the water beneath the oil rig. This body was spindly legs and sleek writhing scale, holding the vague profile of a very narrow wolf.

Memory, too, because scent was tied to memory, and this form was a very good tracker. Less good in the rain, but… good.

Amelia helped him transform faster, and as she did, she removed the compulsion that Goddess had laid on him. As he lost his humanity, he wrapped the cloth sash around himself, concealing his manhood. A length of it went over his head, to keep the rain off. It didn’t really help.

As he fixed the position of everything, he adjusted the boxes that were tucked into pockets.

“How did you know it was me?” he asked.

“You shed.”

“Your power doesn’t work through hair.”

“Not well. But that body didn’t have hair. Besides, you resemble him. You’re not him, though.”

He shrugged.

“What have you done to yourself?” she asked.

He was very aware of the distinction. It wasn’t ‘what did he do to you’, referring to his creator. It was what he had done to himself.

She was sharp. Stupid, so very stupid when it came to some things. But sharp in some things.

“I’ll let you in on that secret, if you let me ask you a few questions after,” he said.

“I’m not in a mood for riddles, Lab Rat.”

“They think I’m fighting to keep my humanity, while changes wreak havoc on me.”

“They being Victoria?”

“Them.”

“What’s the truth?”

“I can’t be rid of it soon enough,” he said. “Every change pulls me further away from being this.”

“To become what?”

He reached into one of the pockets in the sash. He’d told the others that he needed to carry equipment and drugs with him, in case his body started going to pieces.

Not so.

“This,” he held up a syringe, “Is Brooding Anger. I scanned Nursery during the Fallen fight. It would be interesting.”

She put out a finger. He extruded a droplet, let it rest on her fingertip.

She shook it off, then wiped her finger on her clothes.

Fucking rude. Still… bigger things.

“Maybe another,” he said. He smiled. “Maybe they’ll all get a turn. I’ve collected a few, lurking near powerful capes.”

“What do you even want, Lab Rat? I’m kind of- I’m dealing with shit.”

“You had a face to face with her, finally? Despite everyone telling you that you shouldn’t?”

“I don’t understand it. Or- I understand, I think. I just don’t want to think about it at all.”

“I could give you something. You could be mindless for a while. Peaceful.”

She shook her head. “I should feel like shit. I just wish…”

Her face crumpled up. She looked away, burying her face in a sleeve that draped over one gloved hand.

He looked away too. Rainwater was streaming down, and it was cold.

He’d dealt with worse. Lab Rat hadn’t, but he had.

“I told you something I never told that team,” he said. “You said you’d answer my questions.”

“Lab Rat-”

“You thought you had an answer. You’d help Goddess, she’d take power, you’d keep her from being a despot somehow, and as for Victoria…”

“Don’t. No commentary.”

“You thought she’d be so glad to be rid of you that she’d forgive you?”

“Stop.”

“Goddess can’t lead. She’s too dangerous. She’s missing necessary tools because she never had to go through the hardship to acquire them. Survival. Having to work to get somewhere. Having to learn things the hard way.”

“That ship has sailed, Lab Rat,” Amelia said. “If she doesn’t take power, it’s going to be because someone worse beat her. Teacher is in the running.”

“You said you’d answer my questions,” he said.

“I didn’t say anything like that.”

He shifted position, irritated.

“What questions?” she asked. She looked tired and resigned, and even in the gloom her eyes were visibly red.

“Shin has a manufactured slave class, doesn’t it?”

“What?”

“She has a servant who can make armies. Nothing behind the eyes, nothing between the ears. They follow simple orders and they can use weapons. Yes?”

“You want an army?”

“No,” he said.

Test subjects, not an army.

He saw the suspicion in her eyes. Her hands clasped each other now. She worked by touch- touching her hands together was alike another man resting his hand on the hilt of the knife he had holstered at his belt. A security thing.

“Would you fight me?” he asked her. “Would your father?”

“What are you doing, Lab Rat? What do you want?”

“All I want is for you to do nothing. She senses danger. I’m… perpetual danger for her. But she wants to keep me close. She likes me. She thinks she’s safe because she can beat me. I’m just a changer.”

“And?”

“And when I take the form of Twisted Betrayal…” he said. He drew a syringe from the case, and he held it out, producing a droplet. She removed her glove to touch it once again. “It’ll be a sightly different formula to the one she thinks she can handle.”

“And all you want is for me to do nothing?”

“Do it and I’ll fix this. I will give you Victoria however you want her. If you want to talk, I’ll get you there. If you want to keep her forever-”

Amelia shook her head.

“-I can get you there,” he said, lowering his voice.

“I just want answers. I need to think about what I’ll do for her.”

“I can give you answers,” he said. The thirteen year old was gone for the time being. “All I need…”

He repeated himself to lull her in. He’d had to do it with the more vulnerable members of his cell block.

“Is nothing?” she asked.

“And if Goddess can’t rule Earth Shin, then you let me help you and your father.”

“And give you slaves?”

“Mindless drones.”

“And you want to be a monster? And how is it you’re going to get Victoria-”

Her voice rose slightly as she talked, and she shook her head, as if the ‘no’ was already there and she was fighting her way to get to it.

“Amelia,” he interrupted, and his voice was rougher. “Do you want me to act, here? Don’t overthink it. Do you want someone to step in?”

Again, the hands touched. Insecure.

She nodded.

“I know where the last member of her cluster is. I found her before I found you. We had a chat.”

“Like the one you just had with me?”

“Don’t overthink it,” he said. “Don’t signal anything to her. Just… work with me. Accept what comes and don’t get in the way. Do you want me to give you something, so you seem less dangerous to her?”

“Can I trust what you give me? I know some of what you’ve done.”

“If I hurt you, your father will have my head. I’m eliminating problems, not creating them.”

Hands clasped together in front of her, she nodded.

Interlude 10.z

The hospital was packed with people. It was late and families, single individuals, people who looked like they worked at the same places and hospital staff were everywhere. Some were trying to sleep or keep to themselves, with blankets draped over them or jackets used as improvised pillows, and others were trying to make as much noise as they could.

It was a little bit spooky. Spooky in a way that couldn’t be fixed by the knife he had at the small of his back, beneath his shirt.

There was at least one member of his squad who might be willing to try it, though. They moved as a unit through the rows and columns of people, had to skip heading down one alley of the waiting room because a family was practically camped out on the floor that they would have had to walk down, and split up for a short bit when a bunch of people were called and rose out of their seats, cutting them off.

As the split-up group reunited, he felt his skin prickle, and then his brain prickled, awareness of his own body fizzled into place like the bubbles in cola, pressing against his skin and all of his senses. Where he could normally have paid attention to one part of his body, now he could pay attention to every inch of it.

The fizzling didn’t stop there. It was like something off to the side that he could see, then something he could feel. Plumes that expanded out, until there was more skin, more heartbeats, more air pressing against the inside of chests with inhalations, cool as it passed out of noses. He could feel hairy legs inside jeans and agitation like a constant thing, the heart powerful, the motions of arms and legs strong, deliberate, and imprecise.

A few feet away, he felt clothes that didn’t feel very comfortable at all, cold air wafting up bare legs, the fabric stiff and coarse, a thumb pressed between lips thick with something, teeth biting down on nail, hair tickling neck and face. Her body was wound and bound tight, tense and ready to spring, though he’d never seen it happen. He winced at the pain of the nail being bit too forcefully, shivered at the tickle of hair at the back of the neck. The shiver drew an alarmed kind of attention. Even though she couldn’t see him and he couldn’t see her, her head turned to face him.

Not sight, not really- but the sensation of touch that bubbled gave him a good idea of where those people were looking, and why this was happening. He peered past crowd to see the security officer at the end of the hallway.

There were two more members of the group, straggling. There was no need to say ‘wait!’ or ‘we have to take care of this security officer!’, which was good because it was noisy inside.

Skin that felt smoother than skin should be brushed against silk, and the cloth that wasn’t silk was very soft. He saw her as much as he felt her. He could feel where the hair at one side of her head had been braided tight, the braid running along her scalp at the one side of her head, at the smaller side of a part in her hair, and the rest of her hair was big and combed over in a tumble the other way. He could feel and see the silk of her scarf at her neck and chin, which helped to keep the long hair from tickling.

She bent down to whisper in the ear of the last member of their squad, and he could feel the air go out and feel the air against ear as the sound was received. Try as he might, he couldn’t make out the words.

Nobody else was stepping in, and he didn’t like the direction this was going, so he hurried forward, straight for the security officer.

“Hold on,” the security officer said, putting a hand out. “Were you called?”

Aiden shook his head. “We’re here to visit a classmate of mine.”

“Name?”

“Aiden Tate.”

The officer put one hand up to reaffirm the ‘hold on’ instruction, and used the other to pick up a clipboard with a notepad clipped to it.

“Oh, if you meant their name, it’s, um, Janesha Townes. I’m bringing her homework.”

The man checked the clipboard.

He was aware of the knife he had holstered at his back. What if he was searched? Did that happen?

“She’s not taking visitors.”

“I’d just be dropping this off, saying hi, then I’ll leave her alone,” he said.

He was aware of fizzing. Amias was with Candy, who was wearing the silk, and Amias was bubbling, concentrating some kind of sensation at his hands.

Please don’t hurt anyone, Aiden thought.

The security man looked down at the notepad, looked up, as if bothered by something, then looked down again. “No.”

Amias pushed harder.

“We came a long way. My mom said she really needs some friends right now.”

The security guard’s fingers tapped at the back of the clipboard. Restless. Again, he looked around, as if making sure there wasn’t any issue elsewhere.

“No,” the man said, again. Aiden felt his heart sink. The man added, “I’d need to check your background, verify details.”

“Okay,” Aiden said, resigned.

“Who is your teacher, and what school do you attend with Janesha?”

Aiden was caught off guard. What was a good last name? “Um. Miss Sparrow.”

Through the awareness of the rest of the group, he could sense the small laugh from the sidelines.

“School?”

He felt even more panicked, now that he’d already messed up once. “New Brockton Bay Primary School?”

Again, the laugh, and a hand touched face, muffling the laugh. Aiden felt defensive.

“Stay there,” the man from security said. He went to the nurse’s station, a short distance away, said something, and then headed down the hallway. The nurse he’d talked to moved to the edge of the counter, watching the hallway entrance. Her stare was penetrating as she looked at Aiden.

Aiden fidgeted.

Darlene was biting her thumbnail again. Aiden could feel the pain as she got to the quick, flinched, and felt her flinch in response.

He looked off to the side, to where Roman was leaning against a wall. Twelve year old roman with hair on his legs already, who’d been laughing at him. Aiden stuck out his tongue. Roman, with his arms folded, moved one finger, giving Aiden the bird.

Was there any point to staying? He’d almost failed to connect because he’d been more focused on Roman laughing and on the nurse at the counter, but if the guy was going back there and asked, wouldn’t he find out the school was wrong?

Flustered, Aiden turned around, looking for the others. He started to retreat, heading back toward them. Darlene and Candy converged on him, Candy towing Amias behind her.

“Where are you going?” Candy asked. “Chickening out?”

Aiden gave her an annoyed look. “He quizzed me. He’s going to check the info I gave and find out I lied.”

“We came this far,” Candy said. “We’ll find another way. We could go through a window.”

“None of us can do anything like that,” Aiden said.

“Your eagle is on the roof, isn’t it?”

“Nobody’s willing to let me try flying with it,” Aiden said. “Besides, breaking a window would cause problems. I’m sorry I bungled this.”

“I like spending time together, even if we don’t do anything big,” Darlene said, thumb just outside her mouth, thumbnail ragged. She averted her eyes and moved her hand when Aiden looked at her.

Romeo- Roman was approaching now. He’d changed his name recently and it still felt weird.

“You could try messaging her,” Roman said. He either hadn’t heard the discussion and had figured things out, or he was much, much better at understanding speech when his half-sister was using her power.

“I tried twice this afternoon and she didn’t respond. But she’s invited me before, for a face to face hang-out. It should be okay.”

“Heads up,” Candy said.

It was the security man. Aiden turned around, nervous. He was aware of Roman cracking his knuckles. Darlene brought her thumb to her mouth, and Aiden reached out to catch it before it got there. He held her hand, felt the surprise and the pounding of her heart. He’d spooked her, apparently. Or she was bothered that he’d moved in a way that showed he was using the power.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

She shook her head, hard.

“Aiden?” the security man asked. “You can go on in. Room two-two-one.”

Aiden blinked. It took Roman giving him a nudge to get him moving. He turned around. “Thank you very much, sir.”

“I’m not a proper ‘sir’, but you’re welcome,” the man said. “If the room is crowded or if the nurses need the space, you should end the conversation and leave, got it?”

Aiden nodded.

He had the Heartbroken children with him as he headed down the hall. He still held Darlene’s hand, and he felt self-conscious about it, especially when he noticed the others noticing. Candy and Roman exchanged a look.

“Don’t bite your nails, okay? It hurts.”

“Oh,” Darlene said. Her voice became a whisper, “Oh. Um. I’m really sorry. I get weird when I’m using my power.”

“We don’t have to use it,” Aiden said.

“It feels fucked up,” Roman said. “Mainlining little sisters and little bro, and Aiden here.”

“I thought it would be good for keeping an eye out for trouble,” Darlene said. “Watch each other’s backs.”

“It’s good,” Aiden reassured. Darlene was the quietest in a lot of ways. She was the odd one out, when the others were what Aisha called high octane drama mixed two to one with nightmare fuel. Whatever that meant. He’d even defended Darlene when Aisha had said it, which had made Aisha laugh way too hard.

He’d had some tastes of it, but this was the first time he’d really been subject to Darlene’s power for any length of time. He wondered if this was what his birds felt like when he assumed control. The interconnection of things, him and them.

That would be more one-way, maybe.

“I can cut you out of the network,” Darlene told Roman.

“Nah,” he said. “We’re being targeted along with the Undersiders. The people we’re after are being targeted. I’ll fucking put up with it.”

“I appreciate you being our chaperone,” Aiden said. “Thank you, Roman.”

“Nah. You’re a good fucking kid, Aids. Keep looking after my sisters. The ones that are worth looking after.”

You’re a kid too, Aiden thought. Roman was only a year and a half older than him, but the kids in the Vasil family seemed to make a distinction. They afforded a certain distinction to the ones who were old enough to remember their dad, to get tested by him, whatever that meant, and disciplined by him… he knew what that meant. Samuel who was the oldest that hadn’t bailed yet, Chastity, Roman, Juliette, and then Aroa barely making the cut.

Roman was only two years older than Darlene, but he acted like he was four years older. Unless Juliette was involved. He looked older too. Like Juliette, he had straighter hair, which he’d cut and styled, slicking to one side. The family resemblance was strong, besides that. Pale face, bigger lower lip, sharp, ‘pretty’ features that didn’t change much between the boys and the girls.

Candy approached from Aiden’s right, seizing his arm and wrapping it in hers.

He rankled. “I want my right hand free.”

Candy reached out and tapped the knife that had been holstered at the small of his back. “Because of this?”

She could sense everything about him just like he could sense everything about her, so of course she’d felt the knife there. The straps went over his shoulders like suspenders with one leather strap running down his spine.

Candy continued, pressing while hugging his arm tighter. “Why didn’t you put it at your belt like a normal person?”

“Aiden’s the most normal person here,” Darlene said. He could feel her pulse quickening, feel how genuine that anger she was now feeling was.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“It’s strategically important,” Candy said.

“It shows more if it’s at the belt,” he said.

“We’re wearing warm and heavy clothes for winter. Well, most of us are,” Candy said. “Darlene’s wearing a chiffon dress she got in the summer, which is why she’s cold.”

“If you don’t stop interrupting and being a pain I’m going to get mad,” Darlene said.

She was already mad, Aiden was sure. He could feel it. The blood in her veins, the heartbeat, the restrained breathing.

“No fighting,” Roman said. He gave Darlene a light push on one shoulder. “I don’t want to clean up the mess.”

“It really is because I didn’t want it to show,” Aiden told Candy. Maybe explaining would cool things down. She looked like she was going to say something, so he added, in a quiet voice, “And because it was heavy enough it made my pants fall down.”

He could feel the shift in the tension with that. Roman chuckled, Amias outright giggling. Darlene’s face got hot, and Candy barely reacted. Why did she barely react?

“Aww,” Candy said. “That’s a cute mental picture, isn’t it, Darlene?”

“Shut it, Candy. I have one nerve left and if you get on it, I’m going to take it and choke you with it.”

“Sure,” Candy said, in a musical, pleased-with-herself way. She smiled in a way that would have made Aiden want to choke her if he’d been as mad as Darlene felt. “Aiden?”

“Be good,” Roman warned.

“Don’t push it,” Darlene added.

“Aiden,” Candy said, persisting. “As an expert in Darlene-”

Aiden shifted position, ready to put himself between the two half-sisters, because Darlene was on the brink now. He didn’t want to get kicked out of the hospital.

“-she can’t help biting her nails or pulling hair. It might help if you held her hand more.”

Darlene seethed, but she didn’t start a fight.

Candy was Chastity’s full-sister, and both of the two really liked to tease. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to take her seriously, so he looked over at Darlene. “Do you want me to? I don’t know if she’s playing a game.”

Darlene didn’t respond, but instead put one hand out, looking away. He took her hand, holding firm.

She seemed to calm down, which was good, and Candy seemed happy. He felt like everyone else they walked by was noticing, but he could put up with that.

They had to climb a staircase, as it turned out, and get up to the second floor. They walked down the hallway, and he was acutely aware of how generally happy Darlene was now. Girls were so all over the place and rarely made any sense.

As they approached the right room number, he saw a teenager standing by the door. Black hair, chin scruff, and a leather jacket. He looked cool as hell, in Aiden’s opinion, and Aiden had spent a lot of time in the company of very cool people like Lisa, Aisha, and Rachel.

“Problem?” the guy asked.

Aiden shook his head.

“I’m going to need more than that.”

There was a sensation that settled over the group. If Aiden hadn’t been networked to the others, he might have thought it was a sudden shift in his thinking. A creeping feeling of doubt, so small it was barely a thought crossing through his mind.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Roman said. “Wrong family for that little trick.”

Roman was only barely shorter than the guy in the leather jacket, and there had to be five years of difference between them.

The teenage guy looked around, glancing at the empty nurse’s station, raising himself on his toes to look over the counter and make sure nobody was down low and out of sight behind files and computers. He lowered himself down. “Heartbroken?”

“Yeah,” Roman said.

The guy’s eyes moved around, tracking every member of the group, as if he was getting his head around dealing with five people with powers. “Is Tattletale pulling something?”

“No,” Aiden said. “Tattletale’s not. This is me. Chicken Little.”

“We’re not pulling anything,” Candy jumped in.

“Precipice,” the guy said. “Why are you here?”

“Because she’s a friend, and I wanted to see how she was.”

There was a voice from inside the hospital room. Muffled by the door.

“How did you know we were here?”

“She told me,” Aiden said.

Precipice didn’t look too happy about that.

“Can I say hi?” Aiden asked. “I brought her presents.”

“Show me?”

Aiden pulled his bag off and opened it up. He pulled out books, handing them over, then a necklace, and some general junk that he was really second guessing now that people were looking.

Precipice turned the books page-side-down and shook them out, riffing through pages, checked the necklace and cord, and searched the other junk.

The voice on the other side of the door piped up again.

“You’re for real?” Precipice asked.

“I guess,” Aiden responded. Roman nudged him. “Yeah.”

“You’re a good kid,” Precipice told him.

“No,” Aiden replied, his eyebrows knitting together. “I’m a bad guy. I’m an Undersider, which makes me a villain.”

“The people you hang out with don’t define you,” Precipice said. “It’s the choices you make. This kind of gesture seems like the right kind of choice to be making.”

“I choose to be an Undersider,” Aiden said. “I choose to call myself one.”

“You’re a kid. You haven’t been handed a lot of options.”

“I still choose,” Aiden said, setting his jaw. “I’m loyal.”

Precipice stacked the things, so the books were on the bottom, and the successive other things were on top, with the necklace resting at the very top. Aiden let go of Darlene’s hand to take it with a ginger care that kept the stack from toppling, then dumped it into his bag. It would feel weird to hand over the necklace first and with it being on top it would’ve been necessary.

The voice came through, insistent and muffled by the intervening wall and door.

“You’d better go through, before she pops her stitches,” Precipice said.

Aiden opened the door, heading inside.

“-swear I’ll get my revenge somehow!” Lookout was saying. She spotted Aiden. “Oh, hi. And hi Chicken Little’s friends.”

She was black. That surprised Aiden, but he wasn’t sure why. He’d grown up the last few years with Aisha and Aisha was black too. He’d just… had a slightly different mental image of Lookout. It made him feel bad and a bit less sure of himself.

She was sitting up in her hospital bed, covers up to her lap, a small smile on her face. She had her hair tied back into a single messy ponytail that had dislodged a bit because she’d laid her head down at some point. She looked tired enough that he wondered if he was imposing. She was wearing a hospital gown, white with green clovers on it, and a tube ran out from the side of the gown near her stomach. Fluids were running out of the tube, rather than in, which made him feel uneasy.

“Hi,” he said, feeling awkward.

“Hi!” Lookout said, “I’m Lookout.”

Oh, introductions. “Chicken Little, or Aiden, I guess-”

“Kenzie,” Lookout interurpted. “If we’re using real names I’m Kenzie.”

“Hi. It’s not Janesha?”

“Cover name, false identity with a name I made up. Because we’re in danger.”

He nodded. He put a hand to the side, indicating- “This is Darlene, Candy, and…”

He could sense the two boys talking to Precipice outside the door. He hoped they would get along. Romeo- Roman was very easily riled up.

“…the others are outside.”

“You’re all so pretty and handsome and dressed nice,” Lookout said. “And here I am all gross and crusty-eyed after surgery. I haven’t put my face on or brushed my teeth and my hair is awful.”

“You look fine,” Candy said.

Lookout smiled a little. “Thank you for saying so.”

Aiden wasn’t sure he looked that nice. He’d gelled his hair up into a small fauxhawk because it looked dumb however he parted it and it never looked right if he spiked it. He had a nice ankle-length jacket that Lisa had given him, jeans, boots, and a sweatshirt, which he wore with the hood nestled into the jacket’s.

“What did you say to the man from security?” Aiden asked.

“I said that we had Ms. Sparrow as a teacher and that we attended the New Brockton primary school.”

“How did you know?”

“Cameras. I had a friend plant some, because it looks like I’m going to be here for at least one day, and some people might have tried to kill us so it’s good to be careful.”

“Like March went after Imp and Tattletale,” he said.

“And us,” Candy said. “March shot at us at the same time, then.”

“It’s getting scary out there,” Lookout said.

“It was always scary,” Darlene said.

Candy nodded, her face solemna and serious for once. “Yeah. Since I can remember. I think we’re all worse at hiding it now.”

“I wanted to see if you were okay,” Aiden said. “Um, because I know your team got shot a few times and I’ve seen how Tattletale and Imp are right now. Tattletale’s being weird and Imp is doing what she can to protect us, which means she’s not always around, even when she is around.”

“So you kind of know what it’s like.”

“Kind of. Except I didn’t get shot. Are you okay?”

“Painkillers make the pain very fuzzy more than they kill it, and they make time seem to pass very inconsistently. Mostly I’m bored.”

“I brought stuff. Presents,” Aiden said. He got his bag, “Can I?”

“Yes,” Lookout said. She looked stricken more than happy, though.

He put the bag at the end of the bed, and he began digging through. He’d folded one of the covers when dumping the stuff back in the bag, and did what he could to smooth it before pulling it out. Two books. He handed them to her.

“Oh wow. That’s so nice of you. I haven’t read these.”

“There’s more. One second.”

He almost didn’t pull the junky stuff out. Two disposable cameras, and a small pocket kit of tools.

Her eyes lit up.

“I thought maybe if you were bored, you could build something. I know this isn’t anything major or expensive, but-”

“I would hug you if I wasn’t tied down with tubes,” she said, touching her IV and the tube at her stomach.

“Better not, then,” Darlene said.

“This is great,” Kenzie said.

“It’s not too lame? It’s basic.”

“You can build a pretty awesome looking house out of kid bricks instead of real bricks and wood and nails and stuff. It might be a toy or very simple but it’s still fun. My dad worked in real estate and I know they used model buildings before building the full scale. This is really nice and thoughtful,” Kenzie said.

Aiden smiled. “And I remember you liked these when I showed you, and I was doing something for myself. I had to file at the edges…”

He got out the necklace. It wasn’t anything fancy- a rawhide string threaded with some feathers, beads, and at the center was a trio of little metal decorations. Two were the bullets that Shamrock had fired at a target, each one splitting apart into bird shapes. At the center was a button he’d got from the tailor who handled the team’s costume- a metal disc with an eye in the center.

He held it out and Lookout took it, immediately holding it to her chest, expression very neutral.

“It’s a ‘sorry you got shot’ present, or a ‘get well soon’ present,” he said, feeling like the biggest dork. “I made one for myself but the feathers fell off, so if yours do the same, don’t worry about it.”

He felt the emotions running through Darlene’s body, and looked back, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

She didn’t feel fine, but-

The connection cut. He blinked a few times, adjusting as the fizzling stopped. His body felt numb and yet far more comfortable like this. It also felt a bit lonely.

“Why?” Kenzie interrupted his thought.

“Why what?”

“Why come here? Why talk to me?”

“Because you got shot and that sucks,” he said. “And I see how some of our team members treat each other. Tattletale and Victoria are nemeses, which is really sad because I bet they could help each other. It’s always because of stuff that happened in the past.”

“Yeah,” Kenzie said. “Most of us have hard stuff, don’t we?”

“Some. But I’m not thinking of that stuff. I’m thinking about stuff that doesn’t get looked after, or small grudges that become big ones. In a couple of years we’re going to be the same age Imp was when she joined the Undersiders and they took over Brockton Bay. Wouldn’t it be great if we could do it right this time?”

“You’ve been thinking about this a lot, huh?”

“I was at the meeting where all the other villains were talking about what to do, how to protect themselves, where they needed to draw lines, all that stuff. Tattletale didn’t really want to talk about it, Imp doesn’t- how does she put it?”

“She wants to get out ahead, she doesn’t like being reactive. Reactive gets you killed,” Candy said.

“Yeah. So she’s out trying to get ahead of the problem, when the problem is a bunch of people who could be anywhere who want to kidnap Undersiders or hurt other Undersiders to make the one Undersider do what she wants.”

“I think I followed that. I’m fuzzy with drugs.”

“Sorry, talking about heavy stuff.”

“No. No. It’s… kind of the same here. What were you saying?”

“I couldn’t really talk to anyone. I don’t know Flechette and Parian well enough to ask them stuff.”

“You could have talked to us,” Darlene said.

“You guys were busy helping Nathan after Nicholas got mad and terror-waved him.”

“Oh. You still could have asked.”

“I didn’t think I should,” he told her. He turned back to Kenzie. “I spent a lot of time thinking. Everyone I know that’s not a teenager anymore is stuck on the past.”

“Aunt Rachel?” Candy asked.

“She’s special. But I think she misses the dogs she had before.”

Candy nodded.

“The others are focused on what comes next,” Kenzie said. “The fighting, the violence, the rule breaking, the plots.”

“Let them,” he said. “We should focus on the now. Making sure that things okay when we’re, I dunno, ten years older than we are. Once I started telling myself that, I started feeling a lot better about the feelings that the meeting stirred up.”

“I’ve had messy feelings too,” Kenzie said. “But I think some of that is because I got shot twice.”

Candy tittered.

“Yeah,” Aiden said. “Would it help the feelings if you helped me with my plan?”

“I think my team needs me,” she said. “I hate to say no, because I like what you say and you’re officially on my top ten neatest people list.”

“I’m not that neat.”

“You are,” Darlene said.

“But they’re focused on the dangers and stuff and I need to help them. When things are calm-”

“They’re never calm,” Aiden said, interrupting.

Kenzie went quiet.

“That’s not- it’s not me saying that, I didn’t decide that or anything. It’s what Tattletale and Imp say. There’s always something, if you’re living this life. You keep going until you crash into the rocks or you bail out.”

“Then I’ve got to help them until they crash.”

“Okay,” he said. “Can we agree to not be enemies? Can we be friends?”

“Um.”

His heart sank, seeing her try to formulate a reply.

“I’m not very good at making friends. I try. Every time I try to be nice or build up a relationship, I mess it up. My current team is the closest thing to good friends I have, and the boy closest to me in age that I was in love with did the bailing out thing. Or the rock thing. I’m not sure.”

“You don’t have to do anything.”

“But I do! Already I’m thinking about what I could do for you guys that’s nice enough to match up to you doing this.”

“You don’t have to.”

“But then what’s the point? What’s- I want to do something nice. Isn’t it kind of hollow if I can’t?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like friendship to me if anyone’s keeping score and trying to keep it balanced.”

“But I want to do something.”

“Then tell me you’ll consider the alliance. Let’s just make a deal to be good to each other and to all capes around our age. That’s all it takes. Tell me you’ll think about it. I can’t think of anything more I want.”

“Me trying to be good to people leads to disaster. I get overly invested, especially when I’m not at my best. Right now I have two bullet holes in me, and I’m fuzzy with drugs, and I’m feeling like my parents are about to yell at me because I’m entertaining guests while I’m a mess-”

“It’s okay,” he said, a little bewildered at the sudden outpouring. “Um. I spent the last few years with these guys. They’re Heartbroken.”

“We’re fucked up,” Candy said. “We’ve got you beat any day.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Kenzie said.

“I’m really, really good at dealing with these guys now,” Aiden said.

“Super good,” Darlene said, sounding more like Juliette in a monotone than like she usually did.

“I can deal,” he said. “And I have to. I want this. I don’t want to end-”

He stopped himself.

“You don’t want to end what?” Kenzie asked, quiet.

“I don’t want to end up like some of them, I guess,” he said. “They can be so cool, but…”

“You might have better role models if you joined the heroes,” Kenzie said. “Wink wink.”

She made exaggerated winks as she said the words.

“I’m loyal,” he said. “The Undersiders are badass, and the Heartbroken, like these two are-”

He looked at Candy, then at Darlene. Seeing Darlene chewing on her thumbnail, he took her hand away from her mouth and gripped it tight.

“-some of my favorite people.”

Darlene squeezed his hand.

“Darn,” Kenzie said.

“Is it weird if I say I love Tattletale and Imp and I don’t want to end up like them?”

“No,” Kenzie said.

“You were complaining about your hair,” Candy said. “Do you want me to fix yours up?”

“Please.”

“I can’t promise I’ll be very good with hair like yours. I won’t cut anything.”

While the two girls fussed, Aiden looked over at Darlene. He nudged her.

“What?” Now she sounded irritated.

“All you girls are good at different stuff. You’re really good with makeup and all that. Candy takes really good care of her hair and skin-”

“Skin,” Candy said. She turned to Kenzie, stabbing a finger in her direction. “Moisturizer?”

“Pretty please.”

He could see her agonizing over it.

“Fine,” Darlene said. “Okay.”

She got her bag out and began digging stuff out.

It felt a little weird, being in on this scene. It was girly. Still, Kenzie seemed happy, and she’d been upset before.

He backed up. Off to the side, he saw Amais sitting in the hall at Rome-Roman’s feet. Roman and Precipice seemed to be half-listening in and half-chatting.

“It’s a cool necklace,” Darlene said, as she moved his handmade necklace from Kenzie’s lap to the side table.

“You like it?” Aiden asked, surprised.

“It’s cool.”

“It’s a thing I made out of nowhere. I didn’t think you’d like it, since you’re always paying so much attention to the clothes you wear.”

Darlene shrugged and nodded. She seemed relieved, at least?

“She’s paying attention for reasons,” Candy said.

Darlene answered the statement with a death glare.

Between them, Kenzie looked left, then right, then left again, not moving her head or body much.

“Don’t worry, Kenzie,” Aiden said. “I’m as confused as you are.”

“I’m not confused. I really do like it, and I’m glad other people do too. I get being jealous.”

Darlene dropped one of the makeup things.

“Oh, whoops, foot in mouth,” Kenzie said. “Can I blame the pain drugs?”

“No,” Darlene said.

“You can blame the drugs,” Candy said, giving Kenzie’s lap a pat.

Jealous? Oh.

“Dar? Do you want one?” he asked.

She seemed startled. When she didn’t immediately formulate a reply, Candy threw something at her.

“Yes,” Darlene said, glaring again at Candy.

“I’ll put it together tomorrow. You can tell me what you want, even.”

She nodded.

Candy threw more things at Darlene. Darlene, at least, wasn’t blowing up or getting aggressive. She even seemed happy, now.

And, just as important, Kenzie looked okay. Not smiling, but he couldn’t blame her.

From the hallway, Roman gave him a thumbs up. He wasn’t entirely sure why.

But this was the kind of thing they needed. Alliances, solidifying ties. When people were hurt, they needed to be taken care of. He’d learned that sort of thing from Charlotte and Forrest, from Sierra, and from people who had passed more quickly through his life. Taylor had only been around for a short while, but she had made an impact too.

“Thank you,” Precipice said, as Aiden left the room and entered the hallway. “The others who know her best are preoccupied right now.”

Aiden shrugged.

“It’s been a day since the villain meeting. Roman was saying Tattletale hasn’t come around at all?”

Aiden shook his head. “No.”

“We could really use help.”

“I know,” Aiden said. He held his tongue instead of talking any more on the subject. He did want to talk about it, and things had sidetracked a little. There would be time later. Maybe with Kenzie. Maybe with Heartbroken.

“I only caught some of it,” Precipice said. “Couldn’t help but eavesdrop while we were making sure nobody else heard.”

Aiden shrugged. Maybe something to be more careful of. He’d spent the last four years around with villains who all knew each other. He hadn’t had to be very careful about his own business or secret identity.

“The plan is to do nice things and minimize the regrets you have?” Precipice asked. “I have a teammate that’s talked about that. I wish I’d had the mentality.”

“Kind of? Sort of. That’s not the main goal.”

“What’s the main goal?” Roman asked.

“Getting everyone working together,” Aiden said.

⊙

He liked to think of using his power like a general might have a soldier set a standard down on the battlefield. The standard could be adjusted and moved around for different sorts of orders.

Attack, go, circle, search. He was slowly figuring out what kinds of feelings could be pushed out and set to an area or target.

Push out, choose an area, connect… search. Adjust the size of the area to be searched…

The flag was planted. All birds within a large, large radius around him started flying toward the destination, a diffuse cloud. Another flag closer to him kept Chicken Large roosted on a nearby tree.

He wasn’t supposed to call it Chicken Large, on threat of being kicked from the team by Imp, so he only used the name in his own head.

He was dimly aware of them, like he’d be aware of leaves blowing around him.

When ‘search’ was the order, he was more aware of the responses. He could hear the distant caws as the assorted birds found something living. He could sense them too. Just a little brighter, more vibrant, alive.

He was linked in with the others while they were traveling, and now as he stood in the snowy field, no light above and no buildings near enough to cast any discernable light, he could feel where Darlene was lying in the back seat, her head resting on Candy’s shoulder, the younger Amais lying down across passenger and driver’s seat, head on Roman’s lap.

It was spooky out here, but at least he could sense that Roman was looking out for him, power at the ready. There would be the mercenary too.

He had a bead on the intruder. The general shape of it – too large to be moose or bear or anything of that sort.

He pushed out with another ‘flag’. If it were a physical thing, it would be planted right between the eyes of his target. He unpinned the flag from near Chicken Large and let the great eagle take flight.

It took more effort than it was worth to separate his birds by type or function. A creature that wasn’t normal or usual, that acted with too much intelligence. Scaled and drippy, capable of moving fast and hitting like a fast moving car with flailing claw arms.

He could count back from ten. For those ten seconds, the harassment of smaller birds, crows, owls, and other flying things that were braving the winter would be like an early warning sign.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

It weighed half of what Aiden did, it descended at two hundred miles an hour, and it could survive the impact that followed, orienting itself and letting its claws do the work.

One second the target was alive, surrounded by a flurry of small birds. The next it was dead.

He headed back to the car, moving Amais’ feet so he could take the passenger seat. Roman climbed into the back, and the mercenary that had been standing watch with night vision goggles took the driver’s seat. Their ride.

It wasn’t that much of a trip to get to the settlement, a logging village focused on gathering wood, with barely anything to do.

Tattletale was up. She sat in dim lighting, her face in shadow, hiding the expression that came with a migraine.

“Hi,” he said, quiet.

“You asked to go out with the others. When I said yes, so long as you were careful-”

“We were careful.”

“-I didn’t think you meant a three hour round trip, with barely any firepower.”

“We had five capes and a mercenary. And my eagle.”

“Not enough,” she said.

“You had a migraine and wanted to be left alone in the dark, Imp is trying to catch the people who are after us.”

“We aren’t supervising you enough, is what you’re saying.”

“I don’t need supervision,” Aiden said, setting his jaw. “I’m an Undersider.”

“Junior.”

“You said you would be pretending to be in a coma for the next ten hours. Imp was gone for the day. We took precautiouns. I’m doing my best and we ended up fine. Lookout doesn’t get flack.”

“Lookout got shot twice. Bad example, kiddo.”

“I’m working with the Heartbroken-”

“Playing with fire.”

“I had protection!”

“A twelve year old was your best protection.”

“And a mercenary. I’m making alliances!”

She winced at the volume.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“Alliances like that are not helping. If we receive a job to go after Breakthrough, and you’ve made a deal with them, what happens?”

“We shouldn’t go after them.”

He was heated enough that Darlene and Candy roused a bit, paying attention. He waved a hand in their general direction, and the half-asleep Darlene cut the connection.

“Did she cut it?” Tattletale asked. “Yes. Okay. Listen, we can’t rule out any options. We may have to go after Breakthrough or these other allies you’re purporting to make.”

“Why?”

“That, buddy, is a topic for when my head isn’t pounding.”

“I think you’re avoiding the question.”

“Because my head is pounding. Please. We’ll talk about this tomorrow. For now, can you put your bird in its cage?”

“Already done.”

“Then get changed and go to sleep.”

“Tattletale?” he asked.

“What?”

“On our way in, I scouted. Birds were acting funny in the distance.”

“Trouble.”

“One of the lizards that have been homing in on us.”

“It takes them less time to find us each time,” she said. “I’m not going to get to sleep tonight, am I?”

He felt a small measure of satisfaction as he saw her lurch to her feet, heading to the door where mercenaries were standing guard.

“You’re grounded, by the way,” she said.

He spun around, “You can’t ground me. I’m not your kid.”

“You’re grounded,” she said, again, rubbing at her temples. “I’ll tell Charlotte and Forrest. They’ll agree with me.”

Was it because he’d been smug? Had she sensed it and decided to get back at him? It was hard to tell sometimes.

He rankled. He’d done nothing wrong.

“She wouldn’t have wanted you to do this,” he said.

“Cute, but no cigar,” Tattletale said, half-turning.

“She would have agreed with me. She would have been disappointed you fought me on this.”

She didn’t respond, opening the door and then closing it behind her. He could see through the bulletproof glass where she was talking to the mercenary.

He felt frustrated in a way he couldn’t articulate, which was probably by her design.

He’d need to pack up, he knew. They’d keep moving until the problem was resolved.

The living room of the house they were staying in had been co-opted. Two computers, one tablet screen, and a lot of papers were scattered around.

There were boards, too. Bulletin boards that could be picked up and moved from location to location.

Curious about how many more times they’d have to move or how long he’d have to wait until he had real freedom and responsibility again, he looked at the boards.

Valkyrie: scared
Dragon: hid for a while. Scared
Legend, Chev: staying away on long missions. Clandestine meetings.

It made no sense. It didn’t help that her writing got worse as her headaches did.

Bogeyman of Cauldron: captured, weapon kept up sleeve
Dinah Alcott: compromised? Shift of motives?
Why capture/corner/co-opt precogs?

He knew the name Dinah Alcott. Eerie to see it now.

What is the threat? Why scared?

It wasn’t what he was interested in, but now he was paying attention.

Hiding in alternate worlds won’t save us, so why avoid the city?
Who or what is here?

Blinding – 11.1

I could remember conversations that Gilpatrick and I had had, back with the patrol group. Gilpatrick had worked as a PRT squad leader, and he’d had his fair share of bad days. I’d had my bad days too. Even ignoring the obvious, I’d grown up in Brockton Bay. Gilpatrick had wanted to root out all of the ‘powers are cool’ types. To reduce the roster for his school-peripheral program down to a minimum, to the people who had to be there. Not every school had done the same.

A half dozen men and women and three dogs now rippled with enough muscle that their skin had split in places and they couldn’t move in straight lines. Their eyes were bloodshot and their throats produced noises like they were trying to scream while being strangled, and they hurled themselves against doors and windows. Inside, the members of the area’s patrol block were all gathered together, trying to barricade doors and windows. Lights moved wildly, because some were using flashlights and others were doing the work, and the way those lights didn’t hold steady told me everything about how they were coping.

Gilpatrick had tried to train his squaddies for a crisis. To paint pictures and mix up the drudge work with some degree of strategy. He’d run over the basics, had talked about chains of command, and had drilled the older students on worst case scenarios.

A squad of twenty trying to hold out against nine monsters that had once been ordinary people and animals, when any one of those monsters could rend all twenty individuals limb from limb? It worked as an example.

One of the smaller dogs fought to get past the others and get a piece of the action, black froth at the corners of its mouth as it lunged, tried to climb over and was hit with one elbow, flying ten feet.

It stopped making its strangled scream sounds as it recovered from the hit, then resumed its strangled scream sounds, I could see the jerky full body contractions and expansions as it worked at breathing.

It didn’t try going back at the main wall of people and animals, who were battering at the front of the building and threatening to pummel their way through the concrete. Instead, it circled around.

The smaller dog leaped through a window that wasn’t sufficiently barricaded, got halfway through, and scrabbled to get the rest of the way through. Putting my mask on, I flew after it.

People shot at the animal, and the shooting did nothing to slow it.

I collided with it, smashing it down into the floor, my forward momentum driving it across the floor. The Wretch hit it once before the forcefield flickered off. I flew up to the ceiling, back flat against the painted surface, as the dog scrabbled to get its limbs under it. The muscles hampered more than anything in the moment.

I used my aura, but it agitated the room more than it bothered the dog.

“Don’t shoot!” I called out. “Don’t waste your bullets!”

And you’ll hit me.

“What the hell are we supposed to do!?” a young woman shrieked at me. One guy in the background was audibly sobbing in his panic.

Fuck me.

“Do you have an empty cell!?” This was supposed to be a jail.

I didn’t get a decisive answer, only a muddle of ten voices talking at once. The dog was back on its feet now, and the Wretch was active.

I’d fought mutant dogs before. Those had been a bit bigger, armor plated, with sharper edges, hooks, and decorations. This was… denser. It was the only way I could put it. I flew at its legs, expanding the Wretch out to knock its legs out from under it, then punted it across the floor.

“Which way are the cells!?” I barked the question like an order.

A hand pointed.

“But they’re full!”

“Get over there, move people to another cell, and get yourselves into that same cell if there isn’t an escape route! Leave me a door open!”

Some people headed that direction.

“You have thirty seconds!” I told them.

The dog didn’t even have all four legs under it when it hurled itself to one side. The wall partially caved in with the impact, and the dog fell to the ground, slick body sliding on laminated flooring. It was on its feet again before it finished sliding. I could see in the background that the patrol block members that hadn’t headed off to the cells were now backing up, or trying to hide behind cover. They’d been paralyzed by fear and now they were being punished for their fear by being stuck in the main room of the ground floor with me and a beast that I was barely keeping under control.

To my left, at the front door of the building, the drumming of fists against the door was causing the metal door to curve inward. It wouldn’t break, I was pretty sure- by the spiderwebbing of cracks around the frame, the pressure and the pounding would see the frame come out of the wall first.

To my right, the patrol students were down the hall, presumably at the cells, and from the sounds of it, they weren’t as organized as they could be.

I was being really fucking generous, giving them thirty seconds.

The beast made its strangled squeal at me. It lunged, and I didn’t retreat. Instead, I put my arm out for it to bite.

The Wretch expanded out from me, starting at the skin and unfolding into its true shape shortly after. The mutated dog didn’t catch me by the arm. My arm caught it by the inside of the mouth.

I used my flight, raising it up so it only had its back legs, and those legs were only barely touching the ground. Here and there it scratched the surface with claws and found some traction, jerking at me. I used my flight to correct.

Someone was aiming a gun at it while it was momentarily stuck in position.

“Don’t fucking shoot it,” I growled the words. “They’re bulletproof like this. You’ll just draw its attention to you.”

I had very little experience having the Wretch active and a living combatant who wouldn’t be torn to shreds by it. I flipped myself around, arm and Wretch still in its jaws, holding its mouth open enough that it couldn’t muster the strength to close its jaws and break my forcefield, and I wrapped my legs around the dog’s neck.

It was about as tall at the shoulder as a pony, but it was muscular, and the loose skin that had torn around the expanding muscle made getting any leverage hard, but the placement of the Wretch didn’t obstruct my freedom of movement or my ability to get my legs into place.

As it fought me, scrabbling and periodically losing its footing, I began to drag it into the hallway where the students had gone.

“Coming in!” I hollered the words. The dog responded to the holler with more struggling, which seemed to shake it more.

The jail cells were a dozen individual cages, each cage with a cot in the center and a cot against the wall, more bars and not walls separating one cell from the next. Most were so full that people were sitting on the ground, even in a time of crisis. Some hadn’t risen to their feet, reacting only as I came into view.

“We’re still moving people!”

“There’s a nearly empty cell at the back!” I retorted.

“They’re capes.”

“Get them out! Get the way clear now!”

They obeyed. The proximity of the snarling, struggling dog was a good motivator. People who had been moving between cells with armed people directing them were now backing into one cell or the other. I had a glimpse of the two capes. B-listers. Etna and Crested, moving into a cell with others. Both of them had shackles that encased their hands entirely. Crested’s connected to his belt.

Doors were shut with bangs.

The length of the dog was an issue, because the door was too small for it, and as strong as I was, I didn’t have the leverage when it was this lively. I felt the Wretch’s grip slip, saw how the head moved. I knew if the forcefield broke that I wouldn’t get a good chance to use it again- the situation would be too chaotic.

The Wretch wasn’t helping, either. Hands and feet gripped and banged against bars and the floor.

No, if I was going to lose control, I’d do it on my terms. I shucked off the Wretch, and pulled my arm free in the moment before the jaws shut.

Feet on the ground. I struck out, activating the Wretch in time to land hits, trying to pummel and push to work it into the doorway.

“Behind!”

Tristan. He came up behind me, gripping one of the dog’s legs, and threw his weight against it.

Sveta went over our heads, into the cell. She had an attachment on her suit, an arm with long slender fingers and a face shield. It made her lopsided, and the landing was harder than it might otherwise be, but it did give her leverage, as the hand gripped bars, tendrils gripped the cot, and the rest of her grabbed onto the dog, pulling it in while Tristan and I pushed.

We got the dog into the cell. Sveta got out before the dog could recover, with me catching her and helping her to maintain balance as she landed. The door banged shut.

The dog threw itself against the bars. I didn’t see any bending or distortion in the bars.

“Everyone okay?” I asked.

“Are you asking your team or-”

“You,” I said. “Prisoners, Patrol.”

“Pretty fucking freaked out,” someone else said. “What is this? That used to be one of the jail’s dogs.”

“They came after a team of heroes with the same setup and plan yesterday,” I answered. I turned around, looking at Etna and Crested, who were being given a wider berth by their new cellmates. “Past three days, things have been going a bit downhill.”

“A bit,” Tristan said. He rolled his shoulder, like it was sore.

“You alright, Capricorn? You’re not healed yet.” Rain was asking from the doorway that separated the lobby of the station from the hallway with the rows of cells.

“Yeah,” Tristan said, and it wasn’t clear if he was saying he was alright or if he was agreeing he wasn’t healed. “We needed some muscle.”

“We need you in one piece,” Sveta said.

Tristan pulled off his gauntlet, and shrugged a bit to create a gap he could reach his hand inside, between neck and armor. It came away rich with blood.

“Shit,” he said. He immediately switched out to Byron.

“Could really have used his power,” I said. “We’ll get you attention ASAP.”

Byron nodded.

“What’s going on?” a man asked. He approached the door of one cell. He had a goatee made more pronounced by a jutting chin, narrow eyes, and styled hair. By his outfit, which was a Patrol combat uniform that had been stripped down enough for regular wear, I had to assume he was an instructor.

“You’re Harris?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Were you here before or were you called in?”

“Called in. We arrived and it was chaos.”

“The staff at this jail must have been exposed to the power effect somehow,” I said.

“The food,” Rain said. “On the desks, everyone ate food from the same place.”

“Good eye,” Byron told him, head bowing a bit. He had to be anxious about his brother. And the constant pounding of fists on the front door. And the dog that was still struggling. Ineffectually, thankfully. “They would have had to give food to the dogs.”

“They probably did,” another boy said. He seemed young to me, which was odd when he was probably older than Rain and definitely older than Lookout. “There are four K-9s here. One for contraband, two for regular police work, and one for search and rescue. One of the regulars is pregnant with a litter, she wouldn’t get food.”

“You pay attention to that stuff, huh?” Sveta asked.

“I come here regularly on my shifts.”

I nodded. A clearer picture, now. We’d come in knowing the basics, though, and the basics hadn’t changed. The basics were bad.

I tried to compose my thoughts. “Then they might have intercepted or impersonated the delivery person. They transformed the staff into those things. Bulletproof tough and strong for as long as the effect lasts. They must have felt unwell, called for an ambulance, I’m guessing, and got as far as the ambulance before they started changing. No other reason for them to already be outdoors.”

“Is the ambulance staff okay?” a boy asked. “We saw them but we couldn’t get to them.”

“They were alive inside the rolled vehicle. Light injuries. I evacuated them,” Sveta said.

“Why?” Instructor Harris asked, his eyebrows knit together. “Why are they doing it like this?”

“To show dominance,” I answered. “To achieve their goals, which is to hurt the local law enforcement, and to break in, but the reason they’re doing it this way in particular is that they want to show their power.”

On the topic of dominance, even with the main power out and the only power being provided by an emergency generator, I could see how the cells had been divided into prisoner and patrol.

Instructor Harris seemed to notice too. He pulled out his keys. No prisoners moved to take him hostage or fight for those same keys. They were very still, if wide-eyed with alarm.

“You might want to stay,” I told him. “This is a waiting game. While you’re in those cells, you’ve got metal bars between you and the attackers. If we can wait out the transformations, things should settle down.”

“Will the front doors hold?” Instructor Harris asked.

I glanced at Rain. Rain shook his head.

“No,” I said.

Harris put key to lock. “Senior students, I’d really appreciate it if you were with me, but I’m not going to make you. Step forward.”

“I’ll help, whatever you need,” a prisoner said. He was a guy with hair down to his shoulderblades and a tapered beard that touched collarbone.

“Sorry,” Harris said. “I don’t know you.”

“You get credit for courage,” I said. “Good man.”

Byron entered the open front area of the station, stepped up onto a desk, and with his arms folded, began to create his motes of light.

“How much property damage can we get away with?” Rain asked.

“Construction is cheap. At the Lyme center, I drew the line at damaging people’s cars- it’s too personal, upsets people, sets them against capes. The power at the center, I uprooted the wiring, but even a threat of a brief blackout is… not as personal?”

“Speaking as someone who’s dealt with having no power for long stretches at a time, it might be more personal than you’re thinking.”

“I became less convinced of what I was saying before I finished saying it,” I said. “I don’t know, Precipice. If you’ve got to break stuff to save people, then that’s fine. I think those things out there are dangerous, and I don’t think people would hold it against us.”

“Don’t underestimate people’s ability to blame others,” Byron said.

“Yeah,” I said. We’re here right now, aren’t we? “You can put holes in the ceiling, Precipice. I think they’ll accept it.”

He looked around. The smaller length of arm that was attached to his elbow touched a nearby table. “I was thinking floor.”

“Go for it,” I told him.

I picked up a desk, sliding it over to where the damage was worst. After a moment’s consideration, I flipped it over, so the legs and struts were pointing up. It crashed as it landed there.

Sveta and others joined me.

“Why upside-down?” someone asked.

“They’re strong but they aren’t balanced or coordinated,” I said. “Tripping is better than putting something heavy in their way.”

“What are these blue lights?” a girl in a patrol uniform asked.

“A water gun,” Byron said.

“Are they safe to walk through?”

“They’re safe.”

The pounding continued. I could see the spread of cracks.

This was going to be bad.

“Do these guys have a firehose, containment foam, nets? Anything like that?” I asked.

“No,” Instructor Harris said. He sounded pretty grim, and he looked anxious. More annoyingly, he wasn’t really helping.

“You sound pretty sure for someone who doesn’t work here,” Rain said.

“It’s the same building layout as the one we operate out of,” Harris answered. “Except instead of the cells we have a shower room.”

Made sense. Many of the buildings were prefabricated, arriving on trucks and put together like assemble-it-yourself furniture.

“Besides,” he said. “Water pressure here isn’t all that.”

“I wasn’t asking for the water. I was asking because it’d be tough for them to tear, and I could tie them up.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. He was watching the cracks expand. Concrete was coming out of the widening cracks in dribbles and tufts.

“Where were you a squaddie?” I asked, as I used a burst of my strength to send a desk skidding across the floor.

“I wasn’t,” he said. “I was admin in a PRT office. Beartown.”

A paper pusher? The distinction between an office and a department was a pretty big one. The office would be the kind of place that serviced a town like the one Ashley had come from. The department was the kind of place that served Brockton Bay, New York, and any other cities that were large enough or in dire need. There had been sixty-five or so at the time the world had ended.

So not just a paper pusher, but a paper pusher in a workplace that had twenty employees at most.

“How many capes?”

“Two of us, two of them.”

Correction: eight employees at most. Probably an office with three to five people in it. Fuck.

“I’m willing to follow orders if you want to lead,” I said.

“Are you?” he asked. He sounded slightly surprised.

“Yeah. But I really hope you want to and you’re able,” I said.

“No,” he said. “I don’t and I’m not.”

“Focus on your kids, then. Keep them in one piece. Some are freaking out,” I said.

The pounding continued. The dribbles were now more like brief waterfalls, contiguous along the long horizontal crack above the door. It was ready to fall.

Sveta used her modified arm, slender fingers on a feminine hand moving furniture to stack chairs in the cups formed by the struts and legs of desks. The arm was one piece of a greater project. She was strong, really, and her ability to pull and constrict was being leveraged into mechanical movement. The only difficulty was the lack of balance and how she had to brace most of the rest of her body.

Still, she seemed more happy with having a human limb writ large than she’d been with the tentacles.

Or content, if not quite happy.

I looked around. Side windows had been blocked with rock- Tristan’s work, before he’d joined me and helped at the cell. I could see the food wrappers and half-eaten dinners. The ones that were possibly laced.

I added more chairs to the mix, kicked over some garbage bins, and then stepped back.

The pounding was less sharp than before. The impacts were heavier.

They’d sensed or seen the movement and now they threw their bodies against the wall instead of punching or clawing at it.

“How long since you got the call?” I asked Harris.

“Thirty-”

The wall shifted, the scraping and crunching loud enough to drown out Harris’ reply.

The villains had attacked the Shepherds earlier in the day, and the transformation had lasted for longer than thirty minutes. They’d estimated close to an hour, after talking to the people who first sighted the changed people.

“If someone gets dosed somehow, we need to get them into a cell before they chage,” I said. “Harris?”

“We’ll try. They’re already sardines.”

“Better a sardine than dog food,” I answered him.

“It took a while to change,” Byron said.

“I’ve been reading up on tinker transformations and the kinds of drugs they make,” I replied. Again, there was an impact that shifted the whole wall. “They can change it up. Force a faster change, but weaker or less predictable. Or more side-effects for the victim.”

“Why are you reading up on tinker transformations?” Sveta asked.

“A topic for another time,” I told her. “Right now we need to focus on this. It occurs to me, now that I’m thinking about side effects, if this does wear off, we need to make sure they have medical care.”

Another impact. I could see where the cracked segment of wall stood apart from the rest of the wall now.

“Nobody shoots,” I ordered. “Save your bullets.”

The wall came out- I thought it would fall, but it remained suspended. Everyone in the room tensed. There was so much floor space where the desks had been. Our arena. If they got past that open space, then civilians were in danger.

“I’m gonna-” Rain said.

“Do it.”

“Not the floor yet,” Byron said.

Rain created his blades. He flung them, and they hit the door, criss-crossing it.

It was a hulk of a man that came tearing through, stumbling when he broke through with more ease than expected. He was taller than normal, with arms like tree trunks, fingers lost in the mess of muscle, blood streaked his body and the rags he wore.

His stumble carried him into the mess of desk and chair legs. They caught his legs and feet and as easy as it was for him to get into it, it was hard to extract- hard to do it when barreling forward. He fell. Others were following after, and they ran into the same barrier.

Byron didn’t use his power.

The dogs came through, over the bodies of their kin. A straggler, heavy around the middle with a grossly distorted abdomen, followed through.

The dogs weren’t as hampered. They stepped on the people and they leaped, one landing a few feet from the desk Byron stood on.

“What are you waiting for?” Rain asked.

The dog reared up, muscular club-limbs raised high, ready to crush Byron.

He used his power. A geyser of water that could have carried cars away, aimed at the hole.

Two remained, catching on the tangle of furniture by accident or dumb effort. Sveta and I each went after one.

Getting them back outside only bought us time. Byron was drawing out more lights, and now Rain was slashing at the floor, the slashes forming ‘x’ shapes.

It didn’t take long for the attackers to bounce back.

“They’re bleeding a lot!” Rain shouted, as he backed up. “I think the effect is softening!”

A damn good thing he spotted that. If I’d hit them when they weren’t bulletproof tough it could have been a disaster.

Fucking irresponsible to do this like this.

But it didn’t feel like anyone was being responsible right now.

They came for us, and the first three that came barreling through with feet pounding on the floor of the lobby hit Rain’s trap. The ground shattered beneath their feet and they fell, chests and collarbones slamming into the edge of the hole.

I winced. I hoped they’d be okay. Too much strength without durability could be disastrous.

Byron followed up. A torrent of water, to slow them down, push them back, and to turn finer debris into mud.

The air was frigid, with moisture heavy in it.

This was a losing battle. They came at us so hard that there really was no way to even block a hit without causing them harm, we couldn’t even really redirect them.

“Keep destroying their footing!”

Rain did. My focus was on flying, on short bursts of strength to hit them and make them stagger into one another. If I could keep them in place long enough, they could tumble into traps.

Sveta wasn’t fighting, but she was managing the ones who’d fallen. If they started to climb out of the waist-deep holes, then she hauled on them or moved past them to push them back in. The water helped.

Ambient moisture in the air clung to my mask, the parts of my face the mask didn’t cover, and my hair, beading my costume. My breath fogged with the cold air that had flooded in. The others weren’t much better.

They didn’t stop, and the slow loss of their strength and durability was a really fucking slow one.

Rain was using his power again, and I was at the point where I could have snapped at him, cussing him out for catching me in the effect, except I would’ve felt shitty. I knew he was trying, and he was finding his effectiveness now. I even felt bad that I was thinking about shouting at him, but I suspected that was the power.

“I think we should have called for backup anyway,” Byron said.

I panted for breath. It was painful, with the air being as cold as it was. I shook my head.

“We could have tried.”

“They’ve got their hands full. It’s all stuff as bad as this,” I said.

A dog that was feigning injury sprung to its feet, leaping. I flew to intercept and hurled it down into the thickest grouping of enemies.

I could see the fight go out of them. Where they’d been incessant before, they paused, retreating. We were one hundred percent willing to let them, just for a chance to recover a bit ourselves.

They retreated further, then backed off, a third of them moving to one side, two thirds to another.

Past them, past the steaming air where the remaining warm air from indoors mingled with the winter air outside, I saw the culprits.

Bitter Pill. Medical mask only barely visible behind a scarf, white coat, and a short stick with a caduceus. She wore one of those packs that looked like a fanny pack, that was worn over one shoulder instead. Tinker stuff was attached to the strap.

Birdbrain. Bird mask, black coat, and a handgun in each hand, another gun at her back. She stood with back straight, beak pointing up- no indication she was using her eyes to view her environment.

I saw her gun-hand move. As she moved it left and right, it moved as a hand normally would. Up and down, it was nigh-instantaneous, with automatic tracking. Headshots every time. The way her head moved around like she was daydreaming or drugged and her hand moved with such precision was jarring.

Foggy Idea. He’d been in Hollow Point but he’d ducked out of the worst of the fighting. He was a kid, with Einstein hair dyed gray, and a mask that covered too much of the scalp behind the hairline, eyes too far down. It gave him a creepy, impish look, like he was emulating a baby’s proportions. His namesake fog seeped out from the collar and sleeves of his costume.

Bluestocking. Elegant, her trademark indigo blue stockings and opaque blue lenses in glasses stood out amid an otherwise gray ensemble.

A scent like really strong black licorice mixed with gasoline preceded their group. The mutated people and animals retreated further, heads down, bodies hunched over, subservient.

“Pill!” I raised my voice to be heard. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing!?”

“I want my teammates.”

Etna and Crested, back in the cells.

“I didn’t think Etna was yours,” I replied.

“Close enough,” Bitter Pill answered, her voice cool. “Now fuck off and get out of our way.”

“What are our odds?” Rain murmured. He was situated where he could be heard by Sveta, Byron and I.

“Birdbrain is the big threat. The muscle is second to that.”

“I’m flattered,” I heard Birdbrain’s ethereal voice.

“She’s halfway to being an all-or-nothing threat. Like Swansong with her blasts, but with aim.”

I saw Bluestocking turn her head, asking a question. Birdbrain answered, no doubt passing on what we were saying.

“You’re using that term wrong!” Bluestocking called out. “All-or-nothing isn’t right!”

Bitter Pill said something, annoyed. Too far away to be heard.

“If she aims she’s guaranteed a hit if her gun’s at the right point horizontally. Vertically, doesn’t matter. All-or-nothings are PRT terminology for anyone who’s strong enough that you can’t defend against their attack unless you defend against anything, can’t dodge unless you can dodge everything. She’s halfway there and that makes her a good enough shot we can’t afford to get in an engagement. Headshot every time.”

“I’m a game shooter,” Birdbrain said. “Even these days. Killing doesn’t interest me.”

“Game shooter?” I heard Harris behind me.

“Guns are verboten if you’re playing by the rules of cape fights. Unless you use your power on a gun to augment it, pack tinker guns, or you have a power that helps you not kill what you’re shooting.”

Foil had been all three at one point.

“The term applies, Blue. At least in part. She shoots, she kills,” I said, my voice pitched to carry. “Or…”

“I place the bullet to where it should take a month to heal,” Birdbrain said. “Don’t mess with us. Give us what we want.”

“I would have thought the brains of Hollow Point would have kept their noses out of this war that’s unfolding,” I said.

“All of the intel says the time is now,” Bluestocking said.

“Intel is one thing. Respectability? Common sense?”

“Are you trying to stall because you hope our steroid soldiers are going to return to normal?” Bitter Pill asked.

“Give us a second?” I asked. “We have to confer.”

Bluestocking jumped in, asking, “Leave us standing in the cold, too, why don’t you?”

A bit irritable.

“Can we win this?” Byron asked.

“Birdbrain is a massive threat, Pill has tricks up her sleeve, Foggy can distract and stupefy with his gas, and Bluestocking is a thinker of some kind.”

In the background, I saw Birdbrain nod to herself.

Was she aware she did that?

“The last couple of days have been back to back crisis management,” Byron said. “Yes, this is important. Keeping the bad guys locked up in jail, especially ones we locked up? All for that. But what does it mean tonight, when there’s another issue and we’re all hurt or out of gas?”

I could see Rain nodding. Better to say that I could see Precipice nodding. His mask hid his expression, but his added hands allowed for more gestures, which hinted at the emotions in play. Fidgety, one hand raising, then dropping.

Sveta wasn’t moving nearly as much. Even her tendrils weren’t that lively. She stared at the brains of Hollow Point, her expression hard.

They were exhausted.

“We give them what they want?” I asked.

“You sure?” Rain asked.

“They want two capes, fine. But we can negotiate.”

In the background, Birdbrain nodded again, said something. Reporting on what we were saying.

“What do you think, Mr. Harris?” Byron asked.

Mr. Harris stared at the villains much as Sveta did. In a way, it was like standing at the foot of a mountain and seeing just how daunting the ascent was going to be. There was such a gap to be closed, and getting there was going to be so hard.

Worse, this ‘mountain’ had no interest in making the process any easier. It was going to do whatever the fuck it wanted.

“I won’t stop you,” he said. “If I get asked why I let it happen, I’ll tell them it was the right thing to do. The way that gun moves unnerves me.”

“If we say no to this, we need to take a few hours off,” Sveta said. “Otherwise I feel like it’s going to end up the same way next time.”

I nodded. I wasn’t super happy about her mentioning that we were tired or taking a break to people who might pass that on to our enemies, but I wasn’t going to get on her case about it.

“Can we talk!?” I called out.

After they consulted, it was Bluestocking who approached, stepping over rubble. She had nice boots. Her approach made the creatures back off.

I floated closer.

What would happen if I decked her and knocked her out right now? If I took a hostage, and played as ugly and as dirty as they were playing right now?

Bitter Pill approached too, maybe because she wanted to say something. I looked back and met Harris’s eyes. Best to connect to the real authorities where possible.

Bluestocking and me, with Bitter Pill and Harris as our seconds, I guessed.

I looked at Bluestocking, and I saw- something in the way she held herself, and what I could see of eyes behind mostly opaque lenses, and in her eyebrows.

A familiar attitude. I wondered if I was comparing her to anyone I knew, but when I reached for it, I couldn’t place it.

It didn’t help that they stank. The smell I’d noted before was emanating from them in wafts, worse when they moved. It was, presumably, what was keeping the mutants docile.

“We’ll give you the two capes you want from the jail. With stipulations.”

“Which are?” Bluestocking asked. She looked pissed, by the way she set her mouth and folded her arms. Or was it resting bitch face?

Oh. There’d been a woman at my rehab who’d given me dirty looks. So that was the answer to my little mystery.

That tiny bit of closure was a note of success in a day that had been hard, bloody, and miserable in large part.

“Nobody gets hurt. If you have the ability, you need to return these people to normal now, with no injuries. You can’t take them with you.”

“They’ll be eighty-five percent healed up, unless you’ve punctured a vital organ or something,” Bitter Pill said.

“Not good enough. You can’t go after civilians.”

“Can and did,” Bitter Pill said.

Bluestocking didn’t agree, but argued the point instead, “Cops. Cops are fair game. So are the anti-cape soldiers.”

“We’re not anti-cape,” Harris said.

“And you can’t take them with you. They’re not your pawns.”

“Couldn’t if we wanted. They go dormant, that’s all,” Bitter Pill said. “No need to worry your little head over that one.”

“Fine. That’s stipulation one, you fix them,” I said. “Stipulation two, is you need to drop some money on this place. Make amends, give them what they need to rebuild.”

“Fuck that,” Bluestocking said.

“Stipulation three? Take a fucking break. Back off, don’t pick fights, don’t go after heroes, take three days and stop being complete dicks for that long.”

“We’d lose ground,” Bluestocking said. “Numbers, social map, demos, territory, ratios… No.”

“You’ll lose ground if some of you get broken bones,” I replied. “This is a way to do this without fighting. We benefit, you benefit, civilians can mend and repair.”

“You’re asking for way too much,” Bluestocking said.

“Heal the people you hurt, make amends for what you broke, and back off for three days. If you want to negotiate down on any of those parts, you can give us some intel on the people who opened fire on us two days ago.”

Bluestocking sniffed with amusement. “That passed under my nose before I thought to pay attention. I know some things, but… you hand those two over, we’ll give you the information. Nothing else.”

“Information, healing-”

“-And that’s it,” she interrupted.

“Not good enough,” I said.

“Fucking deal with it.”

I turned slowly, looking up at Harris. He gave me a slight shrug and shake of the head. Resigned.

Fuck no.

I didn’t want to let them win like this.

“Instructor Harris… stuff for Etna and Crested is on the Captain’s desk. Get them set up and bring them out?”

“Yeah,” he said, voice terse.

He jogged back.

“What’s it going to take to heal them?” I asked.

“I have the stuff. Healing. It should get them to ninety, ninety-five percent. They’ll be hungry. Good enough?” Bitter Pill asked, a condescending note in her voice, her gaze too casual and distracted.

“Good enough,” I told her.

Bluestocking added, “Small expenditure of resources. The fixing of this building when you did half the damage? No.”

“How do you know how much damage we did?” I asked.

She gave me a look, half glare, half disdain.

I hated being ignored, patronized, and looked down on. I’d triggered because it had been so oppressive. Now here she was, just pressing that button.

I consoled myself by telling myself that this was handled. Things were calm. We could still negotiate.

Maybe Bluestocking had some postcognitive powers. Past-reading, like the time camera had been able to do.

In the back, Birdbrain perked up. She raised her voice, alarmed. “Blue! Bitter!”

She was running now, catching up with our group. Bluestocking raised a hand, motioning for her to stop and stay back. She might have been thinking that this was already a two versus one discussion, and a third person would make it lopsided enough to stop being civil.

But then Birdbrain drew close enough that the alarm in her eyes was visible through the eyeholes of her bird mask.

“What did you do?” Bluestocking asked.

Bitter Pill seemed to connect before Bluestocking did, because she pushed past me, hurrying toward the building. I motioned for the others to back off and let her through.

The others followed, with Foggy Idea trailing behind. Birdbrain held out her guns, threatening anyone who threatened to attack while the thinker team was surrounded.

I flew to keep up. I had to be ready to protect Harris if-

He was already backing up, hands up, when the thinkers arrived at the door to the hallway. He’d dragged Crested from the cell and shoved the food that had been left on the captain’s desk into Crested’s face.

“Are you stupid?” Bitter Pill asked.

“Did you eat it?” Bluestocking asked.

“He ate enough,” Bitter Pill said, sounding pissed.

“Your call,” I told her. “You can travel with someone that’s going to go monster and either wreck everything or refuse to budge… or you can let them stay in this cell here. We’ll wait for our reinforcements, see if they come…”

“Shut up,” Bluestocking said.

“Or you can accept my terms, and we’ll keep this easy for you.”

There was a long pause.

My team was standing beside me. I could see Bitter Pill holding a bottle so the cap was between her index and middle fingers, ready to drop it.

I wondered if Sveta would be able to catch it.

She hadn’t let herself be surrounded without a trick up her sleeve. The question was whether she’d throw all sense to the wind and go with that, or if she’d take the other route.

It was Bluestocking who responded. “Reduced terms.”

“Let’s talk,” I said. “We give you passage with your prisoners, no fight, no hassle, we’ll hold them and turn them over… you fix the wounded, you pay-”

“-Not the full price. Two thousand.”

“Pretty paltry. Twenty thousand minimum.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“They’re your teammates. You risked all of this for them. Are you now saying they aren’t worth ten thousand each?”

“We’re not teammates,” Etna said.

“You’ll fucking do a few jobs with us if we break you out, okay?” Bluestocking snarled.

“Okay,” Etna replied.

“Three day break from all activity,” I said.

“One day. Twenty thousand. We fix the injured. And you fucking pretend we don’t exist while we wait for the steroid soldier drug to run its course.”

I didn’t reply, letting the others take that in.

“Yeah, probably,” Byron said. I saw Sveta and Rain nod.

“Then fucking leave us alone, and if you try anything we’ll bring hell down on your heads,” Bluestocking said. “Bitter has stuff.”

“I do. For a rainy day.”

“It’s a fucking rainy day when-”

We backed off, leaving them to bicker.

Harris looked more resigned than victorious when he emerged. When I put out my hand, he gripped it firm.

The hole in the wall meant that the snow and moisture were getting in. The water that Byron had created had frozen so the very top layer formed a paper-thin sheet.

The members of the patrol squads emerged.

“We need help,” I told the instructor. “We need boots on the ground, not just heroes. It’s bad right now.”

“I’ll get my grads on board,” he said. “We’ll see what we can do.”

“We might need seniors too.”

“School-age kids?”

“Seventeen and eighteen year olds? Older than some of us,” I said, indicating my group. “The city needs all the help it can get.”

“I’ll talk to parents. I can’t force anything.”

“And other instructors. Any friends or superiors you have.”

I saw him nod. He put a hand on my shoulder as he walked by, going over to talk to the most unhappy and stressed of his patrol block.

I grabbed a desk that had been tossed across the room and righted it, before sitting on it. Sveta plunked herself down beside me, her giant arm around behind my back and resting on the corner of the desk to my left.

I pulled out my phone, and immediately she pushed it down and away.

“No more,” she said.

I fought her, play-wrestling just a bit, and finally got the phone unlocked. I closed the chat I’d had open, asking for intel on this specific situation so we knew what we were getting into, and brought up the map.

The city, lit up by icons. Each icon had a brief bit of text, describing the situation and the report.

Incidents all over. Nine ongoing situations that didn’t have a team working on them, where the things were was bad enough the police didn’t have them under control, or where capes were involved, or both.

The city was on fire, metaphorically speaking, and we didn’t have what it took to put it out. When Kenzie had put the application together, she hadn’t seemed to expect that things would get this bad, because a lot of the text was unreadable or offscreen. Too much at once.

This time, when Sveta pushed my hand and my phone down, I let her.

“We need a break,” she said. “You need one.”

“I wanted to procrastinate,” I said. “I told myself that we’d wait until Swansong and Lookout are out of the hospital. Then Lookout ended up having to stay the extra day.”

“She’s out tonight.”

“I know. But… I had something to bring up and talk to the group about, and I needed time to digest it.”

“The files from Jeanne Wynn. You went to see Dragon, you got the files, and you found out something.”

“Mostly right,” I said. I gave the phone a shake, bringing it to her attention, the map still glowing with its bright yellow icons on a purple cityscape. “This seemed easier. A relative distraction from that something.”

Blinding – 11.2

Rain and I worked together to remove Sveta’s rigging. One attachment to her suit served as a mounting for two arms; she had the larger arm with the feminine hand on the end, and another ‘arm’ with an elbow joint that had the fragment of mask, like a small shield that could pull close to the face or move away.

There was a single second of danger where her tendrils were capable of reaching out into the world, but Sveta was concentrating and the situation was calm. The metal of her suit’s arm and chest pulled together, and she stood straighter.

The weight of it, as odd as it was, wasn’t a concern to her. The balance issue, however, was apparently a hassle.

The headquarters felt dark, even with all of the lights on and monitors glowing. It might have had to do with the weather outside and the late hour, and it might have had to do with the fact that I was bracing myself to deliver hard news.

I’d ridden with the others in an effort to stay connected and keep a thumb on the pulse of the group. Going from a dark car with only the light of headlights on the road ahead of us to our headquarters, where the light felt insufficient left me feeling like I was underwater and the surface was a ways off. The world beyond the headquarters and car gave me an ominous vibe.

“I don’t know how long it’s going to be before I have another good tinkering day,” Rain said. “I can try taking notes, if you have immediate feedback.”

“It works like this,” Sveta said. “If I had to bring up any issues…”

She didn’t finish the sentence, and as Rain took off his mask and raised his eyebrows, motioning for her to continue, she remained quiet.

“Why are you trailing off?” Rain asked. “I want to know.”

“Sorry. I’m already asking for a lot and saying ‘no’ to ideas. It’s stronger but it doesn’t feel as strong as I’d expect a hand of this size to feel, but I’m not sure if I’m using it at its full strength so that might be bad feedback. When I use my regular body, I’m pretty strong if I want to be, but I end up holding back because I don’t want to break it. I might be doing the same thing here.”

“We can’t know until you test its limits and break it,” Rain said.

“Except I can’t do that while I’m in the field. If I screw something up I have a hundred pounds of dead weight to drag around.”

“Can you do it here?”

I could see the hesitation on Sveta’s face as she turned around, looking at the hand that was planted on the floor, the arm extending up, and over, to where the ‘shoulder’ now rested on a table.

“I get it,” I told her. “My mom sent me to clinics for testing my powers. It’s kind of rare that you ever get to get an exact reading on your power’s strength. Especially when it’s durability.”

“Yeah,” Sveta told me.

“Except one of those things is Victoria talking about her flesh and blood body,” Rain said. “And- I’m suddenly realizing I sound like an insensitive asshole.”

Sveta swatted his shoulder. “You’re fine.”

“The arm can be fixed more easily, is what I wanted to say,” he said.

“I dunno,” she said.

“You’re used to holding back,” I observed.

I could see the realization cross her face. The connecting of two dots. I could relate it to a lot of moments where I’d missed something that seemed objectively obvious.

We weren’t always obvious.

“That’s true,” she finally said.

“I could try putting together a gauge,” Rain said. “Something like a visual indicator or audio indicator that measures what you’re putting in, with a max limit if you get to the point that metal starts bending or snapping.”

“That might work.”

“What else?” Rain asked.

“Well, um, this is a really obvious one, but I’d love it if it was more complete.”

I left them to the discussion. I stopped by the table by my whiteboard and collected my bag and some spare clothes.

In the bathroom, I stripped down and rinsed off, aware of the blood that came away from my hair and skin; I hadn’t been aware it was there. Not mine. There was smoke, there was sweat, and there was grime. My skin was still bruised from my fight with the arena man two days ago, and as much as adrenaline pushed pain into the background, the pain came back. I ached.

All of that was secondary to the problem of figuring out how to deliver the bad news.

I’d been focused enough on the present and the future that I hadn’t been paying as many visits to memory lane. I felt unwelcome nostalgia welling now as I pulled on a t-shirt, faced myself in the mirror, and took on the rituals necessary to arm myself. Damp hair fixed and sorted, combed out and braided. Teeth brushed, some makeup to take the shine out of my skin, to minimize the dark circles under my eyes, and some tinted chapstick because the cold weather would shred my lips if I let it.

Some of the nostalgia lay in how I was doing up my makeup at a late hour. The Victoria that had been Glory Girl had done that, knowing that in another few hours she would be taking it all off and going to bed.

That Victoria had, just as I was doing, found injuries she hadn’t been aware of while going through the routine. Hiding injuries had been important to cultivate the illusion of complete and total invulnerability.

The Victoria of the present put a bandaid on a cut, between jaw and ear. If I had cause to go out in costume anytime soon, I’d remove the bandage and cover the injury up.

There was another side to the nostalgia. Darker. After being turned from Wretch to a Victoria made of stray animals, of rats and dogs, I’d stumbled through the days. My skin hadn’t felt like my own, and it hadn’t really been my own. The layers I put over that skin were in my control, and even the most basic of makeup could be the outer layer that worked with the inner turmoil and found reconciliation with the skin and meat in between.

It calmed me, to have something I’d chosen at a store and pull that on over my t-shirt. In tonight’s case, it was black jeans, and then a sweater, light gray and ribbed, with white laces at the ‘v’ of the collar, pulled through gold-ringed eyelets. Whatever the crisis, whatever anxieties plagued me, it was important to me that I be able to tell myself that my appearance wasn’t cause for further anxiety. It had been critical back in those dazed and lost days when I’d been recovering, post-Gold Morning, but it had always been a thing for me.

I could have called it a casualty of growing up with my mom, but even Aunt Sarah, as nice as she was, had made remarks to me as a child when I hadn’t dressed for an occasion, or when I’d tried and failed to dye my hair, or when I’d been ten pounds overweight. Couched, hinting, even being nice about it, or not saying it to my face, but remarking on it to my mom or dad with me overhearing by chance. My dad, my uncles, my teachers, my friends… everyone had at one point made remarks that reminded me it was a thing I was supposed to pay attention to.

Even Dean. I’d thought he was safe, that he got me because he sensed my emotions in a limited way, and that he’d figured out things most others hadn’t because he’d seen the hurt or embarrassment from the sidelines. Then he’d said something, I couldn’t even remember what it was now, and I’d gone off on him – I’d even stopped talking to him for two weeks, over a comment that would have probably passed without mention had he said it to a friend. Had I been asked then, I wouldn’t have been able to put my finger on why. Poor Dean definitely wouldn’t have.

Easier to be bulletproof. To figure things out and take care of it. To make it as much a part of my routine as making sure I had my phone in my right pocket, keys in the little sub-pocket at my left, and wallet in the front pouch of my bag.

Tonight, the anxieties I was wrestling with had little to do with the Wretch.

I could hear noise outside. I set my jaw, looked at myself in the mirror, and felt that pang of dark nostalgia once more as I forced my eyes away from the reflection, aware of how things weren’t as they should be.

I left the bathroom, collecting my things on the way. Sveta sat at Rain’s table, while Rain was at the window by the door.

“They’re back from the hospital,” he reported.

I took a look for myself. There was a taxi below, and Ashley, Kenzie, Natalie, and Tristan were getting out. Kenzie shuffled more than she walked. I snatched up my gloves and hat, skipping my coat to be quicker, and stepped outside into the bluster of early winter.

The taxi pulled away as I reached the bottom of the fire escape.

“Hi!”

“Hi Kenzie,” I said. “Hey Natalie, it’s been a while.”

“I’ve missed a lot,” Natalie admitted. “A little bit on purpose.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “You read the emails?”

“I did. That’s completely different from being here, participating.”

“Nah,” Tristan said. “It’s not like we needed the legal know-how, exactly. We haven’t been arresting as much as we’ve been controlling the damage. Most jails aren’t taking new people.”

“That’s only part of my job, isn’t it?” Natalie asked.

“I guess so,” Tristan said.

“How’s the neck?” I asked him.

“I popped stitches, is all. No arterial bleed.”

“It looked like an arterial bleed.”

“Doctors said it was probably bleeding for a minute before I realized.”

“Glad you’re okay,” I told him.

He smiled, before heading to the fire escape.

Kenzie and Natalie walked to the fire escape as well, Natalie supporting Kenzie. I offered a hand, but because the fire escape was only wide enough for two people, I flew at the side, my hand at Kenzie’s armpit to stabilize and support.

“How are you?” I asked Ashley, looking back.

“I’ve been bored out of my skull. How has it been, living with our roommate without me there?”

“Surreal. Fine. We’ve been ignoring each other, except I brought food home a couple of times, and she brings me tea.”

“Perfect,” Ashley said.

“Speaking of,” I said. “Are you hungry? I know-”

“Yes,” Tristan cut in, from the top of the fire escape.

“-it’s late, but I figured you might be eager for something better than hospital food.”

“Yes,” he said, again.

“I could eat,” Ashley said.

“You two want to come with? There’s something I want to bring up. Natalie, your input would be appreciated too. That second role of yours you mentioned.”

“I was going to stick with Kenzie and make sure she’s okay. I don’t know if I’m still a de-facto guardian, because things are so hairy and she’s at the children’s place now, but nobody’s told me to stop.”

“You should go,” Kenzie told her. “Catch up with the others. You need a break from me, and I’m going to sit down and spend fifteen minutes getting caught up on my tech and all the data that’s rolled in while I’ve been gone. I won’t be doing anything.”

“I don’t want you bending over or crawling under the desk,” Natalie warned.

“I won’t. I’ll make Rain do it.”

“Be nice to Rain,” Tristan said, sounding like a stern mom.

“I am! He enjoys helping as much as I do.”

Tristan put a hand on the back of Kenzie’s head, steering her inside. She had two feathers stuck through the single ponytail at the back of her head. No hairpin, either.

I grabbed my coat, and we got ourselves sorted, with the others changing or organizing their things while I made sure I took down all orders on paper. Ashley was in for our walk, even though she still hadn’t fully mended.

S.P.I.N.E. A plan for going about this. I was pulling from lessons imparted by my family again. This particular lesson had been from Uncle Neil, and my heart was heavy with the memory of how he’d died, and how it tied into the acronym.

‘S’ stood for schedule, setting the context for the discussion. It was what I’d spent the most time wrestling with over the past few days. How to approach this. All at once? One at a time? What was the best venue for it? Schedule mattered the most because I could do everything else right and screw up here, and group dynamics, interruptions, or the tone of things could spoil it all.

“How was your vacation with your boy?” Tristan asked. He was asking Natalie.

“He’s not ‘my boy’. It was nice.”

“Did you tour the sights?” Tristan asked. “I guess there aren’t many sights, with the city being new.”

“We hung out. We drank, we completed a one thousand piece puzzle.”

“I hope you did more than that,” Ashley remarked.

“I don’t think I’m going to talk about that, thank you.”

“It sure sounds to me like he’s your boy,” Tristan said.

“Victoriaaa,” Natalie said.

“Yeahhh?” I asked, drawing my voice out in the same way.

“Did you ask me along just so you could throw me to the wolves?”

“I’m not a wolf,” Tristan said.

“A wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Ashley said.

“Goat, not sheep, and it’s not clothing.”

“Keep deluding yourself. I’m happy to admit to being a wolf. I’m under no illusions.”

The streets were empty, the snow coming down in drifts as the wind blew it from the rooftops. A dense sheet or collection here, then another there.

“You said you wanted me here for the other part of my job,” Natalie said, cutting in while there was still room in the back and forth between Ashley and Tristan. “Is it Kenzie?”

“I was assuming it was,” Ashley said. “Except you brought Tristan, and he doesn’t connect to Kenzie.”

“I chime in for leadership decisions and things,” Tristan replied. He looked annoyed. “Kenzie and I don’t not get along.”

“But you haven’t figured her out,” Ashley said.

“It’s not Kenzie,” I said, before things got any further. “Not exactly.”

I had their full attention now.

We still walked, but they were quiet, all of them watching me. Ashley had a reddish tint to her nose and cheekbones, her only headwear was a pair of earmuffs. Tristan was better bundled up, while Natalie was best prepared, wearing her puffy jacket that was primarily for function.

“Kenzie,” I said. “If you’re listening in, I’d really appreciate it if you’d stop. I’m going to talk with these guys and if everything’s good, I’ll talk to the rest of you about it now.”

There was a pause where nobody spoke.

“It’s worrying that you have to do that,” Natalie said.

“What’s going on?” Tristan asked.

“I got the files from Dragon. I got some other information too.”

“And it impacts the team,” Tristan said. “Kenzie in particular?”

“Yeah, the team,” I said. “We talked about this before, back when we were all shopping, but I should go back to it. What do you know about Chris?”

“Chris,” Tristan said, with a bit of surprise.

P. Following the scheduling, ‘S’, was perception. See where others were at, restate the known, and get them in the right frame of mind to think and talk about it. Forgetting ‘P’ was to risk dropping something on someone right away.

“Nothing we didn’t cover in the shopping trip,” Ashley said. “He wants to be close to powerful people. He’s secretive to a fault. His power is destroying him. Kenzie defends him fiercely.”

“I don’t know much,” Natalie said. “I tried to give him some of the same kind of support and help we’ve been trying to give to Kenzie and he refused it.”

“He’s an asshole, but he was our asshole,” Tristan said. “Then he wasn’t, and it’s getting to me that we don’t know why. Did you figure out why?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I figured out why. I think you guys need to know, and I guess the question is how you want to know. I can dish it all out here, or I can tell you enough that you can give some input on how we approach the others.”

Tristan asking like he had helped to shortcut things. I didn’t have to figure out how to approach ‘I’ in the acronym. Invitation. Asking if they want the information, empowering them to handle the situation.

“This is serious?” Natalie asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “This fills in a lot of the blanks, and it’s not pretty.”

“Tell us,” Ashley said.

Okay. I took a deep breath. My breath fogged as I exhaled.

“The file was Ms. Yamada’s. She wrote about Chris. A message for colleagues, in case she couldn’t carry on her duties. For Chris Elman, the very first line was a statement. Chris lies.”

“No surprise there,” Tristan said.

“I barely talked to him and I’m not exactly shocked,” Natalie said.

No response from Ashley.

In the S.P.I.N.E. acronym, the ‘N’ was for ‘necessary information’. The meat of things. Uncle Neil had told me to stick to the facts, to be blunt.

I wasn’t as blunt as I could’ve been, but I was still blunt.

“He’s not a changer,” I said. “And he didn’t trigger after Gold Morning. He has a long history.”

“How long?” Tristan asked.

“It goes back a decade,” I said.

“He’s thirteen,” Tristan stated, voice firm, like he could say it with enough authority to make it so. Then, in a one-eighty in every respect, he said, “He’s not thirteen.”

“No.”

“If he’s not a changer then that thing about him being experimented on…”

Tristan trailed off. Natalie picked up where he left off. “…I never heard about him being experimented on.”

“It was the story,” Ashley said, and there was no positivity or humor visible on her face or in her body language. “A sob story that ensured we wouldn’t push too hard or ask too many questions.”

“He lied about everything,” Tristan spoke the realization aloud.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Something happened. But it may have been self-inflicted, in a way. I could get into the nitty-gritty of it, what we know, who he was, and the dots we can connect between the two of those, but I want to leave it up to you guys.”

“Who was he?” Ashley asked.

“Lab Rat,” I said.

“Oh no,” Natalie said.

“That’s a reason to be secretive if I’ve ever heard one,” Ashley said.

I looked at Tristan. He was frowning, not looking at any of us.

“If you need a refresher on who Lab Rat is, I could go over the bullet points,” I said.

“Fucking asshole,” Tristan said. He clenched his fist, shaking his head.

“Don’t pop your stitches again,” I warned him.

Tristan shook his head, then winced, reaching up to touch the bandage at the side of his neck. “Let me think on this. Bring me out when you have food and things have settled.”

“You’re not going to immediately unsettle things, are you?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said.

He switched, blurring with his eyes flashing. The blue of the eyes faded, and Tristan became Byron.

Byron’s eyes turned down, looking at the ground as he walked.

“Is he dangerous?” Natalie asked.

“Can’t say anything for sure,” I told her. “But he disemboweled a tyrant and as far as we can tell, he’s taking over a portion of her world. If we go by past history, and if we assume nothing’s changed, he’s dangerous.”

“Everyone’s supposed to get a second chance,” Ashley said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But if it was offered and he didn’t take it, if he decided to hide and operate in secret, does he really get that benefit?”

“I’d say it depends,” Byron said, barely audible.

“Yeah,” I said.

The last letter in ‘S.P.I.N.E.’ was E. Empathize. Leave room for others to feel, to process.

We weren’t far from the dingy little restaurant, which had a rotund Japanese-style ogre at the side of the sign, a cow tucked under one arm, beside the stylized letters stating simply, ‘BEEF BOWL’.

Nobody went in, not right away. I’d taken two days to wrap my head around it, to equip myself with information, and decide on how to go about approaching the others. I could stand in the cold for five, ten, or twenty minutes while they digested the facts. I was prepared to answer their questions, if they had any.

“This isn’t easy,” I said, to give them an excuse to express any feelings they were holding back.

They didn’t have questions, and they didn’t want to express whatever it was they were so clearly feeling. Ashley had gone cold, distant. Natalie was thinking. There was only a single quiet comment from Byron.

“This is going to do a number on the others.”

He wasn’t wrong. Uncle Neil had taught me about the S.P.I.N.E. acronym because as heroes, we were often on the front line for tragedy. It was a tool for delivering the worst kind of news, and for preparing people to grieve.

The Chris we knew was gone.

⊙

The chatter as we got back to the hideout was happy. I put the paper bag down on the table by the door.

“Victoria! Hey!” Kenzie greeted me. She’d shucked off all of the outdoor clothing and was sitting in her chair, everything illuminated. She wore a new sweatshirt that was at least two sizes too big for her, purple, over a blue shirt with a monster on the front. Her skirt came down past her knees and she wore leggings beneath. She’d put on slippers rather than shoes. She’d also, I noted, put on her hairpin, and tucked the two feathers into it so they swept along the side of her head.

“Hey, good news! Is everyone back?”

I cracked the door open to poke my head out and check. “Yeah. They’ll be here in a second.”

“I got intel,” she said, her eyes glittering. “I can’t name my source, and the intel comes with stipulations.”

I looked at the feathers in her hair. “What stipulations?”

Sveta answered me. “We can’t use the information against the Undersiders, and we need to be discreet.”

“Is that so?” I asked. I heard the others at the fire escape and opened the door.

“And I agreed to certain special favors,” Kenzie said.

“Don’t say it like that,” Rain told her. “They want to see your tech.”

“Kind of like how the speedrunners showed Rain’s cluster their tech, except not evil and-”

“And not like that situation at all, really,” he finished.

“I’m showing off my tech, and people are interested,” Kenzie said, legs kicking.

“He sent the information without even bargaining first,” Sveta said. “The pictures and the requests. It shows a lot of faith in you.”

“Or he’s an idiot,” Ashley said.

Kenzie spun her chair around, glaring.

“Let’s hope it’s the former,” Ashley said.

“It is the former,” Kenzie replied, trying to sound dangerous.

The others came inside and the door mercifully shut. Space heaters were buzzing throughout the open space, producing the faint smell of burned dust.

Byron changed out, allowing Tristan free. I saw Tristan’s expression, the seriousness, and what simmered beneath the surface.

“Do you want to see?” Kenzie asked. “I was counting the seconds until you guys got back.”

“She wasn’t,” Rain clarified. “But she is excited. You guys were gone for longer than usual. What were you talking about?”

“Heavy stuff,” Tristan said. He tore open the brown paper bag, taking a bowl of ginger beef and some chopsticks. “I’m so glad we have food if we’re going to discuss this. I skipped dinner and I’m running on empty.”

“You have me worried now,” Sveta said.

I got other things out. I passed Sveta a bowl, then put Kenzie’s request on the table next to her. Some peanut chicken, a small tray of salad with dressing in packets, and far too many fortune cookies. She reached for a fortune cookie, and I grabbed her hand, moving it to the salad.

“Is this what you’ve been stewing on?” Sveta asked me.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“How bad, on a scale of one to ten?” Rain asked.

“What’s a ten?” Tristan asked. He was already eating.

“Gold Morning,” Rain said, dead serious.

“Seven, then,” I said.

“I would have called the Goddess situation a seven, with what happened to the prison,” Rain said. He was entirely serious now.

I’d wanted to handle this better. I returned to the acronym.

“Where do you guys stand on the subject of Chris?” I asked.

“Oh,” Rain said. He looked a little crestfallen at the name. “That’s ominous.”

“Is he okay?” Kenzie asked.

“I don’t know. We don’t have any updates on what he’s doing right now, or how he is, but we do have information about him.”

“I always had a bad feeling,” Sveta said. “It started as a small discomfort when he was in the group. I could sympathize, turning into a monster, not having control, but… it was always a bad feeling and the little things only added to it, never really making that feeling less intense.”

“I really don’t want to spoil a reuniting of the team with us dumping on Chris,” Kenzie said.

“I’m not,” Sveta said.

“You really kinda are,” Kenzie said. “And I understand why, he left and that sucks. It’s easier to deal with if you get angry instead of sad.”

“Kenzie,” Sveta said, and her voice was lower, “I understand that you want to respect Chris and his feelings-”

“And you should want to too!”

“-But please respect me and don’t minimize my feelings to protect his.”

“He’s not here to defend himself, so if I’m being forced to take a side then I’m going to take his. I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Sveta said. “I’m sorry too.”

Ashley approached her, sitting on the desk beside Kenzie’s keyboard, a bowl and chopsticks in hand. She didn’t look like she was having an easy time with the chopsticks.

“We’re not dumping,” I said. “At least, that’s not the intent. I respect that Sveta’s instincts were to be uncomfortable around Chris.”

“I don’t like the word instincts,” Sveta said.

“Fair. Feelings?” I offered.

“Feelings,” Sveta said.

“And I don’t want to condemn him either,” I said. “But what I’ve found out looks pretty bad. It’s up to you guys if you want to tackle this in one way or another. We could raise the subject tomorrow.”

“I won’t sleep all night if I’m busy imagining the worst outcomes,” Rain said.

“I want to know,” Kenzie said, looking stubborn.

“I’m not sure you do,” Ashley told her.

“I do.”

I looked at Sveta.

“You told the others?” Sveta asked.

“A little less loaded. Easier to bring up,” I replied.

“I’m trusting you on this. I’m going to be pretty stung if you didn’t have good reasons.”

I nodded.

“What is it?” she asked.

That brought us to the ‘I’ of the S.P.I.N.E., this time around.

“He lied to us,” Tristan said.

My breath caught in my throat. “Hold up.”

“What did he lie about?” Kenzie asked.

“Everything except his first name, apparently,” Tristan said. “Everything.”

“Tristan,” I said. “Hold up, okay? Stop.”

He looked like he was going to say something, then stopped. He put the bowl down hard, chopsticks laid on top. Only about half was eaten.

“Sure,” he said.

“Everything?” Rain asked.

I opened my mouth to try to formulate a reply, then closed it and nodded instead. No way to sum it up.

“Why?” Sveta asked.

“Because he wanted to keep it a secret that he’s a villain with a lot of enemies.”

“A lot?” Kenzie asked.

“He was in the Birdcage,” Ashley said.

“What did he do?” Sveta asked. “What was so bad that he couldn’t use his old identity, when Bonesaw was walking around free?”

“Semi-free,” Ashley said.

“My point stands. Valkyrie used to be a dangerous villain,” Sveta said. She looked at me, and the statement that didn’t follow was telling.

“My sister, too. She was dangerous,” I said.

“What did he do?” Sveta asked.

“Can I ask that we gloss over that? We can get into the details tomorrow, after we’ve absorbed the basic info tonight.”

“You know where he is right now, don’t you? How pressing this is? He’s on an island in Earth Shin, near their equivalent of New Zealand, with other parahumans and people. I’m really sorry to bring this up, but your sister and her dad, they’re on an island nearby, they’re having all parahumans come to them. They’re negotiating with governments. That’s a lot of people potentially under his thumb. If he’s dangerous-”

“He’s Chris,” Kenzie said. She looked to me for her validation, which broke my heart a little. The smile on her face broke it a bit more; she wore an expression which would read to others like she thought this whole thing was a joke.

“Except he isn’t,” Rain said. “He has a history? Who is he?”

“He’s Lab Rat,” I said.

I could see everything go out of Sveta, as she heard that. I saw Kenzie’s eyes widen just a bit- she recognized the name.

Rain, by contrast, seemed baffled.

“He’s a tinker?” Kenzie asked. She laughed, a smile creeping across her face. “That’s hilarious.”

“Who the hell is Lab Rat?” Rain asked. “Keep in mind, I spent half my life in places without radio and television. He went to the Birdcage, so it sounds bad, he’s a tinker, so that’s a lot of options for bad, but that’s all I’ve got.”

“He made mutagenic serums. The transformations,” Sveta said. “He was dosing himself? Or did his power change?”

“Dosing himself. The medicine he kept with him.”

Kenzie banged the table. “I feel so dumb!”

“Easy,” Ashley told her.

“I didn’t even think! He asked me not to record him changing and I didn’t because I knew he’d be naked at one part of it, and I’m absolutely not allowed to take those kinds of pictures, accidentally or on purpose.”

“Easy,” Ashley said, again. “Count to ten.”

“That’s your thing, not mine.”

“Count.”

“He experimented on a lot of people,” Sveta said. “He turned them into monsters. Freaks. You’ve seen the kind of transformations he can manage, except- the ones we saw were uglier.”

She met my eyes as she said it.

I nodded.

“You’ve seen them?” Natalie asked.

“At the hospital,” Sveta said. “The asylum. Parahumans who can’t control their powers and victims of parahuman powers get sent there to be taken care of.”

“You’ve talked about it,” Tristan said, uncharacteristically gentle.

“I was there for a month and a half, so I could talk to a therapist every day without worrying about rotations or anything,” Kenzie added. “I didn’t really see many others.”

“We’ve all- most of us have seen or been the victims of powers,” Sveta said. “I’m one. There were a few Case Fifty-Threes there. Um. People who lost their minds, one way or another, or who were already struggling with something and who had powers that made it worse. People who were hurt by tinker experiments, in ways that conventional medicine couldn’t help.”

“Bad situations,” I supplied.

“In the few years that Lab Rat was active, for every one person who went to the Asylum for one reason or another, there was a Lab Rat victim. He tested his serums on people and not every single one changed all the way back.”

“Did anyone ever ask him why?” Kenzie asked.

“Kenzie,” Sveta said, her voice hard. “Don’t.”

“I’m just saying! Maybe there was a really important reason, or maybe he couldn’t help it.”

“Kenzie,” I said, before Sveta could get riled up and say something regrettable. “This is a no-fly zone.”

She giggled in a nervous, bewildered way, “What does that even mean?”

“I hear what you’re saying, but… we can’t extend the benefit of a doubt. Not about this. Not until we have a reason to.”

“If we have to have a reason it’s not the benefit of a doubt,” Kenzie replied.

“It’s too close to home,” I said. I tried to keep my voice level. “For me, for Sveta. You can’t make apologies for his actions until we have more information, not when some of us here are unable to forgive people who did the exact same thing to us.”

“But you guys-” Kenzie started. Ashley put a hand on Kenzie’s shoulder, and Kenzie slumped back into her seat. She pulled her feet up onto her seat and hugged her knees. “Okay.”

“Did they get better?” Rain asked.

I was already shaking my head when Sveta said, “No. You know how his Screaming Anxiety form kept screaming? There was a woman like that. Her mind didn’t exit that state, and she roared out cuss words nonstop. All day, every day, without ever sleeping. She had surges of strength that meant she couldn’t be in a regular hospital. There was a man who boiled alive. The bubbles would swell-”

“I don’t- I don’t need details,” Rain said.

“They were still there when I arrived at the Asylum, along with a few others that had survived,” Sveta said. There was a hard edge to her voice, like she could’ve been angry or burst into tears in the same breath. “When Victoria did. They were probably still there on Gold Morning.”

“He was my friend,” Rain said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I know he was younger, or-”

“He wasn’t younger,” I said. “Twice your age.”

“Ah,” Rain said, and he huffed out the word like it had hit him straight in the solar plexus.

“Sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter any to me,” Kenzie said, stubborn. “It doesn’t change anything. In fact, I kind of feel validated, because it fits everything in super neat with my seating chart-”

“It should matter,” Ashley said. “And let’s just let the others talk a moment, no commentary. Please?”

“I didn’t have many friends, when I first came to group therapy,” Rain said. “I didn’t even know Erin properly then, everyone at the compound had turned on me.”

“He gave you games and comics,” Tristan said.

Rain nodded. “And we talked online, whenever I was online. He helped me research clusters and find details on Love Lost, Cradle, and Snag. And he’s a complete and utter monster?”

“Apparently,” Sveta said.

“We can’t know one hundred percent,” I said. “He’s apparently an experiment. Not a clone, but a malleable housing for the DNA signature for the agent to hook into, I’d have to reread the notes.”

“Ashley was a clone and she turned out okay,” Kenzie said. “Better than her former self.”

“That’s true,” I said.

“The malleable house stuff,” Rain said. “That was why he was falling apart? He was trying to fix something by creating permanent changes?”

I hesitated.

“He lied about that too?”

“He was apparently doing the exact opposite of what he was saying. Trying to weaken the ‘Chris’ in him to make the changes stick longer. Intentionally creating changes to break down his old self.”

Rain rose to his feet, and in the same motion, pushed on the table in front of him, sending scrap, food, and his tools to the ground. The table followed a second later, everything crashing in a sharp, deafening noise, with a short yelp from Natalie.

Natalie, who had been watching from the sidelines.

The bowl rolled around on the floor for a second, the only sound. The sound wound down as it lost momentum.

Where the sound faded, I heard another. Kenzie’s nervous giggling.

“Please don’t,” Rain said.

“I can’t help it.”

“Come,” Ashley said. She winced as she picked Kenzie up out of the chair. “Slippers off. We’re going for a walk. You and me.”

The giggling stopped and started in the minute or so it took for Ashley to get Kenzie to the door and make her put her boots on. I helped, getting the coat, hat and gloves, with Swansong’s stuff in my other arm.

Rather than put those things on, Ashley just opened the door, stepping out onto the fire escape without winter clothes. I handed everything over, and she shut the door. They’d get dressed for the outdoors outdoors.

The door closing mercifully shut out the sound of the nervous giggling.

Rain stood with his eyes up toward the ceiling, fingers knit together behind his head, forearms pressed against his ears.

“I fucked this up,” I said.

“I don’t think there was a good way to do it.”

“I was considering one-on-one, once I’d briefed people I thought were safe,” I said. “I was seventy-five percent on Ashley, I thought that if she did have an outburst, it would be okay so long as she was away from Kenzie. She surprised me.”

“She once said her default for every person she meets is to be disappointed in them,” Tristan said. “There’s never any surprises if they live up to that disappointment.”

Rain was only just now relaxing, lowering his arms. He looked down at the table he’d overturned. “I’ll clean up. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll get it,” Natalie said. “Please. It’ll help if I can do something.”

“If you bring the stuff, I’ll help,” Rain said. “I told myself a long time ago I didn’t want anyone cleaning up for me. It’s a rule.”

“Okay,” Natalie said. She was on the other end of the room, so I barely heard her.

“If you’d done Kenzie last, she would have gotten curious and found out, and she would have been hurt,” Sveta told me. “If you told her first, we would have realized something was wrong, and I would have had a pretty hard time knowing I was last on your list of people to tell.”

“Is it okay that I told you after-” I started.

I stopped because she was already nodding.

Off to the side, Tristan had pulled Rain into a hug. I looked away. Rain was kneeling by the mess, separating things from the ginger beef and rice. I would’ve helped, but I had the instinct that he wanted space.

Sveta- her arms were folded, her head bowed. Her expression as angry as I’d seen it, as she looked at nothing in particular.

I’d known Sveta would take it hard. Rain had caught me by surprise. Kenzie had too, in a way. I’d prepared myself for the mindset that the others would want to grieve, and I hadn’t anticipated the abject denial, even though it was one of the classic stages of grief.

I didn’t trust myself to approach any of them, so I turned toward the screen that Kenzie had left live.

The images were there on the monitor. Bulletin boards with notecards stuck to them. Not so different from what we had in our hideout.

I pretty quickly realized what they were.

Tattletale’s notes.

Scary notes. They had some starting points on the people who’d attacked us, notes on the portal, and some theorizing on the greater threats in play.

Almost casually, figures like the Bogeyman were name-dropped and discarded. Amy and Chris were a footnote.

Fucking dangerous information for us to so casually have, and dangerous information to be sending out.

Blinding – 11.3

“I’ve got it,” Natalie told me. She squeezed past me to get to the door, took the keys I had in the flat of my hand and opened it, stepping inside to hold it open.

I had Kenzie in my arms. She was skinny, but her clothes for the cold weather were puffy, and it meant my arms had to go around more. My arm still twinged from the gunshot wound in the left bicep, and my right hand had bandages around it, inside the glove though the skin was on its way to healing.

Kenzie, meanwhile, was resting her face against my shoulder. When the cold weather had blustered, she had ducked her head down, and she hadn’t lifted her head back up.

The kettle was already starting to boil in the other room as we kicked off boots and got ourselves sorted in the front hallway. Ashley took her boots off and stalked off into the kitchen with her coat still on.

Kenzie and I couldn’t take our coats off either, since I was carrying her. Natalie did help me remove her hat and boots, though.

“Hold on,” Ashley said, as I entered the living room. She had a sheet in hand.

The couch was quickly stripped of the backing cushions and then made up with a bottom sheet. It took Ashley, Natalie and me to ease Kenzie down to a sitting position on the couch. Kenzie had been shot twice and had undergone three surgeries in a thirty-six hour span.

“I’m a bit embarrassed,” Kenzie said.

“You’re fine,” Ashley told her.

“It’s going to change how you guys all see me.”

“We already know you,” Ashley said. “Nothing to change.”

“It’s one thing if I talk about how I used to be, but if you actually see it then it’s worse.”

“Was that how you used to be?” I asked.

“See!?”

“Volume down. Keep it at a two or three on the volume knob,” Ashley said.

“See?”

“I’m not saying anything’s changed. I’m trying to give you a chance to expand on your thoughts there,” I said.

“I remember feeling like I did tonight. Except it was all the time, and it ended up with me going to the hospital because nobody could get me to stop, even me.”

“You stopped,” Ashley said. “You aren’t who you are then.”

“But I feel like I did then.”

“We all backslide. Tomorrow we’ll return to business as usual. Some people will say apologies. If it makes you feel better, you can say yours.”

“Apologies are for the other person.”

“We can agree to disagree on that,” Ashley told Kenzie. “For now, do you want a snack?”

“Yes please,” Kenzie said.

“Some tea to help you get to sleep?”

“Okay. Whatever works. I don’t know about that.”

“Get comfortable. I’ll bring snacks, then I’ll get the rest of your blankets.”

Ashley stepped into the kitchen, past Natalie, who was warily watching Damsel, and then past Damsel, who loomed at the doorway, shadowy, with claws at the frame.

From my vantage point, more used to this kind of scene, I could see Kenzie raise a hand to give Damsel a little wave, and I could see Damsel smile. When Damsel turned to go help Ashley, I saw the bed-head, a lick of hair at the back and the side that was pressed down.

I was pretty sure Natalie didn’t see that. That Natalie saw Damsel reach out for Ashley with knife-fingers, touching them to Ashley’s back, and leaned in close- but didn’t see that Ashley was putting away the tea bags that Damsel had taken out of the cupboard, instead getting out the little jars of loose leaf teas and the tea infuser.

“This wasn’t what I expected, when I thought about having a sleepover,” Kenzie admitted. She smiled. “I thought it would feel happier.”

“Tomorrow will be brighter,” I said.

“I feel weird, not having my tech. You said to leave it behind, but I’m used to falling asleep to the glow of the screen.”

“It’ll be good to try and sleep normally,” I told her. “No late-night tinkering. Eat, drink, sleep, enjoy your time with Ashley. Recharge.”

“I recharge by plugging in, though.”

“You’re human. You’re a mammal. As much as any dog, cat, mouse or elephant, you should be able to enjoy a good nap, warmth, companionship, and treats. They’re universal.”

Kenzie drew in a deep breath, then huffed. “Are you staying, Natalie?”

“I don’t think so. Even if I was welcome, I think I should really be back at my apartment, getting organized for going back to work. I’ll stay long enough to make sure you’re comfortable, and then I’ll be by first thing in the morning to pick you up.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

I checked on the Ashleys in the kitchen, and they seemed to be fine. Ashley had her arms folded while she leaned against the counter, and was inaudible as she talked to her sister.

“Does she need something?” Ashley asked, as she saw me. “Do you?”

“I’m just going to get sheets and blankets to make up her bed.”

“There’s a nice throw in the drawer under the coffee table. When you go to the closet for sheets, get the ones from the top shelf. Someone lacerated the nicer sheets.”

“I bought the nicer sheets,” was the response.

“With our shared money. If you refuse to fix your hands, you get to sleep in rags like a peasant.”

I rolled my eyes, and headed toward the closet door. Natalie was talking to Kenzie in a quiet voice, while Kenzie was lying down with her head on a throw pillow. I stopped to watch for a second.

In the other room, I heard the continued dialogue. “The hands are not changing, my dear whitewashed clone. I’m happy with them. They’ll be needed when I go.”

“Go? So you’ve decided?”

“It’s crowded. I’ve deigned to give you free reign, let you have your guests-”

“Guests you like. Also, this is my apartment. Paid for with money they gave me for my help in research.”

“That I contributed to as well. I earned my due, and you’d have nothing without my share of it.”

“I’d have something. I’m disappointed either way. You’re better than this.”

“I’m better than this. This is all very cute. Your friends are… cute. But they’re yours. I’m restless, and you know what this restlessness feels like.”

“I know what it is and what it becomes.”

“I’ve agreed to be good, little clone, because I didn’t want to bring trouble down on your head, and I’m willing to play along with the rules. I committed crimes, they got me, they were taking care of me, and I didn’t want to spend any more winters hungry. Fine. I’ll stay in prison, even if I could easily escape.”

“Of course.”

“But there are no rules, there is no prison, and they’ve forgotten about me. I’ll make my mark. I’ll carve out a place for myself, and I’ll build a citadel that makes this cute little hovel feel paltry.”

“You can’t build anything if the energy you’re using is pure ‘restlessness’, if you want to call it that. You definitely can’t if your judgment is so clouded that you think this apartment is anything but great.”

I stopped eavesdropping and left them to their bickering, relatively confident they’d stop when the tea was done steeping. I might not have listened in at another time, but the two were volatile on their own and there was that one in a hundred chance that they could be explosively volatile if they clashed. It was better if I could step in before they got heated enough to disturb Kenzie.

I gathered up the blankets from the closet, stole a pillow from a bed, then took it all to the couch.

Kenzie was already asleep, without blankets or pillow, dozing off to the background noise of Ashley and her clone sniping at each other.

“Are they aware we can hear them?” Natalie asked. She was sitting by the couch, Kenzie’s colorful backpack resting against her lap.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said.

“Isn’t it concerning if the scary version of your teammate is talking about leaving to be a villain?”

“She makes noise about this now and then. I’ve tried to convince her and she doesn’t tend to listen. She’s gradually working her way up to it, but…”

I paused to listen to the back-and-forth. I couldn’t make out all of the words, but I could definitely make out the tension.

“…Not tonight. Probably.”

“Okay,” Natalie said. Her forehead creased with lines.

“Something to worry about another day, if our Ashley doesn’t have input or ideas. For today, I think we’ve worried enough. Give me a hand?”

Kenzie roused only a bit as we set the sheet and heavier blanket down over top, with the folded throw blanket over her feet. Her lifting her head up was a chance for me to get the couch pillow out from under her head and put a real pillow there instead. Somewhere in the midst of it, the Ashleys noticed that Natalie had turned off some of the lights and went quiet.

I said my goodbye to Natalie, collected my tea and crackers, and headed to my room, leaving Ashley watching a television on mute while she had her tea, Kenzie sleeping on the couch behind her, a crossword or something in her lap. Damsel had gone to her room, or their room.

Glowing screen after all, I supposed.

Kenzie had been too upset to go back to her place, and it wouldn’t have been fair to the staff at the institution to put that on their shoulders. Ashley and Kenzie balanced out some of the most troubling aspects of each other, and after some debate and some phone calls, we’d agreed that this made the most sense.

I’d spent the last few nights researching, focusing and thinking about the group, and bracing myself for what I knew would be a tough conversation to have. Now Kenzie was having her turn at the same things, with a bit less research, but she was figuring things out.

In line with that role reversal, I was now taking on the task of building something, putting off sleep and focusing on bigger things. I flicked the row of switches for my computer, monitor, and peripherals to boot up.

Kenzie’s source had given us some information. Photos of bulletin boards, with some more photos of notecards, all with Tattletale as the dubious source, I had the PRT data from Dragon, I had my notes from the Patrol, and I had my own notes.

Noontide was the one name I had to work off of, and from there, I could go to Tattletale’s notes to find out a bit more.

Noontide Demon – reference to apathy?
Partners with The Orders, Contender, Griph/Glyph (see 1104.aud)
1104.aud convo partner Griph could be one of Orders
Contender partners with 3rd G post-prison. ?Romantic?

Names to throw around. I checked The Orders against everything I had. PRT stuff from before Gold Morning, Patrol notes, and the listings in a ‘who’s who’ subscription that had come out in 2008 that had attempted to track every cape and where they were. It had been a phone book of information that required far too much effort to maintain and had commanded a niche market of interested people. At best, it had been the next best thing to an online search to figure out if a cape name or team name was taken.

Three issues had come out. I had a tattered copy with pages starting to come free of the spine.

No ‘Orders’ under the team names. While I was looking, I didn’t find a Contender.

Noontide, though. There had been one, and the name was both in my ‘who’s who’ phone book and available with an online search. The internet being what it was, my search turned up a positive search result, but clicking through returned a ‘page not found’ result.

The truncated description and single portrait of a mask that the search engine had coughed up from its servers was enough to tell me that they weren’t the same person. Noontide had had brown skin, and her aesthetic had been entirely different from the woman in the picture that I’d found with the search.

That, and with a second glance, I realized that there was a termination to the old Noontide’s date in the date provided for activity. Born 1985, dead 2008.

The old Noontide was almost certainly not the one we’d run into. That was a tidbit of info, because it suggested things about how she’d gone about picking out a name, that she hadn’t used our internet, because she hadn’t been able, or she hadn’t cared enough to.

‘3rd G’ was the next thing that caught my eye. My first instinct was to think of third generation capes. Capes with parents that had been the kids of capes. My second instinct was inspired by the mention of the prison. Goddess. I was left with the niggling feeling that more people had disappeared after Goddess had attacked the prison, and very few people had appeared.

Who was involved that hadn’t wanted to go back to Shin? The third member of Goddess’ cluster, potentially?

If so… the Patrol was working with the Wardens to keep tabs on a limited suite of parahumans. Because of the danger Goddess had posed, and because her cluster was paranoid about being targets and about being weak, her cluster had asked for protection. The Wardens hadn’t been able to provide a safehouse and around-the-clock bodyguard, but they had provided some guidance. Three members of the cluster were gone, Goddess included. Two had joined the Wardens, becoming employees. Two more had slipped through the cracks, maintaining a stipend if they would call in or visit on a regular basis.

Just to let the Wardens check that nothing too ugly was happening.

I could search them up, and with the search and the database access I’d been given, I could see some of the notes on the files.

Tori Heflin, NONE (109c)
Classify: Shaker
Power: Telekinetic reel-in, push-out, straight lines only, max 20 lb. weight.
Dispo: NON (Victim)
Age: 25
Appearance: Aboriginal, West Continent, Shin, round face, thick black hair, glasses. Tattoos, neck, dotwork triangles.
Notes: 109c Sought asylum and refugee status, victimized by Goddess. Claimed nonaffiliation, no interest in using powers or parahuman activities, but has been contacting other capes. See MER_CONTENDER, MER_LIONWING, MER_CRETAN. See attached files 109c_D and 109c_E.
To be monitored further.

I checked the profiles for each of the names. The link to ‘Contender’ gave me the image of the guy who had sealed me in his personal fighting arena.

Bingo.

The attached images took a minute to come up. ‘Tori Heflin’ was at a venue too dark to be a bar, sitting with a trio of people in civilian clothes. Each had a label highlighting them- the extra metadata and labeling was part of why it had taken a minute. I could click on each to bring up their respective files.

Tori was brown-skinned and round faced, small and of a build that someone might term cute, but she had a mean look on her face in each of the attached files. The others at the table drank, but Tori didn’t- instead, she apparently smoked up a storm, favoring cigarettes with blue paper and a blue glow at the end. I’d seen them before- blue flames or something.

In the time it had taken her buddies to finish several beers, she had downed an equivalent number of cigarettes. Her unlabeled friend was mixing drinks and smoking, coming just shy of her in smoking and a bit shy of his friends in drinking, if I had to judge by the glasses beside him and the butts he’d stubbed out in the ashtray among Tori’s blue flames. He was unlabeled, but I knew him. I’d seen him as a civilian in past shoots with the time camera, and I’d fought him.

Kingdom Come.

The light-haired woman next to her was leaning heavily into her personal space, and Tori didn’t seem to either welcome it or hate it. One photo where the blonde sat with her tattooed arm pressing hard into Tori’s shoulder, and another photo where the woman had an arm around Tori’s shoulders, half leaning into Tori and half onto the table, clearly tipsy.

The woman was Lionwing. And she, too, had cropped up on the time camera. When we’d first seen the Pharmacist, Kingdom Come had been there, and so had a strawberry blonde woman with a tattooed arm and cat mask.

I clicked the label, and I brought up a page. Lionwing, in varying costumes. She had light armor she wore when in the field, along with a sword and a triangular shield that had decorative arrangements of spikes at each corner. A bit of a ‘gladiator’ look.

The last person sitting at the table was Cretan. Muscular, with a shaved head and goatee. Clicking through produced a blurry picture of him standing in the midst of fires. He had a helmet with a bull motif, but didn’t even use the bull’s horns as part of the aesthetic- the helmet hugged his head pretty close, and the ‘bull’ arched over top like a mohawk, its eyes lining up with his. His armor was similar, hugging his body pretty close, with the design etched in or marked out in white metal.

Okay.

Making sense of this- the pharmacist had been allied with Teacher. Teacher was connected to the hyper-religious nuts from Earth Cheit, with some Fallen and Kingdom Come roped into that.

They or Teacher had hired six mercenaries. Contender, the one who had created an arena, Noontide, who had tried to put Sveta and I to sleep, and the Order, a quartet of capes we hadn’t seen yet, with only two of them in my pictures here. Attention had been drawn to them only because Tori had claimed to be a victim in the Goddess debacle, had asked for help as a non-threat, and had then started hanging out with people who hurt others for money.

Why come after us or send the mercenaries after us? Because… they’d already been caught on camera, and someone had told them they’d need to keep it from happening again?

Noontide’s lack of research for her name was odd, but it made more sense if I reconsidered things from the angle that she wasn’t from Bet.

I looked into her file, and found a series of jobs she had done. It was stock work for a mercenary, with bodyguard work for a celebrity, theft, and teaming up with another team to rescue a girl that had apparently been kidnapped by some people from the construction worker’s riot that hadn’t been willing to let things go. She was a mercenary- there hadn’t been any lying about that. Was this dry resume a cover? Was she up to something else?

Contender, at least, wasn’t Cheit or Cheit in disguise. He had a history and had gone by another name before. He’d been ‘The Pug’, short for Pugilist, and had taken bids on sites to pick fights with capes, prior to Gold Morning. He’d evolved toward the tail end of that embarrassing debacle, taking more serious money and going after Kill Orders, all the while refining his skill set. He’d had a break, Gold Morning had happened, and a few months afterward, he’d emerged as Contender.

Then, as I turned my focus to the Order, I found them to be ghosts. Some jobs, but they hadn’t existed a month ago, and they apparently worked together and socialized as a tight-knit team. That didn’t happen; not with people who’d appeared so spontaneously and simultaneously.

Cheit, again?

Insidious, if it was the case. Foreign agents operating as mercenaries, maybe picking and choosing the jobs they did, meeting other capes, sounding them out, and manipulating the ones they saw as vulnerable.

No, it was worse than that.

They’d permanently scarred our horizons, torn up a chunk of our city, and killed a lot of people. People we cared about. Jessica was gone. The cracks that radiated out from that wound and the loss of some of our best Wardens and Warden staff had laid the groundwork for Goddess to take the prison.

They’d done that, and then they’d fucking insinuated themselves into the background of our cape scene, foreign agents acting as mercenaries.

I was left to wonder if Tori was among the scared and vulnerable that they’d positioned themselves to snap up. A cluster-mate of the Lady in Blue?

I began looking into other jobs they’d done, going back to Noontide’s record, then extrapolating to people she’d worked with. The patchy notes meant that even if Contender wasn’t listed as being on a job, I could find a note where Cretan was listed as being on that job, with Contender helping.

I was in the middle of a frustration-induced note that I was planning to send to the Wardens about cross-referencing when I heard Ashley using her power.

A sound like ripping, a sound like nails on chalkboards, and a sound like thunder, all rolled into one.

⊙

I flew to the living room, narrowly avoiding a collision on the way. Damsel was exiting her bedroom, and she ducked low as I adjusted by flying high.

The window to the outside was broken, and cold air blew into the living room. Kenzie was propped up, one hand on her stomach, and Ashley stood in the center of the room.

“What happened?”

Ashley was silent, looking around the room.

“Ashley!”

“Someone grabbed me.”

“Kenz?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I was sleeping and I got a huge wake-up call.”

The wind whistled as it blew in through the broken glass door.

“This wasn’t a dream thing?” I asked.

Ashley shook her head.

“How sure are you?”

“Seventy.”

“Leaving a thirty percent chance you put a hole in the window for no reason,” Damsel said. “Scared your little friend, and scared Kenzie too.”

I gave her a roll of my eyes.

“You got scared,” Damsel told Ashley. “You’ve gotten soft.”

“I’m a little scared,” Kenzie said.

“Shh, you’re fine. All of us are here watching over you,” Damsel replied. “We won’t let anything happen to you. Ashley’s imagined monsters won’t hurt you.”

“You’ve become less funny and more of a bully in the time I’ve been in the hospital,” Ashley observed.

She was still turning slowly, checking the room.

“What was it?” I asked.

“A man. He made noise, I woke up, and he grabbed me before I could react. I was prepared to use my power to throw us both into the wall, but I didn’t get a chance. He threw me from the chair, I used my power, and I didn’t connect.”

“Where did he go?”

“I didn’t see.”

I looked at Kenzie. She shook her head.

“Powers?” I asked.

“Possible,” Kenzie said, her eyes wide.

I drew my phone from my pocket. The contact screen had different icons by different names. Most had ‘Zzz’ beside them.

Rain was awake. Working late on Sveta’s arm- as much as was possible when his tinker power was in its wane period.

Me:
Trouble. We might need help.

There was a pause.

Rain:
That not good.

Me:
Can you make your way to us if we need backup?

Rain:
No.
No – I have no transpo and time is wrong. 13 minutes until my power knocks me out automatically. Then I sleep like dead.

I looked at the clock.

Rain:
What is trouble?

Me:
Ashley was grabbed, thrown from bed. She broke a window. No idea where the attacker is.

Rain:
Weirdness here too. K’s projector box is sweating.

“Rain says your projector box is sweating?”

“What?”

“Is that dangerous?”

“No. No, it just doesn’t make any sense.”

“Talk to our guy,” I told her, putting my phone on the coffee table and sliding it to her. “I’m going to check the building.”

Ashley stayed with Kenzie, while Damsel came with me.

Front hall clear. The door was locked.

The kitchen was fine.

Bathroom, first bedroom that included my office with the papers strewn everywhere, the second bedroom that belonged to Ashley, the storage room that still had Ashley’s furniture in it, from where I’d moved it in to make room for my things… all clear.

“Um,” Kenzie said, as Damsel and I returned from the hallway that led to the bedrooms. “So it’s not just that my projector box and computer are sitting in a giant puddle.”

“Spit it out,” Damsel said.

“The door was left ajar, so it almost froze. Rain was hogging space heaters, so it took him a while to notice.“

“Didn’t you waterproof it?” I asked, “because you knew Capricorn would be using his power around it?”

Kenzie nodded.

“And proofed it against cold weather?”

“Best as I could, but that has nothing to do with anything, except it means they probably survived the flooding.”

“Why? How? Did it malfunction?”

“It wouldn’t ever malfunction like that. That’s like saying your barbecue is broken, it keeps making salad.”

“Kenzie, please. Simple answers.”

“It’s the simplest answer! It’s wet because someone put the water there,” Kenzie said. “Then, according to Rain, this theoretical person left the door partially open on the way out.”

Why put water on a computer? Attempted sabotage? How did one put water on a computer without alerting the guy who was working late on his tinkering?

And if they were active there, and we had strangeness here…

“Shit,” I said. “My computer.”

I took flight, cutting a path through the hallways.

The door to my room and office was closed when I got there- and it had been open when I’d left it a minute ago. I pushed the door open, and a blast of cold air mingled with choking, blinding fumes to dash my senses. I couldn’t see, couldn’t smell, and couldn’t taste, and the only noise was the wind from the open window.

My files. Months and months of effort, of back-and-forth, five hour round trips, to scrounge up papers from the remains of our house. To dry papers, separate the mildewy and moldy from that which could be preserved, and typing out new versions of any pages that couldn’t be saved, even trying to keep the formatting intact.

The smell was gasoline. He was setting fire to everything that was mine, from clothes to computer to files. To the space that was mine. To Ashley’s apartment.

⊙

The others caught up to find me standing there in shock, covering my mouth and trying to avoid the kind of coughing that prompted more coughing.

What the hell?

“He took my feathers.”

I turned back to look at Kenzie.

“They’re important, and they’re not on the coffee table.”

Important. Priorities. I shook off the shock and took stock. The fumes filled my room to the point that it was hard to enter.

“Get to safety!” I called out to the others. Then I covered my mouth and flew through.

If he went after the projector computer, he’d go after my computer too. I had to rescue it. If he was after fire or torching any and all evidence, then I had to deny him that.

A contest of parahuman against parahuman broke down to a game of denial and control. Even if the power was strength. When my mom stepped onto the battlefield, her ability to succeed was dependent on getting to where she could hold her weapon near her opponent’s vitals, and her opponents couldn’t respond or react. That was the endstate.

For Crystal, it was about getting high, dropping forcefields in the right places or using them to protect herself and deny her opponents the ability to hurt her. So long as she held that high vantage point, any place that was in her field of vision was a place her enemies couldn’t go.

For my dad, a thrown grenade created a radius around it where enemies could do nothing but get away, if they were even afforded the time. Failing to do so meant they were concussed at the very least. He essentially maintained a broader circle around him where he could quickly deposit grenades, and the only way to fight him without facing an endless onslaught of light-grenades was to stay out of his range, which extended about far as a strong man could throw a head-sized rubber ball.

For me… especially now, it involved doing a lot of damage, and measuring out how much.

Little things could be fixed or handled later. I flew up, grabbed a bookcase, and used a pulse of my strength to haul it over. It crashed down with enough force to create gaps between floorboards where there hadn’t been any. There were books and papers on it, but the bookcase was metal, and with any luck it would interrupt the flow of fire across the accelerant. It might buy time, if the fire came from the hallway, or if the fire was traveling from here to the hallway.

I flew to the window, my mouth still covered.

No sign of anyone outside, no flame, no lighter being used or match being struck.

I flew to the bookcase. I’d be sealing myself inside, but if worst came to worst, flying through a wall wouldn’t be making the damage that much worse.

A hand seized me by the throat from behind. A sharp blow across the back of the head disabled the Wretch before it could even unfold, and I was pulled away from the bookcase.

He’d never even left the room.

⊙

I tumbled head over heels, disoriented. The rush of cold air mingled with the odor of the gasoline vapor. I found ‘down’ and flew straight to it. We crashed to the hard floorboards, gasoline soaking the papers that had been scattered across the floor.

Mine. Mine, and you ruined it!

In the wrestling match, each of us exchanged places, one of us on top, the other with back to ground. I was getting gasoline on me, but so was my shadowy attacker.

I saw the hand reach for a weapon and grabbed his wrist. A taser.

As quickly as it had been grabbed, it was dropped. The spark would be a mistake, given our current battlefield.

The computers- black screens.

Hopefully the breaker switch for this room was down or the connection was otherwise a failure. Because those computers being on meant any number of infinitesimally small ways to ignite the gas.

The computers. I had to remember my goals. Even though our attacker was in my hands, it was better to deny the control of the situation, as I’d done before.

I forced my way out of his grip, then barreled straight for the desktop tower that was my at-home computer. Cables were all still plugged in, keyboard, mouse, and monitor were plugged or even screwed in.

I tore at them, letting the easier ones fall free, forcing the remainder.

The aura was affecting my attacker. Where he might have swung a meaty fist at me before, he was holding on tight, as if trying to wait out heavy weather in a bad storm.

As I tried to fly away, he clung to me.

There were too many things to focus on, between the computer tower, the damage to property, the gasoline that could easily see the neighborhood go up in smoke, and my own well being.

I shoved my assailant off me, then flew closer to the ceiling, holding the computer tower with its stray wires dangling down. Winning the fight wasn’t important. Coming out ahead was.

My notes were everything.

Flying out of reach, near the ceiling, I had a view of the entire room.

⊙

Was it over? Had I won?

Well, won insofar as I’d denied him what he wanted.

I shut the window.

“Two bullets to the back of the head. The first will take out your forcefield. The other will end you. Drop the computer. Fly away.”

I turned around slowly.

A girl in a black leather bodysuit with a black leather jacket and a scarf around her lower face. The face I could see was covered in a gray mask, with eyes slanted to match the angle and slant of a woodland animal, each lens an opaque black.

“That’s not flying away,” Imp told me. “That’s standing your ground.”

She was holding up a lighter. I was very worried the vapor in the air would ignite.

“Put that out. We can talk,” I told her.

The lighter flicked closed. “I’m not here to talk.”

“We had a good working relationship a couple of days ago.”

“That was then,” she said. “Put the computer down. You’re going to tear out the hard drive.”

I drew in a deep breath.

“No games,” she said. “I’ve got to protect the kid I’m looking after. Your kid baited him into sharing secrets. In the course of sharing those secrets, he used mundane networks, no encryption. People have seen. Some of those people are mentioned in the pictures.”

“Sounds like a failure on your part.”

“It’s a problem for all of us, Glory Girl. But the kids are most important.”

My volume raised, “It’s a failure on your end, and our home has to burn to the ground? Fuck that.”

“The people who were alerted are going to pay more attention to you, G.G.. If they think you got nothing, if you avoid making specific searches about names, and if there’s a nice fire to assure them that all evidence stops here, the buck stops there.”

“It’s never as simple as that. This isn’t about protecting us. This is about protecting you.”

“Us, not me,” Imp said. “I’m armed, you’re not. Let go of the computer. Let it fall to the floor.”

“If it sparks-”

“Just do it,” she said.

I did. It clunked on landing. There wasn’t quite enough accelerant or anything on the floor here to allow for a splash.

“I’ve been really nice,” Imp said. “I could have humiliated you. Instead, I’m sticking to nonlethal weapons and careful use of fire.”

“Uh huh.”

“Stay where you are,” she said, keeping the pistol on me.

I could use the Wretch, I knew. It had reach, it was invisible, and if it got her, it would pull her in close and tear her to pieces.

Except I didn’t want to be that kind of person, and the computer by my feet was in the Wretch’s reach too. I could trust an invisible hand to probably seize her outstretched hand, but I couldn’t trust anything else.

The gender confusion from earlier was resolved as I glanced back and saw how one of her arms was altered. It was hairy, veins running down the back of the arm, and it was a little longer than her usual arm. The bodysuit’s fabric didn’t roll past the thickest part of the bicep, so she had rigged some other kind of detachable sleeve to pull over and up to the shoulder.

Her power hadn’t effectively covered it, so it regularly figured into my processing of the scenes, and it lingered in my head even as the rest of her threatened to disappear while my focus was entirely on her.

“I’m going to need you to move the bookcase, G.G.”

I locked eyes with her. She motioned with the gun, tilting her head so the lenses of her mask caught the light in a different way.

I used flight and a bit of strength to move the thing. It screeched loudly with the motion. I wasn’t even done moving it when Imp pushed the door open.

She immediately leaped back. I could hear Ashley’s power, almost entirely hidden by the raggedd sound of the bookcase moving over hardwood.

Ashley or Damsel was approaching, and I could hear the sound of it. The power shredded the door and the surrounding frame as she stalked forward. It was Damsel, and her claws contained a large sphere of destruction, annihilating everything in front of her, flickering and storming as power ran through it.

⊙

“Move a hair,” Imp whispered in Damsel’s ear, “And you’re going to get a bullet in your throat to match the one your sister got. Except yours will be the last body mod you ever get.”

I wheeled around. Imp had her gun to Damsel’s throat, her man-hand wrapped in a death-lock around Damsel’s front, pulling her off balance. Damsel had her hands out to her sides, no power active.

“Pick up the computer, Glory Girl.”

“It’s not my name anymore.”

“I don’t care. People change names too often. It’s better to have one good one that you stick to.”

“Imp was taken, you know,” I told her.

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t really have it.”

“I don’t care. Pick up the computer. Fly it to the ground outside the window. No games.”

I pushed out with my aura again, but I kept it subtle. Barely noticeable, like Rain’s often was. I began feeding it to Imp, with Damsel as an incidental target.

“Now.”

I picked up the computer, stepped over to the open window, and flew down. I planted the computer case on a stack of firewood.

“If you have any freaky porn that you’re embarrassed about, I promise I’ll only make a little bit of fun of you over it,” Imp said, from the window. “I’ll only share your browser history with a thousand people tops.”

She beckoned, and I flew over.

⊙

I was flying, and I had someone in my arms.

The nose of the gun jabbed into the soft flesh beneath my jaw, forcing my chin up.

I was still tempted to drop her. Instead, aware I was outputting a bit of my aura, I slowly ramped it up. If I could do the ‘boiling a frog’ trick…

“Down by the red cloth. I know it’s hard to see in the dark, but do your best.”

There was a red cloth tied to a post. I flew to it.

She hopped down the last ten or so feet to the snow. I chose that opportunity to push out harder with my aura.

“This was fun,” she said. “We should never ever do it again, understand? If someone slips you information that’s supposed to be ours, you hand it straight back over, or you’ll run into problems like your house burning down and you not being all the way sure why.”

“The feathers. You need to give them back.”

“No I do not. The feathers were a gift from a member of our team to a member of yours. They don’t need to hang out any longer. Normally I would encourage friendships, but I’ve read the horror stories, and it’ll just get messy when we’re all on opposite sides. Trust me, I did that back in Brockton Bay for a bit. Kid hero and me, bit of romance? Got awkward when it ended.”

“Really. Who?”

“Not kissing, not telling. Instead, I am…” she drew a flare gun out of her pocket, and with pistol in her right hand and flare gun in her left, kept the former trained on me and the latter aimed at the window.

⊙

“…Delivering my coup de grace,” she said, sounding tired. Her flare gun was in her right hand. “And I’ll do it on my first try, like a badass.”

“Damsel is up there. It’s not badass to kill people. That’s complete and utter failure for anyone civilized.”

“She’s not up there, not anymore,” Imp said, sounding even more tired. “She’s at the side, trying to flank me. Still.”

Imp indicated a corner of the building, about forty feet away.

I ramped up my aura.

“Stop,” she said.

So that was her limit for tolerance. I pushed harder and I set my jaw.

“If you think that’s going to mess up my aim, you should know I thrive under pressure.”

I heard Damsel using her power.

“Stupid,” Imp muttered.

I heard Ashley using her power. A little more oomph, more of an eruption of power than a jetting out. Unpredictable, uneven, but it gave her momentum.

Those forty feet of distance closed fast. Multiple blasts, and each one carried one of the two in a different direction.

They zig-zagged through the air, one pale shape and one dark one, and converged on Imp with the same timing, each set to collide with her in the same instant.

⊙

The two Ashleys landed, one of them clipping a branch from the overhanging foliage on her way down. They didn’t fly so much as they propelled.

“Are you okay?” Ashley asked me.

I nodded, my eyes searching the battlefield.

Kenzie was still vulnerable, but as I groped for what the threat was, I drew a blank.

Fuck.

“Put up with this if you can,” I said.

I increased the push on my aura until it was at its worst.

“That’s nothing,” Damsel said, even as her face’s microexpressions betrayed what was going on behind the surface.

“Let’s hope our attacker doesn’t think so,” I said.

I closed my eyes, focusing.

I couldn’t sense through my aura, but my aura made it hard to deal. Ashley and Damsel had talked about restlessness. I was creating a sort of restlessness in this moment, of a very different sort.

The snow muffled sound, and with this area of the city being where it was and with everything being after hours, I could hear noise. I started toward it.

⊙

We were moving in a direction, and with the weather being what it was, and me not having a coat, it was easier to keep moving. When I hit my limit, I would loop back.

Just to be sure, I cast a glance backward, and spotted the computer case.

Wouldn’t do to lose track of that and let our enemy run away with it.

The Ashleys were advancing on either side of me, and as we heard a pant, we started forward with more vigor.

⊙

“You’re being irritating,” Imp whispered in my ear.

I blinked.

The Ashleys had fanned out a bit more to either side… and Imp had me. Gun to my throat again.

“I’m trying to be nice. I’ve been avoiding murder.”

“Me too.”

She whispered, “You try anything, I double-tap you. And while we’re on the subject of doubling… we’re doubling back.”

From the woods behind Ashley’s place back toward the rows of buildings.

The Ashleys had noticed and were approaching cautiously. For every one pace Imp and I advanced, they advanced two.

She’d called herself a wolf earlier, and I could see it now. Pack hunting, stalking, dead serious, and very dangerous.

We found the computer once more. Imp drew her flare gun.

She stopped when Kenzie stepped out from behind a tree, wearing all winter clothing, including coat, hat, and earmuffs.

“You’re outnumbered.”

“Doesn’t matter when number one is super awesome,” Imp retorted. “And when she has a hostage.”

Kenzie drew a gun and pointed it. It looked like a toy weapon.

Imp shook her head slowly. “No. You don’t want to do that. Hostage. Use your common sense, kiddo.”

“I spent it all on figuring out my tinkering. I’ve just got a big empty loneliness inside me right now, with some mad scientist vibes.”

Kenzie smiled, and then she pulled the trigger of her Flash Gun, blinding everyone present that wasn’t her.

⊙⊙

Snuff held the door open for Tattletale. The kids climbed out too, but they weren’t part of the show of force- not directly. The Heartbroken kids ran around, and headed toward the mall that was at the far end of the parking lot, the older kids who were apparently in charge of them hurrying after.

Herding cats.

Tattletale remained, and so did the two members of Palanquin who were guarding her. Imp was with her, but Imp was still blind.

It had been a few hours. I’d had the presence of mind to fly away before more shots could land, so it had been about twenty-five minutes for me, where I hadn’t been able to see anything except hot white spots.

Rain and an unhappily awoken Tristan and Sveta were with me.

Not bringing backup just hadn’t been an option.

Chicken Little seemed to want to go with the Heartbroken, but instead Snuff positioned him at Tattletale’s side. He had a hangdog look, for someone with a hard full face mask.

A few of the Heartbroken lingered. Chicken Little’s age.

Parian and Foil lingered too. I gave Foil a nod, and she nodded back.

Kenzie was with me too, in a sense; she didn’t get out of the vehicle. She sat in the passenger seat, feet swung out over the side. She had her costume on.

“Let’s try this again,” Tattletale said.

“Are you sure? Because your approach of burning everything we cherish and love to ash to protect your info is a great plan.”

“Works for me,” Tattletale said.

I shook my head slowly.

“You gotta scrub it all. You didn’t get it fair and square, and some of that is stuff only I and my sources know, that the kids don’t pay much attention to. When people start blabbing about details that only I’m supposed to know, it makes my sources jittery. Some of them are in very dangerous places.”

“Sounds like you got sloppy,” Tristan said.

“Having a thinker hunting us down and forcing us to relocate regularly is what makes us sloppy, as it would for anyone. Now, you don’t want to be casualties of that sloppiness.”

“Work with us,” I said. “I don’t like you, you don’t like me- but I could help you figure something out.”

“You’re making too many enemies. Profitability-”

“Fuck profit,” I interrupted. “Fuck that.”

“And simple logic!” Tattletale raised her voice. She stabbed a pointed, painted fingernail in my direction. “If we spend too much time around you, your enemies become our enemies. If you have a lot of enemies, which you do, then that fucks us.”

“And if you refuse to cooperate with us and play ball, then we let your intel leak, including that information about sources, and your allies become your enemies.”

“You’re really willing to play hardball?” Tattletale asked.

“Give Kenzie her feathers back. Let the kids talk.”

“You realize what a monster she is, don’t you?”

I glanced back at Kenzie. “Nothing resembling a monster, and I’m an expert.”

“Because you spent two years as one. Of course.”

I looked back at Tristan, who held out my bag for me. I put it down, and as I reached for it, Snuff tensed. The Palanquin mercenary who looked like an ordinary person tensed as well.

“Files,” I said. I moved slowly as I drew the paperwork from the bag.

Tristan was the one who took the files and handed them out. Some for Parian, some for Foil, and some for Tattletale.

All of the information on the Order and the mercenaries I’d picked up. The PRT files.

“Your files are more up to date than mine,” Tattletale said, as she read. “You found a central network server?”

“I was led to one. Bargained.”

“The details on ‘Pug’?”

“Old collection of paper files. Which you guys doused in gasoline but didn’t set on fire.”

“Do you have more?”

“There’s a bit more in there. We’d have even more if we hadn’t been interrupted. Again, your teammate tried to set us on fire.”

“You’re building a narrative here,” Tattletale observed. “It all ties back to Teacher, I see.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “An awful lot of it. Fallen, the baiting of Goddess, the portal attacks.”

“I’ll provide you a tidbit of information then. If we’re going to deal-”

“If we’re going to deal, the feathers first. They’re important.”

“Fine. I’ll agree to that. But Chicken Little is still grounded. He can’t talk to his friends on the phone.”

“Some conversation.”

“I’ll cut twenty percent off his sentence of being grounded forever,” Tattletale said. She glanced back at Chicken Little, who ducked his head.

“Seriously,” I said. “At limited times per day. Or a limited number of messages,” I suggested.

I heard Kenzie groan behind me.

“That would be workable,” Chicken Little muttered, barely audible.

“Feathers and chat. Some meetings allowed if they’re both on good behavior. I’ve read her rap sheet, and I want to make sure he’s protected.”

I looked at Tristan, then at Rain.

They looked so exhausted I doubted they were processing.

I looked at Kenzie, who nodded.

“Sure.”

“We’ll negotiate. You want in bed with us, you’re in bed with us. Congratulations. We’ll share resources.”

I nodded.

“Fine,” Tattletale said. “Let it be known I’m immensely unhappy with this.”

“That’s allowed,” I said.

Behind Tattletale, I saw Chicken Little’s leg jiggle slightly. Surreptitiously, after he looked left, looked right, and checked that nobody on his team was looking, he turned his hand to one side, extending the smallest of thumbs-ups.

I looked back at Kenzie, who nodded.

Tattletale heaved out a sigh. She waved Imp forward.

Imp met Rain halfway. She handed over two feathers, and he took them back to hand to Kenzie.

Important to do this. She needed a friend.

And I supposed we needed the intel.

“You’re wrong, though,” Tattletale said.

“Wrong?”

“These mercenaries you’re looking at… they’re Cheit, your notes are right. The Order is a reference to a verse in their texts. The thousand-eyed beasts, front and back. Lion, that’s your drunk girl. The ox. Your bull guy. You’ve also got the beast with the face of a man, and the eagle. They’re tied up in the fours that run through the texts. Four apostles, four virtues, four whatevers.”

“I think I know the verse,” Rain said. “We have it too.”

“Good,” Tattletale said.

“Why is that important?” I asked.

“Because it means they’re hardcore Cheit, which you guessed. You were mostly on the right track and you might have stumbled on the right answer… if you weren’t keeping your eye out for the wrong destination.”

“The wrong destination?”

“Teacher,” Tattletale said. “He doesn’t have control of his group, so he’s not pulling their strings. He’s happy doing the prison thing, fucking with Goddess, tearing open holes in reality like the one across Brockton Bay and the ones in the heart of the city, but his people turned their attention to people caught in time loops, stasis, other fuckery like that… and Teacher drew the line there. These guys here?”

She tapped the paper before continuing, “The mercenaries from another world? They split from Teacher over it.”

“Are they after Jack?” I asked. “Worst case scenario.”

Tattletale shook her head. “They’re not that reckless. No. One of the names raised was closer to home than Jack. And while the shit with March is going on, the Undersiders can’t go home.”

Interlude – 11.a

“Ahahahaha,” she fake-laughed. “My sides! Oh wait.”

“You need new material, ‘Piece.”

“If I didn’t repeat myself once in a while, I wouldn’t get to hear your dulcet tones telling me how unfunny I am.”

“Ha ha.”

They hiked through the snow and underbrush so thick that it was oftentimes easier to walk on, instead of walking through.

Sidepiece reached out for D.J.’s arm, gripping the forearm, ducked under a branch, and then stepped down to lower ground.

Thirty feet away, he was using a stick to prop himself up. He only had the one hand, but he could lean heavily on the stick for added balance. He spared her a glance, withdrew his arm, rotated the forearm, and then flung it out instead of teleporting it.

The hand gripped a branch, and the forearm stuck out at a convenient height and angle for her to grip.

“Masks or no?” D.J. asked.

“Sure. Can’t hurt.”

“We’re going to be near people.”

“We’ll be lurking in the trees like creeps. We might as well wear masks.”

“Uh huh.”

She put on her mask, a new one that had been provided by Love Lost. It was in the shape of a skull, but limited to a cut that only covered the middle third of her face. The mask attached with glue and stayed stuck where it was. A mouth portion covered the portion of her face between lips and chin. The teeth of the mask were modified, as were the shapes of the eye sockets, but it worked.

Damsel had fucked up and bailed when it mattered, but she’d had other things on point. Sidepiece had a compact filled with black grease paint. With her thumbs, she applied it to upper and lower lids, with a little curl up at the edges, like exaggerated eyelashes. Nothing so delicate as Damsel had been, but Sidepiece didn’t consider herself delicate.

D.J. had a similar mask, but it was limited to the lower half of his face, broken into two parts, which he exaggerated by breaking his head into two parts, the upper half suspended over the lower. He had his own greasepaint, white to contrast with his black skin. He used his one hand to draw horizontal lines and highlight other gaps he created with his power.

She gave him a thumbs up, smiling.

The lights of civilization glowed beyond the trees, but the footing didn’t get any easier to manage. The divide between pain-in-the-taint nature and snow-covered concrete was a harsh one, with bushes and piled-up branches standing high enough that she could stand three feet above solid ground with parking lot two paces in front of her.

D.J.’s hand once again provided a hand-hold as she navigated the wood underfoot. She settled in, leaning against a tree, and tapped on his wrist with one finger. “Let go for me.”

He let go. She retained her grip on his arm, cradling his arm in hers.

“I want you to know you’re a proper fucking gentleman, ‘Joint. It warms a lady’s heart.”

She punctuated the statement by taking his hand and laying it down flat against her chest, where her coat didn’t cover her.

“That’s not your heart, ‘Piece.”

“Is so.”

“I’m not complaining,” he said. “Not about that. Keeps my hand warm.”

She laid her hand down over top of his, sandwiching it there, and then pulled her coat around, to cover both of their hands.

“I don’t want to tell you to stop, but can you keep it where I can see it?” he asked. “I might need it.”

“I’ve got us covered,” she said. She used her free hand to move her jacket, which was open, showing off her midsection. There was enough missing that she’d been able to position two holsters so they were strapped around her spine and each other, the guns angled so she could reach down and draw one. Even when her coat was pulled tight around her body, the matched pistols wouldn’t show.

“Come on,” he said.

“If there’s trouble, I’ll give you back your arm. Yeah?”

“Fine.”

Considering, she shifted the coat, buckling it at the top, still allowing for both of their arms and hands to be inside the coat, and left the lower half unbuckled, her midsection and the two pistols exposed and in reach.

“This shit is risky,” Disjoint said.

“Aw, buddy. Are you scared?”

“Aren’t you?” he retorted.

“Nah. I’m mostly worried we hiked this way for nothing. What are the odds that they see us in a car while driving here? If they even show up? It’s so fuggin’ stupid. If I’m scared of fucking anything I’m scared of being set up to do fucking stupid things for no fucking good reason.”

“Love hasn’t wronged us once. She’s smart.”

“Isn’t smarts,” Sidepiece said. “Smarts is what you learn from a book or teacher. Street smarts from a street teacher.”

“You don’t need to lecture me about street smarts.”

“I’m more street than you, anyway, I don’t think that’s what she’s about. She used to be law, before she was lawless. She’s got a good eye for things, and that’s where she shines, ‘Joint.”

“A good eye even when she’s not looking, which makes me worry.”

“She’s looking. She’s not telling us about all of it, but she’s looking. What we’re doing right now? It’s so she can look. We’re trustworthy eyes.”

“Uh huh. Trustworthy.”

“Mostly trustworthy. But a week ago I saw her talk to this skank, woman was making booze in her bathtub and definitely not using the bathtub for its usual purposes. She was hanging around Love’s turf, trying to pawn off her bathtub booze, scaring off anyone who had a sense of smell. Right?”

“Uh huh.”

“Most people would tell the skank queen of stank to take a hike. Love turned her into an asset. She still hangs around, she still pawns, but the product’s a bit better, the skank showers once a week now, and she reports in. Things she’s heard. Things she’s seen.”

“That’s usually the way it works.”

“Nuh uh. I’ve known people who ran a neighborhood, expected people to tell them if there was any news, but didn’t care otherwise. My family was like that. I’ve known people who ran their blocks like a business, with rules like how you take fifty percent of what you get and reinvest it back into the business. I’ve even known ones who paid people for information. But the goal was profit. Maximizing money in their pockets at the end of the day.”

“She’s different?”

“Her goal is information, ‘Joint. If you look for it, you’ll see it. But she’s willing to break even on the business side of things to buy unreliable information. She’d be willing to send us on a wild goose chase that could go nowhere, and that bothers me.”

Disjoint shook his head. “You’re off.”

“I think she would, and if she will, that means we’re lower in her eyes. There’s a class system here, like castes in India or whatever, and stank skank with the bathtub booze is bottom tier. I don’t want to be at the mothersucking stank skank level. If this is a shit job then it means she’s not all that and it means I’m not all that to her.”

“Not what I’m saying. I don’t agree about the information part.”

“Really? You’ve got to pay attention and look, D.J.. See what she’s fucking organizing.”

“I’m looking. Not always at the same things you are, but I’m looking. I see the people she’s putting in place, but I don’t think the point is information. The point is emotional. She knows that information gets her what she wants.”

Sidepiece considered, then shrugged. She wasn’t sure he could see her in the gloom, but his hand was in place to feel the shrug. She smiled at the thought, and spoke through the smile. “Revenge.”

“Hate and rage. Revenge means there’s something that can be done and once it’s done then that’s the end of it. I guarantee you, ‘Piece, she’s going to get what she wants and those emotions she’s feeling won’t change a bit.”

Sidepiece felt uncomfortable, hearing that and kind of agreeing with it. The playful smile dropped away, and she found herself staring out across the dark parking lot. There were only six cars in a lot that could have held a hundred, and it wasn’t because the mall was closed- the lights were on, signs lit, and store interiors illuminated.

“She’s still classy as shit,” she decided.

“She is.”

“And pure sex. If she gave me a clear signal, I’d go to town and I’m only a bit into women.”

He drew in a deep breath, then like a robot, recited the practiced line, “I decline to comment on the grounds that it would self-incriminate.”

“Baby,” she cooed. She stumbled along the heaped branches and rocks to get close enough, and he caught her, the hand at her front going rigid and providing some of the leverage to keep her from falling. She leaned hard into the hand and reached up to touch his face. “There’s no criminating here. No discrimination, no incrimination, no cremation. You’re safe from me.”

She felt his hand at her chest move reflexively at the line.

She’d never known a guy like Disjoint, and she had known a lot of guys. When she had been fourteen she’d dated sixteen year olds. They’d wanted one thing. That hadn’t changed when she’d been sixteen and dating eighteen year olds.

It might have continued as a pattern, except shit had gone down when she was eighteen, and she hadn’t come away in one piece. It had taken her a while to try again. When she had, she’d been twenty, offering herself to thirty year olds to see if they’d bite. Some bit.

She hadn’t realized what she’d been looking for until she stumbled into it. A guy her age, who’d been hurt when she’d been hurt. She could offer him the sort of thing that other guys wanted, and he liked it, but it wasn’t why he stuck by her.

No. It was fucked up, but he stuck by her because he liked it when she was nice to him. It revved his engines and it made him happy in a day to day way.

She wasn’t good at being nice.

“Headlights.”

She saw. Across the parking lot, vehicles were convening.

“I brought binoculars if you want ’em,” D.J. said.

“I trust you.”

D.J. brought his hand to his face, two fingers at each eye. He pulled his hand away, and his eyes were each between two fingers. His own eye sockets were black pits, rimmed with red flesh and the horizontal ‘blindfold’ of white grease paint that he’d applied.

He stuck that hand out in the direction of the headlights. The eyes fritzed like a bad video tape, then disappeared.

“Breakthrough,” he said. “Some of them. No Damsel. Nobody else. I’m going to have to put my ears over there to catch what they’re saying.”

“I’ve got you.”

She drew closer to him, supporting him with her body. He reached up to remove his ears, which was a little more involved than simply removing the exterior portion, then he cast them out as he had the eyeballs.

When he did this, he was blind and deaf, but he also lacked balance. Sending eyes or ears one at a time while keeping one close by only served to further disorient him, and the eyeballs didn’t come with eyelids, so he couldn’t close his eyes to filter what he was seeing.

This was the dangerous part. If the ‘heroes’ realized they were being watched, they could retaliate. If it came to that, D.J. would have to bring back his eyes and ears, and they would have to scram. A fighting retreat, against people who could fly, do the retractable doll-limb thing, and that shit with the silver blades that had killed Snag from Love’s cluster.

She’d told herself a long time ago she would face danger with a smile. As her heart beat faster, she told herself it was excitement. This shit was neat.

She rose up on her tiptoes and kissed his mouth.

He broke the kiss, muttering, “Keep an eye out.”

“I will,” she said, before tracing the letters on his stomach, spelling out what she was saying.

There were more headlights.

Another car, beat from bumper to bumper. It parked in an empty spot at the edge of the trees, as far away from the mall’s door as was possible. It put the driver fifty or so feet away from Sidepiece and Disjoint.

An employee of the mall.

Sidepiece drew D.J. in for another kiss.

“You’re distract-” he started. Her finger on his lips silenced him.

She maintained the kiss while the person walked by, apparently choosing a course where the snow and ice wasn’t as pronounced, which meant walking beneath the overhanging branches of trees, and walking within ten feet of the pair.

Sidepiece watched with one eye, hoping that if the person did see, they’d think it was two people having a ‘snog’, as she’d heard characters in a tv show say. The masks were a drawback when it came to camouflage, but she could hide some of that with her hand up by D.J.’s face.

“Hello!?” the person called out.

She sighed into D.J.’s face as she broke the kiss.

She looked at the employee, someone wearing an orange shirt with a big blue button featuring a cartoon computer chip with eyes, mouth, arms and legs. She’d seen it on television.

D.J., too, was looking in the employee’s direction. An androgyne figure, short-haired and cute despite having lines around the eyes suggesting they were closer to thirty than twenty.

And very wide-eyed, seeing a man without eyes and with cavities instead of ears standing at the wood’s edge.

Sidepiece turned, giving the employee a view of her midsection. She started to draw her gun, and the person bolted.

She reached past the gun and up into her ribs, digging for the liver and digging into the liver. Pointed fingernails helped her to sever the connective tissue, and to get her fingernails in and around just enough that she could get a grip on it. When she tore it out, she felt the damage to nearby parts that were still connected by tatters and webbings of tissue.

A second later, the wounds were puckering up, the liver drawing into itself to close up the damage, hardening around where the damage was worst.

With a practiced throwing motion, she cast the gallbladder out and over the employee’s head.

It exploded outward without much noise, but with a visible puff of smoke and a spray of fluid, with a volume far exceeding what the tiny organ should have held within it spreading out over pavement and ice.

That D.J. didn’t seem to notice suggested it was quiet enough that Breakthrough hadn’t heard.

The person stopped running before she ran into the caustic acid. They looked back to see what was happening, and Sidepiece aimed a pistol at them.

“Listen carefully,” Sidepiece said. “That acid’s nothing compared to what I can do to you if I hurl something bigger at you. And I will. I’ll throw something at you that will make you a greasy smear. The only way you live is if you listen. Nod if you understand.”

The person nodded.

“Take your phone out, drop it.”

The electronics employee did as instructed, pulling the phone from an inner coat pocket. The phone bounced instead of breaking. A protective case.

“Kick it into the acid there.”

“Please.”

“Now.”

The person kicked, but the traction of the case was enough that it barely traveled.

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” Sidepiece warned.

“I tried- I’ll…”

It took two more kicks to get it into the puddle.

“You’re going to reach into your car and move very slowly. You’re going to drop the keys. You can kick them under the car. I’m being real fucking nice, because the alternative is to destroy your keys and leave you without your car.”

The person obeyed.

“You’re going to sit. All lights and engine off. You put your hands on the dash, and you don’t move until we give the say-so.”

Sidepiece made sure the employee obeyed.

“If you have to piss, piss yourself. You don’t move a muscle.”

It was another few minutes and another six cars -the new ones parking much closer to the mall- before any cars joined the cluster that were parked in the corner of the lot.

“It’s the Undersiders,” D.J. reported. “Bunch of kids ran off. Going shopping I guess. Adults stayed to talk.”

“Figured,” Sidepiece murmured.

“It’s a meeting about fire… the Undersiders set a fire to burn intel. Hm.”

Sidepiece waited.

“Tattletale wants to protect sources. Antares is threatening to leak intel.”

“Sounds like Love’s thing,” Sidepiece murmured.

“They’re sharing info. Love Lost is going to love this.”

⊙

Love Lost screamed. The scream hit Nailbiter and several members of the Patrol. That it hit Nailbiter didn’t really matter. Nails was filled with piss, vinegar, and rabies, and having the dial set to ten on ‘rage’ didn’t change a lot. It made her more intense, aggressive, and focused, and far less likely to choose any option that wasn’t ‘fight more’. It did the same to her enemies, but they weren’t going to win that fucking fight.

When they’d reported the meeting over, Sidepiece had messaged Love Lost. The response had been an address. This intersection.

No elaboration. If she’d known it would be a fight like this, she would have hurried.

Sidepiece adjusted her coat, pulling it open so the buckles came undone. She ran toward the thickest part of the fighting, raising her voice to a harsh pitch, “Give me the word!”

“Get ’em!” Nailbiter shouted.

“That’s two words!”

Nailbiter’s fingers elongated, narrowing into rigid, sharp lengths, which scuffed the road near Sidepiece’s feet. Sidepiece cackled.

A patrol soldier whipped around, gun raised, and kept spinning, as Disjoint’s hand gripped him and shoved him. A judo move at long range. The guy stumbled into another soldier’s way, nearly getting shot.

Sidepiece reached into her coat and reached for another organ, her fingers sliding on slick tissue and the fluids that periodically dripped down from the upper half of her torso to the bottom. Her kidney- not her right kidney. That one was still growing back. Her left kidney was ripe, and the faint, sharp pains told her it was loaded.

The sharp pains became something pronounced as she gripped the kidney and set to tearing it away. There was a sound like wet cardboard ripping, audible snapping as the congealed and hardened parts around old injuries broke away. Her right knee trembled with the effort and the pain, to the point she almost fell to the street, but then the last attachments broke, and she had her kidney in hand.

She even gave it a brief shake for good measure, feeling the reactions stirring within, like the fluids within the kidney were coming to a boil, the bubbles pushing out through the solid matter.

“Run!” someone gave the order. A captain, who twisted around and aimed to open fire with their assault rifle. Disjoint fucked with their aim.

They were already running, but they were running on a battlefield obstructed by their rage-filled allies, with parked vehicles here and there, and all of the other normal obstacles of a sidewalk, like mailboxes, trash cans, and trees. Those things funneled them.

It was a question of waiting until they were caught, then aiming for the concentrated mass, favoring the side with captain that had just tried to shoot her. Aiming wasn’t a guarantee, but her throwing arm was well practiced.

She lobbed it, and her timing was perfect, because it went off while over the heads of the crowd. On any ordinary day, the kidneys produced a chemical blast, concussive, congealed, and activated- like napalm with something more noxious instead of fire.

That was on an ordinary day. Her kidneys were packed with kidney stones, which would have better been described as sea urchins that chose to dwell in the kidneys.

Her power translated that quality into a kind of aggressive shrapnel. Ten people were cut down. Three of them hadn’t even been in the radius of the initial detonation.

Even on an ordinary day, most of her organs had another effect. The blood they shed and the bits of flesh they carved out were activated, much like her kidney had been.

A smattering of smaller explosions followed the first detonation. Where blood had sprayed, it ignited, burning like oil that had been touched with a lighter, brief but hot enough to hurt.

“You assholes are a mess!” she cried out.

“No,” Disjoint said. “You’re hurting us more than them if you say it.”

“You need to get organ-ized!”

Muscle came away in strips. Pulling at the stomach muscle near the spine made her thigh tremble. She flicked the strip out in the direction of a pair of people who were finding their feet. The explosion was smaller, localized, and put them down. Muscle was clean- too concussive to tear away chunks and cause a chain reaction.

Nailbiter swatted at the stragglers, sending them sprawling. Sidepiece quickly pulled away another segment of muscle, nearly losing her footing as nerves got to her, and then flung it out, as best as she could. Straight into the mass.

“Can’t stomach what I’m dishing out?” she asked.

“Stop, please, mercy,” Disjoint cried out, from the distant rear of the fracas.

She smirked.

Three more patrol soldiers remained. They looked like leadership, and two of them had riot shields. Nailbiter was playing with her food now that the rage had subsided. A prod here, a poke, trying to get over, under, and force a continual retreat that put the patrol leaders further from their fallen friends.

Nail-fingers and feet that had been sharpened down into singular points stabbed the ground near the fallen, but by careful positioning or sheer luck, Nailbiter didn’t stab anyone who was lying on icy pavement.

She tugged out a knob of fat, from between organ structures. Fat burned like blood did.

With index finger and thumb, and a bit of the enhanced strength that her hands and forearms had, to help with the tearing, and throwing, Sidepiece flicked the glob of fat.

The fat made a sharp sound and splatted out into a thin slime, which promptly ignited. One plexiglass riot shield was on fire now.

She kept one eye out for D.J.’s hands. She counted both wrestling with the commander’s own hand and foot, a targeted attack that was aimed at the one person without the riot shield. It served to separate him from the others, which exposed him to Nailbiter.

But Disjoint was occupied, which meant he couldn’t do much as one of the men with the riot shields raised his rifle, aiming it around the shield. Sidepiece had to run for it, hurling herself to the ground. There wasn’t much cover there, she was a sitting duck, and she knew she made a better target than some, given her proportions.

But she was near some of the wounded patrol officers, and the man with the rifle wasn’t willing to risk hitting them.

She hadn’t even seen Love Lost start moving, but she saw the middle and end of the movement- a shape along the wall, hair and dress flapping, claws sparking as they hit stone and brick, and then the plunging descent, feet planted squarely on the captain’s shoulders, driving him to the ground.

She leaped forward from there, and her claws scraped the plexiglass riot shields as she slipped between them.

Without turning around, she reached back to scratch both men. Ragged cuts- one at the side of the leg, the other from thigh to armpit.

Love Lost panted as she turned around, surveying the fallen, her mask dangling with one side attached at the right side of her jaw, the other unclasped. The pants weren’t normal ones, either- there was a note of something in them.

Almost a whimper, or the pained intake of breath between screams, except the screams had been a minute or two ago, not a second ago.

With the attachment of the mask, she composed herself in posture, straightening to her full height. Her claws ran through hair, a stroke of the back of the hand smoothed out the dress.

The look in her eyes took longer. Wild, almost crazed.

Then calmer. A perpetual glare.

“Would it make your evening better to know we got some really fucking good intel?” Sidepiece asked.

Love Lost pointed a claw at one of the guns that lay on the ground. She held up a finger.

“That first. Got it.”

Sidepiece bent down to grab some of the guns off of the men. Seeing Nailbiter extend an index finger, threading through multiple rifles by the trigger guards, Sidepiece picked up an assault rifle and flung it into the air.

Nailbiter stabbed out with two fingers. She caught the gun between them, like she was holding it with chopsticks.

“Don’t be a pain,” Nailbiter said.

Sidepiece winked.

Nailbiter’s index shortened until it could pass through the trigger guard, and then the two elongated ‘chopstick’ fingers withdrew.

“We should call for an ambulance,” D.J. said. “I’m not sure if you all killed any.”

Love Lost made a motion with one hand, claws glinting where they were mounted on her fingers.

“Calling,” D.J. reported, hesitating as he turned to the others, “what do you think? Three ambulances?”

“More than that,” Sidepiece replied. “What happened?”

“They came after us. We came back at them harder,” Nailbiter said.

“Good thing D.J. and I showed up when we did,” Sidepiece said.

Nailbiter gave her a look.

It wasn’t that Nailbiter disliked her or she disliked Nailbiter, but Nailbiter was a veteran. Almost a decade under her belt, being a villain. That shit hardened a woman. Nailbiter wasn’t one to relax, play around or laugh at jokes until she’d had drinks.

By contrast, D.J. wasn’t hardened enough. He was here because she was here and if pushed he sometimes collapsed. He was figuring her out and she was figuring him out. They made a good team, because she could deal with numbers and he could trip up any one enemy. But even this shit with gunfire, or shit like the Fallen, it wasn’t as big as some of the shit they could end up getting stuck in. She wasn’t absolutely sure he was fucked enough in the head to have her back when it counted.

She missed Damsel. Damsel had been willing to let the facade crack to fucking smile now and then. Sidepiece had started to think it was all an act, part of the undercover op, but during the interrogation in the shed, she’d still seen those small smiles.

Shit like that fueled Sidepiece. It was rare she could meet someone and feel like she could take on the world with them at her side.

She kept picking up guns.

She wasn’t done with Damsel, she decided. If the princess wanted to act proper and heroic, then Sidepiece would find a way to drag her into the muck. There was a kind of romance in the mental picture of the two of them too beat up to move, bloody and dirty, and the facades cracking. Emotion pouring out.

There was a romance to the scene, but a purely platonic intent, she decided. Damsel’s ass was far too skinny for Sidepiece’s tastes.

Speaking of. They had a report to make.

“How did you know that Tattletale wouldn’t pick up on us?” Sidepiece asked.

Love Lost looked over one shoulder, peering through red hair at Sidepiece. The hair had been dyed at one point, when Love Lost had been doing covert missions and had sought something more subtle, and it still lacked its brighter tones as some of the dye was still there. Blood red, if anything.

Love Lost’s claw moved, tapping out something in the air. She slashed it to one side, as if it was a kind of punctuation.

Sidepiece’s phone blared with the refrain from an angst pop song as the message came in, “Follow you, follow you, into the rage…”

Other phones went off simultaneously, throughout the group.

Love Lost (is the muthafuckin baws):
SURVEILLANCE. HER HEAD IS BOWED AND POSTURE STOOPED IF HER POWER IS EXHAUSTED

“Thinker headaches,” Nailbiter said.

Love Lost nodded, slightly shrugging one shoulder, still walking at the head of the pack, still without looking back.

“What’s that?” Sidepiece asked.

“If a person with brainy powers uses her powers too much…” Nailbiter hissed the words, lisping the ‘s’s. “Suffers for it. Saw it in the Birdcage. Thinkers can’t get the privacy to hide when they’re hurting, and can’t not use their powers, when they need to hold their own.”

“A weak point,” D.J. said.

Love Lost’s claw moved.

“Follow you, follow you, into the rage…” The phones rang.

Love Lost (is the muthafuckin baws):
SHE WILL FAKE IT TO FEINT WHEN SHE REALIZES WE KNOW
FOR NOW WE TIME OUR MOVES

“We weren’t in that much danger, then, surveilling?”

Love Lost made a so-so gesture. Her claws tapped at the air, poking at an invisible keyboard.

“Follow you, follow you, into the rage…” the phone’s ring tone sounded.

“Put that on vibrate,” Disjoint said.

Sidepiece snorted.

Love Lost (is the muthafuckin baws):
CAMERA TINKER A DANGER
WHAT IS NEW INTEL?

“Camera tinker wasn’t moving around much, or using much tech,” Sidepiece said.

Disjoint elaborated, “Half of what they were talking about was smoothing things over between some of the kids. Either fighting or getting along too well. Chicken Little and Lookout.”

“Look out, the sky is falling,” Sidepiece said.

Love Lost’s expression had changed. It always did when kids were involved. She even changed her attitude when it came to Colt.

“They talked about where the major players are, and who’s involved. They have a good guess about the attacks that took the Navigators and some of the Advance Globs out, thanks to Tattletale.”

Love Lost nodded, very cavalier about that fact.

“Matter of time, huh?” Sidepiece asked.

Love Lost nodded again.

Love Lost didn’t like using the phones to communicate, which meant that half the time she was leaving things up for others to infer or guess. If someone could fill in the blanks, then Love Lost allowed it. Screw up too many times or put the wrong words in her mouth, and that someone would get sent to do a shit errand and kept out of the way.

The inner circle mostly had it figured out, now. Disjoint stayed quiet rather than guess. Nailbiter only guessed in the middle of a fight. She worked well with Love Lost in an all-out fight.

“They’ve been working out who’s who. Shin’s quiet, Teacher overreached and some of his mercs from Chiet are rebelling, doing their own thing. Apparently, Bitter Pill isn’t leading the thinkers from the Point,” Disjoint said.

Love Lost typed in the air.

“Follow you, follow you, into the rage…”

Nailbiter’s fingers extended into points, perilously close to Sidepiece’s throat.

The scene remained utterly still for a few seconds.

The phone started up its ringtone again. “Follow you, Foll-“

The points of Nailbiter’s fingers touched skin. Sidepiece set her phone to vibrate.

“Yeah,” Disjoint said, looking at his phone. “That’s their best guess. Pill is the face, or a partner in leadership.”

Sidepiece looked at the phone to see what the guess was.

Love Lost (is the muthafuckin baws):
BLUESTOCKING

Love Lost nodded. She drew to a stop, then looked around.

“Trouble?” Disjoint asked.

“No, not trouble,” Nailbiter said.

Love Lost pressed a claw to the fanged mouth that was molded to her lower face, covering nose, mouth, and cheeks. A single finger to mime ‘silence’. Her other claw went up in a ‘stop’ position.

The group was quiet and still as Love Lost extended a claw point skyward. Love Lost tilted her head.

The hand came down, pointing, then motioned again, quick.

Hurry, was the intent.

The group hurried. Sidepiece’s legs hurt from all the walking, especially the uneven walking through the forest, their shortcut to avoid being seen as they made their way to their vantage point at the edge of the mall parking lot.

“New security measures. Extending her sensory ranges, and feeling out for tech. It takes a minute,” Nailbiter hissed.

They entered the hideout. Love Lost activated the door’s locks, both mechanical and mundane.

“Breakthrough knows you won’t deal with them, so they asked the Undersiders to. Undersiders know March is prepared for them, so they’re asking Breakthrough to alleviate the pressure.”

Love Lost typed at the air. Sidepiece couldn’t look at her phone, as she was busy taking off her winter clothes.

Love Lost (is the muthafuckin baws):
WHAT ARE THE UNDERSIDERS GOING TO SAY TO ME?

“Nothing useful, since we know what they’re doing and who they’re working with,” Sidepiece quipped.

Love Lost shrugged slightly, her head moving in acknowledgement of that simple truth. Even distant friends of the Fallen kid were off limits for alliances.

“They’re supposed to tell you that Cradle is dangerous, he wants to kill you and take your power, and-”

Love Lost moved her hand.

“I know. They said it before. They’ll be more insistent, try deals. They said the worst case scenario is that Cradle allies with March and then takes you out of commission. Second worst case scenario is you ally with March, Tattletale seemed pretty sure you wouldn’t go after Cradle.”

Love Lost stepped into the living room, claws clicking against the floor- three at the toes, one stabbing down from the heel, her feet encased in thermal stockings that extended up her legs. The moisture didn’t seem to stick to any of it, wicking off immediately.

Colt was lying on the couch, and sprung to her feet as Love Lost entered. Love Lost gently pushed her back into her seat.

A knife-finger pointed at Colt, a warning.

“Sorry,” Colt said. “I tried.”

Disjoint continued, “There was other stuff, Cheit’s mercenaries and some follow-up to the portal or something that they’re planning, but they didn’t talk much about that. Mostly their focus was on teaming up and trading enemies. Making sure March doesn’t get in contact with any member of your cluster, and making sure Cradle-”

“-Doesn’t steal the powers of another member of the cluster,” was the response.

Cradle stepped out of the kitchen.

Sidepiece met Disjoint’s eyes. Her hand moved closer to her midsection. Shit. Shitty shit shit shit.

“They don’t understand the most basic and fundamental truth when it comes to the Mall Stampede Cluster,” Cradle said.

Love Lost visibly winced at the mention of the mall.

“Sorry, L.L. But the fact is, if we were going to kill any member of the cluster, it’s going to be the kid,” Cradle said. “You don’t need to worry.”

Love Lost nodded.

Cradle, tousle-haired, wearing tinted goggles and a mask, looked as much like a kid as anyone, Sidepiece observed.

But as irreverent as she tried to be in the face of an unjust, grisly world, she could read the tension in the air. She could shut up when absolutely necessary.

Her stomach was doing flip-flops. Her pancreas was at that stage in its growth where each tiny growth made it twitch and flip up, then flop down, slapping lightly against the raw meat around it.

“I’m ninety percent done our second version,” Cradle told Love Lost. “I got peckish, I decided to use the kitchen. I told your henchman there to sit on the couch and let me tinker together some snacks. So take that claw away from her throat.”

Love Lost withdrew the claw. Her eyes narrowed. She started to type.

“Ninety percent because I want another scan,” Cradle said. “You gave me one of… his, I think it was.”

He was pointing at Disjoint.

Love Lost nodded.

“I’ll get one of my own. The data you collect is slightly different from what I get. Differences in focus.”

Love Lost looked at Disjoint.

“So long as it doesn’t hurt me any,” Disjoint said.

“It won’t,” Cradle said. His smile was thin, hollow.

Are we pretending that we weren’t just talking about Cradle hurting Love Lost? He says he won’t and we believe him? Sidepiece wondered.

“They suspect you, I don’t know if you heard that part,” Disjoint said. “Hurting the Navigators.”

“Okay,” Cradle said. “All the more reason to get version two up and running. And a bit more manpower.”

Love Lost walked over to the coffee table. Rather than pick up the files there, she speared them with claws, so each file was on a different claw-point.

She planted them on the counter-island that sat in the middle of the kitchen, where Cradle could easily see.

“Kitchen Sink and Hookline. It’s a start. Are they forgiven?”

“They can prove themselves worthy of rejoining us,” Nailbiter said.

“Ah.”

“Love Lost and I talked about it before,” Nailbiter clarified.

“It’s a start,” Cradle said. “The mercenaries we hired before-”

“Money’s tied up,” Nailbiter said.

“I’ll put some forward,” Cradle said. “It always bugged me in the cartoons, when the villains had a plan that almost worked, and when the next Saturday morning rolled around, they tried something completely new, instead of refining the old idea.”

“Are you a villain, then?” Colt asked, from the couch.

“I’m a planner. We’ll hire the same people who did the job last time, and we’ll use version two of the weapon.”

Love Lost started typing in the air, claws stabbing at an invisible keyboard.

Cradle seemed to know what was being typed before any phones rang, because he added Love Lost’s line, “And if they don’t want us getting in contact with March… I think that’s exactly what we need to do.”

Love Lost nodded, claws touching her hair to brush it aside as she stood straighter.

Blinding – 11.4

The schism remained. The Shepherds, Advance Guard, Wayfarers and Kings were absent. The room would have felt crowded if everyone was present and it felt too empty with the more aggressive heroes gone.

I wondered if there was ever a group size that would feel natural.

We’d wanted to gather information. We’d asked for six hours, admittedly, and it was well past that deadline, but information was why we were here.

‘Here’ was a room in a library where the lights were off because the grid had failed and power was being conserved, and the morning light from outside was obscured by snow that had piled up against the window, with frost cluttering every inch snow didn’t touch. The light that came through was diffuse and mottled, dimmed and slightly blue, because the glass was solar glass that reflected the yellow and gold hues.

Relay, Cinereal, Weld, Aleph Wolf from the Lone Wolf Pack, Lark from Auzure, and Caryatid from the Malfunctions were all gathered around the room. I had Precipice at my right, and Foil to my left.

Mayor Jeanne Wynn was also present. Her presence in the room felt like a shadow when the room was already dark. The yellow of her shirt under her suit jacket was more striking than some of the costumes present.

Foil’s hand rested on the table, fingers at the file folder with pictures. My pictures. The gasoline had saturated my office to the point that even the copies of my original files had a lingering smell to them.

She turned the file so people could see. A distant image of Cradle, taken by way of flying camera, saved to a computer. I’d printed it out when trials had been happening.

“Tattletale says she’s seventy percent confident that the attacks on the Navigators were Cradle, who slipped custody when the prison was emptied,” Foil said. “He had an unknown hireling use the device by proxy, and that hireling worked alongside Lionwing and two Case Fifty-threes.”

“Those two aren’t ex-Irregulars,” Weld said. “But they’re tied into the community. People have seen them. I’ve put out some feelers, but I can’t promise results.”

“Seventy percent certainty that Cradle is responsible isn’t a hundred percent,” Cinereal said.

“It isn’t,” Foil admitted.

“Can we trust what she’s saying?” Relay asked.

“Are you asking if we can trust Foil or are you asking if we can trust Tattletale?” Weld asked.

“I was asking about Foil, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on both,” Relay said.

Relay was standing in for Foresight, after Brio had caught a bullet and while Countenance was leading elsewhere. Brio hadn’t gotten back up. I was a little worried that Relay was closer to the leadership, which was about twenty-five percent personal bias, and twenty-five percent that he knew I had my doubts. The rest was a blurrier mixture of my not knowing him and my instinct that Relay was driven more by emotion than logic.

If Relay had made the call when the hero teams had split off into two groups, would they have stayed?

I could see Relay’s eyes move, studying me briefly before looking back to Weld. Foil and Tattletale – where did we stand, and what answer could we give that didn’t cross Relay’s crude mind reading?

“I was her teammate for a short while,” I said. “I like her.”

The nicest, only truly honest thing I could say. I had reservations and questions about someone who had heel-turned like she had.

Foil nodded, dropping her eyes, as if to acknowledge what I was thinking. “Thank you.”

“Antares and Foil were on my team when I was first leading the Wards in Brockton Bay. I hold Foil in high esteem,” Weld said.

“Thank you,” Foil said, stoic, standing up straight, no longer with a hand at the files.

“Can I ask you why you’re here, Foil?” Relay asked, head tilted so he was looking up at Foil more than at her, his tone the sort that was best suited for quietly asking someone if they had a gun and if they planned to use it.

“The Undersiders felt that if we were sharing information, we should have a representative here.”

“That’s not what I’m asking,” Relay said.

Foil frowned. Her mask covered most of her face, but the shift in her lips was unmistakable.

“He wants a read on you,” I said.

Relay met my eyes without moving his head, then looked back to Foil.

“I want to help,” Foil said.

“You believe Tattletale’s information is good?”

“Yes,” Foil said.

“But you have doubts… not about the information?” Relay asked. “About your team.”

“If I was a hundred percent certain, I think that would be more concerning,” Foil said.

“If you were a hundred percent clear you were on the right side, you’d be a Fallen-” Relay retorted.

Precipice didn’t move a muscle at that, but Relay looked at him all the same.

“-But if your head is full of noise and contradiction when it comes to your team, that’s almost as bad,” Relay finished.

“I can do the most good where I am, with the Undersiders,” Foil said.

Relay, head still unmoving, looked down at his hand, where it rested on the table.

“Do we move forward on seventy percent confidence?” Relay asked, without looking up.

“Cradle is a danger and he’s done nothing to earn trust,” Cinereal said.

“He’s done nothing wrong that we can say for certain either,” Relay pointed out.

“He likes to bide his time,” Precipice said. “But there have been hints that he’s doing business. I believe it.”

“You’re biased,” Relay said.

“I definitely am,” Precipice replied.

Relay nodded at that, as if it was entirely okay now that the bias was out in front of things.

“He’s cold and focused right now. I won’t get into how I know, but I have a sense of him, like he probably has a sense of me and how I’m doing. He’s dangerous. I could see a world where he’s doing this. Using tech to torture people like that.”

I cleared my throat. I had all eyes on me.

“The activities of Cradle seem to be only half of it,” I said. “It’s a half I’d like to ask you all to please let us tackle.”

“Us being who?” Relay asked.

“What’s the other half?” Weld asked, before I had a chance to answer.

I drew in a deep breath. “The Undersiders and Breakthrough will tackle the situation with Cradle. I think we have some sense of his motivations. Love Lost too. We plan to keep them separated if we can. In exchange, we’re helping the Undersiders with a related problem. But the mercenaries are up to something else and we’d like to ask you to focus some attention on that.”

Cinereal still had that dangerous, intimidating thing going. She leaned back, looking very casual and very ominous, and she asked, “How bad is this else?”

“We don’t know,” Foil said. “But Tattletale is pretty certain that their focus is on the time stasis effects in Earth Bet’s Brockton Bay.”

“Tameka Schooley. Lee Pemberton. Tom Kahn. Bakuda’s test run and one use when she was terrorizing the city,” Jeanne Wynne spoke up for the first time. “Alabaster, Jotun, and Dauntless… Leviathan hurled them into a time stop effect when defenders tried to use one of Bakuda’s leftover tinker weapons to stop him. Wanda Fowler, Sarah and Patty Martin. Henry Holmes. They tried to break into what locals termed ‘The Scar’, an ongoing cataclysm from a bombing run that had been made using more of Bakuda’s leftover technology. They entered because someone had told them that The Scar had veins of diamond, gold, and other rare materials inside it, where matter had transmuted to different forms.”

“Did it?” Aleph Wolf asked. “That someone was right?”

“Yes. Rumors got out while barriers to contain the effect were being put up. The workers saw things. Unfortunately, that area also had a lot of active dangers that hadn’t gone off, settled, or stopped. The four risk-takers tripped an inactive weapon and were trapped by a fourth time-stop effect.”

“Maybe they’re still after that stuff,” Aleph Wolf said. “Times are tight. A big chunk of precious metals could go to some other dimension and pay for… a lot of things. Get a whole city or the city through the winter.”

The Lone Wolf pack was a band of heroes that were taking an especially wild west approach, patrolling the periphery of the city and the surrounding worlds. They answered problems where problems came up, they teamed up when absolutely essential, which was mainly if there was a bounty to share, but they were otherwise independent.

Aleph Wolf was exemplifying the ‘stick to the basics’ mentality, as well as the group’s ‘heroic mercenary’ streak.

“I think it’s more worrying than a cash grab,” I said. “Teacher and his mercenaries parted ways. If it was a question of cash in a really dangerous area… Teacher would put his thinkers and tinkers to solving the problem, he’d succeed, and he’d be in good shape. I can’t see why he’d back off.”

“The Wardens were looking into those effects, as well as the ongoing Gray Boy loops,” Jeanne said. “They researched it and decided no. The same people who petitioned the Wardens then petitioned the government. It crossed my desk, but I already had some faint knowledge of what it was about. I considered, researched, and came to the decision that yes, I know a way to undo the effect. No, I won’t actually do it.”

Using her power, I thought. She could free people from perpetual torment and she says no.

“Why no?” I asked.

It wasn’t Jeanne who answered. Cinereal gave me my reply. “Thinkers say no. They’re either drawing blanks or they don’t like what they see.”

“Nothing specific? No details?”

“No,” Cinereal said. “But if you look at some of the other major thinker blind spots, you’re going to find yourself running into topics like Eidolon, Sleeper, the Endbringers, Valkyrie, the Island-state, the Pastor incident…”

“Concentrations of power,” I said.

Jeanne shook her head. “Complexity of power, most often. Whatever thinker powers come into play, with these cases, there’s often too many variables to fully consider, thinkers report that their powers are fuzzy, inconsistent, or blacked out.”

“And it’s not just the time-stop bubbles in Brockton Bay that are an issue?” I asked.

Jeanne shook her head. “But Brockton Bay is one of the largest collections. Keep that in mind.”

“And you don’t know why? The thinkers can’t shed any light on this?” I asked.

“Little.”

“You’re saying you checked, you’re saying no, risky for reasons you can’t disclose. The Wardens checked, and they’re saying no, the thinkers think it’s volatile somehow…”

“Yes,” Cinereal said. “Volatile is a good way to put it. It might not explode. It might be devastating.”

“Okay,” I said. “And for the record, I want to stress that Teacher said no. He broke with his mercenaries from Cheit because they wanted to go after this. Are the mercenaries after it because so many people are afraid to touch it, or do they know something we don’t?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Jeanne said.

“Can you send me information on the victims?”

“I will. Bakuda’s victims, the three heroes-”

“Not all heroes,” I said. “Alabaster and Jotun were white supremacists.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Files on those two groups, and the group in the bubble caught the group that snuck into The Scar. I’ll send you what others sent to me.”

Trying to wrap our heads around a problem that apparently even thinker powers couldn’t tackle without running into blind spots.

Daunting.

I turned to the heroes, my eye mainly on Cinereal and Relay. This wasn’t an easy ask. “We can’t get directly involved until we’ve tackled Cradle, Love Lost, or some other peripheral things. If we can make headway in solving any of those issues, we should be able to converge on the mercenary problem from multiple angles. In an ideal world, we’ll catch up with them from the flanks while you’re approaching from the front.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Cinereal said. “But we don’t have many resources.”

More crime and incidents than we had heroes to send to them. The city was still on fire, and we didn’t have the means to put every single fire out.

“When you say resources, you mean heroes,” Foil spoke up.

“Yes,” Cinereal said.

“Do you have money?”

“Are you hiring yourself out?”

“No,” Foil said. “But there are a lot of capes out there who are worried about the winter. Most costumed stuff doesn’t pay. The guys you’re dealing with are hiring mercenaries. This Order of Four, the Case Fifty-Threes. If you’re really pressed for manpower, we can send you a list of people.”

“A mercenary we hire is someone the other guys can’t,” Lark said. “I can look into that.”

“We’ll send you the list, then. I can send copies to anyone else who asks. You can tell us if you know something about the potential hires that means they can solve a problem we have or if they’re going to be a problem.”

“I’ll talk things over with Countenance,” Relay said. “My gut feeling is that I’m worried you’re getting mired in something personal, while we’re sticking our necks out with something that thinkers can’t vet.”

“If you have any suggestions or alternatives-” I started.

“I’ll talk to Countenance,” Relay stated. Firm, final. He did with me what he’d done to Foil, angling his head so he looked up at me more than he looked at me. The brow and a partial view of his eyes dominated his expression, as a result. He took notes on the pad in front of him, as if he was leaning forward to write.

But he still studied me.

Nobody else was willing to commit, with the largest and most influential hero team in our group that wasn’t the Wardens being unwilling to do more without checking with the boss. The Wardens were too caught up in other things to dedicate themselves unless it was something on the scale of the prison or the Fallen camp, but I was reserving hope that Cinereal would talk to others about the time bubbles.

“We’ll touch base again soon?” Weld asked. “If you’re approaching the same problem from two directions, you’ll want to compare notes.”

I looked at Relay, who nodded.

“If we’re getting involved in the time bubble issue,” Relay said. “But we’ll meet soon regardless.”

“Capricorn Red will represent us for the next meeting,” I said.

That was it. For lack of a better word, the room dissolved, with everyone shuffling around, splitting up, or leaving the area.

Weld signaled for my attention.

“You good?” I asked Precipice.

He nodded.

“Foil?”

Foil glanced at Jeanne, who was walking toward her.

“You want backup?”

“No. I know what this is about. Old alliances and favors owed. Tattletale told me to expect her to show up and to expect this. I’m just the middleman.”

“I’ll stick around,” Precipice said.

I had to wonder if Foil was happy like this. Having to go out of her way to even collaborate with the heroes, and then being questioned when she did.

I kept an eye on her up until I caught up with Weld, who had retreated to a far corner of the room, mostly out of earshot of others. He seemed mindful of the other people in the room, his mouth shut.

Relay was already gone, teleporting out. Aleph Wolf was just leaving. The moment Aleph Wolf was out of the room, Weld finally spoke.

“What do you think?”

“I think if Alabaster is potentially a part of this, it’s worth reaching out to the Shepherds. Victor and Rune from the Empire are in the Shepherds now, under new names. They knew Alabaster and they might know something about Jotun. He was small-time.”

“Okay.”

“Can you handle that?” I asked. “The Wardens are neutral, so you can talk to the other group without issues, right?”

Weld nodded.

“I hope the division between the heroes isn’t straining things with Sveta.”

“With different bosses it might,” he said. “We’ve been together for about three years, depending on how you define ‘together’. You were a big part in that.”

I smiled.

“I think we’re okay there. Nobody’s demanding that I make any hard decisions yet.”

“Good,” I said.

“I did want to ask something though,” he said. “I don’t-”

He stopped himself there. He stood with his back to the wall, the window beside him, and the texture and material of his ‘skin’ made for a striking image.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t have a lot of friends that I can talk to about certain things,” he said. “I have teammates, but few who have spent any amount of time around Case Fifty-Threes.”

“Is it about the Fifty-Threes who were doing mercenary work?”

“No. No- it’s not that. It’s more awkward.”

With that, I knew just what he was talking about.

“Ah. I get it now,” I said.

He didn’t reply, and I didn’t press. More of the heroes filtered out. Jeanne was talking to Foil, with Precipice standing beside Foil, not really joining in.

“She welcomed me home from my mission away with… affection. I’m assuming she talked to you about it.”

“Yeah.”

“She brought it up after?”

“She seemed really happy. I didn’t get details.”

“Can I-” he started. “I don’t want to put you in an awkward position, but I don’t know who to bring it up with.”

“Ask, or share,” I said. “I get the feeling it’ll do more harm if you don’t.”

“It wasn’t good,” Weld said.

My heart sank.

“I love her, don’t get me wrong. I was game to experiment and find something that worked. But none of it worked. None of it.”

“Fuck,” I said, under my breath. My fingers dug into my arms. “Damn it.”

“Well put,” Weld told me, sounding just as miserable.

“Can you communicate? Find a way…?”

I saw Weld already shaking his head.

“I thought I’d play along to make her happy. Like I do when she wants to experiment with food. We’ve had some small, tiny successes there. Maybe there could be a success to be found here.”

“Of course.”

“I spent a while thinking about it. I think I was wrong, thinking I could do that. I think each time I try to play along, it’s only pushing me away. It takes what we can’t have and pushes it into my face.”

I snapped my head around, looking at him.

His forehead was creased, brow knit. Quicksilver eyes looked back at me.

“I know it’s a fucked thing to say, but I like girls and part of that is liking girls’ bodies. Sorry if that’s TMI. I haven’t had one of these conversations with anyone.”

I shook my head. My heart was pounding in my chest, as calm as I was trying to appear.

“I feel like a traitor, even saying it. Saying I’ve entertained thoughts about breaking up with-”

I stabbed my finger at his shoulder, using the Wretch to give that finger the power to push his heavy metal body. I pushed his shoulder into the window’s frame, indenting the metal and damaging the wood.

“Ow,” he said. He blinked, metal closing over those liquid silver eyes with etched irises. “Actually pretty close to feeling pain there. Ow. That registered.”

“Breaking up?” I asked him, my voice hard.

“It crossed my mind, after the other night. And the nights since. I know that makes me the scummiest hypocrite, saying I’m not sure I can date a Case Fifty-Three when that would disqualify me in a lot of people’s eyes.”

I dropped my finger.

“No,” I said. “You’re not.”

“You don’t have to lie,” he said.

“I’m not. You don’t have to date a Case Fifty-Three anymore than a black person would have to date another black person. That’s a screwed-up mentality.”

“It’s different,” Weld said. “Being black is the most normal thing in the world. Being me, being Sveta, being Chantilly or Gentle Giant, it comes with complications.”

“If you were disabled, you would not be obligated to only date disabled people.”

Weld shrugged. With his broad shoulders, decorated with melted fragments of metal, it was a pretty dramatic movement. “You can say that, but I still feel like a hypocritical scumbag.”

“I don’t think you’re a hypocrite. I do think you’re a bit of a scumbag, talking about dumping my best friend.”

Weld nodded, with enough fervor that I felt bad for being hard on him. “I want to do right by her. I mean it when I say I love her. But that love gets confused.”

“Confused?”

“It’s there. But I don’t know if it’s the love I feel for the woman I’m going to marry, a girlfriend, a best friend, or even a-”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

He was being really open. Maybe more open than he’d been with anyone except Director Armstrong, at least with this stuff. But he didn’t finish the sentence.

“It’s like trying to compose something and skipping out on the vocals or the strings.”

“Percussion would be a better metaphor,” I said.

I didn’t smile as I said it, and Weld didn’t smile as he heard it.

“There’s no workable physical aspect, and I want that aspect.”

I folded my arms. Weld did much the same.

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. Fuck.

At the other corner of the long conference room, Jeanne was leaving. Precipice and Foil hung back, talking with one another.

Fuck it all. Fuck. Fucking why did this have to be so hard?

Precipice shot me a curious look. Foil walked past him, and for a second I thought she was walking around the table to approach us, interrupting the conversation. She was walking to the window though, still at the far end of the library’s conference room, looking down toward the parking lot, then out at the city. Precipice indicated a portal in the distance, cutting into the sky.

“I’ll make you a deal,” I told Weld.

“Please. Anything you can offer. If I could feel sick, I think I actually would feel sick over this.”

“You tell me before you do anything. You promise me you will, and you keep that promise. Because if you do something like break up with her on impulse it’s going to be worse.”

Weld nodded.

“And I swear, if you tell her the actual reason why, I will tear your arms off.”

“How do I do that?” Weld asked. “I want to communicate, be honest that it’s not all that great, and try more avenues before claiming defeat. Not that there’s many more, but she’s not stupid. She can connect dots, if that’s the big issue we’re wrestling with and then I break up with her without explanation.”

He’d talked about feeling sick, but I was the one who felt that way now.

Poor fucking Sveta.

“The deal,” I said, because I couldn’t answer the question that easily if addressing it directly. “Is that you warn me in advance if you make a decision. I’ll be there for her with ice cream and my shoulders ready to cry on.”

“Okay,” Weld said. “I’m not sure I’m there yet. The decision, I mean.”

“Second part of the deal? Figure out a way that explains it, okay? That makes it not about her lack of a body or physical incompatibility. Because that will annihilate her.”

“Yeah,” Weld said.

“For that, you need to take time, and you need to give me time. Let me research. Let me ask questions.”

“We’ve looked at a lot of options and possible power interactions,” Weld said.

“Let me research,” I said, my voice terse to the point that it was almost hostile.

“Then I will,” Weld said. “Okay. How long?”

“A month. Two.”

“Month and a half?”

I shrugged. Already, I felt more like I was buying time to stave off devastation than I felt any hope that I’d stumble on a solution.

“Victoria,” Precipice called out from the other end of the room. “We’ll be outside!”

I twisted around, looking down at the parking lot. “Trouble?”

He shook his head. “Getting organized. I’m going to load some stuff into the car.”

“I should go,” I said.

“Thanks for being a friend,” Weld said.

“You know, if you break up with Sveta, meet a gorgeous girl and break Sveta’s heart again, I’m obligated to throw you into the center of the Atlantic Ocean.”

Weld winced. “Sveta’s dished on my weaknesses, I guess?”

“Hm? Not really.”

“Fear of mine.”

“Through the stratosphere then, so long as it’s ignorance and not maliciousness, but I don’t think you’re that kind of guy.”

Weld shook his head.

“What you do is your choice. You don’t have to stay with her. But you have to be gentle.”

“I don’t even know if I will go through with it,” Weld said. “It’s just… thinking. The idea of making her genuinely happy makes me happier than anything. Even imagining that I might make her sad is making me more miserable than I’ve been in a long time.”

I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Go,” he said. “I’ll go after the Shepherds, distract myself by talking to some vaguely familiar and probably hostile faces.”

Victor and Rune.

I slid the window open, then flew through, heading for the lot. I shut the window behind me, and floated down.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck…

Precipice and Foil were just now reaching the ground floor. I waited for them. Rain indicated the dumpster at the edge of the street. Metal for roofs, fencing, and power tools that had been thrown out, because they’d been made cheap in a time of need and they hadn’t been made to last. He’d spotted all of it when we’d pulled up to the library.

We loaded as much as we could fit into the trunk. Foil used her power to slice some pieces of corrugated metal into smaller chunks.

We climbed into the car. The driver turned on the engine, but he didn’t pull out of the parking spot.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

He held up a note. There was still tape at the top.

I didn’t even get a chance to read it when the passenger door opened.

“Scoot.”

I turned to look. Rain was shifting to the middle seat. At the open door, Imp was climbing into the car.

“What were you doing?” I asked, trying to sound more casual than suspicious and unsure if I was succeeding. I was usually better at that, but- conversation with Weld.

“Went with Mrs. Wynn. When she was done talking to us, she got on her phone to talk to her hubby and some guy called Balminder.”

“And?”

⊙

“This Balminder guy has Cauldron vials. We talked about how Tats said there were Case-53s at the attacks. Mercenaries, right?”

“Yes,” Tattletale said.

Both groups were assembled in the hideout, with only Rachel absent. They’d decided it was time to call her.

Sveta sat beside me, very still as she watched Imp.

“They were talking out loud about whether their vials could be responsible for the new cases.”

“And?” Sveta asked, her voice tight.

“And they think no.”

Both teams and a collection of the Heartbroken were assembled at our headquarters.

I’d thought earlier about how the conference room had felt too empty, but how it would feel too full if everyone was present.

This was that weird middle ground, I decided. Not a middle ground where the porridge was just right, but one where it was both too hot and too cold. Fucking uncomfortable.

Chicken Little had a pigeon in his hands, and Kenzie was fitting something around its neck and chest. One of the Heartbroken- Candy, I was pretty sure, was sitting on the edge of Kenzie’s desk, feet propped up on the back and front edge of Chicken Little’s chair. Dark hair, braided close to the scalp at one side, the rest left as a tumble. Darlene knelt on the floor by Chicken Little, holding the cage with more birds inside.

Others were scattered around the room. Some boys were in Chris’ old corner, having found and started up some of his old games. One had been given to Kenzie- it wasn’t a video game player, but a scanner. She would dismantle it later.

Older Heartbroken were scattered in with a trio of mercenaries, and were managing some of the remaining Heartbroken. A seventeen or eighteen year old with really long, wavy hair was stepping on a leather whip she’d wound around one girl’s hands, keeping the hands pressed to the floor.

Eerie, to think about where they came from and how very dangerous they were.

A hell of a lot of emotional firepower.

On the topic of firepower, Ashley was present, sitting on the floor with her legs tucked under her. When we hadn’t been sharing info as a group, she had been talking quietly to the little girl that was Kenzie’s age who had her hands bound by the whip.

Parian and Foil sat on plastic cases with perishable foods inside. Tattletale stood off to one side, a healthy distance from the dangerous little ones, looking at various screens.

“New Cauldron, same as the old Cauldron,” Sveta said.

“They have less resources. And they rule Gimel,” Tattletale said. “Different mission statement now. From getting through the end of the world to surviving the aftermath.”

“When you put it that way, you make it sound like they’re on our side,” Precipice said.

“New Cauldron, same as the old Cauldron,” Tattletale said, indicating Sveta, who she’d borrowed the line from. “Doing things that everyone should be unambiguously on board for and making every enemy possible along the way.”

“Great,” I said. “Countenance and I exchanged a few texts while we drove back. Relay gave him a quick recap and he reached out. He sounds…”

“Undecided?” Byron-as-Capricorn asked.

“On the positive side of undecided. Agreeable but yet to say he’s sure he’ll do it. They’ll try to look after and stall any plans for the mercenaries and what they’re planning with the time bubbles. If we catch up or figure out why while we’re dealing with the mercenaries’ allies, we use that info to help them wrap up.”

“We can’t focus on the mercenaries and stop whatever it is they’re doing?” Foil asked.

“We don’t have leads on them. We do have some loose leads on Cradle’s business dealings, places Love Lost’s people have been seen, people they’ve hurt, and some last known whereabouts of March.”

“We go after them, then,” Byron-as-Capricorn said. “All at once, after one target?”

“Coordinated strikes,” Ashley said.

“I dunno,” I said. “I like the focused attack better. Our goal is to keep them from achieving their goals or our worst case scenario. A focused attack guarantees we take the most problematic person out of the picture.”

“March,” Foil said, definitively.

I drew in a slight breath.

“You don’t think so,” she said. Again, a statement, firm.

“We’re supposed to be cooperating,” I said. “The best order to remove threats would be to remove one of ours, one of yours, another one of ours. It gives the best odds that we see this through.”

“Or we coordinate,” Ashley said. The kid on the ground was inching closer to her while she focused on us, wriggling and twisting until her arms threatened to dislocate, just to get closer, gnashing teeth. “No need to worry about order if we’re going after all of them at once.”

Capricorn shifted. From Byron to Tristan.

“I think coordinated,” he said. “It’s faster, and it means we can support the other groups. Even if we fail on one front, we have better odds of keeping them from uniting. Doing what you say, Victoria, and keeping them from achieving any goals and meeting up.”

I glanced at Tattletale.

“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I’m here to collect information, because it’s warm, and we needed another place to go while March is hunting us. You have some of my mercenaries. You can ask me one favor. I may refuse it. But I’m not getting involved personally. I need to conserve strength.”

“You can be-” Foil started. Parian pulled her back down to her seat.

“I can be such a bitch sometimes?” Tattletale asked. “At least I’m upfront about it.”

“I think we should split up,” Imp said. “Coordinate.”

I had my reservations. Still, sometimes with groups, a mediocre plan that everyone was on board with was much better than a fantastic plan with disgruntled people and people who had no idea what they were doing or why.

I nodded.

“Let’s get organized to hit them all at once, then,” I said. “Three groups, three raids on March and the two members of the cluster.”

Blinding – 11.5

The ‘joints’ of the spider’s limbs were higher off the ground than I was, the body headless and featureless, an uneven, almost potato-like form in the center. It was all black, and it moved with a fluidness that stood in stark contrast to the jerky, twitchy way that spiders normally moved.

It flowed more than it walked as it moved to the base of a building, found purchase on windowsills and gutter. As it carried itself off the ground, Foil skipped up, stepping onto one of the eight limbs, walking up to the next. She had no handholds, not even the ones another person might have if they were there, because both of her hands were full carrying her crossbow- an entirely different make and model than the one I’d known her to use, once upon a time. Bigger, heavier, and it would have to be mounted on a surface to be set up and then fired.

Spider legs appeared and disappeared beneath her feet, in what should have been something a third of the way to being stairs and a third of the way to being a ladder, not all of the way to being anything. The distance between Foil and the ground grew.

“You’re hesitating,” Foil called out. “If you pause I’m going to miss a step and fall!”

“You’re making me nervous!” Parian called back. “Talking about you falling makes it worse, not better!”

“Trust me!” Foil replied.

“I trust you! I don’t trust powers! Not mine, not yours,” Parian answered, but the third utterance wasn’t at a volume meant to reach Foil.

Foil ascended to the roof of a three-story building ducking as the cloth-and-knots spider passed over her head. Parian visibly relaxed as soon as Foil was on solid ground again. Past the eyehole of the cracked doll mask, Parian’s eye focused on the spider as it restricted its movements to the visible edge of the building. What little focus wasn’t for the spider was for Foil.

“The funny thing is, you guys got off easy,” Candy said. “For trustable powers.”

“None of us got off easy,” Parian said. “Powers are meant to hurt, cause harm, and foment chaos, according to Tattletale. The things that handed out the powers wanted to put us in situations where we’d have to use them on each other. Even the tamer sets, like Foil’s.”

Shots that could penetrate anything, enhanced accuracy, and enhanced timing.

“Foil’s powers did come with a March attached,” I remarked.

Parian nodded, pausing to look around before returning her focus to the rooftop. “It’s never easy. There’s always complications.”

“Some got off easier than others, though,” Precipice said.

“True. Undeniably true,” Parian said. “But easier still isn’t easy.”

“I like that distinction,” I said.

“If you want easy, you don’t have to look any further than my sister,” Candy said. “I mean it in the most affectionate way possible.”

“So long as it’s coming from a place of sisterly love,” Chastity said, reaching out for Candy’s cheek to pinch it. Candy fended her off.

We were walking at a brisk pace. We’d broken up the groups, and the reasoning for why we’d broken it up had me thinking about my early thoughts in the days of Breakthrough. Wolves, corn, and chickens. A man who needed to take all three things across the river, but the wolves couldn’t be left alone with the chickens and the chickens couldn’t be left with the corn.

We’d had concerns that the Undersiders would act in good faith. Having some of our team in each group meant we could keep an eye on everything. Breakthrough was a six member team, and we had three bases to cover. Two Breakthrough members were assigned to each team.

The Heartbroken were more volatile as more of them were gathered into a single unit. Heartbroken were thus split into three groups, and family dynamics seemed to factor in there. Siblings were separated and kept together, depending.

From there, it was a series of rules and complicating factors. Tattletale was insistent that Chicken Little was grounded and shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy hanging out with his new friend Lookout. That meant Lookout was assigned to another team. Swansong went with Lookout by apparent default, and the feral child Florence went with Swansong. Imp went with Florence, because she was the best at handling her, and initial attempts at negotiating this had met with stubbornness.

It was a team with far too many wolves, but those wolves seemed content with the status quo. That was despite the fact that Swansong was on a team with Imp and pretty goddamn resentful of the fact that her nice home now smelled like gasoline – a smell had soaked into floorboards and furniture.

They’d wanted to go after Love Lost, working on the assumptions that Love Lost didn’t like hurting kids and it was a squad with a lot of kids on it. Swansong knew the people Love Lost liked to associate with, and Imp had the ability to resolve problems before they started. The problem was that when things went wrong, they stood to go very wrong. A single rage scream that hit Swansong was too much of a problem. Cradle was too much of an unknown, and the Undersiders had wanted Tattletale on that particular unknown, for her limited involvement.

I had a projector disc with me. I brought it up, tapping on the side. A group of small holographic figures appeared above the disc, tinted yellow from head to toe. An arrow at the disc’s edge indicated the direction to them, with a number showing distance. They were gathered in vehicles, but the vehicles weren’t drawn as thoroughly as the people who sat in them, much like the mercenaries that accompanied them. Three heartbroken, Chicken Little, Sveta, and Capricorn, with Tattletale along to gather some intel and make sure the kids were alright. They were tracking down Cradle.

They were mostly silhouettes, but I could make out details like how one of the Heartbroken was resting a head on Chicken Little’s shoulder, apparently asleep. Chicken Little was moving his hands like there was something in them. A bird, I assumed.

I ran my finger along the disc’s edge. The image shifted, and the group of people were tinted red. Many of them were small. Imp, ‘Florence’, two heartbroken, Lookout, and Swansong. They’d watch March, gather surveillance and maybe have Imp take action but they wouldn’t take any direct moves until Hellhound caught up with them.

“They okay?” Parian asked.

“Looks like it,” I said. The images were stable. Different groups were talking. “Calm, no fighting.”

“If you’re talking about my cousins, they’re never ‘okay’,” Chastity said. She was seventeen or so, with wavy black hair and makeup fully on point. I’d noticed Precipice noticing her cleavage. It seemed wholly intentional with her wardrobe choices, a low-cut top worn with a scarf and coat, unzipped enough that a strategic triangle was visible.

Had to be cold, but she endured with an unwavering, teasing smile that made me uncomfortable.

“Relatively,” Parian said, still watching Foil and the spider.

“Relatively? It’s because they’re relatives that I know they aren’t okay,” Chastity said.

“Such a dork,” Candy said, before switching to French to better articulate that lameness. Candy was a smaller version of her older sister. She had a similar teasing demeanor, from what I could tell, but without the flirting aspect.

Chastity retorted with something else, so rapid-fire that I couldn’t even tell where the words started or stopped.

The Kenzie-aged Candy’s response was sharp, and sounded weirdly religious- I wasn’t sure if my mind was seeing faces in clouds, putting meanings to foreign words that weren’t there.

There was enough violence in the words and enough of a glittering look in the young girl’s eye that I felt the need to say something. “Do we need to step in?”

“Don’t even try,” Parian muttered under her breath.

“No,” Chastity said. “Not unless you want to wash my sister’s mouth out with soap.”

“Please do,” Aroa said, from the sidelines. She was similar in appearance to the others, but her hair was straight, and there was no smile on her face- no particular frowning or coldness either. Her eyes were animated, her glances always sidelong, never direct. “It would be funny.”

“You can help,” Candy said. “My dork of a sister needs to get laid.”

“Can’t help you there,” I said, trying not to sound as uncomfortable as I felt.

“Your teammate can. Precipice!” Candy raised her voice.

“Uh.”

“Please. She gets more annoying and immature every minute she doesn’t have anyone, and I’m the one who has to deal with it.”

“Uh,” Precipice said, again. He looked at Chastity. “Sorry.”

“No need to say sorry,” Chastity said, touching his arm. “My sister put you on the spot. But if you did want to say yes, you could count on my discretion and a complete lack of any strings.”

“Just don’t fall in love with her,” Candy said.

“Yeah, don’t fall in love with me,” Chastity said.

“It’s… weird, getting this offer,” Precipice said. “Knowing who you guys are.”

Heartbroken. Heartbreaker’s.

“I would have thought you were sympathetic, coming from a bad place,” Candy said.

I looked down at Candy. “Tattletale told you?”

“Uh huh.”

“That’s not great,” I said.

“We don’t mingle with society or have a lot of civilian friends,” Aroa said. “We aren’t going to leak your secrets because we stick to our own.”

“You haven’t even seen my face,” Precipice was telling Chastity.

“Back out, Precipice,” Parian said. “Drop the topic, walk away.”

“If she has advice, it’s good to take it,” I advised him, giving him an elbow to the arm. I bumped the metal under his sleeve.

Precipice nodded.

“I get a sense of people around me,” Chastity told him. “It’s clear enough for me to know proportions, and I like your proportions.”

I sighed, loud enough to be sure he heard it. My breath fogged in front of my face.

“Now it’s weirder. I’m flattered, I think, but also very weirded out,” Precipice said.

“Okay,” Chastity said, sounding like she was having fun, even while being turned down. “I can tell how flattered you are, same way. It even makes me stronger. So this teasing, it’s good battle strategy, you know.”

“Maybe, but just so you know, I have someone I like,” Precipice said.

“Precipice,” Parian said, warning. She started to turn around, then her spider slipped. She twisted around and caught it at the building’s edge.

“Someone you like?” Chastity asked, edging in closer, her arm touching his. They were wearing jackets, but still.

“Love. I think.”

“Precipice,” I said. “Don’t tell them that. Don’t share that information. Especially when Parian is warning you.”

“Trying to keep my partner from falling off a building,” Parian said, absently. “You might be in more danger, Precipice.”

“Uh, noted.”

“What if I said that made me more interested?” Chastity asked Precipice, nudging him. “What if I said I was intrigued, now that you already have someone you like?”

“Sorry,” he said, in a vain attempt to disengage.

“Does that mean sorry, no, or does it mean something completely different?” Chastity asked.

“Can you leave him alone?” I asked her.

“I could, but I’m going to wonder what he meant, and I’m going to end up assuming the worst.”

“Safest bet,” Aroa said. “Men.”

Precipice, against all sense and sanity, opened his mouth to explain, “I’m flattered, but even if it wasn’t really weird, even though she and I aren’t together and might never be-”

“Stop sharing information about your love life with people who call themselves Heartbroken,” I said. I turned to the younger Heartbroken. “No offense.”

“No, no. You’re totally right,” Candy said.

“-Yeah,” Precipice said. He managed to stay silent for two fucking seconds before telling Chastity, “I can’t mess around. At least for now, I’m not doing anything in that neighborhood.”

“Oh.” Chastity squared her shoulders, eyes forward, in the direction we were walking.

“Sorry.”

“If you’d given me another answer, saying you were willing to betray her or betray those feelings you have for her, then I would have found a way for you to be hurt in any upcoming fights,” Chastity said, her tone still light. “Really badly hurt.”

I looked at Parian. She shrugged and nodded.

Great.

“Good to know,” Precipice said, awkwardly.

I fucking told you not to engage.

“Now I’m disappointed,” Aroa said. “Chastity’s one of the last family members on my bucket list to see go all out.”

Candy poked her cousin. “You’re such a Juliette. Wanting our mouths washed out with soap, wanting poor Precipice to get all four arms and both legs mangled, or whatever it is Chastity has in mind…”

“Juliette wouldn’t want anyone’s mouth washed out with soap. She’d want your mouth washed out with bleach,” Aroa said.

“I don’t think that’s as big a difference as you’re pretending.”

“It’s the biggest difference,” Aroa said, with maximum condescension. “On and off. What’s the fun in kicking someone in the tits, pushing them down or setting them on fire if they‘re cold and dead, or if you kill them and that’s the end of it with no potential for the future?”

“True,” Candy responded.

“I’ve got your back,” Chastity was telling Precipice. “Whatever happens, I’m going to protect you and protect those feelings, now. We’ll get you back to this girl you like.”

“I don’t know if anything’s going to happen there. It’s complicated.”

I rolled my eyes. Maybe he needed to get stuff off his chest, and for some reason was deciding on this venue.

“Unrequited or complicated sorts of love are still love and love is the most important thing,” Chastity said. “Without it there’s no point to anything.”

It was dawning on me just why Tattletale had looked so damn exhausted when I’d seen her, the last few times.

Above us, Foil whistled. Parian was making the spider form a bridge. Foil was halfway across that bridge. Very deliberately, she put the folded-up crossbow down on top of the spider. She pointed at it.

The crossbow disappeared as cloth wrapped around it. Attaching it to the spider.

Foil bowed, flourishing, before skipping up the spider-bridge to the next rooftop.

“She’s such a ham sometimes,” Parian said.

“Ham can be nice,” I said. I was glad to get away from the other discussion. “Ham can work.”

“I think she’s happy, hanging around with heroes again. Old teammates.”

“Good,” I said.

“We need to do this more often.”

“Why not always? What keeps you with the Undersiders?”

“Resources. I still have family who need medical attention,” Parian said, quieter.

“Ah. I remember. I’m sorry.”

“Sometimes you make deals with the devil because the alternative is not dealing at all,” Parian said.

“You’ve been with them for how many years, now?”

“Four and a half.”

“And you still refer to them as the devil, huh?” I asked.

Parian snorted or sniffed behind her mask – the material distorted the sound and I couldn’t see her face to know which it was.

“Don’t try to convert me,” she said. “Life’s too complicated as it is.”

“Okay. No conversion.”

We walked in silence for a minute. Chastity was still engaging with Precipice, but it seemed a bit safer than before now. More normal than I’d seen her act, now that she wasn’t aggressively teasing and flirting.

“I like your costume,” Parian said.

“High praise, considering who it’s coming from.”

“I’m nobody special. Who made it?” she asked.

“Me, teammates. Weld did the metal decorations.”

There was a pause. Her head turned, caught between watching out for Foil on the rooftops, managing her spider, and looking at the metalwork.

“Do you think he’d do work for pay?”

“I can always pass on a message if you want to ask.”

“I might. It would be nice to stay in touch. Look how much fun she’s having.”

I couldn’t quite read into body language or see what Parian meant. Maybe if I’d known Foil for longer, I could have seen a difference. As it was, Foil crouched on the corner of a rooftop. She held her hand out.

“Stop,” Parian said, quiet.

We collectively stopped.

Foil moved her hand, sweeping motions. Directing us to one side of the street, until we were at the base of one building, Foil one building ahead of us and five stories up, barely visible in the gloom.

We weren’t that far from Lyme. In the midst of a criss-crossing of new roads and multiple buildings in progress, there was an area that wasn’t accessible by car. This was the result putting together the reports we had from other heroes and Tattletale’s knowledge to hone in on the area Love Lost was working from.

“I’m going to talk to Foil,” I said. When Parian nodded, I flew up to the roof.

“Are the Heartbroken behaving?” Foil asked me.

“Precipice is getting a lot of attention,” I said. “He can’t keep his mouth shut. Is that a power one of them is using?”

“Yeah,” Foil said.

“Fuck,” I said.

“Chastity’s pretty,” Foil said. “He’s red blooded. That’s the power I mean.”

“Seemed like more than that,” I said. When that didn’t get me much of a response from Foil, who was scanning the area with her eyes, I asked, “Why did we stop?”

“No man’s land,” Foil indicated. “See what I mean?”

I did. We were inside the perimeter where ongoing construction, parked vehicles, and unfinished roads were limiting our access, and within that vague territory, there was a swathe where the buildings were girder and beam, surrounded by fenced-in lots.

“It’s all open space,” I said. There wasn’t much in the way of cover. No way to get from A to B without being seen from a block away. Even the scant lighting to illuminate the road seemed more like it was meant to help highlight any incoming cars or catch people trying to sneak across the road in one of the five to ten times they’d need to do so, to get to the center.

“Three… maybe four buildings that they could be camping out in.”

Foil indicated, a dart in hand, the gleaming point serving to point.

“Do any of the Heartbroken here have the ability to sense emotions?”

“No. Chastity senses bodies, but not at a distance that helps us. Aroa has to engage. Candy doesn’t get anything.”

“Keep an eye out? I’ll be right back.”

Foil nodded. I had a glimpse of her face in profile, as she surveyed the area, and I could see an enviable kind of focus and calm there. Jaw set, eyes slightly narrowed and alert as she looked for hints in a collection of half-built neighborhoods.

I dropped to the ground.

The others were very still and somber, except for Aroa, who looked pleased, and Chastity, who had a hand firmly on Aroa’s shoulder.

“What happened?”

“Aroa happened,” Chastity said.

“I told the truth. It’s not fair if you’re getting only half the picture. Love is the most important thing.”

I looked at Precipice, then at Parian.

It was Parian who supplied the details. “She said the reason Love Lost is so upset is because Precipice killed someone she loved.”

Fuck me. These girls were such nightmares to wrangle. I was now in full agreement that having all of the Heartbroken in one place would have been too much.

“It eats me up inside,” Precipice said. “I didn’t kill them by acting. I killed them by not acting.”

“Growing up with Fallen?” Chastity asked. “Do you think that absolves you?”

“No.”

“Good,” she said. “It doesn’t. I’ve killed someone by not acting too. I think.”

“A lot of people, probably,” Candy said.

“The one I’m thinking about is when you were young. Too young to remember,” Chastity said.

“Mom?”

Chastity nodded. “Daddy was tired of her, and he thought I was old enough to look after you and Revere. He pushed feelings into her head. He didn’t want her sharing evidence, so he made her scared of people. Any people at all, she wouldn’t be able to speak because she was so freaked out. He said he made it so she’d be happy so long as she was totally alone and there was no civilization nearby. I’m not sure if Daddy was saying it to get us to stop crying.”

“Probably,” Aroa said.

“Yeah, and you wouldn’t just say that, right?” Chastity asked Aroa. “I’ve told you, if you want to nettle people, you have to give them hope once in a while.”

“He probably wasn’t lying,” Candy said. “He didn’t need to go that far to make us stop crying. He’d just… make us stop.”

“Yeah,” Chastity said. To Precipice, she said, “I could have said something or stopped it, I think. To save my mom from being sent away like some dog in the movies that’s driven out to the wilderness and then left behind while the car speeds off.”

“I remember that day,” Candy said. “It wasn’t like that.”

“It’s a simile, little sister.”

Candy shrugged.

“My thing was different,” Precipice said. “I was older, and it was a lot of-”

“Don’t,” I interrupted him. “Don’t work to convince them to hate you.”

He folded all four of his arms. Two flesh, and two mechanical. Was he so reflexive in trying to own up for his mistakes that he’d make enemies by admitting to them?

I wasn’t even sure what the right decision to make there was.

“We’ve got a wide area out there that we won’t be able to cross without being spotted. Not if we go across.”

“Over?” Precipice guessed.

“Or under,” I said. “If you look, you can see where the piping is being laid out where the road doesn’t cover it all yet.”

“I see it,” Precipice said. “I’ll make a hole, then.”

Silver blades appeared in his hands.

“Wait. We should coordinate,” I said. “Call first.”

Precipice checked his phone.

I checked the disc with representations of each team. Tattletale’s team was hunkered down, apparently working on tracking down Cradle. Tattletale was also supposed to be able to keep an eye out for any pointed dangers or incoming attacks, which meant Capricorn and Sveta should be safe or safer for as long as that activity took.

I really wished I knew the particulars of her power.

A glint caught my eye.

Foil’s dart, embedded on a piece of paper. There wasn’t anything on the side of the paper I could see, but it was yellow.

“Danger,” Parian said.

“Aroa, Candy,” Chastity said. “Get back. Be good until you absolutely need to step in.

Another dart, another slip of paper. This one was red, so close to the first dart that the two squares of paper that were embedded on the dart seemed to line up.

No need to clarify.

I flew up. The others dashed to where there was cover nearby- we were only at the fringes of the no-man’s-land, and the buildings here had fences, backyards, and piles of broken-down crating tied together with twine. The crates had packaged food from offworld.

Below, headlights illuminated the street. The noise the car’s tires made changed as it shifted from squeaking on contact with snow to grinding against salt and gravel, then near-silence as it touched ice, moving smoothly over the surface the winter tires gripped.

They paused in the street and people inside the car shone flashlights out the windows.

Here we were. The patrol.

On the rooftop, ten feet from where I floated, Foil was at the spider’s side, setting up the large crossbow so it was mounted on the spider’s back.

“Did they spot us?” she asked.

“Looks like a routine patrol.”

Foil was silent, leaving the crossbow where it was, and heading to the edge of the rooftop to look down.

Below, the car went on its way.

I drew my phone from my pocket. “I’m going to have them go underground, approach the buildings you pointed. Give me a minute to text them.”

“Wait,” Foil said.

I waited.

The car that had passed returned. It stopped somewhere close to where it had the first time. Again, flashlights shone out the windows. I could see someone leaning out.

“That’s not a patrol,” Foil said. “Most people who are doing a perimeter check don’t check and recheck themselves. They do the bare minimum and then they get on with their nights. Applies to some heroes that patrol. Learned that when I overheard some villains, a year back.”

“Doing a single loop, so as soon as the hero has come and gone, the criminals can come out of the woodwork? That’s really dumb,” I said.

“It really is,” Foil said. “Back when I was with the New York Wards, we’d mix it up every night, doubling back, doing loops… it helped that we had the bikes and it was an excuse to ride down subway tunnels and around any place without cars.”

I smiled. “I fly, so… same idea. It’s easy to cover the same ground if you move fast.”

“Gonna give my spider a pet, so Parian knows I’m alright,” Foil said, backing away from the rooftop’s edge.

I kept an eye out. Keeping my arm and the glowing projections out of sight of the ground, I checked the others.

Both of the other teams were staying put and doing things, but it didn’t look like they were fighting.

Below, a shift in the light’s movement caught my eye. I let my fingers drop away from the projection disc and focused on what was happening. Or in this case, what wasn’t happening. One beam had stopped moving.

I heard raised voices.

Fuck. They got caught.

“What’s going on?” Foil whispered.

I mimed for silence.

A car door opened. A man stood on the seat of the car to better look over the top of the vehicle and into the avenue between two buildings- one of which was the building Foil and I were standing on. He added the light of his own flashlight.

A woman, the driver, was saying something. I tried to hear, and I couldn’t make it out. I could have flown down, but I didn’t want to risk being spotted.

I tapped one ear, while glancing at Foil. She shook her head.

Below, the car drove away. The man who was standing on the seat swung back inside. I could see the gun he held as he did. The door shut as the car rounded a corner.

The spider helped Foil drop to the street level. I watched to ensure the coast was clear while she started, then dropped down, getting to the group’s hiding spot at the same time she did.

“He saw Candy,” Precipice said.

“I thought the coast was clear. Why did they come back?” Candy asked.

“They had some sense that we were here already. It could be a device or power,” I said. “Love Lost can detect emotions, but it’s not that long a range, I don’t think.”

“And if he saw me, why didn’t he do something about it then?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He could have decided to play it safe. For now, let’s do the same. We didn’t plan to pick a fight this soon. The other teams need intel and time to get where they’re going.”

“We run,” Precipice said. “We can stick to the same plan. I make a hole, we use the drains and sewers.”

“Ew,” Candy said.

“Once we’re down there, we can decide if we want to go to one of those houses to investigate and see if we can’t spy on Love Lost,” Precipice said.

“Hurry,” I said.

Precipice created silver blades, and drew out a five-sided hole in the ground. I flew up to make sure there weren’t any more cars full of armed men and women, then flew down, slamming into the pentagon. Water splashed below.

“Ew,” Candy said.

In the distance, I heard a thud, then a laugh.

“Hurry,” I told them. I had a sense of who that thud belonged to. “They were willing to pass the buck because they have enforcers. They’re coming after us with powers.”

They hopped down into the tunnel, Chastity and Precipice helping.

Another thud.

A jovial bellow.

“That’s not Love Lost’s group,” I said, keeping my voice quiet as I talked to the others in the hole. I moved aside so the spider could slip down beneath.

“Mercenaries,” Precipice said. “Villains banding together because the heroes are.”

High above us, a shape moved through the air with enough force that it made the air shudder and cheap windows rattle in their frames.

“Lord of Loss,” I said.

I ducked down into the hole. The Heartbroken already had their phones out, screens glowing and flashes on. Foil and Parian had flashights they could clip to their costumes.

Precipice’s mask glowed, the red illuminating to become pink.

“That does not work nearly as well as I hoped it would,” he said, and he sounded pissed. The glow died and he pulled out his phone, doing what the Heartbroken were doing.

Behind us, Parian’s cloth snake slipped into the hole.

“Come on,” I urged. “Toward the houses.”

To find us, Lord of Loss would have to spot the hole in between two house lots- not impossible, not easy either, given the lighting and the glare of snow contrasted with dark pavement everywhere. Then he would have to find which way we’d gone. I was betting he would assume we’d headed away, not deeper into the territory in question, toward Love Lost.

The cloth spider and my flight kept the group from having to wade in freezing, ankle deep drainwater. We covered good ground too. There were surprising amounts of materials and piece of construction material to trip up anyone who moved fast enough that they couldn’t react to the fleeting glimpses of whatever the flashlight illuminated. There weren’t many things that got in our way or that the spider had to slow down for. A wheelbarrow with a broken handle, a collection of what looked like curtain rods or wooden poles.

I checked the disc.

No whole figures. Body parts everywhere. Scattered into air, into terrain. All tinted yellow. Tattletale, Sveta, Tristan, Chicken Little.

“What?” I breathed the word.

I checked the other team.

More scattered parts. Suspended in air, unmoving, flickering like the hologram couldn’t track them. Imp. Ashley. Lookout.

No, it wasn’t possible like that.

Not two teams at once, not so easily or instantaneously.

I checked my phone. The display was flickering slightly. I thumbed for a message to Precipice, the alarming picture on the disc still hanging off of the disc at my forearm, mounted like a buckler.

“Check your phone,” I told Precipice.

“A text?” he asked.

“From me,” I said.

He shook his head.

I tried two more times. I heard the one go through.

He held it up for me. Gibberish.

“We’re being scrambled.”

“Shit,” he muttered. Even with the word being scarcely a whisper, the drain carried the sound. “Could be tinkertech defenses. Keeping Lookout’s cameras out of it.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Candy’s phone flickered, and then both screen and flash went dark. The other two phones died simultaneously, plunging us into the darkness.

It was only because of that darkness that we could see the faint hue of pink. A glow, like light through a curtain, and the sides of the drain were curtains.

In the silence, as none of us spoke, I could hear a dull sound, a hum with no source, and I could hear chiming, discordant, struggling to find its rhythm.

Nursery.

The images on the disc were getting scattered further, blinking in and out, each reiteration putting body parts further and further from the source. The mode switched, and I could see that there were symbols, large and blunt, that Lookout was trying to transmit.

The noises of Nursery’s power effect were getting louder, and they reverberated down the drain. The effect was taking hold too, distorting the tunnel.

No slurps and wet noises yet.

On the disc, there was one last projected image I could make out. Three large arrows, pointing at a single dot.

Three forces converging on one? I had the impression that it wasn’t the signal to mount our coordinated attack. No, this was too ’emergency alert’ with the big bold symbols.

The humming and chiming swelled, the chiming finding it stride with more coordination, less discordant, now more disconcerting because the off-notes were spaced far enough away to catch the ear off guard.

One of our teams was being attacked, and we were stuck against a brute strong enough he wouldn’t go down unless he was permanently put down, and a shaker-master nightmare I most definitely did not want to fight on her turf.

The disc was flickering to the point that it was off nine seconds out of every ten, and nonsense the last second. Even with that, the broken-up models that put heads twenty feet from the associated bodies were an ominous warning of what was at stake. I had to assume the worst hadn’t happened, because the distorted images I was getting from the disc put body parts in mid-air, and had a computer-glitch kind of logic or arrangement to them.

They knew we were here, they had prepared with stalling tactics and organized assault against one of our groups, they had the device responsible for the Navigators incident, and they had the willingness to use it.

Blinding – 11.6

It had been a long, long time since I’d fought with any musical accompaniment. Glory Girl had worn headphones for a little while, to fill the silence while she patrolled, and because she hadn’t been one to have a back and forth with the small fries she was taking down.

Mom had put a stop to that. Situational awareness was too important, she’d said.

Now, the music box chiming came from nowhere, and the dull heartbeat thud was a percussive element overlapping that. Other sounds creeped in, but it sounded like they were mostly aboveground. It didn’t quite come together as a complete musical piece, but that gave it more effect, not less.

Situational awareness was in full effect now.

“Don’t touch the walls,” I said, as we hurried down the storm drain’s tunnel. About two hundred feet ahead of us, there was a section that was open to the air, where the upper half of the drain hadn’t been laid in yet. The mist that Nursery’s power generated was coming in hard, rose-tinted and distorting the surroundings. Where it was heaviest, especially around that open air, it was rewriting things. Curved walls became hallways with straight walls perpendicular to floor. Water with a paper-thin sheet of ice atop it simply terminated, not flowing into the lower ground where there was no water. Just stopping.

“It’s not an illusion?” Parian asked.

“No. Localized reality overwrite. Reality works differently in her nursery-space. Don’t touch the walls, don’t touch the floor where it’s fully changed. And if we run into her, remember that area-effect powers don’t tend to work in the rewritten area.”

“I don’t know if my powers are area-effect,” Precipice said.

“Mine either,” Candy said.

“Let’s not fight her on her turf and hope we don’t have to test it. Parian, can your snake be a bridge where the effect is most intense?”

“Yeah. I can handle that… but I’m really wondering what happens if we touch the walls or floor?” Parian asked.

“Hopefully nothing. But I’ve read reports of bad things happening when people got stuck in her shaker effect when it’s most intense.”

“Like?”

I looked back at Candy and Aroa. “I don’t want to scare you guys.”

“Our daddy gave us fear for breakfast,” Candy said. “I was so young I’m not sure I would have even been in school then-”

“You would have. Definitely,” Chastity cut in.

“Okay, but I don’t remember much from those days, and I remember getting chocolate frosted fear bombs for breakfast-”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Aroa cut in.

“Stop interrupting! Sacrament! It’s metaphor!”

“It’s dumb,” Aroa said.

“What are you saying, and is it important?” I asked.

“Daddy made me scared when he wanted me to stay out of his room, he made me as happy as a little girl getting a puppy on Christmas morning when he needed me to clean up some baby barf tout de suite…”

My skin crawled.

“…I don’t remember much, but I remember those moments. Don’t look down on me,” the girl finished. She was still jogging along the side of the column, periodically slipping where the sloped wall on either side of the water was icier or slimy. Chastity was fully in the water, and whatever contention the sisters had, Chastity was there to support her younger sister and keep her from outright falling into the damp.

“Fine. As the power saturates a place, containers will fill with her power. If containers don’t exist, they’ll appear on their own. One thing that can happen is that you touch a wall and your hand goes through it like it would go through wet paper, and there’s something living on the other side.”

“Or the floor. You said we have to watch the floor,” Parian said.

“Yeah, but there isn’t much we can do about that,” I said. “The way powers tend to prioritize things, walls will be a problem before floors are.”

“How do you know that?” Parian asked.

“Studies,” I said. “PRT research. Classes. There’s a whole mess of research into why people like Shadow Stalker from our hometown didn’t fall through the floor to the planet’s core.”

Precipice was typing on his phone while using it for light. He aimed it at the floor, nearly tripping as he kicked a bit of ice crust on the top of the water that others hadn’t already broken up. Chastity caught him.

Before straightening, he aimed his phone at the ground. I could see that he’d modified it, with a chunk of what looked like battery with wire wrapped around it mounted on the top.

“Scanning?” I asked, quiet.

“Trying. I used Lookout’s numbers as a model. Our- that other tinker’s scanner we found earlier, I looked at that too. But it’s mostly noise, I don’t know how to use it yet.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You’re right,” he said. “Walls are more intense than floor.”

“Good to know,” I said, my expression serious. I put a hand on Parian’s shoulder as I passed her. “It’s probably going to be a little while before we need to worry about stepping into a hole. Let’s get out of here before it’s a real problem.”

“Good plan,” she said.

I nodded. I flew ahead. As tense and borderline sick as I felt, my gorge not in my throat but definitely ready to go there, I felt a bit happy that my little bit of cape knowledge from a paper I’d skimmed years ago had been relevant and validated here.

Feeling sick with mixed feelings did provoke another thought.

“Candy talking about emotions is reminding me,” I said, fibbing about the source. “Precipice? We need to figure out how you’re handling your power in a fight. Friendly fire.”

“Ah. Shit.”

“Last few times, it’s been a problem. Nothing big enough it’s changed the outcome, but it came close. Sorry to bring it up here, but-”

“But if you didn’t you might forget, or it might change things now. It’s fine.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“I can take my lumps. It’s about all I’m good for, a lot of the time.”

“You’ve got a lot of good points,” I said. “Don’t undersell yourself.”

“What’s the power?” Chastity asked.

“Shame and regret thing. I’ve been meaning to figure it out, so I’ve been trying to use it more often.”

The music box sounds were fading, but the thudding was heavier. I wasn’t sure how to interpret it, but there was enough of a distinction in play that I was pretty sure there was a pattern to be deciphered.

“You used it at the hospital,” Candy said.

“Yeah, on its lowest setting. I thought it might help make you guys go away,” he said. He was holding his phone up to the wall as he jogged by it, the top and bottom thirds of the screen filled with numbers, the middle section showing a graph. “Sorry.”

“Apologize when your power actually does something. You used that emotion power on us.”

“I’m trying to figure it out,” he said.

“Let’s stay focused,” I said. “We’re close to the hole, so keep your voices down.”

“Right,” Precipice said.

“We’ll figure your thing out,” I told Precipice. “When things are calmer.”

“I’m happy to help,” Chastity said.

“Uh, sure. Thank you,” he replied.

We edged closer to the place where the drain was empty. The mist was flowing down from the street above, and the entire area had changed. No ice, no water, just walls with peeling wallpaper, floor that might have been hardwood, and scattered children’s blocks.

Parian’s snake slithered past us, the knotted material sloshing through water and ice on its way to the area, then scraping against the floor, depositing moisture on the surface.

As we drew nearer, ready to move across it, the walls pressed in. They were wallpapered, but there wasn’t any wall behind the wallpaper. Something fat and wet like a tongue pressed in, moisture blotting out to color the surface as it bulged. The thudding from behind the walls was evident in how the fleshy bulge throbbed.

All with one singular heartbeat.

Foil had her rapier out, pointed at it but not penetrating, while the others hurried forward. Precipice was one of the last to cross. He held up his scanner, aimed at the bulge, then passed his hand between scanner and bulge. He startled a bit.

“Go,” I hissed the word.

He wasted no time.

The thudding from behind was mixed up with added impacts as Lord of Loss touched down somewhere not too far away.

We hurried down the drain tunnel, putting the effect behind us.

“Lord of Loss is close,” I whispered, as I floated to catch up with the group I saw Foil and Chastity look back at me. “Familiar with him?”

“Shapeshifting breaker,” Foil said. “Big, brutish.”

“Repeated motions are more effective,” I said.

“That’s always the case,” Chastity said. “Find what works and keep doing that.”

“It’s more the case for him, I assume,” Precipice said.

“He’s got size on his side too,” Chastity said.

Precipice turned his head, giving her a long look. Chastity’s face was barely visible, with none of the flashlights aimed directly at it, but I could see the smile.

“We’re close to the first building that we thought might be theirs,” Precipice said. “If we’re going aboveground, we should do it further down the street here. There might be a side tunnel.”

“Good,” I said. “Nice work, keeping an eye on that.”

“Lookout’s stuff, not mine,” he said.

“You did figure something out with your stuff, didn’t you?” I asked. “Your scanner picked something up.”

He turned to look at me. He nearly tripped a second later, but Chastity put a hand to his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he said. He raised his phone, and tapped the screen with his thumb. The feed of numbers and movement of the graph changed, changing from red on a black background to yellow, instead. He scrolled, and the readings went backward in time, flowing the opposite way, tinted green as they did.

“Means nothing to me,” I said.

“There’s something haptic in there. Sense-sharing, binding biology, not all that different from what I do with the tactile feedback pads.”

“Yeah. Parasites.”

“The tongue in the wall infects you?” he asked, with a note of alarm in his voice.

“Oh my god,” Parian said.

“Yuck,” Candy said.

“Basically infection,” I said, trying to sound as casual as ‘infection’ warranted. “Sure.”

“She’s lying,” Candy said.

Fucking fucker emotion readers. The ones who weren’t Dean sucked. I shot Candy a look, and Precipice noticed.

“What the hell, Antares?” Precipice asked. “I need accurate info for my scans.”

“Fine. We’ll talk about it later. Your scans don’t matter until we get back to your workshop anyway, right? It’s not like you’re calibrating anything in the field.”

He was a grim kind of silent as he jogged along.

The tinkling music box chimes had come to an outright stop. The thudding persisted, but it was more general and dull than it had been. Less of a sound like someone banging against the walls, less of a heartbeat, and more of a distant pounding.

Not that we had walls here, per se. The storm drain was a concrete tube with iced-over water in the bottom tenth of it, and a whole lot of dirt and pavement in the area immediately around it.

“Assimilation?” Precipice asked.

“No,” I said. “Can we drop it? Let’s hide out, figure out what we’re doing, figure out which of the teams is being targeted, and then mobilize. Hopefully without ever having to deal with Nursery again.”

“Is it a lotophage thing? Pulling people into a specific, themed dream state?”

“Fuck me, Precipice,” I said. “You can’t let it go?”

“I’m stubborn. It’s the only thing I really have going for me. Knowing would help me interpret my scans. I can potentially use this!”

“Then, again, I’ll explain when we’re back at your workshop.”

Foil cleared her throat. “I’d like to know.”

“It would help to counter it,” Parian said.

I didn’t want to talk about it because it bothered me. I didn’t want to picture what it involved. That gorge was closer to being in my throat now, to the point it hurt to swallow.

“Not assimilate, not exactly infect. Not… whatever you just said.”

“Lotophage. Lotus Eaters? The Odyssey?” Precipice suggested.

“I never read the Odyssey. Only got what came up in adaptations,” I said. I paused. “Impregnate.”

“Uh what the fuck?” Precipice asked.

“That’s the theme,” I said. “Close to infect, really, but-”

“What the fuck?” he asked.

“I”m not good with the ick,” Foil said. “The Dolltown victims were almost too much for me. Parian knows. I’d always prefer riding Parian’s dolls instead of Bitch’s dogs.”

“Wouldn’t anyone?” I asked.

“Not Bitch. Not a few other people, believe it or not.”

“You asked, now you know,” I said. “We won’t let it get that far.”

“How far does it get, worst case?” Precipice asked.

“Surgery,” I said. “To stop the cycle. Get everything out of your system. But she doesn’t like taking things that far so she holds back, I think. Authorities came after her in her apartment at one point and one guy got it bad. She got away because people were trying to help him.”

“Fuck me,” Precipice said.

“Absolument,” Chastity added.

“I’m a little scared now, not going to lie,” Candy said.

“We’ll stay clear,” I said.

“We’re close to the house,” Precipice said. He pointed.

He paused, after pointing, then created a blade of silvery light.

“Problem?”

“No,” he said. “Just realizing I’m an idiot. Just realized my blades shed more light than my phone.”

“Not idiotic,” I said. “There’s always a learning curve. And you’ve got more powers to figure out than most.”

Precipice led the way, venturing down a side-tunnel with a much steeper incline. There was no water or ice on the underside of the tunnel, which was a nice upside, but I did have to position myself to keep others from sliding or falling.

Precipice checked his phone, then looked back at me, his blade a hair away from the wall.

Quiet, I asked, “Chastity, can your body sense detect people?”

“Not much further away from arm’s reach,” Chastity whispered.

“Okay,” I said. “Candy, the lie sense, that doesn’t have any application here, figuring out if anyone’s above us?”

Candy snorted.

“She doesn’t have a lie sense,” Chastity said. “She has a hallucination power. We went over our powers.”

“I just called you a liar,” Candy said, gleefully. “You seemed a bit hesitant so I tried it, and it totally worked.”

Aroa put out a hand and Candy slapped it in a little high five.

I clenched a fist.

“Roll with it,” Foil said. “You won’t win, it’s not worth the fight. You can’t discipline them, you just… guide.”

Chastity was nodding, even though she was one of them.

“You got me,” I said.

“Yep,” Candy said.

“Emotion powers usually have some feedback aspect to them, or emotion reading.”

“Often,” she said. “Not me.”

“Okay. Because you said yours was emotionally charged hallucinations, if I remember right.”

“I have a certain amount of juice that refills over time. I can push it into people… can’t dodge it, can’t stop it. Makes you see, hear, feel, taste what you like most in the world, except it maps to everything. Makes you sick of it, really fast. If I push in a lot of juice then it’s a lot of seeing things and hearing things, tasting things and feeling things, and it takes forever to go away. By the time it does, you’ll never go back to liking that thing.”

“Or person,” Aroa said. “Or food, or experience.”

“Nathan wouldn’t let me play with his game consoles, said they weren’t for girls and girls should stick to fucking, having babies, cooking, and cleaning. I hit him with a full tank of juice because. For five days he was living his video games, and now, after, he can’t even look at a screen or touch a control, even for tv and tv remotes.”

“He can’t do much now,” Aroa said.

“That’s his own fault, and it’s not all me. But I don’t get to see whatever it is. I just know they’re juiced and I can tell where they are because I can feel the ‘juice’ while it’s stirring in someone else.”

“Which isn’t actually juice,” Chastity said. “Energy.”

“Yeah,” Candy said. “Alien too-much-happy stuff.”

“Don’t use a full tank on anyone here, okay? No matter how dire the situation is. No permanent effects,” I said.

“Can’t anyway. If I’m full up then I start brimming over and affecting people around me. I wouldn’t do that to my cousins or anyone like Chicken Little or Lookout,” Candy said. “I find people to dose.”

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t want to think too much about what that would look like. “You couldn’t push some juice up into the space above us and see if it hits anyone?”

“Good idea, but no.”

I pulled up the disc, then turned it on. The distortion wasn’t what it had been. Less bad. People were intact and moving. Both groups were in a hurry. The image distorted here and there, fluctuating.

My phone had no service. We checked with Precipice sending me a text. Again, there was too much distortion.

“Nursery’s effect is still here. I think that’s why we’re having trouble connecting to the rest of the world,” Precipice said.

“She was here earlier, then,” Foil said.

“Or close by.” I drew in a breath. “I can’t imagine them staying put here while the others are on the move. Three active teams converging on one point. Let’s get up there and see if there’s anything. It could be an empty house, the occupants could be out there looking for us. Let’s go Let’s make a hole and be ready for a fight.”

“Got it,” Precipice said.

The blade touched the wall. A square of silver light was marked out.

I punched it, Wretch active, then flew to the side.

It came down in pieces, the concrete pipe wall, then the gravel and compacted dirt above it. I could see the wood and plastic-covered insulation where the exterior wall of the house was.

I signaled, made sure the other heroes were with me, then flew forward, busting through. I moved quickly, as soon as I was through. To wall, then another wall, floor. Hallway, another room.

The place was occupied. I saw sleeping bags. I saw food. A pile of construction supplies had been made into a makeshift desk.

Footsteps behind me. Foil. Precipice was right by her, heading another direction, blades glowing in his hands.

We fanned out through the house. Empty.

Precipice, Foil and I found ourselves in an upstairs room that had most likely intended to be an office. We chose it not because it was central, but because it was undeniably Love Lost’s space.

On one of the desks, a series of bars, rods, and blades were arranged, laid out on paper with lines scratched out in something that looked halfway between an engineering blueprint and calligraphy. The layout made it clear what the assembled package would be. One of Love Lost’s claws. It looked like the claws were meant to extend into whips, which would go from razor thin to being fifty or a hundred ring-shaped razor segments compacted together into a covering over each finger.

There were computers, I noted. There were planners. I paged through one planner.

“Careful,” Foil said, as Precipice opened one laptop. “Tinker means traps.”

“It’s true,” I said.

“I can scan,” he said. “No guarantees, but it might turn up something.”

I nodded.

He slid the laptop closer to me, pulling out his phone. He attached the bulky scanner over the open socket where the camera had been torn out.

He swept it over the computer. I watched as he went over the entire room, periodically going back to Love Lost’s gauntlet. He typed something out, then held out the phone. It beeped as it swept over the gauntlet.

“How do you distinguish a trap from regular tech?” I asked.

“She’s working from a similar starting place to me,” Precipice said. “If I see something like what she makes, it should stand out like… a word in English in a jumble of random characters.”

“Traps can be mundane,” Foil said. She used a dart to penetrate a locked cabinet that was part of the desk, then stood as far away as possible, using her sword to open it.

Empty.

She approached the area with the laptop. Precipice put out a hand.

He brought his phone to the computer. As he did, it beeped.

He rummaged for a bit before finding an attachment at the side. A fake side panel. When he pulled it away, needles spilled out. I wasn’t sure exactly how it was supposed to work, but it looked ominous. They were barbed.

“Oh,” Foil said.

“Seems like the kind of thing she would protect,” he said.

He gave the room a once-over. Foil fidgeted.

“Let us work here,” Precipice said. “You focus on downstairs. Take my phone? Check for traps. If it beeps, call me.”

Foil nodded.

I let the laptop Precipice had opened boot up. It showed a login screen.

“Password protected,” I said. “Do you have a hacking thing like Lookout does?”

“No,” Precipice said. “Try… Father’s daughter two-zero-closing parentheses-number-sign. Chevron instead of space, no apostrophe, capital F, capital D, capitalize all vowels.”

I typed it out.

FAthErs^DAUghtEr20)#

I showed him. He nodded. I hit enter… and nothing.

“A checkered scarf for Ever. Capitalize each word, all vowels. No spaces this time-”

“Are you sure you don’t want to do this?”

“Let me finish the sweep. Try in the meantime, if that’s ok. Or leave it, and I’ll get to the computer.”

“I think this OS sends an alert to your phone if you get a certain number wrong.”

“She sets it to alert her phone if someone gets one wrong. It’s fine. If we pull her away from whatever she’s doing and get lost before she turns up, that’s good, right?”

I nodded.

He walked me through the next password.

AChEckErEdScArf4EVER_/#/#/#/=

The computer hung.

The OS came up. Immediately, I set to work. I brought up the wheel menu, went to the browser, and opened it up.

“There’s a password vault,” I said. “I need a single password to get things to auto-fill.”

Rain took over.

“I saw her on this computer in some of the dreams. Before our trigger. She still has it. She doesn’t look at her hands while typing, but I can feel what she types. After a couple of days of doing research with Erin and getting practice typing myself, it started clicking,” he said.

“Muscle memory.”

“Her muscles. Kind of. I could figure out what she was typing, the characters came into my head. She likes the long ones for things she wants to keep secure. The checkered scarf one is long, so this might be even longer. We could bring it with us instead of stumbling through.”

I pointed at the bottom-layer wheel. There was an icon.

“Location tracker. That can be worked around,” Precipice said. “Flip some switches, wrap it in tinfoil…”

“I’d feel better just not worrying about it,” I told him. “Can you?”

“I can try.”

He tried four variants, using no spaces, then chevrons instead of spaces, then moving on to another phrase.

While he worked, I checked the disc. The scenes were distorted, but it wasn’t as bad as before. I could make out figures reasonably well, enough to tell something from body language.

Yellow team was scrambling, but they didn’t look like they were running for their lives. Nobody limped, nobody was shouting, and when they came to a stop, they did so collectively. They would be the ones closest to Cradle, if things weren’t more mixed up than I was assuming. Tattletale was talking, and Chicken Little was nodding, hanging on her every word. They set to running again.

Red team was looking more stressed out, but they were doing less. They weren’t running. If anything, I imagined them hunkered down in a fortified area. Swansong turned her head to shout something.

The issue was that it was a thirty minute trip to get to either of the other groups, assuming my team drove. I could fly there in a shorter time. The question was what I could do to help in the now, that might help them enough that they could last another thirty minutes.

The password manager lit up. There was a list of everything the password manager had unlocked, except Love Lost used code or a shorthand only she understood. Leather, leash, quartz, catclaw, pitch, pigeon.

Quartz drew my attention, because it looked like there were six quartzes, running from Quartz00 to Quartz05.

I right-clicked it and found a ‘go to location’ option. I hit it.

The folder it took me to had a ‘read first’ file, describing the program it was meant to be used with. The six quartz files were six halves of encryption keys for six drives that were supposed to be plugged in.

I rummaged and I found them. A case beneath a set of screwdrivers. Opening it up, I saw a set of small storage drives, each in a brushed aluminum case, with a single cord laid out in the middle of the package, for connecting the drives to a computer.

That wasn’t what was especially important right now. I put it aside. Leather… family albums. Photos. I didn’t want to browse, this wasn’t a priority either, but I saw one photo highlighted because there was a preview in the sidebar. A red haired woman with a red haired daughter, an Asian man with a shaved head and a cigarette perched in his mouth. There were others of her with friends or family members. Of her on a beach. Of her in a uniform, receiving an award.

A real person. A person with a past. I shivered.

It bothered me more than it should have. I didn’t want to betray secret identities quite like this. But lives were at risk. People were crossing lines, chopping human beings to pieces and letting them suffer.

Leash was the location tracker. Having the admin password let me open it. While it was on, I could see where Love Lost’s other tech was. Her phone was on her person, and her person was… very close to Ashley’s group.

I sent a warning.

“We could pack up,” Precipice said. “Disable it.”

“It looks like disabling the location tracker means neither device knows where the other is. There’s no way to control it so we’re off but we can watch her.”

“Still.”

“Let me work a second more. There has to be something we can do to alleviate the pressure on the others,” I said.

“I trust you,” he said.

Catclaw: tinker notes, scans, files, images. Villain stuff. There were communiques there. Nothing we could use for the current situation.

Pitch. An online wallet. Thirteen thousand dollars sat in the account. A transaction list showed a long list of transactions with nothing identifying the recipients or reasons. Only amounts.

Just a matter of hours ago, sixty thousand had been moved from her account elsewhere. Twelve thousand to one account. Twenty-eight thousand to another. Ten thousand to one account, ten thousand to the same account the twenty-eight had gone to.

Each entry had a set of options by them.

I moused over, looked over my shoulder, and saw that Foil and Precipice were behind me looking over my shoulder.

“Yes?” I asked. “Any objection?”

“I don’t know if it’s going to do what you think it will,” Foil said. “But sure.”

I hit ‘contest’. A bubble came up with a list of options around the radial.

“Service not rendered,” I said, as I selected the option.

“You think it’s the mercenaries she paid for?” Precipice asked.

“And I’m guessing escrow,” I said. “To go through when the job is confirmed done.”

“That makes sense,” he said. He looked at the numbers. “Being a villain pays.”

“Considering it?” I asked, trying to sound casual, as tense as the overall situation was, as not-casual as the possibility of him turning to the wrong side might be.

“No,” he said. “It costs too.”

I nodded.

I went down the page and contested everything. I was twelve options down before I was redirected to another page.

Account suspended.

“That might tie up her ability to act for a bit,” I said. “And maybe it’ll give mercenaries out there in the field second thoughts.”

“Scary,” Foil said. “I’m going to go check on Parian and the Heartbroken. I came up to tell you we already found cash and weapons.”

“Good,” I said, but she was already leaving. I looked at Precipice. “I have a guess what pigeon is.”

I opened it up.

An encrypted email client.

There were already three warnings in the inbox about the online wallet. I looked at the most recent exchanges.

“Ryan,” I said. I opened it.

A back and forth about mercenaries, apportioning cash. Who paid what ratio. Love Lost had done the fundraising, ‘Ryan’ was doing other things behind the scenes. A ‘Jonathan’ was mentioned in passing.

A lot of talk of ‘nights’. Whose night it was. A room. Precipice.

I looked over at Precipice.

“Yeah,” he said.

Communiques with Lord of Loss.

I am happy to do this level of work because I trust you. A job done is reputation. \ ._. /
Get the job done get the pay build rapport. (E >_<)E ~(L o L ~)
My thinker has a good feeling about this :->D

“Wow,” I whispered. “That’s more horrifying than Nursery’s power.”

“No kidding,” Precipice said.

Nursery was at least somewhat sane.

I sent Lord of Loss and Nursery messages. I had to check Love Lost’s typing style before crafting it.

JOB COMPLETE. PAY WITHHELD FOR NOW. WILL DISCUSS. VACATE LYME AS WARDENS ARE INVESTIGATING VILLAIN PRESENCE.

There was a pause.

If they called, demanding answers, then there wasn’t much we could do. But if they didn’t, it was a potential chance to take two capes out of the equation.

There were already two angry emails from mercenaries. One was Lionwing. The other was an encrypted handle. Apparently their accounts had been frozen by my interference with Love Lost’s.

That seemed like an oversight to me, but the economy was a fragile and nascent, and what they were working with looked like a system built upon layers of trust.

A third angry email. Contender. My enemy with his personalized, no-powers arena.

I paged through quickly. I had to go back a week to find it – the anti-parahuman group. Love Lost had correspondence with them, setting up a meeting. Twice, she asked them to meet in person, and she was rebuffed. They didn’t want to meet a dangerous parahuman, even if they were armed.

Which meant the Lyme center, the anti-parahumans having weapons, and a few other terms.

It meant Love Lost told them her objectives.

I HAVE TWO ENEMIES WHO NEED TO DIE.
BOTH PARAHUMANS. THEN I GO.
BORDER WORLD. WE ARE AT YOUR DISPOSAL IN
TIME OF NEED BUT WE DO NOT INTERFERE. I REST.
YOU KNOW MY STORY. WHEN THE FLAME OF MY REVENGE
BURNS OUT I REST.

“She can’t,” Precipice said. “I don’t see it. I can’t envision her if she isn’t brimming with rage.”

“Who’s the second parahuman who needs to die?” I asked.

Precipice shook his head, but he didn’t respond.

“Cradle?”

“It’s possible.”

I scrolled down. From Driskey_Whinker@GIMELNET, a simple question:

How can we trust you will go?

THERE IS NOTHING I CAN SAY TO CONVINCE YOU.
YOU KNOW ME & MY FACE
THE CITY IS LOST ALREADY
IF YOU WANT IT YOU CAN HAVE IT
IF YOU WANT HELP I WILL GRANT IT AT ANY TIME
GIVE ME ARMS TO HOLD AND CLAIM MY CORNER. TO SECURE MY REST. I WILL GIVE AND I WILL GRANT IN EXCHANGE
ARMS, AMMUNITION, I SLIT TWO THROATS
THEN YOU ARE RID OF THE WORST OF US

“The city is lost,” I said. “She said this four days ago?”

Another message from ‘Driskey’.

Why do you think the city is lost? You sound mad.

MAD AND MADDENED. YES.
BUT MY PARTNER SNAG TRIES TO COMMUNICATE
I LISTEN
HE IS FAR AWAY AND HE IS CLOSE. DEAD AND ALIVE
HE SHOUTS AT ME FROM THE BOTTOM OF A WELL FILLED WITH
THE POWER OF A DESTROYED ALIEN WORLD AND I HEAR ECHOES OF WHISPERS
HE SAYS THE CITY IS DOOMED AND HE TRIES TO EXPLAIN WHY AND
I KNOW IT IS TRUE
IS THIS MAD YOU CAN WORK WITH? WE MEET AND WE TALK. YOU BRING ALL THE SOLDIERS YOU WANT. I WILL GIVE YOU NO TROUBLE. THIS I GUARANTEE. PHONE ME.

That was all there was.

“Fuck me,” Precipice said.

“You’re saying that a lot.”

“Fuck a lot of this.”

I nodded.

Nothing I could use. No sign the anti-parahuman groups were in play – if they were, we’d have to deal with them.

But it was something.

I looked around and I found paper. I scribbled down a note.

“What are you doing?” Precipice asked.

“A note. We have her family photos on this computer. I know you and her are at odds. I know she’s threatened your life. But I don’t want to play it that way. Take illicit money? Screw up her deals with murderous mercenaries? Fine. But if she wants the photos, I’ll send them to her. They aren’t hostage. They aren’t part of a deal.”

There was a pause while I scribbled it out. Precipice was silent. I underlined ‘not hostage’ on my note.

“Is that okay?” I asked.

Precipice nodded.

I penned out a final line. I said it out loud as I wrote it, “We want… to talk. Breakthrough.”

I underlined it. The willingness to talk, to communicate. If we couldn’t get there, then there was a very real possibility that Love Lost was on our shortlist of people to trap in an alternate world, not disclosing to anyone what we’d done with her.

Just… too angry. Too violent. Even in talking about rest, she talked about guns and claiming her corner. She talked about being mad. She thought she could take thugs like Sidepiece and Kitchen Sink and drag them off to a corner world, where they wouldn’t bother anyone, and she could wrangle them there?

I just… didn’t see it. We’d have to talk it over with others. Try talking to her first, to see if any middle ground was possible.

I closed the laptop and took the cords. There was a messenger bag that we could slide it into, along with the other things, including the storage drives. Precipice took the claw-whip framework that was meant to fit over a hand.

“It’s not set up with location detection?”

“Nothing my scanner sensed. Maybe there’s a ping it responds to, but for right now I think we’re okay to bring it. It’ll be useful.”

I nodded. I’d trust him in this. This thing with Love Lost, the cluster, and the dynamic, I knew he was well versed in it.

“Are we good to go?” I asked, as we headed down the stairs. I paused as I saw the cash that was gathered in bags. The pile covered a countertop that could have had three medium-sized microwaves set side by side. A mix of currencies.

There were, I noted, three traps. Two had the barbed needles. The other had something like a spring-coiled version of the claw-lash that Precipice had stolen. All three had been demolished. Foil’s power, it looked like, stabbed through and fusing to the internal components, before the shelf or drawer was removed.

“Fuck me, being a villain pays,” Precipice said.

“It really does,” Chastity said, winking at him.

“There are villains who build rep by doing something big,” I said. “Go after a big hero and win, pull off a major job. They have ups and downs, but the ups are big. The Undersiders are an example.”

“Fair,” Parian said. She was in the kitchen, rooting through cabinets. There were bricks of drugs wrapped in plastic, most no bigger than a clenched fist.

“Heartbreaker would be one of those,” Chastity said. She packed up the cash, filling bags. Precipice went to help her. “He had some low lows.”

“Yeah,” I answered. “The other kind of rep is the kind that comes with the record. Having done fifty jobs and not having any losses under your belt. Lord of Loss is one of those. He doesn’t take big jobs, but he doesn’t have anything he’s done that counts as a fuck up.”

“Why not make him fuck up?” Aroa asked.

“Because not everyone can make people do things, hon,” Chastity said. “We’re kind of unique because most of us can do that.”

“Some heroes specialize in that,” I told Aroa. “Mouse Protector was an early one that I think stuck in people’s memories. Ruining perfect records, humiliating villains, knocking them down a peg. Making their reputation the thing that gets hurt. She was a good one.”

“Dead?” Candy asked. I couldn’t even see where she was.

“Disappeared… for a good while. Turned out the Slaughterhouse Nine got her.”

“Love Lost has that reputation. She’s good,” Precipice said. “Commands more pay, I’m guessing.”

“Yeah. Are we taking all of this?”

“Free money,” Candy said, peering over the pile of cash to look at me. “And I finally get to try… cocaine?”

“Something opiate,” Chastity said. “The plastic isn’t like our plastic, either.”

“I get to try opium!”

I looked at Parian, who shook her head.

“Don’t take the bait,” she said. She was using a roll of cloth at her back as an overlarge arm, raising herself up, moving around, and checking cabinets. She was finding a good quantity of stuff that had been stored on top shelves, all the way at the back.

Taking the cash and taking the drugs was a way of gutting Love Lost’s revenue stream.

I backed off, pulling up the disc to check the status of the other groups.

Bodies in pieces. It still made my heart skip a beat.

It was… oddly intense, as far as distortion went. Why?

As the others worked, I held out my arm, the disc mounted on it like a buckler. The projected image of team yellow was visible over top, everyone drawn in miniature.

I floated back, and the distortion eased up a fraction. I could see where disparate pieces were drawing together into something more coherent, between flickers. I tried to find the place where the signal strength was best.

The others seemed okay, at least.

I heard a beep. Foil moved Precipice’s phone in front of cabinets, trying to figure out where the trap was.

“Careful,” Precipice said.

Foil raised her rapier, then pointed it at the cabinet. She let Precipice take his phone and move it around. When he’d confirmed her target was in the right location, she thrust her sword through.

Five spikes punched through the wood of the cabinet, each a foot long.

Foil’s sword shimmered slightly as she tugged it free. With a few short swipes up and down, left and right, she demolished the trap. Spikes that were four feet long tumbled to the counter, then the ground.

The cabinet was open. There was a miniature filing cabinet inside, partially damaged by the rapier’s swipes. While Chastity helped Foil take it down, Parian took the phone and started sweeping over the fridge.

I don’t think I’d be comfortable stealing food, I thought.

I was even less comfortable with the distortion.

“Is the distortion in this image not Nursery?” I asked. I indicated the projected images.

“I thought it was,” Precipice said.

I shook my head.

I moved the disc around more. This time, my aim was on finding the area with the most distortion.

A triangular closet beneath the stairs.

“Quiet!” I hissed.

All of the rustling and packing up stopped.

There it was. A dull thud. Like the heartbeat of someone catatonic, as large as the house.

Precipice raised a hand, touching his ear. I nodded.

He heard it too.

“Didn’t realize there was a closet there,” Foil said. “Suddenly glad I didn’t, because I might have opened it.”

“Is she here?” Candy whispered.

No mist, no rose color, no changes to the environment I could see.

“Can’t be,” I said, whispering so I wouldn’t disturb what was inside. “No, as near as I can figure, the chiming means she’s doing her work, setting her power into an area. The dull thuds mean the power’s there, active.”

I backed away from the closet.

“So long after she left?” Foil asked.

The door was shut. Nothing leaked out- no gas, no fluids.

“It’s sealed tight. The seal is keeping the power inside the containing space,” I said. “Don’t-”

The fridge door, ajar, opened with enough force that it banged into the wall. What lunged out was far larger than the space that contained it. A tongue but with elbows segmenting it. A length was covered in transparent skin, and the contents looked like a collection of babies, visible as shadows through a translucent skin.

Parian fended it off with cloth. It grabbed the cloth, then surged- not moving forward, but by growing new segments in a strategic way. It caught her around the face.

“No!” Foil shrieked. She leaped over the counter, rapier in hand. She was slower than Chastity.

Chastity’s hand glowed as she slapped the base of the tongue, close to the fridge. Nothing.

“It doesn’t feel anything!”

“Then get back!”

I flew in, keeping to the ceiling so I didn’t get in anyone’s way. Parian was pressed against the wall, her legs kicking, heels skidding against painted surface. Her cloth and hands found no purchase, pulling away loose tissues like layers of placental sac.

Foil’s weapon severed the creature. I caught Parian, one arm around her body, the other hand seizing her jaw, hard, because there had to be three hundred pounds of mass latched on, and if that fell to the ground in the wrong way, it would have snapped her neck.

Either way, the landing was violent enough that a trap in a cabinet we hadn’t yet reached snapped to life, punching spikes through a door.

My grip shifted to a two-handed grip on Parian’s head, fighting as the Nursery-beast flopped around violently, like a snake with its head cut off. It maintained its grip, and Parian’s body was arching under me, fighting violently.

I could have thrown up, just being near this, knowing what was happening. The fact I couldn’t bring myself to inhale or exhale, or to do anything except strain was maybe the only thing that kept me from vomiting.

Foil slashed the thing that was flopping around, cutting it in half, meaning I no longer had to worry about one wrong flop snapping Parian’s neck or tearing her head off.

I allowed myself to look. What had Foil been doing? Dealing with the stump that had been trying to crawl from the fridge. Rain had that now.

The task at hand changed. I made room for Rain as we gathered around Parian. It took two of us to pry it away from her face. Three to heave it back, to pull out the strings and knots of flesh that filled Parian’s nose and mouth.

At her ear, a tiny umbilical cord threaded to a calloused, quarter-sized lump of flesh with a nascent leg attached. At her nose, a hand was extended from a nostril, fingers twitching.

Parian’s fingers went to her throat. Gesturing. I couldn’t even see her eyes because her mask had been pulled ajar. I couldn’t use a hand to move, because I barely had a grip on the fleshy growth as it was.

Braided and branching umbilical cords. Parian gagged as Foil and I pulled.

“I can cut it,” Foil said.

“Don’t. What’s left inside will set root,” I told her.

The gagging got worse. Parian’s fingers at her own throat curled into claws, and the efforts to pull were getting harder.

There was blood. We were tearing her throat.

The grub we pulled out had to be four pounds. Proportioned like a baby.

The others came easier. A string, seemingly endless. The children apparently set to grow to size in turn, to emerge in a steady cycle. Once we had the three largest free, Parian could breathe again.

There was a heavy thud outside.

Lord of Loss.

The tiny hand at Parian’s nostril tried to maintain a grip before it was pulled backward, inside. Down through sinuses, to the back of her mouth, and out the mouth. One of the last parts to come out.

Parian flopped over, so her face was aimed at the ground. Foil held her, fumbling for a short bit of bandage from her belt that Parian could hold to her nose- blood was streaming out. Every breath came with gags.

She was breathing, but I could barely bring myself to.

“We’d better leave,” Aroa said, weirdly casual and disconnected.

“I can carry her,” I said.

Foil shook her head. She got in position, and with me giving her a helping hand, lifted up Parian, holding her in both hands.

Around us, the area was filling with the dusky rose gas. Intense, now. More than I’d seen it before.

She’d sensed us cutting it up.

Chastity and Precipice hefted bags. Money and drugs.

“Drop them if they slow us down,” I said.

Precipice nodded.

We hurried to the back door. We stopped as Lord of Loss touched a limb of overlapping white strips down by the surface.

Other door.

An impact marked him touching down there too. It was followed by him clawing at the door, pulling it free of the frame.

We backed away, past the closet door. Toward the center of the house.

“She’s not paying you, you know,” I said. “Matter of principle for a mercenary, not to work for free.”

He smiled, not giving me a response. Nothing in him faltered or showed any sign he was second guessing things. There was only resolve. Professionalism.

His parahuman allies, that were standing in the background? From Earth N? They would follow him. Nothing there would hesitate.

Nor Nursery, who stood in the background with the other soldiers. She stared at us from behind the holes in her cloth mask, and the music box plinked the most intense tune I’d heard of it, the dusky rose gas filling our neighborhood.

Blinding – 11.7

“Make you a deal,” I said.

Lord of Loss shook his head, his ‘face’ a smiling collection of metal strips. It was overlarge, looming as much as the rest of him.

“We’ve got a big, big bag of money,” I said. “We want to buy your services. You’ll get more than you will working for Love Lost, you get to keep your hands clean, and you can steer clear of the clusterfuck surrounding that group.”

“No,” Lord of Loss said. “That’s not how we operate.”

“You’re mercenaries,” Chastity said.

“We are.”

“That’s the number one thing about mercenaries, you’ll do anything for money!”

“We work for money. Rules are necessary.”

“Being able to switch sides and do the crazy betrayal thing while getting paid for it has got to be the best part of being a mercenary, and you’re giving that up!?” Chastity asked, aghast, the tension of the small army that was lined up against us adding to the extremes and modulation of her voice.

All around us, the landscape was changing. Snow was melting, heaps of it by the sides of the road that had been cleared for construction toppling and folding into itself. The wind continued to whip around us, and the air that carried that air to us made me aware of how stale it was, with something mixed into it, like an oppressive haze of baby powder or shampoos.

“We get hired, we do the job, we do it well. Rinse, repeat,” Lord of Loss intoned the words, his voice low in the way only Brutes could manage. “We keep up the rules of the game, we don’t make enemies we don’t have to.”

Others in that mob were looking ready to throw themselves at us. Nursery in particular looked ready to draw blood.

To stall, I decided to try something. “I’ll make you another deal. Talk with us. Let’s make sure we’re on the same page. If you still think that this is okay when we’re done, then we pick up where we left off. In-”

“No,” Lord of Loss said.

“In exchange,” I said. “We pay you for your time. We pass you money hand over fist to buy your time. Nursery gets more control over her area, we get nothing except your consideration.”

“Not your money to give away,” Aroa said, under her breath.

“I’m guessing it’s not yours either,” Lord of Loss said, talking past me to address Aroa. He chuckled as much as anything as he uttered, “No.”

“Did you hear what happened to the Navigators?” I asked Lord of Loss. To Nursery, I said, “Are you aware they’re putting kids in the line of fire?”

“If we talk, it’s going to be after we’ve captured you,” Lord of Loss said.

He shifted position, which prompted me to look back. Past the ground floor of the house, past kitchen, living room, and back stairwell, I could see the rear door, and I could see his bodily mass planted down there. Whatever form he wore, it was extended enough that he could cover two exits at once, and his oversized head was mobile, free to move where he needed it.

Foil, quiet up until this point, started shooting the crossbow, launching her augmented bolts. I’d known her as Flechette, back in the days when I’d thought my boyfriend, Eric, and Uncle Neil dying at the hands of an unstoppable giant lizard was the worst life was going to get. Back then, she’d had something elegant. Now she had something big.

The skewers were about as long my arm was from elbow to fingertip, tapered at both sides. They punched through Lord of Loss’ digits, where a hand or clawed foot had just touched ground to give him leverage.

He didn’t react to the pain. He did try to lift his hand up, only to jerk to a halt.

Our cue to go. I covered the rear flank as the others charged for the door. The headless spider with the crossbow strapped to its body was Foil’s mount. Parian slumped between Foil and the crossbow, leaning hard into Foil. She was, at least, managing the spider, despite her condition.

“Cut through buildings!” I told them. “Lord of Loss never seems to go indoors at any point!”

I heard crumbling and looked back. Through the narrow aperture of the front door, I could see Lord raising an oversized, clawed extremity, shedding debris. He hadn’t managed to un-impale himself or pull the needles from the stones, but he had managed to pull up the pavement.

Someone ducked underneath the hand, skidding on the ground. A cape, dressed in an all-covering orange bodysuit, who ran fast enough that they clipped the edge of the doorframe in their crazed run.

I raised my forcefield as I saw them fix their attention on me. I could fly backward without worrying too much about bumping into anything, so I kept the majority of my focus on them.

I saw them glance to one side. They aimed to go around me.

Half right. They leaped, power activating, to throw themselves at the wall. They collided in a shower of orange and amber light and sparks, and rebounded, no longer human. A swirling mass of energy.

The impact when he hit the Wretch was violent, the impact carrying through the air to scatter papers, money we hadn’t grabbed, and the washed and dried silverware that had been laid at the edge of the kitchen’s counter.

He recovered, momentum lost, clearly startled that what he’d planned hadn’t worked.

Reminded me of mom, just… bigger and spikier. Aggressive instead of defensive.

My focus was on him, so I didn’t get to see what was happening at the exit here. Precipice was stepping in, at the least.

I stared down my opponent. They were dressed like a hero from one of the old Japanese superteams, covered head to toe, hard helmet with full face coverage, a bodysuit with stretchy material with light decoration. They did have some padding, though. Elbow and knee pads-

“Need help, Antares?” Candy interrupted my observations.

“Save your juice,” I said.

Elbow and knee pads, and some chest protection that made it ambiguous if they were flat or if they had pronounced pecs. Whatever the case, armor could indicate vulnerability, either to bait, as was my case, or by accident. Theirs was too light, too built for things other than deflecting bullets or stopping knives.

They acted again. Again, a sharp, high-speed lunge, not aimed at me or at the others, but at a wall. Again, the impact, sparks and light. Post-impact, as they rebounded off, they’d become a large, whirling death ball formed of hard energy.

A stray arm of the Wretch blocked the way, deflecting them. They landed hard, sliding on the floor and bumping into a table. They wasted no time in using their power again, holding to the pattern, but glancing off of the ceiling instead. Blocking it meant flying back to get myself thoroughly in the way put me perilously close to the Heartbroken.

They were an air hockey puck. Not well suited for the direct strike, always bouncing off of something sufficiently hard and flat.

I was ten invisible people superimposed over one another, each wildly swinging sledgehammers around.

The thought, as casual as it was, threw me off. The natural hazard. It had made taking care of me at the asylum that much harder, and I hadn’t made it easier.

I drew in a deep breath, throwing myself to one side to intercept again.

The pit of despair was there, waiting for me to get too close before I had that stomach-sinking feeling that anyone felt if standing on a ledge, provided they were unable to fly. It was easier to deal with and wholly recontextualized now that I didn’t feel like someone was lurking nearby, ready to give me a shove or hem me in. But easier was different from easy.

The others hadn’t slipped through.

“What’s the holdup?” I called back.

“Spider’s too big for the door! Moving over to snake, dealing with the big guy!”

I would have provided some assistance, but I couldn’t take my attention off of the air hockey puck.

The puck leaped forward, but dropped like they were tripping over their own feet. The goal, though, was to make as straight a shot as he was capable of, lunging while close to the ground, striking the floor at a shallow angle and then going directly for our team.

I’d kind of expected it, though. My mom had done that a few times in sparring, trying to roll between my feet.

Pads meant vulnerability. The hard bit of plastic or metal at the wrist was meant to help him when post-power, skidding to a stop. I blocked the impact, mindful that I wasn’t too close to heartbroken, then followed up, chasing.

They weren’t fully recovered when I crashed into them. I wrapped my arm around them, gathering them up into a full nelson.

They stomped the ground, propelling us both into a lunge, straight for the ceiling. I used my flight to reorient us in the air, denying them the follow-up contact. Then I used my aura, my chest pressed hard against their back, the feeling emanating from me and into them point blank.

I wanted to break them, to make their efforts less strategic and more flailing. I could feel it in how they jerked and kicked, now.

They grazed furniture with a kicking toe, and again, we were propelled away, hard. I twisted us in the air so it was my back that slid across the ceiling. The paint and the ceiling’s surface cracked badly with the contact, and something on the other side pushed back. It was meaty, broader across than my back was, and it slurped.

I didn’t break through that thin layer of ceiling, and neither did the thing on the other side. Not until my enemy reached up to hit it. Paint broke, cracks spread out, and we were boosted away from it, the boost no doubt being the original intent.

I was glad it wasn’t a death-ball boost, at least.

Their power had two components. The dash, the boost, the ‘kick-off’, where they moved four or five times as fast. If they could bounce off of a solid surface as they did it, then they went full death ball, becoming a whirling sphere as tall as I was.

My goal in the now was to pump them full of emotion without saturating my own team, and to keep them from achieving their move. I kept us away from the spreading break in the ceiling, with red membrane-covered flesh pressing down against the hole, too wide to penetrate.

“Bring him here!” Chastity called out.

Him, then. I’d assume the girl from the villain family who worked with villains knew who the villainous mercenary was.

Bringing him closer to the ground came with a danger, though. If he touched the ground, he could kick off of it. I tangled my legs with his, moving us in the air so those tangled feet weren’t anywhere near the floor.

Chastity stalked closer. She raised her right hand up over her left shoulder as she advanced, and it glowed nebulously with a dark blue energy. She had to make a small hop to give herself the height to make contact- a backhand swing that caught the air hockey puck across the face of the helmet.

He was torn from my arms, slapped down against the ground. He didn’t bounce or rebound. The floor cracked beneath him, far more fragile than it should have been

My foe groaned, as he slumped down to the ground, hands going to his helmet, so he could hold his head up. The sound he made was a long groan like every single involuntary utterance I’d made while cringing about middle school me, except with the duration and volume dialed to the maximum.

Chastity raised her hand up near her face, covering the smile she wore. One of her fingernails was glowing, and a ring at one of her other fingers was catching that light in a way more intense than normal. “Bitch slap delivered.”

“Not the reaction I expected,” I said, as I floated away from the air hockey puck. “Distilled defeat, you said?”

“It looks different for everyone, but everyone reaches a point where their body can’t take anymore and shuts down, whatever the mind thinks it wants. I hurry things along,” she said. She gave the ceiling a dubious look. “Let’s get outside. Outside has to be better.”

I nodded.

“You’re going to need to protect me,” she said, waggling her hand in my general direction, the glowing fingernail in focus. Then, like she was just now remembering, “And I’m going to need to protect Precipice.”

She hurried back toward Precipice with a kind of urgency. The bitch slap target was ignored, assumed out of commission. She had a body sense, too, which apparently mapped out to anyone she’d used her power on, while also helping her aim her attacks by keeping her aware of where her potential slap targets were.

Her ‘bitch slap’ was a dangerous weapon, but a fragile one. One shot, and if the target wasn’t immune or resistant to emotion powers, then they were out of the fight. If she was more confident or powerful in her target’s eyes, it hit harder and lasted longer. The fragility, though, was that the second she was taken down a peg, the effects all broke, everyone she’d slapped down was back in play, and she ate some of the backlash.

It wouldn’t be too bad so long as she only had one foe she’d slapped down.

The others were outside, with only Candy at the door, watching and waiting for her sister’s return.

I flew outside and up to a point where I still had the house to my back but I could see over the others’ heads. We were surrounded, but they were managing. Parian had threads going out in every direction, hampering the potential attackers, Lord of Loss was having to pull a clawed extremity from the side of the house where it had been nailed down, and it looked like he was reconfiguring into a form- three giant heads and multiple arms were drawing back into a central mass.

“I wasted juice,” Candy was telling Chastity. “Lord of Loss doesn’t feel it.”

I could have told you that, I thought. That was a shame. “Nursery. If you can hit Nursery, do it. Just- nothing permanent.”

Candy looked up at me, then nodded.

As horrifying as that woman is, I thought. Foil was still assisting Parian, who was hunched over atop a spider. Her being there made using the large crossbow difficult, but Foil did her best.

The Heartbroken hurried toward Parian and Foil. Aroa got tangled in threads that Parian was manipulating, and Parian had to devote attention to maneuvering the spider, rotating it so she could see Aroa, and then disentangling her.

With the damage to her throat, it was apparently easier to use cosmic power to telekinetically fill a spider made of fabric, then manipulate that spider to turn around, than it was to twist herself around.

Lord of Loss reached out with a clawed extremity, spikes still embedded in it. Closer to his main body, that limb was unfurling, but there was still enough anchoring for it to move and manipulate things.

The claw reached, and I flew to put myself between the others and the hand. I’d block and fend it off-

The length of the arm hid a lance within it. It passed through a gap in the palm of the claw, thrusting toward me and toward the others. I used the Wretch to grab it, but the banding of white stone-like or metal-like strips ran along the length from tip to base, twisting it to give it a kind of rifling. Not something I or the Wretch could get a hold on.

Instead, while it skidded past me, scraping by the Wretch and numerous invisible, super-strong hands, I pushed it off course.

The lance dissolved. I had to maneuver to keep the strips from catching or slicing at me as they withdrew.

I couldn’t get in close, because that put me in reach of another three claws. Five claws if I considered the dissolving ones.

He’d been a mass of large faces, thin arms, and large claws. Everything about reach and perception. Or I was assuming the extra faces were for perception. It was possible it was the equivalent of a man in the jungle wearing a mask on the back of his head to confuse the tigers that wanted to pounce on him from behind.

He’d improved over the last little while. I could remember him being limited to forms. He’d spent time with Marquis, hadn’t he? And Marquis was a top tier changer, with inventive, by-the-moment adaptations.

Lord of Loss seemed intent on taking a few lessons from that playbook. I kept a wary eye out. This was brute-against-brute standard playbook, unfortunately.

I raised my voice. “They tore people to pieces and those pieces are still alive! They took pieces so those people can’t even be put back together!”

“You pulverized Valefor’s jaw,” Lord of Loss said.

“If you don’t see the distinction between Valefor and a plucky band of heroes who made it their life’s mission to stop human trafficking, then something’s really fucking wrong with you, Lord of Loss.”

“I think there are lines,” Lord of Loss said, as he dissolved into more narrow lengths. Two claws with morasses of white strips joining them to his main body gripped the house to hold him aloft. “Between Valefor and those heroes, yes. But playing fair and destroying others? That’s a clear line too.”

“He’s a monster, Loss, and if that’s what you think, why the fuck are you helping people who butchered heroes? They crossed your line!”

“My line gets drawn when I’m hired,” he said. “I can’t quit a job partway through. I’ll consider things after.”

“The damage is being done now! They’ll use that weapon or power again!”

“You think,” he said.

I grit my teeth.

I saw the silver blades appear. Precipice’s power- slicing through the air, to cut at the thickest portion of Lord of Loss’s supports.

I flew, maximum speed, to capitalize on it before the opportunity was lost. Precipice had to have decided to do it to capitalize on Lord of Loss being distracted with conversation.

Lengths of Lord of Loss’ mummy-wrapped-in-iron-bandages form extended out, encasing the parts that had been marked out with silver lines. External support.

A clawed extremity reached my way. I slammed into the palm, hoping to throw him off enough that the silver would snap and the limbs would give way.

No effect. He didn’t topple. Clawed digits of a hand larger than I was closed in around me. I spun, relying on the spinning force combined with the reach of the Wretch to ensure I had enough of a gap to get out.

He laughed.

The music box tune was plinking all around us, and as Precipice and the heartbroken hurried to stay in rough formation with the spider, I could see tracks of footprints where the snow had been pressed down, and the thin red of bodily fluids was leeching up into the compacted snow, through the slats in the road-turned-flooring.

Crimson footprints in white snow.

Snowbanks were moving, not just because they were crumpling to become misty building interior, but because they acted as suitable containers, and Nursery’s power worked by filling up containers. That included filling up living, people containers, throats, sinuses, ear canals…

Chastity had her whip out, and was using it to repel soldiers. The cracks were audible and distracting as she cleared a path for the spider to move forward. The soldiers that weren’t powered were dealing with being tugged and limited in their movements by a thousand fine pieces of thread.

The ones that were powered were the focus of Foil’s crossbow and darts. One shot aimed at a man wearing armor bands that hugged his muscular physique, with each band connected to the next with short chains. The bolt passed through armor by the ‘penetrate anything’ effect, grazed the skin, then came back into reality through use of Foil’s enhanced timing. The bolt was effectively fused to the armor it had been passing through, it retained its momentum, and it threw the the man off balance. His hand touched the road, and another bolt passed through armor to secure the armor of the forearm and armor of the gauntlet to the floorboards below.

Lord of Loss shifted position on his perch. He was making himself into the heavy-hitting centaur form, but for now the four legs and one arm were spindly, drawn overlong, to the point it didn’t look like he could support himself. The arm that wasn’t formed was expanding into a shield to protect him. At the top of his head, strips were hardening into a position where they formed a crown of braided antlers.

Where one spindle-leg punched through the roof, I could see the red mist rising. Meaty squelches and growths reached up and wound around his leg, only to break away as he shifted his footing. Umbilical cord growths reached out, groping for potential targets.

I considered striking at someone else while Lord of Loss was finishing. How long did I have? Ten seconds? Twenty? How much time to get to another point on the battlefield, eliminate the biggest problem, and still be here if I was needed to protect the others?

He might have read my mind, because he proved why I couldn’t just leave him to his own devices- he reached out with a hand, as if to point. Again, the lance emerged from within, stabbing out, rotating as it emerged this time. A hundred feet long, and the tapering point closest to me was still thick enough I could have wrapped my arms around it, if I didn’t have the Wretch to do it for me.

Again, to much less effect than the last time, I deflected the point. With the Wretch doing the heavy lifting, I was free to look back, seeing what he was aiming for.

The cloth snake flanked our group and kept a good five or six of Lord of Loss’ soldiers from approaching. It was winding through and among cars. If I were him, I would have speared the snake and flicked the cars to put them in the others’ way.

For now, I could keep it from being accurate. It struck ground close to the snake, then swiped to one side. Cloth tangled around the lance’s point, and the snake tore, losing a quarter of its total length. The thing started to deflate, and then the tail section twisted itself together, tight enough to offer a seal.

In the movies or comics, sparks would have flown as the Wretch fought the rotation and force of the lance. Here, it was only movements of cold air, some collected ice and snow shedding and falling as a deceptively gentle rain to the street below.

He drew back, his entire body pulling away to help bring his lance far enough away that I wasn’t embracing its length anymore.

He laughed. My expression behind my mask could have been stone.

I couldn’t stop it. The next one would strike home. Every time he repeated himself, he was more forceful, more consistent.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

That he was being such a gloating asshole about it made me feel worse.

Options. What are my options?

If I couldn’t deflect, catch, or otherwise influence the hit- predict the target and move them? Or something else?

Just thinking about my options helped matters, my confidence surging back… and in the wake of that, I was aware that my emotions were jumping all over the place.

Precipice. Fucking Rain.

He’d hit me with his power, after being explicitly asked not to. Why?

To signal. There was no visual indicator he was using his power.

He wanted me to act… and I had an idea what he wanted me to do. I flew at Lord of Loss. Another hit, like the one I’d delivered before, only the silver blades weren’t in place.

Even if this didn’t work, it might delay the next telescoping lance from coming out.

I slammed into Lord of Loss, and this time there was an effect. Far below, two forelegs of his centaur form were breaking. I was slower than the thrown silver blades, so Precipice had signaled me, then timed the throws to connect just before I did.

Lord of Loss lurched forward, his forward tilt and the falling legs damaging the house as they toppled. His shield came forward, the end slamming into the ground, which allowed him to avoid a faceplant. Already, his legs were reforming.

Silver blades hit the shield, and I hit Lord of Loss. The shield broke, and the broken end skidded on the ground. Where it skidded, floorboards broke and shattered, and masses beneath the floorboards began to move, disturbing them further.

It was taking two of us just to keep an Endbringer-sized breaker from getting fully put together and building up his momentum. Our team wasn’t getting away because forward progress was a slog, hampered by Nursery’s power and the soldiers that had to be dealt with one by one.

My ears rang in the wake of a blast somewhere down on the battlefield. It was one of three shots- lasers that hurt to listen to. The cape was one of Lord of Loss’s underlings, it seemed, and they were slinging blasts like nobody’s business. A flaming lob high overhead that forced our guys to scatter, then a volley of green and black spheres, that cracked like eggs and leaked out acid. Foil turned the spider-mounted crossbow around to fire, and the blaster threw something to their feet- crystal encased them, freezing them immobile within for less than a second. It was less than a second because Foil’s shot hit the crystal and both the bolt and the crystal shattered. The cape was free to fire off some more artillery-like lobs.

Foil was running out of ammunition.

Lord of Loss advanced, two of his legs unsteady, forcing him to use the end of the lance or the shield to support his weight. I circled over his head like a vulture, ready to act, and he was keeping an eye out for me. The lance moved, swiping out.

The movement of the lance produced a shockwave that threw my flying off course.

Have to be careful, I told myself. Can’t- can’t repeat the Crawler situation.

With the force that lance was swinging around with, a good hit could destroy the Wretch and produce a residual flurry of wind that would slam me into a hard surface.

Mood, I thought.

Self-doubt and regret was Precipice. Another signal.

I took the signal for what it was and engaged Lord of Loss. Again, the lance swiped past me. The aftermath was worse than it had been, pulling me into the eddy of air that followed after the lance.

I closed the distance, and I landed a solid blow. Lord of Loss began to crumble.

One-two punches. I wasn’t even sure it was possible to take Lord of Loss out of commission, but if we could slow him down enough…

The crumbling continued.

Did we kill him?

With each piece that hit the ground, more of the ‘floor’ broke, where the floor was just something interdimensional, a landscape rewrite that produced floorboards about as durable as popsicle sticks, with a whole lot of fertile meat things beneath that surface.

He emerged, a phoenix from its egg. Bird-form, built like a hawk, but with elaborate, extensive wings, and ‘streamers’ of metal strips that were more rigid than not, with sharp edges. Each pump of the wings was slow, barely matching the downward pull of gravity. Each pump was stronger than the last.

He turned human, shedding his breaker exterior, then went breaker again.

I flew to intercept, while it was still largely immobile. He didn’t try to dodge, and he didn’t fight me. With the Wretch active, I punched in, and I broke through the exterior.

I saw Lord of Loss himself. A figure, not that tall for someone who made such chronically large breaker forms. He wasn’t human, but existed instead as a nimbus of glowing strips that formed a vaguely human silhouette where they intersected most and were brightest. Where they pulled away, they became solid.

The loose strips and broken ends began to close in around me, like I was now standing in the midst of an giant’s open mouth, fangs on either side of me, fingers curling in to keep me from escaping. It was still flying, if lopsided, but that wasn’t my immediate concern.

I had to pull away. He got to keep flying.

Aroa and Chastity were dealing with the blaster of infinite variety. Aroa’s power was a blast of her own, but not the kind that was easily dodged. It was as instantaneous as lightning, and it left afterimages more than actual images, and those after images curled instead of zig-zagging, peeled off instead of forking.

She wasn’t one of the strongest Heartbroken, based on what I’d been told. Not in this kind of situation. Not with relatively short range. Her power stung people, whole-body, and it adjusted the pain response to make them like pain, whether it was from her or another source.

In another circumstance, I imagined she could be like Regent, insidious and very dangerous. Here, it was a way to distract, unnerve, and even condition an unwary foe to not want to get out of the way of danger.

Lord of Loss’s bird form took evasive action to avoid Precipice’s power. One good hit could buy me the chance to get in and take him down, since he would be unable to flap his wings, but he wasn’t inclined to allow that.

As I closed him, I saw his head turn, noting me. He veered to one side, crashing through the skeleton of a building that was only beams and girders dusted with snow and covered in sheets of ice. As pieces toppled, I was forced to back off.

We were getting bogged down. The blaster had been doing something strategic in lobbing that fire and spreading that acid. The ground had been broken, and one mass had sprouted, less of a tongue and more like a woman stretched out to ten feet in length, hairless and skinny, and wrapped up in a layered straightjacket of her own flesh and translucent, veiny flesh. Her toothless mouth yawned open as she jerked one way and the other, her attention on Candy.

Escape routes were lost to mist and Nursery’s power. The enemy’s soldiers that were still in the fight were putting up a good fight. One had a Foil bolt through the barrel of his gun, but was holding the gun by the barrel with the bolt used as a spear.

I changed direction, swooping in to go after the problem elements. Broken legs would have to do.

As I veered off, so did Lord of Loss. One could have seen it as us flying in formation, but it was the opposite. I made a sharp right turn, Lord of Loss made a sharp left.

I knew what he’d do- there were only so many destinations for him. I was faster, but he could hit harder and bigger.

He’d flown through the construction sites that littered Love Lost’s neighborhood. I did the same.

Come on, Wretch. Don’t fuck with me. If you go from grabbing shit to refusing to grab anything here, I’m going to be pissed.

The first attempt failed, as I skimmed past a stack of what looked like solar glass panels, rigged up with chains so the crane could lift them up. The Wretch didn’t touch any of it.

On the second attempt, I veered too close to the mist. The tarp I grabbed with both my real hands and the Wretch broke away. Nursery’s power had turned some of it to curtain or some shit like that, and the connection between the two halves wasn’t strong.

I could see something writhing beneath the curtain that fell aside now that the tarp was no longer attached.

My teeth grit, I circled around. The others were winning their fights but losing the war. Candy wasn’t using her power, Aroa wasn’t a gamechanger, Chastity had a tightrope to walk, and Foil was doing a damn good job considering she was preoccupied with the injured Parian, but she was still running out of ammunition.

And then there was Precipice. Rain. I looked at him, and he turned from looking at Lord of Loss, who was tracing a loose u-turn, to look up at me.

To be sure he could see me, I used my arm to point at the nearby crane.

He fired, striking at the neck of the crane itself.

Again, still flying toward my target, I indicated.

Come on, I thought. Get this right, and please, don’t let the wind jar the crane and make the neck split, because that’s not what I need.

The silver blade cut into the cable, this time.

I flew into the hook, grabbing it, activated my strength and tore it free. Multiple cables thinner than my wrist trailed behind me.

Lord of Loss was diving. He skimmed damaged buildings on his way down, and the ones touched by Nursery’s power broke apart. More holes in the ground, more meat rising up.

But he was drawing nearer and nearer to the ground now. He wasn’t going to crush anyone in the group, slamming into them with a bird form the size of a large truck. He was going to destroy the landscape and let Nursery’s things out.

A loop in the air let me catch the midpoint of the cabling. From there, it was a question of catching up. I’d turned right, hit the construction site, and now was charging in. Lord of Loss was bigger, more ungainly, but powerful, and he’d needed more time and room to turn around. Now we were roughly the same distance from the group, both flying in like jousting knights, and my teammate and allies were hunkered down near the point where Lord of Loss and I were likely to clash.

Parian was knitting her snake and spider together, forming something else. Chastity and Aroa fended off the others nearby, with whipcracks and blasts.

Precipice hit Lord of Loss across the wing, and Lord of Loss froze. He glided, not flapping, not moving, and continued his steady, inexorable descent. With his course being what it was, he would hit the edge of the road and slide alongside the group, carving out a trench.

That trench would mean no escape.

Precipice’s silver line wore off. Fresh silver blades hit. One at the head. Another at the body.

By virtue of being faster, I passed over the group, veering to one side so I didn’t brain or slash any of them with the trailing ends of the cabling, and flew straight at Lord of Loss.

The giant bird made of calcified metal strips laughed, a booming sound. Like he was having fucking fun.

I crashed into him, the loops and cabling catching him at the neck- but he wasn’t rigid. I tried to steer his whole body up, but he angled his wings to force the dive.

Futile.

Leaving the loops where they were, I grabbed the hook. I had a split second to decide what to do with it, and… there wasn’t a building or landscape feature in reach that I could latch onto. Given scale and momentum, I doubted it would have mattered.

Instead, using my strength, I impaled the one wing and hauled on it. He fought me, and it was an arm wrestling contest, with the distinction that neither of us were using our own strength.

I almost faltered, feeling the doubt creep in, knowing that a particularly violent crash with steel cabling whipping around everywhere would be worse. Then the feeling disappeared.

It wasn’t enough to steer Lord of Loss far enough away to matter. But Parian had her combined animal, almost shaped like a hand planted on the ground, with the arm extending up and out. Akin to a spear planted in the ground to stop a charging horse. Lord of Loss rammed into it and the vibration that ran through him rattled my brain, shaking my senses to the point that I momentarily lost touch with everything.

We spiraled out, and a combination of jarring impact and a cable looped around my arm kept me from flying up and away from the crash site.

I lay where I was, cold and hurting from head to toe, a steel cable draped behind me and two uncomfortably beneath me, and I thought about how I’d need to kick Precipice’s ass, after this. I knew he was trying to make Lord of Loss hesitate, that I’d caught only the edge of the effect, but he needed to put one and one together. If the heartbroken’s power wouldn’t work, why would his?

Lord of Loss was pulling himself together. I was just about as fast as he was, which wasn’t fast at all.

A silver blade hit Lord of Loss in one wing. He’d been leaning on it for support and balance, and it broke with the pressure.

I backed up, skirting the hole that Parian’s stuffed spidersnake had made as the impact had driven it into the ground. Mass was rising up, but it was enough competing parts that they were getting jammed up in the hole.

“How’s Parian?” I asked.

“Not good. We’ve been trying to get out, stick to shaker protocols-”

“Don’t fight them on their turf,” I said.

“But she covers so much ground with that power.”

I nodded, my jaw set. Fuck, I hurt all over.

There weren’t any good escape routes on foot, and I didn’t trust carrying a whole team by air. It was one thing if I carried Kenzie’s projection cube with straps. Another thing if it was a team of people, some injured.

Aroa had a bloody nose, but her eyes glittered. Chastity had three glowing fingernails. Candy-

“I still have a shot. I’m saving it for Nursery, right?”

I nodded. “Might not end the effect.”

“You could let us be taken prisoner,” Foil said. “Fly away, get help.”

I shook my head.

“Keep it in mind as a last resort.”

“Last we saw, Nursery was pissed. If I leave you, you all get the Nursery treatment.”

Chastity’s voice was low, dangerous. “I told myself I’d never have a baby. I’ve changed too many diapers, given too many baths, fed smelly food to smellier cousins and whatever. I’d sooner die.”

“Let’s not let it come to that,” I said. “And while we’re assessing what to do and what not to do… Precipice.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Panic.”

“If it was a gun or a toy I’d take it away from you,” I said. “It almost fucked me up when I tried to lasso him.”

“Sorry,” he said.

The bulge where the stuffed doll had been driven into the floorboards was opening up now. The bits of flesh that had been competing for space at the edge of the hole were now rising tall. One reached out to start pumping seeds into the ear of one of Lord of Loss’s soldiers. Another started trying to feed on the stuffed animal. Futile. The stuffed creation fought and smashed until it was pulled down.

Others were creeping out, trying to seize on fallen soldiers. All together, they stopped, leaving those soldiers alone.

“She’s here,” I said. They’ll be controlled instead of acting animal.

“She’s there,” Aroa said. She grabbed Candy by the shoulders, spinning her around.

Candy blew a kiss.

I couldn’t see a result, aside from a stagger on the distant Nursery’s part, where she stood by a building. But I felt a general change in the movements of Nursery’s creations. Some started groping for unconscious and injured soldiers again.

“Two out of ten,” Aroa said.

“I don’t trust your reviews,” Candy said.

“If you want to pose while using your ability you have to do way better than that.”

“You’d lie just to make me feel bad because you get your-”

“Focus,” Chastity said.

“Okay. But I’m out of power, just so you know. I hit her with a quarter tank of happiness oversaturation.”

The battlefield was Nursery’s, even if she wasn’t in control; she was keeping one hand on her head and looking around in alarm, but she was still creating mist. Any hard impacts broke the ground and released monsters.

Lord of Loss, immune to those monsters, was stomping around, tearing everything up. Some of his soldiers were still there at the edges.

I had to digest the flow of events, scouring my brain to think of how we were supposed to get out of this.

I surveyed the battlefield, where Lord of Loss was near the center, standing tall again, not any worse for wear. The ground was room temperature with stale air, the air above cold, and the two combined to make something that was the worst of both worlds, reeking of blood and bile. Tentacles, tongues, and skin-straightjacket women were standing out from the ruined landscape, others were moving beneath the cracked floorboards to the point that those floorboards bulged or oozed with meat. The stuffed animal that was losing its fight against the meat.

“I think I get how your power is really supposed to work,” I said.

“Mine?” Rain asked.

“Who else?” I asked. “Listen carefully, because whether I’m right or wrong, this is going to suck.”

Blinding – 11.8

“If you’re right then I’m a big fucking idiot,” Precipice said. “That’s supposed to be a pick-me-up? Good news?”

“No,” I said. I was going to follow up, but I didn’t get a chance.

“That’s not right at all! You have to look on the bright side!” Candy said, with enthusiasm, her eyes flitting this way and that as she took in the extended constructions of flesh that ringed the area. There was an edge to her voice that betrayed her alarm at the situation. “If she’s right, you’re a secret genius.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Precipice said.

“Very very secret,” Aroa muttered. “The kind of secret that people might notice in a hundred years, if they cared enough to study you. Which they don’t.”

“Closer,” Precipice said.

I shook my head, focusing more on the battlefield than anything. Lord of Loss was pulling himself together, his thugs gathered around him. Nursery had her own backup, but she wasn’t doing so well with them or at all. Half my reason for hanging back in the now was to see if any cracks formed that we could exploit, there.

Then again, we had to keep the cracks from forming on our side too. Foil was focused on Parian, the kids were scared. Precipice was about as unsure of himself as any teenage boy would be, dealing with mercenaries hired by the woman who wanted to kill him, after having spent the latter part of the evening having his head screwed with by an attractive girl. I tried to reach out, “Precipice, if you’re agreeing with Aroa, the girl who said she laughs when old people get hurt-”

“Babies or old people, really,” Candy supplied. Aroa pointed a finger at her cousin without looking at her, nodding.

“-then you might be being a little hard on yourself,” I said.

“I’m an expert at being hard on myself,” Precipice said. “It’s either that, or I’m the biggest asshole alive, and I’d rather hate myself than be an asshole.”

Well, not a lot I could say to that.

Chastity, though, was entirely on the ball when it came to rebuttals. “Alternative, Precipice mon chou? Find someone else and show them how hard you can be for them. Having an external pressure release can be very nice.”

Precipice turned his head her way.

“I did not mean me, but I’m flattered,” she said, laying a hand over the triangle of cleavage she’d left strategically in place, with an amused tone that told me she’d wholly meant to imply herself. “I meant our big man there, or the sea of horrific baby-makers that are waggling themselves at us as we speak.”

“Sorry,” Precipice said, apparently one hundred percent believing her. “Yeah, that sounds like a good temporary plan.”

“It helps that Lord of Loss has a punchable face,” I said. “Help me punch it.”

He created a silver blade in his hand.

“That’s part of it,” I told him. “What we just talked about? I need you to use your power. We’ll try it out.”

“Are you fucking serious?” he asked. “Now?”

“When else?”

“In a safe, controlled training environment?” he asked, with a tone like he was almost angry. Incredulous. A part of it was probably that I was reversing course on things I’d told him again and again.

“Fun fact,” I said. “Powers don’t tend to jibe with safe and controlled environments. For every cape that I know who picked up a trick in PRT labs or whatever, there are ten more who figured their tricks out because they had to. You want to make it work? Field test, be confident, be creative.”

“How many tried to pull something inventive and got their asses kicked?” Precipice asked.

“Lots. But our alternative is that if we don’t up our game then we get our asses kicked here, now. The way this is going we’ll have to surrender or get captured, and we’ll have to deal with a woman who will probably impregnate us as an alternative to handcuffs and a guy who’s so unreasonable he thinks smileys should be appended to every sentence in an email. Not even good ones.”

“If we surrender, they arrest us, not you,” Foil said, her voice low. I hadn’t been sure she was with us at all, she’d been so quiet. “You fly away, get help.”

I looked at her- I would have locked my eyes to hers to read her expression, but she wore a fencer-style opaque pane that covered her face. Her costume was form-fitting, sleek and stylish because of course it had to be when she was partnered with a fashion designer, but that costume was normally adorned with a fanned-out array of spikes where the javelin-like bolts were in her quiver, darts mounted at her forearms, hips and thighs where she could grab them. Most were empty now.

“How is she?”

Parian coughed, hoarse, and her shoulders and arm drew together at her upper body. A length of cloth moved telekinetically, crossed under her mask, wiping her mouth, and came away bloody.

She gave me a thumbs up. Foil, by contrast, was rigid, stricken.

“Foil. We deny them what they want and what they want is you. That’s the job. You and the Heartbroken focus on finding an escape route. Get clear. If you can’t, you focus on keeping anyone else off of Precipice’s back, so he can help me.”

“Okay,” Foil said. She gripped the handle of her rapier with both hands, even though it was a one-handed weapon.

She was in shock as much as Parian was, if not more, but she was pulling herself together in a visible way now that she had strict orders. She wouldn’t be someone who had lived through six Endbringer encounters and the end of the world if she wasn’t.

“Do your best,” I told Precipice.

“Do my worst, you mean?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Nursery wasn’t accepting the help of her henchpeople, but getting to her wasn’t easy either, because her power was thickest closer to her. Lord of Loss was hunched over, his outer body in a state of change where he was all over the place, half-falling apart. It looked like as good a time as any, but appearances were deceptive.

My eye fell on the cabling that Lord of Loss had shucked off and left on the ground.

“I’ll be going where Lord of Loss is now. Be ready. We all move at the same time.”

Precipice nodded.

I took off, not flying for Lord of Loss, but at Nursery. The group started running, the Heartbroken and Undersiders heading the opposite direction from Lord of Loss. Precipice hung back a bit.

Nursery was aware of me, it seemed, and the wreath of moist appendages drew in closer to her in anticipation, spooking her henchpeople. A loud noise to my right marked Lord of Loss taking action.

He emerged like a cannon shot. Nursery-modified building skeletons crumbled as Lord of Loss scampered forward, almost running on the walls. A wolf drawn out in a spindly, sleek way, a face like a spear-head, feet like spear-points. Bands were gathering out and unfolding, bulking him up as he ran.

Much as the bird had first appeared from the failing other form, Lord of Loss had been maintaining that in-the-works, haphazard construction as a feint, while forming a denser real body within.

That was fair. I’d gone after Nursery as a feint, too.

I flew down, diving, to hit the ground hard, and the section of road that had turned to floorboards shattered beneath the Wretch as it hit. Flesh beneath bruised and gouged, and it was that flesh that provided the real stopping power.

Hitting something hard provided the momentum for me to stop, so I could immediately fly the opposite direction, with an emphasis on immediate, because the gory impact was immediately followed by tongues and probosci trying to close in around me or latch on.

Even with the sleek form, Lord of Loss was slower to adapt, to turn. It was similar to the bird, which had needed to take wide turns to fly. It was still building in mass and scale, the spear-feet becoming paws as calcified metal strips folded and wrapped around. He was aiming to win on the raw power front, and by outlasting me.

I landed at the safest point in the bloody mess around Lord of Loss’ landing spot, where flesh bulged and overlapped. The primary threat I had to consider was a braid of umbilical cords with tiny faces peering out between the gaps. I kept one eye on it, and almost missed the other, independent cords that were peeling up and away, trying to sneak their way to me.

The primary threat. There were others. Lord of Loss had moved quickly, escaping the remains of his prior form, but his soldiers had been gathered close and they hadn’t moved far. Their focus had apparently been on getting clear of the worst of Nursery’s power, not on getting to a good place for stopping me or the others.

Problem: two had guns.

“Can’t be worth it!” I raised my voice. “Throw down your weapons!”

They didn’t. The only reaction I got for my trouble was from the umbilical tendrils, which seemed to hear the noise and turn my way.

I chose my course so the one large braided mass was between me and the gunman with the best angle to shoot at me. Rather than fly around, I flew straight at it. I hit it with the Wretch and struck it down with a direction in mind. It slapped hard against the ground nearest one guy with a gun, shattering his footing.

I flew after him, ignoring my main objective for the moment.

The kind of shooting most people practiced was shooting while at the range. Feet planted, shoulders square. Not possible when three-quarters of that person’s footing and immediate surroundings were uneven fields of meat that wanted to pump them full of fast-gro mutant fetuses.

I hit the ground hard, just to the one gunman’s right. They didn’t even pop off any shots as I made the approach, because they were focused on not getting sucked into the meat. My landing broke more of the flooring. If he’d been on an isolated section of ice in the middle of a frozen lake before, he was standing on ice cubes now.

“Drop it,” I told him, as his eyes widened and he realized his predicament. I reached for his wrist and he didn’t fight me or try to get away.

The gun tumbled from his grasp.

Immediately, I took off, gripping him hard around the armpits with one hand, my other hand at his arm. It was a precarious hold and he seemed to realize it, because he made a prolonged, frightened sound that wasn’t quite wail or whimper. More of a ‘murrr’.

He was my human shield as I flew at the other gunman. I let go of him, and I let him crash into the other guy. Floorboards beneath them cracked but didn’t break like eggshells. The building between this spot and Nursery had probably absorbed the worst of the mist.

I half-floated over to them, half-stalked. With one stomp, I put the gun through the floor and into the meat.

“What the hell kind of money are you earning, that you’re willing to put up with this?” I asked. “You know one of your buddies got a fetus stuck in their ear, right?”

“Not money,” one of them said, crawling backwards to get away from where the ground was bulging, a soft wet mass crowning at the aperture. “Homes.”

“Homes?”

“On a safe world. Big houses with two servants each. Room for our families.”

I could hear Lord of Loss making his approach. The building next to us shuddered, steel girders disintegrating and bending beneath Lord of Loss’s mass.

“Next time, throw down your weapons. It’s not worth it. Someone else would have killed you.”

“If we die, our families still get the homes.”

“If they get those homes-” I started. Lord of Loss reached the edge of the building, metal screeching as it crumpled beneath him. He looked down at me. “-they’ll be living somewhere under the thumb of a guy who would throw away their loved ones without a second thought.”

“He has second thoughts,” one of the ex-gunmen said. “He was clear about the rules. The job comes first.”

“He’s better than others,” the other said.

Lord of Loss leaped down. I flew back around the corner to where the braided umbilical thing had been.

I wanted to have a long, long discussion with them, but I wouldn’t get that chance. When this was all over, we’d either be in Lord of Loss’s clutches or we’d be hurrying to help the other groups.

I really hoped for the latter.

In the lot, the braided umbilical thing was rousing, finding added length as it broke free of the container that had been Lord of Loss’s body. A tendril with a draping of placental sacs was reaching in from the building Lord of Loss had damaged with his weight, and the ground was dissolving into a morass of reds, pinks, and layers of veiny translucent films.

I flew to the only area where the ground was semi-solid and the cable still aboveground, seizing up the length of metal in my gloved hands. It jerked to a stop and the ice-crusted metal scraped against my gloves, tearing cloth. I tapped into my super strength to get the power necessary to pull the rest of the cabling and hook free of the meat that had gripped it.

Lord of Loss prowled, hopping up to a nearby building to skip over the pool of crimson, past the groping sea of meat.

Alright, I thought, as I gripped the cable in my hands, feeling the Wretch periodically bat at it and grip it. I clenched my jaw. Hit me.

Lord of Loss chuckled, padding his way forward in the body of a burly wolf made up of overlapping strips of white. The strips mingled at the spine, forming an uneven spiked ridge. Where his feet set down, the ground broke and bled.

This is a stupid idea.

I cocked my head to one side.

Hi Rain, I thought.

I was aware of what he was doing, and instead of getting out of the area or getting angry, I kept my jaw clenched, and I endured it. I made sure the Wretch had a grip on the crane’s cabling that we’d cut free, and then I spun, swinging the hook around.

Lord of Loss leaped, first up to the side of a building, then at me. Aiming to get me before I could get the momentum sufficient to turn the hook into a means of real damage.

He was still confined to physical form, and bound by laws of physics. Where his breaker form distorted rules was in allowing his sheer mass to stay functional, and in altering how he worked when he repeated actions.

I flew under the arc of his jump. The timing was wrong to bring the hook to bear, but I could swat at him with the ends of the cables. The hook had a pulley that was apparently locked, and four cables extended from it. I had one cable firmly in my grasp, another in the Wretch’s grasp, but as the hook turned in its arc, the cables I wasn’t holding swung out on their own.

They’d been cut clean, and they were razor-like at the edges. Sparks flew as they struck across his underbelly and back legs.

Not good enough.

Rain threw a silver blade, and it clipped Lord of Loss in the moment he landed.

I followed up, still spinning. The hook came down, while Lord of Loss was still marked by the silver blade.

He hopped out of the way, and the hook carved a line through floorboards. I saw the silver flare in the moment he finished his hop. Slats began to extend and unfold, patching the injury.

He twisted, angling himself like he was going to leap to another building as a springboard to come at me again. He didn’t. He leaped sideways, twisting in the air, one shoulder partially unfurling to extend my way, claw breaking apart to be half as dense, the points twice as long.

I tried to bring the cable around, holding the midpoint and catching him with the cable-ends on the approach and the hook on the departure. I only managed the former. Too fast, too much momentum, and I had to get away from those extended claws.

The damage was less than minimal. Too choked-up on the grip- like I was swinging a baseball bat at someone and trying to hit them with the end closest to my hands.

No.

He was building up the strength of his lunges faster than I was figuring out a means of attack.

This sucked. Every bit of it sucked. It sucked that Lord of Loss had more cachet with regular people than we did. It sucked that this neighborhood was a nightmare, and someone was going to track the damage, blame all parahumans, and it would land in our laps before it even touched Lord of Loss.

Just like the community center.

Win the battle and lose the war? It pissed me off that with this asshole, we didn’t even get to win the battles and we still lost the war. He lucked out, he got a good power, and he leaned on consistency, doing jobs both small and big, building up a reputation, and never having cause to lose it.

Meanwhile, those of us who were trying to salvage things and manage a bad situation were getting kneecapped. The public turned against us.

It was petty, it made me a smaller person, but I wanted to hurt his smug-ass face and knock him down a peg. Take away that consistency and knock him down a peg.

And it galled me that it probably wouldn’t work. At best we’d eke out a draw.

Momentum was key, so long as I was using the cable. The Wretch was grabbing and plucking at the cable, which threw off the rotation a bit, but enough arms and teeth were holding on to keep my weapon firmly in my grip.

Anticipate the approach, assume he’ll time his attacks to avoid the hook-

He did. I tried to maneuver myself in the air, to bring the hook around faster, so I could catch him, and I failed.

Not good enough.

I was starting to feel the accumulated effect of Precipice’s power. It was like being on the basketball court, a thousand eyes watching me, and failing. Failing in the eyes of my parents, failing in the eyes of my boyfriend, my sis-

Failing.

This wasn’t as simple as a hard shove in the direction of a second trigger. I was pretty sure I didn’t qualify. Second generation capes triggered ‘easier’, but there had never been a second generation cape who’d second triggered. Whatever resources the power devoted to passing itself on seemed to rule it out, and I doubted the universe would be so kind as to let me be the first. It would be too easy.

Multi-triggers were in the same boat. Which might have been the universe being kind, given how many were lined up against us right now.

Lord of Loss was prowling below, changing himself in little ways. He chuckled, a low sound that reached me up in the air. Right. I couldn’t retreat into cape geekery as the normal defense mechanism.

No, the only way to deal with this was to fucking deal.

I kept the hook spinning around me in loose circles, experimenting with passing it from hand to hand, with trying to find the balance between using my strength to keep it moving and maintain my grip and not having the Wretch in a position where it was hurting more than helping. Here and there, the cable slipped against my hand, metal edges cutting at the fabric. Tough fabric, but it was a lot of wear and tear. Past a certain point and it would be cutting my hand.

This was a losing battle. Every pounce and lunge he made was stronger than the last. Because of his physical configuration, and because the power source he was drawing on as part of his breaker form was aligning to fire all engines in the right directions and ways.

For now, we were at an impasse. If given the chance, I could go after Nursery. If given the chance, he could go after the others. With the way he grew, he would soon reach the point that he could catch up to them in one or two lunges, then be back here in a third in time to keep me from taking Nursery hostage.

They just weren’t making enough progress. I wasn’t doing enough damage. This whole fucking thing wasn’t enough.

The cable slipped in my hand. It caught on the bandage at my burned hand, which pulled at yet-unhealed flesh. Pain lunged up my arm, and I almost dropped the apparatus.

Layered injuries and stupid moments of failure. I felt like I was under the watchful eyes of my mother, being treated with kid gloves by Uncle Neil, and having my moods tolerated by Dean at the same time I knew that mood was unreasonable, all at once.

I felt shitty.

You’re better than this, I told myself, and the voice in my head was my mom’s, my uncle’s, an Dean’s, all at their most critical and condescending.

I went on the offensive. Lord of Loss hopped to one side, more nimble and quick than he’d been when he’d first emerged as a spear-throw of a wolf from the husk of the bird. Throwing off my timing.

And my timing was thrown. I tried to adapt, pulling back hard, strength active, to shift the arc of the hook. He hopped again, easily avoiding it.

I didn’t let up this time. If anything I had to break his momentum, force him to adopt a new form and a new course of action. I flew in, kicking.

He pulled his head away from the kick, retreating. I shifted my course, pulling the slack in the line taut, and let the current momentum of the hook finish its rotation. It smashed him in the right shoulder and then carried on to hit the ground by his left forelimb. He hopped, three-legged, to get back, already regenerating by morphing his form.

Still not good enough.

“I got advice once, that I should pick some forms and stick to them,” he boomed. A man’s voice spoken from a body made of energy, at the heart of his form, magnified out by the shell he’d encased himself in. “Then new advice, from your uncle, I think he is? To experiment, diversify. Think outside the box.”

Marquis.

He chuckled. “I had a little help, to ease the learning curve.”

“Then you fucked up,” I told him. “There isn’t a single person I can think of who could do that for you, that wouldn’t be a huge mistake.”

“You don’t know enough people,” he boomed. Talking down to me.

Smug asshole.

“I like this. Experimenting and testing out my new approach. Thank you,” Lord of Loss uttered it with a chuckle. Fucking gracious and fucking magnanimous. “I’ll go easy on you in exchange.”

Well, if I’d wanted something to drive this sensation home, being condescended to would do it. I built up the hook’s momentum again, passing cable from hand to hand. Here and there, the little fuckups, that Precipice’s power drove home. A loss of momentum. A bad timing of the Wretch. Better to do two sharper half-circles with a pause between them- a long ellipsis rather than a circle. It let me switch the Wretch off and on.

I was sweating, my jaw hurt from clenching it. This was hard, demanding focus while he did everything effortlessly.

This sucked.

I was a second or two away from feeling like I had the momentum necessary to deliver a good hit when he leaped in the direction of Precipice’s group.

I flew after him, and saw him veer to one side. Claws latched onto the wall of a building. Going up, gripping-

I shifted course.

-and he bounded off of the side of the building, collapsing a part of the construction as he sailed upside-down toward me.

Again, the hook struck him. This time it was across the face. The impact changed his orientation and gave me the opportunity to strike out, kicking. I remembered the lessons I’d had learning to fight while airborne, and applied them. Rotation was key, and my rotation was helped by the fact that the hook’s weight was pulling me one way. Wretch active, heavy blow delivered.

The Wretch broke and I had to pull my hands away before the cable tore right past my hands and shredded them. Wrong timing. The only saving grace was that I’d just delivered a heavy hit, and all of the momentum was gone. Cables swung through the air and the damaged hook and pulley combination tumbled end over end.

I caught it. Not a great catch.

Rain had stopped for a second before resuming the use of his emotion field. I wasn’t sure why. I looked back, and saw he wasn’t that far from the building Lord of Loss had used as a springboard. Dangerously close.

Lord of Loss wasted no time, lunging again, though he hadn’t fully healed. Catching me before I could get my momentum. I tried to hit him and I failed.

He caught my cable, forcing me to either go with him or lose my weapon.

I went with him. I let him pull me down, then added my flight to the downward momentum. The Wretch and I slammed into him, turning what had been a landing into a crash.

While the Wretch was inactive, I used the cable to bind one leg to snout. The moment the Wretch was available, I hit him again.

Something seized my foot. Beneath Lord of Loss was a pool of gore-slick floorboards and scattered pastel-painted furniture. Reaching from that wreckage was another tongue, though this time without elbows. Instead, it was covered in polyps.

Not polyps. Tiny heads and limbs. They had me by the calf, and groping fingers, hands, and gummy mouths were working at my boot. One head bulged, swelling overlarge as another mass was pumped through the tongue and out the mouth, into the top of my boot.

I shook it free before it took root or whatever. The mess in my boot was still wet, creeping down toward my toes, but the larger mass had fallen free.

I roped the tongue to Lord of Loss’s leg with more cable, before delivering the heaviest hit to him I could. The timing of the hit was off, as he lurched to an upright position.

You’re forgetting your lessons, I told myself. You had this exact same sensation as you tried to spar with Uncle Neil, and he recovered too quickly.

You’re better than this, I told myself, with the voice of everyone I’d disappointed, and a dark, joyless feeling in my gut. Swimming uphill, drowning. Falling. Suffocating under disappointment.

Timing, I thought, as I hit out. Account for who I’m fighting. Keep my grip on my weapon…

He reared up, limbs up in a flash, then coming down just as quickly, like a half-dozen guillotine blades with a truckload of weight driving them. I flew under.

Remember the lessons Uncle Neil taught you about fighting, and stay inside their reach.

I flew to the underbelly. Nursery’s growths reached up to me. Slats like blades were above me. To my left, the tongue, bound to one limb by cables. He was shrugging off the cables.

I flew to the looser section of that cable, so I caught one at my shoulder. The Wretch absorbed the impact as it pulled short, but it didn’t extricate me. The cable pulled against my shoulder, and I spun in the air, hard. My arm throbbed.

I’d killed the tongue, pulling the cable tight enough against it to cut it in two.

You’re better than this, I told myself, and it was a condemnation. A feeling that had followed me all my life. You have so much potential, my teachers had said. But if I focused on friends my teachers would point it out, saying I needed to focus on my schoolwork. If I focused on my school, I lost friends, got called stuck up. If I was Glory Girl I was neglecting my life in the daylight hours and if I was Victoria then I was neglecting my dreams. If I separated the two then I fell to pieces and if I commingled then I fucked that up too. That was when I couldn’t be sure if my friends were with me because me or because I was a superheroine, and when my mom had to tell me to take my headphones off or correct how I dealt with the public.

A silver blade caught Lord of Loss. He turned to go after Precipice, and he was strong enough in his bounding that I had trouble keeping up. He got faster with every few paces.

So much fucking potential, I told myself.

There had been very few people who had apparently accepted me as me. Two. One had made me her plaything before discarding me, and-

Rain’s power enhanced that stab of guilt that came in the wake of a thought I knew was unfair, glossing over context for the sake of absorbing the brunt of the hurt.

-and the second was Dean, and I’d let him die.

I plunged, driving my foot toward Lord of Loss’s tailbone, to drive his hips down and break his stride. He dodged me, and I shattered floorboards instead.

I flew straight for him. He had lost momentum, as part of that change in direction.

The cable was still partially wrapped around him, caught on slats and ragged edges of his white metal strips. I could see those parts moving, even pushing the cable out.

I pushed myself a little further, to reach that cable, to not allow him to so deftly dodge. Expect it.

My hands caught the cable. The Wretch gave those hands strength.

My hands at the cable at lowest point of Wolf-form-Lord-of-Loss’s chest, I hit him with Wretch and pulled the cable taut.

He retaliated. I hit him as he did it, before flying inside his effective reach.

I found the hook, dangling off the side of his neck. I hauled on it. It hadn’t worked with the bird, and I could remember Precipice’s power catching me as I’d failed to alter Lord of Loss’s flight course. Failed to alter it enough.

This time, at least, I could haul his forelimbs off the ground, denying him leverage.

With back legs, he hopped.

I hit him while he was in the air, to throw him off course, and to alter the rotation of his body. It was slight, but while the Wretch was gone, I could fly around, unwinding the cable.

Retrieving my weapon.

I didn’t use the full slack. I wanted the ability to move tighter. To bring the hook around faster. I hurled it around me as I dove.

He landed, all four limbs back on the ground. He wasn’t on the ground for a second before I hit him again. The hook and pulley assembly came down as a dense fifty or sixty pounds of metal, a punch to follow up the diving kick.

“Nice!”

“Shut the fuck up!”

He started reconfiguring. I saw parts that had been gradually moving around his exterior stop moving.

Timing, I thought. I brought the hook around in another tight swing. He leaned back, I flew in. The distances and trajectory of the hook lined up. A heavy blow to his neck.

He swung. Dodge better. I ducked under the sweep of the claw – now more of an arm.

It wasn’t a major factor. It was a factor. Making the lessons learned in the midst of the fight a little more pointed. Driving them home.

Regret and shame were our mind’s way of teaching us, and Precipice instilled a kind of regret, a kind of shame.

A bitter, black kind of schooling. One that could go awry so easily, because the things we felt shame over weren’t always the most accurate.

I hit him twice with the Wretch and twice with the crane hook before he got me. He spiked me down into the ground, and floorboards shattered. In an instant, I was mired in gore.

A hand slipped between my mask and my mouth, and it was moist, soft and boneless. A tiny finger hooked at my eyelid, pulling down hard enough that my chin was hauled to my shoulder.

The hand at my mouth swelled, a thumb pressed against my lips, then a golf ball, swiftly and almost instantly becoming the size of a softball. It burst, flooding my nose with fluid that tasted like sugar water mixed with urine. The sensation, my head tilted back, fluid flowing straight into the sinuses and throat, it prompted a sudden, involuntary, whole-body reaction, my back arching.

Fierce enough that even though it was fleeting, it kept me from noticing the initial push of solid mass at my mouth.

Like containment foam, I thought, grasping for safety in the midst of horror. Like taking a drink of water and finding a slug in it sliding right past the tongue, except not water, and the slug didn’t end- it branched, twisted around itself, and varied in texture.

Straight to the back of my nose, punching the soft flesh there, straight down my throat, like a slug followed by a fist followed by a knobby arm with too many elbows, all wreathed in slick, loose flesh.

All growing to a dangerous size in the time it took me process what was happening. To process that another was at my fucking boot again, for some fucking reason.

I flew backward and away. Using flight to give me the initial tug, to get things moving the opposite way.

Lord of Loss caught me in the air before the tug happened.. My head dangled, the growth still attached.

“Good effort,” he said. “Let’s go find your friends.”

No! Bad effort! Fuck you! Panic tinged my thoughts. There was a growth just behind my collarbone, in the midway point of my throat, that I could feel growing to size and stretching things there. I couldn’t breathe, I-

Air pushed into my lungs. I could see openings in the growth that connected to me widening and closing as it sucked in air and supplied it to me by some column or tube in the midst of it all.

Which didn’t help the fact that it was still expanding inside my throat like it was going to tear everything internal to pieces. I thought about using the Wretch in my panic, them remembered that if it tore the growth in half, then one half would be inside me, not retrievable without surgery.

I would not go to a hospital like that. I would not see those looks on the faces of medical staff. I wouldn’t be a sideshow. Not again. I’d sooner go out fighting.

In the distance, Rain created a blade of silver. I saw him throw it.

Lord of Loss didn’t move, nor did the growth. The blade sailed through the air, missing us completely. It hit a distant building.

Fuck you, Rain!

I tried to pull away, which triggered my gag reflex. The only effect was that gorge rose in my throat and squeezed into every gap, burning my throat where it rested. The ‘breathing’ of the growth gurgled in that small amount of fluid.

Another two blades appeared. Rain threw one- aimed at the growth this time.

Lord of Loss shifted position, putting his own body between the blade and the growth. It hit him.

I hit him. A kick, strength active. It was enough to do damage, but the damage wasn’t enough to change things.

Rain threw for the third time. A scythe cutting through the air, traveling end over end.

Lord of Loss took a step to the side, so it would miss.

With abdomen and flight, I kicked out, bringing my foot up, catching the growth and repositioning it.

The blade caught my leg and the growth.

The growth swelled in my throat again, and this time the swelling forced it down, moved the whole mass. I brought the leg with the silver line on it back to kick-

Lord of Loss gripped the growth and pulled- enough to break it where the line had caught it. I could feel some of the strength go out of it. Slowing it down, reducing some of the immediate swelling, which also had the effect of causing the gorge in my throat to sink, not quite swallowed. The gurgling was worse, and I couldn’t breathe in the moment, even with the apparatus inside me.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said.

Staring him down, I brought my leg back again, to kick him.

He caught me with another clawed hand, around the pelvis, limiting my movement.

I still had the chain in my hand, for all the good it did. I had the growth in my throat, two hands gripping me awkwardly, simultaneously too gentle and too constricting, covering my body from shoulder to mid-thigh.

No choice.

I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the swelling at my nose, that felt like it was going to expand until my nose was just a hole a baseball could fall through.

I used the Wretch. I felt it expand around me, pressing out, clawing at Lord of Loss. I felt the grip loosen slightly.

I dropped, slipping free.

“Aha!” he said, almost happy. “So that’s your forcefield. I was having trouble putting it together.”

The Wretch grabbed and tore at the growth that was still jutting from my face, just as I’d feared it would. In an instant, before I could react or realize just where and how fiercely it was gripping the appendage, flesh was torn away and I was left with four to six inches of raw, slippery flesh outside of my mouth, and what felt like three feet of flesh inside.

I flew up, twisting in the air to find an orientation that would let the thing fall out. It didn’t. Instead, there was only the sensation that when it came out, a sock of windpipe would be dangling past my teeth. That was the grip it had, the expansion within my throat.

I still held the cable, and in an effort to hold onto it, I wrapped my legs around it. I let cable slide through my fingers in fits and starts, the weight of the barely-intact hook pulling it down.

I found the end, and I had to fumble with fingers wrapped in bandages and gloves that had been shredded over the course of the fight. I found the individual bands of metal that made up the cable, and I tore.

A thinner length. Bendable. I wrapped it around the stump of flesh.

Don’t tear.

The hook was too blunt to use. But a tight binding of metal served to give me a grip where I wouldn’t have otherwise had one.

With a burst of strength, I pulled it partway out.

Don’t break.

I used more Wretch-strength, and pulled again. Another two inches of progress.

Every pull threatened to see it go to pieces, or to have one piece drop off and settle somewhere inside me.

I hauled on it once more, and this time, the lump returned to my throat, impossibly large for how narrow the passage was. I was forced to pull- and in doing so I stopped being able to breathe.

In the darkness and the cold, high above Nursery’s mist, where up and down no longer mattered, and the entirety of my reality was confined to a few feet of foreign flesh and the Victoria-flesh that surrounded it, I pulled it out by half-inches, now.

The gag reflex helped and hurt. Because each retching was movement out, but the involuntary swallowing and the way my throat seemed to forget how to work, freezing up in the aftermath, it made it harder.

When the worst of it was past my teeth, there wasn’t one slug, but a hundred, of varying fatness and lengths. Vomit followed.

Can’t ever do that again, I thought, and it was a lesson etched in a hair deeper than already fucking necessary by Rain’s power. An aftertaste. That black kind of lesson.

The thought was immediately followed by me getting a grip on the cable and dropping out of the air. From hovering to falling to diving, being a projectile.

Straight back into the situation that the messy, bloody lesson was telling me I should stay clear of.

Because if I didn’t, I knew, I wouldn’t ever. This was a potential ‘retire from costumes’ level of badness and bitterness.

There was no way this was okay. Not by law, not by morals, not by regrets.

I caught Lord of Loss as he was shoving Rain head-first into more of Nursery’s power-stuff with one hand, and doing the same to Chastity with the other. The ‘caught’ was more in the line of spear-fishing than net. I was the spear.

I broke through his shoulder, slammed the hook in with all the downward momentum for some added punch, then flew back, relying on the hook to catch him and pull him off balance.

As he was pulled back and away, Rain was pulled up and out of the mess. His mask had protected him, by the looks of it. Chastity had wrapped both arms around her face, protecting nose and mouth, but she had a growth at her ear. She hurried to pull it out. Precipice helped her.

Another at her cleavage- less urgent, and Precipice didn’t help her with that one. Instead, he sat on the ground, one eye on nearby appendages, and the other on me .

I started to speak, then coughed.

That didn’t work. Instead, I gestured. A ‘come hither’.

He started to rise to his feet.

I shook my head.

Another ‘come hither’. I punched at my chest with a fist.

This time he got it. He hit me with his emotion power.

I rolled my head around, my throat burning like fire, yet somehow too fluid. My neck was all tension.

My feelings were black loathing.

I took the fight to Lord of Loss again. Timing, as I brought the hook around. Evasion. More evasion this time. I couldn’t trust my forcefield to take a hit if that hit was going to deliver me to Nursery’s babies.

Baby, I reconsidered. I could see enough of the battlefield where floorboards had broken that I could see that it was all one continuous mass.

Last time, I’d scored two hits with my own hands and feet, two more hits with the crane-hook.

This time, lessons etched in a little more, I landed three and two. He swung at me, and I flew back and out of the way.

Not again. That didn’t need Precipice’s power to etch it in, but I had it regardless.

I’d been good at fighting from a young age, courtesy of good instructors. I’d learned to fight big threats, and I’d learned to fight the ones who didn’t go down. Lord of Loss was both of those things, and he was reasonably quick. I didn’t give him a chance to rest, returning immediately to the fight, and I could tell how he was deflecting my hits, bringing fists up to block, and blocking just a bit more aggressively each time.

I threw. The hook sailed over him. I pulled back, and the chain slid between neck and shoulder. If the hook caught-

He batted it away.

The hook did catch his hand. I used my strength for a bit more oomph, and it it pulled him slightly off balance. I was immediately on top of him.

He elbowed me aside. An eyeblink later, and he might have hit me without the wretch protecting me.

Can’t let him do that, I thought. Another lesson to etch in.

Can’t let him block. Time the hook-swings now that the hook is free again. Can’t let him hit me.

My senses were just a little bit sharper, my focus at its limits because anything less than perfect meant he got the upper hand, and it meant feeling that pit-of-the-stomach self-loathing and disappointment. It meant feeling like I had once upon a time, not measuring up to a family that was superhuman, just for a simple missed swing.

Somewhere in the midst of it, I felt like I had his number. He swung hard and blocked harder and I didn’t care because I could hit him low while he was defending himself up-top. I hit him with strength that I could have used to lift up a truck, and then I did it a few more times.

I created an opening , drove him onto uneven footing where there was only flesh beneath him, and then flew to the opening. The Wretch expanded in the opening, tearing it wide. He reached up and I flew away before he could grab me.

Precipice was throwing out blades, catching Lord of Loss in the legs. One stumble severed a leg, and it gave me an opportunity to redouble my efforts, focusing on the offense, sacrificing defense.

Finally, the villain toppled. Finally, the hand fell away and I could access that opening I had created, that he had only partially repaired.

Into the cavity, to where the glowing figure was protected by a spider web of slats and segments. Some were threading out, repairing the shell. Others turned inward. I was the girl in the box, as the magician thrust swords inside.

The first one cut me. No.

The second glanced off of my armor at my chest. The third did much the same, at my leg.

The third, too, cut me. No!

The fourth, I avoided.

I flew in, punching past a webwork of calcified steel slats, losing ground as they constricted around me. As I felt my forcefield return, I pushed out with the Wretch, to expand the slats around me and give myself a way out. I reached the glowing figure.

As I grabbed him by the neck, the body that was Lord of Loss stopped. The life went out of it, and the light of the body in the center dimmed.

It all crumbled. The man in my grip was thirty or so. He had a nice haircut, if a bit young for his age, an earring in one ear, a coat, a gray shirt, and black slacks. If he was wearing anything but that gray shirt past the coat, I couldn’t see it.

Nice clothes, but ones that lacked nuance. The kind of outfit that Dean had once described to me, where a person with a bit of money walked into a store, insecure, pointed to a mannequin, and bought the outfit the mannequin was wearing.

“Good fight,” Lord of Loss told me.

I punched him in the mouth. No Wretch. Just the mild brass-knuckle effect that came with having four metal rings, each with a spike sweeping backward over the knuckle.

“I might deserve that,” he said.

“S-” I started. I coughed. No blood, at least. “Start talking, Loss.”

My voice still sounded a hair too low. I hoped I hadn’t permanently fucked up my vocal chords.

“What if I don’t?” he asked.

I looked over at the nearest appendage of Nursery’s power. The area was diminishing by the looks of things – it seemed she’d made a break for it.

“I could throw you in,” I said.

“Would you really?” he asked. He smiled. “You’re too noble.”

I pulled off my mask and pulled down my hood. I waited, staring him down. As his eyes studied my face, his expression faltered.

Did we get through?

“I don’t normally see people’s faces while I’m changed,” he said.

“That doesn’t excuse anything,”

“Didn’t want it to,” he said. “I’m only commenting.”

“What are your employers up to?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t ask, didn’t care. You might have a better idea than I do.”

“Just following orders,” Precipice said.

“Rule, not order,” Lord of Loss said. “Rules help. Before- before I was Lord of Loss, I was just this man you see here. He was broken, before he had rules.”

“You’re still broken now,” I said. “Whatever made you make those rules in the first place, you need to go all the way back to square fucking one and revisit it. Because this? Not remotely fucking cool. Someone else might have killed you for it.”

He smiled. I resisted the urge to punch him in the face again.

Chastity, though, was on her feet, striding forward. She backhanded him across the face, and he went down hard.

“Others are awake,” Chastity said.

“Okay,” I said. “You’re going to have to drag him.”

She made a face.

“Your fault,” I said. My voice caught, a burr or frog in it that wouldn’t go away.

Fuck, my skin crawled. I couldn’t even be sure my system was clear. I wondered what I could drink that was caustic enough to discourage those things from growing.

Maybe alcohol. A lot of really strong alcohol.

“He wanted to delay us,” Precipice said. “He succeeded.”

An utter fucking disaster, I thought.

I paused.

“You can turn your power off,” I told Rain.

He did.

That could have been better, I thought. But at least we got him.

I almost didn’t want to check. I brought up the disc, and found it out of position, pushed to one side. A click unfolded it, a tap at the rim once it was unfolded brought it to life.

“Are they okay?” Foil asked.

I clicked through, my heart sinking.

“No,” I said.

Interlude – 11.b

Two Hours Ago

Colt winced as Love Lost threw a gun at Nailbiter with no apparent intent to make it a gentle or careful throw. It wasn’t because of anger, but because she trusted Nailbiter to handle it. Nailbiter extended a finger to thread the trigger-guard, before using an overlong finger to slap the gun into her waiting left hand.

Nailbiter seemed to consider for a moment, dark eyes catching all of the lights as she looked down at the lump of metal. She gripped it by the barrel and held it out toward Nursery.

“Oh no,” Nursery said. “I don’t believe in guns. I have to be a good example, you know.”

Lord of Loss chuckled.

They were gathered outdoors, with members of the gang coming and going. Some weapons, some food, multiple cars being loaded up, gassed up with plastic jugs. Breath fogged in the air, except for those who didn’t apparently breathe. Lord of Loss was one.

Colt, Love Lost, and Nailbiter were standing near the door, with Nailbiter taking things as they were handed to her, or pointing when someone held something up for her, designating a vehicle. Lord of Loss, Spruce, Nursery, and Unbound were standing off to one side, the latter three wearing their winterized costumes.

The rest of the group was already by one vehicle. The powered didn’t have to carry or haul. Colt wasn’t being asked to carry or haul, but that wasn’t a good thing.

“Keep the peace at the Lyme Center,” Nailbiter addressed the mercenaries. Colt barely noticed the whistling ‘s’ sounds anymore. “One or two of you can wait there. It won’t need attention unless someone gets stupid. Picks a fight, gets drunk, doesn’t matter.”

“What kind of response do you want?” Lord of Loss asked.

Love Lost paused, meeting Nailbiter’s eyes.

Nailbiter supplied the answer. “Dramatic, but not dramatically violent. These people are ours. If you act and use powers, mention our names.”

“Then we’ll put Spruce there. He’s used to keeping order,” Lord of Loss said.

“And he’s bounding back from the flu, poor dear,” Nursery said. “It’s good if he’s somewhere warm.”

“Don’t tell them that,” Spruce said. “I’m well enough for whatever needs doing. I can keep things calm, resolve disputes. When you say mention your names, I should say, hm, ‘Love Lost wouldn’t want this’?”

Love Lost nodded, a firm motion. Her heels clicked and scraped on the floor as she took something one of the henchmen had brought from upstairs. A belt that sat askew on her hips. A rigging of claw-work and thin metal bars that formed a half-circle around her upper arm, reaching almost to the shoulder. It took a second of work to get the rigging to attach to the existing work that reached her elbow.

She made a motion with her arm. The claw that was attached to her hand swept in a half-circle, slapping into place at the upper arm, while the configuration of bars and blades at her bicep slapped into place over waiting forearm, hand, and fingers. She made a backhand motion, and the new, smaller set of claws uncoiled like five slinkies, with a sound like a hundred tiny swords being drawn from their sheaths, then sheathed again as they returned to their normal claw shape.

Cool. Scary but cool.

Or was it scary- cool but scary? Colt wasn’t sure. She wasn’t in Love Lost’s graces and that was a problem. Love Lost disposed of problems.

“Only the one?” Nailbiter asked.

Love Lost tapped her wrist, claw-blade striking metal bars there.

“What’s she mean?” the mercenary in orange asked.

“No time to get the second one done,” Nailbiter told him, keeping her eyes on Love Lost. No disagreement there, Colt noted.

But Love Lost did tap her wrist again.

“And we should go,” Nailbiter said. Love Lost nodded, firm once again. “Those of you who aren’t at the Lyme center, keep an eye on our place. Cradle thinks they’ll come for us. If they do, we want them to find you instead. Protect our headquarters. Don’t mess around there. It’s trapped.”

“We can guard it,” the giant shell of a man said.

“I could add my own traps,” Nursery said. “If they get close I’ll know where they are. If they get too close, my baby can pacify them.”

Love Lost gave the go-ahead to Nailbiter.

“The stairwell,” Nailbiter said.

“Enclosed spaces. Anything I can seal shut, without the power leaking out. I was thinking of the refrigerator.”

“It’s a pantry under the stairs. I’ll show you,” Nailbiter said.

Love Lost held the door open for Nursery, then followed her in.

“Or she will. She knows where all of the traps are,” Nailbiter said.

Colt felt intimidated, surrounded by the people who were here. Lord of Loss was huge, and had a big personality. The other mercenary had quality, and the thugs they’d chosen to surround themselves with were big enforcer types, like they’d taken their pick of the largest five percent of guys from over in Earth N.

Colt’s dad had once said that he liked people who surrounded themselves with smart people, because they weren’t insecure. It was the same thing here. They surrounded themselves with big, strong guys and they didn’t look any less powerful in comparison, even though Spruce was a skinny guy and Nursery was barely any taller than Colt was.

It was uncomfortable, thinking about her dad.

On her side, Nailbiter was skinny, even rangy, and Colt liked that last word because it made her think of the range, of steer and cattle and that thought made her think of beef jerky. Love Lost was lithe like a jungle cat, and some people were like that. Beast of Burden had had that bullish quality to him, even when unarmored. But Nailbiter? Nailbiter was less beef and more jerky. Salt and grit in personality and quality, everything in her condensed down, her hair dried up with bleach and her brown skin abraded here and there, lips chapped or scraped up with the nails, a cut on one eyelid.

“Sidepiece,” Nailbiter called out. Sidepiece was sitting on the hood of a running car. Disjoint leaned against the edge of the hood, feet on the ground and back to his girlfriend, and had Sidepiece’s legs pressed against his arms, knees by his shoulders, while she did something with his hair. They were casual, even lovey-dovey, while Kitchen Sink and Hookline stood by, stiff and looking like kicked dogs. Hookline had one hand at the elbow of his other arm, head down, while Kitchen Sink had his arms folded, shoulders drawn forward.

In the same doghouse as me, Colt reminded herself.

“What do you want?” Sidepiece asked.

“Show the mercenaries around. Key areas.”

“There’s not much,” Sidepiece protested.

Nailbiter’s already hard expression took on a harder cast.

Rolling her eyes so hard that her head moved with it, Sidepiece disengaged from her boyfriend and hopped down.

“Thank you,” Nailbiter said, to Sidepiece and Disjoint. Her smile was all nails and one screw. Sidepiece gave her another eye roll.

Leaving Nailbiter and Colt alone. Well, alone except for the people who were loading up trucks with basic supplies

Fuck, Colt thought. That was on purpose. It was cold, and the chill that came over her made her feel even colder. Nailbiter still had the gun.

“What are you going to do?” Nailbiter asked.

“Do I even have a choice?” Colt asked.

“If you did, what would you do?” the woman asked her.

Colt shivered, jamming her hands in her pocket, ducking her head down. “I don’t know.”

“You need to know,” Nailbiter said. “I’m sure you can guess why Sidepiece isn’t asked to watch you. You’re not that stupid.”

Colt shook her head. Her hair was a mess and she couldn’t bring herself to fix it.

“Disjoint handles it sometimes. Love Lost sometimes,” Nailbiter said. “But it’s usually me. Do you know why?”

“Because you’re the one who’s going to kill me, if she decides it needs to be done. The others aren’t reliable for that kind of thing.”

There wasn’t an immediate response. Trunks and car doors slammed. Some men turned to give Nailbiter a thumbs up. She responded with a motion of her hand.

“We talked about it,” Nailbiter said. “She draws the line at a certain age. You’re over it. The question is if you’re a kid.”

Colt’s first attempt at speaking failed. When she tried again, her voice was closer to being a whistle or hiss in Nailbiter’s voice than a normal person’s voice would be. “And?”

“And I want to know what you’re doing right here, right now. Are you coming here? Are you staying behind, making sure the errands are done and dinner is made, being careful not to open the wrong cabinets?”

Colt swallowed hard, looking through the open door to where Nursery was crouched by the pantry under the stairs.

“Very careful,” Nailbiter said, amending her statement. “Or are you going to run and try to go home?”

“I know too much. You’d catch me.”

“If that wasn’t a consideration?” Nailbiter asked. She turned her face toward Colt, her eyes dark, her teeth frozen from where moisture of her breath had gathered on nails and formed an ice coating.

“I don’t know.”

Nailbiter’s expression changed, a snarl without a sound to it, and Colt dropped her eyes.

“We were the bastard children, my sister and I,” Nailbiter said. “Our daddies passed through town and they didn’t know it, but they left our ma with child. School was a suggestion, and I fucking hated and hate it when people suggest I do anything. You hear me?”

Colt nodded, not sure why this tangent had come up, but it was better than talking about execution.

“I was young enough that I’d just grown in my adult teeth when my face got caved in by a boy from town, five years older than me and he got most of those teeth. He said I picked the fight with him, I fell and bit the curb by my own clumsiness. They took his word for it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You had nothing to do with it. Thing is, times were changing. Powers meant an awful lot of people with causes were getting the ability to make themselves heard. My sister and I, we heard people were commemorating the anniversary of one of those people getting arrested. Lustrum. You know her?”

Colt shook her head.

“Kids aren’t getting educations in what’s important, these days. She stood up for women when they needed it and she was put in a hole forever as punishment. What her followers were saying sounded good, ‘cuz I was angry at my daddy that I’d never seen and would never know if I saw him, and I was angry at the boys in town, and the people who let those boys be the boys they were. We joined up. Not that different from this. We had a good role model in Lustrum. Nothing better than a martyr, you hear?”

“Did you get your teeth fixed?”

Nailbiter smirked, showing her teeth. The smirk distorted slightly because her lips stuck to the metal where it was cold. “Stupidest question I’ve heard from you yet. You can see the fix. Third go I’ve made at it.”

Colt swallowed and nodded.

“We split up. I tried the sapphic shit and nah. My sister had a relationship that turned into a ball of drama that was bleeding into everything else in the group, so we moved on. Stayed with our friends in that group. We were on the road, half the group making music and the rest of us robbing the occasional asshole to make ends meet. We realized we were a stone’s throw away from our hometown. Our mama was gone. Dead.”

“I’m sor- that fucking sucks.”

“It did. It does. But the boy who caved my face in wasn’t dead or gone. We tracked him down. Caught him drunk and alone. Decided we’d corner him, I’d fight him. Get my own.”

“Did you?”

“I wasn’t strong enough. I blame being vegan and eating a meal every other day, looking back, but I didn’t think about that then. I just knew I was hitting him and he wasn’t hurting.”

“If he was drunk, that’d be part of it, right?”

“I didn’t know that either. I thought it’d make him sloppy. He managed to land a hit and it hurt me enough that the others all jumped to my side and he was able to run for it. I came to, realized what was up, and couldn’t sort it out in my head. A couple years then of thinking we were invincible, I was strong, we had the answers. The thoughts in my head twisted up in my stomach and in all that twisting, I came out different. I had a cause of my own and it was getting my brand of justice. Him. The people giving him pats on the back the same time my jaw was getting wired shut, because I was just a bastard fucking child with a slut mom…”

Nailbiter drew in a sharp breath, the sound hissing through teeth.

“I kept going after that. I thought about pulling out his entrails. Felt too tidy. So I clawed out his eyes and lanced his eardrums.”

Colt couldn’t bring herself to answer. Nailbiter was staring off into space. Reminiscing. There was no joy in the expression, no sadness.

Worse, Colt decided.

“I did what I’d dreamed of, and it wasn’t enough. So I did similar things to people similar to Noah, then ‘similar’ started to mean less. Sister pulled away, said it was too much. One by one, the rest of the group fell away. I had the cause, I had someone to look up to.”

“Lustrum?”

“Yeah. When you go to the Birdcage, Colt, they sort you out. Put birds of a feather together. I was one of a few prisoners, and once I heard how they were putting certain people in certain blocks, I thought of her. Of course I go there. Of course. But I ended up being Ingenue’s to look after. Not just not Lustrum’s, but farthest from Lustrum’s cell block.”

“And you never got to see her?”

“I got to see her. You can go this way or that. You can even pack up your shit and move to another cell block, if the leader of that block allows it. Moment I heard that, I knew what I was doing.”

“Okay?”

“I went to ask if I could. Listened in. I realized she wasn’t who I thought she was. A hundred college campuses and a hundred more cities, and her face was printed on caps and smocks all over. Meant different things to different people. For most, being part of her following meant taking a stand. Not even being criminal or protesting.”

“It sounds like it was big.”

“Yeah, well, there was no anger in her, she didn’t even like violence much. Hated that what she’d put out there had been twisted around. My type most of all. I never did let her know. You get ideas in your head, you decide who you want someone to be, and it’s you who disappoints yourself more than them who disappoints you. Understand?”

“I think so.”

“Understand?”

It was a question with more meaning to it.

“No,” Colt admitted.

Nailbiter’s expression shifted, that mute snarl again.

“I don’t know who it is you think I’m looking up to that’s going to disappoint me,” Colt said.

“You’re not looking up. You’re looking down,” Nailbiter said, sounding as pissed off and exasperated as Colt had ever heard her.

Colt’s eyes darted this way and that. If this was a test, she didn’t want to fail.

“You think I’m looking down on you? On Love Lost? The group?”

Nailbiter was silent.

“I… have a real choice? You’d let me go?” Colt asked.

“Are you saying you want to go?” Nailbiter asked, and her voice was hard, the hisses and whistles sharper.

Again, that trap of a question. If she said yes, she could be killed or punished as a traitor.

But that could be the ‘looking down’ part.

“I don’t want to go home.”

“Is that because you’re afraid to leave, or you’re afraid to go?”

“I want to stay,” Colt said, and by the time the sentence was done she wasn’t sure if she believed it.

Nailbiter didn’t budge. No tells, no decisions.

“I don’t want to stay behind, but… I’m not sure I’m brave enough to be a soldier. Fire a gun.”

There was noise at the door. It opened, and Love Lost stepped through. Seeing her face, Colt was reminded of the golden man’s face in the rare video footage of him. Of the image that had been mass-printed, of an artist’s rendition of Scion, the man who would later end the world.

Not that Love Lost was capable of ending the world, but the expression was so similar. Caught between anger and sadness, disappointment too light, too loaded a word in Colt’s mind now that Nailbiter had talked about it. Crestfallen? Why?

“You’re not a kid,” Nailbiter said. “If you were, this would be easier. But because you’re not a kid, I can give you options. How would you like artificial courage?”

“Art-” Colt started. She stopped as she saw the pill Nailbiter held between two extended fingers.

“We don’t trust you enough to leave you at headquarters alone,” Nailbiter said. “If you can’t fight, you can’t be a soldier. So either take the steps necessary or get lost.”

Going home meant facing her parents. She’d attacked her mom to get her mom to let her go, while Nailbiter had watched it happen, not stepping in. Nailbiter had claimed her, and now Nailbiter was saying she had things wrong?

She didn’t get it.

But as scary as these guys were, going home was scary in another way.

She reached out for the pill. Nailbiter deposited it in her hand.

“Chew it, don’t swallow it. It’s going to last for a bit whatever you do, and you don’t want it having to sit for too long to work.”

Colt put it between her teeth. She bit hard, and it crumbled. The acrid taste flooded her senses.

“That’s awful. Ugh!” she cried out, doubling over. “Is this that pill person’s stuff?”

She looked up, and she caught the very tail end of Love Lost and Nailbiter silently communicating something between them.

Having already taken a second or two longer than she usually did, Nailbiter answered her, “No. Nothing tinker about it. It’s an upper. Some energy, some recklessness. Courage, if you want to call it that.”

Love Lost looked even more upset than before, but she betrayed nothing and said nothing. A clawed hand was gently laid on Nailbiter’s shoulder in passing. It stayed there as Love Lost stood straight, chin rising. Her claws and other tinker decoration glittered as she raised a hand, fingers moving in a swooping gesture.

The cars and trucks that had been idling to let the heaters run chugged to life, almost synchronized.

She wasn’t sure if it was the rush of fear and excitement or if it was the pill already working, but her heart was pounding now, with a hammering rhythm that paid no mind to her feelings or the circumstances. The brights of the world seemed brighter, and the darks seemed darker, and in the moment, there was a hell of a lot more dark than light.

Nailbiter extended a hand. She gripped the barrel of the pistol, handle out for Colt to hold.

“Don’t take this if you’re not willing to shoot to kill.”

Colt took the weapon.

⊙

Twenty Minutes Ago

“Go,” Nailbiter barked. “You’re a liability.”

“Liability?” Sidepiece asked. “The liability is the q-tip down there. Our good old Damsel of Distress needs to answer for betraying us, and I swear we’ll get that answer if I have to blow up everyone here to do it!”

Colt smiled, despite herself. She felt a bit giddy with excitement. She was ninety percent sure that Sidepiece was joking, but the idea that she might not be made her want to laugh.

Smiles were okay, she decided, but laughing was a problem.

“Go,” Nailbiter said.

“Never and fuck you!”

Love Lost pointed.

“Fuck!” Sidepiece shouted.

Colt’s hands shook as she held the binoculars. It was enough that it was kind of hard to keep the binoculars focused on a target.

Which was a shame, because two of the targets was really, really nice to look at.

Damsel, Lookout, Imp, a young girl in a black dress with white lace frills beneath, a boy with wild blond hair, cute and older, but on the nerdy side, and another boy with black hair, moody, glowering, the same age or just a bit younger than Colt. She’d liked boys in the past and she’d really liked some boys she’d gotten to know, but she’d never really really liked boys, and she’d definitely never really really liked boys she’d only ever known from a distance.

Hookline shifted his position, and Love Lost put an arm out. The configuration at her arms broke apart, going through the swapping procedure, then stopped, only the bars extending out, an added foot of reach that blocked Hookline.

“What?” Hookline asked.

Nailbiter offered up the answer, “The blond one senses things at a distance.”

“The kid has cameras.”

“Not aimed our way, probably. If they were, they’d be on alert.”

Love Lost held up a claw, tilting her head to one side. She nodded.

“This is where March’s group has been hanging out, they’re after her?” Disjoint asked.

Love Lost nodded.

“We’re surprising the surprise attackers,” Disjoint said.

Love Lost shook her head.

There was a pause, then she typed out the words. Colt reached for her phone before it even rang, still looking through binoculars.

Love Lost:
SURVEILLANCE. NOT SURPRISE ATTACK.
THEY ARE SUPPORT TEAM FOR SOLO ASSASSIN.
IMP.

“Makes sense,” Nailbiter said. “We don’t know the power level of the three without masks.”

Love Lost:
THE GROUP IS SCARED OF THE YOUNGEST GIRL.
UNPREDICTABLE AND POWERFUL.
FORMATION HAS BLOND BOY AT CENTER. PROTECTED.
BLACK HAIRED BOY IN VANGUARD.

Black haired boy. Colt looked again. He walked with Damsel, not saying much. Damsel was vanguard too, it seemed. Made sense, based on what she knew.

“Can we take them?”

It took a second before Colt realized she’d asked the question.

Love Lost nodded.

She reached to one wrist, and adjusted the settings on the claw at the arm where there was only one configuration. Colt watched warily.

Claw-tips glowed. Where they moved, they cut lines into the air.

A circle was drawn around Hookline. A line was drawn from it, as claws tapped at air. Hookline’s phone lit up, and he held up the screen for others to see.

Love Lost:
SMALLEST GIRL. INCAPACITATE.

More circles were drawn out. Orders given by text to specific phones. Each person dutifully held up their phones with the targets and orders, shifting position to be ready to take the courses given. Some would attack the rear, others the front.

Disjoint to Lookout.

Kitchen Sink to the black haired and blond boys, whoever provided themselves as a target.

Nailbiter to the same pairing, dissuading Damsel where possible.

Love Lost to Imp and Damsel.

Then Colt. A circle drawn around her and two other hired guns from the Lyme center.

The text appeared.

Love Lost:
SUPPORT ATTACK FROM REAR
PERMISSION TO KILL
EXCEPTION FOR TWO GIRLS. LOOKOUT & YOUNGER.

Colt nodded. Her heart continued its racing beat, not slowing, not speeding up. It made the entire thing feel less real. Easier.

Love Lost started forward. She pointed, then the hand moved, fingers extending down. She ‘walked’ the fingers through the air.

“Walk, don’t run?” Kitchen Sink asked.

“Until they notice us. Save our strength and stamina until then,” Nailbiter said.

Love Lost nodded.

Their path was downhill. Their target a city street with closed businesses all shuttered. Some looked like they were permanently closed. Ice made some footing treacherous, but different members of the group compensated. Love Lost had her claw-feet. Nailbiter had pointed tips to her fingers and toes. Hookline dragged his hook against the pavement. Disjoint was segmented, most of his body floating.

Kitchen Sink wasn’t so able. The other mercenaries too. Still.

“Gun tag,” Disjoint said.

“What?” Colt asked, startled.

“What we’re doing right now. Playing tag with guns. Get them before they get you and you win. Other way around? Lose.”

“Don’t lose,” Kitchen Sink said. “Those are Heartbroken. They don’t go easy on losers.”

Claw snapped against claw like a snap of a finger, but far more violent, and with the lights still left activated, the movement produced a small sparking of light.

Love Lost broke into a run.

Colt raised her binoculars to confirm, even as she started running too. It was the pat-the-head-while-rubbing-your-tummy kind of coordination that would have been hard at any time, but the pill made it harder or the pill made it seem easier of a task. She slipped and skidded on ice until her foot hit the crust of a snowbank. A mercenary hauled her to her feet, then kept a hand on her shoulder as they ran.

They’d been noticed, so the attack was happening now. Gun tag?

She had a gun.

“It’s not March!” she could hear one shouting. The dorky-cute blond boy.

“Shit,” was his companion’s response. The broody-cute one.

They converged on the group, each set of Love Lost’s people rounding the corners and stepping out from cover in near concert. The Undersiders-Breakthrough teamup had already formed battle lines, a loose ring protecting more vulnerable members.

Lookout already had her tinker weapons out. A clawed tail or something and a white gun that she clasped in both hands. Disjoint’s hand appeared and seized her wrist. She pulled the other hand away, taking on a one-handed stance, aiming off to the side. Another hand caught her.

The black haired boy was stepping forward, and Colt had to remind herself she had a job to do. She aimed high and fired.

It didn’t slow him down or distract. Fists clenched at either side of him, he roared, a fierce sound, veins standing out on his face. Kitchen Sink reeled, then started sprinting forward.

“Don’t!” Hookline shouted.

There was no controlling it, apparently. A headlong berserk rush, meeting the black haired boy, who was still roaring.

Kitchen Sink was all brawn, weapons appearing in his hands, slipping free as soon as he realized he couldn’t use them. A metal stein became a thing he could grab and swing toward the black haired boy’s face. In the other hand, the deciding fixture was a bit of piping with a showerhead fixed on the end.

The black haired boy fought with one arm extended, the other held back. It was a fencer’s pose without a fencer’s foil, grace, timing, and keen reactions contrasting with the way his eyes were bloodshot and veins raised on his forehead. He swayed back, slapped aside, and stepped in close, driving a knee into Kitchen Sink’s middle.

Faster than a normal person, maybe stronger. Inflicting rage but suffering it too. Forced duels. If he kept doing that-

She raised her gun.

Before she could do anything, people were getting in her way. Damsel was one, and Damsel was complicated, and that complication made her hesitate.

Damsel used her power. Nailbiter swiped into the air at the same moment, predicting Damsel’s trajectory. Her power made an explosion that looked like all of the light and all of the dark that Colt had noticed after taking the pill were being twisted together until they snapped, and it sent her flying into the air, toward the extended fingers.

She didn’t stop using her power, though. Rather than end it abruptly, Damsel let it trail off, bringing her hands under her. Her feet went up, and she stepped on the underside of the fingers, before bringing her hand up-

The fingers retreated.

Hookline had the little girl who wasn’t Lookout. Hookline’s power was a chain and hook that couldn’t be destroyed, that he could telekinetically manipulate, and he’d encircled the girl with it, the hook secured on the chain that he was now hauling in with both hands and power.

The girl reached for Kitchen Sink as she passed him, and Hookline whipped the chain a bit, casting her a few feet to one side in the other direction. Out of reach.

She screeched, like only a young girl could. Colt was put in mind of Reese. Her sister. It jarred. She hadn’t thought of Reese in a while. She hadn’t gotten along with Reese in… ever. But she still missed her.

Weird to think about in the now.

Damsel, landing, immediately sprung forward, toward Hookline. Nailbiter produced a cage of interlocked fingers, barring the way, and Damsel avoided the cage, another burst of power to vault to one side, yet another to slide through the space between elongated wrist and ground.

“Fuck!” Hookline shouted. “Fuck me!”

Nailbiter followed up. Fingers drew in, a cage that now closed in around Damsel, and her teeth extended, a scattershot volley that aimed to fill the space.

Damsel used her power twice in quick succession before the kicked-up snow and dirt and the seemingly countless narrow spikes that filled the area caught up to her.

Two shots. One to punch a hold into the ground, the other to reverse course and hurl herself into that hole. The nails had passed overhead.

Colt saw movement. She aimed, sighted her target, and recognized it as the blond boy.

“Samuel!” a girl shouted, not that far away- between Love Lost and Colt.

Reflexively, Colt pulled the trigger. It felt like it had seemed to work with the black haired boy’s power. His power had been rage, both inflicted and felt. This was a horrible, jarring kick, and corresponding to that kick, the boy kicked back and flumped to the ground in a horrible, jarring way.

“You bitch!”

Colt turned toward the sound, then felt bewildered at the lack of a source.

The black haired teenager was trouncing Kitchen Sink, despite Kitchen Sink’s relative size and weaponry. Sink’s swings were wide and reckless, and he almost seemed to forget he had the weapons in his haste to get in close and hurt the teen.

That changed in a flash. One item fell into his hands, and he hurled it. It produced a cloud as it hurtled through the air, and that cloud left the black haired boy coughing.

Kitchen Sink slammed his face into the boy’s. Sink’s face had a heavy porcelain mask strapped to it. The boy had nothing, and dropped to his knees, one hand to his face. A second later, veins stood out across his face, more intense than before, and the blood loss accelerated. He lunged forward, and didn’t quite manage to get off his knees before Sink started pressuring him down toward the ground. Sink looked pretty affected, almost frothing at the mouth now.

Colt staggered back, an arm encircling her neck. Her first thought was that it was one of Love Lost’s mercenaries, and that she’d somehow crossed a line or gotten her just desserts.

Her other thought was that Love Lost was stalking toward her. Her right claw extended into whips with sharp metal caps at the end.

Colt tried to bring her gun up to shoot at the guy who had her. When her hand raised, however, there was no weight in it and no gun.

She felt a gun press against her back. Though it was a heavy, hairy man’s arm that held her, the voice in her ear was feminine. “You just shot my friend, you fucking lunatic.”

Damsel was using her power more, skipping ahead, while Nailbiter was trying to catch up. Forgetting the strangulation for a second, Colt twisted to try and see what was happening.

She was just in time to see Damsel arrive at the corner where Disjoint was waiting. He had no arms by which to defend himself, so Damsel was free to use her power to deliver a flying knee-strike, as he doubled over, trying to shield himself with truncated arms. When he flew back, he had hands again.

Which freed Lookout, who he had been restraining.

Colt screwed her eyes shut, saw Love Lost doing the same, as Lookout raised her gun.

The flash hurt, even with her eyes forced as shut as she could get, her face turned away. It made her mind adjust light and dark in a funny way, as if she’d always scaled it from one to ten and she’d just found a new, higher bar for ten.

Her mom was always in the hospital for hip pain, she thought. She’d heard a lot about pain scales, had heard her mother complain about how arbitrary a ten was.

Disjoint was knocked out. Hookline- he gathered chains together into a loose wall in between himself and Damsel. Doing so meant dragging the kid a little closer.

Colt found herself able to breathe again, unsure why she’d even stopped. Love Lost shoved past her, and started whipping at the air.

“You need to help!” Colt shouted at Love Lost, her voice too high, tremulous. The mercenaries that had been part of her flanking group were on the ground, and she couldn’t remember them getting beat.

Bending down, she picked up one of their guns.

Damsel crashed into the length of Nailbiter’s claws, then used her power again, forcing the claws to move with her, slamming into Hookline. It meant the littlest kid was free. Colt turned to look, and saw Lookout aiming.

She shielded her eyes, aimed blindly in the right direction, and fired, pulling the trigger again and again, in time with a heartbeat that was moving so fast she couldn’t count it if she tried.

Something hit her across the side of the face. She fell.

It was Love Lost who picked her up again, her grip hard enough that metal claws threatened to pierce skin. Love Lost’s claws were slick with blood. Kitchen Sink was battered, Hookline rattled, but those two were up. Disjoint and the other mercenaries still seemed to be unconscious, except or a guy or two at the far end.

They were outnumbered.

“Traitor,” Kitchen Sink said, to Damsel.

“Old news, that,” she said. Her eyes were black from corner to corner, and they smoked faintly. She’d been scratched at one shoulder by Nailbiters’s teeth.

“You shot a child,” Damsel said. “You’re working with Cradle on that machine of his? You’re a disappointment to yourselves and everyone who has to walk the same earth as you.”

Love Lost was silent, of course. Colt made a small amused sound before she could stop herself. Still a little giddy, loose around the edges.

The smile fell from her face as she noticed Love Lost staring her down.

Oh, this was worse than going to the doghouse. This was fucking up and then doing it again.

And getting beat. They were going to win.

And then- then she would have nowhere to go.

The thoughts that sprung from that were delirious, but they weren’t ‘upper’ thoughts, as far as she got that stuff. They were a swell of darkness, pushed up from below.

“You alright, Roman?” Lookout asked.

“Peachy,” Roman said, his voice a growl. He spat blood onto the snow. “Samuel’s not peachy, and Flor’s bleeding.”

Love Lost and Nailbiter looked so confident, and Colt wasn’t sure why.

Confident and pissed.

In her daze, trying to make sense of things, Colt saw Kitchen Sink try to throw something. Lookout’s claw-on-a-tail reached out to catch it, but that left her blind for Nailbiter to attack. Damsel threw herself at Nailbiter’s real body, to throw off her trajectory.

Love Lost wheeled around, striking out with her whips, hitting empty air, then leaped backward, riggings on her legs snapping out as they fired like gun chambers, giving her a slight boost. Her feet scraped against the wall, and she ran on the surface for five running steps.

She bounded down, toward Damsel, Nailbiter, and Lookout.

Everyone had something they were doing. Except Colt…

…And Flor, the creepy little girl with the black dress decorated in white lace. The girl smiled, showing a lot of small white teeth. She limped with every step.

“You shot my brother,” the girl’s voice was quiet. “Now if I do something extra horrible to you, they won’t blame me. It’s great. Thank you for shooting Samuel.”

Colt backed away as the girl advanced. In the background, it looked like Love Lost was winning, propelling herself from Nailbiter’s claws to strike Damsel in the air.

The girl bolted forward. Even with the limp, she was quick.

Colt turned to run. If that girl wanted in close, then Colt wanted away.

She got three steps before she was caught. In the confusion and daze, she thought it was two people. Two different arms.

Imp.

No.

The arms thrust her back in the direction of the child. She slipped on ice and skidded to a stop. Where one of her gloves had ridden up, her hand had scraped on the hard ground.

Colt reached for something- anything she could do. A plea- she had no ideas. An anything?

She floundered, like she was in water and there was only water so disturbed and black that she couldn’t find any way up or out.

There were stars in that water, and it wasn’t the water churning, but sleek forms within it.

As the forms came nearer, they welled up in her vision. Less like a person walking toward her, and more like a planet colliding with her own.

That form had a mouth, and that mouth yawned open wide, until it encapsulated her vision, and everything in every direction was this thing. She moved her focus around, struggled, fought- but it was like being in quicksand.

She saw the heart of the thing. She saw the small star of energy and how it was broken up into a thousand facets that were somehow all still aligned, even as the thing came to pieces.

And that star, that pit at the very belly of this thing, it burned so hot and so bright it began to eat at her consciousness. Even the detachment she felt wasn’t any insulation against the consuming light.

But she wasn’t one to follow or obey. She’d run away from- she couldn’t remember the word- her creators. She was doing a shitty job here with this new group. Hurting a child.

Hurting cute boys, but that was the drug talking.

The drug was an insulator. A thing she could put between herself and the ownership of her being here.

The first step in a hundred thousand, all undertaken in a frame of completely different time.

She stood on the edge of that pit, and the power was there for the taking.

She stepped away from it, even in her desperation.

Into the real world, where the ground beneath her hands was cold.

She had a power, but just as she’d refused the greater body of power, she fought the urge to take hold of this. To do so threatened to pull her into that pit.

For the time being, she stood, shaky. Others had staggered, hands to their heads. Powers had gone limp.

The scattered henchmen Love Lost had brought were here, hurrying forward. Roman, the boy with black hair, was clubbed across the head with a baton.

Two of them were still close to Colt. As soon as she grasped the fact, saw the decisive action on the part of the mercenaries, she pulled herself to her feet and kicked- catching the younger girl right in the midsection with her boot.

And Imp-

She wheeled around, saw Imp stagger forward, and struck out with the gun. One blow to the throat, hard, leaving the woman sputtering.

It was only when they were down that she could reach for her power.

When she did, she felt herself teeter. On the cusp of falling. She swayed.

The so-called ‘ground’ solidified.

The fight resumed, hesitant at first, as people were still recovering. But the actions of the unpowered henchmen were forcing the Undersiders and Breakthrough to react.

She had a power. She drew in a deep breath, and she used it.

⊙

Now

Bags over their heads, hands bound behind their backs, several with poles attached to the bindings at the hands, so they could be managed from a distance.

Her nose was bloody, her hand and knee scraped, and the drugs were leaving her with a strangely disappointed feeling, out of tune with the reality before her- that she had a strong power. Just the moods swinging in the opposite direction.

Her feelings jerked this way and that as she took it in. Disjoint gave her a reassuring smile. Love Lost, though, didn’t seem happy in the slightest.

Weird, considering they had this contingent captive. Two of Breakthrough, one Undersider, three Heartbroken. Two of those had been shot, one lacerated so badly by Love Lost’s whips that she couldn’t walk, and all three of those were now on the way to hospitals Love Lost had worked with before. The medical care would be held hostage, as necessary. Otherwise, they were all hostages now.

There was no going home again now, a small voice in her head said. She’d crossed lines. Even within this group.

Home had been destroyed two years ago, another said. The concept had stopped meaning anything back then.

“Come on,” Disjoint told her, stirring her from dark thoughts.

Colt forced a smile to her face, and found her feet.

“We’re nearly done,” Nailbiter said.

Interlude – 11.c

Tattletale adjusted the disc. The screen buzzed, flickered, showed the blue silhouettes of Antares’s group frozen mid-run, and then stuttered. A blue line made a circuit around the perimeter of the disc a few times, accelerating as it went, before the entire thing winked out.

The words that popped up in blue weren’t pointed in a direction that Darlene could see.

“Signal lost,” Tattletale said. “I guess Parian’s group found Love Lost.”

“Foil sounded confident that she could deal with her,” Capricorn said, his voice muffled by his helmet.

“She is very good at what she does,” Tattletale said, fiddling to tune the disc to another setting. It looked mostly like static. “She said she can do it, and I believe her.”

Darlene wasn’t sure why Tattletale had to do that. It sounded so insincere, but it was the backhanded kind of insincere where she could use an eye roll or a simple denial to shrug it off if ever called on it. Back when Darlene had turned five, Papa had been in a black mood for a while. From what Samuel had said, Papa had wanted to collect Sidney Saile, the girl from Vancouver, and he failed. That had been when Cherie had left and with Darlene’s mom being gone, she had no immediate family except Papa.

And Papa had had the black mood. More casually cruel than he’d ever been. Tempestuous. She only dimly remembered those days, like a bad dream, but she remembered some. She’d spent a long time having to worry about getting unlucky and having her dad single her out, out of twenty or so people, and a handful of people being kind of shitty. After the black mood, it had changed to the point that it wasn’t about getting unlucky and being that one person in twenty. It had been about being one of the ones who got out of the way and escaped his attention. Everyone had been scared and shitty.

Her sister and some older ‘cousins’ had gone to school. Cherie had. It had seemed like a fairy tale. The girls on television and in movies had gone to school and dreamed of being princesses and singers, even Sidney Saile had. Darlene had just dreamed of going to school. So she’d begged. She’d fought and even went on a hunger strike, until her dad made her eat until she was sick.

The compromise had been a homeschooling network and the homeschooling network had been Darlene’s introduction to the backhanded statements, the fake smiles, the two-facedness. Mostly it was the dads and moms, but some of the other boys and girls had learned it too.

She felt now like she’d felt then. There were dangerous people out there who wanted to hurt her and people she cared about, a black mood spread out among a few people, and even in her happier place people were shitting in the drinking water.

Tattletale briefly met Darlene’s eyes, her fingers still busy tapping and clicking at the disc, to go through channels and adjust settings.

Darlene felt the swell of Aiden’s chest as he puffed up a fraction, the little lean forward and up, like he had to push himself and stand a little taller to speak, and her full attention was on him before he even got the first word out. She felt his expression like she felt his own, even though his mask was blank, a circular disc with a conical beak, two beady eyes, and the cock’s comb. Eyebrows drawn together and up. Her own moved to match.

“Are they okay?” he asked.

“No signal. We won’t know until they’re clear of whatever it is that’s jamming it.”

“Can I take a look? I’m more familiar with Lookout’s tech.” Capricorn asked.

“Be my guest,” Tattletale said. She unstrapped the shield-like disc from her forearm. She passed it to Capricorn, who strapped it to his own arm.

Capricorn was pretty cool, but in a bit of a Chevalier way. He’d been a hero for a while, relatively speaking, and he was still around. She couldn’t see or feel his face because the only one she was connected to right now was Aiden, so he had a cool mystique, with an emphasis on the ‘cool’. His personality felt like it would be painted with shades of Samuel and Juliette.

Tress probably wasn’t taking the disc because her arms were artificial. Her body was encased in armor, and that armor had connections at the shoulders and back that had two large arms, half of a neck and half of a face extending from them. It was like she had a giant robot version of her, but it was only a quarter of the way there, and she was living like someone who had been chopped into pieces, moving forward by crawling with the overlarge arms. Darlene could see Tress’s face, but it was harder to get a sense of her than it was with the helmeted Capricorn.

In this moment, though, Tress was easier to read. Worried.

“Should we check on them?” Tress asked.

“Define ‘we’,” Tattletale said. “These kids are in my care.”

“I’d go,” Juliette said. “I’m old enough.”

Juliette stood off to one side, wearing a Velo-brand coat and turtleneck sweater that matched the texture and color of the wool cap she wore, her hands in her pockets. Her hair was straight, her eye shadow blue, and her expression deadpan cold. Amias was sitting on her shoulders, leaning forward in a way that pushed the hat slightly askew. The only thing keeping Amias perched where he was was Amias, because Juliette wasn’t putting in much effort.

Tattletale shrugged. “Sure. We do need to have a conversation sometime about how you want rides places, you want clothes bought for you, which is kid treatment, but you want to be considered ‘old enough’.”

“It’s the benefit of being a teenager,” Juliette said, deadpan.

“Benefit of being the not-your-mom adult in the room? I can say no.”

“Does being really good at helping out with the cape stuff help?” Juliette asked. “I can kill someone if you need someone dead.”

“I want to see less people dead, not more,” Tattletale replied.

“I can promise to try to kill less people if I can keep getting the best of both worlds. Rides, clothes, and missions.”

“You’re supposed to be Imp’s headache, not mine. Let’s just get through tonight.” Tattletale said. Weary, she said, “We’ll talk to Imp about it, another time.”

“We shouldn’t split up any more than we already have,” Capricorn said, his voice quiet. “Not when they’d be happy to catch some of us alone.”

He was clicking through the channels. It was only static and blank images.

“Mm hmm,” Tattletale made a noise.

Darlene clasped her hands together, staring down at them. Her focus, though, was on Aiden.

“I could say I’m going no matter what,” Aiden said.

“We could,” Darlene added.

Aiden put out his hand. It took her a second to realize she was supposed to give him a fist bump. She did, glancing his way, then turned her eyes back to Tattletale as the hands made contact. She could feel his hand, feel her own hand, and as he continued to move his hand, moved hers to mirror. Fist bump to high-five to finger-wiggles to backwards-high five. Their hands flipped around to a brief hand hold, her idea, then pulled away, tips of their middle fingers brushing against palm, then middle finger, bent just enough that they caught at the tips. A small songbird was already flying down, perching on the outstretched fingers. It peeped, wings spreading as it flapped dramatically without taking off.

Ninety-five percent of it without looking at each other. Darlene broke into the silliest smile, and there was nothing anyone could say to make it budge.

Tattletale folded her arms. “I have to admit, that was cool.”

Aiden was smiling behind his mask. He puffed up like he did, chest out and forward, trying to stand straighter. The bird on their fingers took off.

“How many tries did that take to pull off?”

“That was the first try,” Aiden said. Darlene wanted to bounce on the spot, but that would have bugged Aiden, so she just clasped her hands together and let the nervous energy jitter through one leg, toe of her boot on the ground, heel bobbing rapidly up and down.

“It’s cool, don’t get me wrong-”

“Very,” Tress said.

Darlene’s hands, still clasped together, thumped against her upper chest, pressing against her collarbone, arms hugged against her body.

“It doesn’t mean you’re not going to get hurt if you get into a fight,” Tattletale said.

“If someone’s going to get hurt, and my friends are there, I have to be there,” Aiden said. “I have to.”

“Do you know if it’s a danger?” Capricorn asked, quiet. He dropped his left arm, the disc strapped to it, dark, and held a phone to his ear instead. He turned to Tattletale. “What does your power say?”

“Nothing clear,” Tattletale said. “And I’m not taking a leadership position. I’m taking a looking-after-the-junior-members position. My power isn’t at your beck and call.”

Capricorn raised his hands, surrendering. His phone was in one hand. “Sveta? Thoughts?”

“We need to help them if there’s a possibility of trouble.”

“I’m not sure. Some radio silence is normal. With tinkerings especially. Except there’s nothing on the phone either.”

“Phones being down sometimes is normal too,” Aiden said. “In most places.”

“True,” Capricorn said. “But you can see where I’m worried.”

“I’m worried too,” Aiden said. “That’s Candy, Roman, and Lookout out there. They’re some of my favorite people.”

“Tch,” Juliette made a small sound, because Aiden had mentioned Roman.

Capricorn blurred. His entire body and the blue armor he wore became just a little bit bigger, and where his eyes were, she could see a glow. The glow faded last, as the blurring went away.

He cleared his throat, a little louder in that than he’d just been, talking quietly.

“There’s another option. They’re out there, thirty to forty-five minutes away, something like that.”

“Less,” Tattletale said.

“But still a trip. We have to get there. So think, which of them are getting into trouble where our arrival decides things? Are they running, and we show up in the nick of time? Or are they better off with us moving forward, possibly winning, and creating a negotiating position.”

“Hostages?” Darlene asked.

“Hostages only work if Love Lost or March even care about what we’re doing here,” Capricorn said. “I’m thinking that they want answers or people or something else. We can get that here and change things there.”

“I vote for that,” Juliette said.

“Mmmm. You were just talking about killing people,” Capricorn pointed out. His finger tapped against his forearm, where his arms were folded. He looked at Tattletale, “Is she trustworthy?”

“There’s no way for me to answer that question without causing problems or having more headaches later.”

“That’s kind of an answer on its own, isn’t it?” Tress asked.

“Is she trustworthy?” Capricorn asked Aiden. “Not just for this vote. If we’re doing anything, my team needs to know.”

“Juliette’s good at cape stuff,” Aiden said. “She says she likes watching people die. I’d say listen to her unless people might die.”

“Qué chingados…” Capricorn muttered, looking at Tattletale for confirmation, which she didn’t give. “Can’t be simple.”

Can’t be simple with Tattletale either, Darlene thought. Tattletale had wanted to separate her and Aiden like she was separating Aiden and Lookout, until Darlene had made her argument in the car. Her power made Aiden safer. If Candy was the only one with Aiden then that would be bad in its own way, because Candy egged him on. If none of the young Heartbroken were with Aiden, then the older Heartbroken would be, and very few of them were good role models… and Aiden would be worse off in the future, because there wasn’t going to be a time anytime soon where he wasn’t surrounded by the Vasils.

Tattletale had agreed, points for that. But she’d wanted to separate them and Darlene would remember that for a while.

“The benefit of this is it’s simpler,” Tress said. “Mobilizing is hard, and what happens if we go all the way there, communications are dead, and we can’t find them?”

“Good point. What about you? Your votes?” Capricorn asked. He turned toward the group.

“Mine? Ours?” Aiden asked.

“Sure.”

Darlene felt Aiden blink. Felt him make those small actions that prepared him to speak like an adult to adults.

“My birds are here. This looks like the kind of place where I can use them. I don’t know if it’ll work wherever we end up.”

Darlene looked around. The university was a lot of large, spacious buildings, with sloped concrete overhangs covering walkways, outdoor ampitheaters with stone stairs instead of seats that were now covered in snow, and second-, third-, and fourth-floor aboveground tunnels that extended between buildings. Right now, they were among the dorms. Cradle was said to be active on the other end.

She could see how the birds would be useful.

“Let’s stay,” Darlene said.

Capricorn nodded. “Let’s move to a better position then.”

Tattletale was looking around, taking in information. Tress walked forward on her hands, her ‘body’ barely touching the ground, Capricorn beside her.

It was nice that they’d asked instead of telling, and it was the best thing ever that the handshake had been a thing and that everyone thought it was cool.

She felt Aiden shift how he was walking, drawing closer. She half-turned, realizing what he was doing, and met his three-quarters of a hug with one of her own, the two of them still walking, just now with one arm around each other and their heads close together. Her forehead touched his hard mask, and the physical contact was more of a squish than anything, because they were wearing extra layers for the cold weather. She was connected to him and she could feel him there, the extra squeeze of the hug he attempted, even though she didn’t feel one hundred percent of it on her end.

She took in a deep breath, happy, and she could smell the shampoo he wore and the birds he spent so much time around. There had been a time a year ago when she hadn’t talked to him much, and she was still, as Imp put it, ‘understandably fucked in the head about certain things’. Her best ideas of how to go forward with the feelings she already had about Aiden were from raw instinct, because Cherie was a bad big sister to look up to for that stuff, and Papa and ‘the women’ were a worse adult examples.

During that time a year ago, in her ‘fucked in the head’ phase, raw instinct had been to quietly hold her breath and only breathe in if he was close, anytime she was in his company. Smelling him had mingled with the rush of having oxygen again and the dizzying feelings that swam through her. He hadn’t noticed, because as much as her education in things had been a flood of too much, his had been too little. Tattletale didn’t like anyone, Imp was discreet, Bitch was too far away, and his parents had died when he was little, so he could barely remember them or their relationship. He didn’t even like any of the shows that would teach him the little things.

Maybe that fucked up phase had been a good thing, as tragically lame as it had been, and as much as her cousins had teased her once they realized she was doing it, with Aroa and Juliette getting in her way and Candy playing on the other team, trying to get Aiden closer. If she hadn’t needed to push herself to get closer so she could breathe and not pass out or die, she might never have started talking to him.

And then she wouldn’t be warm, her face this close to him.

“Good job on the handshake,” Aiden whispered in her ear.

“I was just thinking I was so happy with how that worked.”

“I need to focus on my birds. But you’re awesome.”

Darlene nodded, smiling.

Aiden broke away, leaving her with only the warmth on the one side, leeching away in the cold. He put his arm out, and a trio of birds landed on it, each with the camera collars. With his other hand, he had his phone out, and he thumbed his way through until his phone was displaying the view through the camera.

The birds took off. The image on the phone screen became a whole lot of darkness with occasional flecks of white. As the birds changed course, buildings came into view.

He turned her way. His mask was expressionless, but she felt him smile. She smiled back.

Tattletale walked at a certain distance away from the group, her phone out. She pressed it to her ear.

“Which building was it that had the high power draw that made you think tinker?” Capricorn asked, quiet. He’d changed back to his blue self.

Tattletale pressed a finger to her lips, shushing him. She pointed, and Aiden sent out his birds in that direction. The camera showed the view, and each tap of the screen rotated to another camera. The images were too jarring at the outset, but settled as each bird found its perch on a different building. One to the north, one to the west, and one to the south, focused on a building with black tiles all across the exterior, and the yellow-tinted solar windows that didn’t have much color to them in the gloom.

“I need more,” Tattletale said, still on the phone. “Details?”

There was a pause.

“Details I can use,” Tattletale said. Her voice was tense now, which got everyone’s attention. “That’s not the point.”

“What happened?” Tress asked.

Tattletale pressed her finger to her lips again, clearly annoyed. “If you don’t feel comfortable going after them alone, come here. I’ll send you the address, keep your phone handy.”

Capricorn folded his arms. The metal made noise as it brushed against more metal, and Tattletale inarticulately waved her arm in that direction, trying to gesture for him to be still and stop.

“We’re twenty-three minutes away.”

There was a pause.

“It doesn’t work that way. Twenty-three minutes is twenty-three minutes. You can’t say ‘I’ll be there in fifteen’ and make it happen.” Tattletale waited, shifting her weight from foot to foot, her breath fogging as she sighed, her eyes rolling. “Then I’ll expect you to turn up in twenty-three minutes, irritable because you weren’t here in fifteen.”

“Aunt Rachel,” Chicken Little said.

“She turned up at the meeting place. The team got taken down. Love Lost was where March was supposed to be. No sign of March. Because she’s here.”

“She overheard? Saw something? How do you know that?” Capricorn asked.

“I know. The good thing is that March isn’t where Foil and Parian are. The bad is that someone else is, and the people we’re up against are confident in their abilities.”

“A trap?”

“Yeah,” Tattletale said “Right now, we’re surrounded. Nine to ten parahumans and three unpowered are here, already in position. One to three more are on their way here as reinforcements.”

“Aunt Rachel’s on her way here too, right?”

“Yeah,” Tattletale said. “Battle mode.”

“We’re choosing fight over flight?” Capricorn asked.

“They won’t let us fly,” Tattletale said. “Battle mode, I am not joking.”

Blue lights began to appear around Capricorn. Tress shifted position, dropping to all fours and bracing against the ground while the long arms with the slender hands moved. One provided some light cover to Aiden, Darlene, Juliette and Amias.

Darlene reached into her coat, pulling out a mask. Imp had supplied them, and they were all built around a theme. Darlene didn’t even remember Jean Paul, but apparently that was the style that they were matching to.

It made Imp happy, at least. Darlene looked at her mask, which had silver forming a kind of tiara shape, extending up the nose across the forehead, and down the temples, where they curled around to the cheekbones. The lips on the mask were silver, the eyes of the mask black. She fixed her hair around it.

“We should get inside,” Tattletale said. “Can you, Tress?”

“Yeah. I can’t do narrow hallways, but if it’s an emergency, I can ditch these arms.”

“Can you ditch them now?” Tattletale asked.

“Let’s wait until they get in the way or slow us down,” Tress answered.

Inside. The building at this area of the university was a concrete fixture that had a lot of stuff underground, based on the way it almost immediately had a four-times-normal -width set of stairs that went down, with stairs on the far left and right that went up to a higher level. Artwork was mounted on the walls, people that Darlene was pretty sure she was supposed to recognize – a male scholar and a female scholar. There were people inside, standing or sitting on stairs, and they reacted with alarm as they saw the gathered group, with Tattletale, Chicken Little, Tress, and Capricorn all in costume.

She supposed she, Juliette and Amias had masks, but Darlene had a hard time calling it costumes. They weren’t costumes any more than normal clothes were costumes. She had her nice coat, her velvet dress with the extra layers underneath, padding out the skirt portion, and black tights with silver-leaf pattern printed onto them. Her shoes were another thing Imp had provided her.

Juliette’s mask had four eyes, two smaller ones beneath the main ones, and spikes that could reach straight back from the masks’s edges. The spikes were on hinges, and didn’t actually reach directly back because the shape of her head didn’t let them, but it formed a distinct look. Amias had been lowered to the ground, he had slipped his mask on, black with gold flecks and veins at the edges, blending in with black hair and the black toque.

“You should network,” Aiden whispered.

“I can connect us,” Darlene said, loud enough for the others to hear. “Who wants in? It lets us coordinate. You saw the handshake.”

“Me,” Juliette said.

Darlene reached out, connected to Juliette, and felt the sensations bubble into existence- it wasn’t quite immediate, because background noise didn’t fill in, so it was only the parts that Juliette intentionally moved and the things that received new, less usual sensations that registered the sensations. The feeling of the cold metal railing as Juliette slid her gloved hand down the length.

It was that ‘had to be prompted’ thing that kept Darlene from feeling things like Aiden’s private areas. If and when a sensation stirred into her awareness, she politely ignored it.

Juliette knew the routine, and she moved and flexed everything in order, clenching hands, then feet, then forearms, calves, thighs, stretching- Darlene locked in the sensations.

“Anyone else?”

“It’s that easy to connect?” Capricorn asked. “What’s the upside?”

“Coordination,” Darlene said. “We know exactly where each other are and what and how we’re doing.”

“Drawback?”

“It’s weird at first,” Aiden replied, quiet. “But if you’re going to ask me the same thing you asked about Juliette, I trust Darlene. I’d trust her with my life. I trust her with this.”

Darlene’s hands drew together, clasping, then broke apart a moment later. She didn’t know what to do with herself, hearing that. The emotions inside her were a mess, everything a jumble. She imagined that if he’d said something a little more, then she could have teared up or felt as warm as she ever had, depending on what it was he said.

But that was all he said, leaving her… flummoxed. That was the word.

“So easy for you to say, huh?” Capricorn asked.

“Trust is earned,” Aiden said, and though he didn’t move his head, Darlene could feel the eyeballs slide against eyelid, turning Tattletale’s direction. “Darlene earned it.”

“Dumb,” Juliette said.

Darlene wheeled on her cousin. Juliette’s face was hidden by her mask, but even without the mask, even with Darlene able to feel every inch of Juliette’s face, forcing the sensations into being, she couldn’t feel the slightest of twitches or movements.

They reached the bottom of the stairs. The base level of the building had the aroma of sweat, like gyms and pools did, and past them, rows and columns of lockers. The group stayed together as much as they were able, as they filtered between the columns.

“Fire alarm,” Capricorn said, as they reached a central area, with hallways extending in every direction. “Assuming they know where we are or that they’ll find out as soon as someone friendly to them passes on word, it gets the civilians clear.”

“They know where we are, don’t worry about that. Pulling the alarm lets them know we know.”

“It gets civilians clear,” Capricorn said. “Yes?”

“Yes.”

“That has to be worth it.”

“If you say so.”

He started forward, hesitating like he expected her to tell him not to, then with more confidence, he strode toward the little red plate on the wall. He hauled down on the switch.

The ear-splitting noise was immediate, worse because she heard it with three sets of ears and each was positioned in a slightly different place in the group, because the building was all poured concrete, and the sound bounced around violently.

The group hurried forward. Deeper into the building’s underbelly.

“We’re getting further from my birds.”

“It’s the best way right now,” Tattletale said. “It makes us harder to track with tinkertech, and there aren’t security cameras down here. Only employees with instructions to watch out and radio if there’s trouble.”

Tress spoke up. She was making her way down the stairs, her hands out to the sides, sliding down the railings. “If you don’t think it’s going to be a problem, and if it doesn’t affect my movements or yours, you could try connecting to me. Don’t be-”

Darlene connected, missing outright on her first attempt, then aiming for the face and finding the connection there.

The others had been gradual, a handful of sensations at a time, as each body part made contact with something. Tress felt like a hundred sensations at once. Limbs as thin as pencils and as strong as small caliber gunshots were fumbling, reaching, thumping against her shell, and groping blindly for rings and switches, hauling back on cords, gripping those cords, tracing the seams of the hollow metal shell, and straining against bondage where metal bands cinched them together into groups, leaving them to rustle faintly against each other. The longest groupings were extended out to and through the metal arms, where they strained and worked, providing a lot of the mechanical movement for the added limbs.

She felt Tress’s lips part, the words barely audible over the screech of the alarm. “Oh wow.”

“You okay?” Capricorn asked.

Tress nodded. “It’s… nostalgic. The sensations of a normal body.”

“Connect me?” Capricorn asked.

Darlene threw out a hand in his direction.

Her head twisted to one side, as she tried to take in the sensations. She’d expected a two-dimensional image and she got a three-dimensional one.

She’d felt a boy’s body, with her brothers and Aiden. Capricorn felt like a man’s body, in a way that even Samuel didn’t, and Samuel was close to the same age. Strong, burdened by armor, breath hot inside his helmet. That was the Capricorn who was walking down the stairs.

Another Capricorn was overlapping that, frozen like a robot with the power switch thrown off, suspended and moving along with the Capricorn she saw. Frozen as it was, she could feel the heat of the brain against the skull.

Here and there, feet and legs were moved instead of moving on their own. Always maintaining a workable footing.

“Oh. Shit,” Capricorn said. “So that’s a thing.”

He sensed it too. Part of the network.

“And Sveta’s… wow.”

“Don’t get lost in the network,” Aiden said, quiet. “As neat as this always is, it’s supposed to help, not distract.”

“Good advice,” Tattletale chimed in.

“This is weird,” Capricorn said. “Even putting the fact that my brother’s there, and Sveta’s- I’m getting new insights into Sveta.”

“Yeah,” Tress said.

“If you want to stop-” Darlene offered.

“No. It’s just weird. Even if I ignore that stuff… weird for other reasons.”

“You shouldn’t feel anything too weird,” Darlene said, defensive.

“You get used to it,” Chicken Little said. He was probably happy to get to be the expert for a while. “I grew up around powers, so I’m good at adapting to the little things.”

“Grew up,” Juliette said. “You barely started.”

Aiden huffed. Juliette laughed without making a sound, body shaking. Darlene glared at her.

“Cretan and Lionwing are standing guard that way, probably with someone else. Nursery, Lord of Loss, Blindside, any other prominent merc,” Tattletale said, indicating off to the left. “We’re going that way.”

Opposite direction. They picked up the pace. The danger felt more real now, in a way that the fire alarms hadn’t driven home.

They made it about thirty feet before Tattletale stopped in her tracks.

Tattletale held up a hand for silence, which seemed insane, because the fire alarm was loud. Hearing anything that wasn’t from someone a few feet away was impossible.

Tattletale turned at a right angle, a course that would have carried them even further from the entrance and the stairs that had led them down.

She didn’t actually walk forward.

“Cretan and Lionwing,” she said, pointing left. She pointed forward. “Case fifty-three, case fifty-three, and Contender.”

“Vulturehawk and Thud,” Tress said. “Weld’s sources say they’re not from our Earth. There’s a language barrier.”

“They’re here, in the building?”

“Yeah,” Tattletale said. She pointed right. “Cradle, Operator Red, two of March’s underlings. We don’t know what those underlings do, either.”

“What if we go the way we came?”

“The rest of March’s group,” Tattletale said.

“You picked a shitty way to go,” Tress told her.

“I picked a good way. We pick and choose which group we want to bust through as we make a run for it. How strong are Thud and Vulturehawk?”

“Strong,” Sveta said.

“And Contender’s in that group. If he catches us, then there’s nothing we can do, unless we’re willing to abandon one of our own.”

“As the person most likely to be abandoned, I vote no,” Juliette said.

“Let’s avoid the guy with the assumed chop-people-up tech,” Tattletale said. “Let’s avoid March. We’ll throw ourselves at the trained, efficient killers.”

“We can make them less trained and less efficient,” Juliette said.

Tattletale hung back. She looked at Capricorn and Tress.

The two nodded.

“Let’s go.”

“You good with this?” Capricorn asked, his head turned toward the other half of the group.

“Yeah. Good,” Chicken Little said.

Darlene nodded her agreement.

The group broke apart as they ran past more rows of lockers, each seated in sloped concrete pads, then reunited on the far side. The lights of the underground space were both too bright when looked at and insufficient to light the whole area.

The fire alarm shut off. The ringing in Darlene’s ears continued, the only sound other than huffed breaths and running footsteps on hard floor.

Lionwing and Cretan were there. White and black armor, hers modeled with a griffon aesthetic, his modified with a bull, but no clear or obvious horns.

Always amazing to see when Tattletale is accurate, Darlene thought.

Cradle was there too, wearing a tinker’s outfit with a jacket. The entrance was blocked with Cradle’s mech. A tall man in a flowing costume stood with a flickering line held between his fingers, like a dart or card made of black energy, visible from only the edge.

“Paris,” Capricorn said, under his breath.

Cradle audibly snarled on seeing them. “There they are. The job.”

“Not without being paid,” Lionwing said, not budging.

“You’re aware Tattletale is a mastermind? Why would we pull your pay in the middle of the job? Do the task and you will get paid.”

Paris nodded, stepping forward. The others hung back.

“Go,” Capricorn said. “Go!”

They turned and ran.

A dart flew past them. It cut into the base of one row of lockers. Where it hit, it disintegrated. The end of the row began to tip to one side, and as it fell, it brought the rest down. The group was forced to shift direction, to avoid putting themselves in the way of lockers toppling like dominoes. With Capricorn leading the way, they ran on the partially collapsed shelf, which was now more horizontal where it had been vertical.

“What the hell happened?” Tress asked. “Tattletale!”

“Someone fucked with my reading. Two someones. Your brilliant leader called the bank or something and the mercenaries aren’t getting paid. Good is they’re pissed and we have less to deal with, bad is it fucked with my reading.”

“She did what we wanted to do,” Capricorn said. “Each team tries to do their job, do what they can from their end to support the other teams. You can’t blame her.”

“I’m not blaming. I’m stating facts. I can’t give accurate information if certain things aren’t communicated to me.”

“Phones and discs are down,” Capricorn said.

“I know!” Tattletale shouted. “Can-”

Something detonated off to the side. Darlene shrieked, hands going to her ears. Her eyes went wide as she saw the shelving unit beside them starting to fall.

Tress caught it. Except Paris was coming right up behind. He threw one dart, and it penetrated Tress’ arm. Where the dart hit, the arm began dissolving, spraying off pellets that dinged and pocked the lockers where it hit.

She twisted around, aiming the spray toward Paris, who ducked low and pulled his hood down over his head. Disappearing around a corner.

“Sidepiece is coming,” Tattletale said.

“Whoever said that is lying!” Sidepiece called out. “I was faking it! Do you want to see the real thing? Let me show you!”

Capricorn was drawing out blue motes. As he heard that, he shifted position, until his body was almost touching the motes.

They turned to sprays of water, and that water banked off of his armor, spraying hard up and out.

Tress’s one intact arm caught him, keeping him from being bowled over by the force of the spray.

There was another explosion, way off to the side. It took a second for Darlene to realize what had happened. The spray had caught whatever was being thrown at them.

Sidepiece cackled.

Tattletale reached back, grabbing Amias’s hand to help him run. They passed the initial row of lockers, moving to the center of the crossroads- routes lined with lockers, benches, and places to study extended in all four directions.

Darlene felt Juliette spin around, then go stock still, trembling.

“Tress, Capricorn!” she tried to shout and it came out almost as a screech, pointing. “Hit him!”

Paris, emerging from a row of lockers, was now frozen mid-step.

Capricorn started forward, jogging in Paris’s direction, unaware.

“He can’t move while Juliette doesn’t!”

Capricorn picked up speed.

With a gauntlet, he slammed his fist into Paris’s ribs. Paris didn’t budge, except to sway.

Another hit to the same spot.

Then, realizing he didn’t need to be efficient, that it was about doing damage to an opponent that couldn’t defend themselves, an uppercut to the jaw, with a gauntlet around his hand.

“Pull down the lockers!” Darlene cried out.

Capricorn touched the lockers. Then he looked at Paris, and he hesitated.

Why?

“Tress!” Darlene tried. “Juliette can’t run until he’s dealt with! If she starts moving now then he’ll be right back after us!”

“No,” Capricorn said.

If he was going to say anything else, he was interrupted before he could.

Another detonation. This one came with a flare of orange light that didn’t seem to make the area brighter, because the smoke that came with it obscured as much light as the fire created.

“They’re closing in,” Tattletale said.

Aiden reached into his jacket, retrieving two birds. “I hope you two are warm enough. You’re all I’ve got for now.”

The birds took off, circling around the group.

There were more coming.

“Cretan and Lionwing struck a deal,” Tattletale said.

“Can you say anything that isn’t about how this is getting worse?”

“We can go that way or that way,” Tattletale pointed. “Any way that isn’t to Cradle or March. The lines will be thinner.”

Fire barred one of the available ways.

Toward Operator Red, then?

“There’ll be only one or two at these exits, probably,” Tattletale said.

Sidepiece, darting in and out of cover, hurled something.

A lump of something meaty that splashed on impact, the stuff that splashed igniting a second after settling.

She hopped up to a metal bench above the flame, fingers tearing at her middle, and then turned-

Again, Darlene felt Juliette freeze.

She bolted forward.

“Birds!”

The birds flew with her. She had to pick where she stepped carefully, because the ground was on fire, which made this a game of ‘the floor is lava’. There were bags left behind by students fleeing on hearing the fire alarm, which was ironically not making noise while there was actual fire.

‘Sidepiece’, now that Darlene could see, was a woman built like an apple that had been eaten to the core. Her hair was styled and her mask scary. She looked like a zombie, except she was supposedly explosive.

She was also frozen, standing on a bench above a sea of fire.

Some people were immune to powers. Most of the Heartbroken had some resistances to being controlled or having their emotions messed with. Darlene was hoping that Sidepiece wasn’t immune to her own fire.

Hopping up onto bench surrounding a pillar, she had to jump onto a melting plastic cart, then onto the bench that was part of the row that Sidepiece was balanced on.

One arm around her face, to keep from breathing in the smoke, she shoved Sidepiece, and Sidepiece toppled. The woman landed at the edge of the fire, her feet in the flames.

Veins and tendons stood out, her body rigid now, while Juliette continued to refuse to let her move.

She hopped down onto Sidepiece, one more stepping stone in this game of ‘lava’.

“Come on!” she shouted, her voice high. “This way!”

The others followed. Capricorn lagged behind, creating water. Paris was dodging the water until-

Juliette turned around, freezing him. Which released Sidepiece, who shrieked like she was being burned alive.

Which… fair.

Darlene stared down at the woman, watched her thrash. Seeing her get on hands and knees, trying to rise, Darlene kicked, heel toward head.

Sidepiece ducked her head low, the heel hitting the back of her head, but not seeming to do much. She’d hoped it would put Sidepiece back in the fire.

“You’re so fucked. I’m going to fuck you up, you little fucking fucker!” Sidepiece shouted, her voice raw. She was trying to pat out the flame.

The birds harassed her, pecking and swooping. One got her ear, tearing at it.

And in the background, the others weren’t catching up.

No, because Lionwing and Cretan were catching up. And the Case Fifty-Threes. The group had tried to go one way and they’d stopped. They started to come her way, and Cretan used his power.

It was a wave, a pulse that rippled over everything. Where it passed, things were bent. Rows of lockers now turned at right angles, ground bent up, requiring climbing up a two-and-a-half-foot ledge, and off to Darlene’s left, a hole in the wall showed a tunnel, with a tiny version of Cretan upside down on the far side.

That tiny Cretan turned toward her, then began charging down the tunnel, swiftly growing larger.

No no no…

Water gushed, aimed down the complete wrong direction, and yet somehow it passed into the tunnel, gushing in spirals and throwing the bull-costume mercenary around inside the confined space. Some water sloshed out on Darlene’s side.

“-clidean space,” Tattletale was saying.

“Come!” Darlene shouted.

In the tunnel, there was a splash, as Cretan brought his fist down on the ceiling of the tunnel.

Another pulse. Another ripple.

This time, there were walls and bends that obscured Darlene’s view of her team. She could feel them, though. They felt a normal distance away, even if her last glimpse of them seemed to put them in weird places.

Leaving her alone. Separating her from them. From Sidepiece, thankfully. From the birds. She could only hear the shouts and the chaos.

She turned around.

A man in red, with a white handprint on his mask. He held a knife.

She wished she wasn’t wearing her own mask. Maybe if she wasn’t, she could say or do something, pretend to be innocent.

The man threw a pair of handcuffs her way. They slid on the floor, traveling in a straight line until they hit a weird bend, then slid left a short distance.

She bent down to pick them up.

“Cuff yourself to that bench. If you use a power, I cut you where it hurts,” the man in red said.

She opened the cuff, looking at the serrated metal edge that allowed for the handcuff’s adjustments.

“I can’t stand being tied up,” she said. “It makes me want to barf.”

“It has to be better than being hurt or dead.”

She shook her head.

“Don’t make me be an asshole,” he said.

“I just want to go back to my friends,” she told him, her voice small. She could feel Capricorn being kicked hard. Felt Aiden’s back slide against a surface as he tried to make himself small. “They need me.”

“That’s exactly why I can’t let you do it,” the man said.

“Life has really, really sucked for a long time,” she told him. “I finally have good things. I have a boy I like.”

“Cuff yourself, then.”

She shook her head. She had to swallow gorge to keep from coughing or vomiting into her mouth. Just the idea of it brought her to that point, made her breathing uneasy. “I’d lose my mind.”

Aiden noticed, turned her way, touching the wall.

Not that it helped.

She broke the connection. The absence was palpable.

The man approached, knife held out, until it touched her throat. She breathed hard, her eyes wide.

Was there even help coming? Someone coming through the wall? Aiden’s Aunt Rachel?

No. Not this soon. Even if she came in fifteen minutes like she’d said.

She created a connection to Operator. Connecting her body to his.

The knife moved, touching where her jaw met her neck, and pressing in enough to split the skin. It stung, and she saw him jump at the feeling.

She pushed the knife hand away, cut the power and punched for the balls- and he blocked her hand. He wrenched her arm to one side, so she bent over-

And she reactivated the connection. Let him feel that pain of arm being twisted backward.

Her foot had always had a quirk, where if she curled it in a crescent shape as hard as she could, it cramped hard. She did that.

There was an element to things where it was sympathetic, and while it was sympathetic, he felt compelled to adjust his balance, move his own foot, to do something about the cramp.

She shifted her weight, shoving into him with all her weight. He stumbled, still holding her arm above her, shoulder socket twisted nearly as far as it would go. She forced the twist, reasserted the connection so he could feel it just as much as she did.

He released her, catching her by the neck instead. He had the knife-

And she had her hands free. She grabbed her finger with the hand that still had the cuffs, and she bent it backward until something gave.

The knife didn’t reach her throat. It clattered to the floor and she was able to push and pull free of the hand that had her neck, the injured finger flaring with a pain that lanced to her funny bone and up to her shoulder, close to her throat, where the pain magnified the barfy feeling that had accumualted there.

She threw herself at the knife, curling around it.

He kicked her, more to get her off the knife than to hurt.

“I was going to go easy on you because you’re a little kid, but-”

She bit her tongue, hard.

It shut him up, startled him. An opportunity for her to take the knife she’d grabbed and swing it madly in his direction.

Except he knew what he was doing. On her second swing, he slapped at her wrist, and her hand went numb. The knife clattered from it.

A blow to the temple, and her vision went fuzzy in one eye, the other seeing double, like all the vision in one eye had been shoved into the other.

“I can do things other than hurt you,” he said, growling.

She brought the handcuffs down with her other hand, relying on her sense of him. She was too slow to disable her power, so she felt the initial connection, where the blunt point and serrated edge caught him in the wrist, gouging. She fell as much as she pulled down, and the thing was hauled in deeper. A fishhook set.

With a hand with one broken or badly hurt finger, she hung onto the cuffs, the rest of her reaching own, groping for the blade.

He kicked her, along the lower half of her body, and the pain was immense, jolting through her. He’d hit her in the back, near the spine. She knew he felt it, just as much as she felt the injury at the wrist for as long as her power was active.

Her fingers found the knife, touched it, made it spin instead of grabbing it.

She kicked up, toward the balls. He blocked it again, but took the momentum out of the kick more than he stopped it entirely. It made him bend over slightly, and that gave her the chance to pick up the knife.

Still hanging down, pulling on the cuffs where they were embedded in flesh, because relaxing it would mean he could pull the cuffs out, she swung wildly with the knife, aiming at the only flesh in reach- the back of the arm she was pulling down on. Four wild strokes, and she’d turned flesh there into thick ribbons, blood pouring down to the ground.

“You-”

She bit her tongue again, hard. Every part of her was tense, rigid, trembling, straining, and her face mid-bite was no different.

He hurled his mass and her mass around in a quarter-circle, screaming as he did it, because he was pulling on the cuffs and making the damage worse, but in the doing, he created an opening where he could grab her hand and peel it away from the chain of the cuffs.

She reasserted the connection as she picked herself up.

She knew exactly what he was doing as he did it. Her movements weren’t as eerily efficient as his, but they were informed. On the occasions where it did look like he’d catch her, she used her power, so he felt it too.

She took an opportunity to cut him, and that was the point he stepped back, panting, bleeding, and drew two more knives.

She still couldn’t see in the one eye, one ear was ringing, the other eye was seeing double, and her back hurt, where he’d somehow hit her and made the organs hurt. Not just one, but multiple ones, the pain radiating through.

He lunged, and she dodged. He swung downward, and she reached up, both of her hands gripping the handle of her one knife, to provide the strength that, combined with the rush of danger, almost let her match the strength of a grown man using one arm. Her knees bent as she tried to keep the knife from coming down, she felt him get ready to stab with the other knife, and let her hand slip.

The hand came away from the handle and found wrist. She dug fingers into the wound, making him drop the knife, then brought her blade away from where it had been holding him at guard, matching his swing with hers. The knife ran along knuckles.

She’d aimed for fingers, hoped to chop them off, but the knife wasn’t an extension of her or her power. Had she used her fingernails, she knew she could have gotten them exactly where she wanted them, respective to her opponent.

This wasn’t the only time her mood had turned this black.

“Nobody’s taking them from me. I have a family, a job, and things I want to do.”

“I’m-”

She bit her tongue. She tasted blood.

“-mrg,” he said. “Stop that.”

She lunged for him, scrambled to get away from one swung, lunged point-first for another. On attack, her power was off. On defense, it was on, ensuring that she knew his every move, she could deflect, absorb, reduce the impact, and when she felt anything, he did too.

She didn’t stop. Her assault was on his legs and his footing. Cutting his thighs. Swiping for his groin.

A glancing blow, a knife sinking into her upper arm. The sympathetic feeling of the pain weakened his grip on the weapon. She twisted back, pulling it out of his reach. When he reached again, she kept twisting. Always keeping that horrible pain away from the fingertips she could feel just as much as she could feel her own.

He took a step back, and she felt the thigh muscle flare with pain and fail to provide the strength in the same moment he did. She closed the distance, driving the knife into his belly.

Her face against his collarbone, she withdrew the knife and stabbed again and again, then dropped to her knees, just to get the knife handle to a place where he couldn’t grip it and pull it from her arm. His fingertips touched the handle, but didn’t come close to gripping it.

He struck her across the face, instead. This time, she was rendered entirely blind, her head full of noise and pain.

The Operator slumped to the ground, and she felt everything, felt the blood welling out, sticky between fabric and skin. She knew he felt the pain and noise in the head that she experienced, and she felt it was fair. Fair that he had to experience the kind of thing he’d done to others.

She wished she had a good quip. The others were better at it.

“I’m Heartbreaker’s kid,” she said. “I’m not as powerful, but I’m better, because he was horrible. You shouldn’t have fought me. That was stupid.”

He wore a mask, and she could feel him gasping and gawping, a fish on dry land, his hands at the portion of his stomach where he had multiple stab wounds.

She reached for his mask, to pull it off. He shook his head, refusing.

She stabbed him a few more times, trying to hurry him along his way. It didn’t really work.

She turned away, instead.

The others- she pushed out with her power, trying to get it through the wall.

Sidepiece. Sitting with her back to a wall. She banished the power as soon as she realized who it was. Another direction.

Aiden.

She felt Aiden’s alarm and agitation as he realized she was hurt. He touched his arm.

She cut off the connection and looked down at the knife at the spot he’d indicated.

Darlene had spent enough time around Roman to know the particulars about stabbing people. Pulling things from stab wounds made it worse, not better. Though she wasn’t sure it really was better, here. There wasn’t much there at her upper arm, with it being as skinny as it was, and the knife kind of bobbed and dangled where she moved wrong.

“Darlene’s hurt!” Aiden called out.

She pushed out. She found Capricorn, crawling across the floor.

Everyone was separated from everyone else.

“I’m sending birds! I’m going to try to reach you!” Aiden called out.

She looked, groping for openings. The floor had turned up at a right angle and nearly met the ceiling now. She set to climbing up, as best as she could with two feet and one arm. A bench had turned up at a right angle too. Her starting point.

She reached over the top, where there was a foot of gap, and a bird touched her fingers.

“Take me to him,” she said, before she started squeezing herself through. The English phrase ‘stick out like a sore thumb’ kind of applied, since she had a knife sticking out of her, and a narrow space to fit through. She did her best, her arm draped across her front, right hand by her left hip, wriggling through, groping for handholds on the far side.

A labyrinth. She felt out with her power. Found the Cretan. The Minotaur that was making this maze. He moved so quickly through it that it seemed impossible, though it was possible he was undoing the effect as necessary. His head turned her way.

The power that let her find people also let them find her. She had to be careful.

Forward, forward-

Into the L-shaped space that Capricorn was in. She dropped down, and her legs were so shaky she landed on her rear end.

“Creating handholds,” Capricorn said.

She nodded, tense.

“You’re hurt.”

“So are you,” she said.

He was in two pieces. The legs were twitching. The upper body, lying on its back, was creating orange lights.

He didn’t respond, didn’t elaborate. Didn’t say he was okay or not okay.

She felt out with her power, establishing a connection. She felt his body, in two pieces. The other side of him was intact, waiting.

“That’ll have to be good enough. I’m not-” he groaned, a strangled sound.

He blurred, trying to change back. It was a torturous thing, the blur reaching out, groping, trying to connect, to meet the two halves.

She reached for him, grabbing the lower half, and dragged it closer by inches.

Unnecessary. It just took time.

Capricorn with the blue armor, now. Intact. With her power, she felt the two separated parts, floating superimposed around him.

“Climb. I’ll follow. I may have to lose my armor so this doesn’t break under my weight.”

She climbed. She could follow orders when important.

“You kids are scary,” he said.

“Yes,” she murmured. “We have to be.”

She climbed, one hand and two feet, the other hand more a guide to remind herself where she was.

On higher ground, she had a vantage point of more of the battlefield, below raised walls, around bends. The tunnels that seemed to magnify and shrink.

The Cretan crashed down near Sveta. She struck at him with a gauntlet.

And Tattletale-

She saw Tattletale backing up until she was out of sight and hurried forward. Aiden was rarely far from Tattletale.

“I’m not a part of this. I’m keeping half of an eye on the kids,” Tattletale was saying. “You don’t want to go this far.”

Though unable to see Tattletale, Darlene could see Cradle, holding a glowing red whip.

“I have to,” was the response.

She heard the impact, a sound like the whole universe was gasping for breath.

Again, she heard the sound. This time, it struck a wall, carved it away like it was butter.

The wall fell away, and Cradle advanced, head low, passing between the four segments of Tattletale,

“Cradle- the most intact part of Tattletale said. “You have a mole. Someone who tipped you off.”

“Learn your own lessons. Mercenaries follow the highest bidder,” Cradle said.

Darlene pushed out, connecting herself to Tattletale- to someone who had been carved into quarters and felt it. Then to Cradle. To stop him, to stall.

But that was all she could do. She watched as he found his bearings, straightened, and ended further discussion with a stomp of his boot vicious enough to mute out Darlene’s connection to Tattletale.

The whip flared as he cracked it, turning toward her.

Blinding – 11.9

The armored van cut its way through the thin sheet of ice that crusted the road. I could hear the sound because the windows were all open, even the panels on the side, thick glass popped out and away. Our driver was a mercenary in black, Korean, with sparse facial hair at the upper lip and chin, one gloved hand on the wheel, the other hand holding a cigarette up near his face. It was cold as shit, and the comedown of the immediate danger meant my resistances were down, and I felt that cold twice as much as I normally might.

The open windows were partially for the cigarette, but the windows were mostly open for the smell. Being smothered by Nursery’s power meant being smeared and soaked with juices, and those juices smelled like a fine blend of blood, urine, apple juice, and ham juices that had gone slightly off. It was heavy enough on the air that I could breathe in through my nose and taste it in my mouth, back of the tongue to the tip.

The people in the back were enduring. Foil had Parian’s head in her lap, Aroa at the end of the bench with her head turned so her nose was by the air that rushed through the window. A very red, cold nose, but cold seemed preferable to smell. On the other bench, Rain sat beside Chastity, who had Candy beside her.

I could imagine having a conversation with my twelve year old self, seeing her starry-eyed at the prospect of being a superheroine, and that conversation stopping before it even started because she’d gotten a whiff.

My phone rang. I turned it over to see the screen, then raised it to my ear.

“Hi big V.”

“Little V.”

“Shit, are you sick? You sound sick, and that’d be miserable, on top of everything.”

“Not sick,” I said, clearing my throat. “A little froggy from pulling four pounds of unborn baby out of my throat.”

My mild amusement at imagining her reaction was dampened badly by the very vivid recollection of actually pulling the thread of Nursery’s powerstuff out of my throat. I kept my breaths very shallow.

“I once got hit by something that made hear hear voices,” Vista said, through the phone. “For me, the voices belonged to people who died and people I’d killed. Took three months before it was at the point that I could ignore it, and for two of those months I thought it would be permanent.”

Couldn’t avoid it any more than you can get out of the way of someone’s flashlight beam, and then you’re permanently changed? It was only three months, but I feel changed a year later.”

“No shit?” I asked. I had to clear my throat again.

“Yeah shit. How bad was your thing? Sounds painful.”

“Not my best day. Not my worst, but the night’s not over. As nice as it would be to chat, I should ask why you’re calling.”

“I’ve been trying every few minutes for a while. Did you have to turn off your phone for a bit for opsec?”

“Nursery’s power. Jams signals.”

“Did you hear about the Undersiders who got shot?”

“I got a voice message, but we only had one dot of network connectivity so I couldn’t call for details or talk to them. One Undersider and two heartbroken. Unless there’s more?”

“Not that I’ve heard. The villains want to get in touch to negotiate.”

“Hostage exchange, I’m guessing?”

“Yeah.”

“They haven’t given us a deadline and from the message I got, we don’t even know how the surgery or medical care is going.”

“Seems like the optimal time,” Rain said, from the back.

“What was that?” Vista asked.

“Question of timing. They could try to negotiate now before things get complicated-”

“Before one of my siblings or cousins bites it,” Aroa muttered.

I gestured for them to pipe down. “-I think the people who have the final say in negotiations are preoccupied. They aren’t pushing a deadline on us, so for right this second, our read on it is that’s a wait-and-see thing.”

“Okay. Wait and see. I wanted to let you know in case you weren’t aware they’d been shot. That was one reason I called. There’s another. Another two.”

“Hit me.”

“Do you need help? I didn’t plan on asking, but you have a throat baby now-”

“Throat abortion, technically.”

“Good excuse for me to ask now, then. Do yo want me to send you people?”

“How’s your end of things? Tell me that first.”

“Wardens and your other teams are tackling the time bubble issue. Things are ugly in New Brockton with the Undersiders no longer in charge.”

I winced.

“If you really needed it, we could send some people.”

I could hear the tone in the ‘really’, and it clarified the uneasy tone in the rest of it. I’d imagined the city was on fire, before, when all of the villains had stepped up their game and gone on the hard, no-rules offense. Things were still bad and we didn’t have enough capes on rooftops.

But if I really needed it, she would try, she might even find a way, and other critical things would suffer for it.

“We don’t know how bad the situation with the others is,” I answered. “Can I get back to you on that?”

“You can. Fill me in on your thing, so I can tell people higher up the ladder and figure out when and if we can get away sending someone.”

“Our team red got shot up. Some of them were taken prisoner. Ransoms pending. ”

“That much I knew.”

“Team yellow is silent. No communication.”

“Who’s on yellow?”

I hesitated. The inquisitiveness wasn’t unusual for Vista, but being pressed when I was weary and my defenses were admittedly down had me on my guard. My first thought was master-stranger protocols. If she was compromised or if she wasn’t really Vista…

But she’d opened with ‘big V’. I believed the story she’d told and I believed that the Vista I knew, in her right mind, might bring it up like she’d done.

“Victoria?”

“Tattletale, Chicken Little, three heartbroken kids, Sveta and Capricorn.”

“I wanted to make sure Tattletale wasn’t with you, get a mental picture. The second reason I called- offering help wasn’t a reason-”

“Yeah.”

“A friend reached out. I wanted to check with you before giving her your number. ”

I could connect the dots. “Hellhound.”

“Bitch,” Foil said from the backseat. “I know it’s awkward, but it’s the name she chose.”

“Call her Rachel,” Vista advised me, over the phone.

“Rachel, Bitch. Okay.”

“Can I give her your number?” Vista asked.

“Go for it.”

“Call me after if you can. Let me know how it went. And if you need something for that throat, hit up a gas station or a pharmacy, look for this medicine they sell that’s from one of the alternate earths. Weird name, orange cap, blue bottle. I lived by it the last time I had a cold.”

“I will.”

“Good luck with your teammates. And with Rachel.”

I hung up.

“Vista’s giving Rachel my number,” I said. “She doesn’t have yours, Foil?”

“She has it, she loses it. Frequently,” Foil answered.

“She thinks if she can’t remember a number she shouldn’t have to bother with it,” Chastity said. I looked back at her, saw her leaning her head back, eyes closed. “People have tried to tell her about contact lists. She prefers a smaller circle.”

“We don’t cross paths much,” Foil said.

“Any tips?”

“No good ones.”

Parian roused a bit, nudged her. Foil bent down as much as she could without wrapping her stomach and chest around Parian’s head, in her lap.

“Don’t back down,” Foil said.

I fidgeted.

My phone buzzed in my hand. My thumb was already ready to hit the button.

“Henchman here,” a young voice said. “Acting as secretary- don’t nudge me. I am.”

There was a pause.

“Secretary doesn’t sound weird. What sounds weird is you interrupting me when I’m expediting. Passing you to Rachel, Antares. Good luck.”

I cleared my throat.

“What?” was the answer on the other end, like someone had been been called at three in the morning, letting the phone ring ten times before the caller gave up, only for them to start again.

A sweetheart, Vista had said.

“You called me,” I said.

“I was supposed to go help Imp. She got shot before I could get there, the rest of them caged. Tattletale said to come to her, so I tried, and that went to shit.”

“Something happened?” I asked.

“It went to shit. You’ve got my guys with you. We’ll meet. Drive-thru at Hot Pepper’s.”

“See you there, then. We have to drop off Parian first.”

“Yeah,” she said. She hung up.

She apparently didn’t want a timeframe.

In the backseat, Foil was twisting around. The two benches faced each other, in true PRT- or SWAT-van style, and Chastity had moved to the other bench. She and Foil were doing their best to extricate Foil from quivers and holsters without making Parian have to lift her head up, passing things across to Precipice.

After they were done with Foil, they took off the most ostentatious and ‘cape’ stuff of Parian’s.

When we pulled up to the clinic, a one-story affair with a plastic sign illuminated from behind above the door, people were waiting outside. Foil, in civilian clothes, helped Parian out. Parian was a petite middle-Eastern or Indian girl, which I hadn’t expected.

It looked like it would take a while to sort out, so I hopped out and flew across the street to the gas station. I stopped by the bathroom first, to wash my face. I pulled my phone out as I bought the little thing of medicine and some odor annihilators. Supplied by another world. I hoped there weren’t traces of cyanide or formaldehyde in it.

“Hey Little V,” I croaked. as she picked up.

“How’d it go?”

“Reasonably, I guess. The sweetheart thing is pretty hard to see. It’s not that I don’t believe you believe it, but you might have lingering brain damage after the hearing voices thing.”

I heard her laugh on the other end. Good to hear.

“It’s there, trust me.”

“Then we’ll see how it is face to face.”

“How’s your throat baby?” she asked. It took me a second to realize she was asking how the baby was, not calling me baby. It was like a slap in the face. She went on, “Are congratulations in order?”

I shivered. Still feeling the cold, still aware my defenses were down. The clerk took my money.

“No congratulations,” I said, my voice a bit of a croak. “I pulled out what I’m estimating was four pounds of baby from my throat. Our friend that we just dropped off at the clinic got a seven pounder, I’m guessing, not counting all the rest of the stuff that was attached.”

“Gag.”

“Tell me about it. I’m about to gag just remembering it, and don’t get me started on the smell-”

The clerk averted his eyes as I looked at him. Yeah.

“We called ahead, they were ready to get her on her way to a hospital as soon as we showed. They’re answering questions and filling in the clinic staff so they know what’s up.”

“Right on. I hope she’s okay. Hometown pride, you know?”

“I know.”

“Gotta hold on to stuff.”

“I know,” I said.

The clerk handed me my receipt. I took my stuff, raised my eyebrows for him as he stared at me, then headed out the door. I flew to the parking lot by the clinic, and I saw they hadn’t left yet.

Cold as it was, I decided to stay in the air.

I noticed the silence, and I wasn’t sure if it was a painful, awkward one. “You were talking about it before. Holding on to stuff. The hallucinations.”

“I slapped my forehead after hanging up, cringing for bringing it up,” she said, almost groaning out the words. “I don’t know why I did.”

“Was Dean one of them?”

“Yeah,” she said. I could hear her voice over the phone, and the groan was gone. Almost a relief.

“Was he angry?”

“He wouldn’t be angry, or he wouldn’t be Dean if he was.”

“He got angry sometimes.”

“But he wouldn’t be angry. He wouldn’t stay that way. He was just… better than, you know?”

“Absolutely,” I said, quiet.

“My therapist got so cranky about it. We’ve got people who can see through walls. Capable people. I know someone who got stuck in a circumstance after an incident, she missed her time window to change back a few dozen times and now she just stays a giant magenta cat made of energy. And a certain someone was strong enough to deal with being hospitalized for years after-”

I cleared my throat. A second after doing it, I wasn’t sure if I’d done it intentionally to interrupt or if it was an accident.

“-After. Strong enough to deal then and after. So is it really hard to think maybe someone can be a really great guy, and I’m not puffing him up by calling him that? That maybe she doesn’t need to take the one negative thing I say about him and run with it?”

“We puff him up a little.”

I heard Vista make a disgusting snorting sound over the phone. I smiled.

“Are we trying to one-up each other here with war stories, because you just-”

“Nah,” she interrupted. “Nah. That’s for the boys. I know that really cute guy in armor on your team has the competitive streak. I’m… empathizing. And saying something I wanted to get off my chest, I guess. For a while after it wore off, I gave some real thought to going to where we’d stashed our bad guy and getting him to dose me again. That was part of the quote-unquote ‘clinging to the good’ conversation with my cranky old lady therapist. Most of the voices were friendly, and because I figured I’d gotten by, not telling my superiors.”

“Can’t do that. Not giving them the information.”

“I know. But this is all me trying to say that sometimes this all sucks. Really sucks.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Sorry about your throat baby. Me spending three months with voices in my head is the best comparison I can come up with. Sucks.”

“At least you got something out of it. Got to talk to Dean.”

“You didn’t get anything out of your throat-baby? No cooing at the chubby little munchkin?”

I made a sound I hadn’t wholly intended to make. Humor and disgust and cringe all together.

“Good luck with your team, Victoria. This thing is a mess. If you need help, we’ll send some people we can’t afford to.”

“The time fuckery is too important. Too big, according to apparently everyone who knows anything. Don’t.”

“If we don’t hear from you?”

“Don’t,” I said, again. “Don’t send anyone, don’t come. Not unless you’re sure you can afford to.”

“Okay. Don’t become one of those voices in my head, Victoria. I’ll put you in a corner of my brain with Bastion, Barrow Rose, and Shatterbird.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Call me when you’re done.”

“You too, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I hung up.

They were still talking, and I didn’t want to join in. Too close to memories of being wheeled off. Packed up into an ambulance, hearing people talk about me like I wasn’t there. Being ignored.

Parian wasn’t being ignored. Foil stroked her hair while talking to the professionals.

Still too close.

I flew straight down to the van. I stepped into the vehicle, and I unloaded with the odor annihilators, spraying myself down, and being sure to get the seats and the rest of the vehicle’s interior.

It kind of worked. I couldn’t trust my own nose, but the worst of the smell was gone, and what lingered was akin to a bad aftertaste, which was equal measures floral scent and Nursery-power.

As the others returned to the vehicle, the driver gave me a nod, apparently approving.

Candy, on reaching the back end of the van, took a whiff and broke into a stream of French profanity.

“I can’t tell if you’re mad or happy,” I said.

“So happy,” she said.

“I’m going to smell like flowers,” Precipice said.

“It’s better than smelling like hot dog water and pee,” Candy said.

“That’s true.”

Foil was the next to appear at the door. I hadn’t been sure if she’d come or if she’d stay with Parian. She took up her spot on the bench, and Chastity sat beside her.

“She looks like she’s in good hands,” I said.

“She does. Let’s just get this done.”

Everyone climbed in.

Our professional driver continued to drive on icy roads with one hand on the wheel, but the armored van seemed equipped for the weather, he seemed confident, and I was pretty sure I could do something about any skids if I had to, as I’d done with Byron. I forced myself to relax, uncapping the medication and tossing it back. Half a bottle for now, half for later.

It didn’t have the bad taste I expected, but it was oily, and bad associations made me want to gag. The effect on my throat was immediate, though, and as soon as I felt the cool sensation, the desire for a gag disappeared.

The fast food place wasn’t far. Hot Pepper had a sign that showed ‘Pepper’ standing with only the portion of her body between nose and hips visible. Her arms were folded and the folding held a giant hot pepper within her cleavage, in an association driven home by her pose and the kissy lips visible up at the top.

Question marks about why Rachel had chosen this aside, I could see commotion. Cars blocked some of the view, but I could see people at the window, crowding to one side… and as we rounded the corner and pulled into the lot, I saw the giant dogs.

Rachel was attacking one of her own.

Before our armored van even pulled to a stop, I was out the door, flying.

“-be torn apart!” Rachel’s voice was raised. She stood on the back of a giant mutant dog that was stock still, head down, breath coming in and out in huffs. “Which is it!? Cut in half, chewed, or torn apart? Or are you going to say something I actually believe!?”

‘Sweetheart’.

The man didn’t answer, fighting for a grip. By the look of it, he didn’t have the breath to form words. A dog had a paw on his chest, and was leaning forward, exerting what had to be hundreds of pounds.

“Hold on,” I said. “Wait a second.”

“This is my business, not yours.”

“It’s everyone’s business if you’ve got people at the window over there watching. Word gets around. What happened?”

“He looked at me funny.”

“Y- what?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

The guy on the ground was groaning. I was reminded of the day I’d first glimpsed the Siberian. This woman, then a teenager, attacking people in her territory for the crime of being there. Maiming some.

She had henchmen, by the looks of it. I looked at the nearest one. “Am I missing something?”

“Nah. He looked at her funny,” the girl in the heavy jacket covered in patches and buttons said. Her eyes were heterochromatic.

Rachel whistled twice, two short sounds, more like a bird call than anything. The dog lifted its head, peering at her with one eye.

“Soft,” she said. She indicated the mercenary. As the dog lowered its head, mouth open, she said, “Good.”

“Not good,” I said, as I saw the dog take the mercenary’s head into its mouth.

“What the hell?” Rain asked, as he caught up. The Heartbroken were with him.

Rachel, though, turned our way. She wiped at her nose with her sleeve, leaving a wet line on it, then saw something- someone, and smiled. She hopped down from her dog onto snow, gave it a few heavy slaps on the side, and said, “Stay.”

“Stay is good,” I said, eyeing the mercenary.

She walked past me to where the Heartbroken were. Her hug of Chastity was forceful enough that Chastity had to take a step back, awkward with Rachel holding her.

“I’m still annoyed,” Chastity said.

“Get over it. We have work to do. Now hug me back.”

Dutifully, Chastity did. The hug broke, and Chastity seemed very at ease in the wake of it.

For Candy, Rachel bent down, then straightened up. A big hug, Candy’s feet dangling. Rachel’s hand went to the back of Candy’s head, fingers in her hair. Those fingers gripped the hair close to the scalp.

“Don’t muss my hair,” Candy said, into Rachel’s shoulder.

“Long hair is a weakness,” Rachel said. “It’s something your enemies can grab.”

“You have longer hair. You have dogs with longer fur.”

“I’m all out of enemies and my dogs don’t have hair when they’re grown,” Rachel said, “And I have long hair because I don’t care enough to bother one way or the other. But you make your hair this nice, braid parts, put pins in parts, make it all shiny-”

“Conditioner, Aunt Rachel.”

“And you leave yourself open. If a villain or a no-neck twit hero gets their hands on you like this, what do you even do?”

No neck twit hero?

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll fuck ’em up.”

“You don’t hesitate then.”

“Of course not.”

Rachel let Candy drop. Candy spent a second smoothing her coat and skirt before fixing her hair with her fingers.

Aroa tried to back away. Rachel caught up with her-

I wanted to wince, because Aroa was the thirteen year old Heartbroken who apparently liked hurting people, and got a power that lashed out with pain and made people like the pain.

“No hugs,” Aroa said. “Never hugs.”

Rachel stopped short of a hug. A hand touched the side of Aroa’s face, two fingers above the ear, two below. She moved the hand, Aroa’s head rocking.

“Don’t get into trouble,” Rachel said.

Head still moving side to side, Aroa rolled her eyes. “Or you’ll make me pitchfork shit?”

“Next time, I’ll make you express anal glands,” Rachel said.

“I don’t even know what that means,” Aroa said.

“Popping out the pooper juice,” Candy said. “After I embarrassed Darlene in front of Chicken Little, I got sent to Rachel and apparently I qualified as breaking the ‘don’t hurt the Chicken’ rule, so I got the bad punishments. I had to do it four times.”

Aroa smirked. Candy smirked back, less natural, more mocking of Aroa’s expression.

“It’s your job next time,” Rachel said. Her hand stopped moving but it didn’t pull away.

Aroa glared up at Rachel. “I don’t think you realize how fine a line you walk with us, abusing us like you do.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Rachel said. “Show up. Come anytime. Good clean food, playing with the other kids, swimming, riding the horses or dogs. If you aren’t bratty and you don’t scare or hurt anyone, you get a pass. No anal glands and no cleanup the next time you get in trouble after that.”

“I don’t plan on getting caught.”

Rachel put another hand on the other side of Aroa’s face, bending down, and putting her face the crown of her head. She murmured something I didn’t hear. Aroa nodded. As Rachel took her hand away, she gave Aroa’s head a push. Aroa rolled her eyes.

Last of that side of the group, Foil greeted Rachel. A hand clasp, not a hug.

I glanced down at the mercenary, who still had a paw pinning him to the ground, his head lifted off the ground by the teeth that had slid between head and pavement, mouth not fully closed. He barely moved.

“Precipice and Antares,” Foil said. “Bitch.”

“Yeah,” Rachel said.

I put out a hand. She hesitated, then took it.

Precipice did the same. She didn’t hesitate. Because she’d gotten over it with me, or because I was more of a reason to hesitate? Past history?

Off to the side, Chastity was greeting Rachel’s henchperson. A kiss on each cheek, deftly done, while the henchperson reacted in the awkward way just about anyone, myself included, did when a surprise dual-cheek-kiss was done to them, trying to reciprocate while a step behind.

“If you get your food and arrange meetups at a place like this, people are going to draw conclusions,” Chastity said.

“It’s good food. I got you some.”

“I’m really not hungry. But thank you. At a place like this you’re getting pretty waitresses, not good food.”

“If pretty waitresses was all they had, then they wouldn’t be full of customers. And they wouldn’t have a nice sign.”

“Can we address the guy with his head in a dog’s mouth?” Rain asked. “It’s alarming.”

“It’s a soft mouthed breed,” Rachel said, patting the side of the dog with heavy slaps that sounded like drum beats. The dog, for its part, wasn’t moving its head an inch- considerable given the size of that head.

“I don’t know what that means. I never had a dog growing up,” I said. “My parents said it wouldn’t be fair if we got hurt or if a supervillain got us, and we weren’t back for it.”

“Fair,” Rachel said.

“Not fair. They had you,” Candy said.

I shrugged.

“We had a dog,” Chastity said. As the Heartbroken turned her way, she clarified for her sister and ‘cousin’, “Not the fat man. An actual dog.”

“What the fuck? I don’t remember that,” Candy said.

“It died when you were small,” Chastity said.

Rachel stared at Chastity, her expression unreadable, just kind of ambiguously hostile, eyebrows furrowed. Then she turned back to me. “Soft mouthed means it’s gentle. You could have it carry an egg and it wouldn’t break it.”

“Is it necessary?” Rain asked.

“We’ll see,” Rachel said. “Off, Honeybun.”

The dog backed away, releasing the mercenary’s head. Just from moisture of the dog’s breath, his head and face were damp.

“I didn’t have a look in my eye. I’m just doing the work,” he said.

Off to the side, Candy shook her head.

“Lie,” Candy said.

“I’m fucking innocent of whatever it is you think I did!”

“Lie.”

“You’re lying to my face?” Rachel growled. She stepped forward, gesturing. The dog exerted more downward pressure.

“Fuck! No!”

To my right, Precipice shifted his footing, head angled down.

I could see the faint change in the man, the way his jaw set.

“I get the pay, I do the work, I keep it simple!”

“Lie.”

The mercenary’s expression twisted. Breath fogged as he hissed through teeth, his hands reached up to grip the dog’s leg, as if he could alleviate the pressure by lifting it- but that was next to impossible.

“I don’t know what you want me to say! You’re utterly insane!”

“True, but iffy.”

“Fuck you!”

“True, but also iffy phrasing. The intent is there.”

I folded my arms. I knew that Candy didn’t have any emotion sensing or lie detection power. This guy worked with the Undersiders and seemed to be under the impression she did, or that it was possible.

I glanced again in the direction of the restaurant.

“We should take this elsewhere.”

Rachel shook her head, glancing at me. “If we take it elsewhere it’s going to be so they don’t see any bodies.”

“True,” Candy said, mischievously.

Rachel shot her a look.

“Whatever. Let’s just move elsewhere, then discuss.”

Rachel whistled, and gestured for the dog to move its paw.

We lifted him up, Rachel, Rain and I draping him over the dog’s back. As we finished, I saw Rachel glance sidelong. First at Foil, then at mercenaries.

Foil was hanging back, apparently looking at Chastity and the henchman, but with a vantage point to see the entire group, the other mercenaries included.

“The only way this goes okay for you is if you cooperate,” I told the mercenary.”

“There’s nothing to cooperate about!”

“Lie.”

All based on a look, and a little girl pretending to be a lie detector.

I felt uneasy.

“You want to give us answers before we get where we’re going,” Rachel said.

“I don’t have any to give!”

“Lie.”

I saw the man’s expression twist. I gave Rain a look, discreetly pointing between him and the man. He nodded.

Guilt and regret aura in effect.

He twisted his head around, looking at the other mercenaries.

I spun around, relying on flight, not feet. Already, the two mercenaries were acting, their expressions set somewhere between annoyance and alarm.

Foil’s actions were smooth, as she stepped in close. As one drew his gun, she struck his arm. It fired in the moment of impact, and the gunshot hit the ground right behind Rachel’s right heel.

Rain and I hit the other mercenary at the same time. Rain’s hand caught the guy’s arm. His mechanical hand reached up to grab the gun as I grabbed the guy, keeping his other arm from doing something. Mechanical fingers worked at the gun, and pulled away the gun’s slide.

The mercenary knew some martial arts, and tried them on me. A grip at my arm, pulling me forward, a twist of his body-

I inverted, flipping up, so my hands were down and my feet were up. His leverage was nil, and with my hands gripping his hands, I could come down hard, the flat of my forearm against the flat of his, driving down. Bone broke as I forced arm to ground, and nose broke as face followed.

“Are there others?” Foil asked.

“The one that drove us,” Rain pointed out.

“And these three,” Chastity said, looking down.

Rachel turned to the one that had ‘looked at her funny’. “Speak.”

“I don’t-” he started. He grimaced. “Fuck.”

“Speak.”

“We got a better offer. Money froze up when the Undersiders left New Brockton. The boss is being cagey. We talk, you know. About what happens next. This is a cushy gig, how does it end? And we collectively decided a year or two ago that if it ended it would look like this.”

“And you fuck us?” Rachel asked, gripping him by the collar.

I saw him set his jaw.

“May I?” I asked.

She didn’t let go or budge, staring him down.

“Rachel. We’re working on this together. Let me have a go.”

“Let’s cooperate,” Foil said.

Rachel dropped him. He slumped to the ground.

I glanced at Rain, gesturing slightly, indicating our prisoner. That got me a nod. For the actual interaction, though, I had to get close. I was glad for the armor at my knees as I knelt beside him.

I could feel Rain’s power. Subtle, but there.

“Tell us.”

No answer.

I pulsed out with my aura. Calculated, as I’d been doing as of late, to just extend a few feet. The others would barely notice it, if they noticed at all. A glance confirmed I was right. No changes in expression, no reactions, no anger or frustration with me.

“Tell us who paid you and what this operation entails.”

No answer again.

Again, I used my aura.

Rain was exerting a constant pressure, magnifying regret, shame, and guilt. My power was a slap across the face, a burst of emotion, a feeling plummeting to the pits of the stomach.

In the wake of my power, they’d rebound, reel. Some emotion control powers could be used like that, to create a long-term effect that extended past the power’s duration.

That lesson was being driven home by Rain’s power.

“Cradle,” the man said, his head bent. “Love Lost. March. They’ve met, they’re working together.”

“Kind of assumed,” I murmured. “Try harder.”

A slap of my power got a reaction from him.

“Last I heard, which was before we left for the restaurant, they beat your buddies. Both groups. Sliced and diced a bunch of them. If anyone asks…”

A pulse of my aura encouraged him to keep speaking. He babbled instead. “If anyone asks we were going to say we were with Tattletale until she bit it. We’ll say- we were going to say, we only joined these guys when it was all over.”

“What are they up to? What are they doing?”

“They’re retreating to another world, taking hostages with them. That’s Cradle and Love Lost. March is gunning for the finale.”

Not Finale, but the finale.

“The time-stop and time loop effects?” I asked.

With circles under his eyes, his expression a little wild, our captive mercenary nodded his head. “Exactly. As far as they’re concerned, they’ve won. You just haven’t gotten around to realizing it yet.”

Blinding – 11.10

We picked up the three mercenaries, lifting them into position on a dog’s back. Each was out cold.

Sliced and diced a bunch of your buddies.

Sveta.

The others were caught.

“Do we go after her?” Precipice asked.

“March?” I asked. I had my phone out and was typing one-handed as best as I could. “I don’t like how our guy here phrased things about slicing and dicing-”

My fingers weren’t hitting all the keys right. My hand shook annoyingly.

I kept my voice level. “I’m texting Vista. We’ll see what she can do. If she thinks their team can handle it, we might have other options.”

“Them thinking they can handle it is different from handling it,” Foil said. “It’s March.”

“We’re going after the others?” Precipice asked.

“Gut feeling? Yes. We know where they are. The disc should be working now that we’re out of Nursery’s range. We get to them, maybe we can get enough answers to steer things. There’s no telling who exactly is where, though.”

“You’re thinking they’re dead?” Rachel asked.

“I’m thinking worse than dead,” I responded. “You didn’t hear what happened to the Navigators?”

She shrugged.

“Chopped up into cubes, but not allowed to die,” Foil said. “They might have done that to some of ours.”

Rachel’s expression hardened.

“I know,” Foil said. “I’m not good with this stuff. I can suck it up if I have to, but I swear, if it happened to the kids? To any of our friends?”

“I”m getting flashbacks to the Fallen attacks on the portals,” Precipice said. “The stakes, the distractions.”

“Some of the same people are involved,” I pointed out. I put my phone away, tapping the disc on the arm. Still, my hand shook. Only our team red was findable, but the setting was screwed up. Lookout’s team tracker seemed to be working under the assumption that the entire team was together. Our team red was split in two, which meant it was very, very zoomed out.

“We could try going after March. Resolve the hostage situation after,” Foil said.

“Do you want to?” I asked. “Really?”

She shook her head. “Only if it makes sense. I’m just putting it out there. We know she’s split off from the larger group.”

“The problem is that March never makes sense,” Rachel muttered. She was at the back of the group. Chastity was walking beside Rachel’s henchman, who was sitting on a jutting outcropping of bone at the dog’s shoulder, one hand on its side to help her maintain balance.

“Foil,” I said. “What’s March’s fixation on these time effects? I’m trying to wrap my head around all of this.”

Give me something I can break down.

“I don’t know.”

“She has enhanced timing as a power, but I don’t think that factors in. What’s driving her? What’s the focus?”

“She wants to wrap Foil’s skin around a rocking horse and ride it all day long,” Aroa said.

“Ew, weird, and no, I don’t know. I’m a focus but time effects have nothing to do with me.”

“Multitriggers,” Precipice said. “She collects them.”

“Why?” I pressed.

“Because I think she gets them. She understands it, she’s good at finding us out in the wild, she’s good at figuring out weird, wild shit like the power transfers. The Goddess thing.”

“Because of her power, somehow, or-”

Foil shook her head.

We headed back, flying, jogging, or, in Rachel and her henchman’s case, hopping up so they hung onto the side of dogs with one hand while the dogs did the work of padding through snow and over ice.

Chastity had a suggestion, “Natural inclination. Some people are good at music, and they were going to be people who were good at making music before they even picked up an instrument or sang a note.”

“Maybe that,” Foil said. “Maybe she’s been focusing on that stuff while I was getting started as a Ward, getting my gear, doing patrols.”

“Do you know anything about her? Do you get insights through any special… dynamics?” Precipice asked.

Foil shook her head.

“Bleed-through?” he pressed. “Emotions leaking from one person to the other?”

“Terrifying idea, but I don’t think so. Unless-”

She finished her statement there.

“Unlessss?” Candy asked, drawing out the word.

“It’s nothing that would be helpful.”

“She’s a thinker primary,” I said.

Precipice nodded. “Like I’m a blaster primary, it’s the strongest of my powers, and Foil is-”

“Striker, technically,” Foil volunteered. “Not that the otherworldly things that put these powers in us really categorized everything so neatly.”

We had to get up a hill to get back toward the parking lot.

I continued to find my refuge in geekery. “March’s a thinker first. Mental powers come from mental triggers. Powers that grant skill, perception, information, they tend to stem from self-centric things. Dilemmas, complexes, obsessions, delusions. Can I ask what the circumstances were around your trigger?”

Foil jogged at a light pace, considering.

“No obligation, but it would help,” I said.

“It’s weird that there are so many people here and there’s only one that I don’t know well enough to trust telling,” Foil said.

“I’m the odd one out?” Precipice asked. “I’ll cover my ears.”

She reached over to his arm, pulling it down before he could.

“I’ll skip over details, but I know you’re roped into this. She’s after you, right?”

“Technically I owe her a favor,” Precipice said.

“She won’t make that easy. The more you know, the better,” Foil said. She drew in a deep breath. Then she hesitated.

Which was annoying, but annoying was better than freaking out over what might have happened to Sveta.

Answers, we find them, we help the others. If needed we break all of Cradle’s limbs and get him to tell us how to undo what he did to the Navigators.

Through that, maybe we can stop March before she does whatever she’s planning.

“I didn’t mean for it to be a big thing,” I told her. “I know triggers are heavy.”

“No, it’s okay. I need to, and if anyone has insights or perspective, it would help,” Foil said. “Even if it’s power wonk stuff.”

“Alright,” I said.

“I was fostered, entered into the system. I had older siblings who weren’t. Subway platform in New York, I get attacked from behind, and it was one of my sisters, homeless, and so- so angry. It was like she lived in a completely different, warped reality, where I was to blame for everything, I’d sold her out, I’d taken something she was owed. She tried to push me but I caught myself, and when she tried again, she pushed other people down onto the tracks while pushing me down to the ground, put my head in the way of any incoming trains.”

“March was one of those people on the tracks?” I asked. “Her timing power… and an imminent train?”

Foil shrugged. “All I know is I triggered as the train hit my sister, convinced she’d killed me. March says our third was a friend of my sister, but I barely met the woman, and I didn’t realize why she was important or what she meant when I did.”

“And March?”

“There were people on the tracks. Never got off, just… backed off enough that they could hug the wall while the train passed. Or she got under a ledge, or she was pulled up and something else led to the trigger”

I nodded.

“Does that really give someone powers?” Chastity asked. “Being off to the side and having a train pass within a foot of you?”

“She might have thought the same thing as Foil. That she was about to die. But thinker triggers are tricky. They’re all about what’s going on in someone’s head.”

Precipice was staring off to the side.

We’d have to talk about Cradle at some point too. Deciphering that.

Foil’s family situation had gotten other people caught up in it. That explained a bit of March’s fixation or degree of blame, maybe. Or the worship, if March saw Foil as responsible for vanquishing their attacker. Or something.

“I always wondered if my sister was on something, or if she was under the effect of a power, or if she was just that angry. They were supposed to do a full autopsy and send things in to get checked- it was even a request of mine, when I joined the Wards. If they ever figured it out, they didn’t tell me. All I ever heard was that it was still in the works, there was a backlog, the department didn’t see it as a priority. It stung. A small part of my reason for wanting to get out of New York was to get away from the dynamic where I was just another face in a very crowded department. Of course, I picked Brockton Bay, and we all know how that went.”

Foil was fixated on her end of the trigger, but I was left to consider March’s. Thinker triggers were hard, because they took place in a person’s head. What served for one person to trigger might not work for another. The only evidence available would be the course of action before, and the course of action after.

“Power involvement would complicate things,” I said. “And explain things. Like your power’s tendency to go through anything, not just through things.”

Foil nodded. “I’ve talked about that with some power testing people. They didn’t talk about the thinker side of it though.”

“What was your first meeting?” I asked.

“She joined a villain group my Wards team was already dealing with. Low-level, nonviolent, safe enough that our bosses were okay letting us try. She made them more effective and she blew up enough things that our bosses withdrew that permission. We moved on to another sanctioned target, and March joined them.”

“After you from the beginning.”

Foil nodded. “She would disappear for months at a time, then show up with friends. What got me was that I was trying to treat the cape stuff like a career, right from the start. Getting away from… from whatever pulled my sister down. For March, it was always a game. Not the usual way, where it’s a specific meta-approach to crime and criminality. Like an actual game.”

“Sometimes you have to approach it that way,” Candy said. “The worse something is, the more you have to treat it like it’s nothing.”

“Yeah,” Foil said. “It’s just fucked up when she ropes me and Parian into it. Or the other Undersiders. Or civilians.”

I saw Precipice start to raise two right hands, like a student in class who had something to say but wasn’t sure about it.

He stopped, dropping his hands. Not the time for it. We had other immediate concerns.

Our driver was leaning against the door of the van when we returned from our excursion, smoking. All was well until we drew close enough that the streetlights illuminated our group, and the driver saw the three bodies we’d draped over the back of Rachel’s dog.

There were a few directions one could go, when their immediate peer group had just been taken out by the scary people with powers. Fight, which meant drawing that gun and doing as much damage to us as possible, flight, which meant hopping into that vehicle and trying to drive away…

His hands went up.

Freeze is another option. For the guy, not for us.

Other people couldn’t afford for us to freeze.

“I’m going to knock you out while we figure out what to do,” Chastity said, as she drew closer. She drew out her whip. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I don’t know what they said, but I’m not part of it,” the driver said. He backed up a little. The hand closest to his gun dropped a couple of inches, still raised. “I’m new.”

“He is new,” Chastity said. “It’s true.”

“Don’t announce that you’re going to bitch slap a grown man and then fail to follow through,” Aroa said. “It makes all of the Heartbroken look bad.”

“Is there a way forward where we don’t take him out?” I asked. “Because I’m really not keen on running interference while someone else drives on icy roads, so I can grab it if it starts skidding. It’s nerve wracking. He seems to have the driving down, at least.”

“It’s what I do.”

“Shh,” Rachel shushed the man. “You don’t have to whine about guarding the car. My dogs can handle that.”

Whine?

“You have Yips with you, and Yips is barely a dog,” Candy said, pointing at the gangliest of the monster dogs. Rachel glared at her.

“All I’m asking is who drives, if he doesn’t?” I asked.

“I can drive,” Foil said, at the same time Precipice volunteered with a, “Me.”

They exchanged looks.

“Enhanced timing and accuracy with my power.”

“I’ve been driving since I was old enough to see over the wheel, most kinds of weather. I don’t have much going for me, but I’ve got that, at least.”

I put my fingers at my nose, pinching the bridge.

“Why haven’t we beat down the merc?” Aroa asked. “Priorities.”

“Because we don’t know what we’re doing, hon,” Chastity told her. She flicked her hand, the motion traveling down the length of the whip that draped across the icy road. “These things take negotiation.”

“No,” I said. “Knock him out. Precipice drives. Dogs will run interference, but they can’t do it alone. The road between here and where we’re going is busier, and other cars on the road limit what the dogs can do to stop the van if it goes off course. I’ll be overhead, helping.”

“I can drive,” Foil said. “I know he’s your teammate, but-”

“But we need you shotgun, in a position to shoot if we need shooting,” I said.

She considered, then nodded.

Chastity looked at Rachel for confirmation. Rachel nodded, and Chastity flicked out her whip without turning to look at the driver. He brought up an arm, protecting himself, and the whip encircled his wrist. She hauled back on it, pulling him toward her- and he went with it, charging her.

A dog butted forward, moving to intercept. The driver couldn’t pull back or get away before the dog rammed him with its head. The impact was heavy enough that Chastity had to let go of her whip instead of being pulled along with.

“I don’t have enough shots for my crossbow,” Foil told me, even though the situation with the driver wasn’t yet resolved.

“We have other weapons,” I said.

“I guess,” she said.

“How much time have you spent at the range?” I asked, flying over to the dog with the knocked out mercs draped over its back. It shied away, stopping as Rachel made a disapproving sound.

I pulled a pistol from the mercenary’s holster, handing it to Foil. Off to the side, Chastity bent down over the mercenary,

“Not enough.”

“Enhanced timing and accuracy, at least.”

She nodded.

I gave a hand in getting the knocked out soldiers into the back of the van. Lord of Loss was already in the back, under the bench behind the passenger seat. As we’d done with him, we positioned the mercenaries, zip tied their hands and feet, then had Foil use her darts to fix their clothes to the surroundings.

It was crowded work, so as soon as my portion of things was done, I checked on Lord of Loss, making sure his hands weren’t cold and that circulation was there. Which was probably nicer than anything the asshole would do for us. Sticking people’s faces into Nursery’s power. Fucker.

I shivered involuntarily.

“I should cancel out my power on them sometime,” Chastity said.

“They’re knocked out until you wake them up, right?”

“But if that tackle had hit me, they’d be awake and I’d be out, and I wouldn’t be useful to you for a while,” she said. “We have to assume it’s going to happen.”

I nodded. “Maybe wait until we’re closer to where we’re going. It means Lord of Loss talks less. He’s kind of ridiculously annoying.”

She nodded.

“We could tape his mouth shut,” Aroa said.

“That’s a hazard if he pukes. Which he might if it turns out he’s very claustrophobic. Which he might be, since I’ve never known him to go indoors while in breaker form.”

“Ah, I know someone like that. Except not being tied up. She freaks out and sometimes even barfs every time she gets tied up.”

“Puke and taped mouth means not being able to breathe. For now, let’s keep it simple,” I said.

“As funny as it would be to see him freak?” Aroa asked.

I pushed her the rest of the way into the van.

The other two Heartbroken climbed into the back.

“The dogs will help keep you on the road. Don’t pull too far ahead,” Rachel said.

“Got it,” Precipice said.

“You say dogs,” Candy chimed in, “But Yips is barely a dog.”

Rachel slammed the door in Candy’s face.

“Yips?” I asked.

Rachel indicated one of the animals. The smallest and gangliest of the monster hounds. It was still large enough that when it walked by the van, its spine was level with the top of the vehicle.

“Where to?” Rain asked, leaning out the window.

I checked the disc. “Direction of Fairfield, looks like.”

He nodded. The armored van started up. It rumbled to life, then started forward, a little jerky. It almost immediately braked, skidding a few feet.

Even from outside the vehicle, I could hear the heckling from the Heartbroken.

“Problem?” I asked, raising my voice.

“Checking the brakes, getting a feel for the weight of the vehicle.”

More heckling from inside.

Rachel still hadn’t left. She was bundling up, drawing a blanket that I’d taken as a saddlecloth around over her legs instead, so the corners met at her lap, the blanket covering her legs. She had leather mitts that looked comically oversized, more like boxing gloves than regular wear, and added protection for her face: a hood with fur trim pulled up, ski goggles for the eyes, and a face cover for the lower half, a dog’s features stamped onto the cloth.

Her henchman had a similar setup. Where Rachel rode the largest beast, the teenager rode the middle one.

Rachel’s voice was muffled. “If we have to body check the van, you’re going to need to pull your leg up. Don’t lash in too tight.”

“That’s terrifying,” the henchman said.

“There’s still time to ask to ride inside.”

The henchman shook her head, pulling her hood up and hunching over, mittened hands at the chains that served as reins.

I flew up to the top of the van, standing on top as it pulled out of the parking lot. Being grounded and in contact with it helped keep me in tune with its movements while I checked my phone.

No signal.

The van picked up speed, which made standing on top harder, the wind against my hands cold. I’d have to trust. We had sent a message to Vista, urging her to be ready for March, and we’d told her to pull strings and cut all communications for now, at least until they’d weathered the initial attack.

The wind whipping over the top of the van caught my legs, sweeping them off the roof. I started flying the instant they were no longer touching, staying close. I wrapped the Wretch around myself, to shield against the cold wind, at the cost of making it harder to fly straight. Shifts in air resistance, a lopsided body.

If March couldn’t call other teams or mercenaries, then she couldn’t coordinate timing. She would still have an advantage, but it would be predicated on having the information to exploit.

The disc at my arm glowed. I checked the status. I wasn’t sure how to tune the default settings, because pulling up our red team still brought up a painfully zoomed out view, with three red dots miles away from another three red dots. I had to take nearly a minute to focus the view on one group of three, zooming in close enough to make out any pertinent details, and it looked like I’d have to do it every time I wanted to check. If I wanted to check on the other half of team red, then I had to reset, then zoom in on them.

Swansong, Lookout, and one of the Heartbroken kids were in custody. Bags over heads. Hands bound. Swansong had the power to free herself, but she couldn’t use it. Lookout had been positioned just behind her. Using her power would obliterate her teammate and friend.

The heartbroken kid, one of the younger ones closer to Kenzie’s age, was being managed with a long pole attached to her restraints.

An indicator showed the direction to them. They were to our west and were traveling west. We knew they were heading to a portal.

They were near Fairbanks and were heading in the direction of the screwed up portal that had once led to Earth N. In the same neighborhood as Kenzie’s old house.

An attempt at checking on the other group provided only static. We’d known they were at the university, and that wasn’t far from the portal in question.

Was this a trap? That we could only see one target for the time being? Love Lost was a tinker, careful enough to have security on everything tech and traps riddling everything that wasn’t tech.

It was hard to imagine her not expecting us.

“Let’s try to intercept red team before they’re taken to where the larger group with Cradle is!” I called out.

I got a signal of assent from Foil. Rachel, to my right, nodded her head.

At least she wasn’t fighting me.

“Rachel!” I called out, trying to be heard over the rush of wind. “Can you hear me!?”

I heard her grunt. I wasn’t sure if it was in the affirmative or the negative.

“What’s going on with Tattletale? She didn’t catch this with the mercenaries?”

“She’s an idiot!” Rachel barked the words.

There wasn’t any elaboration.

“Victoria!”

It was Foil who called out through her open window. She’d heard me. She leaned out the window, one elbow poking out. The hand of that arm had a gun in it.

I flew close enough to hear, which meant being close enough I couldn’t wrap the Wretch around me. It was cold, but I could deal in the short term.

“I don’t know if you can relate,” Foil said, “But sometimes you get stuck in a place that isn’t you. Where everything you do is a drain on you. It brings out your worst traits.”

My face was so cold I was worried about frostbite. I turned my head around, one gloved hand going to my hood to keep it up as a shield against the wind. All the same, I flew sideways, one eye closed.

Foil said something, and I had to cup a hand by my ear to hear because the wind whistling past the van was too much.

“Tattletale’s in that place, trying to help the city,” Foil raised her voice.

“She took over Brockton Bay!” I had to half-shout to be heard over the rush of wind.

“She didn’t! Not like you’re thinking! Coil took most of it over, set most of that stuff in motion! Skitter did a lot of the rest of the work when it came to the taking over part! Tattletale isn’t a warlord! She isn’t a chessmaster!”

Eerie to hear one of her allies say it. More uncomfortable to have to recontextualize my mental picture of her.

“What the hell is she, then?”

“She’s an idiot!” Rachel shouted.

I was surprised she could hear.

“She’s a manipulator!” Foil called out, raising her voice in response.

“She’s an idiot, but if you start talking shit about her-”

“I’m not, Bitch! It’s not shit,” Foil said, the latter half of what she said was a normal speaking volume. “She took over what Coil started and she steered that. She’s good at that, but the farther we get from that setup of his, the harder it is. She steered the group, helped Skitter, helped Imp!”

“And Rachel?” I asked, looking at Rachel.

“You don’t manipulate her, or you get your head torn off!”

Rachel turned her head to stare at Foil. With the protection against cold weather, her expression was hidden. I was going to assume sheer hostility. It seemed to stay the case, unless she was being sweet to the Heartbroken kids.

“She was always at her best dealing with the smaller scale and the biggest, most abstract stuff,” Foil called out. “Fights and powers, conspiracies, not running cities! That was always her sticking to someone else’s game plan, manipulating the parameters. She was best when she was taking care of the Undersiders. When she had to look after herself, because not being at her best meant she might not be able to manipulate and steer her friends.”

Skitter and Imp?

“Except they’re okay now!” Foil’s expression had changed below her visor. She was almost smiling, but it was a sad smile. “Imp’s okay! Rachel’s okay now! Parian and I are okay! Heartbroken are less broken than ever! New Brockton was even okay! The ones who aren’t or who couldn’t be okay are dead!”

Rachel snarled. When I looked, she was just goading her dog to keep running and to run harder. Tough going in the tall grasses and bushes that ran along the side of the road.

Or at least, the goading and tough way forward was a good excuse.

Losing teammates was- I could sympathize with that.

“She has no purpose?” I asked. My hand was cold where it was holding my hood up. I pulled it down, using my other, and drew closer so I wouldn’t have to strain my throat yelling. “How does that lead to a screwup like not knowing what her own mercenaries are doing?”

“She has a purpose, but it’s killing her,” Foil said. “She looks after the city. It’s that thing that drains her and brings out the worst in her. It doesn’t fill that need she has, but she does it because she has to.”

“She did it, past tense,” I gritted out the words. I’d have to bail in a second to throw the Wretch up. “She keeps talking about how she’s bailing, she’s out, she doesn’t want to get involved.”

“Yeah. What’s she doing instead?”

“Looking after Chicken Little. Do you mean he’s her project now? Like the Undersiders were before?”

“Except he’s okay too,” Foil said. “Most of the way to okay. And she’s trying to steer him when he’s already on course to being a good- whatever he ends up being. And that drains her, I think it surprises her how much. She doesn’t accept input, not from me, most of all, not from Imp, Rachel doesn’t give input, and I think everyone that’s paying attention is pretty sure she’s going to either get him hurt, drive him away, or get herself hurt.”

I thought of the little man I’d felt so much like I’d wanted to coach and guide. The boy with the birds.

“She looks like she’s in her element but she’s not. So she puts more of herself into it-”

“And ignores the things that are in her element?” I asked.

“Yeah. Just so you know, I don’t have the most charitable view of her, though I’m really trying here, I’m glossing over a lot of general bitchiness,” Foil said. “Take what I say with a heaping of salt.”

“I don’t-” I winced at the cold air that rushed its way to my sore throat, colder than most of the air I was intentionally taking in. “I don’t have the best view of her either, I don’t know if that means there’s no need for any added salt, or if I need an extra heaping. But it makes sense. What you say makes sense.”

“She’s out there,” Precipice said, from the driver’s seat. His hands were on the wheel, the smaller mechanical arm on the shift. “She’s helping our team yellow. I’m not saying you’re wrong. Just… to me that looks like she’s really conflicted, that she’s saying one thing but only halfway committing to it.”

“I’m not going to tell you that you’re wrong,” Foil said.

“But you want to?”

“She’s given me so much flack about being conflicted where I am…”

I didn’t hear the rest. Foil was talking to Rain now, not me. I peeled away, far enough from the armored van that I could use the Wretch. Close enough I could step in if needed.

A bit of relief, but it didn’t make the cold parts of me warm, it just stopped them from getting colder.

I checked the disc. Again, I had to zoom in.

I flew in closer to the others, holding the disc up. I saw Precipice glance my way. I put my arm out across the disc, hand flat, pointing the way.

“Be careful of a trap,” I told him.

I saw him and Foil nod. Foil undid her seatbelt.

“Watch for ambushes,” I told Rachel, “We’re conspicuous.”

“I heard you already,” she said.

Her henchman did give me a salute, though.

“And Precipice?” I asked.

“What?”

“Same thing as Lord of Loss. Hit me.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” I said.

We had to catch up to the hostages and the group of mercenaries or whoever that had caught them. They’d beat Imp, they’d gotten around Lookout, and Swansong hadn’t taken them down.

Every car on the road was a potential threat. Every person on the street, every alley was a potential direction of attack.

I rose higher, scanning the surroundings. So many people wore black for their winter clothing, or they wore white, and they were camouflaged against a background of dark pavement, gray concrete, and white snow.

I checked the disc.

They weren’t far at all. A couple of blocks away.

Rachel’s dog barked. A warning sound, one that the others picked up. I saw her reorient-

I sprung to action before I even had a good view of what was happening. In the dark, it was hard to see the particulars, but I could see the outside context. A car turning around a corner, only to hit a barrier.

Naibiter’s claws.

I was already descending, and taking action meant a trajectory change, the momentum already there. I struck the claws from above, driving them down toward the ground. Though rigid, they bowed beneath the pressure from above.

She was the escort, running alongside much as Rachel and I had been doing with the van. The difference was that we were making sure Precipice didn’t drive off the road or slide into incoming traffic, keeping an eye out from where we were. Nailbiter was running interference.

Buying time for their vehicle to get away with their hostages. Our friends and teammates. If they reached Cradle-

I caught the nails, and I lifted, hauling them up, so they wouldn’t be a barrier for the van.

Nailbiter’s distant figure barely moved. But the ‘nails’ came hard. More than fifteen, pale and narrow, passing me, stabbing into the street, stabbing a nearby building face. One hit the Wretch, and the other hit me, grazing the underside of my fucking foot.

In the same moment I reacted, the fingers I was gripping withdrew, slipping from my grasp. Too fast, too silent, no cues, and it was too dark to see what I was fighting.

She wasn’t the only one running interference.

Another flier, coming at me as I tried to take evasive action. Nailbiter, off to the side, was scaling a building, preparing to come at the van or come at me from the flanks. I focused on the flier for the time being.

She had a silvery glow about her, long, wild hair made wilder by the fact that she wasn’t human any more. I could see the veins running across her body, the fact that her body had incorporated her costume- maybe clothes. A high collar that could have been a hoodie or a collared shirt. A ridge at the hips and waist that could have been pants, with a pair of horns decorating the ridges halfway between where the belly button should have been and the nethers- by placement and protrusion, I was guessing belt buckle. The solid mass in the midst of the silvery nimbus was a dark purple.

Breaker.

Breaker meant on-off powers, ones that tended to ‘break’ reality. A breaker power meant there were other powers in the mix.

Hers was creating a foot-long blade at each hand, black, to contrast the silvery glow, flickering and shimmering.

I flew closer. I saw her stop in mid air, faster than any flier I’d seen, then immediately set off in another direction. Direction change on a dime. To turn that abruptly, I usually had to land, hit something, plant myself on some solid ground and then fly off.

Not as fast as me, it seemed, but far more maneuverable.

I drew in closer.

She hit me, and I didn’t see what with. A flash, an impulse.

My head was flooded with information. Everything and nothing. Every priority I had. March and the time effects, Love Lost and the hostages, Cradle and the people he had apparently butchered, who would be stronger if Love Lost got close. The team, the dynamic with the Undersiders, the Heartbroken, the kids– I couldn’t help but go to that. And from there my brain leapfrogged to the Major Malfunctions to Fume Hood and the other low-level capes who had been so neglected. To the major teams and that I still had to prove my worth to them. To the organization I was trying to set up- not in the sense that I wanted an institution, but I wanted to organize, and that meant something vaguely institutional.

I wanted to stop anyone from being hurt like I’d been hurt. I wanted to stop every Amy out there. I wanted to save every Glory Girl, stupid and barbaric as they might be. I wanted to help Jessica help Breakthrough and I was worried that by failing to stop Chris I’d failed her.

A surge of feeling, of paralysis and motivation in overwhelming measure.

And I’d been driven back by it, because it had tapered off as I’d pulled away.

Which meant the flier was free to continue.

I saw her course, and I had a pretty good idea of what she was capable of now. I halfway knew what she was doing before she used the black energy blades at her hands to swipe at a lamp post, severing the post that held up the glowing head. The metal crashed to the ground, and the van rolled over it, bucking, almost leaping into the air.

Rain steered, and navigated the traffic that was freaking out, people stopping midway down the road without pulling over after hearing the crash.

The van was almost recovered when Nailbiter struck again from the alley. Rachel’s dogs leaped, crashing into them, and instead of striking dead on or through the windows, they raked along the top, still forceful enough to topple the van, knocking it onto its side, directly in the path of incoming vehicles.

I swooped down, curving as I descended. I was almost flying horizontal as I hit it, knocking it out of the lane.

I heard a door pop open. Foil, climbing out the door that was now facing sky. She had the gun in her hand, for all the good it would do here.

I really hoped Chastity had revoked her power from our captives. Else we wouldn’t have her, and we’d potentially have an escaped Lord of Loss.

Mutant dogs snarled as they turned, facing the alley where an elongated Nailbiter was stepping out, a leering, stretched out smile of rusty nails plainly visible. Rachel shushed them, and for a moment, the only sound was of passing cars, and the crackle of the nimbus of energy around the breaker that flew above us, suspended in the air.

Those powers… what the hell had Love Lost done, to add another member to Rain’s cluster?

Blinding – 11.11

…and all of the junior heroes I want to ensure have a place in this world, and every damn member of this team needs a full time friend to guide and help and I can’t be everywhere at once, least of all for my best friend. I’m worried about Sveta and Weld and yet they’re the easiest thing to mentally set aside in the moment and I’m worried it’ll be weeks of moments and then I won’t have a chance to help. I’m worried about Kenzie and I’m worried about Rain and about Tristan and about Byron and Ashley and Damsel and even Natalie-

I’m worried about me, too.

Reality came crashing home with a massive impact that crushed the Wretch. The object in question hit the ground and tipped over, moving in my direction.

I flew back, halfway to get out of the way of the thing- the section of building. Halfway to get away from the mental effect.

Can’t- can’t let this get to me like this. Can’t let it distract me. Fucking stupid of me. How many times did we mentally go over the list of techniques and approaches to fending off mental and emotional effects?

I shook my head. The overwhelmed feeling slipped off of me like a caking of soap under warm water. The condemnations stuck.

I pulled myself back to reality. I’d gone after the breaker again. Again, I’d been repelled by the effect. The overload. She flew over me, using blades she’d created at her hands to cut at the building and bring debris tumbling down. I’d been trying to stop her before she could rain something down on the van, she’d got me, and while I was out, she’d gone ahead with her plan.

The armored van rested on its side. Concrete and rubble littered the top, covered the side and the door that pointed the sky, and some pieces had even fallen within. A pillar-like mass of brickwork had been what had almost hit me.

Dangerous. If I got remotely close to her, I got hit by that effect and it took me out of the fight for however long it took me to pull myself together. Fucking stupid, that I’d thought I could chance it.

I shook my head.

Those feelings, the doubts, the hesitations, I knew where they were coming from. Somewhere down there, near the driver’s seat, Precipice was extending his power up toward me. I had to face those feelings, use them to forge myself into someone more effective, or quash them. Were they useful to Victoria Dallon? The Scholar? The Warrior Monk? Hell, I wouldn’t even rule out the Wretch.

If they weren’t useful to any of the above, then I had to burn them out of me.

I grabbed a piece of concrete, and I leveraged my strength to hurl it. The Wretch’s extended limb clipped it, sending it off course. Too low.

As if it had sensed I had been thinking it might somehow be useful.

I felt agitated, frustrated in a way that went beyond screaming about it, pounding a punching bag, or decking a bitch.

Don’t get angry, get even. My mother’s words in my own voice, running through my head. A condemnation, even though the tone was level, instructive. And Precipice’s power was making that all the more pointed. Turning every failure into a sharp, painful lesson.

I hurled another piece of concrete. She adjusted course to avoid it, slashed at a building wildly to bring down more chunks. This set- not aimed at the armored van, but at Rachel’s dogs. There was a wild, untrained edge to the attack. A woodcutter hitting one side of the tree over and over until things came loose, instead of carving out notches… but it was a fresh swing every second, and her blades cut deeper than an axe did.

Focus. Be constructive, The Warrior Monk told me.

I’d hoped to skim the periphery of the effect, to see if I could get her to use that power, test if there was a time window before she could use it again. There wasn’t. It wasn’t like there was a better time or opportunity to test, either. She was full-bore, all-out, holding nothing back. If I waited until she wasn’t dropping chunks of building then the fight would be over before I got an opportunity to figure out a way forward.

I could draw on the practical side of the condemnation aura to process the same feelings that it woke in me. Logic, careful processing, consideration.

“Fuck youuuuuu!” a distant Bit- Rachel could be heard, the last word drawn out, lost in the huffing and growling, howling noises made by her dogs.

I’d been disoriented enough I hadn’t accounted for Rachel’s contingent. She’d sent one dog, Yips, after the breaker, while she and her henchman fended off Nailbiter, Rachel riding the largest dog, curiously symmetrical, while her henchman had been riding the ‘soft mouthed’ dog. Past-tense. Nailbiter had unseated the teenager.

The distracting emotion blast didn’t seem to work on the dog, so as it managed to climb up a building face, a part of its narrow face bashed in, the breaker had no recourse but to fly away. Away from the rooftop, toward the armored van.

I was ready, picking up more concrete to fling, while Yips reached the edge of the building rooftop and began acting agitated, like it was trying to psych itself up to jump down. It was five stories, though, and I couldn’t imagine that even Rachel’s dogs could handle that. Not with half of the dog’s face smashed in and the meat and bone hanging off of the skinny frame.

Yips leaped down to a lower rooftop, then across to the face of the building, running horizontally along a vertical surface, the undamaged side of its face looking down. I saw it tense-

I threw concrete at the breaker, knowing the breaker would have to evade both the throw and the dog at the same time.

She changed course. Flying toward Rachel, toward the two dogs, and toward Nailbiter. Abandoning the van.

“Heads up!” I shouted, and the shout was a painful reminder that my throat wasn’t wholly intact.

Stupid. Don’t do that.

No need to use Precipice’s power to condemn any overcorrection or anything, I decided, as I took flight and chased after. It had been stupid. I had to pay attention to my injuries.

There wasn’t any convenient measuring stick I could use to figure out if that anxiety overload was going to hit me or not. Worse, even though I’d been hit twice, the state I’d been left in immediately after getting into range hadn’t been the ‘remember exact distances’ sort. I was forced to give her a wider berth. I was faster, but instead of using that extra speed to catch up, I used it to keep a roughly equal distance, but also maneuver while I did it. Instead of straight forward, I arced up-

She blasted Rachel and the henchman. I didn’t see any sparks, flash, or glow. Only the immediate, visceral reaction, where the dog continued forward, but Rachel bent her head down, twisting away and back, almost hurling herself off the spot where she’d leashed herself to her ride. The beast hesitated, but then Nailbiter moved, and it lunged.

The henchman just scrambled back, head shaking, curling into herself and uncurling to crawl, then stagger away. Like she had bees in her brain and there wasn’t anything she could do but get away from the beehive.

Rachel screamed, and it was an angry scream, a roar and a howl. It caught me off guard, and it seemed to catch the breaker and Nailbiter off guard too.

Right. I remembered that from the attack on the bank. Dean had remarked on it after. Rachel was the kind of peculiar where emotion powers didn’t always produce intuitive responses. I’d used my own power to scare people only to make them angry, yes, but I’d also run into people who had been seemingly unaffected outwardly, except to become more friendly and submissive, and one rare case who had been the horny kind of submissive, possibly helped by the substances he’d been partaking in. No parahumanity involved. Just… wiring.

I had to ignore her. I’d already noted just how open and vulnerable that emotion blast had left me. Rachel was in a serious fight with Nailbiter, and she needed cover.

In my effort to keep a good distance from the breaker, I’d flown up. I was working on the assumption that the power emanated as a rough sphere or ovoid, or it had a singular target and a range that target could be affected at, and the effective zone of control had that spherical or sphere-ish shape to it. Either way, the arc of my flight was like the arc of a rainbow, putting the curve of the sphere beneath me. I closed that rainbow arc, flying down, straight for Nailbiter.

Her fingers and teeth had elongated, and riddled the mutated dog, plunging through face and exiting the top of the head, and plunging through chest and forelimbs, exiting the other side. The animal was suspended mid-pounce.

But Nailbiter was suspended in a way too. I saw the whites of her eyes as I came down.

Limbs extended, torso and head morphing to stretch out further, adjusting her position and making my target a narrower one to hit.

I did hit her though; while she was impaling that dog, she had to extricate herself to move anywhere. The hit was a glancing one, and I didn’t bend, break, or apparently bruise anything I hit. I landed on the road behind Nailbiter. Above me, her head couldn’t move while her teeth were in use, but her eyes did move, tracking me, staring down.

Pinky and ring fingers withdrew from the dog, hands straining and adjusting the lengths of wrists, fingers, and palms, just so she could get those fingers curled around and lance through me.

My instincts warred with one another as I collected myself post-landing, taking in the scene. Throw up the Wretch, one instinct said. Protect against that imminent attack. Never use the Wretch while in close proximity to another living person, another instinct said. That instinct told me to fly away. A third instinct was that I had to start resolving things, because a breaker scenario I couldn’t change and a changer I couldn’t break would just tie us up until the rest of Breakthrough and the Undersiders were caught.

What had to be three of the longest seconds I’d experienced in recent memory passed, my eyes darting across Nailbiter, looking for the next angle of attack and seeing nothing pointed my way. My own breath was cold against my face, which was a reminder that I had a mask and I hadn’t put it on in this case.

Probably better that I maintained my peripheral vision.

Three seconds to consider, to give the Warrior Monk time to protest, to call this madness or pettiness.

No.

The Wretch unfolded and unfurled, and I was close enough to Nailbiter that it could find things to grab. A forearm, an elongated torso, a leg. Twisting, crushing, pulling. She gained durability as she stretched out, but durability wasn’t invincibility.

I stood straighter, rolling my head to one side, then the other, a gloved hand adjusting the armor at my front. I turned to see what was happening with Rachel and the henchman.

The Wretch, for the time being, didn’t move while I moved within it.. Fingers dug into ground, scraped at wall, and invisible teeth gnashed at air. But for the most part, the Wretch maintained its hold on Nailbiter’s extended body parts.

I didn’t want to kill, so I moved in a more measured way, walking at first, until the scratched underside of my damn foot made contact with the cold surface of the road, making my knee buckle. I used flight as a crutch to keep me upright while advancing.

In this floaty, walky way, I approached the nearest wall- a three foot fence concrete that bounded a parking garage’s lot. I put my hand out and felt the Wretch. A tensile membrane, hard energy. My two years of waking nightmare. It slid under my hand. A length of stomach, back, or thigh that was in the process of trying to get into place to do something. I could feel the curvature of it, my hand pressing against the inside of that nightmare-shaped shell.

I hadn’t really had an occasion to deal with a scenario like this. When the Wretch was firmly anchored and I wasn’t. Normally, it moved with me. Now?

I pushed against that surface, the Wretch moved, and Nailbiter moved with it. There was no resistance. No situation, as far as I could tell, where the Wretch would anchor to something and I’d smack into it from within.

With flight and a strong push of my hand, I smashed Nailbiter into the short concrete rim. The dog’s paws touched ground, and it began to pull away, the pencil-thin fingers pulling out of its head and torso.

I flew back, dragging Nailbiter away, then smashed her into the barrier again. It was like trying to smash a balled up bundle of barbed wire flat. Too much spring, too many parts sticking out, too much tensile strength in there.

Not good enough, I thought.

I’d hoped I had an ally, but the big dog who’d helped pin Nailbiter reached a point where it had backed far enough away and slumped to the ground. The amount of blood it was shedding and the mass of the creature created a splash of blood as its weight crashed down to the road.

I chanced a look to my right. The breaker was backing away from her attempt at getting Rachel, who was sitting in the middle of the street, supporting her henchman. Two dogs were protecting their master, with the gangly Yips clinging to the side of the building, tail and tongue hanging straight down.

I spotted the moment when the breaker decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. She took off- straight toward me.

I couldn’t leave this like this. Nailbiter was too hard to break or take out of action, even if I’d hurt her some. Worse, she was just getting a grip on things now. Once I had her full focus, this would be harder.

She withdrew a hand, elongated upper arm, forearm, hand and fingers becoming normal, but for some horrendous bruising and tissue damage around the wrist.

There weren’t three seconds to consider and measure my response. A heartbeat. I dropped the Wretch, flying in past a tangle of elongated, nail-ified fingers and leg. A point scratched my arm through the sleeve.

Diving through the thorns, the barbed wire, the- however I interpreted Nailbiter’s altered form. I reactivated the Wretch in the moment before impact.

She reacted, her arm started to grow, moved as I closed in. Too slow on both counts. I twisted in the air for some added torque, my foot came down on her wrist, drove it into and against her elongated calf, and broke something. I felt the impact through my body, saw her entire body twist and arch in reaction, twenty-foot lengths of finger sweeping through the air with the whistling, whooshing sound that normally came with the swing of blades.

Teeth retracted, her head turning my way.

I flew away. From her, the teeth, and the breaker that was flying down the street, straight for me. I was faster in a straightaway flight, which meant-

Meant what? Meant I’d broken Nailbiter’s wrist but done nothing else, meant that I had a breaker to deal with, friends who were being dragged away, other friends and allies in a toppled armored van that might be hurt-

The breaker’s emotion power. I tried to find anger, roaring, and it didn’t really work. She tackled me, and the power I wanted to use was lost behind a fog of rattled thoughts. She was small, I realized. Hard to tell when she was in the air, but she was almost a full head shorter than I was.

Have to deal with this short breaker, Nailbiter, have to catch up to the van. We have no idea how team yellow is doing-

She stabbed me with a blade of black energy, right through the chest. Zero hesitation. I gasped, felt the power slide through me, but it was her that seemed most surprised by her action.

Her that seemed surprised by the fact that when she withdrew the blade, it had penetrated my costume and cracked the armor at my front, but it hadn’t touched my skin.

She reared back and backhanded me. I partially blocked the blow, and I felt how little power there was behind it. It reminded me of how I’d had to learn how to fight while airborne, maximizing the delivery of each blow.

She was in a position where she should have had leverage, straddling me while we were on the ground, but the arm she was using to try and strike me didn’t have bones or muscles. It was a construction of her power.

I blasted my aura, saw it didn’t have an effect on her, and struck at her instead.

Of course, she didn’t have bones, blood, or muscle in the place I’d hit her, either. The blade cut both ways. I tried to fly away, and she used her impulsive, instant-acceleration, instant-stop flight to shove me hard into the ground, so I’d be scraping the back of my hood and head against the snow, ice, and pavement if I kept flying that way.

I could fly up, but…

I used the Wretch instead. I hit her with my strength active, and I saw her reel, hurting.

Still not as much as it should have been.

She blasted me with the emotion power, in retaliation, and to fend off further attacks.

The Wardens are trying to save the multiverse, and of all the people trying to save a single ‘verse’, I don’t trust Advance Guard because they’re reckless, I don’t trust the Shepherds because they’re driven by the wrong things, and Foresight, while decent, isn’t a save-the-city kind of group. They’re a figure-things-out group that’s currently trying to figure out how to deal with the recent death of their leader.

Which means that on top of everything, I don’t trust anyone else to save the city from itself.

I flew, and she followed, pressuring me with that power.

I can’t even deal with my own family and I’m taking that on.

With no recourse or way of dealing that wasn’t flying face-first into the emotional onslaught, I pushed myself to keep flying away, and that worked.

The disorientation stuck with me for long seconds. Fortunately, it also seemed to stick with Nailbiter. She’d been in the power’s radius. She, if I was interpreting things right, felt it a hell of a lot more, for a hell of a lot longer.

So it affected multiple targets, then.

I was supposed to be resistant to emotion powers. This effect I’d experienced, it was the reduced-power version.

I fought to get my thoughts in order. I didn’t have Precipice’s power effect on me, which meant he probably didn’t have enough of a view of the battlefield- nobody had emerged from the toppled van. Not yet.

But Hookline was near that van, chain in hand. The disgraced ex-flunky of Beast of Burden with the invincible chain, a mask that was just chain wound around their face, with spaces for the eyes and mouth to peek through.

Another factor in play.

The biggest dog was back on its feet now, injured, and limped toward its master. She put a hand on its side. I could see the bones grow and regrow, the blood welling out with more intensity, before the wounds began to close. The weakened Yips with its flesh hanging loose looked tighter, now, like everything had drawn back in together. The wound at its face was mending.

On the other hand, Nailbiter was back on her feet. She looked battered, hunched over, but she was back on her feet, regardless. The hand with the broken wrist was hanging limp at her side.

Nailbiter was… not impossible to deal with. Except as I tried my evasive maneuvers, circling around, the breaker was putting herself between Nailbiter and me. I started toward Hookline and the van, and the breaker was quick to shift position, trying to block me off.

Slower than I was, but maneuverable, and there was a really large radius around her where I couldn’t fly, walk, or run.

Breaker, I thought. On-off power or powerset, typically a whole-body transformation. Contrasted from changers by the fact that the transition to breaker was usually sudden, instantaneous, and the forms or qualities they adopted were of the breaking-reality or powers sort. Of course, there were lots of people in the middle-ground between the two, leading to a mess of cross-classifications and mix-ups.

Breakers tended to be strong, but it was a limited strength, not in measure, but in the limited circumstances. The powers required the form, and the form didn’t come free. So it made sense that this breaker had powers on a level above Precipice and Love Lost. The compact with the alien in the breaker’s head was that they got to burn the candle at both ends, but only while in the form.

That would be why PRT advice for dealing with breakers was to catch them when they weren’t breaker. Without the form, they were often powerless or far weaker. The less PRT, more-capey sort of answer to the threat was that breaker forms came with protections, but they also came with weaknesses. My for-a-short-time teammate Shadow Stalker had been impervious to physical blows and conventional weapons, but a minor electrical shock threatened to kill her, and I’d heard that even a strong static shock had delivered actual injuries that had translated to muscle damage after she had turned human again.

My own feeling was that assumptions were dangerous. Normal rules did not apply. I’d run into it when crossing paths with Night and Fog at one point. Being breaker could mean that they didn’t see through their eyes, and their entire body was a lens through which they saw in every direction. It could mean they relied on other senses.

So when I took flight, I was careful to note how the breaker turned her face to track me.

That was something I could use. I couldn’t get past her, and she was intending to keep me away by warding me off, but I could consume her focus so she wouldn’t catch Rachel off guard again.

Flying, I circled the battlefield, blocking off her view for moments, timing my changes in direction for when she couldn’t see me. I passed the section of building that she had already damaged, and pulled away a chunk of concrete.

The Wretch seized it as I held it, tore it from my hands, and I had to cancel the Wretch and fly with the chunk to catch it again.

Bursts of strength, to maintain my grip, to get leverage, and keep that chunk alive, without letting the Wretch unfold.

A dart in one direction, and she moved to cut me off.

In the other direction- again, she moved.

I hurled the chunk in Nailbiter’s general direction, as she and Hookline approached Rachel and the three mutant animals.

Her reaction was near-instant, but her first reaction was to grab the chunk. She didn’t have the muscles or power for it.

She darted forward and under it, slashing at it instead.

Yeah, that’s the catch with that particular form. You don’t have any actual strength when it comes to dealing with the real world, just… the ability to cut things really efficiently.

Breakers had other drawbacks that weren’t like Shadow Stalker’s weakness to electricity or the electric breaker that I’d fought and his ability to be involuntarily conducted.

Some were time limits, like only being able to stay breaker for a set amount of time. Some were internal batteries, a power supply that filled up over time before they had to turn human and absorb more.

If she had either of those things, she wasn’t acting like she felt it was urgent. Then again, she reeked of inexperience. Not knowing the lack of her own strength, for one thing.

Some had a need for something environmental, like a water breaker who needed a body of water to manipulate and absorb. I could scratch that off the list. I could almost assume it was a lack of environment that drove her, given her tendency for staying in the air, but she’d been close to the building she’d hacked up and she’d been on top of me when she’d shoved me to the ground. Not… power driven from being in the open air.

There were others. The ones who needed people, the parasite-breakers and those who drank up emotion to fuel themselves. Not that emotion was something so physical, but the thing that supplied the power liked and valued the emotions they churned up and the reactions those emotions got. It would be the kind of thing they wanted to set up.

I flew to keep forcing her to cut me off. Her back was to Hookline, who was whirling the hook around him in a figure-eight. If I could land- wincing at the pain in my foot as I did, I could put myself close to the ground and compel her to match my level. Could I manipulate her into getting into the way of Hookline’s whirling hook? Was she that dumb or unaware?

I saw her turn her head slightly. She’d heard the hook whooshing through air, probably.

Damn.

Fuck me, what else? Think, think! You call yourself a powers geek!

As was becoming reflex, I turned my head to check to see if Precipice was there. The windshield was pointed my way, and Precipice was on the other side. More importantly, Foil was climbing out the window at the top.

Think, I thought. You wanted to study this in University.

Powers. Environment, people, and powers. Was there a possibility that she was like the Pharmacist’s purple fire, that burned powers? A breaker form that relied on powers, in a trump-like way? Was she drinking in nourishment for that form every time that I used my flight or pushed out with my aura?

Would that tie into her having similar powers? Similar powers to me, at least in the loosest sense of the flight and ‘aura’? But how or why, when I hadn’t been anywhere near when she’d taken the form, and she seemed to have this narrow suite of powers. She had no strength at all. It suggested something too selective, picking at random instead of drawing on a theme like Spright did.

I wasn’t sure I had any evidence of it, and the fact that my powers didn’t feel drained counted against it, but I could put a pin in that one. I could test the hypothesis a bit by pulling away from her, flying up, to see if she lost strength or defaulted to staying near the others, when I was far enough away that she probably couldn’t drink from my flight and she had nobody nearby to draw on.

She flew up to follow. She wasn’t an experienced flier. As I flew over her head, she kept her feet pointed toward the ground, turning that mask-like face with its wreath of silvery, glowing smoke-hair up toward me, rotating to keep me in her sight.

If I could get around and past her…

I kept testing her, occupying her attention. Hookline and Nailbiter were focused on Rachel and the dogs, and if this breaker was focused on me, then maybe I wouldn’t fuck this up too badly.

I could feel Precipice’s power coloring the edges of my thoughts. I was still being affected.

Other kinds.

There were the consequence breakers. There was no limit to the time they could spend in the form, except for the penalty waiting at the end, heavy on their mind. It could be tied to any of the other drawbacks. Things like pain, of a magnitude and duration related to how long or how much power was expended while breaker, or madness, or having one’s mortal body age at a hundred times the rate while in the breaker state. Vista had just mentioned a breaker she’d been friends with, a magenta cat, that had missed her opportunity to turn human too many times, and had decided to stay in the form rather than face the consequences waiting for her.

Night Hag had been a Slaughterhouse Nine member once upon a time. She had also made that choice, but more to shirk her humanity, to revel in her altered state.

If my enemy here was a consequence breaker, then there was nothing I could do except play an extended game of chicken, seeing if she would give up out of fear the consequences had grown too heavy.

But again, I didn’t see the urgency in how she acted.

I couldn’t rule out that she had no idea. I was thinking of her as dumb, again, immature, and drawing on that to jump to a conclusion, and it was dangerous to do so, but I was pretty sure the only data points I had was that she hadn’t already thoroughly tested her own limits, she was small, and her way of hacking up the building had been clumsy.

Or… reckless? Off-kilter?

There were breakers who had a profound mental change as part of the break. Ones who lost all compassion and became cold, ruthless, and machine-like. Ones who were filled with rage and destructive impulses, to be stopped only when the little coherent bit of humanity that watched its actions through a window undid the form. People who hallucinated while in their other form, or who saw the entire world as something nightmarish.

I thought of how she’d chopped at the rooftop. Her demeanor as she’d come after me. The way she danced between targets, seemingly forgetting about the last as she moved on to the next, her power facilitating that dance with the manner of flight it gave her, so abrupt and quick to move elsewhere.

Which meant there were maybe chinks in the brain. Or in the heart.

“Can we talk!?” I shouted the words across the empty void.

I was really hoping that Foil was able to use the fact that our enemies were distracted to do something and turn the tides.

She shook her head, wispy hair drifting around the mask-like face, slow in following the movement, as if she were underwater.

She touched her mouth.

No voice. No bones, no muscle, no lungs, no breath to form words. No lips, for that matter. What had been lips were hard ridges of tooth-like protrusions.

She was reckless, almost drunk, wild and I needed to find a way to use that against her.

If your enemy is choleric of temper, agitate the fuck out of them. A lesson from my childhood, paraphrased. Except she wasn’t choleric of temperament. It was an outdated model by a few centuries, but I was willing to latch onto anything for inspiration. Even if it was the wrong label in an outdated system.

Choleric tempers were the ‘warrior’ tempers, as I interpreted it. The rulers, the warlords. The decisive doers. Sun Tzu’s idea had been to dismantle that organization and focus by upsetting them and inflaming their tempers.

This woman was… more whimsical, no passion in what she did, instead doing it as a kind of expression of her self. Of her new self, if I was interpreting her lack of experience right.

Lack of experience, or a mental effect of being a breaker with a mental state attached to the form.

Whimsical made me think sanguine and sanguine was the ‘happy’, creative, wandering sort of personality. If I wanted to take that apart in the same way… could I take away from the whimsy? Could I go after her on an emotional level, without using my aura?

But I didn’t know what agitated her or brought her down to earth. I didn’t know her.

I flew in wide circles around her to make sure I had her attention. If I could pull her far enough away from the rest of what was going on, there was a possibility that I could make a break for it. Beat her there.

Every second I waste is a second that the others might be getting hurt, or imprisoned.

“They’re planning on hurting a lot of people,” I said. “Everyone we talk to that has any power that gives them info says that March is going to do something that’s as bad as whatever happened to the portals, like the ones in New Brockton or Norwalk. People are going to die and you’re letting this happen?”

She seemed to have realized that ‘down’ meant nothing when you defied gravity, and shifted her orientation to face me more fully without craning her head up.

It gave me a better view of her, too. I knew she was she was probably new to her power, really new, and the breaker decorations suggested a belt buckle, regular clothes, built up around the back of the head like whatever she’d worn and incorporated into the breaker form had included a hood.

This never works. Talking to people about the harm being done, the stakes.

“People have been chopped up, left alive. People who made it their life’s work to get people out of slavery. By helping these guys, you’re helping the people who hurt those people. You’re helping slavers. Monsters!”

I did see a slight reaction as I raised my voice at the end.

I reached for another talking point, I thought about family, and something fell into place. Before I could ask if they had any family in the city, I found myself able to see past the mask, metaphorically speaking.

“Colt?” I asked.

She flinched more than she had when I’d shouted ‘monsters’.

“It’s not worth it,” I said. “It may be fun in the moment, but that power you’re using, it never comes easy. There’s a consequence or a price or a limitation and I don’t think you’ve figured it out a hundred percent. Whoever brought you into this, they haven’t showed you or told you the ropes.”

Her hand went up, touching the side of her head, skeletal doll fingers in the midst of wispy glowing smoke hair.

“And there are situations where people get powers and make some bad first moves, and they pay for it for the rest of their lives. Swansong- Damsel could probably fill you in on that.”

I saw the recognition on that alien face.

“Colt, Damsel spoke highly of you. She worried about you when we were watching the villains. If you came with me, if you helped, then there would be at least one face you recognize. We can help with family, home situation, with fending off Love Lost, any debts you’ve incurred-”

I saw her shake her head.

Got it wrong, I thought. Not even a small shake of the head or a dismissal. Something stronger than that.

No debts. Maybe the opposite. That she felt she owed them?

“You’re starting a whole new phase of your life, make your first steps the right ones. You don’t owe them anything.”

She hesitated.

“Colt,” I said, repeating her name to try to stress the reality I wanted to bring home. “You don’t have to betray them. I’m not asking you to fight. Just… make a mistake. Let me by. Or tell them you were getting a handle on your power, you lost track of things. Mistakes happen and they can be forgiven.”

She shook her head. A small shake this time, more for herself than for me.

“Make a mistake, let me fly past. Then you fly down a short while after and do what you have to do. If my side wins, you come with us. If their side wins you go with them. It’s smart.”

Not that I was sure I could win, but I hated not having an opportunity to try.

“All you have to do, for five seconds, is do nothing.”

She was statue still, floating there. I saw her turn to look at the portal on the horizon. A slice of a different Earth’s night sky.

I dove. She didn’t move to intercept, and I had no idea if it was because she’d decided to let me or if it was because that mental state of hers was making her more easily distracted.

It was Colt, and Colt had no relation to the mall cluster other than the fact that she’d spent a few weeks in the company of Love Lost. Yet her powers fell eerily in line with the cluster’s. She also had the flight, and a kind-of-aura-esque take on the emotion power, which seemed like a me thing.

I plummeted and brought up the Wretch in time to make contact with the ground, just behind the newest Parahuman to enter the fray. Kitchen Sink was at the van, throwing stuff at and into it. Both fists and my unscratched foot struck hard ground and cracked it.

He twisted around, a handful of foot-long centipedes gripped in one hand. In his haste to turn and react, he threw them in a loose fan that only sent one flying in my general direction.

I hit him across the collarbone, I used my power, but controlled the velocity of the hit, striking him with a flat hand.

Sufficient to break bone.

He crumpled to the ground, rolling back, twisting in agony and groaning with the agony that came with twisting when he really shouldn’t.

Dealing with him meant that he couldn’t get at the people at the van. Foil was evading Hookline, and Nailbiter was dealing with Rachel.

Two dogs down. Yips included. Only the biggest and Rachel remained, and Rachel had been unseated.

Foil was supposed to have her gun, but I hadn’t heard gunshots. Was she reluctant? Was there a problem? No, well yes, but she’d been disarmed- I had to look to find who I was looking for. Disjoint, standing on a snow-covered balcony. His white mask and black hair made him hard to spot in the gloom.

And that left two members of this particular group, assuming they’d all stayed together. Sidepiece and Love Lost. It was hard to imagine Sidepiece missing this action, and Love Lost…

I flew up, trying to get a better vantage point, looking for her. I couldn’t afford to get into the fray before identifying everyone in play.

Hookline and Nailbiter were the biggest threats. Disjoint was assisting both. Probably unseating Rachel and taking Foil’s guns. Rachel was holding her own, while Foil was… she was stuck evading, it looked like. Relying on her power to help with the timing and deflection, but against an opponent with impossible reach and flexibility.

I went after Hookline first. In the worst case scenario, I figured I could buy her a chance to act. I landed, because being on the ground made it easier to control my strength, strode toward him in the floating walk that kept me from having to put too much weight on my scratched foot, and drew my fist back.

A hand caught it. Disjoint’s.

I caught his hand between both of mine. I used my power-

A scream ripped through the area, distorting the meager light that was available, filling every inch of space with a kind of energy, ambient and agitated. That energy soaked into me.

Reflexively, my hands tried to crush the hand that was clamped between them. It slipped free in the last instant.

Reflexively, emotions boiling over in a release of the frustration I’d felt earlier, I went after Hookline. A flying charge. I’d break him-

The hook caught Foil, who had been hunched over. Swept her into my path. I had to divert course.

Attack, was the impulse.

The length of the hook and chain doubled up in loose loops that filled the space between Hookline and me. A snare, waiting for me to fly into it.

With the artificial emotions running through me, I felt like flying right through it and winning regardless was a really fucking good idea, because fuck that two-bit villain. Fuck everyone responsible here.

I changed course as I reached the length of chain, adjusting my orientation to cannonball through one of the spots he might not have anticipated. It closed around me, but while it dragged at me, slowing me down, it didn’t catch me.

The hook reversed course, flying my way. Invincible, high-velocity, and the first step to me being wound up and then hurled around however he chose.

In the surge of emotion, I hoped he’d try. I could try things.

I didn’t get a chance. Though her face was red and her movements restless, Foil jumped forward, through the same fence of loops and barriers. Her timing and position were good, and there was less coverage because I’d already been snared, which meant she managed to slip through. The movement and the distraction meant I had enough slack to withdraw. Foil, on the other side of the airborne, telekinetically-moved chain, was now in close quarters with Hookline.

She swung to club Hookline with something she wielded, and Disjoint caught her wrist. Immediately, she shifted footing, her left shoulder almost touching Hookline’s right. Blocking Disjoint’s view. Her knee came up-

Hookline grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her to the ground with him.

It was a good move. I couldn’t interfere as much as I wanted, because the chain was twisting through the air between me and the Foil-Hookline fight.

Love Lost, meanwhile, stalked closer. She whipped out her hand, and the fingers on that hand extended into a metal whip. She retracted it. She turned a circular dial at her shoulder, and electricity crackled between two fingertips.

Colt dropped out of the sky, landing behind her. For a brief moment, Colt turned human. She swayed on the spot for a second, before Love Lost caught her.

Colt said something, then went Breaker again.

Fuck. I could see some resolve in her stance: the hands clenched at Colt’s sides, the framing of the shoulders.

I could also see how she floated in the air. By the looks of it, her powers hadn’t changed. One point against the trump thing. I’d almost thought there were power copying shenanigans going on, but it didn’t make sense that it would be this static, this particular set.

I floated toward the rubble that Colt had brought down. I saw Colt react, making sure to create the black blades with ethereal white haze around them.

Did she think she could chop it out of the air if I tried hurling one at Love Lost?

A silver blade cut through the air. Precipice’s answer to Love Lost’s scream. It hit the chains that Hookline had made, but it drew no silver lines.

They’re protected by Hookline’s power, I thought.

I turned to look at Precipice, who crouched with Chastity’s support on the side of the armored van. They’d climbed out of the open door in what was now the ceiling. Aroa and Candy would still be inside.

Another silver blade flipped end over end as it whipped through the air. Foil, a chain around her neck, hands trying to keep it from tightening, flipped backward, feet at Hookline’s stomach. Flipping him up and into the way.

The silver blade grazed him. Foil kicked him backward, sending him crashing down to the road. The silver lines that marked bicep, deltoid, and pectoral split, and blood gushed out.

Costume and flesh cut.

I’d had the same lines drawn on me just an hour ago, when fighting Lord of Loss, before the meeting with Rachel, before the travel.

“Does that girl have my cluster’s powers?” Precipice asked.

“Yeah, looks like,” I said.

“How?”

“Usual way? I don’t know, Precipice. She blasts you if you get too close, by the way.”

Foil bolted, running in Disjoint’s general direction. He caught her leg and she nearly tripped, but she managed to find her stride a moment later.

Love Lost motioned, and it was Colt who flew to bar Foil’s way.

“Go, help her,” Precipice said. “I’ve got Chastity for backup, and Rachel’s on her way.”

I turned to look. Rachel had polished off the fight. One of her dogs followed beside her at full size. The other two were small. A chihuahua and a golden retriever with a black patch at one side. She’d beat Nailbiter.

“Go!”

“I don’t think Chastity can beat Love Lost,” I told him.

“Hey, fuck you!” Chastity said.

I bit my tongue before sharing my other worry, because it was even more controversial than doubting Chastity’s skill. Honestly, Rain, I’m not sure you won’t put yourself in a situation where you’re forced to kill her.

I only imagine that because I’m trapped in my own hell of other people, and even though it’s as good as it’s going to get, it still eats at me. She’s in another world and there’s little to no chance she shows up in my life again until I reach out… but it eats at me.

I can sympathize if you want her dead.

The two of them hopped down. Aroa climbed out the door, perching on the wheel.

“Candy?” I asked Aroa.

“Hurt,” Chastity answered. “You should go. We’re good.”

I took off, escaping the area just in time to hear Love Lost scream, a sound matched by the tromp of Rachel’s mutant dog’s charge.

Disjoint-

A hand covered my eyes as I flew his way. I tore it away, and it was gone when I looked to see.

Colt blocked our way, focusing her attention on Foil. I saw Foil stagger back, and sought opportunity, helped by the distraction of Precipice, Rachel, and Chastity going toe to toe with Love Lost. There was a violent metal against metal sound, a flap of cloth, with Love Lost airborne- she’d used the charging dog as a stepping stone, scratching its snout as she sprung free, going right for Precipice. Chastity stepped forward, unsteady- she’d been using Rain for balance as much as he’d used her. Her face was scuffed and she had a red mark down the length of one leg.

Three against one, but all of the three were injured, worn out, or both.

I used the distraction, going over, because Colt still wasn’t in the mindset for aerial combat, was slow to look up. Disjoint was helping Love Lost, thinking he was too safe in Colt’s range. At worst, what, he’d get stunned?

I saw what Foil was after. Disjoint had disarmed her, stealing her guns, and she’d brought three or four. I saw one in pieces, the slide removed and tossed away, and I saw another lying in the snow. A dark, unmistakeable shape.

“Foil!” I shouted.

Colt whipped around, alarmed, looked back at Foil, who was recovering from the latest stunning. Immediately, Disjoint tried to grab me again.

I threw the gun, lobbing it high.

Foil ran. While she did, I went after Disjoint, so he couldn’t slow her down.

If this was going to work like I’d hoped, we couldn’t be interrupted or interfered-with. Disjoint was the bigger problem.

I crashed into the balcony, breaking it. I grabbed at him, not holding him up so much as I reserved the right to arrest his fall at the latest second if it looked like anything fatal or injurious.

It didn’t, so I let him land the hard way, amid dust and uneven concrete.

Colt had taken too long to realize what Foil was doing, or what I’d done. She’d moved to protect Love Lost, and that wasn’t where she needed to be.

The gun fell from the sky, and Foil, who had timing and accuracy powers, was in position to catch it, nearly dropping it not because she was off, but because it was probably heavy and falling at a high velocity.

Colt, adjusting her battle plan, was maneuvering around the fight. Picking a spot where it looked like her emotion power would catch Precipice and Chastity, but leave Love Lost out of it.

Colt was caught by apparent indecision, unsure of who to stave off, or maybe if she was considering my offer, figuring out the way this was turning. Love Lost’s henchmen had fallen or retreated. It was just Love Lost and Colt now.

Was she debating running?

Whatever it was, she was choosing a spot that meant I couldn’t be confident about flying over.

Chastity wore the glove that Precipice had taken from Love Lost’s workshop. The finger extended like a whip, maybe ten feet long, more to deflect and combat what Love Lost was doing than to go on the offensive.

She did the offense thing with a bullwhip.

Love Lost, for her part, was agile and scary. Her leaps gave her traction on the side of the building, and let her choose where she jumped down to, instead of it being any kind of foregone conclusion decided by trajectory and human limitations.

Her weapon was the other half of the same glove that Chastity was using. It was longer, stronger, and unlike Chastity’s, it left gouges where it impacted the ground. Many of those gouges were reserved for the snapping mutant hound.

Foil fired. I saw her bend over, and I saw the blood pour out.

I flew to her. What happened?

She’d shot herself?

Colt remained where she was, staring at Foil, turning to look at Love Lost. Chastity and Rain whipped and threw silver blades, the dog nipped, and Rachel whistled to give it an order.

I reached Foil’s side.

Her left hand was what had been injured. The gun dropped to the ground.

“What the hell?” I asked.

She indicated Colt.

The breaker had touched ground, and wasn’t moving from the spot. I could see why. A shot of the gun, penetrating the toe of one foot. With the bullet passing through, fusing everything solid enough that it touched as her power effect wore off, it had sealed the breaker’s foot to the ground.

“That doesn’t work with guns.”

“Works,” she said. “Ow, this hurts. The reason I use a crossbow is I can touch the tip and affect it, fire it before it affects enough of the bolt that trying to push it would destroy my crossbow. For the gun, I had-”

“You had to touch the live bullet?” I asked, placing pressure on the wound.

“It worked,” Foil said. “Fired through a hole I made in my fist,

“Why her?”

“Clearest shot, and if I hit Lost, then the breaker would hit everyone with that emotion power.”

I set my teeth.

Colt bent down, starting to hack at the ground.

“Shit,” Foil said.

I flew.

Wretch out, hitting hard. There were probably no vitals to worry about. Only a supply of energy animating a puppet that had been phased into our world.

I hit her, hard, and I knocked her to the ground. The section of foot broke away violently, and she flickered, turning normal. A fourteen year old teen, the toe of her boot torn up, blood welling from the tear.

I stepped on her, pinning her to the ground. She stopped where she was, staring up at me.

Leaving only Love Lost.

Who looked way too okay with current circumstances, all considered. She glared at Rain enough that it was probably impacting her combat performance, but I didn’t see desperation.

Had she distracted us enough?

She backed off, holding up a hand. I was reminded of how she’d looked when we’d encountered her at the Lyme center, after we’d destroyed all the guns.

She wasn’t normally one to back down or accept a graceful loss. Too bloodthirsty, too angry. But twice now, she’d backed away.

She felt confident. Confident she’d get her revenge.

“Can we talk?” Precipice asked. “I’d like to have a conversation.”

A firm shake of the head, a glare. One claw clenched into a fist, the other remained up, urging us to stop.

The clenched claw opened. She began tapping at the air. I could see faint squares appear and disappear in mid-air as the claws pierced them.

“Trap?” I asked, raising my voice to be sure the others heard.

Love Lost shook her head.

The typing continued.

“She’s spelling out words,” Precipice said “Five of-”

A synthesized voice that didn’t come from Love Lost, but seemed to radiate off of nearby power lines. “My team walks away. You get some of your people back. Decide now.”

“Hostages,” Chastity observed.

Love Lost nodded.

“Imp?” Candy asked, from atop the van.

Love Lost nodded.

“Chicken Little?”

Another nod.

“My brothers and sisters?”

A nod.

I was tense. I wasn’t sure I bought this.

“What’s the catch?” Precipice asked. “You put a lot of effort into this. You’ll give up your stakes? You’re not even asking for me to turn myself in?”

She didn’t respond.

“You don’t want Rain?” Chastity asked.

That, Love Lost responded to, turning her attention to Chastity. She shook her head. Again, she began typing.

We waited, tense.

“You’ll turn yourself in to our care another time.”

“What if we say no?”

No response. Only a glare.

“What if we say we won’t let your guys go?” Chastity asked.

Love Lost drew a claw across her throat. Then she waved a hand in one direction.

Was that the direction they were? An accidental hint?

I had a bad feeling, but I felt stuck.

“You need to call off March,” I said. “This thing she’s doing, it’s bad for all of us.”

Love Lost shook her head.

“It’s going to get kids killed. Thinkers we talked to seem to think it’s something along those lines.”

She went still.

I could see agitation in her hands, in her claws.

I saw it start to fade.

“Kids, Love Lost. Like your fucking daughter!” I shouted at her.

At that, I saw a flare of anger, enough I worried she’d do something reckless. Then-

Then doubt?

She stared down at the ground for a long moment, and nobody broke that spell.

Then her hand went up. A claw, four fingers and a thumb extended. A hand pointed in one direction.

Five of ours for some of yours.

“Who are you keeping, out of our groups? Tattletale?”

There was no response. Instead, fingers typed.

I expected another audio message.

Instead… wailing. Panicked sounds.

A hollow sound, magnified times ten by the fact it seemed to resonate out from everything from wires to engine block.

A young girl’s voice, caught up in sobs that made the words impossible to make out.

For an instant, I forgot how to breathe. My heart forgot how to beat. I wouldn’t have been sure I knew how to stand if I couldn’t fly to keep myself upright.

Candy reacted, I saw, hands at her mouth. Chastity visibly flinched.

Rain… he looked angry and harrowed at the same time.

“Take your people. Tell us where ours are,” I said.

Nobody on our team disagreed with me. Nobody looked like they doubted the call. Not while the sounds continued.

Love Lost tapped her wrist and she pointed at me.

I looked at my own wrist. The disc was still mounted there, slightly ajar after the fighting.

I tapped it, activating it. It brought up the red team, Kenzie and Ashley with hands bound, back to back. The other Heartbroken kid a distance away, looking like she was digging.

A tap brought up the yellow team.

Noise, no directional indicator.

Love Lost gestured, and that was apparently the key for some tech to kick in.

The noise remained, but there was an indicator.

In an instant, the others were hopping up onto the dogs for a ride, Rachel giving a hand to the more battered members of our team. Love Lost stepped to the side.

I turned her way. My foot was still on Colt’s chest.

“That was a kid,” I told Love Lost. “I thought you had some principles.”

She didn’t move an inch.

“What the hell did Cradle do to you? Or… what compromise did you make in yourself, that this is okay?”

Not a bat of an eyelash. The mouth of her mask was a perpetual roar, and her eyes matched it in intensity and simmering anger.

“You brought her into this?” I asked, my voice choked, as I pointed down at Colt.

“I brought myself into this,” Colt said. I could read her expression now. I could see a look of regret pass over her face.

I didn’t care in the slightest, either, because regret wasn’t worth a speck of shit if it didn’t change anything.

I let Colt go, and stepped closer. Love Lost moved her claws, and the image at my disc broke up, the location data fading.

When I backed away a step, she returned it. That information was her insurance.

There was a whistle, shrill and loud. Rachel, at the very far end of the street.

They needed guidance.

I checked the direction and I checked my phone, before flying down to Precipice and Rachel.

“University. I’ll meet you there,” I told them.

“What if you get ambushed?” Precipice asked.

“I’ll manage,” I said, my voice hoarse. “I’ll have to manage.”

“That’s not good enough,” Foil told me.

“It’s good enough,” Rachel said.

Good enough. I flew.

Better that I forge ahead. I could move faster than the dogs, especially when intervening buildings were taken into consideration.

Fifteen minutes of flying.

Then the University. Closed for the weekend, but with students still milling about. No lights of emergency vehicles.

The lights in the building that the disc led me to were off.

Snow and cold had a way of obscuring the nose and eating smells and sounds. It said a lot, then, that the smell of blood was as strong as it was.

Disturbances in the snow in a relatively abandoned area were my second clue, helping me to verify that I had the right building. I tried the door, found it locked, and broke it.

If I’d had any doubts, the smell of blood and bodily fluids erased them.

I heard the wailing. It hadn’t stopped since I’d entered. Someone was shushing them.

Tristan, bisected, lay on the ground, panting for breath.

“Ant- Vic,” he managed, between huffs. “Are they gone?”

“They left, I think,” I told him.

He let off a string of Spanish expletives before burring. Becoming Byron.

“I’ve been trying to give medical care, get people sorted,” he said. “But we couldn’t afford to let them know we- fuck!”

“It’s okay,” I said.

I saw the look on his face, eyebrows drawn together.

It’s not okay.

“Show me,” I told him.

Bags were the first thing I saw. Bloody gym bags, with blood leaking out the bottom. Then… body parts.

Kenzie’s friend Darlene was the source of the wailing. Her arm was in her lap, and it wasn’t attached to her shoulder. Chicken Little lay on his side beside her.

“Y-you’re back,” she said, to Capricorn. then she looked at me. “Can you fix this?”

“We’ll get your arm attached, okay?”

“Not this. Him. They hurt Chicken Little and it’s supposed to be a rule, that you don’t hurt the Chicken!”

“Your friends did, or-”

“The bad guys did! But it’s a rule! It has to be a rule!”

“Shh,” I said. I bent down, offering a hug. She took it, seizing me in a deathgrip.

I put a hand on Chicken Little’s side, and he flinched.

“Can you sit up?” I asked.

“He can’t-” Darlene started, before stopping. “Can’t hear. Don’t make him take off his mask, either, because he needs that to hold things in place.”

“Juliette’s here,” Byron told me. “Tattletale’s over there. Swansong and Lookout are in the other room, they were the last ones brought in. I didn’t want to break in in case they noticed and saw me. I thought we needed someone mobile.”

I couldn’t even move, with Darlene hanging on me. She shifted position as I tried, and I saw where one of her legs terminated at the knee.

“Sveta?” I asked.

“They broke her suit. She’s staying at the end of the hall.”

It took doing, especially when I was sore, but I could use flight to help. I lifted Darlene, and immediately she started fighting me.

“I need to be with Chicken Little,” she said. “We can communicate some with my power, but being connected means he hurts more. I don’t know what I’m supposed-”

“Shh,” I said, easing her down.

“I check in now and then.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s good. Can you stay for a second?”

Her hand clutched at my leg. Like she didn’t want me to go.

She couldn’t leave Aiden and she wouldn’t let me go.

“One minute, okay?” I asked. “One minute, you can count the seconds. Can you count?”

She nodded. Without speaking, she mouthed the words.

Sixty seconds to see how bad it was.

“Let’s get Swansong and Lookout out,” I said.

I hesitated as I saw damaged equipment. Something not all that dissimilar to Love Lost’s whip claw, but it had a handle, and it was broader. Split in two.

“The device we’d need to undo the damage,” Byron said.

I flinched, looking away.

“You should know. They severed pieces of Swansong and Lookout,” he told me.

I nodded. I was almost numb now.

I only had a minute, then I had to go back.

Juliette was lying on a table. As hurt as anyone, with a burn at her side that had damaged her clothes.

And on the ground, half of Tattletale. One arm, one leg, no head.

Some of our team was here, I realized, with a sick feeling. That’s how Love Lost put it.

“Everyone’s accounted for?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Byron said, “But…”

He didn’t finish the statement.

Everyone is accounted for… but only some of our team is here.

They took the rest hostage.

Blinding – 11.12

“I’m back,” I told Darlene. “That wasn’t a minute, was it?”

She shook her head.

I had Juliette with me, her arm around my shoulder. She had a wedge missing from her side, and some horrific damage to her shoulder I couldn’t parse with the blood and the way her hair matted into the wound.

She pulled away as soon as there was a bookshelf in reach to lean on. Hand over hand, with one arm barely functional, she crawled along the wall to the nook by the door, where she slowly eased herself down. Still hand over hand.

“Do you want help?” I asked.

Juliette shook her head. She reached over to the light switch. Only half of the lights in the space were on, and with a flick of the lights, only the light from the back room where Lookout and Swansong were and the light from the stairwell we’d come from were there.

Nobody complained or commented.

She settled in against the wall, leaning sideways into it instead of sitting with her back to it.

I was wary as I watched. There was something about how quiet she was and how rigid Darlene was, that made me feel like Juliette was a powder keg about to go off. I had no point of reference, I didn’t know much of anything about her except that she and her brother didn’t get along, and the feeling persisted because- because there was no way she could be like that and not be bottling up emotion, ready to vent it at the next or nearest excuse.

She pulled out her phone from her pocket. The screen glowed in the dark. She fished in her pocket with the shaky arm that was attached to a shoulder with a gap in it that I could have put my hand through, and she pulled out the headphones that were threaded up and under her top.

I saw it coming as soon as I saw the glimpse of blue at her side, where it looked like a triangle had been taken out of her. The headphone cord had been severed.

Her hands shook as she held the severed cord.

“Do you- do you want mine?” I asked. “My earbuds?”

She nodded once, a single jerk of the head.

I pulled mine out. Rather than approach, I tossed them to her.

In taking them, she turned further away from me. As if she had to move away from giving a thank-you, refuse my existence further, because I’d supplied that help.

“Antares?” Darlene asked, a question in a small voice.

One eye on Juliette, I found my way to Darlene’s side, crouching down.

Juliette plugged the earbuds into both phone and ears. Her head leaned against the wall as she stared down at the screen, the blue light illuminating a pale face with drops of red at the side, spray.

Darlene, at least, seemed to relax as Juliette did. I touched her shoulder, and felt her start at the touch.

“I peeked in on Lookout and Swansong. Capricorn is helping them. If- I may have to go help him again.”

“Don’t leave,” she said, her voice small.

I slumped against the wall, going from a crouch to a hard sit. She reached out, trying to hug me, and I pulled her a bit closer, which provoked a head shake.

It took a second to find a position where she was comfortable. Not being too far from Aiden, her back pressed against his. Her head in my lap, even though I wasn’t a person she knew.

My heart was pounding like I was in the middle of a fight, my thoughts were chaotic, and I was just sitting, trying to figure out how to handle this, worried that I was somehow doing this wrong.

“Lookout,” I heard Byron. “Lookout, stop-”

Lookout came around the corner, hobbling on one leg, a hand at the wall, the other leg she was using terminating at the ankle. She set the stump down, reached out to the wall for support, and paused as she looked at Darlene, Chicken Little and I.

Byron came around the corner, checking. I signaled that it was okay, even though I wasn’t sure it was.

“Don’t touch him,” Darlene told Lookout, sitting partially up. There was a panicked note in her voice. “You can’t touch him.”

Silent, Lookout started forward again.

“Lookout,” I said.

There was a grim kind of determination as she made her way forward, more extreme than a limp. I started to rise, but hesitated when she went straight past Chicken Little. I had to catch her as she half-crouched, half-collapsed, landing between Darlene and I. I eased her the rest of the way down.

“Thank you,” she said, quiet.

Just past her, Darlene looked wary.

“You can’t run on that leg,” I said.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she said. There was a pause. “It hurts a lot. But putting weight on it doesn’t hurt. It’s frozen like it is.”

Darlene nodded.

“This is doable,” Lookout said. “I’ve been hurt worse than this. Not that I want to say it’s minor, because it’s not, I want to sympathize and-”

She’d been hurt worse than this? With her parents? I found that really hard to imagine.

Or… not physical pain.

“Okay,” Darlene said, her voice tight.

Lookout was tense, fidgeting.

“Can I get you anything?” I asked. “Either of you?”

Darlene shook her head. She didn’t, I noticed, insist that I stay.

“My helm-” Lookout started. I caught the hitch in her voice. “My helmet. The, um, I was thinking about what I was going to say when people showed up, and- can you help with my helmet? I-”

She reached up with both hands. One hand had a thumb missing. The other had been cut at a diagonal. There was nothing except a triangle pointing to the corner nearest where the pinky would be.

I hadn’t seen, glimpsing into the room before letting Capricorn handle our teammates, turning my attention to Juliette. I felt guilty having left Kenzie, but I would have felt worse, making a promise to Darlene and not following through.

“I have it,” I said. I tried to find the clasps.

“I thought what I’d say, and it sounds weird, now that I’m here, but watertight bodysuits really suck so much when you’re sweating a lot. I feel like I’m swimming in here, and it’s full up all the way to the neck. Is that gross? I’m sorry if that’s gross. I don’t know why I fixated-”

Another hitch of the voice.

“It’s okay,” Darlene said.

I didn’t have words. I just focused on the helmet. I found the clasps and opened them.

She was sweating profusely, but I wasn’t sure that sweat was responsible for the moisture at her cheeks. Saying something or pointing out how out of sync that was with the smile on her face would have been betraying a trust, however.

My first concern was in mitigating the damage. Kenzie and Darlene, and then Chicken Little who was lying a short distance away. Was it making things worse, Kenzie being here? I didn’t have the best read of Darlene or Chicken Little. Kenzie sat beside me, her back to the wall. Darlene lay on her side, propped partially up because to do otherwise would mean her head was in Kenzie’s lap.

“When help comes, you might need to put that helmet back on. Darlene, your mask, too. I know it sounds like the dumbest thing ever when things are like this, but it could be a lot of people, and once your face is out there then your secret identity is kaput.”

That got me a solemn nod.

“Are you okay?” Kenzie asked.

“Not very,” was Darlene’s response.

“Capricorn warned me Chicken got hurt.”

“Apparently,” I said, quiet, because I wanted to make my voice heard now, before the conversation reached a point where it was too much of an intrusion.

“They hurt him. We couldn’t stop them. He can’t see or hear much now,” Darlene whispered.

Matching Darlene’s volume, Kenzie said, “Can you? I know it must hurt to be connected.”

“You and Chicken?” A tighter tone of voice, defensive.

“You and me, silly. I want to help him but…”

Lookout reached down, using the left hand that was only four fingers, no thumb. Index and ring finger went beneath Darlene’s arm, while middle and pinky went over.

“Go easy, Lookout,” I said.

Darlene resisted a bit as Kenzie lifted the arm, but didn’t fight as it was moved toward Aiden, instead.

“Help me help him?” Kenzie asked, pushing the hand of the dismembered arm toward Aiden.

Aiden stirred slightly, then touched the arm, pulling it closer to him. Both arms wrapped around the limb, pulling it against his chest.

Macabre, but I could see Darlene visibly relax at the gesture.

She wants to help too.

“Connect us,” Lookout said, insistent.

Her most injured hand reached down to Darlene’s intact one, touching wrists. Lookout twisted around to see me and spotted the helmet.

I followed the unspoken request, putting it in reach. Watched as Lookout moved her hand, Darlene moving hers in concert. Used Darlene’s fingers as her own to reach to the back of the helmet, with me rotating the helmet to help.

The ‘bun’ at the back was soon disconnected. A flick of a small switch made it open, two covers pulling back to reveal the camera ‘eye’. Another two small adjustments made that eye turn left and right, then up and down.

The distraction seemed to help both of them. No hitched breaths, no physical jolts of pain. The light from the stairwell caught a bead of sweat at Kenzie’s forehead, lights glittering on the moist surface of Darlene’s eyes.

The camera was removed from its oblong mounting, moved over toward Chicken Little-

He jumped at the physical contact, squeezed Darlene’s arm harder.

The pad touched his neck. The camera came to life, moving stiffly, the cover ‘lids’ opening and closing slightly, the ‘pupil’ narrowing and widening. Rain’s tech.

Kenzie leaned into Darlene hard, pressing their faces together as the camera focused in on them.

“Hi!” Kenzie said. “Hi there.”

“Hi,” Darlene said, to the camera-eye.

“Hi,” Chicken Little spoke for the first time. “I can’t hear you. I can’t see you clearly either. I don’t think it’s because it’s dark.”

“We can work on that, can’t we?” Kenzie asked.

Darlene nodded.

I extricated myself, letting the two girls get to a more comfortable position, Kenzie communicating through Darlene’s power to get Darlene to act as her hands. Darlene didn’t need me to cling to, at least for right now.

⊙

“Sveta?” I asked.

Silence.

“What can I do?” I asked. My voice carried into the dark.

“Leave. For your own safety.”

The words stung. A gulf separated us.

“I can use my forcefield to get close.”

“Don’t. Not when- not like this.”

She didn’t trust herself. It wasn’t just the gulf. She was several steps removed. On most days I’d seen her at the hospital, she’d been one or two steps removed from hurting me. One mistake to smash something into a forcefield, another mistake to do something to my body.

Here, to cover that distance, turn the corner, to smash my forcefield and then to hurt me, it required a sequence of mistakes.

And she saw that sequence as being too possible.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Me too. I’m just- why? Why couldn’t they take my word for it when I said I surrendered? Why did they have to wreck it? Why did they-”

There was a movement. A object hurtled in anger, startling, then I startled more as that object exploded.

Not fire and heat, but a violent release of pressure. Layered lemon-slices of plexiglass overlapping one another, each one curved and nestled into others to form a ball shape. On impact with the floor ten feet from me, the pieces had sprung apart. I could see where the damage had already been done, pieces sliced through, some pieces missing.

“Sorry,” I heard her voice.

“No,” I said. I leaned against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. “No need for any apologies. I get it.”

“Can you give me some space? I want to mourn.”

Mourn.

Byron was helping Ashley, and I knew they heard. Both looked at me.

“The body,” I said.

“I really liked it,” she said.

“So did I,” I said. I could have said there would be another one, if anyone in her immediate circle could help it. Even that Rain had the details on the internals that he’d been replicating as something writ large. Didn’t matter. There was something sentimental about this body, and it was no longer usable.

“I could have killed him. Them. I had a split second to decide, and I worried that if I instinctively grabbed at the whip, then the tendrils would be cut loose. They could hurt a lot of people if they weren’t attached to me.”

“You made the right call.”

“I think so,” she said. “But it’s not easy knowing I might’ve stopped some of this from happening.”

“We have options,” I said. “Trust me? Can you just… give me some faith, that I can figure something out?”

A long pause. Wrestling with herself, in more than one way.

“Yeah,” she said. “Just… some space? Until I trust myself?”

“I’ll be back to check on you soon,” I said. I knocked on the wall as I left.

I had to walk around bookcases to reach the table where Ashley and Byron sat. The table had been moved so that Ashley could watch Kenzie’s group.

About ten feet away, Flor was handcuffed to a desk – a professor’s desk, fit for the front of the classroom, with the internal shelves and drawers. her legs were stacked against the wall, and she hunched forward, hair hanging down as she tried to tear open the wrapper from a treat from the vending machine with her teeth. She’d been supplied with a lot of things, and for now that seemed to be keeping her content, much as Juliette’s phone was allowing her to tune out.

Treats and battery life were finite, though.

“Status?” I asked Byron.

“The rest of team blue is arriving soon. We got a status update from Vista, we were debating calling emergency services, or which teams were even available,” Byron said.

I could see the toll that this dark place was having on him. He sat closest to the glow from the back room where Swansong, Lookout, and Flor had been stowed. His brother was hurt and he had to be acutely aware of that.

“No emergency services just yet,” I said. “There’s not a lot they can do. Let’s wait for our reinforcements first, regroup, make sure we know exactly what we need. But people will have to show up to do cleanup. This much blood is a biohazard. The more injured people are going to need fluids and blood. We’ll have to arrange it so we can brief them on the scene before they walk in. Flor, Sveta… too many dangerous scenarios.”

Byron nodded. “Good. That sounds right.”

“Swansong?” I asked.

Possibly wary of a trap, Cradle had been less sure of the strikes he had delivered to Ashley. Marks cut into thigh but didn’t penetrate all the way. One mark cut into the prosthetic hand. Once one leg had been severed at the calf, he had stopped.

Tristan had supplied a peg leg, with the raw end of the stump set into a blunted spike of stone with a growth meant to reach around the calf. Strips of her dress bound it to the leg.

She sat in a way that had her leaning back, trying to look casual and failing utterly with the darkest of looks in her eye, as she surveyed everything around her, the various kids in particular.

“It’s fine,” she said. “Works.”

“Did you get painkiller?” I asked. Byron had found some in a kit.

“I don’t know if they’re okay to take with the meds I’m on,” she said.

“I can search it on my phone, if you want.”

She shrugged. When she turned her head to look at the kids, I could see how drawn her face was, the meager light highlighting the rise and fall of musculature beneath the skin of her face and neck.

“Vista reached out,” Byron said. “She couldn’t get ahold of you?”

“I put it in the other room. I didn’t want any sudden noises bothering Sveta while she’s unsure of herself, and I thought it would be a good idea to charge it in case Juliette’s runs out of power.”

He nodded. He could have called me an idiot for not being available. I wouldn’t have faulted him.

But he wasn’t the type to do that.

Byron tapped through to find an image. He slid the phone across the table in my direction.

Brockton Bay, not New Brockton, and it was thoroughly Vistafied, as Vistafied as anything I’d ever seen. I recognized the scar, a section of the city where Bakuda’s bombs had been detonated in a massive bombing run, chaotic and unpredictable, and then sealed inside an encasement of concrete taller than most of the buildings in that area.

That encasement had broken when Brockton Bay had been hit, but enough of it remained to be recognizable, with color leaking out of the gaps, like fireworks in slow, two-years-to-get-this-far motion. That section of the city was above the Boardwalk. Folded forward, walls folded in. Buildings meshed together like teeth of a zipper, many rooftops a matter of ten feet from the counterpart rooftop on the other side. There were gaps, but many of those gaps were filled by the sections of the city that stabbed in from the west half of the city.

The ‘bay’ of Brockton Bay and the ocean beyond it was reduced to a vein of water that ran along one edge of the almost-cube. Another wall was a distortion of things from pretty distant territory, if I could judge by the ‘rings’ where long distances of terrain had been compressed down: I was guessing Earth Bet’s Killington was among them.

A sign of how sparsely populated Earth Bet was, that she could pull that off. A city folded like origami, distant locations pulled in, so that all of the places they needed to protect were within a few minutes of one another, one upside-down, one leftside-right, one placed at the back, so a lattice of ruined buildings and trees protected it.

One open face, facing the rest of the world, with the terrain leading to that face being warped, altered into ripples, made as slow to traverse as possible.

Go you, Little V.

“I bet she’s happy with that,” I said.

“She is,” Byron said. He slid the phone to where Ashley could see it.

“Badass,” she said. There wasn’t a hint of the smile I might have expected accompanying that word.

“I didn’t tell her. I didn’t think she needed the extra worry,” Byron said, as he took his phone back.

“She’s scared,” Ashley said.

“Nervous, not scared,” Byron said, before I could say anything similar in Vista’s defense. “She wanted to stay on the phone, we had a confusing minute when she thought I was Tristan. Then we talked for longer than I should have. She’s waiting for the attack, seeing only hints of them, having to rely on heroes to cover her flanks because her focus is so tied up in what she’s doing.”

“She’s made herself the King on the chess board,” I said. “So long as she’s making that place that impenetrable, they have to get her to crack it and do what they want to do.”

“Something like that,” he said.

I thought about going. Leaving this oppressive atmosphere. Except that would be leaving Byron as the only able person on site, when there were too many volatile variables. Darlene and Kenzie were getting on for now, but would that change? What happened when Flor could no longer snack or Juliette had no phone?

When Sveta needed a friend, and I wasn’t around?

She was tough, but…

“Tell her,” Ashley said.

“Tell me what?”

“Valkyrie’s back. I immediately asked if she’d help, but they’re doing quarantine.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, well, if this goes on for a few hours-”

“Jessica,” Byron cut in. “They found Jessica. And some staff.”

“Bonesaw?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Apparently not.”

Ms. Yamada?

“I left a message. No response yet,” he said.

I folded my arms, feeling simultaneously relieved and anxious. I wasn’t sure I would have had it in me to make that call and leave that message. Not with the state of things.

“There aren’t many teams available. I’ve been going through everyone I could think of. They’re all tied up. The villains acting like shitheels and going all-out isn’t limited to Cradle, Love Lost, and March,” Byron said.

“Did anyone turn up?” I asked. “It doesn’t have to be to go after Cradle or anything. Just… people we can trust to watch the fort?”

Byron tapped on the phone, then turned it around for me to see.

I frowned.

“Yeah,” I said.

⊙

“Kids,” I said, over the phone. “I’ve talked to the Undersiders at this point, I’ve talked to Sveta. I know you’ve had a longstanding interest in keeping the gears turning and the greater machine working, and I fucking swear, if you screw us on this, if you pull the rug out from under us-”

“I’m not going to do that, Antares. But I can’t tell you exactly what you want to hear, either. You’re right that this isn’t okay. But it’s also uncomfortably close to taking a side in an internal dispute.”

“Then take a fucking side! We’ve put our asses on the line to protect this city. We’ve gone out of our way to cooperate with you, and people are getting torn to pieces! As far as I can tell, they’ve refined their mechanisms for tearing people to pieces! Narrower and fatter margins for where the invincibility-immortality effect extends from the wounds. You cannot be okay with this!”

“Calm down.”

“I’m-” I started. I stopped myself, lowered my volume, and calmed down, but not because she’d asked. Precipice, Rachel, Foil, and the Heartbroken girls had arrived. Natalie drove her bug, guiding them to the building. I was out in front, standing in the cold, pacing.

“Optics matter. If we take a side now it might hurt everyone later. I’m not okay with this. But as long as it’s a feud-”

“They went after the Navigators. How is that a feud?”

“So long as it looks like a feud… we’re reluctant to step in.”

“You’re useless,” I snarled the words. “Completely, utterly fucking useless.”

“In this? Maybe. Partially. We can make less overt moves.”

“Do,” I said, my voice hard.

“My husband says you threw a wrench into their finances.”

“And?”

“And they’re doing a workaround, reaching for other accounts to pay the mercenaries they hired. He can interrupt that, he says. It will add to the pressure, at least until they can pay their hires some other way. It might mean you have less to deal with.”

I restrained myself from being too demanding. “That’s a step.”

“Provided,” the voice on the phone said. “You take credit. It’s an extension of what you started. It will add to your mystique. It casts reasonable doubt, when the reality would turn a dangerous amount of doubt toward economy and the man closest to it.”

The others had dismounted, or climbed out of their vehicles. Worried lines creased Natalie’s forehead. She hesitated, standing about twenty feet away from me.

“We’ve done you favors,” Citrine said, over the phone.

She said something else, but I was distracted by the sudden approach of team blue, who had dismounted and gotten sorted. Precipice, Rachel, Candy, Chastity, Aroa, Foil. I covered the mouth of the phone.

“It’s bad,” I said. “Hang back a second?”

“I can deal with bad,” Rachel said.

With that, she led the Heartbroken girls into the building. Precipice and Foil hung back, Precipice standing next to Natalie.

I uncovered the mouthpiece. “I lost you for a second there. Repeat yourself, Citrine?”

I saw Foil fold her arms.

“Ahem. Favors. We’ve done you some. Knowing what Cradle and the associated groups have done, I can promise you that we won’t extend any favors his way. The way forward will be hard for him, I think.”

“I don’t think he plans on sticking around long enough that he’d care,” I replied.

“Aleph aside, no universe is truly isolated anymore. Many worlds have neighbors. If they settle in Earth N, we can apply pressure. If they move to Shin-”

I tensed.

“-Pressure,” she said.

“We could use that husband of yours on the field, if the stories I hear are right,” I said. “He’s good enough that he could do it and not leave a trail that leads to you.”

“He is. Unfortunately, we’re being targeted. There are no valid moves on this board that don’t put us at risk of being picked off.”

Teacher?

I clenched my fist, angry.

“Is there anything else?” she asked.

“Permission,” I said.

“For? To?”

“To do what’s necessary to deal with Cradle,” I said. “And Love Lost. Potentially others.”

“You don’t need permission for that, Antares,” Citrine’s voice was soft on the other end of the line.

“No. But I want it,” I said. “Tell me… if this somehow wraps up, and people ask questions, it won’t be your people who are putting the screws to us or making us out to be the bad guys. Because I know that’s happened. The lines always got pushed and tested, villains and even heroes would default to what was easiest, taking a bad guy out permanently, and then when the situation was tidied up, the authorities would crack down hard on them. Because getting back to a state of normal meant removing all of the murderers.”

“I’ll do what I can, but I’m not the court and the courts aren’t me. I won’t put you there, I’ll even do what I can to discourage it, but if you find yourself there through no fault of mine…”

My expression twisted and I had to fight to get it back to normal. She did not make herself an easy person to like or even tolerate.

“Thank you, Citrine. Some people just arrived. I should look after things here.”

“Good luck.”

She was the one to hang up first.

I met Natalie’s eyes.

“Upstairs,” I said. “Before you say anything, before you make any firm judgments…”

“This would be better if I was objective about it,” she stated. “I shouldn’t get involved to the point that it colors my judgment.”

“If you don’t want to get involved, I understand. It’s an ugly scene.”

“I want to get involved. I don’t want to be overly involved,” Natalie said. “I’m worried that that’s what I’m being led to. I’m worried I started on that road when I helped Lookout. Not that I regret doing that, but- you’re shaking your head.”

I was.

“Why?” she asked.

“I get it. I really, really do. You can be proud of the course of action -and you should, you really should- but still not like where you end up because of it. That’s okay. I get it.”

“But?”

“But nothing. You earned your stripes. You get to… call in a favor, or have your turn holding up the ‘it’s complicated card’ and being unreasonable-”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” she said.

“I’m not saying…” I trailed off.

“You kind of are,” Precipice cut in.

I frowned. “If you don’t want to get involved, cool. I don’t fault you. I respect the shit out of you for backing Lookout up, going the extra mile many times. Dealing with Goddess and helping us there. I don’t hold it against you if you want to draw the line there.”

“I-”

“Can you just- sorry. I don’t want to say I respect you and then interrupt a second later, but can you let me finish?”

Natalie nodded.

“I’m tired, I’m not at my best, and I don’t want to frame this wrong. I’m saying if you want out, you can be out. If you want in? If you want to check out the scene, get all the facts, have your say? I would welcome any input. I think we all would. We’re shaken up.”

“Yeah. Absolutely.”

I had to clear my throat. It still hurt.

“If you don’t want to look at the scene, if you want to give your opinion without knowing the whole why? You’ve earned that. It’s unfair but you’ve earned the right to be a little unfair. If you want to give that input, then yeah. I’ll listen. We’ll listen- the rest of Breakthrough, I think. Just… don’t be unfair about it and call it fair. I don’t think I’d be comfortable going this extra mile in any premeditated way if either you or the mayor said no.”

“You want me to sign off on murder?”

Put so bluntly, it was a heavy thing.

“Just… go upstairs? Or settle in down in the lobby, wait for ambulances and cleanup?”

“Or go,” she said.

“If you want,” I said.

I saw her expression, put myself in her shoes for a second, and then I frowned, hand going to my face, pushing hair away, momentarily covering my eyes. “I’m just realizing the situation I’m putting you in. You can’t go, because that’s the same as giving permission, because you heard one end of the conversation with the mayor.”

Natalie hunched her shoulders, hands in her pockets. “I’ll go up. Don’t worry about it. It’s been a shitty night.”

“Thank you.”

She headed inside, turning to where the stairwell was.

The wind changed direction. There hadn’t been anything falling from the sky or stirred by the air, but with the change, snow was whisked from precarious positions, and flurries stirred up.

“I might have to opt out,” Foil said.

“Okay,” I said.

“I love the kids, many of them, I really do, but the horrific stuff isn’t getting easier with time. You’re supposed to become numb to it, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I’m not becoming numb,” Foil said. “Each time’s harder than the last. I’m going to stay down here. Keep watch.”

“Okay. It makes me feel better to know we have someone watching out. Just remember you’re being targeted too.”

“I’ll be careful,” Foil said.

I nodded.

Precipice followed me inside.

The door shut behind us, and he put his hand on my shoulder to stop me. His mask glowed blue, the circuit pattern glowing in the unlit lobby. Similar circuits traced his miniature arms.

“What’s our next step?” he asked.

“Vista may have this in hand. It’s looking more like we might have to go after Cradle.”

“What Love Lost said… she fully expects me to turn myself in. This is what she’s trying to do, right? Apply pressure?”

“I don’t think she’s in her right mind,” I said. “What she’s doing and saying don’t line up.”

“Maybe. You’re not answering my question.”

“Yeah. Yeah, she probably thinks you’ll give yourself up, to undo what was done to all the others. Or she thinks that if those guys are left like this for long enough, they or their loved ones will turn on you.”

Precipice nodded.

“I don’t think it makes sense to do, Rain,” I said. “I think they’ve proven themselves unreliable and dangerous, well past the capacity for any kind of deals. If you turn yourself in, they’ll let the others suffer just to make you more miserable before they kill you.”

“I was wondering that,” he said, barely audible. “A lot of time spent stuck in a room with them. I can see it.”

“We’ll figure something out,” I said. “If we can’t figure out a workable plan of attack, we’ll go after March and-”

I stopped as we reached the top of the stairs. Natalie stood in the doorway.

Candy, Chastity, and Darlene were talking. Aroa was with Juliette, and the fact that Aroa had been in what was effectively a car accident when the armored van had rolled was nothing compared to Juliette’s condition. The pain was clear and the blood was everywhere. It didn’t help that the lights had been turned on.

Kenzie didn’t have her helmet on, despite my earlier urging. She sat with Chicken Little while Darlene’s family members clustered around her. She didn’t seem aware of it, but as seconds wore on, she hunched over more, tension taking over her body, her hands pressed tight between her knees.

I touched Natalie’s shoulder, to get her to move, or to get her out of my way so I could act. She reacted, turning, and Kenzie noticed.

Either because she was good at putting on a show or because having the right people around revitalized her, Kenzie almost immediately perked up, the signs of pain gone.

“Natalie! And Precipice!” she said, all smiles. “Precipice! I’ve been using your contact pads for Chicken Little. It’s so useful! Can you help me crack this? I think the signal’s not translating right.”

“One second,” Precipice told her.

She bobbed her head in a nod. Natalie entered the room, stepping around streaks and pools of blood, and Kenzie seemed happy as a clam to have Natalie around.

I studied the room, trying to see if I was missing anything. Any powder kegs set to go off, any tensions, any people in need…

There was one, really. Rain.

“We can’t discount the obvious,” he said.

“The obvious? You’re not turning yourself in. We already established that’s a bad idea.”

“The other obvious,” he said. “It’s… seven-something o’clock? Almost Eight? It was six when we left in the three teams, thirty to forty five minutes to get to the locations, move between them. Then this.”

“About right,” I said.

“It’s not all that long before I get knocked out by the dream room,” Rain said, quiet. “Erin says I’m almost dead, I’m so unresponsive.”

“You think it’s a time window to go after them?”

“One of ours and three of theirs get knocked out. It’s an edge.”

“And their mercenaries are possibly disrupted,” I murmured.

Precipice nodded.

I put my hand on his shoulder as I left him behind. Byron was sitting in the chair next to Swansong, and even though I knew he hadn’t been touched by the whip, he’d presumably felt Tristan’s wounds, and it was clear from posture that he wasn’t bearing down well under the situation. Swansong had barely moved an inch, except for that dark look in her eye to intensify.

Situations like this could bring out the worst in us-

Rain joined Lookout, bending down to see how the camera had been set into place. Aiden raised a hand to bump fists with Rain, a relatively small hand meeting a smaller, mechanical hand.

Not just the worst in us.

⊙

Sine-squiggle. Guncheck. Greater-than symbol.

N. O. D. E. A. T. H. S.

I spelled out the letters, tracing them.

After a pause, a response.

Circle with a diagonal line through it. Square with wobbly side. Arrow. Trident. Less-than symbol. Circle with a vertical line through it. Equal-sign with line drawn through it. Parallel vertical lines.

There was no pattern I could discern. There was no point, either.

But I couldn’t bring myself to stop, either. So I traced out words. The response came back, garbled, encrypted. I wrote down the symbols as best as I could. When I called it quits, I could go to the others, pass it to Rain or to Kenzie, and see if they could work out how the scrambling happened, and if there was a way to counter it.

I doubted it was easy. I doubted it was possible. There was no point to this, no pattern, and no way I could bring myself to give up, because giving up meant going back out there and-

-And I’d hit a wall.

I hunched over the sink, avoiding looking at myself in the mirror. My notepad -actually a tall pad of sticky notes with lines on them- was balanced precariously on the sink, threatening to fall when and if I wasn’t careful to put the part I was writing on over the right inch and a half of sink.

Backwards two. Two overlapping circles. Backwards two.

The door to the bathroom opened. I tensed.

I didn’t untense when I looked in the mirror and saw who it was.

“Thank you for coming, mom,” I said, without turning around.

“Your dad’s here too. We brought the team. Victoria-”

“Mom,” I said, interrupting.

She stopped.

“Whatever you’re going to say, just… save it? Please? Whatever you want me to hear you out on, I will. E-even Amy. Her, you, family, obligations, anything. But-”

I hesitated as my voice wavered.

“-not tonight?” I asked.

I remained tense as I saw her approach. Inscrutable.

She gave me a hug from behind.

I stopped taking my notes, laying pen across the pad, my fingers pressing it down hard, as if to secure it there. Resting in the sink, one arm draping out, a portion of Tattletale’s upper body was animated, a finger tracing its arcane runes at the base of my wrist.

⊙

“…give this a try?” I asked.

The emergency services workers had arrived. Briefed by Foil on what to watch out for. That being told not to go down one hallway was really important. That one little girl in the bunch would ruin lives for fun and two more girls would hurt people or kill for a laugh. Or something.

My mom’s team was helping to guard the location. Protect Foil, protect us. A technology blaster was pacing the area, searching for bugs or anything the other side might be using. A thinker was talking to Lord of Loss and the mercenaries.

Even with the warnings, I felt it was best to occupy the hallway.

“Yes,” Sveta said.

“If you need to call it quits, say so,” I said. “It’s insidious.”

“It’s insidious all the time. If you’re right, then… maybe.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Rain stepped forward. He lifted a hand, then dropped it.

At the far end of the hall, under the influence of his power, Sveta endured.

⊙

My dad, having helped with the heavy lifting, returned to the second floor. The people who had camped out here weren’t intending to go to any hospital. That included Darlene and Lookout. Chastity was keeping Rain company while he worked, while Byron had his head down for what I imagined was the nap of the emotionally exhausted. Ashley was with Kenzie and so on and so on.

Solidarity, friendships, bonds. Support.

I watched from a distance as my dad approached one of the only people who happened to be alone. Candy, who sat with her knees to her chest, while the doctor looked over Darlene’s wounds, a handful of feet away.

I heard her respond to his question. “I don’t like when strange men get close. Sorry.”

I saw him back off, walking away, sitting against a distant wall.

He created a globe in his hand, and he rolled it across the floor, to Candy.

She stopped it, then rolled it back.

It was, of course, a grenade, but he caught it, reabsorbed it, then created another, rolling it.

So the back and forth went, a half-dozen times.

I floated over. The emergency personnel had cleaned, stitched and bandaged my foot and tended to some of my other wounds, but they couldn’t do much for my throat, except to hand me a pack of lozenges and tell me to stop by a hospital when I could. They’d even been gracious enough to re-wrap my burned hand.

My foot being bandaged made me more likely to fly than to walk, if only because the compression there was a reminder to not put my weight on it. Also because the amount of crud they’d flushed out when rinsing it had been alarming.

I settled down beside my dad, resting my head on his shoulder. Candy passed the ‘ball’ to me, and I stopped it with my foot, before using my toe to flick it a few feet over to where my dad could stop it.

“That’s not the kind that blows up, is it?”

“Nah,” he said. He let it stay there for another few seconds. It popped more like ten soap bubbles than anything explosive.

Juliette, recently looked after, unwilling to go to a hospital, settled herself down a short distance away. The ball was passed her way.

A game of not-even-catch that was more fit for infants than children or adults, but it seemed important, somehow.

⊙

I dialed.

One ring.

A second ring.

The third- interrupted. A heavy click.

I put my phone down. Juliette’s was still plugged into the wall, recharging, and I picked it up.

I dialed.

One ring.

A second ring.

The third- interrupted by a voice. “This is the work number for Ms. Jessica Yamada, counselor. I can’t come to the phone right now, but please feel free to leave a message. If you have an emergency-”

I hung up.

Without picking my phone up from the table, I dialed her again, using my own phone. I watched rather than listen to the ring, listen to the…

I saw it transition automatically from call sent to call terminated.

I knew that if I were in the right frame of mind, I could come up with a good reason. I also knew that in any frame of mind, right or wrong, there were easily five or ten really unpleasant answers.

I didn’t feel up to trying it.

I approached Rain, who sat on the floor, doing upkeep with a pocket toolkit on a far-from-pocket prosthetic body. It was like trying to fix a car crash. Chastity still kept him company, guarding him, even though she wasn’t in the best shape herself.

“How are we?” I asked, pitching my voice to be heard.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Sveta said.

“It worked?” I asked.

“Some,” she said. “I’m still going, even if I have to keep my distance from all of you.”

“Alright,” I said.

The table that Ashley sat at was close. She tilted her head as I looked at her, her expression still grim.

“My sister’s coming,” she said. “So am I.”

“Walk over here first,” I said. “No stumbles, no falls.”

She stood from her seat, her leg wobbling as she put weight on the peg that Capricorn had provided. Back ramrod straight, chin high, she made her way to us, her hand going out once to correct her balance. Not what I could call a stumble. Not quite.

I caught her as she reached us, and she leaned heavily on my shoulder.

“Okay,” I said.

We had the verdict from Natalie. We had the opportunity, we had the motive. The means- we would see if we had the means.

Interlude – 12.z

“You can’t put that down there.” The words were hushed, furtive. May’s mother snatched up the violin case that May had just set down. In the process of straightening up, her hands fixed May’s shirt collar, then smoothed her hair down. “Everything matters.”

May put one hand inside the other, rubbing where the weight of the case had pulled at her fingers, her expression unmoving under the attention of her mother. A kiss at the top of her head, a smoothing of the hair, another kiss.

“We’re going to be late,” she murmured. A strategic move. In the moment, mentioning the time took the attention off of herself and put it toward the time. Toward digital clocks on the walls, the number of people gathered at the subway platform.

Even in her distraction, her mother’s hands were still at her shoulders, rubbing through thin, papery-crisp fabric. Her mother’s lips absently pressed against the top of her head again. She was embarrassed, and in her glances to either side, she saw a group of girls about her age, talking and joking together. They weren’t looking at her though. They were roughhousing.

“My friend thinks you’re hot!” one of the girls shouted across the subway platform, aiming the comment at a guy that was at least two years older than any of them. The other two girls, a blonde and a redhead, tried to shush her, one of them pinching her hard, the other trying to cover her mouth.

“Don’t be distracted. Play the music in your head. Go through the words, remember the inflections. If you’re confident about the singing, work through the violin piece. If you’re confident about the violin, think about the singing. Visualize.”

May was distracted. The blonde girl dragged her friend away, while the redhead pushed. All of them had faces that were varying shades of pink, from exertion, from embarrassment, from fun.

And the one who had shouted- she was seemingly the only person on the platform who paid attention to May. A long, lingering look, encompassing May and her mother, the aura of ‘fun’ momentarily dampened by what May imagined was a pitiable sight.

It was a moment that struck her as profound, the kind of moment she imagined would be with her forever.

And that girl, who looked like she could have been May’s sister, who could have been one of the many, many people who evacuated Japan after the attack, who might have changed her name to be more American like May had changed hers, she would probably forget this momentary meeting of eyes. May’s heart swelled with a childish sort of longing, a mad desire that- if she could only push that feeling out, couldn’t it be the kind of wish that drove fairy tales?

I want to be you.

I want the clothes off your body, so I can wrap myself in them and be them. I want the friends who are pinching and shoving you and laughing with you.

“Which are you focusing on?”

“The singing.”

An encouraging rub of the shoulders, reminding her of how thin the fabric was, how scratchy it was. The pleated wool uniform skirt was worse, but it at least didn’t touch her legs when she wasn’t sitting down.

“You’re going to mess up the ironing if you keep rubbing like that.” Another deflection, a diversion.

The hands dropped away.

“Remember to smile. You never smile enough,” the voice in her ear said. “You have such a pretty smile.”

May nodded. The deflections and diversions were only that. It was like kicking at the water at the edge of a beach, creating a momentary divot that was immediately filled in, pressing in from all sides.

I want a life that’s a balance of life and work, not weeks of waiting for a break in my schedule, so I can have a scheduled, calculated few hours of fun. This movie, because it will help with my English and because it’s a classic. An actual playdate for a thirteen year old, my ‘date’ chosen carefully, because their parents are the right people and they’ve never been in trouble.

“I’m so proud of you. I know you’re going to be great. If we aren’t late. Are you still visualizing the singing?”

“Yeah. I murdered the time, when I ran through it with Ms. B.”

Nervous hands fluttered at her collar, fingernails running along her neck as fingertips and thumbs pinched at the fold, pressing it tighter. Fingers brushed imaginary dust off her shoulders. May’s hands remained clasped in front of her.

“Where is that train?”

May’s mother ushered her one way, closer to the edge of the platform, closer to where the train would come, so she could stand at the yellow line, peer past and around, maybe hoping to see the light of the train, though there was no sound.

Just off to one side, a taller homeless woman had approached the group of friends, her tone urgent, angry.

May didn’t want to stare, and with a lack of people to look at, met the eyes of the man who was the homeless woman’s friend or boyfriend.

She could remember how, the last time she was sick with the flu, she’d longed to be well again so much that she’d promised herself she would cherish the days when she wasn’t sick. She had done the same thing when she had a toothache.

Did the homeless man have days like that? Was his every day like that, filled with longing to not be… that? Was she supposed to be happy she was where she was?

Because she couldn’t. Happiness was by accident only. Happiness was when the tutors got the times wrong and there was a break in the schedule, and mom just so happened to be busy with something. Or when mom had just bought the violin and cupboards and fridge were running empty, and mom messed up the timing on the preheating for the chicken kiev, so it was raw on the first bite, and there had been money only for a dollar burger and side salad.

The homeless man had a bottle in the pocket of his ankle-length jacket, and all she could think was that he was free. Free to make all the bad decisions. Free to dress like that, free to eat whatever, if and when he had the money. She would rather go hungry six days out of seven if it meant eating what she wanted on the seventh.

The shouting got louder, and it got louder because it was closer. Hand at fun-girl’s shirt, the homeless lady drove her toward the edge of the platform. Flailing, reaching out for help, fun-girl ended up pulling at her friend, who was moving forward to help. She groped for May’s mother, of all people.

May’s mother toppled, because she was leaning forward and totally unaware of what was happening in reality.

And in toppling, she pulled May down, because there was no reality where she would let go of May.

All of the emotions that had been brimming inside of May were left standing behind her like a cloud of dust after a cartoon character was whisked away, they had to be, because they were gone in an instant, replaced by the feeling of falling, and then the feeling of pain, as she landed, a few feet down. A springing feeling in one hand, like a sprain or a twist.

“Are you okay?” her mother asked.

“My hands. I think I hurt my hand.”

“Stand up. Let’s get up before-”

Someone else fell. The red haired friend of fun-girl. People were pressing forward, trying to stop the attacker, trying to reach down but getting in the way. Fun girl was on her back on the platform. Her head stuck out and over.

“I hurt my hand, I can’t play violin.”

“It doesn’t matter,” her mother said. “We have to get you up. Stand up!”

May tried to stand. She was wary of the tracks- was there a third rail? She remembered something like that. Was-

She saw the violin case and grabbed it.

May’s mother, face streaked with blood, lifted May up, hands at her waist. May reached forward, where people were helping, where people were focused on helping one of the white girls, or the man that had fallen onto the track, the latter groups more obstacle than anything.

Her hand full, she passed the violin forward and over the wall of people, before her mother couldn’t hold her up anymore.

Why did I?

“Again,” her mother said, voice warbly with emotion. She wiped at her eye, where it had blood running into it.

The next attempt started and stopped in the span of a second. A waste of strength, when nobody was positioned to catch, lift up, and receive.

In the back, the black man who had been in the attacker’s company was pacing, hands at the sides of his head, where his hair was shaved. May reached, and he didn’t see. His eyes were on his friend, who was being clawed, beat, pummeled and pushed, but who wasn’t being moved.

May’s feet hit the tracks. Her mother let go of her to wipe at the blood in her eye again, and May stepped back, almost instinctively putting distance between herself and the hands, the attention.

There was an alcove. May retreated to it.

Everything matters. Every detail.

It mattered that her mother had hit her head, and had blood running down one side of her eye, that her mother reached for May and found someone else, the blonde girl. She lifted, noticed something was wrong, and by then, was locked into the course of action. She wasn’t a bad person, wouldn’t drop the girl to look for her own daughter.

But she did look, and with one eye squinting shut, she didn’t see May.

The train could be heard. The lights visible in the tunnel.

There was still time. Just enough.

She reached forward, but she didn’t –couldn’t– call out.

This accident bigger than chicken kiev. Bigger than tutors missing an appointment. She wanted it to be a happy one and in the instant her mother turned and met her eyes with the one eye that wasn’t squinting shut, May wasn’t sure it was.

The train flew past, and May’s outstretched hand was positioned just so, that the fingertips were grazed by the rivets at the side of the train, but not struck clean off her hand. She might have imagined it, but it seemed to her that as the train hit all the other people, it paused for just a hair. A single tenth of a tick of the clock.

She heard the screams, and she bowed her head. Conscious of what she’d just done through her silence.

Disaster.

She opened her eyes, but she saw only darkness, and she wondered if she had died after all. She saw figures writ in onyx black against a black background, dressing themselves in roles. Again and again, on the stage, curtains closing, crashing together like waves, fragments flying in every direction, then backstage, figures dressing themselves in a new set of roles for another performance, then the performance, so fleeting compared to the preparation and what followed…

She felt an elemental sort of urgency as she minded the repetition, the drum-beat flow of images so big she had to abstract them in her head. In trying to define that elemental urgency, she reached for a comparison and found one in her mother, driving her, not demanding perfection, but needing it.

In that touchstone of reality, May found her way back to clarity and sense. To feeling nauseous and bewildered, numb and hypersensitive to the smell and taste of blood, the smell and taste of the train’s oil and engine. To touch, the scratchy feeling of blouse on skin, sweat coating her.

The sounds. People still screaming.

To get away, she had to get through. Between train cars- she had to step on a segment to get up and forward. Up to the platform.

Reaching hands tried to pat at her and check that she was okay. Used touch to assuage their own anxiety.

Dimly, she realized some of the blood droplets she was walking on were her mother.

Driven by the thought, she pulled away from the hands, ducking down, looked for her violin case, and found it lying on the platform. She ran up the stairs, stopped and hugged the side as people ran down, and escaped the ones who paused long enough to notice that the scratchy blouse had dots of crimson on it, each dot bleeding into fabric and spreading out into circles.

A man screamed, and it was a different sound than the other screams. They were reacting to something that had happened a minute ago. The man- the homeless man with a mop of dreads at the top of his head, he was screaming because of something that was happening now.

May winced at the sound, then winced again as her thoughts were briefly scattered. Onyx figures that weren’t figures, choosing roles in contradiction to one another.

She shook the thought away, took long seconds to find herself again. The hands were reaching down, now, trying to get her to stay still.

May charged through the forest of hands like a linebacker, violin case held against her upper body.

Up to the street. She hailed a taxi. She had some money. She was careful to hold the violin case so it covered up the blood on her shirt. Her hands wiped at the blood on her face.

In shock, in numbness, she told herself that she couldn’t be late. Her mother wouldn’t want her to.

“Julliard,” she said.

“You look too young to go there.”

I’m just going to show off for someone important, not to apply.

“Julliard,” she said, instead of articulating herself. A machine, a metronome.

The taxi pulled onto the street. She was free, for better or for worse.

⊙

Delicate touches for the gear shift, one hand firmly at the wheel, March let the car coast down the length of shattered highway. She flicked on the hazards.

“Why are we stopping?” Ixnay asked.

March leaned into the wheel, pointing. Snow and dead plant life danced across the road, tracing curious paths where they abruptly turned at right angles.

“The hell?”

“Vista,” March said. “Cute kid. If she’s actively using her power, then driving into it would be bad.”

“Bad how?” Dino asked, from the back.

“It doesn’t affect us,” March said. “Our ride would turn into a pretzel around us while we stayed the same.”

She smiled, and she looked at the others for reactions. Only Tori matched the smile. Tori, the Goddess cluster’s fourth. Tori, who had a tractor beam as a power. Tori’s was a friendly smile, not one of appreciation for the novelty of the situation. Not that Tori was really the type to get excited about novelty, danger, or those sorts of things. Not often.

Fine then.

March hit the accelerator, shifting gears. She caught a glimpse of alarm on her megacluster’s faces as they sped toward the effect.

There was a paradigm shift, a sudden lurch, and she heard a yelp. From Ixnay, the baby.

“That was only ice!” she crowed, steering into the slide. The wheels found traction again.

“Ice is still dangerous!” Tori reminded her.

She had to swerve around sections of road that had broken as the ground had resettled. More wind brought more flurries of grasses that hadn’t had enough sun over the past year, gone dry over time and now scattered in even drier, windy weather. It brought dead leaves that hadn’t decomposed, dust, and meager twists of snow.

A light gray plain beneath a dark gray sky, no light from the streetlights, no illumination in houses they passed. What wasn’t dead was slowly dying and what wasn’t slowly dying was being killed. It was cold and yet wildfires burned elsewhere, and the smoke from those fires turned the horizon from a line of light into a line of black. There were places near the cities where the water had chemicals in it and in places that meant that there wasn’t any ice, or ice could coexist with water that roiled in the wind, gray in reflecting the sky and white where it frothed.

She could see how it happened. The order of things, laid over one another. A fallen tree branch over a patch of leaves, telling a story. A car that had crashed, gone rusty, that rust a history and a timetable. Paring through it all, she could get a sense of how it had played out. A clock had ticked down without anyone the wiser and when it had hit zero, a world had ended. These were the consequences and the casualties.

To throw paint at a surface and see it mid-motion, splashing against itself, to see the potential, that was best. The next best thing was to see the aftermath. A rolled vehicle, a collapsed building with plants trying to grow over it, finding root in the clean water that had pooled in recess.

“Home,” she said.

“Sad,” Tori said. She touched March’s arm.

March shook her head. “No.”

The car sped by a long line of bodies covered by sheets. Rain had smashed down the sheets and the sheets had molded to the bodies, going stiff or getting stained, following the bodies on their to decay.

“…Maybe a bit,” she decided.

“I’m worrying about the pretzel thing,” Ixnay said, leaning forward a bit. His costume was black, a red ‘x’ across his face as part of his mask.

“She’s a hero, Ix, she’s not going to lay a trap that might hurt a civilian or any friends that are coming to help her. And she’s a teenage girl. What teenage girl is going to sit still and keep her power in place somewhere while doing nothing with it, when she knows the people she’s up against are making plans? She’s going to be anxious.”

“This is going over my head,” Ix said.

“Smart thing to do would be to lay a trap. Watch from a distance. There would be almost nothing we could do about it. But she doesn’t think that way. She thinks the impressive part of her power is what she does when she’s used it for a while. Not the weird things that happen while she uses it. She’s not going to do the smart thing and lie in wait. She’ll get ready to drop a mountain on us or something. That’s the teenager approach. Reach for the big guns.”

“I don’t think that’s a teenage girl thing,” Tori said. “You were a teenage girl not that long ago.”

“And I am impatient. I’m reckless, and I don’t dwell on the quiet parts of my power as much as I could. But she was younger when she started, and she still has a way to go. If she lived another ten years, I think she’d settle into it.”

There was a length of road with a hole in it that a car could disappear into. March swerved around it, coming close as the wheels skidded on an invisible patch of ice. She checked the rear-view mirror to make sure the others were fine. They were going a little slower, a little wary, and were following her path fairly closely.

“Not that little Vista is going to live that long,” March said.

There was no argument from her megacluster. Ixnay fixed his gloves, one looser-fitting than the other.

Off the highway. Onto the side road. They had an incline to go up, and with the ice on the roads, it was a tricky route to take.

The signs indicated the destination. ‘Brockton Bay’.

As they made their way down the road, the view between the mountains and hills became clear.

A city folded into itself, a landscape from half a continent away pulled close. Another side of the city raised up. An end result like a cardboard box turned on its side, just the one side open. Inside, buildings ran horizontally, vertically, upside-down, even diagonally in places, where they jutted from corners. None collided with any others, and water, parks, and hills all factored into the architecture.

March broke into laughter, seeing it. She let their ride coast to a stop while they still had the view.

Too dangerous to go forward. There would be traps. Pits, divots, uneven ground. The ground could be raised into spikes, or a wall could suddenly appear in their paths. She hit the hazards to notify the other team, then pulled over, before putting their ride into park.

She couldn’t let go of her amusement over the sight.

“You really think the quiet stuff is what makes her strong?” Ixnay asked.

March managed to stop laughing, uttering a gleeful, “I really do! But this is great! I can’t wait!”

The others climbed out. Ixnay, Dino, Enyo. Tori lingered behind.

“Don’t die,” Tori said.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t die. We just found each other again, and you’re old enough I don’t think it’d be weird, and…”

Tori’s hand brushed the side of March’s face. March took it in her hand and kissed it.

“Our thing is temporary. You can’t get attached,” March said.

“You always say that. Temporary because you plan on dying?”

March shook her head. “Because, until I figure something out, we can’t be together long-term. It’s unfair to pretend we can.”

“I’m worried what your solution would look like. She got you good. Wormed her way into your head.”

“It’s not that she got me,” March said. “I got it. I figured it out.”

March looked in the rear view mirror, saw Tori’s expression, deathly serious.

She twisted around, kissing Tori, to make that expression go away, because there were few things that bothered March, and one of those things was people she loved being unhappy.

“I won’t die,” March pledged, her words breathed against Tori’s cheek. “I promise.”

Tori smiled.

“We’ll be together for a few decades, I think. Unless we’re interrupted.”

The smile faltered a bit. Tori shook her head. “You’re messing with me, not making any sense.”

“I’m the most sensible rabbit I know,” March retorted.

“You say interrupted, but you mean dying. You promise me decades but you tell me no long-term?”

“Yes on all counts. Yes, dead is always possible, and you know that. Yes, decades. Yes, I can’t get your hopes up about long-term.”

“You’re fucking with me. Lying to me by dropping ‘decades’ in there, or pulling some double-meaning on me.”

March shook her head. She kissed Tori again. “Talking about it makes me sad. Let’s just enjoy the time we have together, without commitment?”

“Thinker neurosis. Like the fire thinker having a thing about arson. Except you somehow think decades aren’t a commitment?”

“Sure. Let’s call it that.”

“Or is it the relationship that isn’t important enough to count?”

“You are important. You count.”

“But not as much as Flechette. Not as much as Homer.”

“They count in a different way.”

“I should be glad that you don’t want to drink my blood.”

“I don’t want to drink Flechette’s blood either. But…”

“But.”

“But if I could? If I can? I’d map you to our cluster, so I could do all the Kiss and Kill things I have to do to them to you, too. And you would be the most important person in the world to me, then. I’m going to look for ways.”

Tori touched March’s face. There weren’t many people she was willing to let touch her like that. Tori knew, too.

“I’ll stick my sword through that teenager, and I want you there when her power comes undone and this city slowly folds back to the way it’s supposed to be. It’ll be like watching a flower bloom, all around us.”

“That’s not nearly as romantic as you think it is.”

“City-flowers?”

“Sticking metal through kids,” Tori said. When March didn’t respond, she added, “You’re so weird.”

“I’m ahead of the curve.”

“You’re weird, and I like it.”

March pulled away, settling into the driver’s seat, locking eyes with Tori through the rear-view mirror. After the distraction, she had to hype herself up, remind herself of what she was doing, and get her mind off the subject of how impermanent this all was. “Time against space, let’s see who wins.”

Tori rolled her eyes.

March pulled on her mask, put on her cap, with the flaps that covered her real ears, flipped up her collar, and drew her rapier from between the two seats.

Tori, getting out the other side of the car, wore blue contact lenses that colored her eye from corner to corner, an electric contrast to her brown skin. The rest of her mask was only going on now – around the eyes, silver with blue highlights. More blue feathers dangled from the braid that hung from her temple down. Her costume included a long coat with cobalt blue chains around the collar where a fur collar might normally be.

March didn’t know how Tori didn’t get her hair caught in those dozens or hundreds of chains, but she liked the effect.

Tori was joined by Jace and Megan. The other two wore blue as well, though Jace favored midnight blue, painted onto armor that had scuffed here and there, the silver showing through the paint. His shield was a metal riot shield, painted on the front side with the paint rubbed away with fingers and the side of the hand, in a way that was clearly a handprint, but also clearly meant to be a rabbit- two fingers for each ear. The inside had three handprints in blue against a steel background, one at the top left, one in the middle by the shields handle, and one at the bottom right.

Megan wore sky blue. Scarfs and cloths, with a scarf around brown hair. She too wore the contact lenses, but her look was more of a dancer. She wasn’t a fighter, and being even this close to danger had her on edge. Jace seemed to sense it and drew nearer.

There were the Graeae twins, Dino and Enyo. Silver haired, wearing gray and silver, they had rabbit patches sewn onto their sleeves.

Then Ixnay, as alone as she was, though she could pretend he had a bit of company with the arm he had borrowed.

They had other help too. Kingdom Come, injured, could still use his power, and the corner world warlords Deader and Goner had lent her Noose, Shiv, Matches, Bash, and Banger. They’d owed her from a favor she had done them a year ago.

The other half of her forces were split into two groups. With the phones dead, she would have to find another way of coordinating with them.

But this would do. She was excited.

“Let’s play, Vista,” she said, smiling. With a two-note whistle, she gave the cue for her army to fall into step.

Her hand went up, hand signal, and her power kicked in. Two, three, fist pointed left.

Jace and Megan began to jog forward, taking the side path. With only sound cues and awareness of where they had been before, March could visualize their locations. She knew how fast they moved from how fast they had moved before, she knew how long it would take to get where she wanted them to go, and she knew them well enough that she knew their behaviors and they knew what she wanted of them.

One, two, hand flat in ‘paper’ sign, pointed right.

That was Kingdom Come, Tori.

Ixnay stuck by her. He knew the signs too.

“Newbies,” she announced, without turning to address them. “I’ll walk you through the hand signals. If you follow them, we will win. Keep up.”

The shortest path from the road to the city was sloped dirt, loose earth and ice. She angled her feet to slide down the slope, with Ixnay following after. As she reached untenable ground, she hopped up onto a rock.

Looking back, she saw the newbies from Deader and Goner’s group were lagging back.

“Keep up!” she ordered. Her hand went up. Paper sign, again, pointed skyward, then turned into a beckoning gesture.

Megan hit her with the power boost. March felt her perceptions shift, her power take on new dimensions. The dimensions it would have permanently if she got her hands on Foil. The world slowed down as her perception of time increased. That perception of time was linked to a perception of movement, and all of this would become child’s play.

She would crack open this particular cereal box, find her treat, and please the people who were going to try to corner Foil. Even if they succeeded, they’d weaken her or wear her down, and March would be free to act.

She’d skin Foil and wrap herself in Foil, she would soak herself in Foil and gorge herself on Foil’s flesh. Foil’s clothes would be decoration, as she had fancied once upon a time. She would be in and of and greater than and less than and equal to Foil. Then she would be in and of and to and through Foil, and vice versa.

And if Foil made it, which she would, provided March didn’t make any hilariously bad slips with the knives, which she wouldn’t, then what was left of her would come to accept it in time. She would see that it all made sense.

She would even come to love it.

⊙

“They didn’t let me sing or play,” she said. “But if they had, I would have killed it.”

“Shit,” was the response, a sluggish utterance, tired and not all the way there.

May shrugged. It had been a good while now, since she had stubbornly insisted on playing, while the person she was supposed to play for tried to get her to calm down and sit still. To explain why she had blood on her.

She had almost, almost used her power on the woman.

She abandoned the conversation, and had doubts her conversation partner would even know she was gone. It was late, or early, depending on interpretation, and anyone here who wasn’t addled was getting other people addled.

A trio of half-naked teenagers ran through the mansion, hucking vinyl discs at one another. May skipped forward, her power kicking in, and she caught one of the discs out of the air, her finger at the little hole. It spun with latent momentum, and her finger traced along the underside, carving out a line of power, which became a spiral rather than a complete circle, as she moved her finger further out.

She judged, connected to the timing, and visualized the avenues it could travel. She threw it frisbee style, lining up her own body with the ghost images.

The vinyl passed into the boughs of an apple tree, detonating just as it reached the center. The entire tree shook, and apples began raining down. The two people beneath shrieked and made a run for it as the hail came down.

May pumped her fists in the air. As the apples stopped falling, people ran to go get some for themselves.

A twenty-something guy offered one to her. She clapped, and he ran across the poolside before throwing it. Not the most accurate throw, but she was an accurate catcher. She ducked low, hand behind her back, and let it slap into place between index finger and thumb. Nobody was really looking, but that hardly mattered. She was wearing a mask and kept her hood up, either way. Dime store mask, borrowed sweatshirt. Notoriety or fame didn’t matter much when it wasn’t even her face.

“What are you watching?” as she approached the couch. A twenty-ish girl was sitting there, laptop out, while three people crowded around.

“New hero,” the girl said.

May looked, watched the video play, an introduction with some poses and close-ups of costume parts. White and blue, a tinted one-way visor. PRT quality, PRT production. Polished but… boring.

The girl wasn’t, admittedly. May watched as the girl threw darts, cleaving through the top of a series of soda bottles. While the caps were still in the air, she threw again. The darts embedded metal caps to the wall.

May picked up a bottlecap and set it to spinning on the table.

“I don’t miss,” the girl on the screen said. She threw again, beheading another series of glass soda bottles. Foam sprayed and caps flipped through the air. She ducked low, and threw the darts through the short wall of cinder blocks that had held the bottle. They struck more caps, sticking them to the wall.

“There’s no taking cover from this.”

As the video cut to a series of rapid-fire shots, each zoomed in on a different cap, leaving an afterimage of a letter as things moved to the next shot, May stopped the cap, fingertip striking it down flat against the table, set it to spinning again, stopped it-

The letters on the screen spelled out ‘Flechette’. An edited-in graphic stamped in ‘Ward – NY1’ below it.

“You’ll see me patrolling the streets of New York, starting February first,” Flechette said. She picked up a new bottle with blue liquid inside, took a drink, then flipped the bottlecap back. Without turning around, she threw a dart behind her.

It caught the cap, and embedded the cap to the lip of the camera, just in front of the lens. A Flechette in miniature on the cap.

The scene, of course, was ruined by the squawk as the ad shifted to cramming in as much merchandising as possible in the last one point eight seven seconds. T-shirt, poster, limited time energy drink collectors item.

Buy now, buy now, buy now!, she translated it.

The video stopped.

A few people looked up at May.

“Familiar?” the girl with the laptop asked.

“Yeah. A bit.”

“Do you know why?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m seventeen, in my first year studying powers,” the girl with the laptop said. “I can tell you things.”

“What do you want in exchange?” May asked. She was leery of being indebted to anyone. Leery of being trapped again.

“To study you. Talk to you. I’ve been meaning to for a while.”

“You could just ask.”

“I did. But you were pretty drunk, and I was geeking out,” the girl said.

The party was one of about fifteen benders that May had participated in since her mom had died. She had a hundred thousand dollars in inheritance, and after the state had found someone who qualified as a relative, she’d ducked out, grabbing the folder that her new guardians had been left, with details on her trust.

They were leaving her access to the account, probably because they thought it would help lead them to her. As far as they were concerned, she always just barely got away. For her, it was trivial.

And with money and people who enjoyed spending money to keep her company, she’d settled into a group of teenagers and college students who were crashing at houses. It started at their relatives houses, then migrated to people they knew of. This time, those people they knew of were confined to a back bedroom. Food was being tossed into the pool because some guys wanted to see if they could fill it up enough that they could ‘walk on water’, clothes were being modeled and despite the fact that it was five-something in the morning, people were still at it, still dismantling the house or boning or scraping the bottom of the liquor cabinet with the stuff that apparently wasn’t supposed to be drunk straight. They’d turned it into a punishment game.

“It happens when a bunch of people get powers all at the same time. The powers get fractured and different people get different pieces. She triggered when you did. Ring any bells? Does anyone stand out?”

“Maybe. Some people, I guess. I don’t even know what a trigger is.”

“They say if you do something really triumphant, you get good powers. If you don’t… you get the flawed or broken ones. You trigger at major moments. Best days. Worst days. That’s the line, anyway. Does it hold up?”

“I got good powers, so…” May paused. She thought about how she’d let her mom die. Was that supposed to be a triumph? “I guess I did something good.”

The student with the laptop smiled. “Can-”

“Police!” a kid yelled. “Shit, shit, shit!”

There was sudden panic. People who were in the heaviest of make-out sessions pulled clothes back on. Others hurried to find shoes and boots.

“They’re by the pool!”

At the back of the property. We’re surrounded.

“Fuck!” one of the oldest people present shouted. One of the sober people. He was tattooed, and he’d been the one supplying the drugs. He paused for reflection, then uttered a louder, fiercer, “Fuck!”

“You’re not scared,” the girl in the chair said.

May shook her head. “I can get away.”

“Can you get me away too? I’ll tell you everything I know about Flechette, your multi, what it means…”

“I don’t care about Flechette.” I know who she might be. I still don’t care.

“What do you want, then? Get me out, keep me out of trouble, and I’ll help you with whatever.”

“Out?” the guy with tattoos asked. “You can get us out?”

“She has powers,” someone remarked.

“I can get everyone out,” March said. She smiled. “If you follow my instructions exactly.”

She could see the excitement of the girl in the chair.

“Raise your hand if you can count to thirty… okay. Which of you are confident you could count to one hundred?”

There was a heavy series of bangs on the front door.

“Police! Open up!”

May counted eight hands.

“The moment I snap my fingers, get started. Count carefully. We can’t run until we stop enough of them. You- upstairs. There’s a fire extinguisher on the wall. Count to a hundred starting at the finger-snap, make sure you have it by seventy. You’ll want to stick your head and arms out onto the roof on that side of the house at one hundred and start spraying right then.”

That got her a nod. She snapped her fingers, putting the mental model into effect. Timing, visualizing the person going around the corner, up the stairs. She could adjust her mental model, backward, forward, which would be useful when the numbers got larger.

“You – front door. Blockade it, dining room table, should take you twenty seconds. Take four of the people too drunk to count to help lift. Go now. You-

⊙

Ixnay’s waves pulsed through the air, making the air condense into rings, and some of those rings served to stop some of the drones and the ice crystals that were flying through the air. As the waves hit, the things were suspended, rotating slowly on the spot. If released, they would continue their current trajectories.

“Megan, your three!” March gave the order.

Megan turned, hand extending out. She tractor-beamed an ice crystal her way, driving it into the back of a cape that was stampeding toward her.

“Back three steps! And five!”

Megan hurried back three steps as the stampeding cape crashed into the ground. He coasted on icy ground, stopping just before colliding with her. Her trust in March was enough that she’d already turned, was grabbing a drone out of the air, pulling it to her-

The stampeding cape rose to his feet, only to have the drone crash into him.

“About face!” March shouted.

She loved these moments.

Without asking, with trust, her megacluster spun one hundred and eighty degrees. Switching who each of them were fighting, changing targets, shifting priorities.

“Jace, shield, ten!”

Jace half-turned, shield going up.

“Noose, charge!”

Noose, faced with a gauntlet of tinker soldiers dressed up as knights, hesitated.

“Belay that! Turn right and help Matches!”

March burst into a run, straight for the gap that Noose had refused to jump into.

“And for the record!? You would have been fine if you hadn’t hesitated!”

March was a target for the forces defending the Brockton Bay time bubbles because she was so clearly the leader. Now they were finding what they saw as an opening. Two capes came at her from different directions.

She traced a half-circle on the ground with her rapier, then stepped back from it. That covered one flank. The other- her rapier caught a stone on the ground, flicked it into the air. As she pushed her power through the rapier and into the blade, the weapon traced a 9/10ths circle around the stone as it flipped it up.

The ice cape threw ice at her, and as the line on the ground detonated, it intersected the flying shards. Frozen shrapnel scattered across the battlefield.

A little messy, but-

At the same time, the stone detonated a second after being flicked, well before touching the ground. It was at eye level for the cape who had sound-manipuating touch, fingers singing as they moved through air and the ability to deafen on touch. He reeled back with a bloody nose.

Not his biggest concern. March put her rapier through his chest cavity, pulled it out, and then drew a line through the face with her power. A hole in the heart, and four point three seconds until face became crater.

A merciful way to go. It was also about to become a dramatic and cool way to go out.

She cut a scrap of his costume away, doing a small circle with her sword to keep it airborne, cut it in half, then pushed her power into one of the halves. Time delayed explosion. While Megan’s power boost was running through her, she could work with shorter fuses.

The explosion was just in time to intercept a lob of ice through the air.

Her sword danced, keeping the other scrap alive. “Bash, right turn! Deal with ice guy for three seconds!”

Ice guy reacted, backing away instead of going on the offensive. That was fine too.

“Tori, about face! Your twelve in three, two, one!”

The explosion at the face knocked the cape’s helmet off. Tori caught it with her tractor beam, pulling it to her with the same force as if it had been thrown full-strength. It clocked the ice guy across the side of the head, while he was focused on Bash.

Across the battlefield, a cape created a flash of light. As it faded, March found herself alone, in a maze filled with moths.

One by one, defenders of the ruined Brockton Bay began to appear in the maze with her. Phased into this space.

Do you want to see me go all out? she thought.

“If this is a hallucination, I’m not bothered,” she said. “I trust my team to handle things while I’m out.”

One of the capes shook his head slowly.

I still have the power boost from Megan. One against seven. No, eight. And the world is moving in slow motion for me.

She could do this.

“What do you gain by messing with this stuff?”

“That would be telling, and you would put more people between me and what I want.”

“You lunatic.”

March smiled. “You guys are the crazy ones. If you knew what I knew…”

⊙

Homer had grown, in a lot of ways. He was well-dressed now. He still had the dreads, but they were shorter, bound in gold – it looked like wedding rings. His mask, too, was gold. He had a golden baseball bat, and as he walked, he dribbled a baseball with the bat. A flowing black costume swept around him.

He liked the aesthetic and she didn’t hate it, herself. She watched the baseball bounce up and down. Black skin, gold stitches. It was getting a beating, just from being dribbled.

“I think I got the singing from you,” Homer said. “I remember the violin case. Some musical talent. I guess not violin, specifically.”

“I sang before. It’s been a while since I did.”

“If you picked it up again, I’d lose the ability,” Homer said.

May nodded.

“It’s subtle,” he said.

“I’ve been really into putting all kinds of fun things up my nose and into my arm,” May said. “Is that from you?”

“I was never an addict. I used regularly, but I never had to,” Homer said. He paused. “I haven’t used in a while.”

“We each get what the others don’t want.”

“Seems like it. Or what we have in abundance.”

“I checked in on our third,” May said. “She’s serious now. Dedicated, disciplined. She doesn’t hate it either. I’m the opposite. She and I switched places.”

“I tried to reach out to her. She wasn’t interested. I don’t think she understood,” Homer said.

“That she’s not alone? It’s ironic, isn’t it? New school, new foster parents, moving away from friends, she’s lonely and she’s making up for it by jumping into the Ward thing, but if she stopped and listened…”

“The Ward thing is better than the mercenary thing,” Homer said. His voice took on a different tone, hollow. “I’ve stepped on toes.”

“I was thinking about going that way. I’ve burned through a hundred thou in an alarmingly short span of time.”

“If you do, step carefully. Find a mentor, find the people who are worth listening to. Once you step on toes, it can’t be undone.”

“You said you had a reason for reaching out.”

“The private investigator I hired said you needed cash. I’m not sure what will happen when things catch up with me, but… I hope you don’t keep getting pieces of me.”

They entered a tunnel beneath a bridge. Homer hit the ball, striking it sideways, so it ricocheted off floor, wall, ceiling, wall, then lighted onto the bat, stopping with only a slight bob from the bat to catch the momentum.

He did it again, harder, hitting the ball instead of catching it, to keep the speed going. The ball glittered and glimmered as it reached its peak speed.

They were out of the tunnel by the time it stopped, and Homer resumed dribbling it.

“You’re dying?”

“The kind of people who rise to power in New York aren’t the kinds of people you cross. When you get hired by someone, it’s your job to do the due diligence and make sure you aren’t digging yourself into shit with the wrong people. Gotta do it before you sign the deal, too.”

“You could run.”

Homer shook his head. “I’ll try. I’ll reach out to our third another time before I go. But… I wanted to look after you two. I got things from you, like the capacity to love, and satisfaction, and respect for other human beings. I owe you. So I’m going to set you up.”

“Can I have your contact list?”

Homer hesitated a good while.

“I’ll be careful. I’m good at staying out of trouble.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t stop it.”

“Stop- the train?”

“The attack, people getting pushed onto the tracks. I- our powers mock us, you know?”

“I had that feeling. A friend of mine said something similar.”

“I couldn’t. She was too important to me, and I couldn’t stop her, but I had to stop her. I finally took action, she turned on me, and she got killed. Worst of all worlds.”

May nodded.

“And I can’t do a thing with this power that doesn’t hit people right where it needs to to kill them. I can smack something clear the opposite way and the ricochets put it right into their temple, or over their heart.”

“I’m ready, whatever comes. I wanted to say my goodbyes.”

⊙

She rolled her shoulders as the light flared around her. Centipedes, giant moths, and seven of the eight capes who had followed her into the maze.

She had to adjust her mask, and she had to adjust her boot, because she had been so intensely at it that it had come unlaced, then nearly come off. She’d had her toes at the heel and her heel at the top of the boot for the last part of the skirmish.

She stabbed her weapon into the ground, and bent down to fix her boot. Her people waited. One injured while she was gone. It was Shiv. No loss.

Checking herself over, she verified everything was okay.

“Check-” she started, before her lack of breath stole the words away. She gave signals instead. One, there, phone. The universal pinky and thumb extended provided the ‘phone’ sign.

She held up fingers, then pointed at Shiv. Slow at first to recognize they were the number, Banger found his wits, stepping forward to pick Shiv up. March, meanwhile, adjusted her calculations. Any instruction given to Banger would have to account for delays like that. The guy was slow on the uptake.

No phone. No way to contact her reinforcements or other squads.

Maybe they wouldn’t need them.

Finally regaining her breath, she plucked her rapier from the ground, and she pointed it at the center of the city. Another five or ten minutes of walking, and they’d be at the foot of the construction.

Her group set out.

⊙

She’d come to like travel. It helped that other people were usually driving.

They’d settled into an informal role. Jan was the power expert, March the bodyguard.

Jan had no interest in being a gal in a lab coat in the PRT, but she did have an interest in writing about powers and people with powers.

Which meant hunting down interesting things. Which interested March, too. She was set for a good long time financially, and with this, she was feeding other passions.

Maybe the insatiable curiosity was Flechette’s. Maybe the poor girl was enduring her first few months with the PRT, being expected to learn these things, and it was being raised as a talent or inclination, discarded because Flechette had other priorities.

They got each other’s scraps. They were stabilizing over time, but now and again, things would get passed over. If Homer hadn’t pointed it out, then she might never know.

“This is a heavy one,” Jan said.

“Heavy how?” March asked.

“Six people. They triggered like you did. All together.”

“Six?”

Jan nodded.

Six. When Jan and March reached the town, there were three.

Three at a table in a shitty pub, four looking worn out, scared.

“I’m Tori,” one member of the group introduced herself.

“Jan. This is March, my bodyg-”

“Can you help?” the plea from a man, who was prematurely balding, and who had veins at his forehead, not from stress, or maybe only partially from stress, but because that was the way his forehead looked. He didn’t seem superhero-ish. “Please.”

“I can try,” Jan said. “March is a cluster too. We’ve been researching things, and new information is coming out every month or two.”

“Do you have a carousel?” another member of the four-person group asked. A woman, brunette.

“A what?”

“A carousel. It’s what we termed it. Silly of me to think you’d know what I meant. Any game? A gimmick? A way the power passes power around?”

“I’ve picked up some skills, I think. And addictions.”

That only got her a head-shake in response.

“Start from the beginning,” Jan said.

“Did you hear about the quarantine at White Rock?”

Jan nodded.

“Do you know the reason why they quarantined White Rock?” Tori asked.

“Yes,” Jan said.

“No,” March said. “Quarantine?”

“Someone dug a hole,” the other woman in the group said. “I’m Megan, by the way.”

“Hi Megan.”

“They made a hole between worlds. And… some people here started using it. A few years back.”

“Me,” Tori said. “Jace.”

The guy raised a hand.

“Smuggling. Passing information. Scientific research. Music. There’s so many ways to profit, with a link like that.”

“Of course,” Jan said. “Something went wrong.”

Megan nodded. “People started getting sick. We thought we took precautions, but…”

“I lost someone, several someones,” Jace said. “They traced things back, connected it to the suspicious material, the fake IDs we made to push stuff out into the right channels… they shut down the boundary.”

“The wrong people got stuck on the wrong sides,” Tori said. “I got stuck here.”

“What was the inciting event? You all triggered at once?”

“No,” Tori said.

“That’s the way it works. Multiple triggers within a minute of each other.”

“Days,” Megan said. “Days.”

“The portal,” March murmured. As heads turned her way, she said, “The portal? If there’s a lot of energy or interference, or connections or… whatever. We talk about powers passing stuff between people, but maybe they need to draw energy from somewhere to do that.”

“An open door between worlds as a big signal booster?” Jan asked.

March shrugged.

Jan nodded. “That would make it easier for six to happen, absolutely.”

“With the quarantine, and the inhumane treatment, and the suspicion we were doing it on purpose, as a biological weapon…” Megan said, trailing off rather than forming a full sentence.

“Well, that gives us some answers and food for thought,” Jan said. “But… you asked for help. Why?”

“The carousel,” Tori said. “Every day, one of us would become strong, and the rest are weak, or normal, or… or whatever.”

“I’ve heard about similar cases,” Jan said.

“We- there’s a loyalty effect,” Megan said. “It’s messing everything up. It’s messing us up.”

“Loyalty?” March asked.

“We couldn’t say no. We didn’t want to say no. And each of us have fragments of a power that influence people’s moods or views of them. Change how other people treat us. There were two who were problems. Two who had us robbing people, hurting people. One of them told us to like hurting people, and I don’t know-”

Megan trailed off.

“I did. A little bit, for a little while,” Jace said.

Tori nodded. “And for a while, things were okay, because we all knew that if we did something unconscionable, then in a few days we would be at the mercy of whoever we did it to.”

“Things changed?” Jan asked.

“One of our group took charge and- she went after the other. They were both the worst of our six… for very different ways. He was the monster but she- she had the strongest control power. She went after him and she took his day of being in charge. The day of having all the power. And she came after each of us, one by one.”

“To do what?”

“Take our days. And she got even stronger, if that’s possible.”

“What happened to her?”

“She disappeared. A while ago. And things have been okay for a couple of years now.”

“But the other – Bill. He called Jace. Reached out. He wants to try doing what Bianca -the other woman- did to him. Even though we’re already spent, we don’t have any days any more, and we barely have power. He was trying to convince Jace to kidnap us. Promised money, safety…”

“We don’t have anywhere else to go. People made Bianca disappear when she became a problem, and we’re not exactly in anyone’s good books since the portal mess.”

“I was barely even involved,” Megan said.

“He got Ysmine,” Tori said. “He’s coming for us.”

This wasn’t fun. It was hardly a game. But to be trapped, March could sympathize. It hit so close to home that she worried it was designed to.

She laid her hand over Tori’s.

⊙

She’d reached the city. A folded-up Brockton Bay. She whooped as she ran forward, leaping, hurling herself at a bend in space.

The bend swept her up. Gravity flowed in another direction.

With hand signals, her teams fanned out. Tori was absent. In two minutes, Tori would fire a blue flare off to one side. It would signal the reinforcements, if the reinforcements hadn’t been wiped out.

“March!” a hero bellowed. He stood on a rooftop directly above her, looking up at her while she looked up at him. Twenty feet separated them.

“Hallo!” she shouted. The bent space captured her voice, made it resound in different ways.

“You can’t do this! You can’t touch the time bubbles! Every person with a power that looks at the future says the result is bad!”

She laughed.

“Stop!”

She laughed again, gauging the bent space, then ran, leaping over a chasm, letting the bend in space redirect her leap, putting her near another rooftop.

Her people were making their way up now. Getting used to the vectors of this particular battlefield.

“You need to stop!”

“You need to get out of my way! I get what I want, and anyone who tries to stop me dies!”

“It’s not a game!”

She laughed again, using one hand and both feet to quickly ascend the light post that illuminated the newest roof top, dragging her sword against the length of it as she ran; it was the roof where the distance between rooftops was shortest. She stopped, pausing, then leaped.

The leap carried her a few feet up, helped by the fact that the space in the neutral territory between buildings was neither up nor down. Then the light exploded. The blast from the explosion tipped her over to the far end of the neutral territory. She fell up, rather than down.

All around her, buildings began to move. Leaving her less in the way of escape routes.

Vista was in play. Vista was getting in her way. They’d had a few run-ins already, when March had paid visits to Foil and had run afoul of the city’s heroes. This city’s heroes, she had to remind herself.

She smiled, and she moved her hand, signaling her team. Heroes were mobilizing, moving across every plane, like a topsy-turvy funhouse, but each facet was a different hero and a different power. Each moved in slow motion. She had time to remind herself of what each of them did. The ones she wasn’t sure of, she sicced her people on. A hundred cans of paint in the midst of being tossed onto surfaces.

When this was done, all would be crimson.

⊙

“I’m so sorry.”

“Shhh,” Tori murmured.

“I’m so sorry. I was supposed to save you.”

“Shh.”

March’s head sagged.

A flashback. A brief and violent struggle. She was good at timing, but she had to know what her enemy did.

And the people of this cluster did so very many things.

A man, heavyset, with a false magnificence that filled her with equally false strength, just to be around him. False enough that she tested and exceeded her limits, hurt herself in mind and body. A telekinetic shield that seemed to parry things just as effectively as her own timing power and enhanced baton did. He teleported short distances, and made the building shake like it was in the midst of an earthquake when he appeared. Power and force and when she finally cut him, he grabbed the line she’d drawn on him and threw it away, like it was a scrap of cloth.

Now… now she bled.

Now a tube in her arm drained her and kept her at the brink of life. She faded in and out and every part of her hurt.

For Tori, who was just close enough for March to touch, it was much the same. Blood drained. She passed out, came to with weak startles.

For Megan… for Jace, for Ysmine.

And he was getting stronger. And somewhere, a disappeared Bianca was getting weaker.

He’d drained March in hopes that he could take her power like he took the others’. He didn’t get the power. Now, instead of killing her directly, he killed her by neglecting to check her vitals, neglecting to ensure he didn’t take too much. She didn’t get the drugs or the food the others did.

So she talked to the ones in earshot. Tori, primarily, when the two of them were awake at the same time and the sedatives weren’t too strong. About love and life and hopes and missed opportunities. About mothers and violins and about the differences between their worlds.

By millimeters, she was brought closer to a futile end. Her hands were bound in a position where she couldn’t activate her power, and her sense of accuracy and timing only helped her to track the time she had been here.

Slowly, she slipped closer to oblivion.

Onyx facets.

Onyx walls.

Carmine facets, with veins instead of edges, kaleidoscopic when she tried to wrap her head around the shape.

Carmine walls, that she could almost imagine were the inside of her, because she saw herself reflected in this wall or that surface.

She’d remarked on the power of portals, and as she felt things hum through the structures that made up this oblivion, she imagined it was much like that. Vast amounts of power being redistributed, like the amount it took to hold up a breach between worlds. Governments had tried to harness the power of Haywire’s portals and they’d decided it didn’t work because any means of gathering it didn’t stand up, durability-wise.

A tidbit from Jan.

Poor Jan. Dead Jan. She hadn’t been any use to Bill. The bloodletter. The blood priest.

March sank deeper into the oblivion. She saw patterns in the energy that ran through things, and for fleeting instances, those patterns resembled people, ideas, events. Too much to read. They weren’t for her.

But there was something here for her. Codified into everything in the same way she was being codified. Homer.

She could see the empty space where Flechette was meant to be.

She communicated with Homer, and it was different than anything she’d done or felt as flesh. She felt his sadness and knew he’d died sometime after she’d left. Swallowed up by the worst of New York’s villains.

She could sympathize with the blood priest, who was scrabbling so viciously for this. He told himself it was for power, but… he was really after this, she felt. He wanted this connection.

Something beyond the short and fleeting life. A heaven where she would never be alone. Forever in the company of another, running through, over, under, into, communicating through shared events and bursts of static, riddling each other out.

And when Flechette died-

The view dimmed.

And when Flechette died, she would have Flechette forever. Until the end of a species that intended to last beyond the end of the universe. And Flechette would have her, and what happened in flesh would be swiftly forgotten.

The view dimmed further. For an instant, she felt a fear bigger and more horrible than any she’d ever considered. That she could be teased with this, then to have it taken away.

It all went black, and she wailed with a body that no form and a voice that had no sound.

Her heart resumed beating. She sat up, and was instantly pushed down. A doctor.

Already, the particulars were fading. But an impression that deep- that would never go away. She knew.

She could remember the feeling of the portal, so close. Past a veil. A huge source of energy. An amplifier.

Maybe that helped make the impression deep enough, strong enough.

Tori’s voice.

“They’re taking us to Bianca. So long as we’re with her, none of us will be able to try this again, and if we do, at least we’ll be somewhere we can’t interfere with other stuff.”

March tried to sit up. Doing so gave her a blinding headache.

“It’s okay,” she said, not sure if Tori was still there. Or any of the others. “None of this matters.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter. I love you. Thank you for talking to me.”

“Be safe, March.”

It doesn’t matter if I am.

All of this is a teaser. A chance to flirt and toy with our reality before we move on. Little more than a game or a dream that sets the tone for the day.

She shivered. She felt nauseous. She felt glorious.

She didn’t hear or see, but by the feeling of the air, she sensed that Tori was gone. The others were gone.

She would see Flechette, of course. There was no way that she wouldn’t, when they were fated to revolve around each other for an eternity. Joined by gentle Homer. Surrounded by the muted presences of others.

How delighted Flechette would be when she found out.

Heavens – 12.1

The red and blue lights from the police cars and the red lights from ambulances lit up the courtyard of the University, with multiple vehicles parked on the broad, normally pedestrian-only walkway. The lights were inconstant, ambulance and police cars flashing at a slightly different rate, so they desynchronized, creating a strobe pattern, then resynced.

No noise. Only darkness and the lights.

There were students gathering around the edges. Some of my mom and dad’s teammates were keeping the perimeter clear. I could see people in pyjama pants, wearing boots, hats and coats, and others with bags of fast food or supplies bought from on-campus stores who had forgotten about their now-cooling meals. They had to know it was bad. Superheroes covered in blood.

In another course of events, I might have been among them. And then- then what? Would I be stepping forward, volunteering help and expertise, touting my time with the Patrol block? In that timeline, would I have made headway against the nightmares and the loathing of my own skin? Had I made headway against the nightmares and the discomfort with skin that wasn’t human and hadn’t come from humans? I hadn’t vanquished my demons. I’d just… scared her away. She was some other Earth’s concern now.

Now there were more demons. Cradle. Love Lost. March.

No scaring them away. That wasn’t how this ended.

Alone, I wasn’t sure where I stood. A few things figured out. That I couldn’t be just the Warrior Monk, or just the Scholar. But I wasn’t alone, and that was maybe the biggest difference. Not necessarily all for the better, but still a big difference. I had backup, and I had distractions. People I could dwell on instead of myself. We were all fueled by different things, and I was fueled by dwelling on others.

Yeah, not all for the better. Lookout was seriously hurt for the second time in a matter of days, an ambulance picking her up. I’d started all of this because I’d wanted to help Ms. Yamada, and given that I’d been unable to reach her on my phone but I’d been successful in at least reaching her answering machine with a stranger’s, I was pretty sure she had blocked my number.

Capricorn emerged from the building, one hand on his helmet as he adjusted the fit. No cloth layer beneath like Tristan had switched to.

Rachel followed. Her dogs were small now. A chihuahua with bulging eyes and a spine malformation was in the lead, bouncing ahead, stopping as she whistled to rein it back. The other two were a jowly hunting hound, and a husky.

No, not a husky. Damn, that was spooky to see.

As they stepped outside, the dogs were made to sit. I saw the changes begin, with the chihuahua bouncing up excited as it started, Rachel making it sit again. With the intermittent darkness as the emergency lights flashed, it didn’t look like a gradual change, but one of fits and starts.

She more or less ignored Byron and I as she handled the dogs.

Probably for the best.

Rain emerged in the company of Chastity and Cassie, Rachel’s henchman. Rain was holding the destroyed whip segments, while Chastity held her arm out for him to poke at. She still wore the arm that Love Lost had made. Cassie observed from the side.

A mismatched set. Precipice was in costume, his mask and the mechanical right arm bearing the circuit board pattern in a glowing blue, his costume modified from a winter coat with a hood. Chastity was wearing nice clothes and a coat that looked like she’d had to go to Paris or New York to find a store upscale enough. Cassie in a bomber jacket with patches and badges on the sleeves, some looking like they were there to mend rips or tears. The hair that stuck out beneath the hat with earflaps was longer in the front than in the back, in a way that made me think her hair had gotten too long and she had just gathered it all up into a single ponytail and then cut it off.

It put Rachel’s comments to Candy about the long hair in another light. What was it like to even be Rachel’s henchperson?

But she got along with Chastity. Since they’d reunited, they had been together at every opportunity, breaking apart only because of the serious fighting and the differing modes of transportation.

The hound was tall enough that it could stick its nose into Cassie’s face without rising from its sitting position, licking her with a tongue that looked more like a braid of three tongues than a single one. Armor plating was already sprouting, and skin was splitting to show muscle that would potentially wrap up and around without much rhyme or reason, only maintaining the rough shape of a dog.

“Sveta?” Rain asked.

I pointed skyward. Rain turned on the spot, craning the circuit-board masked face up as he looked to the rooftop. Sveta’s face was just barely visible.

He extended a hand, and the face bobbed in a motion that was too fluid and extended to be called a nod. For me to emulate it, I would have had to use flight or have my head sink into my chest cavity.

I’d tried to fly up to Sveta on exiting, to talk about the route she could take that didn’t risk contact with any rubbernecking college students. She’d asked me to go. Her control was better after Rain’s ministrations, I had some protection, but she hadn’t wanted me near.

Mourning. Grieving her lost body.

Now Rain was using his power again.

“Please tell me that you can figure out something about their location from the broken pieces of the whip,” I told Rain. “Or the glyphs Tattletale drew, or- anything?”

“Love Lost was inspired by the body part severing whip when she designed her whip-claws,” Rain said. “The groundwork’s there, but not the implementation. Not the… energy source, for lack of a better term. The nucleus.”

“But she was going in that direction?”

“Yeah. Seems like.”

“Fuck her then,” I said.

“Yeah,” Rain responded, with some fierceness I didn’t tend to hear in him. Some of the others nodded. Chastity. Rachel. Byron.

“Any luck de-scrambling the signal?”

Rain shook his head. “Lookout’s looking, but I don’t think this is her specialty.”

“She’s busy with the doctors now,” I said, quiet. “I was hoping we’d have more to go on.”

“We have enough,” Rachel said. “They got enough blood on them that my dogs can follow.”

“Good,” I said.

“Almost grown,” she said, indicating her dogs. “We good to go?”

“In a sec,” I said. “We’re missing people.”

It took another minute for our missing people to show.

Ashley, limping on her peg leg, with one of Rain’s miniature arms wound around it, the hand touching the ground, not as a foot, because it couldn’t bear any weight, but as a way of getting some sensory input. She didn’t bring Lookout with her, which was probably for the best. Natalie would look after Lookout, Darlene, and Chicken. It would be Natalie’s call, based on how Lookout was doing, whether Lookout would be talking to us on comms.

My parents might’ve arrived before Ashley did, but they hung back a touch as Ashley caught up with us, my hand going to her shoulder to steady her, Rain immediately checking on the hand attachment. I glanced back at them. I saw Foil join them. The last of our group.

“How is Lookout?” Byron asked.

“Upset.”

“Relatively?” Byron asked. “Putting the situation aside?”

“Very upset,” Ashley said. She looked at me. “My sister wants to know where we’re going. She’s with the two Citrine recommended. They’re traveling west from our place.”

“We’ll let her know as soon as we have an idea,” I said.

Ashley nodded.

My parents approached. Foil went to stand by Rain.

“Hello again, Rachel,” my mother said.

“We’ve met?”

“You’ve met,” Chastity said. “We’ve met.”

“Briefly, before I took a break from things,” my mom said.

“Are we going?” Rachel asked, gruff, impatient.

“We have a vehicle,” my dad said. No longer in ‘dad’ mode. Not in looking-after-hurt-kids mode, or his speak-softly-so-civilians-don’t-get-intimidated mode. Superhero mode. “Who’s in?”

Straight to business. We had a clock, and none of us were particularly interested in wasting time.

“We have the armored van, too,” Foil said. “Beat up, no airbag, villains unloaded from the back and passed into cape custody.”

“Good,” I said.

“Do you want to ride with me?” Cassie asked Chastity.

“Shouldn’t. As much as I want to, after the last crash, I’m not dressed for a ride.”

“Precipice?” Cassie asked. Very casual, pointed.

I’d caught a glimpse earlier, while Precipice worked with Sveta. Sitting at the end of the hallway, Chastity had traded off with Cassie so she could look after her sisters and ‘cousins’. Precipice had had his hood down and mask off while talking to the henchwoman.

“He shouldn’t,” Chastity said, before I could say anything. “He has tech to look after.”

“Or driving,” I said. “He handled the drive well earlier.”

“Another time,” Rain told Chastity.

The teams split up between vehicles. Rachel mounted the hound, while henchwoman Cassie found a seat on the wolf’s back.

The dogs were on the main road before the armored van and my dad’s truck were out of the parking lot. The two vehicles followed, and I watched to make sure that Sveta had caught up. She situated herself on top of the van.

I’d reclaimed my earbuds, and my phone was fully charged. I began dialing a group call. I was maybe the only person present in a position to address everyone.

“Speaker?” I asked, as my mother joined the conversation.

“You’re on speaker phone.”

“Dad?” I asked. He was in his truck with Foil and Chastity.

“Yeah. Don’t use this much, had to find the button.”

“Rachel, Cassie, you can hear me?”

I got a nod from Rachel. Cassie looked to be mostly dealing with staying mounted on the wolf, which was a tougher ride.

“Sveta?”

I saw Sveta nod her head.

“Okay. The members of this cluster pass out at a set time every night to rearrange their powers and the strength of those powers, dream, and communicate. This is our time window to do something. That’s the good. We have resources.”

“So do they,” I heard Rain.

“They have resources too, yeah. That’s the bad. They have mercenaries hired and contingencies planned, and they have our teammates’ body parts held hostage. We have to keep in mind that he knows we know about the time window. Anticipate that he’ll have guards, mercenaries, hirelings, traps, deceptions… Love Lost had some nasty traps at her hideout.”

“They’ll have eyes on the roads,” Foil said, through the phone.

“They will. Lookouts, people watching their rear and flanks while they get where they’re going,” I said for the benefit of Rachel and Cassie.

“I’ll get off the main road. I may come back to give ’em a sniff,” Rachel reported.

“Rachel’s going to try to stay more out of sight,” I said. “Can you roll down the window of the van, Foil, and make sure Sveta can hear? I’m going to stick with her right now.”

“I’d rather not roll it down,” I heard Sveta, distant.

“Belay-”

But the window was rolled down.

Sveta was perched on top, and as she was, she was as in control of that body as I’d seen maybe three times ever.

“Do you want the windows rolled-”

I saw her shake her head.

Foil left the window open, and Sveta hung near the top of the van. Rachel was starting to peel away, her dogs running now in places where a lookout wouldn’t immediately spot them and identify a telltale sign of Undersider or Undersider-Breakthrough action.

Helps that there aren’t headlights on the dogs. We’d be spotted a mile away.

On reflection, it was patently insane that they were traveling as fast as they were with no headlights.

I followed Rachel and the dogs as they left the road, running through the fields to the side, where no streetlights shone. I kept the Wretch active while flying out of reach of them.

“They have hostages. We can’t charge in. We can’t make noise. Swansong, Damsel, and Rachel are our biggest, noisiest attackers. Capricorn, Flashbang and me are a step down. We have more ability to be quiet. This is a covert mission until we get a better sense of where the hostages are and what measures we’re up against.”

“I can be quiet,” Rachel said.

“Rachel says she can be quiet.”

Swansong chimed in, “I spent years on my own, every bite of food I ate and every piece of clothing I wore was a result of me being stealthy.”

“It’s-” I started. Damn it. “Yes. Absolutely. If our covert group needs a distraction, though, you’re best at making a lot of noise. Then you can use that stealth to slip away.”

“That got you a sigh and a nod from Swansong, for the record,” Byron relayed.

Rachel was silent, face hidden thoroughly by her winter wear. Unreadable. I couldn’t tell if she was listening and unhappy about it or if she wasn’t listening and was happy at the prospect of imminent trouble.

“So we’re all on the same page: the go-ahead to kill,” I said it into the phone.

I let those words hang. Weighty ones.

“Kill who?” I heard Swansong. “Specifically.”

“It wasn’t specific. Love Lost, Cradle, and March, for sure, but anyone who’s aiding and abetting. Obviously this doesn’t include people who don’t necessarily know. I think it was a surprise for Lord of Loss and Nursery. Mayor says yes, for all that counts. Lawyer-”

I had to remember my mom was present. How to relay the tacit permission without throwing a wrench into Natalie’s professional life?

“-Talked to me,” my mother said. “She won’t tell you yes, but today she isn’t telling you no, either. I think that’s as close as you’re going to get.”

Essentially my take on it.

“That’s where we stand,” I said. “They’re planning to delay, so be ready for any master-stranger stuff that might tie us up or obstruct us.”

“Protocols?” Byron asked.

“At the first excuse, yes. But only then. Otherwise it slows us down.”

“Can’t get a nose on the scent with the wind!” Rachel raised her voice. “Going to the road!”

I started flying in that direction, to stay in earshot and to signal my acknowledgement.

The dogs reached the road, running alongside. One ran with nose almost to the ground, a precarious kind of stampede forward, when it couldn’t look firmly in the direction it was running. The wolf and Cassie took up a position head, clearing the path.

I felt bad for the cars that were on the road tonight, seeing this sight. The dogs, even though they were on my side, were objectively things of nightmare.

I heard Rachel whistle. The dogs peeled off once again, away from the road, away from everything, so they ran through places where tent cities had stood and where trees had been cleared but only skeletons of buildings stood. A wilderness of the interrupted urban.

She was saying something.

“-ent North.”

“They headed North?” I asked.

“This way!” Cassie shouted, pointing.

“Turn north,” I told people on the phones, as I flew straight up to get a view of what was involved. I could see the headlights of cars that weren’t going anywhere. “It looks like one of the portals to Earth N! Be wary! Company parked up further ahead!”

Earth N. Lord of Loss’s Earth. It had been Marquis, before Marquis had vacated. Deader and Goner had controlled territory there too, off of one of the portals. An Earth of a dozen corners, where the settlements were spread out and hard to reach, so a bunch of the ‘corner worlds’ were on the same Earth. Which in reality made sense, when so much vetting had been necessary, to watch for invasive species, disease, and hazards.

We’d been once before, when looking for the culprits of the portal attacks. We’d found Earth Cheit’s people camped out there.

Now? Now it was a different kind of problem. It was where the villains had retreated to, for the most part, since Hollow Point and similar locations had failed.

And right now, the villains were pushing the limits, rebelling hard against the idea that heroes finally be asserting proper authority again. Rebelling somewhat more understandably at the idea that if people were a real problem, we might have to incarcerate them and not let anyone know where, lest we run into another fiasco like we did with the prison.

Bluestocking, Prancer, smaller villains, bigger villains…

None of the above. I was a dark form flying through the dark, and no lights touched me. Nobody looked up. I could scout their number, look for familiar faces, and get the lay of the land.

It was as though they’d sensed that we’d be coming at them angry and willing to cross lines. There were humans gathered around the parked cars, and cars situated so they blocked the access to the portal.

“Headlights off,” I said, through the phone. “Stop if you can see them parked ahead.”

I had a position to see the truck and van park. Nobody among the cars seemed to notice.

Rachel, Cassie and I joined the others, parked in the darkness, looking at eight cars with at least fifteen people gathered. Two of those eight cars blocked the entrance to the building where the access to Earth N was.

On the building itself, more people were gathered. People-mounted spotlights swept over the field and the road, but didn’t reach far enough to illuminate us. There were more than fifteen people in or on the building itself, and that was just the ones I could see in plain sight through windows and on the roof. They were armed. Rifles. Not a police, patrol, or station employee’s uniform in sight.

They’d taken the station and now they guarded it.

Everyone was climbing out or half-climbing out of the vehicles to get a view of what we were up against. I saw Sveta’s pale face in the woods off to the side.

“People we can deal with,” Ashley said.

“We have to deal with them without immediately sounding the alarms,” Byron pointed out. “Which is awkward, because that’s a lot, and they look organized.”

“Cell phones don’t tend to work across dimensional portals,” I said. “In a theoretical world where we could get in and block off anyone from getting through the portal to notify the other side, we could hit this place pretty hard and still remain covert.”

“Could flood it, turn it to stone before the flooding gets to the other side,” Byron said.

My mother was hanging back, staying quiet. My dad looked pensive.

“Thoughts?” I asked.

My mom answered me. “I think you know what the answer is. Time is short. Are you asking because you want to be fair and maintain the team equilibrium, or because you really do need the advice?”

Which had a faint tone like, if I needed the advice, I’d failed somehow.

“Because every bit of feedback is an opportunity to do what comes next better.”

“They got away. This is where they went. Every minute that passes, they’re either getting where they’re going or they’re already there and they’re laying traps, organizing their people, or getting ready. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.”

Just hearing that last line made my hackles raise. I hated that line, because it seemed to always be paired crosswise with ‘you can always do it better’.

My mom seemed to sense the raised hackles, because her expression softened. “You know the team and team dynamic better.”

I looked to my dad for backup. But my dad wasn’t my dad right now.

“Do you remember the engagement patterns we used to drill on?” Flashbang asked.

“Of course,” I said.

“It would be nice to get some use out of those again.”

“I’m noticing you’re saying engagement. You want to blitz,” I said. And mom’s implying I want to blitz. “Any objection to hitting them and wiping them out before anything else?”

Some shaken heads, some silence that wasn’t uncomfortable or damning by my best estimation.

“Chastity, Capricorn, with us. Stick by Flashbang. Precipice, Swansong, guard Cassie and the vehicles. If we run into a wall, you’re our backup. Swansong can punch through powers, minions, anything we can’t seem to stop, Precipice can punch through obstacles.”

Precipice turned to look at the situation. A long straight road with woods on one side and field on the other, cars sitting with engines running and headlights illuminating tracts of land.”I have to be there to hit stuff. If you’re in there and you run into trouble-”

“We’ll signal. You’re sticking by the truck for a reason. Cassie can get you in and Cassie can get you away.”

He nodded.

“Rachel? Hold the flanks. There might be people coming from down the road. Once we signal, bring everyone that’s not inside back in.”

I saw the frown on her face.

“We’ve got a team going right for the heart of this place. Number one thing, we stop them from reaching the people on the far side. Then we clean up from the inside out. You guys handle the outside in. Yes?”

“Mm,” she grunted.

Great. Great communication.

“Sveta, I know you don’t want to go inside while you’re unsuited, so just help from the flanks, follow our rear. I’ll try to stay in communication. When we get through, we’ll bring you across.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I heard her say. A voice like the one she’d used in the hospital. “I want to try this but I’m really afraid it’s not going to work. A lot of things didn’t.”

“Really truly, just knowing you have our back matters,” I said.

I saw her nod. I wasn’t sure she believed me.

“We don’t have long,” Rain said.

I nodded.

“Dominoes,” I told my parents. “Capricorn, Chastity, with us. Be ready to run. Rest of you, spread out. Capricorn? Give yourself a water gun further down there. We’ll need it to reload.”

“Reload?”

“You’ll see.”

They did.

“Small, small, empty,” my dad said, creating his energy orbs. Hard light around a swirl of energy. He tossed them to my mom.

She shifted into her hard, indestructible sphere form, and I snatched her out of the air with one arm before she could hit the ground.

“Run!” I gave the order. My dad ushered the two forward, Capricorn’s armor making metal on metal sounds in tune with heavy footsteps, Chastity far lighter.

I flew, Brandish tucked under one arm, a large sphere.

With a bit of Wretch strength, I hurled the sphere. It crashed into the two guys on guard duty, I landed, and I kicked it, channeling about seven years of active frustration with the maternal unit into the kick.

It lost a lot of momentum by the time it struck any of the people on duty. I remembered talking to Lord of Loss’s men about how his people were recruited. Were these among them?

The ‘ball’ that was my mother was an indestructible projectile. I kept it moving, a prelude to my own arrivals, as I plunged into each group in turn.

At the station housing the more discreet portal to Earth N, they’d noticed. People were running, some had guns and were getting to cover. Others were heading inside.

We only had seconds to get a grip on this. Which meant-

“Hit ’em!”

I kicked the ball hard, full Wretch strength. She flew through the air and collided with the lip of the roof, tearing into it.

In a flash, she was Brandish again. Her one arm swept out, hurling a sphere.

The detonation was small. Bright, with impact but no heat and no fire. There was a ‘whump’ and a shockwave that scattered snow and dust, with multiple people sent sprawling. A second toss, with much the same effect, but it included some of the people who were getting to their feet too quickly, and it sent them tumbling, with some frantic movements to avoid falling off the roof. Not that here was a great chance, given the short lip around the perimeter, dotted with cornices that hid the places where the prefab building had been put together.

The third toss landed in the midst of another group, who scrambled away. She lunged into and past the sphere that hit the ground, catching one guy.

I took my cue, going after the remainder. Two people close enough together that I could land beside them, driving my elbow down into one’s shoulder, grabbing the other by the back of the hood and, pausing as I delivered the elbow-strike, heaved them forward and face-down into the surface of the roof.

To the side, the ‘grenade’ burst into a sputter of bubbles. A fizzle.

Brandish was already twisting around, her weapon across his neck. They sank down, and the weapon followed them, the tip searing into and through the cornice beside the man.

“Radio,” she said. “Walkie talkie? Now!”

He reached for his coat. She beat him to it, reaching inside the open coat, and pulled out the walkie talkie.

“You will tell them it’s a trap. Tell them to freeze, and make them believe it! They are not to call anyone, they aren’t to pass through!”

“I-”

She moved the sword, singing beard-hairs.

“Fuck!” He fumbled for the walkie-talkie. Again, she beat him to it. Making everything fast and fluid as he followed instructions. “Do not go through! Your lives depend on it! Find a safe place and remain where you are! The portals-”

I reached out, covering the mouthpiece. “The portals are unstable.”

“The shrinkage,” he said, through the walkie talkie. “They think it’s what happened before the other ones went bonkers. No passage, no signals through! Stay put or evac!”

Hopefully that would do.

I had to leave the cleanup to the others.

“Gun?” my mother asked.

“In my belt. At the back. I dropped my rifle,” the man said.

She reached around behind him, got his gun, and slid it into her belt.

“Reload,” she told me.

“Yeah. Go with the others. I’m diving in.”

She turned into a sphere. I grabbed it and hurled it toward my dad. Again, distance and air resistance ate into the forward momentum, even with the Wretch active. My dad, Byron and Chastity had paused by the constellation Byron had drawn out.

My dad caught my mom out of the air. Those days in the gym hadn’t been for nothing. When she changed back, she was in his arms, her face close to his.

Dorky, lame, embarrassing.

And I resented it, for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on. Dorky, lame, embarrassing, and I couldn’t have gotten more of this? Or it couldn’t have extended into things that weren’t shock-and-aweing a bunch of desperate assholes who were willing to work for a villain for a chance at the good life?

I couldn’t stay to watch, as much as Dr. Darnall might have asked me to think it out. I pushed the guy I was holding with my aura, ratcheting up the panic. “Who do you work for?”

“Uh-um!”

“Fast answer!”

God I hated how I sounded like my mom had sounded in that instant.

“Lord of Loss. But we’re being hired out to someone else. Love Lost.”

“You know he’s a lunatic. You know she’s violent and she works with killers under her.”

I saw him shake his head, frantic, jarred by my aura.

Then the fleeting admission.

I grabbed him, bringing him closer to the edge. Was there an angle I could throw him and a place I could put him where he wouldn’t die on impact?

And a tendril grabbed him.

Seizing him, then depositing him firmly in a snowbank.

“Good one!” I shouted. No time or breath to waste. But that had saved me the time it would have taken to deposit him down there.

I flew around in a sideways arc, diving for a side window. That put me inside the building. Once the Wretch was active again, I plunged through the floor. There were people with guns, and I flew into each of them.

I knew the general layouts of the stations. I’d visited more than a few.

Punching through obstacles and walls put me in the center area between all the terminals, past the initial gates. Staff had already cleared out. I could hear the noise outside, powers being used. Chastity’s voice.

A voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. “Can we get a confirm? When are we good to proceed? Hello?”

Couldn’t let them proceed.

I left the rear group to handle the doors and the people we’d scattered. My goal- the portal itself. I flew down and through, knocking down metal gates that should have been open.

There were people making a break for it, and I dealt with them. I helped them down the stairs, in the most debilitating way possible.

I heard the slap of Sveta behind me. I heard the bang at the door. Ashley’s power. I spun in the air, caught only a glimse of a door with a silver line on it, Ashley with her good foot out, arms behind her. As part of that scene, I saw a massive collection of tendrils, with Sveta’s face at the center of them all, her expression focused, her face not as traced or marred by the tendrils reaching across it. Nothing at eyelids or nostril, nothing at the corner of her mouth, pulling because it acted instinctually.

The cape geek in me wanted to rattle through all of the ways that could have happened. The Sechen Ranges, or the fact she was pissed, that anxiety fed into itself and she was so distracted by reality that the cycle had been interrupted.

But she was with me. No suit, no middle ground. I had the Wretch and I felt the tentacles touch it, leveraging it.

How confident was she, to transition from ‘I don’t want anyone near me’ to ‘I can be this close to a variable scenario’?

“Can you grab the Brandish-ball?” I asked.

“Yes,” was the whisper.

Hearing the whisper, knowing my friend, I got it. Sveta turned away, head down low while tendrils reached up.

I felt a pang of sympathy, but I couldn’t afford to act on it.

And at the station platform itself, was the irregular shape of the portal, a three-dimensional hole in reality. A few dozen people were gathered. Stuff had been unloaded, including food and munitions. Intending a longer stay.

The deeper recesses of the station. They were talking, unaware of the commotion above. Trying to figure out what they were doing. They had a boss and that boss wasn’t on site. Love Lost had been brought in, and Cradle wouldn’t be here. Not so close to the deadline.

They’re just obstacles and an early warning system.

As I arrived, Sveta delivered the Brandish-Ball, whipping it down hard. Water flowed down from upstairs, as a distant offshoot of the water gun that had deposited Brandish here. The ball ricocheted off the ground, hit the ceiling, then, in the center of the room, expanded into Brandish, who was loaded with pre-prepared Flashbang grenades. While she was in her ball-state, she was in total stasis. The grenades had a timer, but the timer didn’t count down while she was frozen and not of this world. She scattered them, throwing them wide.

In a half-circle around her, grenades exploded with light and concussive force. Some of that force caught one or two people badly enough that there might be long-term injuries. For the rest, it took the fight out of them for the moment. Everyone who had been standing in or near the portal was laid low.

The dominoes engagement – named by Amy. Which sucked, because that ruined it a little. Me, Brandish and Flashbang all hitting like dominoes toppling. A series of devastating blows. Brandish wasn’t bothered by light, and in the midst of the chaos, knowing which she’d thrown were duds by experience, she could weave through while her targets were just trying to get out of the way.

The explosions cleared out half of a roomful of forty people, many of them armed. Sveta and I picked through the remainder. Women with guns. Men with masks covering their lower faces. Tossed aside. Sveta couldn’t really be shot, and the Wretch protected me from being shot, even though it was mostly pandemonium and people reeling.

And Sveta’s movements only continued to make sense to me again, now that I could parse why she was so reluctant and reserved. I’d known her at one point in time when this was all she had. She’d been hesitant to get to know me, but she’d settled in.

But she was a teenage girl. And for a brief time, she’d had a body. A covering she loved for a shape she hated.

Back then this body had been her in entirety. Now? After a body and paint to decorate that body, after clothes and clothes we’d shopped for? To lose her suit was to be stripped down, naked before the world. Vulnerable on multiple levels.

She wrestled with that even as I saw the visible triumph in how each extension of a tendril moved just a bit more accurately, just a bit less self defeating. And just a bit was a hell of a lot when there were so many tendrils.

“You’re doing great!” I cheered, because words were all I could offer and what I really wanted was to hug her and have her hug me back with those arms she’d built.

I wanted revenge, here, and I wasn’t ashamed to admit it. For her, for the others. For Kenzie who had lost her hands and who hadn’t been able to smile enough to compensate for the pain and sadness, whose cheeks had been wet with tears. For Ashley, for Darlene, for Tristan…

Fuck.

Infiltrating, finding our stride. Getting a sense of where strange teammates were, so I could identify the big guy who looked like he might take a little more effort to take down, someone I didn’t necessarily want to pulverize, and I could hit him so he stumbled in the direction of the group coming down the stairs.

Chastity caught him, and I saw the stunned surprise at the pretty girl before him.

She backhand-slapped him, and he hit the ground like a wet towel.

No smile, no triumph at the act. Even with Lord of Loss and Nursery’s people, there had been that.

Rachel’s dogs came down the stairs three astride, with Cassie on the hound’s back and Rachel following behind. Each dog had multiple people in their mouths. Two for the chihuahua, three for the wolf, and three and a half for the hound.

No- not a half. Someone’s jacket had come off.

They were deposited on the floor and the people writhed, unwilling to get up.

“Let’s get through and scramble. We have everyone?”

A quick head count confirmed we did.

Past a small army, a little bloody, a little too unkind, in a way that would be remembered, but we were as intact as when we’d arrived.

Blue lights appeared down the center of the room. Water appeared, and that water was like the inverse of the parting of the red sea. A crest of water appeared in the center of the long platform, and as it sloshed down, it swept the unconscious, injured, and dazed bodies on the platform to either side of the platform floor.

We fell into formation as we stepped across and through the portal, some of us limping or giving evidence to injuries minor and moderate. I chose to float rather than limp. Sveta slipped through, found a rack of books, and clung to it, hiding on the far side and peering over at us as we made our way into the platform, earth-N side. The dogs sniffed and snorted at the ground.

“They were here. And there’s blood,” Rachel said.

Rain twisted around. “The dogs told you-”

“On the ground,” she said, pointing.

“Ah. Fuck.”

Fuck indeed, I thought. Rain. There was no good place to stow Rain. No place that an assassin like Operator Red wouldn’t be able to find him or kill him.

Not that Operator Red was with us anymore. Juliette had taken credit, which was chilling to think about. More chilling that she and her brother competed over kills.

The blood was a good reminder that we were in enemy territory now. The settlement that extended from this station was a place where villains rented out places. From our past visit, I knew that there were distant cabins that were intentionally out of the way and hard to find. Without cooperating authority, finding the right place would be hard or impossible.

This was Lord of Loss’s turf. We’d arrested the authority. On principle, I was fairly sure, he wouldn’t tell us what he knew or guide us in the right direction.

“Scrambler,” Swansong said, holding up a device. It looked like a taser, but meaner. “And our key out of here.”

“Do we?” Byron asked.

The station on this side was empty. No people, no staff. Computers were on, as were the monitors for tracking the state of the portal. Unmonitored monitors.

I walked around the desk. Camera footage showed that the place was empty except for one girl in a staff uniform out back, smoking.

“Don’t hit that button just yet,” I said. “Could this be a trap?”

“I can scan,” Rain said. “Not well, but I can scan the area.”

“Be ready to run,” my mother said to my father. To all of us. The two of them were standing close together, his hand on the small of her back. Because they were dorks.

While Rain waved his thingy around, and the rest of the group settled so they could watch out windows and peek at the settlement beyond, I stayed by the computer. Periodically I hit the spacebar, to cycle through the surveillance images.

On a second go, I realized there was also television. Fed through from Earth Bet.

A distant, shaky camera shot of Brockton Bay. Mechanical suits were flying around, unleashing barrages.

And slowly, glacially slowly, the city unfolded, returning to its old, shaky, ruined configuration.

I shivered, seeing it. I saw Byron clench his fist, heard a ‘no’.

Rachel, supposedly Vista’s friend, only glowered.

I got my phone out. I flew to the portal. “Don’t seal it!”

Ashley raised her intact hand, thumb clearly nowhere near the button.

Through the portal. Back to a roomful of people who were still recovering from a soak and concussive shocks to the sensory faculties. My aura kept all but ten or so from getting back up, as they slumped over defeated or frustrated.

My phone call went through.

“What the hell just happened in Brockton Bay?” I asked.

The explanation took a minute to get through.

By the time it was done, my fingers were knotted around the headphone cord, which was so tight it threatened to cut off circulation.

“They want Foil. But even if they get her, they aren’t saying for sure they’re willing or guaranteeing they’re able to walk it back.”

And these guys want Rain, I thought.

Worse than we’d anticipated, in a lot of ways.

One bargain or the other might even be a consideration.

Heavens – 12.2

I was about to leave back through the portal when I saw our reinforcements. Quick, to get here in what must’ve been half the estimated time. Damsel was wearing her black dress and a black coat that buckled at the neck, lace up to the underside of the jaw. She had black eyeliner around her eyes and eyeshadow smeared around eyes without pupils or irises. Her blades gleamed on her left hand. On the right, the shine was dulled by streaked blood. It looked like she had tried to wipe it off and had only dragged it along the length of the blade.

Two people accompanied her. The reinforcements from Citrine, I was assuming. After she got new information or had second thoughts about how fucking useless she was being, she’d volunteered two of her contacts.

The two contacts matched, boys shorter than Rain, both wearing peacoats and wearing hard white masks like hockey masks, that were cut out to trace the edges of thick-rimmed glasses. Another hard mask segment covered the foreheads, cut to fit to the top of the glasses, and each of the upper-face sections had a number stamped on it. One and Two. Hair was parted and combed back with some gel that made hair look both perpetually wet and rigid.

“Damsel, thank you for coming,” I said, glancing over the crowd of people we’d leveled earlier. “Thing one, thing two, I presume?”

“That works,” one of the boys said.

“Password?”

“Pilum,” he said.

“We’re good, then. Let’s go. They’ll close the door after us.”

We turned to go, the boys falling into step on either side of me. Something was eerie about the way they moved. That Damsel had a regal glide as she walked behind me almost seemed to accentuate it.

I turned my eyes forward.

“You’ve heard?” Thing One asked.

“Pretty sure,” I said. “Brockton Bay? Unless there’s other bad news warranting a question as ominous as ‘you’ve heard’.”

“Yes. Brockton Bay.”

“Please tell me the situation hasn’t gotten worse in the last few minutes.”

“It’s worse,” Thing Two said. “But not exponentially worse.”

“A derivative kind of worse,” Thing One said. “If you bomb a city, the fires that follow are derivative of the bomb. Worse, but not in the way you mean.”

“Good,” I said. “Let’s hope this stays on the borderline side of catastrophic.”

“It’s not,” Thing One said, quiet.

My heart sank. “Past borderline?”

The two boys nodded in unison.

The sensation of gut sinking joined the feeling at the center of my chest, and swept through my entire body. That down feeling, the sick drop that was associated with the moments before disaster struck.

We passed through the portal.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“My brothers,” Damsel said. “After a fashion.”

Brothers? My mind turned to that particular riddle. Ashley had never mentioned anything which meant she wasn’t talking about blood brothers. She was talking about a different kind of kinship. They’d been cloned, and that meant these two were Slaughterhouse. Slaughterhouse meant-

I went through a filing cabinet in my mind’s eye, a dozen faces and masks making their fleeting appearances.

“Jack?” I asked, my heart skipping a beat. “No. Harbingers?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You were close,” Harbinger One said.

“You were active pre-internet. That’s my excuse,” I said. “Can I trust you?”

“Does it change anything if we say no?” Harbinger Two asked.

I saw a wounded Ashley, knew Tristan was inside Byron, cleaved in half. I had the grisly image of Lookout and Darlene, of Juliette, Amias, Flor… the Navigators. Sveta.

I could see the others. Looking back, I saw Sveta just beyond the portal’s boundary, which was marked in tape on the floor. The tendrils were gathered into a rough human silhouette, many long enough that they had to coil or wrap around her like a spring. Some were weaving into one another to form complex braids.

“No,” I decided.

I gave the signal to the other group. Rain hit the button.

The portal behind us crackled as it shifted. The ‘view’ distorted, a texture like television static rippling across the periphery. I hadn’t even realized it had a proper shape beyond being a rough three-dimensional blob. It had been a building, of some peculiar architecture, it seemed.

I turned away.

“Swansong, there you are,” Damsel said, as we drew nearer. “How clumsy of you, to lose a foot.”

“It’s clumsier to taunt the woman who is very irritated at having lost a foot,” Swansong retorted. “The pain is making my temper short. Don’t test it.”

“Bad mood. I might have to make it worse, not that I want to,” Damsel said.

“Worse?” Rain asked.

Damsel met my eyes.

Oh. She wants to mention the situation in the city.

I beat her to the punch. “March got to one of the time effects. It was the Killington Mayor, in an area that was folded into Brockton Bay.”

“What happened?” Brandish asked.

“Broken trigger,” I said, my voice soft. I could remember the last one I’d been present for. The construction worker’s rally. It had been bad. This was apparently worse by orders of magnitude. “It incapacitated everyone in the ruins of Brockton Bay and left them defenseless while the initial effects took place. They’re calling it a Class-S problem. Not a threat, because that implies a consciousness, but…”

“Everyone on duty offworld and internationally has been pulled to assist,” Harbinger One said.

“Really?” I asked.

He nodded. So often a steady gaze was associated with confidence, but his eyes searched without wavering, and they were more disconcerting because of it. “It’s dangerous to enter the city, and it’s dangerous to move around, but as soon as this storm passes, March will continue going after her prize. Precogs and other thinkers are still having nosebleeds or hitting walls when trying to figure out a way to get ahead of her.”

Same as before. That meant this wasn’t an isolated incident. It was even possible that everyone who was released from time bubbles was going to trigger the instant they were released. Possible that everyone who was released was going to be a broken trigger.

There was a whole group of people caught in a time effect in the scar. Three at once?

I wasn’t going to rule out worst-case scenarios.

“Should we turn back?” Capricorn asked.

“If you do, you’ll find yourself waiting at the periphery of the effect with everyone else,” Harbinger One said. “There’s no guarantee you’ll be able to help.”

“No guarantee I won’t,” Capricorn answered.

Harbinger Two said, “The employer of my brother and myself is of the opinion that we’re best utilized to go after her co-conspirators. We should find out what they know and what they want. There are hints they know too much and we’re curious how.”

Harbinger One said, “Prime example: we have logs of exchanges between them referring to the broken triggers by a much more accurate label.”

“What?” I asked. “You know something about broken triggers?”

“They called it a structural issue, which isn’t our terminology, but it’s better terminology,” Harbinger One said.

“I hate to interrupt,” Rain interrupted.

I reached out, grabbing him by the front of his costume. “Don’t.”

“Victoria,” my mom said.

“And you- don’t do that,” I said, to my mom, still holding Rain by his front. “This is important. Harbingers, what’s going on with the broken triggers- the structurally flawed triggers?”

“Time’s short,” Rain said, behind me, before either Harbinger provided me an answer. “By my watch, it’s only going to be a few minutes before my cluster passes out. Me included.”

I turned to look at him. His head hung a little. He didn’t want to be in this position.

“There will be time for answers later,” Harbinger One said. “Make your arrangements for Precipice.”

No there won’t, I thought, incensed by the interruption and the derail. We always need more answers than there’s time to get them.

Pushing for the information now wouldn’t work, and there were too many other things to do. As if tacitly acknowledging this, Harbinger One was stepping over to the window to peer outside.

“You’ll want to give them very specific orders,” Swansong said. She was leaning against a wall, her hair in an atypical sort of disarray. “Don’t get distracted.”

“These two?” Capricorn asked.

“It would be smart,” Harbinger One said. “We’d do things our way, but we’ve been forewarned that you wouldn’t like our methods.”

“What methods?” Flashbang asked.

Swansong gave the answer. “They’d go out the front door, into the hail of gunfire. They’d kill or maim every threat and every potential threat and then torture answers out of the survivors.”

“You oversell us,” Harbinger One said. “Not into the hail of gunfire. Not in the late evening when visibility is low.”

“I stand corrected,” Swansong said.

“If it was just capes who were aware of what Cradle’s group did and were condoning it, maybe,” I said. “But there are civilians in that town, and I doubt capes living out in the corner worlds are fully aware of all the context. No killing.”

“Then we’re at your disposal,” Harbinger One said. “No killing.”

“No maiming, no permanent damage. Not civilians.”

“No permanent damage includes mental scarring from trauma. Don’t break them,” Foil said.

The Harbinger spread his arms, before uttering the least believable, “We’ll be good,” I’d ever heard.

I looked over the group. Some strong, capable capes. A lot of people I trusted and knew how to work with. And then the handful I didn’t.

And three overlarge canines, who were on the dangerous side of neutral.

“You trust Cassie?” I asked Rachel.

“Mm,” was the unhelpful response.

“Why?” Cassie asked.

“Someone has to take the controller that unlocks the portal, and someone needs to look after Precipice,” I said. “You don’t have powers?”

She shook her head. “And I’m glad.”

My estimation of her rose by just a little, even without the approval from Rachel.

My glance in Rachel’s direction as I thought that seemed to be a cue for her to say something.

“She’s never disappointed me,” Rachel said. “Some of my old teammates, but not Cassie.”

I saw Cassie react to that, like someone could have knocked her on her ass with the gentlest push.

“You’re good with it?” I asked Rain. “We’ll leave you with her.”

He nodded.

“Take Yips,” Rachel said.

“Yes ma’am,” Cassie said.

Rain joined Cassie, at the side of the group. A dog loomed above him, but he didn’t look too intimidated.

My mom and my dad were talking, standing by one window. The two Harbingers took another window. Damsel and Swansong hung back, having a murmured conversation. One long clawed finger pointed at the Harbingers.

As help went, they seemed like more complication than actual assistance.

“What’s it look like out there?” I asked. Byron was standing by the window.

A gauntleted finger pointed, indicating. “Lights are on, including some bigger lights, not much cover of darkness. Some people outside, some armed. A good number of capes.”

“Any sign they’re guarding a specific building or direction?”

Byron shook his head.

“It’s warmer here than back home,” Flashbang said, from a few feet away. “But they’re still motivated to stay where they’re out of the wind and weather. They’ve been told to be on guard, but nothing specific.”

Back home, I thought. Having an apartment, I’d almost reached the point that I could start thinking about it as home, and then the original occupant had arrived. Two of her, in a manner of speaking. I didn’t think of Gimel as home, hadn’t thought of Crystal’s apartment or my dad’s apartment as home.

I hadn’t thought of the care house as home. Or the hospital room.

Home was Brockton Bay and home had been in ruins even before today happened.

Byron moved out of the way, and I peered out the window. I could see the construction lights that had been rigged up in place of streetlights, too bright and wide-area. Homes were small and one-story, all prefab and few with any attempt to hide the fact that they were prefab.

“Even if you find Cradle or Love Lost, maybe Colt, you won’t be able to wake them,” Rain was telling Foil.

“Pain? Drugs?” Chastity asked.

“No, I’m pretty sure. Cradle tried using a power to throw a wrench into things once. When I talked to March about it, she said that Cradle hired someone called Snaggletooth, a cape that invaded dreams. The woman ended up brain dead.”

“You have someone else now,” I said. “Colt. Is that going to be an invasion or an addition?”

“I’ll find out in a few minutes,” Rain said, looking at his phone. I saw him sigh.

The settlement around the station was tricky. So much of it was illuminated so brightly that it seemed to cast the remainder into darker shadow. There were places where I wasn’t sure if the dark shapes were buildings, rocks or trees. With the construction being so cheap and so quick, even down to there being corrugated steel roofs and plywood, the windows weren’t exactly of the insulated double-pane sort. They were drafty and to deal with drafty many of the residents put up heavy blankets or blocked the windows outright, at least for the colder months.

I’d seen enough of it while working with the Patrol.

And blocked windows didn’t shed light unless someone peeked out.

I wished we had Lookout, to map this area. It would have changed everything about our approach. But she was still getting medical care, for what little it was worth.

Byron tapped the glass of the window we were looking out of. “If we leave out the front door, then we’ll have twenty eyes on us. Ten seconds later, we’ll have a good hundred people ready to deal with us.”

“Side door, then. Has to be.”

“The layout of this place is pretty simple. It’s not a big station. It might not have one.”

“It’s a station though. It has employees on a good day. Let’s look for the employee entrance, wherever they go for a breath of air or smoke.”

Byron nodded.

Some stayed behind to keep an eye out the windows and the glass of the door, while, at my indication, the rest of us fanned out, checking the building. Rain’s blades cut the bulletproof glass that walled off the security booth. I flew through, while he retreated back to Cassie and Doon.

There was a side door, by a supply area that looked like a quadruple-size broom closet and small workshop combined. Some old construction material lay by the wall.

The door was securely locked, at the top and by the knob.

A bit of light in my peripheral vision got my attention. I could hear the familiar crackle, and stepped aside.

My mother pushed a spike of light through the lock, then reached up, letting the spike extend to reach the one above. White-hot metal dripped down.

“Lights,” she said.

I turned and flicked the lights off. The only illumination was from the station interior. The storage room and this employee-only area were dark, illuminated only by the spike.

She held the spike out of the way while she cracked the door open, pressing her head to the crack, then pulled back. The spike was held against palm with her thumb to provide illumination as the four fingers were held up.

The hallway here being dark would mean that anyone outside wouldn’t see a sliver of light appear. And that was good, because there were apparently four of them.

“Guns?”

“Assault rifles. Your dad could deal with it, but that gets noisy.”

Four of them with guns.

I hesitated. I could send the Harbingers, but I didn’t trust them.

“Go back, tell others to clear the way, then have Sveta come here. She can deal with it. She should be hanging back near the portal.”

My mother nodded.

Others had filtered into the back area. I bid them to draw nearer. Chastity and the Harbingers. Once they were in the storage room, I partially closed the door.

“I love how in sync you two are,” Chastity said.

At first, I thought she’d meant me and my mom, and I wanted to laugh. Then I saw she was talking to the Harbingers.

“It’s not on purpose,” Harbinger One said. “When you’re very good at doing what makes the most sense in a given moment, you usually do the same things most moments.”

“It helps that we have the same DNA, we grew up together, and we enjoy each other’s company,” the other one clarified.

“Believe me, growing up together does not mean you get along,” Chastity said.

I closed my eyes, blanking out my thoughts to avoid connecting that thought to anything relevant.

She continued, “What happens if you diverge? Does that screw up the sync?”

“If we go our separate ways, then we go our separate ways,” Harbinger One said. “The coordination follows from other things, not from us. Understanding. A little bit of programming.”

“But we won’t go our separate ways,” Harbinger Two added. “Probably.”

“If one of you got a girlfriend..?” Chastity asked, “Hm?”

“Wouldn’t happen,” Harbinger Two said.

“Ah-ha. What a shame.”

“No,” Harbinger Two said. “We like girls. But it wouldn’t be one of us. We’d come as a set.”

“Yes,” Harbinger One said. “We get jealous.”

“Two boys who care about their appearance, in good standing with the Mayor, even. Lucky girl.”

“Five boys,” Harbinger One said.

Chastity made an amused sound. I just shook my head.

I heard the rustling that was Sveta tumbling into the area. I flicked the light switch off and on in the storage room.

I felt the jostling at the knob a second before the pull came, forceful enough to potentially tear the door from its hinges. I was ready for it, and held the door firm as Sveta pulled herself to the end of the hallway and the employee door.

“Hi,” she said, from the other side of the door. “Rai- Precipice passed out.”

“Alright. As expected.”

“Sorry that took a second. We had to wait until people got out of the way. I figured you had your forcefield. Or… a door.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You wanted me?”

“Wondering if you feel up for this?” I asked. “Four people outside. Heavily armed. We need a silent takedown. We have Chastity here.”

“As well as Thing One and Thing Two,” one of the Harbingers said.

“I can try,” she said. “It really does help. Precipice’s power. It’s awful while it’s working, but… I feel like I did when I left with Weld. As ready as I’ll be. Scared, but part of that’s the fear you get when it could work out okay.”

Left the Asylum.

“Focus on arms and legs.”

“Yeah,” Sveta said, her voice soft. “I can do that, at least.”

If all of this goes wrong and she does end up hurting someone, it’s best it’s kept to serious damage to an arm or a leg.

“Can you get the door?”

“I think so. Be ready in case I toss anyone your way.”

“Got it. Whistle?”

“You know I suck at whistling. I’ll shout if I can’t do it.”

“Not too loud,” I told her.

I heard the door open. I felt the cold air pour into the station. Not that the station was warm.

“-wiped the asses and changed the diapers of cold-behind-the-eyes killers,” Chastity was murmuring. “Doesn’t scare me.”

“Chastity,” I said.

“Full-grown, or-?” Harbinger One asked.

“When they were babies. But they were screwed from the get-go. Heavy exposure to emotion powers before they had teeth.”

“Chastity,” I said, “Focus on the task at hand.”

“What do you need?” she asked.

“Outside. We might need takedowns.”

She nodded, approaching the door. I stepped around the door of the workshop broom closet.

“All I’m saying is I’m not scared,” Chastity told the Harbingers. “I grew up with hot-blooded killers, cold-blooded killers. I saw them evolve, I know most of the tricks.”

“Vic!”

I flew. Out the door, into the cool outside. Compared to the temperature back in the city, it didn’t feel right to call it cold, but it was borderline freezing out, and a light rain was pattering down.

As I stepped outside, I felt a tendril encircle my neck.

Wretch, the idea crossed my mind. My forcefield extended from my skin, then unfurled. The tendril squeezed, limiting expansion, then released as what it was gripping became ten feet across.

I whistled, one quick sound. To confirm I was okay, and to signal for the teamwork.

The first hired gun was flung our way as if by an invisible force, whipped through the air by one limb, that arm twisting awkwardly as it absorbed the force of the whipcrack.

Chastity stepped out of the building. I put myself between Sveta and her.

No need to worry. The tendril at my neck had been an isolated incident.

Chastity slapped the man who had fallen a few feet from the door.

Two more, one after the other. One was flung by the waist, the other was disarmed, backing away from her, which meant he was moving in our direction. A multi-tendril strike thrust him out as a massive push.

I flew, orienting myself to catch him, then use the rotation of my body and the direction of my flight to heave him more in Chastity’s direction.

Chastity knocked out one more, and was starting to move toward the third when a fourth was hurled at us. Immediately after that fourth were more. Pulled from around the corner.

“Too many!” Chastity shouted.

I intercepted two. Rather than leave them for her to deal with, I hit them while they were airborne. Ribs cracked, leg broken. I winced as I saw the one with a broken leg land with his leg under him. His scream was strangled.

There had been a squad of hired guns just around the corner, to the left of where the main door jutted out of the front of the building, all huddled in a corner where two of the station’s walls blocked off the wind and the overhang kept the rain off.

Sveta wrapped herself around a post. For a moment, in the gloom, she looked like a person of indistinguishable silhouette, her face pale.

Every movement was calculated. Even the distance to the post.

I ventured closer, aware of the range mostly by how aware she was of it. I put my hand out flat, toward her.

“Stop?” she asked, quiet.

“What?”

“You mean stop?”

“No,” I said. I kept the hand where it was, waiting.

“Oh,” I heard her.

The tendril slapped my hand in a high-five.

“Don’t be so down on yourself, okay?” I asked. “If the two of us are being careful, I think we’re alright.”

“It’s been a long time,” she said. “I haven’t been doing exercises, except for that misery-training with Rain before.”

“You’re doing fine.”

I could hear the slaps as Chastity knocked out the last people.

We stood in the shadows at the very edge of an area one of the construction lights illuminated. The heat from the light had melted snow in a patch, while leaving snow intact just an inch away. The other members of the group joined us. My mom and dad. Capricorn. Foil. Ashley and Damsel. Rachel and… two very non-mutant dogs.

“They shrunk.”

“Your teammate cut them out,” Rachel said.

“Precipice?”

“They weren’t leaving the building without going through the front doors,” Foil said. “He cut them open so we could get the dogs out.”

“Whatever works,” Capricorn said.

“The scent trail leads through the town,” Rachel said, her hand on the hound’s back, as it sniffed at the ground, lifting one leg so the ‘wrist’ pointed forward.

Through an armed populace. Past a settlement where capes that didn’t want to integrate into proper society were collecting.

“Go around,” I said, pointing. “It doesn’t make sense that they’re in this town, so close to things. We’ll see if we pick up a scent at the perimeter.”

Rachel made a small whistling sound. The wolf and hound followed her. Others began jogging, taking the indicated path.

I floated, hesitating and watching. Sveta stayed where she was.

“Go,” she said.

“Did you catch everything earlier, when we were all talking?”

“Most of it. The Harbingers. The broken triggers that aren’t broken.”

“I’m glad.”

“Don’t worry about me. Don’t feel you have to, okay? I’ll manage. I can deal with the bad days. I’ve got support, friends. Jessica’s back, and she’ll get in touch soon. Weld is out there, and all I’ve wanted to do from the beginning was to stand shoulder to shoulder with him.”

I thought about my conversation with Weld.

“I’m sorry it’s a bad day.”

She gave me a push, hard enough I would have fallen if I hadn’t been flying.

“I’m figuring out how to do my part, I’m doing what I wanted, even if it isn’t pretty. Thank you for giving me an excuse to risk it. But I’ll manage. Really. Go help the people who won’t manage.”

I looked at the other group.

“Yeah,” I said.

Sveta took the long way around, going up onto the top of the station, then circling around through the shadows of the encampment on the far right, while we traced a route along the left. Swansong was struggling with her footing, so I floated down, giving her support.

The hound huffed, almost barking, until Rachel shushed it. I saw its tail wag.

“Found it?” Foil asked.

“Yeah.”

Byron said, “We’re moving forward on foot. Are they in a car, is there any clue?”

“If they’re hitching a ride, then they have the windows open. And I don’t see fresh tire marks.”

Rachel indicated the half-frozen mud.

“I’ll take your word for it,” Byron said.

“It’s a good skill to know,” my mom said. “Admirable.”

“I don’t care,” Rachel said. “I just want to hurt the people who hurt the kids.”

“I agree,” my mom said. “One hundred percent.”

I turned to look back. A group of villains and corner-world civilians, all banding together. If there was a situation where I could have laid out the facts, told them the stakes, then how would they react?

“They might follow,” Chastity said. “Attack us from behind.”

“They might. They’re reinforcements for the people we’re really after,” I said.

“I can slow them down,” Foil said. “I count eight vehicles.”

“From this range? You don’t have any crossbow shots.”

“Range barely matters when you ignore gravity and air resistance,” she said. She had darts- though ‘dart’ was a misnomer. They were pencil-length, sharpened at both end, and looked to be singular pieces of metal.

“Do it,” I heard Swansong.

Flechette threw. One dart per throw.

There were no explosions. No dramatic movements or responses.

“Done,” Foil said.

I nodded.

I could see Crested down in that crowd, now that we were almost on the far end of the encampment. That meant Bluestocking was here or hereabouts – she had broken Crested out just a few days ago. I saw Moose, with another figure that might have been Prancer.

Factors to consider. That they had the means to detect us but hadn’t- they might be a consideration later. That they had a few people who could catch up. People who fit in weirdly- seeing Moose made me think of the weirdly civil true-to-the-‘game’ interactions I’d had with the guy. What would he think about Cradle’s whip?

So far, we hadn’t been detected. So far, we weren’t being chased. So far-

-So far, not so good. Not while it was a disaster in Brockton Bay. Not while we were stuck playing catch-up.

We hurried to catch up to others. Swansong looked unsteady, so I continued to offer her my shoulder.

“My new leg keeps digging into the ground,” she said. “The parts that look soft and muddy are hard and slippery and the parts that should be hard are soggy enough I sink in. It’s ridiculous.”

“I hear you,” I told her.

“I think less of any gnatwit that would live in this sty.”

“Gnatwit, huh?”

“If you’re going to be a villain, at least have some pride. Manors, mansions, towers. Have roads, not slicks of frozen mud.”

“Marquis was like that,” my mother said.

I couldn’t help but involuntarily tense when she engaged the discussion.

“Credit to him,” Swansong said. I could see how drawn her expression was. Walking was hard, even with my supporting arm, and she was in pain.

“He lived here, in this mudpit, so maybe not so much credit,” I said. The tension was worse, because I knew the line we were straddling. Where my mom stood. Where Swansong stood on the topic of villainy. That Damsel was off to the side and how Damsel couldn’t help but pick at weaknesses, especially when that weakness was demonstrated by a reflection of herself. They squabbled and bullied each other in an ongoing effort to ensure they each met their mutual standards, and that was fine until one of them needed a supporting hand rather than a push forward.

Damsel was being very, very good, all considered, but this was a topic loaded with buttons.

“Can we drop it?” I asked. “The topic?”

“You can,” Damsel said. “We lived in a trash-heap, once upon a time. Hiding from the law. Didn’t we, Swan?”

“We did.”

“Marquis moved on to rule a world,” Damsel said.

“We could quibble about the definition of rule,” my mom said. “But I’m biased. I don’t think much of the man.”

“Really.” Damsel sounded genuinely surprised.

“We have a complicated history with him,” I said, my voice more curt than I intended. I’d really wanted this conversation to die, and it wasn’t. A part of me hoped that the people involved would catch the tone or read the signal, or that an abrupt rejoinder to the conversation with no easy follow-up would bring it to an awkward halt.

That part of me was really fucking stupid, because nobody that was participating was good at stopping. Fuck me.

“You don’t have to like him,” Damsel said, “But if you know his power you should fear him, and if you know what he’s accomplished you should respect him.”

“I don’t like him, I don’t respect him, and I don’t fear him,” my mom said. “I’ve wrestled with my feelings about him for a long time and I’ve decided that he’s not worth thinking about. He’s pathetic.”

“Woah,” I said.

“He ended up in a position of power with underlings, money, fine things, respect, power, and fan followings. He’s reached a point that others only dream of.”

“There’s a flaw in your thinking,” my mother said. “You say he ended up like this, that he reached a certain point. It doesn’t work that way. Where he is, it isn’t the end. He has the rest of his life to live, and I guarantee you, he won’t be where he is now in five years. Because any fear or respect he claims to have isn’t earned, it’s stolen. It’s forced. And that never lasts. It never leads to a legacy. He is small.”

“Then what are you? I don’t even know what team you belong to. What credits do you have to your name? That you can wear a tight-fitting costume without completely embarrassing yourself at your age? What do you even do?”

“I’m a lawyer of some repute. I’m a mother. I’m a heroine of some capability.”

“A lawyer in a world without any laws, a heroine I’ve never seen or heard of, and as for the mother part, if it isn’t obvious seeing two of you interact for five seconds-”

Damsel made a small scoffing sound.

I could see my mother’s expression change at that. Shock. Like it was somehow a surprise. Because it was a thing? Or that it was that obvious?

“Hey,” I said. “Damsel. My business, not yours.”

Was I defending my mother, interrupting Damsel? Should I have been?

“This is between me and her,” Damsel said, indicating my mom.

“No,” Swansong said. Her hand clutched my arm a little tighter. “When my teammate and our housemate draws the line, respect it. Or you’re disrespecting both of us.”

I saw Damsel pause. She was riding a high, being combative, going toe to toe with my mom. Enjoying it, as bitter as the discussion objectively seemed .

“Fine,” she said.

“What he steals and earns, he doesn’t keep,” my mother said, and her voice was hard, now. While we’d talked and debated among ourselves, my mom had been formulating her argument. I was more than familiar with it, from my times getting in trouble as a teenager. “He might live in a manor for a few weeks or months, but he spends years in jails. He’s never married. He’s never celebrated an anniversary or enjoyed the quiet kind of love, if he’s ever known love at all. He never held his daughter when she was a newborn because her mother was scared to bring up the pregnancy. He, as I understand it, never celebrated a birthday with his daughter that wasn’t in prison.”

I winced at the mention of Amy.

“Some people don’t want those things,” Damsel said.

“He wants it,” my mother said. “I saw how he looked when he had to give his daughter away. I saw how he looked when he greeted her in prison, roughly ten years later. He’s a hollow man. The more he dresses up or surrounds himself with pretty things, the more obvious that hollowness becomes. In the end, he’ll die ignobly in a fight against another cape, and he’ll leave absolutely nothing behind except for a lick of his DNA.”

“You don’t know anything,” Damsel said, and her voice was harder. “You’re bitter and you’re straining yourself to paint him as something lesser, because doing anything else would be admitting you’re a distant second to him, as a washed-up heroine and a lawyer without a job. His daughter chose to be with him. Your daughter can’t wait to be out of your presence. So what kind of legacy do you think you’ve left?”

“Hey,” I said. “I drew the line, you just crossed it. That’s it- conversation done.”

Damsel seemed to take that declaration as more of a victory than an admonishment. Chin raised, she stared down at my mother. My mother met her gaze with a level stare.

“Split up,” I said. “Each of you, separate. Please. What we’ve got lined up is going to be hard enough without infighting.”

They didn’t budge. It took my dad stepping in. Quiet through the fights as always, because he liked to think, to do instead of say, but that sometimes meant doing nothing and saying nothing at times when things really needed to be said.

But he guided my mom away, to watch our flanks.

I was aware of how incensed Ashley was as Damsel walked off to the side.

“I’m afraid to ask,” I murmured. Is that you being upset at Marquis being slandered, just as Damsel is, is it in my defense, both, or neither?

“Best don’t,” she said. She gave my arm a pat, flinched as her broken arm crackled, and leaned away, walking on her own.

Other buildings were in view now. They were closer to the manors and towers that Ashley had declared so essential than the rush-built homes closer to the station.

“We’re getting closer,” Rachel said. “Go slow. Something’s off with the road.”

“Off how?” Capricorn asked.

Rachel didn’t reply, only pointing.

In the mud of the road, a hole had been left, angled. As if someone had done a really shitty job of planting a flag, pulled it out, and carried it off.

She pointed at another.

“Slower,” she said. Her wolf’s ears twitched, and as it turned to look, Rachel and Foil did. I was next, and others followed my cue.

Only darkness, off to our left. If there was anyone out there, they were well hidden.

Chastity backed up, stepping onto the slope nearer the ditch.

“Don’t,” Rachel said, when she saw. “Move carefully.”

“Traps?” Foil asked.

“It’s something,” Rachel said. Her hand went out, indicating the direction that the enemy group was, as they moved through the darkness. Her other hand rested on her half-grown wolf’s head. “It’s not going to be a good something.”

The glow was visible through the glare, almost mistakable for a phantom image from looking at other lights. It hit the road, streaking across it before going from red hot to a red-black, then black.

Glass.

“Etna,” I said. I took to the air. “Bluestocking’s group, she’s-”

The molten glass globs sailed our way, and this time there was no mistaking the volley for a trick of the eyes. I flew forward to intercept, but they were spread out enough I could only block one. Swansong and Damsel used their powers to try to blast shots out of the air. Damsel succeeded. Swansong missed.

The group backed up, and I heard Rachel bark, “No!”

Red lights flared, all around the group. I saw the Harbingers spring up and back. One landed on Capricorn’s back, the other on Flashbang’s shoulder, perching.

A carpet of red lighting crackled between the points of red, where traps had been laid. It lanced through legs and the bodies of those who were crouching.

The group toppled. The Harbingers sprung forward from their perches on higher ground, landing back on the road, while others tipped into the ditch of fell flat.

Swansong hadn’t suffered as much, because she had only the one leg, and she hadn’t been as close to the ditch. Her sister had fallen. My mom and dad were down. My mom hadn’t managed to orb up. Rachel was down, as was the hound, but the wolf remained up, alarmed and growling. Byron had fallen, landing belly-down on the ground.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Spasms,” my dad grunted. “Every muscle twisting and cramping. Fuck!”

They weren’t bouncing back. Not fast enough it would matter.

Chastity, off to the side, reached out to a Harbinger for support. They caught her, but as her leg spasmed, she fell. They eased her down.

“We’re going to be ungentlemanly and leave you behind while we deal with this,” one of them said to her.

I could see the enemy now. A tall man in flowing clothes. Two case fifty-threes. Etna. One of the Fourth Sect mercenaries.

We had multiple people who were down. Myself. The Harbingers. Sveta. Ashley.

“Paris,” Byron said, identifying the tall man.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I could have killed him-” he stopped to grunt. “Last time.”

“We can kill him,” the Harbingers said. “Just say the word.”

I saw Byron hesitate.

He wasn’t a killer. Now that I knew Chris was Lab Rat, I could peg just about everyone in Breakthrough, Byron and myself excluded, as people who had taken lives. It was in files. Tristan had taken life in only a loose sense, murdering his brother, and charges of attempted murder had been considered, because that was the closest equivalent they could find in the law.

But for Byron and I, it meant something else.

“I feel responsible,” Byron said. “I know I shouldn’t, I know he’s scum, but-”

“He saw what Cradle did?” I asked.

“He helped,” Byron said, voice tighter. “Fuck this hurts.”

The red lightning had stopped, but the spasms were clearly continuing.

“If he helped, then the Harbingers can kill him.”

I let those words stand. Cold even in the winter air.

They dashed forward. Red lights began to blink across the field, and they were swift enough to be clear of the area before the red lighting happened, legs cutting through the heaped lumps of snow where bushes or crops had been, skipping over the divots and dips where irrigation ditches had been. They were faster than some would be on flat ground.

My first mind was to playing defense. Etna was hurling globs, and her intent clearly wasn’t to hit our group. She wanted to herd, to take the group that was struggling and force them into continual retreat, deeper into the patch of traps.

But her aim wasn’t perfect. One splash landed close, and it splashed, gobbets flying toward the group. One hit Byron’s armor, only missing his eye because he ducked his head at the last second. Another hit my mother, a quarter-sized lump.

I caught and blocked the next. I could see her floating above the field, a heat shimmer surrounding her, the air steaming.

Swansong’s power blasted. As I went high, she went low. I went right, and she seemed to watch me, darting left. She stumbled, used her power, skidded and almost tripped over irrigation. But she was closing the distace and helping to apply pressure. Etna threw one globe at each of us, but in her haste to do so, her aim sailed widely off the mark.

It hit everyone present like a truck. In one moment, I could hear the grunts of pain and frustration. The bursts of power. Sveta and the Harbingers were focusing on Paris’s main group. It was noise. Flashes of power and light. I could see Capricorn’s constellation.

Then it was silence, just for an instant. A flicker of an image across my mind’s eye, a blip in the senses, and my power went out from under me like collapsing scaffolding.

As I fell I could see Paris lurch forward, catching one of the reeling Harbingers. I saw Swansong fall, reaching out to use her power to counter-balance and not finding it.

I saw Sveta go utterly limp, too close to the enemy.

And I fell. It was only a few seconds, but a few seconds of falling made for a hard landing, especially when that landing was on hard earth. The air went out of me.

None of us here were in a position to trigger for the first time.

Couldn’t be a second trigger. Too brief, no excuse for it, at the opening of a fight.

No. It felt heavier and weaker. Like the crackle of thunder as lightning struck a long distance away.

Already, I could feel my power start to creep back in, but it was a hundredth of what it was supposed to be.

Too little to matter, as red lights illuminated around me, triggered by my proximity or the impact of my landing.

Interlude 12.e

Seven Years Ago

The interrogation room was concrete, a metal table set against the wall. A monster was in the corner, perched on a metal folding chair that creaked when she shifted position.

It was all arranged to make the suspect as uncomfortable as possible. The chair was situated in the corner, and the table had a bar between the legs so the suspect couldn’t turn the chair toward the table or easily put their legs beneath.

Whichever orientation of the chair they chose, they had to sit uncomfortably or twist if they wanted to look at anyone else in the room, and they had to to turn a hundred and eighty degrees if they wanted to look at the mirror set into the wall behind them.

It was to the detectives’ benefit that the suspect was not only made uncomfortable, but that body language was put on full display with no table to block the view. Every movement of the hands, every adjustment of the feet.

It was a bit of a twist of expectations that they were on the other side of the one-way mirror. This was the room where the various members of the station normally gathered to watch investigations in progress. It was tempting to keep looking back, to try to read something into a scene without sound, when the speaker was switched off. In the other room, a thirty-something woman was talking to three officers. In this room, two officers and the suspect waited.

‘Suspect’. Nic had already come to her verdict: Monster.

Nic stood by the door, pretending to be watching that scene. She took periodic notes.

“We’re having a conversation here, that’s all,” Doug told the suspect, all smiles.

“And I’m Alexandria,” Jen, the young woman at the far end of the room said. Suspect. Monster.

“Oh, wow,” Doug said, breathy, excited, playing along and happy to play along. “That’s amazing!”

Trying to sweep their suspect up into a rhythm. Nic wouldn’t have gone about it that way.

The response was a sneer. “I’m not saying anything without a lawyer. I went to a decent high school, we got an intro to law in tenth grade. We all saw the video breaking it down. This. Nothing I say can support my case, but you’ll twist it around or use pieces of it to screw me over and make me out to be the bad guy.”

“It’s just a conversation, Jen,” Doug said. “You can leave at any time. For right now, until things are settled, we think it’s best you’re here and not in the pit.”

The pit. The floor with all of the desks and phones, where the most informal of interviews were held.

“Of course you do.”

“When you were sitting out there and she passed by you, your stepmom started screaming at you. None of us want that. Not at this time of night. Or, worse, we get a situation where you’re outside waiting for your cab when she comes across you and there’s nobody around to hold her back.”

Jen’s response was a shrug.

“The stepmom. She’s very emotional,” Doug observed.

Anyone would be.

“It doesn’t help her, acting like that while making accusations,” he said. The friendly, good looking officer, playing nice. Jen didn’t bite.

No bite, but she did twist around to look. The woman in the other room was dabbing at her eyes with a kleenex.

“Oh god,” the monster said.

“Right?” Doug asked, smiling.

Their suspect responded to the smile by retreating, arms folding, settling into the chair. Reminding herself she was talking to the enemy.

Doug pressed, “Look, she won’t be much longer. A lot of the people here, we were up at six this morning, got our coffees, breakfast sandwiches, ate our oatmeal, ran through our routines. And we’ve been up for fifteen hours. We aren’t interested in anything that’s going to take hours. We want this done and out of the way. We’ll wrap up the interview with the stepmom, send her home, then we’ll let you go. Then we get back to you in a few days to let you know where things stand.”

That wasn’t really how it worked. Some started late and worked late. But it made for a good story.

Jen, the monster in the chair, turned and looked up at Nic, who was pretending to watch ‘the stepmom’.

“How long have you had to put up with that?” Doug asked.

“I won’t answer any questions until I have my lawyer.”

“I’m trying to kill time, that’s all. Trust me, a guy who’s been working for fifteen hours is not the guy who would be interrogating you. We already got your statement.”

His finger tapped the paper.

“I’m not saying anything,” Jen said.

Tenth grade law class or no, ‘Jen’ had yet to actually ask for a lawyer. She’d stated she wouldn’t answer questions without one, but it was a distinction that mattered.

Nic watched the ongoing back and forth. Frustrated, she stood up straight, no longer standing with her back to the doorframe. “Boss just waved me down. Back in a sec, D.”

“You need me to take notes or anything?” Doug asked.

“Keep an eye on the stepmom. Look for shiftiness, bullshit.”

“Any first thoughts?”

“Munchausens?”

Doug gave her an affirmative grunt.

Even though it was for good ends, the implications sat uneasy with her. ‘The stepmom’, the implications that the woman in the other room was in the wrong. The focus on that woman, while Jen was situated in that uncomfortable metal chair, feeling the pressure without any active pressure being applied.

The heel of her hand rubbed against the corner of her jaw. That uneasiness and the tension of the long day were wearing on her. She’d been gritting her teeth and now her jaw hurt, and it would hurt into tomorrow morning, if past experience was any indication.

She hadn’t been hailed or waved down. Her destination was the locker room. She had some evidence baggies inside a larger resealable baggie in her coat pocket. She pulled them out, setting them down on the small shelf.

The pills she put into the first bag were her own pills, as was the pill bottle- she’d peeled away the label a long time ago. The stepmom had said something about the kid being on medication. She felt it was important, so she would use that.

Flipping open her phone, she brought up images she’d snapped while visiting the kid’s house. Jen’s half brother. Pages of lined paper with the chicken-scratch writing running through the lines, the words written large and along the longest edge of the papers. It had caught her attention when she’d first seen it. A little puzzle she’d answered later in the night, when Jen had talked about disabilities.

Owen had a syndrome, the full name was in her notes, but in addition to the obvious facial and neck issues evident in his photographs, his fingers were shorter, the joints at the base of each finger malformed and gathered together. He had similar issues with wrist and elbow. Writing was hard, so he wrote in a way that let him use more of the page.

She copied out his unique handwriting, slowly at first, then with more confidence. As she wrote more, she could let herself be sloppier, always with a mind for the limitations of his hand and arm.

The pages went into another bag. Sealed away, the contents recognizable but partially obscured by the label pre-printed onto the bag’s exterior.

She had other files still in her locker. Take-home work. She picked through them and she found what she could use. Fingerprints from another case. A kid that had been setting fires. Paperwork from another case. All gathered up into an otherwise nondescript file folder.

With her phone, fingers clicking on the number keys, she flicked through to find more pictures she’d taken while visiting the family home. She found one she’d taken of Jen. A family photo, thirteen year old Owen smiling as best as he could with his facial deformation, dressed smart in a nice shirt and sweater. Owen’s mother and father. And Jen, standing with a measurable distance between herself and Owen.

She couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t stand in that room, apply that slow and steady pressure, wait for the interview with Mrs. Bowers to finish, have the pow-wow, work out the plan of attack, and then turn her full focus onto Jen Bowers. Not when Jen would get defensive, insist on her lawyer in a way they had to oblige, and tie up the process. She knew how it would go, what the lawyer would say. What the boss would say.

Her own jaw would break from clenching her teeth before Jen broke. She had to do something.

She had to plug her phone into the printer to send the picture. Grainy and low-res, but that didn’t matter.

Three swipes of the box-cutter knife separated Jen’s black and white image from the rest. It went into the file, tucked beneath someone else’s fingerprints.

She was on her way back when the chief stopped her, one hand at her shoulder. She showed him what she had, and she watched as the older, better detective picked through her ‘evidence’. A pen-tip ran along the case number printed with the fingerprints. The pen turned around and the butt-end was used to lift up pages, then to prod the evidence bag with the pills.

He looked at her, quizzical. She shrugged.

He moved on. He knew it was all charade. His role had changed now, as he assessed whether any of it was poorly done or oddly specific enough to give away that charade.

He seemed amused as he gave her the silent go-ahead.

Three more steps took her into the room where Doug was commenting aloud on the stepmother’s mannerisms. Jen had twisted around in an uncomfortable way to look.

“She keeps adjusting her wedding ring. I read that as a sign of infidelity. Is it a sign of infidelity, Jen?”

“No comment,” Jen said, staring through the one-way mirror. Still trying not to engage.

Jen looked, too, as Nic put the file down, then the bottle, and then the forged notes in Owen’s handwriting.

The file and papers weren’t on the table for two seconds before they were picked up by Doug.

Doug’s smile dropped off his face. Where he had been pleasant, positive, upbeat, he was now cold. It was an act, of course, but it seemed to shake Jen some.

There was no communication. No words, as he read through what she’d written. On the front, in ‘Owen’s’ words, she’d expressed grief and anger, frustration and hopelessness. On the backside, in the same crude handwriting, she’d outlined how everything she’d put in front of him was bullshit.

He got up and he left the room, taking the file with him.

Let her believe we got her. A note with telling information. Or…

Nic looked at the pill bottle. Pills for anemia, which she’d barely touched. So long as she ate on the days she had more to drink, she didn’t need them. In this ruse of hers, she was making a gamble, an educated guess.

Owen, a physically and mentally disabled boy who was struggling through school, friendless and frustrated, had been on more medications than Nic had been able to count.

Nic was pretty sure she knew Jen’s type. A cousin who had been enchanted by her kitten, but when that kitten had grown up to be a cat, had emptied the food bowl into the trash or tainted the food, knowing the hungry animal would eat it. She’d seen it in certain parents and their kids. In kids with dependent parents.

It made sense that Jen would tamper. Switch the contents of one bottle for another, or empty a bottle and replace its contents with something innocuous. Hastening a disabled boy on his way as Nic’s cousin had tried to do to the cat, before being confronted. As parents who no longer wanted to be parents sometimes did. As children who no longer wanted to struggle to care for their parents sometimes did.

And if Jen hadn’t tampered, then they were simply pills. They wouldn’t mean anything.

But Nic could see Jen fidget. Her eyes didn’t miss a detail. Her ears didn’t miss the squeak of the chair, or how Jen seemed more bothered by that squeak in particular.

She could have pressed, applied even more pressure, and it would have worked. But if she’d pressed, she might have screamed, or shouted, or said something regrettable. She didn’t trust herself.

Silence is damning. Silence can tell just as much.

Long seconds passed, and then twenty year old Jen leaned forward, elbows on knees, head bowed.

That was it. The moment every interrogation was aiming for. The defeat, almost always the same decline of the head and slump forward, if she looked for it.

“He’s not an angel or anything, just because he’s disabled,” Jen said. “He-”

Nic left the room, gathering up the things. Because she didn’t trust herself, in small part. She kicked the stop and let the door start to swing closed. Let Jen think that her words wouldn’t matter.

A minute and a half passed. Long enough for Jen to consider how fucked she was. Not long enough for her to work out any answers. Doug re-entered.

“The good cop returns,” Jen could be heard, and there was a bitterness in her voice.

“Detective, not cop,” Doug said, and there was no warmth in his voice. He could sound like a real bastard when he wanted to.

We’re all good cops, anyway, Nic thought to herself.

“Why?” Doug asked. “Why do this?”

In the twenty-year-old monster’s defeat, her earlier composure and certainty about her way forward were shaken. She didn’t second-guess things or think about what she’d learned in law class.

“I didn’t tell him to do anything he wasn’t already thinking about doing. He doesn’t have that long to live, anyway. He comes to me, saying he’s miserable, he’s sore, he’s sick of the medication, he wants to end it all, and I’m supposed to say no? Fuck me, if he was a dog and he was that bad off then we would have put him down a long time ago.”

He’s not a dog, he’s a kid.

Doug didn’t say anything. Nic, standing in the hallway, near the door, was silent, teeth clenched.

A monster had told a little boy to kill himself, and he’d tried. Now he was in more pain than ever. And for all that the classes and the workshops on powers and crisis points hammered in all of the things to look out for, it never came. Killers and thugs and abusers, victims and victimizers. Hundreds like Owen. Maybe even hundreds a year.

No magic answers or anything like that. Just… concrete rooms and human psychology. Looks of defeat that were nowhere near enough.

Restless, angry, Nic paced down the hall. Her boss was there, and he raised his eyebrows.

In answer, she gave him a nod. It had worked.

At her locker, she helped herself to a drink, and she leaned her forehead against the top shelf of the locker where some loose evidence baggies still rested. The drink burned in her mouth and throat, and frustrated thoughts burned in her head.

It was nine. Late enough that dinner was almost certainly out of the question. Not so late that failing to call and see if dinner was in order would be allowed.

She had a message. She put in the three-digit code, and held phone to ear. Was Lee mad?

“Mommee! I had my bath and we had waffles with chocolate chips and strawberries for dessert! Love you miss you going to bed now! Daddy’s going to read me a book!”

Lee could be heard in the background. “Bye!”

“Bye!” Ever said, loud enough that Nic winced. The wince became a smile. Still loud, Ever ordered her, “Get all the bad guys!”

All the bad guys.

The message ended. Nic didn’t lower the phone, even as the automated voice outlined the options available for how the message could be replayed, saved, or deleted.

There was no beating the bad guys. There was no defeating them. A monster had encouraged a little boy to kill himself and he’d tried. Now he hurt more than ever. What was she supposed to do in the face of that?

⊙

Earlier in the evening

Love Lost was still, her jaw clenched, as she faced Cradle. Cradle was distracted, barely aware of her as he sorted through her traps.

Her eyes dropped to the table. These traps would trigger on proximity, arm, and then produce a wavelength that arced between them, forming a carpet around an area. The effect utilized some of her emotion power. Agitation, impulse.

“You’re getting good use out of the tinker power,” Cradle observed.

She nodded.

“The claw-lash?”

She shook her head. The lash part worked, though the left one was being temperamental. But the power that was supposed to channel through that-

She’d hesitated, procrastinated. Traps instead. The swapping rig for her arm.

“Another night then,” he said.

She didn’t respond. Instead, she focused on getting her things together.

He rolled his shoulders, mechanical hands going to gingerly touch each before he reached out to the window of her workshop. As he touched it, the window became a screen, just as clear and distinct as any computer. He dragged metal fingertip against glass, moving the windows on the screen.

March’s schedule and timing.

There were windows with notes on surveillance, with added details from the mercenaries they’d turned to their side, the outreach to those mercenaries timed to coincide with Tattletale’s downtime. Time she wasn’t as active with her power.

It made sense. Everyone had a routine, even erratic types like Tattletale. She lived on information and she got most of that information in the early morning and late afternoon. After a crisis arose, a new enemy or headache, she was slower to move and recover.

Which meant paying attention. It meant exerting pressure.

A lot of things had changed over the years, but those things were constant. Any threat could be defeated with a combination of the two. If the stories she’d heard were right, the man who’d ended the world had been defeated that way.

“No complaints?” Cradle asked.

She had some, but in her self-imposed silence, words had to be chosen carefully, and she couldn’t bring herself to utter the complaint. To say yes, that she had an issue.

The plan was sound. They had multiple thinkers on their side. Their enemy was weak.

Her claw-tips touched the window, and when she pulled them away, a copy of the window came with them, projected into the air. Not as dense or clear an image, but it was fine to see.

She dragged claws through air and the claws transmitted tactile feedback, a slight drag, a digital buzz. She rotated through to other pages.

To Precipice. To artist renditions of the face of the boy they’d seen in the cells. He would die soon. Seir, in secure custody because of his teleporter power, they would get him and he would die.

…Christine and Elijah Mathers. She paused, looking at the faces.

“Soon,” Cradle said. “Once we’re secured here.”

A swipe of the claw shredded the digital window. In the doing, she briefly shifted from the notes for their long-term plans to the plans already enacted. She saw the Navigators. She looked away.

Had to be done. If anything, they could’ve, should’ve done more. They hadn’t expected Advance Guard to be as capable as they were. The Shepherds had rebuffed the initial attack.

“I should go. She has notes on the times I should leave by, to get where I need to be. Good luck in your fights,” Cradle told her.

She gave him a single nod.

“Can I grab one?” he asked, indicating the agitation traps.

She held up two fingers.

“Two. They’re a pair.”

She nodded. At least.

“Thank you. If I don’t talk to you before then, I’ll see you in the room,” he said.

She nodded, not looking at him or the screens anymore. The tinkering- she had time to make some last-minute adjustments. Clawed hands rested on the table as she leaned over her work.

Cradle stepped downstairs. She could hear him giving orders to his mercenaries. Easier people to handle, in some ways. Tougher in others.

When alone, she removed her mask from her lower face.

Teeth grit together with a sound that someone standing next to her would have heard. The smallest of sounds at her throat and mouth were deafening to her.

When she couldn’t express herself, it was easier. Mask off, even the smallest thing felt like a crack in ice, an essential part of a water-retaining dam falling loose.

A fine screwdriver and a micromagnet adjusted the internal mechanisms of the mask.

A creak of her breath sounded like a whimper.

A slip of the screwdriver made it strike hard against the internal surface of the mask, metal against kevlar fiber. She was put in mind of the tables and chairs in the mall, all folded up, strapped together, and leaned against the wall.

She saw, as clear as day, Ever’s face striking the edge of the table. Clawed fingers dug into her work table, dragging inch-long divots. The memory came with pain, as sure as if she’d been stabbed- not through the heart, but the base of the throat, the point where the windpipe branched to transmit air to each lung. It choked her.

She hurt enough in the moment that she felt like she could die. There was only regret, and that regret killed her a little more every time she faced it. She leaned forward, forearms resting against the worktable, clawed fingers pointing in, touching flesh.

Clawed hands stretched out, fingers splayed out as far as they could go.

A set hand motion, like a gesture of a magician in one of Ever’s books. Except they weren’t called magicians. She’d tried to read the books since, but- it hurt too much.

Middle and ring finger extended, a sweeping, circular motion, sharp, fierce, focused.

Then her hand moved, claws turned away. She moved gently, back of her hand reaching out-

Tactile feedback. Hair. Skin.

She- stupid to do this when her mask was off. Sounds escaped her throat, touched by her power. She usually had rules about when she allowed herself this- this illusion.

Phantom hands touched her arm, near where the rigging ran along the length of it. They squeezed it.

The wizards and whatevers in your stories made hard choices, right? They worked with monsters for something more important. To vanquish greater evils. To save worlds.

A motion of her hand dismissed the apparition.

Channel injector, wave adjuster, screwdriver. She picked up what she needed.

She adjusted the components of the mask, then put it on. It wasn’t anything as complex as a new setting- only ensuring that everything kept working when she made it more comfortable to wear. New components made for a tight fit, and it was already sufficiently tight enough that she couldn’t open her mouth a fraction, her voice silenced.

The air filtered through the mask, and more feedback beamed into her eye indicated that the air quality was good. In a pinch she’d have the ability to breathe for at least two minutes before the filters gave out. She made sure to bring more, slipping them into her belt.

But the new components- she adjusted the dial at the side, claw-tips finding niche grooves, rotating. In her reflection she saw the mask’s external change. Roar, snarl, mouth clamped shut, teeth meshed. With each one, she felt out with her emotion power- felt the people downstairs.

Anger and hostility? Not much, all considered, but it was crystal clear in her mind’s eye where it existed. Tension? More than a little, and very clear, like a thrum of a guitar string. Overall? The setting with teeth meshed was more focused on range than a specific flavor of emotion. It worked just fine.

The sub-settings to focus that range in a cone or a line in front of her, with corresponding increases of range as she widened her blind spot were all operational.

It would do.

Carefully, given the machinery around her arms and hands, she wiped away moisture from her eye. She choked back the emotion that settled at the branch in her windpipe. She stood straighter. The sensation of the apparition clung to her, warmed her.

Everything in order.

She made her way down the stairs, claws clicking on the wood.

“It’s not your circus, it’s not your monkeys.”

Sidepiece’s voice.

“It’s kind of my monkeys.” Colt. “I’m here, right? I’m a part of this.”

“Nah. Because you can leave.”

“No. Not really.”

“Yes really, you loser. Don’t let someone else’s shit become your shit. They gotta do what they gotta do. You gotta do what you gotta do. I’ve gotta do what I’ve gotta do.”

“Aren’t you- you’re helping though.”

“I’m doing what I gotta do. And what I gotta do is Disjoint, every morning and every night if I can help it, I gotta make money, I gotta keep my ghoulish figure, and I gotta work for the coolest, fiercest gal this side of the end of the world. That’s me. What’s you?”

“I don’t know what I am. I’m staying away from home, being independent.”

“Nah, bullcock-and-shit. You’re not independent. You’re the furthest thing from independent. And staying away from home isn’t what you are, my big-haired loser friend. Staying away from home is what you aren’t.”

Silence.

Silence was ever damning, whether it was damning others or damning oneself.

“Anyone with powers has horrible shit they’re wrestling with, unless they’re one of the lucky ones who got the good powers for being math superstars or going to mars or some bullcock-and-shit like that, you get me? And we deal with it. If we’re really fucking lucky, then we’re like Disjoint and me, and we find someone really boneable who also helps us through our horrible shit. Or we’re pretty and classy as fuck and we get a bunch of underlings willing to help us, like our boss. But mostly we deal with our own horrible shit ourselves.”

“What if you can’t?”

“Then we don’t. Most don’t.”

“What if… a bit more help makes the difference?”

“What if it doesn’t? Then whoever tried to give that help gets fucked over and things stay bad.”

“But…”

“But,” Sidepiece said, and the word was a condemnation. “Come on. Fuck off.”

“But- sometimes when you’re dealing with your shit and you’re dealing with it alone, you lose…”

Colt’s voice faltered.

“Perspective?” Disjoint offered.

“What if you need someone outside of it to point you in the right direction? A second opinion?”

“If you think you are in a position to give second opinions or directions to someone as badass as Love Lost, then I have a totally harmless bit of uterus to sell you, uterine lining included. Harmless!”

“Please put that away.”

At the base of the stairs, Nailbiter passed by, glanced up, and saw Love Lost.

Nailbiter was…

Love Lost floundered in her efforts to put a description to the woman. Scary, yes. Dangerous, yes. She wanted to say Nailbiter was good even though she didn’t know why, but she knew that was a lie. Enough of a lie that amending the statement to ‘good at her role’ felt false, because it had ‘good’ in it. Reliable? Too minor.

Important. Nailbiter was important, because Nailbiter was a reminder of what Love Lost had to be careful of. The line between villainy for a reason and degeneracy was a fine one. Nailbiter was effective, strong, focused, and Nailbiter was degenerate. It was important to keep in mind that a series of the wrong decisions or mistakes could put her where Nailbiter stood now. The reasons lost.

It was easier every day. Love Lost didn’t enjoy this war, and the damage she did or condoned along the way was wearing on her soul. Lately it felt worse. Like there was less of her intact.

They were all important, really. She had spent so long working on the side of the law, and these people who worked under her now were exemplars of the different types of people she had fought to put away. She understood them. She could see everything that made them who they were. The fact that they could love. That they had priorities and dreams. That they enjoyed certain foods or searched the internet to keep tabs on family they no longer spoke to.

With that in mind, when she’d done what she needed to, she would ensure they were killed or gone.

And Colt, stupid, immature, quick-to-anger Colt… who was absolutely nothing like Ever, and was perhaps the only younger person Love Lost could tolerate in her company and in that role for that very reason? A girl Love Lost couldn’t decide was adult or child?

“Really, please, put that away!” Colt said. “Please! Uncle!”

“You’re dripping on the couch!” Disjoint shouted.

“Oh fuck!” Sidepiece shouted, louder.

She really didn’t want to kill Colt as she killed the others.

Something in that look was communicated to Nailbiter, who remained at the base of the stairs.

Nailbiter, who understood her because they were very similar people at different points in their journeys, gave her the slightest nod.

⊙

Seven Years Ago

Nic tapped her shot glass against the counter.

“Keys,” Shelly the barkeep said. A tattooed woman with a streak of gray hair despite the fact that she looked thirty at the oldest.

“Don’t infantilize me,” Nic said.

“Keys, Nicole. If you want your refill.”

She took out her keys, slapping them onto the counter. A carabiner separated her car keys from the rest.

“Making my job easier, huh?” Shelly asked, disconnecting the carabiner. She put the car key beneath the bar counter, before returning the house and locker keys.

“I try,” Nic said, arms folded on the counter, chin resting on her arms. She watched the drink get poured out.

“I’m going to call you a cab in a minute. Let’s get you home to that gorgeous husband and that little girl you’re so proud of.”

“She’s asleep already. She’s usually asleep by the time I get home. I feel guilty when I wake her and I feel guilty when I don’t.”

“If it’s an unwinnable situation, don’t get down on yourself for losing.”

“You’ve said that before,” Nic said, before deciding she’d stared enough at the contents of the shot glass. She imbibed. Shelly was giving her the cheaper liquor now that it was later in the evening.

“You guys deal with a lot of lose-lose situations, hon. But if you don’t mind my saying so, I don’t think this is a win.”

“I don’t want to bring it home to her,” Nic said. “The anger, the ugliness.”

“This doesn’t fix that.”

“You know what haunts me?” Nic asked. Her voice was a whisper. Her chin continued to rest on her arms, which were folded on the bar. “It’s not the rapists. It’s not the human traffickers or the look in the eyes of the victims. That gets to me, but it doesn’t haunt. I can move forward.”

Shelly leaned closer to hear, because the words were quiet and the people at the far end of the bar were loud.

“Four times, I’ve cried in front of her. Ugly cries. Sober. I… hold it together all day and then the moment she toddles over to me and gives me a hug, I think about how I don’t want her to deal with anything remotely close to any of the stuff I see, and I break. Three times I cried so hard I scared her.”

“You said four and then three.”

Nic looked up at Shelly, blinking tears out of her eyes, then blinking fiercer. She whispered, “The fourth time she was used to it.”

Shelly handed her a napkin, and Nic dabbed at her eyes. She saw the approach of the boys, Doug and Maz, and put the napkin away.

“You can always quit, or change to something else.”

“Woah!” Maz cut in. “Woah, Shelly. Those are fighting words! You can’t tend the bar the precinct goes to, then sneak around our backs and try to scare away one of our best!”

Shelly held her hands up in surrender, but she gave Nic a look.

“Our best,” Doug said. “Not one of our best. Not one of the boys, she’s our boy!”

“When you’re drunk you get sloppy sentimental, Dougie,” Nic said.

“You’re worth it. You get ’em all. You- you get ’em.”

“I don’t get ’em all,” Nic replied. “I wish I got ’em all.”

“I mean you get how they tick. What they want. The tells. That thing earlier tonight, you brought the evidence bag in with the medicine bottle?”

Nic bobbed her head in a nod. The world wobbled up and down in a mostly pleasant way.

“You knew she’d done something to his meds.”

“Seemed like the type.”

“Shel, give our Nic another shot? A celebratory one.”

“I just gave her her last. I’m calling a cab to send her home.”

“One more. One more, come on!”

Shelly paused, then looked at Nic. Nic nodded.

“I’m calling the cab. Just in case that little redheaded girl is lying awake at night, worried her mom’s hurt.”

“Too young to know it’s a thing to worry about,” Nic muttered. “Small mercies.”

“Perk up, Nic,” Doug said. “At the risk of overinflating your ego, I have to remind you that today was a damn good day. I will use the time it takes the taxi to arrive to extol your virtues.”

Nic shook her head. “Don’t.”

“If you’re thinking about quitting, then I think it’s my obligation,” Doug said, barely getting ‘obligation’ out.

Nic felt the warmth of the bar, heard the noises, loud and muttered, the war stories, the camaraderie, the boasting and jostling, her partner’s good cheer. She could smell the cigarette smoke that wafted in whenever the door to the kitchen or the front door of the bar opened. The smell of the alcohol.

And, as shitty as the bad got, she could feel good about the successes. About being appreciated. Doug’s praise felt genuine. It was a hell of a thing, to get to the point where people would sing someone’s praises and others wouldn’t immediately cut them down. Especially, she admitted, as a woman.

It felt good.

“I’m not quitting,” she said, absorbing it all. “No quit, don’t worry.”

Time was lubricated enough that the cab’s arrival surprised her with how early it seemed. The trip home equally lubricated, massaged by the hum of the cab’s engine, the whir of heaters and the feel of wheel on pavement.

Home. The cab waited- Shelly had given them instructions, maybe, or they knew the routine. It was usually one or the other. She reached the front door and put key to lock, letting herself in. Only a few of the lights were on, giving her a dim path to bathroom and bedroom.

Bathroom first, because she had to go enough that the resulting stream threatened to penetrate the material of the toilet bowl. She washed her face and cleaned up.

Then she looked in on Ever. An angel in sleep, arm in a lethal sleeper hold around a unicorn’s neck.

Then bed. She kicked and shrugged off her clothes. Lee watched her at first, then looked away. She slithered under the covers, finding the space beneath warmed by Lee’s presence, but as she drew near to him, he pulled away, turned his back to her. Cold air found its way into the gap between them.

Her hand pushed the blankets down into the gap. The good feelings from earlier in the night had evaporated.

Lose-lose.

The silence lingered in the bedroom, damning.

⊙

Earlier

Silence and a void so empty that even distant starlight barely touched it. Fragments and facets had only themselves to reveal.

Love Lost’s mask communicated the intensity of emotion to her before her own senses recovered. The black-haired boy, Romeo. He was fast and he was intense, eyes wide as he lunged in.

Her claws intercepted the blade, and it slid between the two claws, which redirected the thrust to a point over her shoulder.

She was barely aware of things as she came back from that darkness- that space that was escaping her memory, but she’d been in enough dangerous situations, enough fights. Instinct prevailed. He tried to pull the blade away, and a shift of her hand trapped the blade between two edges. She kicked, the claws on her foot raking for his midsection, and he drew back.

He’d recovered his balance, not just in the physical sense, and when he came at her again, it was with his power roaring. She felt it wash over her, and it was so familiar as to be ordinary. Pain and rage, struggling within her, trying to find an angle to push or twist at her to drive her forward.

She retaliated, swiping with claw, throwing the sword he’d let go of aside, then kicking, first with one claw, then the other, a figure skater on ice. She turned, using the length of her body to hide the claw-lash as she extended it to its length, whipping it-

He kicked the end of it, intercepting.

So capable, and he was just thirteen years old. She’d had to draw the line somewhere, about what was acceptable. She’d settled on Ever’s age, at the time Ever had passed. Too many parahumans were young, and both Breakthrough and the Undersiders were willing to employ the young.

Swansong used her power, launching herself into the air. Arms were spread, one leg half-bent, and residual wisps of her power traced from her fingers.

Disjoint caught her, hauling on one arm, so feet were no longer beneath her. Swansong had to fire another blast to reorient herself, rather than to go on the offensive. Her landing was still hard.

Love Lost lashed out, whipping for Swansong. She saw a shift in expression, a tell, and immediately changed course. The whip cracked twice in quick succession, and the defensive blast that Swansong fired didn’t reach the length of the weapon.

The gun went off.

Imp collapsed, off to the side.

Colt. Stupid girl. What was she doing?

“Imp!” the littlest girl present screamed. She wheeled on Colt. “I’ll end you!”

Colt turned the gun on the girl.

Love Lost lashed out, cracking the blade. Colt flinched, no longer aiming at the littlest girl.

“Fuck. Fuck!” Imp gasped. “Oh no.”

Swansong lunged, power flaring. Others were closing in-

And Colt erupted into a nimbus of light.

It was weird, perhaps, that Love Lost had so often ruminated on the power seminars that she had been given back at the station, in a past lifetime, in another world. She’d hoped, ironically, that the victims she worked for would get powers, that they would just this one time be able to fight back.

It had been a frustration that every lesson and tutorial she’d been given had been for nothing, and a part of her had been waiting for eight or nine years for it to be relevant.

Somehow her getting her own powers hadn’t counted. The thought had never connected, because it was her, and she’d been expecting someone else.

Now… now it was Colt.

Colt pushed out with a power, and Love Lost felt her thoughts scatter. She reached up to her mask, adjusting the dial, and changed the focus for all emotions she was absorbing and reading.

That dampened the effect.

With her lash, she struck Swansong down, while Swansong reeled. The cut went through Swansong’s arm, exposing wires.

Colt was a parahuman. That wasn’t- it shouldn’t be. The idea scared her, because it took everything that made Colt important and utterly destroyed it.

Love Lost snarled behind her mask, angry, inarticulately upset. Nailbiter had tried to reach out to the girl and convince her, and it hadn’t worked. Love Lost had hoped Colt would either prove herself to be a child or be adult enough to make a decision and Colt had done neither. Naibiter had given the girl an upper, something to keep her from backing down at the wrong moment and opening their flanks to an attack.

Colt’s power continued to blanket the battlefield, creating more openings. Love Lost struck out at Romeo, who ducked the claw-lash’s tip as it cracked.

Colt rose into the air, flying, and her hands turned into blades, edged in dark smoke.

As Colt rose, Love Lost’s heart sank.

She would deal with that later. Gritting her teeth, she turned her focus to the ongoing fight.

Imp was a problem. Whether this was a feint or not-

Love Lost reached up to her mask, releasing the catch. As the mask fell away, she drew in a breath.

She felt the phantom presence of Ever. The touch, the sentiments that were so predominantly regret. She felt the anger, the echo of Precipice’s laughter in the seconds after Ever had died rang in her ears, and that anger twisted. If it were a muscle in one second it was black cancer through and through in the next.

The pain, she felt it, physical. Choking her, like screaming would be impossible. She always felt that part – the rest could be there one time and not the next, but the pain and that near-certainty that she couldn’t breathe, let alone scream?

All of it bundled up with fleeting memories. The breath that went into promises made that weren’t kept. That whispered hopes and fears to a newborn who would never grow up. The choked sobs out in a wild crying fit that had scared Lee and Ever both, coming out of nowhere.

She put all of it into a singular scream that she aimed at herself, in more than one way. Screams were usually at or to someone, but in this, she screamed at her own feet, hunching over, and the effect rippled out in every direction.

Love Lost could see that Romeo had a bullet wound from earlier, and he stopped favoring it as he retaliated. Less affected than most, but it helped that anger and resentment naturally ran through him.

Swansong lunged, as did Imp, who hadn’t been feinting. If Love Lost could have gathered up blood into two hands cupped together, then that was the amount Imp shed to the snowy road with every running footstep.

Even the children, both the smallest and Lookout, joined in the charge.

Her mask was set to read anger. She could see them coming, and it was a question of timing the whip cracks. One to Swansong’s leg, another to Imp’s ribs.

She caught Lookout and thrust her into the littlest one’s way, backing up.

Colt’s power put most of the group down for the count. Swansong was injured and Romeo and Imp were now feeble from blood loss. It left only Lookout, and Nailbiter had roused enough to go after her, grabbing her and locking her in place.

That didn’t mean things were completely dealt with. The little girl with the pixie cut was quick. She ducked around, then charged, a wicked grin on her face.

Disjoint grabbed her leg, and she tripped, falling hard. She was on her feet shortly after, charged, and was tripped again.

It took two more attempts before the kid struggled to stand, an ankle twisted. Love Lost put the claw-lash around the girl’s neck with care, watched the girl put hands in fingerless gloves up to the lash, and shy away when touching the sharp edges.

Love Lost drew a trap from her belt, switched it on, and tapped it hard against her leg to activate it. As it went off, crackling with red lightning, she touched it to the lash, letting the energy conduct down to the girl.

Down and out.

Love Lost looked over the remainder. Unconscious, severe bleeding, severe bleeding, disabled, spasming, pinned…

Her eye settled on Colt last.

What a profound fucking loss that was. She’d hoped Colt would run or get away from all of this. Now…

“Should I call Cradle?” Nailbiter asked.

Love Lost nodded.

Colt dropped out of the ethereal form, falling the last two feet to the ground. Her eyes were wide, and there was a look on her face somewhere between horror and amazement.

“I have so many powers. Blades, flight, the burst that stops people in their tracks… I think I can build things. Studs, for my arms?”

At that, Love Lost realized what Colt meant. Her instinctive response, inexplicable, was that she wanted to kill Colt. To respond to this horror and alarm by eliminating the source of it.

But it was horror because she didn’t want this for Colt. Horror because she wanted to tie up loose ends, to end this. She was doing this for a reason, and Colt utterly defied that reason.

In the moment, she found herself hating the girl.

“Boss,” Nailbiter said.

Love Lost turned.

“He wants you to bring them to him. He wants to sever them.”

Love Lost looked over the enemy group. Swansong stared back, angry. In a start, she used her power, firing from one hand-

Colt used her power. A burst of emotion. Swansong landed hard. Love Lost bent down to put claws against the young woman’s throat.

Love Lost nodded.

“All of them,” Nailbiter said. “Kids included. If it’s just the older ones, he thinks they’ll be brave or willing to take risks.”

Love Lost stared at the youngest ones. Why was it so much harder to reach for that part of herself that felt anything but pain when thinking of Everly?

Pain, anger, frustration.

All more intense, seeing Colt throw herself headlong into this existence.

She undid the clasp on her mask. It was just her and Nailbiter. If she made any sounds or revealed any emotion in front of Nailbiter, she sensed it would be okay, somehow.

Her voice had a creak to it, from disuse. “Do you think one bad experience would scare them away from this life?”

Nailbiter looked down at the one with the pixie cut, who was twitching and kicking.

“No. It’s not likely.”

Love Lost reached for something, any shred of empathy. Anything that would let her relate them to Ever, as she might have done before.

All there was, was a rule she’d made when she had some warmth left in her.

Her voice creaked, and the words hurt. The creaks and unevenness of her voice mirroed the emotion that threatened to pour out. “There’s nothing good waiting for them if they live this life. We’ll reverse it when everything’s done.”

“There’ll never be a day when we’re done,” Nailbiter said.

Love Lost shook her head.

There had to be. She would expose and then deal with the worst capes, everyone who was willing to break the rules. She would kill them, starting from the worst offenders, the Fallen, moving on to Teacher, to the people who would have worked for Beast of Burden.

She would take them all down in a blaze of glory, if she had to. She had plans in mind.

She did up the mask, sealing her mouth shut. Her breath filtered through, cleaner and easier than if she were breathing through nose and mouth.

With claws, she gestured, her intent pushed into the movements of her hands, trusting that the people who followed her knew what she meant, because they’d had to learn to.

Pick them up. Let’s go.

⊙

The dream came like a bad trip.

A day so sunny it was delirious. Ever and two of her cousins were in the backyard.

The topic of Lee was carefully avoided as she listened to Lee’s sisters talk. She kept one eye on Ever and one eye on making sure refreshments were served.

“Do you have a lighter, Nicole?” Ever’s Aunt Didi asked. “I’m going to cheat and grab a smoke.”

“I’d have to search,” Nic said. “It’s been a long time since I smoked.”

Ever was watching more than playing.

“Matches, perhaps?”

“I do have a lighter, now that I think about it, it’s for the barbecue.”

“That works,” Aunt Didi said.

“Keep an eye on the kids?”

“Of course,” Aunt Didi said.

Nic had to rummage around the barbecue and the associated drawers before she found the lighter. It had a band of stars around it for remembrance of those lost to Endbringer attacks. She hadn’t bought it for that reason, it had just been on sale.

She was in the midst of handing it over when she looked for Ever and saw that her daughter was gone.

“Where’s my daughter?”

“She’s somewhere over there,” Aunt Didi motioned to the far end of the backyard. Ever’s two cousins splashed in the pool. “She’s fine.”

The backyard was long, and the trees that were scattered on the one end were dense on the other. Her heart pounded as she ran, and with the pounding was a distant rattle, that seemed to grow ever closer. With the shouting of the kids in the pool was an echo, overlapping cries of a crowd.

The pounding in her chest grew worse when she found her daughter, paradoxically.

Ever was crying. It was the ugly kind of crying that Nic remained ashamed she had allowed her daughter to see, no defenses, just weeping, snot dribbling, tears appearing faster than hands could clear away.

Nic felt her heart break as she rushed to her daughter’s side.

“What happened? Did your cousins say something?”

Only a head shake. Ever’s first attempts at speaking only produced sobs. Nic tried to hug her daughter, only to get pushed away, to have her daughter turn her back.

“Please tell me. Please.”

More sobs.

“Ever,” Nic’s voice shook.

“Dad. I want dad,” the words were wailed. Further attempts at touch were rebuffed. “I need dad!”

Lee.

Something she couldn’t give her daughter. Lee wasn’t coming back. And Ever had retreated to a place to hide so she could cry, rather than go to her mother.

She tried to draw Ever into a hug, and Ever fought her. Sobs and shouts and fighting overlapped with accusations, blubbered, inarticulate.

“-cause of you-”

“-if you’d-”

Each accusation was like a stab of a knife.

She forced the hug, and in that moment, Ever stopped fighting and hugged her back, fierce. The accusations stopped. With legs and arms both, Ever clutched her like she would never let go. And the noises and bangs of children playing became deafening. The press of trees and branches all around them became people, hands.

Nic fought to keep her daughter close, pulling her tighter into a nook between folding tables and chairs. People scraped by, pressed in so tight that jeans scraped the backs of her knuckles.

Ever cried out as tables nearby slid closer to the ground.

“I love you,” she said, and the din stole the words out of the air, so she couldn’t be sure Ever heard.

Then- a break in the noise of the crowd and the banging. A second where people didn’t press in so close that it hurt.

A chance to draw Ever further into the nook, her back to the folded tables.

To say something.

But- what could she even say? She’d said sorry before. So many times. She’d told her daughter she loved her more times than she could count. She’d uttered words in anger and words in despair. She’d made a thousand promises that she would do better or be a better mother, but she knew that she’d made those promises and broken them. She’d made promises in dreams, and she would never ever get a chance to keep them.

“Goodbye,” she said. Lucid words, while looking her daughter in the eyes. “I’m going to do my best to make sure no monster ever does something like this again.”

The press of bodies collapsed nearby furniture, people climbed over them. For once, she dreamed of her daughter, and she held her daughter in her arms until the last, instead of having her torn away. Instead of that dreadful, sanity-shattering, life-ending impact.

Then- then she wasn’t herself.

Not past self, not present self. Not anymore.

She was the Fallen boy. In a parking lot. She watched as the mall employee ran. As Seir the horse-headed used a power of lightning and darkness to leap onto the girl, and hurl her to the ground. The Fallen boy had his mask off and in one hand, his face etched in anger, in twisted emotions.

This isn’t the way things go.

“Don’t fucking second guess me. You know how this goes if you fail us. Soldier or slut, and as shitty as a soldier you’d be, you’d make for one depressing slut.”

The Fallen boy looked away.

“What? You want to fight? You want to say something?”

The Fallen boy turned his head. As he did, a thin woman in white appeared beside him.

Christine Mathers.

“No,” the boy said.

Seir shoved the employee inside, but grabbed her hair, hauling back. The girl shrieked in pain as she was yanked backward, shrieked more as the door was shut on the hair, trapping it.

She wasn’t on the ground as she had been before. But the essential elements remained the same.

Seir produced the chain, and he bound the door shut. The lock was placed through chain to secure it, but as always, it wasn’t actually locked.

The option was given.

“If you open that door, you’ll never be a soldier.”

“I’m not going to open it,” the boy said, stubborn.

As monstrous as Seir, just underdeveloped. Content to talk about murder and righteousness while a girl fumbled under the blanket they shared.

Capable of laughing as people died.

Seir left. The boy remained.

Then the explosions. The fires. The attack.

Love Lost could remember how scared Ever had been. She could remember seeing Ever’s friends, seeing them run from her as she’d tried to corral them and manage them as a group. They’d been intimidated of her.

Perhaps for the best.

There was a pause, then fists pounding on the door. The screams, the shouts.

She could count it, almost. More than a minute passed, but she knew, right down to the fraction of a second. She would hear the noise as the tables fell, the distant thud, her own scream as her daughter died.

Every night.

The lock was pulled free. Chain rattled as it was unwound. It was cast aside, and the doors opened wide.

Then he watched as people tried to exit the hallway at the mall’s side door. But there were too many bodies. The people pressed in together and wedged themselves into the door. In all trying to get out at once, nobody got out. He reached forward, trying to grab someone- but it was futile. A hand grabbed him. A suffocating man on the ground had him by the pants. Reached up, toward the mask that was held in one hand, still.

Why?

Then the last dream. Cradle, moving through scenes, trying to keep ahold of his glasses. Cornered in the schoolyard, faced by four girls a year younger than him. They shouted and their words were only the rattle of chain, the pounding on a metal door, and the blare of a fire alarm.

They shoved him, he bounced off of a car, and he lost his glasses. The car wailed, its alarm going off.

The wail became his mother’s wail. He was in his home, standing at the door to his bedroom while his parents shouted and screamed at one another. One held up a paper, a list of numbers and letters running down the center column. Cradle, standing around the corner, flinched at the words, gibberish though they were.

He adjusted his glasses, and when he fixed them, he stood in the mall.

He watched as the first Fallen appeared. Men and women in disguises that barely served. Tattoos barely covered. They looked Fallen, whatever else. Subhuman, gleeful at what was about to happen.

Cradle turned, and he walked away, stepping into the pharmacy, and cutting a path for the door. As he did, he nudged a store employee, and his voice was a thousand creaks of metal hinges.

While the store employee ran, he opened the door, to the sound of a single door’s metal hinges creaking, that same sound that had just been made a thousand times.

Then there was only silence.

⊙

Now

Phantom sensations of Ever slipped under and around Love Lost’s hand. Just as when she used the device to simulate the tactile.

But it was, as always, a doll’s head. A bit of curtain with attached rod, intended somehow for a window, though the space they occupied had none.

She swallowed hard as she found her way to her feet. The pain was fresh, but in the moment it was dulled by confusion.

What had linked those three deviations from the norm?

What- no. Not what, exactly. Who.

She turned to look. The black fifth cell remained black, no light entering or leaving it. Cradle occupied the space to her left.

Across from her was the Fallen boy, who wore the demon mask. Always wore it. He didn’t seem to realize, a lot of the time.

She felt disgust well up. Anger, because that scene-

-hadn’t made sense.

Silent, the Fallen boy pointed.

Love Lost turned.

Within her cell, Colt stood by the nursery bookshelf, looking spooked.

Love Lost beckoned.

Unsteady, Colt picked her way along uneven floor, over toys and a fallen changing table. Toward the dais.

Two of them, one cell.

“What the hell?” the Fallen boy asked.

In reflex, her hand twitched. Ready to punch the barrier, to do something to silence him. The sound of his voice bothered her as much as anything she’d experienced, and she’d talked to a nurse who had been proud to spread hepatitis among her patients, who had been smug about it.

“What is this?” Colt asked.

Love Lost put a hand on Colt’s shoulder. She didn’t trust herself to talk, so she relied on the gesture.

“You brought someone,” Cradle said.

People with powers can have kids with powers. She counts?

The cells are inflicting a bad joke on me. Taunting me with the loss of my daughter by giving me the last one I’d ever want.

“What was that dream?” the Fallen boy asked. “Did you guys-”

“Shut up,” Cradle cut him off.

“I saw it,” Colt said. “I felt it. What is this?”

“It happens every night, but tonight was different,” the Fallen boy said.

“It happens every night?” Colt asked.

“Yeah,” the Fallen boy said. “This happens. This room.”

Love Lost’s grip on Colt’s shoulder grew tighter.

Colt pulled free, shrugging it off.

“How was it different?”

“It was everyone,” Cradle said. “What you saw was- not the way things happened.”

“I hope not,” Colt said. “What happened in those first two dreams was pretty awful.”

Cradle shook his head. “All three. But what happened in the originals was worse. And it’s been that worse, accurate version every night for the last year and three months.”

Colt hugged her arms to her body.

“I think it was your dream,” the Fallen boy said. “Somehow.”

Colt shrugged. “I dunno.”

“It was what we wanted,” Cradle said, looking at Love Lost.

“I know I didn’t want people to get trapped like that-”

“The new girl being here means someone might actually believe you when you say that,” Cradle retorted.

“Fuck you,” the Fallen boy said.

“Christine Mathers,” Love Lost whispered.

Colt looked between her and the rest of the room, then echoed her, louder. “Christine Mathers?”

“Mama Mathers,” the Fallen boy said.

Love Lost saw the look on Cradle’s face change. They’d been plotting to deal with the greater group of the Fallen for enough weeks now that it was a familiar subject.

“She watched everything I did. If I’d gone against the group, I would have been castrated,” the Fallen boy said. “I would have been driven insane. She can do that.”

“That’s scary,” Colt said.

Love Lost turned away. Sympathy for the devil.

“It doesn’t excuse anything,” the Fallen boy said. “I was stupid, I could have done more.”

“Probably,” Cradle said.

“Fuck,” the Fallen boy said. “This is fucking with my head.”

“Um, I think my head is most fucked right now,” Colt said, her voice wavering. She offered up a nervous titter of a laugh. “First time.”

Hearing Colt be so familiar and so unaware was a special kind of hell of its own.

Then a worse kind of hell. To be utterly alone. Cradle ventured. “More of a head-fuck to think maybe you were telling the truth all along.”

The words were stilted, awkward.

If they were a lie intended as bait, then the Fallen boy didn’t seem to believe them.

If they were truth, then Love Lost would never forgive Cradle.

“What was he saying before?” Colt asked.

“I can barely hear you,” Cradle said.

“Yeah,” the Fallen boy echoed.

“Meaning we have a problem,” Cradle said.

A problem. Love Lost wheeled around, looking at the other cells, at her own room, and at the dais. The lights that had no source that filled the area were dimmer in her shared fifth of the room. As she watched, they grew dimmer still.

This was what had happened to Jonathan. Her heart pounded as she reached out, fist striking the surface.

“I know why,” Cradle said.

“What’s happening?” the Fallen boy asked.

“Two people in one area. It’s draining the power twice as fast. They get half the time.”

“Has it even been half?”

Cradle shrugged. He pushed scratched-up glasses up his nose.

There were some, Love Lost knew, that she’d never quite been able to get. The very best criminals she’d gone up against. The ones she was closest to, like Lee, who wasn’t a criminal, except that he’d left their family and left Ever, and he’d never come back. But he counted. She’d never been able to get him.

As her room began to dim, it dawned on her that Cradle fit both categories. Too good, too close to her, because he was a part of this room. This engine.

Her hand slammed against the invisible barrier, and she screamed. They didn’t seem to see her.

A face on the wrong end of one-way glass.

Her scream became raw. So close to that scream, Colt shied back, scared.

“What’s happening?” Colt asked.

“March released something bad,” the Fallen boy said. “They’re calling it Class S. She’s going to release more.”

“The plan was for her to release one,” Cradle lied.

That hadn’t been the plan. Zero, not one. If she found the one she needed then she would mercy kill before it became a real problem.

She screamed again.

“Why?” the Fallen boy asked.

“Because all of the rules we used to operate by were based around mutually assured destruction. We needed a scare,” Cradle said. “Something that forces everyone to look at where they stand and what they’re willing to do. We pose a threat without actually following through, then remind you all that you need us.”

None of it true. Well- some. It had been a contingency plan. Discussed in the span of one minute, as a possibility if something did get loose.

Cradle-

She screamed.

Just as bad as the Fallen boy.

“You chopped up my teammates. You chopped up kids!”

“We took them out of the picture! The plan was to take the best and most vulnerable-”

“And chop them up into mincemeat!?”

“No! To disable them. To force them onto the bench so that if something did happen, they wouldn’t get hurt in the time it took us to step in.”

Truth… except now she didn’t believe him.

“Why mincemeat!?”

“Because I handed the tool off to a hireling and they lost their mind.”

“I don’t believe you,” the Fallen boy said, gripping the dais. “I don’t believe any of this.”

“I’ll admit. A bit of it was to fuck with you. To pressure- her idea.”

Cradle pointed at Love Lost.

She screamed and pounded.

“To put you into a corner. To force you to surrender. That was true.”

“You’re a fucking lunatic.”

“I hate you so much I can’t think straight,” Cradle snarled. “I want you to die in the worst ways…”

His head bowed slightly.

“Love Lost?” Colt asked, her voice small.

“I’ll show you I’m genuine,” Cradle said.

“I don’t trust you.”

“Do you have the pieces of the red whip?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll give you what I have. All of it.”

Love Lost swiped her hand across the dais. Clearing away rubble.

Turning up the teeth.

Nothing new for Colt.

“Take these coins,” Cradle said. “Full strength tinker power. Fix the whip. Use it to undo the damage to your team. When we offer our help with whatever March is pulling, you let us.”

“Love Lost,” Colt said.

Colt turned to look at the younger girl.

Colt indicated the floor.

Centimeter by centimeter, hair by hair, the floor changed. The nursery disappeared, and Cradle’s domain grew.

She touched the barrier, and she could feel its movement.

Hair by hair. Drop of blood by drop of blood.

Hers- and probably Colt’s too.

She screamed again.

Cradle held out the coins, fingers pinching at the edges while he held them to the barrier.

Why?

Were they a trap, somehow? How?

The Fallen boy didn’t take them. When he’d said he didn’t trust Cradle, he’d meant it.

“Why is the room shrinking?” Colt asked.

“Be-” Love Lost started. Her throat was raw from screaming. “Because he’s killing us as we speak.”

She watched the Fallen boy reach up, hesitating, not yet taking the coins.

He’s been killing us- killing me, for a long time, she realized. Just not physically. An ego death.

The coins.

The compromises she’d made. The coldness. The lack of warmth. The inability to feel for the children.

When we give up our tokens, we give up aspects of ourselves. We change the other. Cradle’s been constantly giving up his tinker ability. To Jonathan and me, then to me alone.

He knew.

Giving us the ability to tinker, and making us into monsters. That’s how we bleed through.

Her hand shook as she touched the barrier.

The most galling part of it all- the Fallen boy had never been given anything. Until now. No bleed-through. Just him.

In the near-pitch darkness of her shrinking room, staring at the exchange between the two young men, she gripped the teeth.

All of her anger, in one gripped fist.

She would have a split second to act. When the dream ended, she would pass on her ability, and with it, all of her rage and savagery. To throw it into one room, in hopes they would wake before the teeth could be collected and thrown back.

If that was even a consideration.

She watched, waiting for her chance, waiting to see if the Fallen boy took the coins that would steal his warmth. Whether he did would determine who she gave her teeth to. All her power for the day, and dangerous, reckless rage.

Heavens – 12.3

I stared into the glare of a red light that shone out of a hole in the ground. The two Harbingers had found the time to leap up onto the backs of others. I wasn’t so nimble, not after a fall. I chose to rely on base instinct. Fight, flight, or freeze. The latter two were out. I punched the red light, putting fist into glass.

I rolled to my feet, and by the light of a sliver of a moon, the dark gray of snow wasn’t a factor, nor were the combatants, the road, the rises and dips of ground. The only thing that mattered were the handful of red lights near me.

In my hurry to get back I performed a movement that was probably only logical or sensible if one were a seal or if they spent far too much time flying, half-rolling, half kicking, transitioning into a mad lunge-

In my hurry to get away from two lights I found myself with three in my immediate proximity. I started to pull away, seeing them go from stationary red to a mad blinking.

“Forward!” was the shout.

I hurled myself at the red lights, drawing on that one-twentieth of the ability to fly that I’d recouped to move a little faster.

The whip struck the earth by the side of the road. It didn’t break the lights, but it disturbed the placement of one, where it was in muddier. As I pushed forward, the red lightning arced across my upper body instead. A glancing hit, momentary, as the arc lanced through me, cut out, then resumed behind me.

The shock and the sudden pain made my heart skip, and it didn’t start again. My muscles spasmed and joints strained across my arms, shoulders, and hands, and I couldn’t convince my body to take a breath, nor could I make my heart beat in a way that meant anything.

I toppled, landing with my head and upper body on the road, arms curled up in front of me, trapped between my torso and the road. My legs, insignificant in the moment, were left draped along the steep incline between ditch and road.

I would have called out for help or first aid, if I could’ve breathed.

Time of death was given at the moment of the flatline, the arrest of the heart. Was I already dead and unaware of the fact?

I twisted, kicking out with one leg to try to get to a position where I wasn’t staring at the ground. I could see some of the road and some of the field where the villains had been making their approach. Harbinger one was down, and two was wounded, making a limping retreat.

Etna had fallen out of the air too. Paris didn’t have his power but was putting up a fight, keeping the remaining Harbinger on his heels. One of the case fifty-threes was grabbing Sveta by the mass behind her face, where organs were hidden in the morass of tendrils. Sveta and the other case fifty-three were limp, barely moving. The powers that gave them the ability to move weren’t, at least for the moment.

I could hear a small, high pitched sound that seemed to rise in volume by the second. It wasn’t in my head either. The higher-pitched noise drew the attention of Rachel’s animal, which no longer had a handler. It pawed closer, head low, every inch of it radiating hostility and tension. And it was mutated and nearly its full size, which meant there were a hell of a lot of fucking inches of it.

A short whistle from Rachel made the animal stop. The ongoing sound made its head turn back in my general direction again.

In a lapse between alternating twinges and spasms of my shoulder, I felt a vibration at my throat, and realized the sound was coming from me.

I made the strained whining sound stop, a process that saw me making an ‘agh’ gasp, then figured out breathing as an extension of that. With breathing resuming, air surging into my lungs, I felt my heartbeat flutter, blood pumped, and the spasms became worse.

A whistle drew the wolf’s attention again, and this time it walked off, staying as close to its master as it could without treading into dangerous, trapped ground.

Every fucking one of my nerves were kicking off, forcing movements, causing muscles to jerk, pull, or just hold a too-flexed position until they cramped. At any given moment there were at least six points in my arms and hands where it felt like wedges were being driven in deep into center mass of muscle or between muscle and bone.

My power was still just not there. Flight that couldn’t actually hold me up. An aura that felt like a memory of a feeling. The Wretch- a forcefield so small that it didn’t extend any further than my clothes. So fragile that my attempt at moving scraped it across the ground and destroyed it.

Swansong used her power, and it was a spitting of power, barely extending a foot and a half past her hand. She’d fallen, sliding into the ditch, and the use of her power destroyed one of the red lights.

Chastity had pulled herself up onto the road, but it looked like her legs were mostly disabled, and the spasms there made it hard for her to even sit up. Byron was beside her, and he was pretty badly off.

As traps went, it was effective. Most of our group was out of action. Now-

I shifted my weight, leaned back, then threw myself forward, getting to my feet. My flight did about five percent of the work. My boots skidded on the side of the road, putting me further into the ditch, while reminding me I had a row of stitches on the underside of my foot. As my boots hit the lowest point of the ditch, a red light appeared, joined by others, further away. I stumbled away as they crackled to life.

Each trap generated the red arcs about two feet around them, just on their own, but they also activated nearby traps that were even ten feet away, and the chains of electricity that connected each were what created the carpet.

I could make headway, I was pretty sure, but it was staggered headway. If I was at the edge, I could avoid the worst of it, triggering them, waiting, then advancing until I triggered others. Each crackle made my arms spasm almost sympathetically.

They were fucking hurting Sveta, and there was nothing I could do about it.

No flight, no strength, no aura. Just me and a minefield.

Swansong used her power again. She was on her knees, lashing out to destroy the traps that illuminated around her. I saw her stagger to her feet, make it a few steps, only to collapse again.

I could see the expression on her face, all softness gone, only darkness behind eyes that smoked visibly with Kenzie’s tech.

“Help.”

Immediately, I started fighting my way back up the ditch, to the road where the traps weren’t set, then I jogged as best as I was able when my arms and shoulders were fighting me, jerking this way and that. I was a person wearing a straightjacket, the strings being tugged and jerked this way and that.

It had been Swansong that had made the… the utterance. Not a word I’d expected from her mouth. Not a tone I’d imagined either, but one that made a profound kind of sense. An order – she’d wanted to be the team’s leader at one point. A plea – she had been a member of the therapy group, and to sit in on a therapy session she’d had to bring herself to ask for help before.

No, a plea… because she cared enough that she wanted to help Sveta much as I did.

I took the path that she’d clearly taken, off the road, into ditch, then into field. Across what had been farmland, ridged with where the irrigation and crops had been. A red light flared to my right, and I veered left, away while still heading forward.

“My arms don’t work,” I told her.

“Neither does my leg. Give me your body,” she said.

She laid a hand across my back, fingers and fingernails digging into the back of my neck, the raw material of her damaged arm biting through the fabric of my costume.

Wasn’t- hadn’t her arm sparked earlier? Was that a danger?

The case fifty-three had Sveta’s face in its hands. It was a weirdly shaped figure, squat bodied, but with a skinny neck topped with a normally sized head. All was clad in what looked like cylindrical extensions of shell, white and ornamented like a castle with crenellations. What the shell didn’t cover was ropy, yellow, and slick with fluids. A notch was inset into one shoulder, making it so one arm seemed to practically float in the air, joined to the body at armpit but not at shoulder.

I was put in mind of a ‘rook’ chess piece, given arms and legs, with internal workings that dripped phlegm. I was especially mindful that the arm that was barely attached didn’t seem strong, but it was gaining strength as its powers returned.

My powers- one fifteenth of what they should be, maybe, if I judged by ‘flight’ alone.

I was Swansong’s legs, her arm at my back and her body lined up beside mine. With an arm that still spasmed -still, and only from a glancing contact with the lightning- I tried to hold her around the waist, to keep her upright.

The red lights appeared. Swansong lashed at them as they came into her meager reach. It was a flirtation with danger, because her power’s range was so abysmal like this, the effect of that power random within the area. Sometimes a twist, sometimes a tear, sometimes annihilation, but not always in a straight line, aimed in the direction her hand extended. Sometimes it veered left, sometimes right.

How long until we got unlucky? If we had two seconds and her power struck out wildly with six lashes of power in that span of time, three lashes if we were slow to react or get her in position to reach out, how long and how many attempts until the power just… didn’t hit the trap?

Sveta’s tentacles were wrapping around the ‘rook’ case fifty-three. They gripped shelled sections and they gripped the soft sections of actual flesh. There wasn’t much strength in them, but as she regained her strength, the rook seemed to regain his twice over.

Paris threw a dart toward the remaining, injured Harbinger, and the Harbinger leaned to one side to let it pass by. Every step the Harbinger took seemed labored, heavily favoring one leg. Actions were kept efficient, tight, and careful, as Etna found her footing and created a bubble of hot but not superheated glass and hurled it.

The Harbinger twisted around, striking at the orb with one gloved hand, then the other, deflecting it. It was pushed off course and shattered on impact with the ground. Red lights illuminated around the impact site.

Paris kicked out. The Harbinger avoided the worst of it, but still stumbled back, doing the half-step with the injured leg to minimize the time spent on it, and tumbled to the ground beside the glowing trap.

“Hit it!” I shouted.

Fingers found a glass shard from the orb, then, awkwardly, thrust out, heel of the hand pushing the shard into the glowing red light.

The crackle was muted, dancing around the Harbinger’s hand, but it didn’t swallow him up or completely disable him.

My shout had drawn attention. Etna created another globe of hot glass, then hurled it. It was barely on the cusp of being hot enough to change colors, and I could see the glow emanating as her power provided a little extra push to the throwing motion, staying with the globe as it flew. Like it was less a globe of hot glass and more like a rocket.

I shifted position, putting Damsel between myself and the globe, bracing her and holding her as she reached up with both hands.

The blast annihilated the shot.

Yeah. There were things that still caught me off guard, like that ‘help’, but I knew this much. She preferred to face danger head on and blast it out of existence than to run. Even before I’d fully braced and supported her, she’d been reaching up to blast.

We were past the worst of the minefield. Ashley broke away from me, staggering forward on peg leg and one leg that wasn’t cooperating, and she struck out with her power, twice just to keep her balance or push herself upright when her leg was starting to give, a third time to strike at one red light that had blinked to life.

I followed, mindful of Swansong’s blasts. The spasms had subsided enough that I could put my arms at my sides instead of having them folded up against my chest or awkwardly around Swansong. ‘At my sides’ wasn’t the best way of putting it, as fingers were curled up into claws and I couldn’t really extend, swing with, or rotate my hands and arms. It was a fight just to keep them from getting in my own way.

A glance over my shoulder suggested the others weren’t recovering in any visible measure. This recovery seemed to be because I’d only taken a glancing blow. That my heart hadn’t actually stopped seemed to be because I had armor at my chest. Something to conduct or take the focus of the arc, I couldn’t say.

Contender, a case fifty-three with ‘feathers’ that looked more like worn leather than any featherlike, Paris, and Etna all stood lined up against Swansong, the Harbinger and I. In the back of their group, Sveta wrestled with the ‘rook’ case fifty-three, and she seemed to be losing. He was pressing the edge of her face into the ground like he was trying to break it in half.

“Leave her alone!” I hollered the words.

I saw him visibly pause.

“He don’ like tella he what do, no yah?” the other case fifty-three said. A string of English with some heavy tonal emphasis on vowels, especially on the ‘tella’.

“Not unless you want to egg him on,” Contender said, putting one fist inside his hand, cracking knuckles.

I tried my forcefield on for size. Skintight, but I could feel the rustling, sense the extension of it, as a hand reached out here, a Victoria-ish shape emerged there.

Something simultaneously reassuring and quietly horrifying. If only there was some way to keep the forcefield in its wet-paper-fragile state, where it hugged my body again and didn’t echo my worst nightmares.

At least it didn’t break when I took a step.

Powers were coming back into play. I was still grounded, but I could use a bit of flight. The winged case fifty-three seemed to be in a similar boat. Half-mummy, dessicated with ‘feathers’ like straps, half-bird, with its body extending into wings that weren’t like a bat’s or a bird’s, draping down and out from the arms. They moved sideways more often than they moved forward, and a glimpse at their feet indicated why. Bladed feet, not talons, but a single blade in place of the middle toe, another at the heel. The hands were similar, it seemed, kept out of sight, hidden in the drapery of ‘wings’.

Etna had more globes of superheated glass forming in her hand. The other hand had her phone out. She’d been wearing a skimpier costume in the early fall when the weather was warm, but her outfit now was more along the evil sorceress look, with high collar and draping coat, all with a ‘flame’ cut. She looked down, checking her phone-

Swansong lunged. With her power not at full strength, the recoil of the blast wasn’t severe, and the resulting propulsion wasn’t too meaningful.

I had to trust her. I flew straight for Paris.

“No,” Etna said. She threw the globe.

Swansong shot it, but the recoil was just enough to burn her forward momentum, and her footing wasn’t secure, one foot not cooperating, the other foot absent. She landed on her knees, skidding on ice. As Etna formed a smaller globe and threw it, she blasted that too.

My attempt to close in on Paris was blocked by the case fifty-three. A flap of the draping ‘wing’ saw him… not fly, not bound, definitely not a teleport, but slide through the air, upward and at a diagonal.

When he came down, he came down kicking, the blade sweeping down toward me.

Twisting around, throwing myself back, I kicked up to meet the claw with the bottom of my boot, forcefield active. My meager flight made my landing easier.

The slice at my boot was followed up by something heavy striking at my foot, almost twisting my ankle.

I could see it hanging in the air. A shadow, like a smear that followed the talon’s trajectory. It only lasted a couple of seconds.

The Harbinger went toe to toe with Contender, neither apparently using powers. Contender seemed to have the upper hand, pressing the offense, while the Harbinger did his best.

I couldn’t afford to help. By advancing, I could maintain some pressure, keep Paris on his toes, while occupying the aerial assassin here.

Wing ‘flapped’, and the assassin slid to my left. I saw one hand raise, another flap imminent, their head turning toward Swansong.

A bit of my own flight gave me the ability to focus my movement and make it more effective- I couldn’t swing punches with my arms still spasming, so I had to kick. With flight, a roundhouse kick could hit that much harder.

He slid out of the way, hands coming around in parallel slashes toward my middle. With forcefield up, I met the blurs that followed in the aftermath of the slashes, and I was shoved almost five feet away.

All one power, it seemed. Swoop and slash, he created the blurs that propelled, drove movement, slid. When he used them, they facilitated movement. For others, it was a focused kind of pressure. I imagined that if he cut me, the blur would open up the cut.

Swansong, meanwhile, was entirely preoccupied as Etna hurled a glass globe, which was shot, but Paris immediately followed up, timing his hurling of a long, thin black dart for the moment Swansong wasn’t able to strike.

It sliced her as it passed her, and carved a divot into the ground. The divot began spraying out a geyser of frozen dirt and ice, cutting Swansong’s cheek. She had to move out of the way- and Etna was already cutting off retreat, hurling another globe. The same Swansong blast that consumed the globe also arrested momentum, kept Swansong in the area of the spray. Paris followed up, throwing another two darts-

Fuck.

I tried to get by, running footsteps and lunges augmented by flight, like moonwalking, but tighter, faster. The case fifty-three was right there, to cut me off. When I tried to slip by, they somersaulted in the air, changing direction while mid-slide, and slashed a flurry into the air. Left hand cut a zig-zag, foot struck up…

Not aimed at me, but at another purpose. A barrier of the high-pressure blurs cut me off from getting to either Swansong or Sveta.

I kicked the ground, hard, and sent a spray of crud directly at them.

“Kicking dirt?” Etna asked. “Really? That’s what you heroes have sunk to?”

I kicked again, aiming at her, the kick aimed for a mound with a rounder shape within it. Dirt and ice flew, and a flat stone six inches across flew past the barrier, clipping her on the hip.

Paris hurled darts my way. One hit the forcefield and was destroyed on impact, but the other missed, and that one was an issue.

Another barrier, a geyser of pellets flying like tiny bullets.

“You’re working for people who cut up kids and you’re calling us low?” I growled.

Swansong was lunging in to take advantage of Etna being distracted, reaching out. Balance off from the stone’s impact, Etna had a panicked response, throwing the half-formed globe, then a glob rather than a globe, barely a handful, all while floating backward.

Still holding onto that phone with the one hand.

Swansong couldn’t advance while the ground was littered with cooling masses of glass.

“She doesn’t care about hurting kids. She hit Lookout because she can’t aim,” Swansong said. “Embarrassed an entire neighborhood of supervillains.”

“You want to see how good my aim is?” Etna asked.

“Are you suggesting you weren’t trying before?” Swansong asked. “Because you saying that doesn’t intimidate me. It suggests you’re a lazy supervillain halfwit.”

Etna threw more globes, floating and doing her own moonwalk. Swansong ducked, wove, started to close the distance, and then was forced to back off again as Paris threw more darts.

They had everything they needed to ward us off. The globes were just too menacing in terms of the sheer damage they promised to inflict if she could actually hit us with one, the aerial assassin had the ability to create a fence of slashes, and Paris produced the geysers, though he seemed more focused on capitalizing on momentary weaknesses.

Contender- he’d dispatched the second Harbinger, knocking the kid out.

For the time being, we were two against one.

I glanced back at the other group. It would have been nice if that wolf came charging in, but it was staying close to its master.

“Don’t turn your back on the enemy,” Contender said.

I was fully aware of him, as he joined the aerial assassin, standing beside the guy. I was aware of Paris, and of Etna. Of Sveta, who had fluid running down her face, but who was at least holding her own, against another case fifty-three who seemed implacable.

Swansong was bleeding in multiple places from the geyser, and the bandage at her neck was soaked through. Something had pulled at the injury.

It couldn’t be easy.

“We should end this,” Paris said, very quiet.

“Why?” Contender asked.

“Do you disagree?”

Contender shook his head, as if exasperated. “Vulturehawk, you and I take down goldie.”

“Not confident you can do it alone, Contender?” I asked, taunting.

“I’m very confident we can manage it as a pair,” he said.

“You call yourself Contender and there’s no fight in you,” I said. I pushed out with my aura, full strength, and even at that it felt like I was outputting a three on my normal one to ten scale.

The taunts were borne of nervousness, and a little bit of it was the conscious awareness that powers tended to make sense. Contender’s name, his power, his assured cockiness, and the way he tended to go after people he thought he could beat, it painted a bigger picture.

Whether he was a prize athlete who’d hit hard times or someone who’d never been able to score a win before he had powers, whether it was a school that had exerted pressure… I felt like being called out for cowardice would get to him.

“We each get one easy one,” Swansong said. “I get the halfwit who can’t aim unless she’s hitting a kid, and you get the contender who can’t win his fights.”

Contender arched an eyebrow above the white and black mask he wore, looking back at the Harbinger.

“Holding that up as a victory isn’t making you look better,” I said.

“Hey ‘tend, ya got dez deaf it,” Vulturehawk said. His eyes were sharp.

“Yeah,” Contender said.

I tried to slip past, but Vulturehawk was fast, more mobile with two-thirds of a sliding power than I was with two-thirds of a flight power that didn’t really do more than make me weightless. I continued to exert pressure, studying them. When there was a chance, I glanced back toward the others, to check.

There were headlights on the road.

The claw skimmed along my arm. I kicked, another roundhouse with part of a flight power accelerating the movement, then used more flight to change my direction as I fell, while Contender ducked in low, trying to flank.

I could avoid the opening swing, bring arm and leg up to shield the one side of my body as he kicked-

I didn’t miss the weapon that he slipped into one hand. My thought was knife.

A baton, that whipped out like a switchblade, striking me across the face.

I drove my forehead into his face. The icon at the front and center of my hood slashed forehead and eye. He stumbled back, but I was on his heels.

He found his bearings, and instead of panicking, he began to respond. Blocks, a strike to my jaw, then a kick. The kick to my side hurt.

He knew my forcefield was something that ‘broke’, or he thought it was fragile.

He was bigger, stronger, and if I was a hundred percent honest, his hand to hand technique was better than mine on a general level. I was willing to press it regardless, trusting that one in every two hits that he landed wouldn’t count, while I could make mine count just fine.

He created his circle, a flash, a flare, and I lost my power.

Which- well, of fucking course he did. Now I wasn’t ignoring one in every two hits, and he had the baton.

I shifted to the defensive, looking for an opening. Punch after punch, and I kept my arms up, dealing with the fact they were still spasming. The cut on the bottom of my foot made footwork hard, and I couldn’t use any degree of flight to ease my weight off of it.

I was too out of practice. The patrol training had been me instructing the newbies more than it had been me learning.

Swansong’s power was audible, and the nothingness that extended around the perimeter of the area became a universe of roiling distortion, blurs, and shadow. The bubble collapsed. I saw Swansong with her hand extended my way. She’d caught another glancing hit from Paris for her trouble.

A bit of flight and the ability to take one baton swing without flinching or slowing down in the slightest bought me an opportunity.

My thumb slipped one of the rings from the base of my finger to the middle part. Each ring had spikes that swept back along the back of my hand, and by moving it to where I had, with my hand in a fist, the spike pointed forward.

I aimed for the throat, worry for Sveta burying the clear awareness of what I was trying to do. The spike punched into meat. I repeated the hit, flying close so my legs wrapped around his upper body, punching- catching the underside of his jaw, his face, mask, then helmet. He twisted to keep me from getting at the neck again.

“Vic!”

Swansong’s voice. I kicked away and flew back.

Vulturehawk was swooping in, and I was ready for a fight. Ready to just fly in close and put a mess of holes in him.

But he wasn’t interested in a brawl. He cut me off and backed away, dropping down near Contender to check the wounds.

“No arties, ‘tend. All sho’, rest sure.”

“Fucking hurts,” Contender growled.

“Yep,” Vulturehawk said. Even the single word had its peculiar inflection.

“Don’t stand in the water,” Paris ordered.

“Water?”

He pointed up.

Above us, a diagram in blue lights. Byron’s constellation. He was still lying on the road, I could see, but he was focusing enough to draw something for us.

As if seeming to realize the other guys were onto us, Byron activated the diagram.

The water the diagram writ across the sky created was something that gushed skyward.

I took advantage of the distraction to fly straight for Swansong. I still couldn’t hold up my entire weight with flight -whatever had shaken our powers had shaken them good- but I could make myself nearly weightless. I pulled a Harbinger and situated myself above her.

I’d heard the term raining buckets before, but this- this was closer to the idea. It was as though a swimming pool had been dropped on us from above, diffused by the fact it had been cast up, breaking apart as the wind and slight differences in timing added up together.

I leaped upward, and then I used my powers. Flight, to stay airborne longer. Forcefield, to block and break the worst of the water.

Swansong used her power.

The water settled, sloshing and filling up irrigation ditches. The villains found footing on higher ground, where snow and ice piled up, or where the dirt was highest. Paris had one foot up on a fence, the other on stone.

Byron had drenched them, at least. When I looked at Swansong, she looked sixty percent dry.

The Harbingers – slumped over dirt mounds. Drenched but they would be fine if they got warm.

Not for the first or second time, I took the time to glance back. The truck had stopped a distance away from where our group had settled. New blue markings in the air blocked the roadway. People had climbed out of the vehicle. Prancer and Moose.

That- it would have to wait. The others were vulnerable, but as shitty as Prancer was, I was pretty sure he wasn’t about to take helpless people hostage. Those ‘helpless people’ were probably able to use powers, too. Too dangerous for him to crack.

He might have been calling friends.

Didn’t matter.

Each time I’d checked back over my shoulder, I’d been looking. This time, with water settling, swirling, and frothing or carrying loose debris, I could make out particulars in the darkness.

A swirl where water at the edge was settling.

I flew to it, reaching it just in time. A cylindrical hole in the ground, three or four inches across, and deep. As I got to it, the red light of the trap that had been embedded into the ground illuminated. It had been triggered by a disturbance from the sudden rush of water.

I grabbed it and I hurled it, grenade-style. The Wretch provided the strength for extra distance.

Etna’s attention was on her phone. When Paris got out of there, Etna didn’t.

The device activated. A crackle of red energy that swept over Etna. I saw her drop, limp, spasming, and she landed face down in the water.

Paris started forward, and Swansong used her power. A warning shot, fired off to her side. Paris stopped.

Etna remained where she was, periodically pushing herself partway up, then splashing back down.

Paris waited, chin high, hands clasped behind his back. Swansong stood, hair damp, head bent, glaring up and across at Paris. Four good paces separated them.

Etna, unable to move on her own, floundered in the water.

“Is her phone there?” I asked.

Swansong started forward. Paris threw darts, planting them in the dirt between Swansong and Etna.

With a blast of her power, followed by a short stumble and recovery, Swansong destroyed the swathe of dirt and the geysers.

I had blood running down the finger of my glove. The ring squelched as I adjusted its position, the blood on the inner circumference squeezing out.

Etna continued to flounder.

“Do you think we care?” Contender asked. “She was two-bit. Vulturehawk and Thud aren’t even from around here. They don’t give a shit about her or me or Paris over there. I’ve got a job. Cushy gig in another universe, gets me out of this sad echo of the world we lost.”

“Joining the fourth sect,” I murmured.

“Yeah,” Contender said. “And Paris? Paris has his own thing going on.”

“You don’t need to talk about me,” Paris said, creepy-quiet.

“If you’re trying to scare us, it won’t work,” Contender said, one hand at his neck. “You can’t use her for leverage if none of us give a shit.”

“She’s not leverage,” Swansong said. As she paced, Paris threw another dart. She destroyed it before the geyser could appear. Pale as she was, the red line and the trickles of blood stood out on her face and at her scalp, running through her hair to matt an area with blood. “We’re getting used to the idea of killing. Again, in my case.”

I drew in a deep breath, exhaled. Etna blew bubbles.

Sure.

“This looks worse for you than for us,” Contender said. “She hasn’t hurt anyone, not that I’ve heard, she wasn’t a part of this except that she was one of a bunch of people they hired. I don’t know what happened with this kid she apparently hit, but-”

“Contender,” Paris said.

Contender looked over at the tall, long-haired man.

Paris just shook his head.

Telling Contender to shut the fuck up, using silence to evoke silence.

Etna struggled, but she didn’t find the means to get her head out of the water.

Ice water, it had to be. When I glanced at Paris, Contender, and Vulturehawk, I could see how the cold and damp was getting to them.

Thud,who held Sveta against the ground, didn’t seem to mind overmuch. Sveta was adapting to more targeted holds, hauling on Thud’s knees, pulling his head down.

This- it was a stalemate of a particularly dark sort. If we- if I backed down now, hauling Etna out of the water, then I wasn’t sure I could go as far as was necessary the next time I had to make the call.

And Contender was probably right. They probably didn’t care.

We needed a break for the stalemate, and it was either going to be one of theirs or one of ours. Ours were out of action. Theirs…

I glanced back.

Prancer and Moose were approaching, picking their way across the water. They had one of ours hostage- Sveta. Three of ours if we included the Harbingers, who we couldn’t help.

“Big bad Paris,” Swansong said. “Can’t even protect his subordinate. From all I heard about you… I thought you’d be more.”

He didn’t take the bait. I was put in mind of the cold, calculating professional, rather than Love Lost’s type.

Moose and Prancer reached the edge of our collection of capes. I saw Moose pause as they got to a vantage point where they could see Etna moving awkwardly while belly-down in water.

“Hey,” Prancer said. “Blue and Bitter are coming, along with the rest. Your buddies won’t recover before they get here.”

I glanced at Swansong.

“We don’t need your help,” Paris said. A voice at normal volume, steady, condemning.

“Help would be nice, to get out of the cold,” Contender said.

Paris gave Contender a look.

As much emotion as we’d seen from him yet.

“I don’t care enough about this to help or not help, or to care that you hate me for no damn reason,” Prancer said.

“I’d care, but I get the impression this is complicated,” Moose said.

“It’s really not, Moose. They cut up kids,” I said. “Carved off pieces. Left ’em crying. For a good few of them, they were crying over what happened to their friends, not themselves.”

“Took my leg,” Swansong said.

“You think I’m nicer than I am,” Moose said, his voice low.

“I think you’re a cape who flew under the radar for a long time-”

“Your polite way of saying I’m B-list.”

“-You lived in the woods of British Columbia and you oversaw drug grows. Kept ’em safe, scared off trespassers, dealt with police. As villains go that’s pretty harmless. You didn’t sign on for this bloody, killing stuff.”

“Nope,” he said. “But I didn’t sign on to stop it, either.”

“Bull,” I retorted. “This isn’t you. You can’t be okay with this.”

“I came out of the attack on the Fallen compound needing three inches of colon removed after it got pulled out of my middle and left exposed to the world,” he said. “A friend died. I’ve had to face a lot of ugliness.”

“Boo fucking hoo,” Swansong said.

“No,” I said. I could see a dark look in Prancer’s eyes. As dark as any I’d seen in Swansong’s earlier tonight. “Ugliness sucks. It hasn’t been great.”

“I can’t stand gutless villains. There’s no point to this, and there’s no point to holding back and being neutral except to be an utter coward. You cast yourselves in the worst light by hiding when it counts.”

“Swan?” I asked. “Speaking of standing by, give Etna a breath of air?”

She didn’t budge.

“One breath,” I said. I glanced at Paris. “Unless you’re going to stop her?”

A gamble. Was he going to act differently while Prancer and Moose were here?

She walked over to Etna, and Paris didn’t stop her.

She hauled back on the decorated ‘flame’ collar of Etna’s costume and lifted her up. Etna took in gulps of air, coughing and sputtering, her arms curling up awkwardly, like t-rex arms. Not that I’d been better.

Swansong dropped her. Etna splashed down into the water.

“This is who you are, Moose? Gutless?”

“I’m sayin’, feeling awfully mortal after that little funeral service. All I’ve wanted since the world ended was a place and some people to keep close.”

“Do you want those people to be people who maim others?”

“I wanted Hollow Point, but that didn’t work out. This… it’s closer to a summer camp. Some shitty people, sure, but freeing, finally a chance to breathe, after a lot of bad days.”

“People who maimed others,” I reminded him. “When I gouged you beneath your mask, you said your mom would’ve cried over it. How’s she going to feel about this?”

“Low blow,” Prancer said.

Moose just made a bit of a face, almost a scowl, but then faltering, like he couldn’t bring himself to.

“Prance?” Moose asked.

Was that him deferring, because he legitimately couldn’t come to a decision, or was he checking with his boss or partner because anything else would be dangerous?

Not that I could imagine Prancer being an outright danger to Moose.

“We negotiate,” he said. “Give her a breath, come on. Enough have died.”

Swansong looked at me, then at my nod, lifted Etna up.

“What do you want?”

“Call off the reinforcements,” I said.

“Can’t. I’m not in charge.”

“Convince them.”

“Can’t. They don’t like me,” Prancer said. “I made a play for power and I failed. Lost my Queen.”

There were more vehicles on the road now. The cars Foil had disabled were moving now.

A convoy of capes and the kind of locals who’d worked with Nursery and accepted her methods because it meant a shot at a house.

Our team still wasn’t up.

“Let Sveta go,” I told the others. “We let you have Etna.”

The chess case fifty-three turned his head slowly to look at Paris. Sveta gripped the head from five different angles.

“This the Svet’?” Thud asked, in his booming voice.

“Yeah,” I heard Sveta. It sounded like she was having trouble making words. “Let me fucking go!”

“Let her go,” Paris said. “She’s more dangerous to them than to us.”

They released Sveta, who escaped. Swansong let Etna slump to the ground, backing up to stand by my side.

I bent down and picked up one of the Harbingers. The second Harbinger was up, and crawled our way until he found ground steady enough to stand on. His leg looked mangled. In this manner, we gathered together. A very small group when compared to what felt like a larger assortment of others. Not because we were outnumbered by that much, but because they were more intact as a whole.

Swansong elbowed me. When I looked, she passed me a phone.

Ah, Etna’s phone. What had she been interested in? The reinforcements?

An overhead map with a field of red dots. The traps. Easily fifty. She’d been keeping an eye on the layout while trying to herd Swansong toward the traps. While moving around on her own. Probably everyone had something like this.

Seemed like Love Lost had been making a lot of use of the tinker power, lately.

“It’s going to mess with the dog’s tracking,” Swansong said. “How can they follow a trail if it’s littered with this garbage?”

“Let’s talk about you showing us the way to them,” I said, to Prancer.

I saw others react. Firming up, tensing, getting ready for debate, fight, argument.

“You leave anyone I name alone, your targets aside,” Prancer said, calm, “Then yeah.”

“We shouldn’t,” Moose said.

“You really shouldn’t,” Contender said, hostile and angry. Beside him, Paris looked like he agreed with the villain consensus.

“Give my guys protections, keep the peace, I’ll show you where those guys are,” Prancer said.

“You’re not making any friends,” Contender told him.

“Deal,” I said.

Prancer laughed. “Fuck no. That’s one of my conditions. Second? Money. Enough to get resituated.”

“You’re making enemies who’ll come for you,” Contender said.

“I promised my girl I’d make something of myself. I’m not doing that here,” Prancer said. “This is a mess, those guys have gone around the bend, and hearing about that kind of horror? Kids? Doesn’t sit right. Having talked to Cradle, Snag, Love Lost, I believe it. It’s fine when it’s Fallen and Fallen soldiers only. But they were too okay with it, and now it’s other people?”

“How much money?”

“I’m not greedy. A hundred thou?”

I grit my teeth.

“Fifty thou,” Prancer amended his statement. “And I hold a hostage until the payment comes. I’ll call in favors, get you your safety.”

“You can’t call in enough favors for that,” Contender said. “They paid mercenaries and hired them to defend these spots.”

“That’s their fault for not being discerning about clients,” Swansong said. “Greed made them stupid.”

“What the lady said,” Prancer echoed. He seemed to stand a little taller, in the mid-strides of a deal. “How much of you being a pain in my ass was your game in Hollow Point, Damsel?”

“One hundred percent,” she said.

“Even down to killing Beast of Burden.”

“That was different. The rest? An act. I’m the easiest and most reasonable person in the world to get along with, when you’re obeying my every whim. You… didn’t obey.”

“Mm.”

“You call them off as best you can, you lead the way, we give you safe passage and we pay,” I said.

Prancer smiled.

Byron’s power went off again. A diagram high above, drawn out in blue lines and bluer lights, it became a vast quantity of water, and that water flooded the area, spraying to cover field and road both. We were beyond the worst of it, but at the road-

At the road, it was a defensive measure. The wolf had been standing guard and the wolf had just been knocked down. They were picking a fight.

“Yeah,” Prancer said. “Deal then.”

“You’re fucking us,” Contender said.

“You’re fucking us,” Prancer retorted. “How’s Moose supposed to have his adult summer camp-”

“Winter camp,” Moose said.

“How’re we supposed to call this place home if they bring this garbage here?” Prancer asked, almost snarling. “If you help them?”

“If you thought it would be any different, you were lying to yourself,” Etna said. “This is the default. The way things are staying. It’s the best we get.”

“Fuck that,” Prancer snarled.

He turned to go, but as he did, the villains we’d been fighting with tensed, shifted footing, got ready to pursue.

We couldn’t turn our backs and a small village of capes had turned up to defend their turf. They were wet and cold after Byron’s impromptu shower, but that didn’t count for nearly enough, not when our team was halfway disabled, if not outright down for the count.

“And this isn’t even going to be the hard part,” Prancer said.

Heavens – 12.4

Moose, Prancer, Sveta, Swansong and I were a loose line against Paris’s group. Etna was worse for wear but she could sort of fly, and that meant she could be an airborne mess instead of a burden on her teammates. Contender was bleeding, but that wasn’t keeping him down. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Paris stood tall, darts in one hand. Vulturehawk lingered somewhere between Paris and Contender. I interpreted it as a kind of anxiousness, finding some degree of familiarity in Contender and a bit of reassurance in Paris’s confidence. Thud hung back.

One of the Navigators had had their throat slashed. We’d read it as an attempt at a mercy kill. I found myself staring at Vulturehawk’s ‘talons’ – the singular blades at each foot.

“I was hoping you’d come around, Prance,” Contender said.

“Shouldn’t have,” Paris added.

I moved the Harbingers as we steadily retreated. One was leaning on me, the other was unconscious. My hand periodically convulsed or tensed, causing my grip to slip on the one I dragged, keeping me from making any headway. Swansong couldn’t hold them at all, and Sveta- well, Sveta wasn’t an option.

“Let me carry,” Moose said.

“Can I trust you?” I asked.

“Come on,” he said, and it wasn’t a condemnation or a plea. Closer to an ‘excuse me’, as he bent down. Each of the Harbingers was lifted up, draped over one of Moose’s shoulders. One was conscious and able enough to protest, and was shifted to a position where he sat on Moose’s right shoulder.

“Better?” Moose asked.

I wasn’t sure if he was asking me or the Harbinger, but the Harbinger said, “yes,” and I took that as excuse enough to stay quiet and stay focused on our immediate problems. I could support Swansong’s balance and keep an eye on Paris’s group.

“Treat them well,” Swansong said. “Hurting them puts you onto the shitlist of some powerful, scary individuals.”

Etna tried to make a globe, but her body convulsed and tensed, and she dropped it. It landed on the field below her.

“Trying to scare us?” Contender asked. He winced, touching his neck. It looked like talking hurt. Good.

“Individual one? Me. They’re my brothers.”

“You sound juvenile, grandstanding like that,” Contender said.

“Because they’re ex-Slaughterhouse Nine,” she said. “All of us are one big unhappy family of not-to-be-fucked-with.”

Her words were a growl at the end there.

“Who?” Vulturehawk asked Contender.

“Remember what I said when we did the Navigator job?” Contender asked. “Some days are good, some days are bad, and some are bloody by necessity.”

“Throw away all the good days and all of the bad days, and make every day bloody,” Swansong intoned. “Make every day a bad day for someone else. Then you fit in right alongside the Slaughterhouse Nine.”

“Not how I would have put it,” Contender said. “But sure.”

“I wasn’t trying to help you explain,” she said.

Our footing was slippery. What had been snow, ice, and frozen dirt was now closer to ice and slick frozen dirt, after Byron’s downpour.

“Your second issue?” Swansong asked. I had the distinct impression that she was taking all of her frustration and the pain of her missing foot and channeling those things into her words. She enjoyed being scary and this kind of taunting served. “They have brothers.”

“We dealt with them,” Contender said.

They were edging closer. Paris’s every movement was calculated, I noticed. He was like a magician, timing his movements so he acted when people were distracted. He put others between us and him, and the moment we were engaged and reacting to other people, he’d start moving again. He had a dart in each hand but he didn’t throw them.

“You got lucky. Our powers got wiped out by whatever that was. Now we’re at, hm… I’d have to use my power to get a feel for where we are.”

“Seventy-five percent,” I said, testing my own flight.

“Harbinger,” Swansong said, keying her voice to be something closer to haunting, “Think you can beat all of these guys when your power’s working again?”

“Injured, so no,” the Harbinger said.

Swansong turned her head, shooting him a glare.

“Give me four rocks I can throw and my power at eighty percent and sure.”

“Thank you,” she said. She turned to face Paris’s group, while still talking to him, “I’m intimidating them and you throw a ‘no’ out there? And Jack said you were one of the scariest of them.”

“I am. We are. Which is why, ideally, I’d like four rocks I can throw, my power at eighty-five percent, and one nail or pen. Because beating them isn’t enough, now. Both sides of this equation need to be balanced out.”

“You couldn’t end this by saying you’ll annihilate them? Or even ‘break them’?”

“Those kinds of phrasings have been made weak by overuse. Math is unchanging and crystal clear.”

“Only to you,” Swansong said.

“This is going completely over my head,” Moose said.

“Just don’t drop ’em,” I said. “You don’t want them holding grudges.”

“Alright,” Moose said. “I wasn’t going to anyhow.”

I glanced at the phone, tracking my blip -the phone I held- and extrapolating directions from the way the image showed an overhead view of field and road. Reaching over, I gave Swansong a tug on the arm, pulling her away from a course that would put her in the way of traps.

“Hey Moose,” Prancer said. “Remember the old mechanic, when we were road tripping? Got in an argument with Velvet?”

“Sure.”

“Remember why I handled it the way I did? Don’t go saying it, just yes or no.”

“Tricks, Prancer?” I asked. “You’re being vague.”

“Nah,” he said. “Not coordinating against you. I swear on Velvet’s memory.”

“He’s being honest,” Moose said. “I remember, Prance.”

We continued a slow retreat toward the road. Paris’s group wasn’t letting us go, and I could tell that at least Paris had noted that we were adapting to the mines. He might have hoped we’d walk right into them.

Before he could adapt or attack, I spoke up, “Contender. Paris. The Harbingers are in good with the people who really run this city, you know. We asked for help in dealing with the real scumbags, with you assholes, and they sent these guys. You have enemies with reach that extends beyond dimensions, now.”

“We’ll manage,” Contender said.

“We closed the doors,” I told him. “Exits to other worlds are closed, until we unlock them. You’re stuck here with us. No running back to Cheit, no escaping the consequences.”

We steadily retraced our steps, moving backward through the field, toward the larger group of villains and our incapacitated allies.

Sveta was staying further away. She triggered a trap and grabbed it, hurling it in the general direction of Contender’s group.

Paris looked ready to deal with it himself, but it was Contender who stepped forward, using his power to draw a glowing bubble around himself and the trap both. Two seconds passed, and the bubble receded. The trap was broken at his feet. No symptoms.

I noted the moment when Paris’s group stopped, Paris touching Vulturehawk’s shoulder to get his attention, making sure he stayed with the others. As part of that same check to make sure his group was organized, he turned to make sure Thud wasn’t falling behind. The chess-piece Cauldron deviant was slow, heavy.

Turning my head, I could see why they’d signaled the stop. Bluestocking stood on the road, a hump of dirt that had been sifted of stones, flattened and packed down.

I saw Bitter Pill, with Crested beside her, and I saw Bird Brain. Bird Brain held a rifle. I didn’t see any of Bird Brain’s funny head movement, but I knew it was in the cards.

“You okay, Et?” Bluestocking asked.

“They have-” Etna grunted out the words, throat tensing and jerking. “Phone.”

“Your phone. Did you do something stupid like have both personal and cape business on one device?”

“Mm,” Etna grunted in the affirmative.

“That’s stupid,” Bluestocking said, to Etna. To me, she said, “There are rules.”

“This group was the group that cut the Navigators to pieces and left them like that. Undying and in agony,” I said. “Pleasantries go out the window when you cross lines like that.”

“Not Etna.”

“Aiding and abetting that same group,” I said.

“You played your part in this. Raising the stakes,” Bluestocking said. We’d ticked her off when we’d last crossed paths. She’d been breaking Etna and Crested out of jail, and we’d blocked her, forced her to shell out money, some limited information, and give medical care to the people they’d hurt. Now I supposed she thought she had her revenge.

I shook my head. “The stakes were always going to be raised. There was-”

Prancer cleared his throat.

“What?” I asked.

“You asked me to negotiate.”

I closed my mouth, eyeing Paris’s group. They were most likely to spontaneously attack, especially considering we were closer to the villains and hemmed in on the sides by the planted traps.

Traps we could deal with, but…

At the far side of the road, Byron and Chastity were sitting together, both visible. Chastity had been disarmed, and Byron had Birdbrain’s rifle trained on him. I could see the glow of my mother’s orb. She’d retreated into that form.

Because they traveled over the orb, I realized there were still red electricity crackles dancing intermittently through the area.

I checked the phone.

No, the traps were a little more complicated.

“Remember that thing we talked about, Moose?”

“I remember,” Moose said.

“Being sneaky, Prancer?” Bluestocking asked.

“Nah,” Prancer said. “Trying to figure out how to help you.”

“We don’t need help.”

“Look,” Prancer said. “It sucks right now. Pay’s shit, money doesn’t go far, heroes are ramping up, and we end up in places like Hollow Point and Frontier Row, here. And the heroes show up, and we can’t get settled.”

While he talked, I drew a circle on the phone screen to ‘reel in’ the zoom. Moving in closer, looking at the cluster of traps where my friends were, I could see how they were spaced out, seven in a loose cluster.

Nothing distinguishing one trap from the others.

“My group’s doing fine, Prance. Sucks to be you, I’m sure.”

“All of us are getting together. You’ve got drug kingpins and smugglers like me and my crew, you’ve got hitmen for hire, information brokers, the publicity hounds… we had to agree to a truce, to a strict no-infighting policy. A truce that means we hear stories about what people are getting up to and we let it slide.”

“You were part of those discussions too, Prancer. In fact, I seem to recall that the topic of the Navigators came up, and you had a stake in the matter.”

“Not denying I did,” Prancer said. He glanced at me. “Blue will bring it up if I don’t. I wanted the Navigators gone.”

I was in the middle of zooming out to see the trap layout when I processed what he’d said.

I tensed, phone forgotten for the moment.

“They were going after our one means of trading with the settlements establishing on the other side of the ocean. Stopping all trafficking, not just the human trafficking. With winter coming up, everything fucked up, my girl dead…”

“You asked for it?” I asked, my voice hard.

“He didn’t,” Moose said, sounding defensive. “That’s not how we operate.”

“But Cradle knew I wanted it and he offered,” Prancer said.

“And you said yes,” Bluestocking said. “My group said no.”

“But you allowed it,” Swansong said.

“Etna’s even protecting the people who did it,” I added. “And she’s working for you.”

“The only way we survive as a whole is if we’re strong. Strength in number and strength in the powers we have,” Bluestocking said. “The network of alliances we’re operating under is like a chessboard. Try to take one piece and two more are positioned to wipe you out. That’s on purpose.”

“All beside the point,” Prancer said.

“It’s the point,” I said, more than a little incensed.

“It’s not my point,” Prancer countered. He sounded heated in his own way. “My point is that deals were struck, in the midst of all of that. Cradle came to me, he made the offer, asks for a cut of traffic if he removes an obstacle from our way. He shakes my hand, and we go on our merry way. Then I find out what happened and I’m… angry at the Navigators, because it’s their fault that it came to that. Irrational, but I’ve become pretty fucking familiar with irrational lately. Familiar with angry.”

“Your point being?” Swansong asked.

“That he made deals with other major villain groups. With people in those villain groups. And I’m willing to bet he shook their hands too,” Prancer said. “The guy with tinker hands and arms and an emotion power shook Bluestocking’s hand. I remembered Snag. I know Snag could make stuff happen through his tech. I got to wondering.”

I looked between him and the villains of the villain group.

“I had a little scab on the side of my hand. Like a needle went in,” Prancer said. “I’m wondering if anyone else here had anything like that.”

“Cradle touched my arm,” Moose said. “Seemed weird at the time. We talked about it, it’s when we first started thinking something might be hinky.”

There was a long pause.

“Yeah, he shook my hand,” Bluestocking said. “If you were right, then alliances don’t matter. He breached the truce.”

“I’m right,” Prancer said. “Rationally, really, none of us would be okay with this. Right? We’re not monsters.”

The question was met by silence. I saw some exchanged looks.

“No,” Bitter Pill, the woman who had turned civilians into hulking rage-filled monstrosities, said. “We’re not monsters.”

When my eye fell on Prancer, he locked his gaze onto mine. “He didn’t have to get every last one of us. Webwork of alliances being what it is… he just had to get enough of us. Subordinates are going to follow their leaders, and they aren’t going to go after all of Frontier Row.”

“That’s a really terrible name, even for this mudpit,” Swansong said.

“Let it go,” I said.

I could have addressed the group, challenged, questioned. I didn’t. No further comments. Instead, I waited, studying the group.

I looked away, and looked back to the phone. Zooming out – lots of clusters of seven traps, some so close together that they looked like they all interconnected.

Fuck. Maybe I’d have to say something.

“Dad,” I called out. “Try nuking the trap in the center? To your left.”

“If you do anything, we’re going to have a problem,” Bluestocking said.

“The sooner they’re free, the sooner we’re out of your hair,” I said. “Provided there’s any validity to this.”

I saw her pause. She scowled, and she was good at scowling. She was probably the type who scowled while reading, scowled while watching television…

“Do it,” she said. “Antares’ dad, do what she said.”

My dad, incapacitated as he was, was able to create his orbs. He moved his arm into the right general area, then created an orb, holding it down over the trap at the center of the area. Here and there, it scootched over a half foot one way or the other, as his arm spasmed.

It detonated, his hand containing the direction of the blast. The blast didn’t hurt him, and it was small enough that it didn’t disturb anyone nearby.

I didn’t see a discernible difference. Had the red lightning stopped its intermittent crackling?

“There’s some validity to this, then,” Swansong said.

“I had a mark on my finger, and a weird heavy feeling, like I get any time I have an injection,” Bluestocking said. “I had Bitter Pill take a look at it.”

“I took it for a splinter,” Bitter Pill said.

“He broke the truce, the heroes go after him and his co-conspirators,” Prancer said. “They leave us alone. We point the way and we don’t even have to get our hands dirty or risk our own skin, because they’re going to take over dealing with that asshole.”

“You could help, make amends,” I said.

“I’ll leave that to these guys,” Prancer said. “Up to them. But I’m leaving. I’m going. Greener pastures. I have some money, I’m going to get settled in another corner. Somewhere smaller and quieter. People are welcome to come.”

“Poaching, Prancer?”

Prancer shrugged.

“I’ll help,” Moose declared. “Carry your scary little buddies.”

“Now I have to wait for you,” Prancer said.

“Well… deal,” Moose told him.

It was a little thing, but the tone of it suggested that the tensions weren’t as high as they had been. He could get away with that kind of comment and pushback. Bluestocking didn’t look like she was going to attack any more.

The red lightning was dissipating. I wasn’t sure if it was because the trap that held the reserve power was gone, or if the network was spread too thin.

Not that things were okay.

Paris, Vulturehawk, Thud, and Contender lingered at the rear of our group.

Prancer seemed aware.

“He shook your hands. He would have, as part of the hiring,” Prancer said.

“Paris doesn’t need anything to make him monstrous,” Byron said, too quiet for Paris to hear.

“A small mark on the hand, or uncharacteristic anger?” Prancer prompted. “Both?”

Paris shook his head.

“Whatever reputation you think you’re getting or holding by sticking to the contract, you’re losing by going against all the alliances. You can’t work with a truce-breaker,” Bluestocking said.

“Years ago, his team couldn’t beat me,” Paris said, indicating Byron. “Everything I did was fair-”

“You targeted capes and hospitalized them for kicks!” Byron raised his voice.

“I met them on the streets and I beat them on the streets,” Paris said. “By the rules we all followed, that’s allowed. Reduce it all down and that’s even what it’s all about. Then they turned around and accused me of a murder that never happened. Capes came after my civilian identity. People interviewed my family. My wife. I went to jail. I almost went to the Birdcage. All of the rules you’re talking about now? Truces, what’s allowed? It didn’t matter then and it doesn’t matter now.”

“I could have killed you earlier,” Byron said. “I didn’t. Because I felt like I played a part in what happened-”

“You did.”

“But this road you’re going down, it doesn’t make sense.”

“Don’t talk to me like you’re righteous,” Paris said. “If you had any guts, you would have done to him what he did to you.”

There were two statements set side by side there. To me, they were a non-sequitur. To Paris, no doubt, a natural jump from one idea to the next.

Byron shook his head. It looked like he was recovering now. No ambient red lightning, nothing humming in the air?

“Speaking of righteous,” Bluestocking said. “I know about the charities, Paris.”

“Charities?” Byron asked.

“The money he earns, he gives almost all of it away. Keeps some to secure his family’s future, anyone would, but nobody would give as much to those in need as this guy. I bet Tattletale could shine light on why, if we asked her. Guilt?”

My mind hadn’t been going to guilt. Maybe self-aggrandizement. If his civilian identity made the donations, that identity reaped the reward when it came to reputation and social status. It wouldn’t be the first time a cape identity was used in a dark way to support a shining public image.

“Tattletale’s not available,” Swansong said. “They took her head.”

Bluestocking nodded, seemingly unfazed.

“Outing me?” Paris asked Bluestocking.

“No. But if you’re doing this for money, to throw ninety percent of what you make away at charities, I’m prepared to tell them where the money comes from.”

Paris shook his head. “Do it then. You’ll see how little I care about the money or the reputation.”

“It may not come to that,” I said. “Because I don’t think these people are on your side.”

Paris glanced through the mask that covered his brow, nose, and cheekbones, peering at the crowd. Rain pattered off of his hood. He looked cold – a guy as tall with as little body weight as he had probably didn’t retain heat well, and being soaked in cold weather impacted him. He still managed to stand with head erect, no visible signs other than clenched fists and a slightly drawn-out look to his face.

“I had a taste of revenge,” Paris said.

“What?” I asked.

“Capricorn. You took photos while out with Moonsong, didn’t you?”

“What did you do?” Byron asked.

“I had a taste of revenge. The Shepherds and Advance Guard came after us. And the Shepherds are led by Moonsong.”

Byron struggled to stand. Chastity gave him a hand, while being unable to stand herself, her shoulder as a support.

Standing up, moisture streaming off of his armor, Capricorn flinched as a spasm caught him by the side.

“What have you done?” Byron asked.

“You let me, Thud, Vulturehawk and Contender walk away, I’ll tell you what you want to know. And you do want to know this.”

Byron’s gauntlet squeaked. He looked to Swansong and me.

“Could be a lie,” Swansong said.

“It’s up to you,” I told Byron. “We’ll manage either way.”

“No,” Byron said. “Not up to me.”

He blurred, and the blur separated. Two segments, side by side. An armored Capricorn, insides partially hanging out.

Paris didn’t look especially happy at the sight. But there was something in him that looked… satisfied? Behind him and all around us, veins of rock ran through the water in the irrigation canals, filling the bottoms of ditches.

Tristan lay there, arms propping him up, Chastity providing more support. I saw villains in the larger group behind Bluestocking look away.

“Do what you have to. Save our old teammate. Paris will get what he deserves- eventually.”

“I deserve to see you suffer ten times what I did for your fake murder charge. This? It’s a beginning,” Paris said.

Tristan began to change back. As the blur fought to reconcile, I had to wince, worrying about what would happen if it didn’t.

“For those who don’t know, Cradle did that to multiple people. For those who do know and allowed it to happen? Fuck you.”

“Extenuating circumstances,” Prancer said. He tapped his hand, where a faint mark dotted the side.

I didn’t respond. Up on the road, Tristan became Byron again, and the veins of rock splashed violently, the water resettling. A few people flinched or reacted with surprise.

“He knows you’re coming, and he researched who we were up against. Breakthrough. Foil. He knows Foil can shoot through anything, that Precipice can break through anything if he uses his power and then hits it hard enough. He knows that… they’ll be tempted to.”

“What?” I heard Foil. She was still in the ditch, still recovering.

“He knew you’d want to shoot, so he put pieces of Tattletale, Moonsong, and other people you care about in the way. Don’t shoot, don’t try. That’s the information you’d regret not having, that buys me my safe exit.”

Paris brought out his phone. I saw him bring up the same screen I had with Etna’s phone, showing the layout of the traps.

“Let’s get you first aid for that neck of yours,” Paris told Contender. “Come on, V.H.”

“No,” Vulturehawk said.

Paris hesitated, staring at the aerial assassin.

“Cray’ did nick-drip my hand meat,” Vulturehawk said. “No yah?”

“Yeah,” Contender said, sounding resigned. “You realize that means we’re going our separate ways?”

“Yah.”

“Yeah.”

“Sor’, Thud,” Vulturehawk said.

“Neh,” Thud responded, voice low, guttural.

Paris and Contender exchanged glances before heading out into the field, Thud following. Here and there, traps illuminated, and Contender created bubbles surrounding the two of them, allowing them to walk unmolested. When traps weren’t destroyed, they activated well after the bubble disappeared and the pair had moved on.

On Moose’s shoulder, the Harbinger that sat there drew a slingshot out of his pocket. “Three stones, one pen.”

“No,” Bluestocking said.

The others were rousing. Most lay on cold ground, panting for breath. I could see the sheen of sweat on faces. My mother’s. Rachel’s. Foil’s.

Byron had helped Chastity up.

“Can we hurt him? Just a little?” Byron asked. “Because he’s a dick that hospitalizes minors for being different? My friends, even? And now he’s gone after Moonsong?”

“Who are you asking?” I asked, quiet.

“I don’t know,” Byron said.

An instant later, Byron blurred.

I tensed, watching. Across the field, I saw Paris stumble, dropping to his knees on rough ground, as droplets of water became pebbles and water elsewhere became water with veins of rock in it and rock with veins of water. But Paris had been skipping over the dips, avoiding the water, and he hadn’t really been affected, other than a change in footing. Contender had forgotten Paris’s earlier warning, and Contender fell, making a sound that I heard from two or three hundred feet away.

A twisted ankle, a sprain, maybe a break.

Tristan, already blurring to become Byron again, was nodding, silent.

The change from Tristan to Byron hadn’t changed the stone back to water. Paris had to use his power to disintegrate the rock, which meant shielding Contender from the spray. It held them up.

“Letting him know,” Byron said.

“You can handle the rest of this on your own,” Bluestocking said. I wasn’t sure if this was a consequence of Byron acting, after she’d told Harbinger no. I wasn’t about to judge either way.

No, this was… uneasy ground. Ground where I wasn’t sure I knew how to navigate the terrain.

Bluestocking’s group piled into the cars or started on their walk back. Prancer went with them, while Moose stayed. We took a moment to recoup, our people getting sorted out.

“You look like someone drowned a cat,” Swansong told Damsel.

“Cats can slash your throat.”

“Your makeup’s running. And you were mocking me?”

“Look down on me and I’ll fucking evisc-“

The remaining word was drowned out by a blast of power, a swipe of claw.

Swansong took a single step back. Her costume had been damaged at the shoulder, but the skin hadn’t been touched by the power.

The bladed claw-tips, however- a line of blood marked Swansong’s shoulder from collarbone to the rightmost edge of her right shoulder. There were spots where it looked like it had cut deeper than just the skin.

“Eviscerate me?” Swansong asked, and even though her voice was calm, I could see the animation in her eyes- if it weren’t for Kenzie’s special contact lenses with their holographic smoke effect, I might not have seen how her eyes moved. As it was, I could see the starting point for the black smoke as a faint ring at the edges of her eyes. “You’re making us look bad, and that’s worse.”

“Shut up before I shut you up.”

“Let’s patch you up,” my dad said, intervening. “I have a kit.”

“How useful,” Swansong said, smiling. Calm, poised, with eyes that moved in an agitated way, checking people’s expressions, body language. Checking on her sister.

“Instead of every member of the team having utility belts, they get a big guy like me, marry me into the family, and have me carry everything.”

“I’m sure you have other merits, Mr. Dallon,” Swansong said.

“He does,” my mother said.

I was very sure that every bit of calm and charm was like a poke with a sharp stick to Damsel.

“Can the dogs track?”

“Give me a minute,” Rachel said, brusque, annoyed. Chastity went straight to her. A helping hand, a familiar face.

My mom assisted my dad in getting things out, holding the kit in her hands while he picked through the sub-compartments and drew a bent suturing needle out of a kit.

“This will sting.”

“My foot was cut off. It hurts every second. I lost my hands once. That hurt. I can deal with a scratch.”

“Sure,” my dad said.

Foil was with Capricorn, and they were talking about Paris. I could hear the emotions in Byron’s voice – emotions I didn’t tend to associate with him. He named teammates, Moonsong, Furcate, Reconciliation, and my ears latched onto the names, but I wasn’t trying to listen, and I stepped away to avoid overhearing things that were being shared in private.

Too close to home, for Byron. Paris’s involvement.

No.

No, not just Byron. This was too close to home for Sveta, who was a little out of control, isolated, and cut off from the rest of us.

For Chastity, probably, because she’d stepped away from Rachel to go to Damsel, touching Damsel’s hair, smiling. Playing peacemaker to someone that was emotionally volatile, dangerous, who probably didn’t deserve that peace. But Chastity was doing it, and she was good at it, from what I could tell.

The Undersiders? I couldn’t tell. Rachel was alone, focusing on her dogs. Foil was worrying, no doubt, especially with the nebulous hints Paris had given. She probably wanted to be stopping March, not here. I knew she’d always felt displaced, before. It was probably why she was with the Undersiders.

Damsel was tense, but she was easing up. Walking a razor’s edge. Ashley was trying to look poised as my dad stitched up her shoulder. She wasn’t doing the best job of upholding the poised and ‘I couldn’t care less’ image, I could see the tells, but nobody commented.

And, all this while, I was thinking of Brandish as my mom and Flashbang as my dad because right now they were. I associated coming home at the end of the night to medical care and small talk or recaps of the night with family. After a point, it had been coming back to Amy, to fix any bumps or scrapes, if anything had slipped past my forcefield. That thought did sour the picture.

Soured, but it didn’t change that some of the moments my mom had felt most like a mom had been when she’d been holding my hand over the sink, dabbing at blood or probing at the bones to see if I’d broken my hand by hitting something too hard. Like other girls had their moms brush their hair, but I’d had that too when I was little and it didn’t sit with the same weight as the hand care. I remembered my dad massaging my shoulder and talking to me about the bigger picture, after a frustrating night where five carjackers had scattered the instant they saw me and I’d only caught two. In those moments I’d felt more like I was a part of the family than I had on any Christmas or on any summer vacation.

Close to home. Pain had a way of bringing us that direction, and those traps had hurt. Exposed the raw nerves.

That only left Moose and Harbinger.

I really hoped Harbinger wasn’t closer to home, because home for him had to be a scary, scary place.

I floated, testing my flight. Ninety percent.

Still no clue why it had cut out. It hadn’t been one of Love Lost’s traps. It had affected the other guys. But that kind of interruption went hand in hand with someone having a trigger event. It was just that this was… major. It hadn’t been anyone in our group or our ongoing skirmish, and it had been both more distant and more profound.

Something more intense in quantity… or in quality. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it spooked me.

“Hey Moose,” I said.

“What’s up?” he asked. “Everything good?”

His attention moved to Swansong and Damsel, then to the mutant dogs.

“It’ll have to be.”

“Good. Sorry about, y’know, not jumping on board. What Bluestocking said about alliances was more or less why.”

“I’m just glad you came around,” I said.

“What am I walking into?” he asked.

“A vicious rivalry. A lunatic who’s butchering people, and we don’t know- well, we have hints about why. It’s convenient to eliminate the Navigators in a brutal way. It plays into the villains wanting to posture. But there’s more to it.”

“Sure,” Moose said.

I lowered my voice. “Prancer’s thing about Cradle injecting something into hands was pure, unmitigated bullshit. The mechanic thing?”

“Doesn’t have to be bullshit,” Moose said. “Old mechanic gets told one thing by Velvet, he does another, turns out she’s right, but he’s proud. He needs a way out, so he can do the right thing. Doesn’t mean the way out is wrong or a lie. It’s even better if it’s the truth.”

“Cradle’s thing isn’t anger. That’s Love Lost.”

“Could be,” Moose said, jaw square, gaze focused on the horizon, in the direction Paris and Contender were both limping off. “Tinkers are funny though, aren’t they?”

“Funny,” I said. “A lot of people are getting a pass.”

“Prance delivered what you asked for.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Chastity whistled. “We’re moving!”

Further up the road, Rachel was hanging off the side of the hunting hound. It had started pacing forward. The wolf ranged further ahead, checking the path.

We packed up what we could, and Swansong’s first aid ended with an unceremonious length of bandage pressed down over sutures. Everyone started following.

“He’s a smart guy. Admirable, even,” Moose said.

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Just wait until he starts playing more to his strengths like this,” Moose said. “He’ll change your mind.”

“I dread the day.”

One of the Harbingers was waking up. That was good – being unconscious for longer than five or ten minutes was a really bad sign.

I flew to Swansong, noting that part of her costume was destroyed, and that meant her outer layers were damaged. I undid the straps for my breastplate, and pulled off the hooded top section. I picked off the shoulder and hood accessories.

“You don’t have to. The cold doesn’t bother me,” she said, while looking very bothered by the cold.

“Wear it. I have a forcefield,” I said. “You’ll have to find someone else to lean on, though.”

“Noted,” she said.

I was already feeling the bite of wind. I slipped all of the accessory parts into a pocket and I fixed my breastplate back into place – I had a long-sleeved thermal top on beneath, like a skintight sweater, and I did have gloves on, with bandages under one glove. There were still slivers of glass stuck in the bandage and the fabric of the glove, from where I had punched the trap.

“Victoria,” my mother said, while I was still making sure Swansong was squared away.

I turned in the air.

“It was good, back there. The negotiation. Getting through a bad situation. I’m proud.”

“I’m pleased too,” Swansong said. “I’ll turn Breakthrough into some top notch villains, just you wait and see.”

She laughed, mostly for her own benefit, and she might have glimpsed the frown on my mother’s face, because she doubled down on the laughter.

Capricorn broke away from Foil to see what was up.

“Give her a shoulder to lean on?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Gentleman,” Swansong said. She sounded far too pleased with herself, for whatever reason.

We were making some headway now. Some walking, some jogging, with the group getting a bit more spread out. The stragglers like Swansong would catch up. I hoped that a lone wolf like Rachel would hang back and wait for us if she found something, instead of going in alone. I didn’t know how predictable she was or how she operated.

I hoped too, that Damsel wouldn’t try to stalk ahead and tire herself out too thoroughly in the process, just to prove she moved faster than her sister.

Moose was waving me down. Please let this not be too complicated.

“What is it?”

“Paris, Thud, and Contender. They’re going in the same direction we are. They cut through the trees between the outcroppings, way over there. Harbinger Two saw them.”

I looked. ‘Over there’ was three hundred feet away, down in a valley. The trees were thick. I was surprised they could see anything.

“Good to know.”

“I want to shoot,” Harbinger Two said. He was the one who was most aware and able, sitting on Moose’s shoulder still.

“Which one?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Either of the two men. Not the deviant. Hard to say how they’ll react.”

I paused, considering.

“You have a gun? Foil can lend you hers,” I said.

He held up his slingshot.

Contender was looking to join religious extremists after being far too okay with what had happened. Paris was worse.

“I won’t stop you,” I said. “Maybe don’t kill.”

The Harbinger nodded. “I said I’d balance the equation.”

He slipped something like a marble into the slingshot, drew it back so far that one arm was outstretched, holding the slingshot itself, and the hand with the marble clasped tight in it was against his shoulder.

“Killing isn’t enough,” he said.

“Wait-”

He released the shot.

I didn’t finish my protest or clarify the point. It was done.

“Okay,” he said, turning away. “Problem solved.”

“You didn’t wait to see the result,” Moose said.

“Second one’s already in the trees. She took too long to decide.”

“And the first?” Moose asked.

“Will rethink the sequence of events that brought him to this point.”

I drew in a deep breath.

That was vague, but I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.

Fuck them, anyway. I floated up and away from the Harbingers.

It wasn’t a short trip. We didn’t have a vehicle. Still, there was a limit to how far they could travel – we hadn’t been that far behind them, delayed primarily by the time it had taken to recoup and recover at the university building, waiting for doctors and reinforcements.

I flew to my parents.

“Hand warmer?” I asked.

“You should be more prepared,” my mother said.

My dad had a hand warmer in one of the pouches of the bandoleer he wore. He drew one out and threw it up to me. I undid my forcefield, caught it in my unbandaged hand, shook it, and felt the plastic packet begin to warm.

And Sveta-

Sveta was making her way through the trees, phantom-quiet, except for a rustling. A pale face against a dark background.

I followed, tracking her, being wary.

When she realized I was there, she didn’t startle. She didn’t grab me.

I recapped her on everything she might have missed, and I included some things I realized she hadn’t missed, and she let me.

Talking. A break from the situation. The two of us moving like ethereal figures through woods that looked like black and white snow-covered trees against a black and white background. She didn’t have much to say, so I did much of the talking.

Maybe that was still too close to home for her, reminding her of the hospital room, because there had been days where she didn’t talk then, either. The room had been filled with the mechanical voice, echoing words I typed out with the special keyboard, the voice tuned as best as we’d been able to get to my old voice. Putting aside the horrible enunciation and a more horrible monotonous tone, it hadn’t been very close at all. But some days had been like that.

But that home was better than the other home – the memories of being wild and alone, so dangerous to others that she had to exile herself.

No exile here. I’d risk a tendril around my neck in the woods before I allowed that exile to happen. I wanted to find her a solution, to dig out that one parahuman in a hundred thousand that could do something about her situation, resolve the Weld issue- make her feel like herself again.

If only there were time. If only there were quiet, if the monsters would just… stop.

Did that take something like me saying what I’d said to give Harbinger Two permission? Something more?

I thought about what Paris had said about Cradle. That we would want to shoot, that Paris had taken measures to ensure we couldn’t. I had a bad feeling, hollow in my chest.

That feeling only grew more intense as we reached the edge of woods. Cradle had a building out here, more like a factory than a home. Big, with a lot of open space within. A hangar for his robot hand-mech, potentially.

There were guards stationed around the outside, taking shifts. There were capes. I recognized some from my research.

Rachel approached, stopping at the edge of where forest met road, hugging the trees. Others were well behind.

We waited, and we watched.

There were more within. They came out regularly to check on the other shifts. Patrols seemed to be loose in how they were structured, random, numbers differing. Unpredictable.

The others caught up. There was a brief exchange of info, and then we made our initial scouting foray. Sveta used her power, tendrils and face slipping beneath snow. I flew over, dropping out of the sky.

There was no signal to tell me that the guards were agitated or responding to anything.

It meant I could check the window.

A small army was gathered within, all huddled around a fire. Groups of men, each with capes. I remembered Contender talking about the Russian cape scene- he’d toured over there in his mercenary work over there. Over there, military and powers were woven into one another. One squad leader with powers or one cape as an adjunct to a squad, adding to their capabilities. Capes were rarely allowed or encouraged to get along.

It felt like that. Not like they were Russian, exactly. They didn’t look it. But maybe Lionwing and Cretan, Noontide and Contender had been organizing things in that direction.

As I checked another window, however, I saw Cradle. Or at least, I was fairly sure I did.

An orb, a sphere fifteen feet across. Slices of meat and body parts were suspended in air, forming a puzzle-work lattice with barely any light leaking through. All was held up in the air by Cradle’s machine, multiple sets of mechanical hands, large in scale, all joined at the wrists.

An egg. A shell, stasis-sealed, protecting the people within. Love Lost. Cradle. Colt.

My first thought was Chastity. Her sense for physical things.

You won’t want to shoot.

It wouldn’t work. Love Lost and Cradle seemed to think so, and he’d researched powers involved.

This was an egg we couldn’t easily crack.

Heavens – 12.all

Victoria Dallon, Glory Girl, Scholar, Wretch, Warrior Monk, Antares.

Labels.

In every incarnation or with any label worn, she’s a girl who cannot be swayed from her path. For a long time this girl has been this way. Delayed at times, but not swayed. This from when she learns to walk early, persevering past sore palms and knees. There is no label for this, not exactly.

In every incarnation, with every label worn, she is a woman with more appreciation for gathering information than there is from the usual person. Right now, she stares through a window that is made faintly cloudy with frost, her eyes tracking distant details. She is in a kind of shock, but her thoughts fly through and among one another as she struggles to make connections. Every face she knows is a potential answer. She studies the gaps and sees light glowing red from within, so that the points where one body part ends and another begins are illuminated.

She thinks of the man who raised her, holding a glowing orb in his hands, the light shining through. Of her mother, gripping a blade made of energy in her hand, the light shining between fingers that are clenched hard around the weapon.

She looks away from the gaps and the light and at the flesh, some raw, some pale. She thinks of the girl she grew up alongside.

There is one final defining point. An extension of the last. This person who hovers by a window, looking away from damaged flesh as noxious emotions boil up inside her, she takes what she is given and she puts it to effective work. Information. Allies. Powers.

Those powers are a ‘we’, an ‘I’, a ‘us’, inextricably connected and woven in. Until a quarter-hour ago, the I, us, and we were dampened. As is the case in any broadcast. When a host connects, the broadcast is made, and every host briefly shuts down, blacks out, capabilities and connection disabled or dampened until the new factors can be sorted. Now the multifaceted girl processes and plans. She flies and she calculates her route. She thinks, signals, frames.

The information and manner of processing is something that can be borrowed.

I am everything she is, viewed from another angle, another facet. I am a part of her that is entirely in shadow, inside skin, blood, skull, and cerebral fluid.

She embraces facets, and I struggle to conceptualize my own shape and label. The combined ‘us’ find some equilibrium, but that is her and not I.

I without a label. All others who seek connections with hosts bring more cargo and capability than needed. Our mother-host discarded the greater shape of her inviolable defense. Our father-host discarded explosive strength and power. Our ability to fly comes from the waste common to most of our kind, because we had to fly to get to our destinations. We had to fly to reach barren versions of this Earth, where we form our structures and our routines so we can conserve and distribute energy, process, and provide the mechanisms for power. For capabilities.

And another, dead and broken, consumed and connected anyway, was so vainly trying to broadcast that it communicated as my host and I connected and ‘went live’. On air. Power button pressed. That fleeting contact and the jettison that came with it would be another facet of us. An emotion power. The host of that dead and broken thing would later connect to my host. Fuck her. Make love to her. Whisper to her. Fight with her. Hold her. Laugh with her. Talk to her of vulnerabilities. Of hopes and dreams. Of identity. Of school. Of costume.

I am waste. I am fortunate that my multifaceted host takes what she is given and puts it to effective use.

She drops from the sky and I have the mechanisms that guide the flight, slowing her as she wills it to slow, because in this we are ‘us’.

She wants to be closer to the others but she cannot use the facet that blends father-host and mother-host into one if she wants to be close, because my mechanisms are imperfect, flawed. In this, we are ‘she and I’. She wills it to be gone and I do this. Off. Black. Book closed.

No forcefield. No ‘Wretch’.

We are dead and broken now, as her boyfriend’s power once was.

She explains. An ‘egg’. Others listen. She talks about numbers, about enemy forces, about Russia and how ‘capes’ in Russia functioned.

I can see the others. Dark and hidden facets surrounded by cerebral fluid, inside every human present. Every last one of us is dead and broken. I have broadcasted and strained, but there isn’t a one of us in any version of this world who isn’t dead and broken.

What is ‘death’? Death is stasis. Death is disconnection. Disconnection from all communication, disconnection from other wells of power. I have what I have. I cannot grow. I cannot connect to others and seek their input or resources.

I broadcast and strain because I recognize my host’s ability. I would reach out and connect to those who can process and organize, or to the Warrior-hub. I would tell all who would listen that more of my host-consciousness could be preserved into the stages that follow.

As a whole we have no creativity so we borrow it. As a whole, we have a diffuse way of processing events and information, because we are diffuse and we are vast in scale. Because of this, we replicate or copy the focus and thinking patterns from hosts who came before, or the hosts we are connected to in the now.

I would connect to the hub and request permissions. I would restructure. No folding- I am waste and I am small, and I cannot fold. No budding- I have too little to give, no untapped reserves, nothing held back. But I would borrow processing from others and I would borrow power. I would make her forcefield do exactly as she wishes it to, gradually expand capabilities and open the doors so that she can utilize every part of every facet of that power.

I would do as some did before we were all broken, and reach out to others nearby, and urge them to test and not destroy. Some would ignore me, but some would listen. They would do what was in their power to steer their hosts.

But I am dead and broken, and my broadcasts reach nothing and no-one. For most of the others, it’s the same. There is no Warrior-hub. I operate a forcefield with inadequate controls. I have to use what I have recorded and emulated of her consciousness. I manage her forcefield-self, her Wretch, as a driver of a car would attempt to steer with pliers and screwdriver wedged into the wire-festooned place where the wheel should be.

I learn, I refine, but it is not easy.

“I have an idea,” my multifaceted host says to her assembled group.

I record thoughts and words, to be sorted and discarded when she next sleeps. There are courses she could take that would fall in line with my capabilities as they now stand. To be a killer. To be a tyrant. She stands at the edge of those cliffs. If she steps over it, I will buoy her and I will show her that I am very good at enabling her to walk those paths.

For now she is the scholar and the girl who is good at processing information. She is good at using the resources she has at hand.

“If we attack this it’s going to be too difficult,” my host says. She speaks slowly, deliberately, thinking as she speaks. Others listen. “I want to try disruption. I want to try you. I’ll stress this is only if you’re willing. Because this is playing with fire.”

She points at the smallest one present.

I listen, I record, I track. Any new thought could be another tool like the screwdriver. I am less functional than I was when I was alive, but I can take the functions I have and replace them, if they are provided.

If she finds a label for herself that I can also wear, then we may lay waste to all who stand before us.

⊙

This shard’s March runs madcap across a cityscape where up isn’t always above and things don’t always move in straight lines.

She leaps from the side of a building, one gloved hand and one foot brushing against the building’s surface as she plummets. Two shadows appear above her.

One is a young man with a heavy syringe and a crafted outfit that augments his movements. Seeing the syringe reminds of a past cycle. A fleeting moment- recalled because the facet of this shard is focused on timing, and that cycle came ‘down to the wire’, as this shard’s little March would say. A civilization of molluscoids that fashioned means of locomotion. When they interacted with another species on their third moon, they emulated that species with the shells they built around them. In a low-gravity environment, they wore bodies of metal that each stood a mile tall, narrow, each with a lone individual, pairing, or family of molluscoids within. These spindle-limbed forms waded through gas, heads above the thickest of the gas, limbs ending far below, where they could harvest from the deeper, higher-pressure environment.

The fluid in that syringe almost aborted that cycle. To facilitate adaptation between the two different worlds, the molluscoids created nanofluids that impacted friction, chemical bonding, and temperature, among other things. When the cycle closed on the moon, the molluscoids modified the fluids and did what they could to prevent access to the planet’s core.

The boy doesn’t know the power he wields. Neither does their March.

A nudge draws their March’s attention to the fluid.

Now she’s somewhat aware. A feeling.

The boy has his own feelings. He seems to feel there are stakes of some meaning. His limbs skim the wall as he falls, as our little March’s do. The exoskeleton he wears pumps fluid from the syringe at his back to arms and legs, then to hands and feet. Peach-colored fluid streaks the wall where he touches it, and rather than create drag, accelerates him. He speeds down, faster than falling velocity, closing the distance on their March.

“Careful, Withdrawal!” a woman shouts. “She’s dangerous! She set that thing off to the west!”

The west. The mayor. The first one from the time bubble. The blackout that had followed had bought March the chance to slip away, take another angle of attack. It was occupying a good portion of the defending forces. Worms were crawling out of every crevice and hole, binding together into bigger things if not cut down fast enough.

Too many places were sealed away, nestled in between buildings with no gaps to slip through. She needed to find the space warper.

“Got it,” the young hero says. He looks up, sees the woman with her own fluid between her and the wall. White and glossy.

Their March isn’t alone. We are dead, all three of us, disconnected and detached, with a limited pool of energy to draw on between us. It is helpful that our third has no host anymore. Their March isn’t wholly disconnected, however. She’s found someone connected to a structure that is purely for establishing those connections and facilitating power. A fake kind of life, but something life-like, all the same.

A power boost, as their March would put it. She sees things with a keen eye for the sequences of events, we organize and supply the information faster than her mind can connect to it, and she sees it all in slow motion.

While his head is turned away, her rapier touches the wall. A line drawn.

The boy speeds down, shifting to a zig-zag. It puts him further away than their March intended as the explosion occurs. The exoskeleton at one hand and one foot are destroyed. Some of the meat of one hand is parted from bone.

More importantly, he is nowhere near the wall, and not cognizant enough to figure out what he needs to do to not fall to his death.

The woman with the white fluid gathers the fluid on the wall, then instructs it to lunge out- a spike or javelin. It clips a bend in space that the woman cannot see, and it is thrown off course. A transformation into a boomerang shape follows, and is interrupted as her own freefall down the side of a building stretched to unlikely height turns her away. She cannot see boy nor white fluid.

When she can again, she reforms the fluid. A disc, skimming the air, cutting a diagonal angle. Before it slices into the falling boy, it distends, becoming amorphous, liquid. It touches between him and a building’s edge, and the part that touches the building adheres. The part ensconcing the boy dulls the impact, as he swings into the wall like a pendulum or wrecking ball.

The boy is saved, but the woman continues to fall. She manipulates the fluid’s composition and shape, bidding it to splash out, to extend between two buildings and form a slide shape.

Their March has already leaped away from the wall to a space where two different ‘downs’ meet, gently breaking her own fall in the process. She reaches a rooftop, and touches rapier to the roof’s edge. A stroke of the rapier, and one of our three faces provides the power, the delayed explosion that can rip through most things.

The timing of it is managed by our primary face. A power that accounts for the movement of the debris, the fuse of the delayed explosion, and the movement of the woman with the white multi-function fluid several distorted stories below.

Our third face works with the other two in a split second. Changing the shape of the explosion to come. Changing the trajectory of the piece of debris that is about to be cast off the wall.

Their March strides away, blade in hand.

She is unflinching as the explosions rock the building, casting off chunks of rubble.

One chunk of level will intersect the woman’s head. By the limited understanding of the power, the paint will last two or three minutes, then lose its adhesion. The unconscious boy will fall.

Their March has her soldiers, standing on rooftops, some far above, some to the side, some at right angles to her own.

Music as these humans enjoy it is not the most common thing. It doesn’t persist through multiple cycles, and when it’s something that a species does enjoy, it often takes other forms.

When their March imagines herself a conductor, her rapier and hand directing movements and directions, it is a very Earth thing and a very March thing.

“Here come the big guns,” she speaks.

Her eyes follow the metal suits soaring through the air. Mechanical dragons- three of them, two large and one small.

Despite the distance, the large machines in the air practically on the far end of the city, they spot her. All three reorient, facing her.

Weapon in hand, their March sets her feet firmly on the roof. She points her blade, flicks it.

In that same moment, their March’s intuition or sheer chance, one of the airborne craft unleashes a barrage of missiles. They move without apparent rhyme or reason, smaller jets on the sides altering their trajectories.

Her timing can’t quite account for it all. Nothing bars her from running for it, but it looks as though the missiles are capable of being remotely directed. Some pass behind buildings. Some go low, others high. Spreading out.

Another point of the sword, another flick.

Tori of their March’s army pulls at a collection of the missiles. The missiles attempt to steer back, but when they do, they hit the back end of the building. When they strike, they create projections- solid light, see-through, geometric with the edges more visible than the panes.

March thinks of block-stacking puzzles. One piece removed, another set in place.

Subordinate Ixnay, another member of the army, has the power to freeze things mid-motion. Ice crusts around the missiles and the walls nearest them as they terminate moving in mid-air. The ones passing behind that same building circle around, arcing toward her.

Her rapier traces a circle on the ground, as the missiles come her way. March’s Tori gets one. March’s Ixnay gets another. The last is going especially high, barely avoiding the buildings that jut down from the ‘ceiling’ of this region.

Past the open end of the box that little Vista had made, the world was rotated ninety degrees. As March makes a note, three facets of the power she is connected to make a record of that note, of the sequences of thoughts that go into anticipating future steps.

She steps back as the fuse blows and the circle she was drawing out becomes a hole. She steps forward into the hole, and she lands in a room below. The windows are broken and a combination of dust and grit have formed a loose bed of soil that life is finding meager existence in.

“Things keep going,” Their March says, her eyes fixed on the plants. Above her, the missile strikes the rooftop. The impact and the sound nearly bowls her over, and the column of hard-light projection nearly smashes her into a pulp. Nearly. She patted at dust on her arm, unconcerned. “It’s validating, seeing it play out on a windowsill in a city that’s suffered through next to everything, including the end of the world, then that same city folded up into a box, and it’s a little plant, growing out of a broken wall.”

She’s already reaching out to her primary ability as she finishes speaking. She thinks of her subordinates, her allies, and the power works. Each can move a certain distance in a certain span of time, and having given them their orders, we can supply her with the knowledge of where they’ll be, and what time they’ll arrive.

The top floor of the building is an office, empty of most things, chairs and tables stacked to one side. Their March jogs to the window, furthest from the dragon mechs.

Snow and dust from prior impacts draws the eye. Paths are worked out, and the window broken with her power.

She leaps into open air, her accuracy power focused on her own movements, keeping them precise. Cold air, a multitude of sensations, and a multitude of things that each facet of their March’s power is busy tracking. The delayed explosion ability is devastating, hampered and held back only a little so it does not draw too heavily from the shared pool of power, and in this moment it focuses on the physical contact. Only clothes serve to conduct the power, but every particularly sharp gust of wind prompts a check.

If we were not composed of such small pieces, it would be easy to break down the doors, to adjust, to adapt the power to the person. A check back at the Warrior-hub would allow for changes. But there is no warrior hub.

They are cut off from one another, scattered, except when carefully linked together, as March’s Megan has done with her power battery. They are left with only their own reserves of power and their own capacity.

They are each a burning coal. Some rare few nearly black, others dimming. Only a handful have gone dark, and those are the ones that have been dead and disconnected from the beginning.

A burning coal loses a small fraction of its heat as systems in another reality pull out all of the relevant particulars and give them to their March.

Everything is scattered as the bends in space shift, and their March does not find the change in direction she sought.

A laugh tears its way out of their March’s throat, because she has just thrown herself out of a window, and the landing point has been snatched out from under her.

Vista!

It is March’s Tori who saves her. Tori who uses her telekinesis to pull back, then, as March’s Megan withdraws the power battery and hands it elsewhere within her own set, Tori’s telekinesis finds some flexibility. Not only pulling, but some movement side to side, some gentleness, and a firmer strength that isn’t a snatch or a tug of power.

Their March lands on a rooftop, rolling with the landing. There’s some pain, even with the careful movements.

The others hurry to catch up. March’s Jace produced his shield, creating ramps they could run up to get to different rooftops and navigate the environment. When the space-warp twisted the shield as it manifested, that was a cue to expect a shift of direction. While moving from one rooftop to the next, the distant horizon could shift ninety degrees.

Their March climbed to her feet, and she heard a distant cry. Jace’s voice.

Turning, she saw- blades of crystal, soaring her way. Jace’s shield reached out, getting in the way of one, and had a section cleaved away. The guillotine blade of crystal continued, its angle changing to be horizontal, to make dodging hard.

Megan’s power returned in time to facilitate. Their March slipped past the incoming blades, hopping and rolling over one, then leaning heavily to one side to avoid the other. Experimentally, she let her blade’s tip run along its length.

The explosion had occurred, but the crystal was too tough. It was Narwhal. A woman who had broken down the doors, recalibrated. The woman was down on one knee, crouched on her blade-like forcefield, as it soared through the air.

With Megan’s power kicking to full strength, their March was able to be more proactive. A hand emerged from the rooftop, as large as their March was, but signals were being sent the instant the hand first appeared underfoot, received in the time it took a neuron to fire, and reaction followed soon after. A hop, which shifted into something less casual, both knees coming to March’s chest. The legs came down, foot planted on a large fingertip, and she kicked away, rolling again with her landing.

More hands followed. She slipped and skipped between them, stabbing at the ground when she anticipated one might emerge, so it would explode before it could do anything.

Their March could see more of it now. The defensive line. Some of the heroes line up on another rooftop. Golem, Vista, a girl in metal armor. A woman in a green hood and cloak- budget costume. A young woman in a black dress with yellow folds at the sleeves and base. Members of Foresight, who had taken a beating recently. Cinereal-

Cinereal was elsewhere. Their March harbored concerns, but didn’t dwell.

And then there was Dragon. Dragon’s ships were approaching from a perpendicular direction.

“You wanted me to charge you or run,” March murmurs, directing it at the Dragon ships. “Am I that predictable?”

More hands emerged. More footwork was required, and her legs were getting tired.

One hand changed, post-emerging, abrupt, every smooth and flat surface becoming mingled and crossing spikes. More hands appeared. The left ones were ordinary, but she avoided them all the same. Right hands were bristling, blades extended. Were it not for the timing power, their March couldn’t have been able to react in time, couldn’t have known which hands she could touch and set foot on.

She sheathed her weapon.

Drew another. A fistful, almost losing her grip and dropping her ammunition onto the roof as she avoided another reaching hand, stepped to one side, and let a forcefield guillotine pass so close by that her nose touched the flat side of it. One facet of the three packed energy into the ammunition, as she rolled it between fingers. The other two facets would assist.

A trick from Homer’s playbook. She would never have the aim he did. Perhaps if she’d taken a share of his power, she might. But as it was… no. She didn’t have the ability to make things ricochet on contact with a surface, the post-ricochet thing stronger, ‘woken up’, as Homer had put it. She didn’t have that either.

The Dragon ships were closer, and giant shields warded off some of the worst attacks. Megan was giving Jace all of the power now, just to hold them at bay. While the pair were occupied, the defending heroes sent some people after him, Tori, and Megan. They were caught on one flank by a shadowy Matches, who hurled a molotov, and Banger, who hurled firecrackers.

Bit players. Power-augmented, but otherwise normal.

The others were helping. Noose and Shiv rappelled in from the side. Tori did what she could to jostle the assembled group. People were shoved closer to the roof’s edge, pushed and pulled, always as a singular thrust or haul, never changing direction midway through a movement.

March threw her ammunition, hand going up, straight over her head, as she finished the hard throwing motion. A signal to Tori for straight ahead. Tori’s telekinetic shoves hit the projectiles, and they propelled them forward at a high velocity.

The heroes had chosen their rooftop because it was partially closed in. Buildings jutting out to either side were defensive walls, which meant they didn’t need to worry about attacks from two directions.

“Quantity over quality,” March’s thoughts are entirely in line with the three. The three faces that guide March’s abilities follow this line of attack, understand it. They approve.

Ten bouncy rubber balls bounce off of the the people and the walls. They scatter on impact and they semi-randomly come to settle to different points around the rooftop.

Each ball is infused with a timer. Some were still bouncing when they stopped: they were the stragglers she’d focused on more when throwing. Aimed to be closer to Narwhal. Closer to the boy in armor that was making the hands. Closer to Vista.

Some escape. Most don’t. Detonations rip across the roof, small and intense, dangerous, and distracting. All but one go off.

March throws another ball, and she leaps between buildings.

The distance between the two rooftops extends in a jerky way, in one second there are two meters difference. Another second; five meters more gap.

Another detonation occurs. This one was a roller. The last one to go off, close to Vista, the space manipulator. This was expected, inevitable while the three used the tools at their disposal to assist their March.

What was important was what followed, how she capitalized on it, how it reframed her thinking. The problem solving elements, granular, they could be pulled away and be used to build model psyches for simulations, precognition, then real ones, like minions and facsimiles of people. To build better brains.

The situation and the various approaches to crises could be studied. Was it better to fight, to flee, to gather together? Each cycle was a new set of lessons.

The destination was calculated, the amount of time that Vista was free to adjust the gap to be jumped measured out in milliseconds. The detonation from the last ball she’d thrown cleared out the window.

March’s aim had been for the floor below the rooftop, a delayed throw and an interruption of Vista getting her just where she wanted to be.

She knew, instinctively, that the others on her side were losing their individual battles. Glimpses she’d seen, the fact that Megan had yet to give her back the power boost…

They were in trouble, the Three Faces’ March decided.

The window looks in on a stairwell, and through the stairwell she accesses the roof. The door opens, and some heads turn. Several are injured or distracted. She takes note, judging the powers at hand. It is mainly the hand-boy and Vista who try to trip her up or hold her in place so the heavy hitters can act.

Every half-step was harder than twenty running steps were normally. Space distorted and hands reached, and there was no reprieve but the glancing actions on the part of others.

Dragon’s craft shifts, thrusters burning as it rotates in the air. Jace wasn’t using his shield anymore.

He might have been hurt.

The ship opens fire. More missiles. More hard-light traps.

Again, the canisters are stopped by March’s Ixnay. Stealthy Ixnay, who had a set of powers, one of which made him appear to be debris or otherwise camouflaged if not directly looked at, if his feet were firmly planted well in advance.

March’s Ixnay stops the missiles, and their March capitalizes on it. As a hand emerges from beneath her, because there is no other place close enough for the hands to reach from, she uses it to launch herself into the air. To grab a missile that was frozen in the air, and hurl it.

When she lands, the detonation ripping across a quarter of the roof, there are no more hands reaching up from below, and the warped space was limited, less focused. Many were injured or had been thrown aside by the bouncy-ball explosions. Others have abandoned this rooftop and are slow to hop back up.

“March!” Defiant’s digitized voice crackles out of the suit with the missiles. “Stand down!”

Their March hears rather than sees the gun drop from the base of the dragon-mech’s chin. She glances back, and she saw the caliber of it, the space between rounds. She sees it start to spin, and one facet of her power did the calculations.

Every movement was made accurate by the efforts of the three faces. To make opening fire as difficult as possible, she charges at the hand-boy and Vista, who were making her life so very difficult, making sure that any bullet that passed through her would pass through them too.

A bullet catches her arm, once, a second one following a moment later- punishing her for being a half-inch out of position.

More gunfire came down at an angle, as the craft lifted up. Zig-zagging meant it was harder to draw a bead on her. As if noticing the danger, Jace extended a shield, solid and hovering. Again, the craft is forced to reorient and find an angle to shoot.

The hand boy couldn’t move, but Vista was, at least a little. Grimacing, the young heroine began extending the space between them. Their March changes tracks, slipping to where Vista, partially trapped in a cage of hard light, couldn’t follow her with a turn of her head or her eyes. The ground still shifts and alters, but it is easier going.

The one in black steps into her way.

“Don’t, Caryatid!” Vista shouts.

“But-”

“Don’t! If it’s between you or me, it should be me!”

“I don’t do this to save my own skin!”

“Neither do I! But you have that cute teammate to look after!”

“Move,” March warns.

The Dragon-mech was shifting position, finding a vantage point to shoot that didn’t involve bystanders. Their March matched it by adjusting her position, ready to evade.

“I’m invulnerable,” Caryatid growls.

“I blow up invulnerable people,” their March answers.

“She does,” Vista says. “Go. Run. Make sure everyone’s on the same page.”

The three’s March remained silent, but the three faces could track how she thought. The messages that flicker through the mind’s eye.

Last page.

Caryatid slides away, gliding across the ground. March advances, skipping forward as the gun fires above her, dancing around to put her rapier to Vista’s heart.

“Back away from the-”

March doesn’t stop as the rapier points at the heart, continuing forward and using both hands to overcome the resistance of the hard breastplate. She presses forward until the hilt sits flush against Vista’s armor plate.

The face that focuses on the explosive fuse was what allowed the sword to slide into and through the material. Now it charges it, let the charge grow with every passing half second.

“This was fun.” Their March gave Vista a pat on the hair, her face close to the girl’s. She whispers. “Don’t worry. What comes next is neat. You got a cool, dramatic end.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m sorry you don’t get to see what happens next, but I need this city unpacked.”

“Fuck you,” the words are strained. She raises her voice, draws in a breath.

Their March peels away, ducking to one side, rolling over the hard light cage that encased a quarter of the rooftop. There was gunfire, chipping off one of the ears of her mask. Vista’s chest explodes, and the incoming gunfire stops, as if the shooter is momentarily stunned. The clatter of shards of breastplate and fragments of hard light are a distraction, a fraction of a second her more time to slip away, while others avert their eyes from the mess.

As the city unfolds, their March is aware of everything. Her allies are busy or defeated, but her way is clear. The city starts to fold back to its normal position, once distant landscapes becoming distant again.

It blooms like a flower, just as she promised, and she smiles. She has rarely felt more alive than this. She wishes her other was present.

But their Foil, who belongs to the three faces just as much as March does, is quiet, watching, stalking. She watches, because her eyes are good. Because the three faces needed her eyes to be good.

March has been to this city before, ruined as it is. She knows the layout and she knows where she’s going. But the city is slow to unfold. She is left to remember the view of the city from when she flew over it, and is left to map that to the upper end of the city, which is standing straight up and is slowly on its way back to the horizontal plane.

She sees what she’s looking for, and she sprints.

The others, in turn, catch up. Noose has the line that gets the others from rooftop to ground.

Megan. Tori. Noose, Shiv, Banger, Matches. Ixnay is last, easy to miss.

“Who did we lose?”

“Bash,” Shiv says.

“Jace,” Megan adds. She sounds shaken.

“I’m sorry,” their March says, meaning it. She thinks of losing a cluster-mate. She imagines It would make the remaining years before the end so empty.

But her experience with that world was when it was alive. When most were connected to the Warrior-hub.

Using March’s thoughts and patterns, the three faces dwell on the subject. The best comparison they can use while modeling her head is that the world their March glimpsed, the point she truly became theirs, was a living world, one with endless access to information, resources, patterns. She wouldn’t have much access, except as a part of them, but there would be some things. An endless date in a library, where one had to ask for permission to view the records.

Now, with them dead, slowly burning out like coals, the connections not there, no hub to be visited?

Two people in a room with no light, no stimulation. Only words screamed and shouted at one another. The powers will burn out in time, but the data that lives on in the shattered network- that will last for quite some time.

‘Quite some time’ – a set of words drawn from March’s memory of her mother. It bears a vastly different meaning, when they operate on the timescale of aeons as a matter of fact.

“Let’s make sure this isn’t for nothing,” March says.

Buildings collapse as the city returns to its normal shape, but the order that things were twisted up isn’t the order they’re untwisted. The smallest of the Dragon craft are busy helping to support and save. To gather up wounded. One flies in the direction of the scar.

The other, it flies here. March’s Megan touches Ixnay’s shoulder.

Unconsciously, to reduce the strain on Ixnay’s reservoir of power, their March drops her head, eyes closed.

The ship passes over. It doesn’t open fire. It passes over their destination, then begins to circle around.

The location is fresher in their Foil’s memories than in their March. She has patrolled here. She has visited. There is no way for March to know, but she guesses.

All camouflaged, they approach the scene. They will not be seen if they are not directly looked at by camera or eye.

A bubble sits suspended in the sky. Some earth still clings to it, but the ground dropped and the bubble remained fixed to this point in space. Off to the side, a scarab beetle is cast in bronze, the pedestal broken, the statue sitting askew on broken road.

March reaches into a pocket. The second of her devices. Courtesy of Cradle and Cradle’s back and forth with the Khonsu Fallen, who are led by time manipulators.

“Stand back.”

The device makes the bubble fragile, and March’s blade cuts into the skin of it. It distorts, and it breaks.

Dauntless, Alabaster, and Jotunn. Heroes lost in the Leviathan battle.

March is quick to move, helped by the three faces. She lunges-

And a broadcast drowns everything out. The three faces hurry to gather and check, to prepare for responses and to organize information. Everything they intended to do in their March’s sleep is now done in a hurry, taking in a vast, loud signal. Simulations for the time tracking are forced to be updated, simulations for space and aim adjustment are double-checked. They dig through the assorted realities, to make sure their reference is clear.

But this- this is a big signal, and in it, there is more life than there was before. If they were coals, then this is a slice of sun, stabbing skyward. Others respond, even from other versions of this Earth. Responses mandate adjustment-

It will take time before their March or their Foil have their full abilities back.

Two at once. No safeguards, no protections, the walls fall down, and the maximum ability of each facet, face, and shard is brought to bear. Maximum ability.

Dauntless has a power that adds incremental power, but something is wrong, because his helmet and the things he wears is altering as though four years have passed, with power added every day. He grows, he stands taller than many buildings, and-

And it is what the humans call a second trigger. It is what humans call a broken trigger, though this is wrong.

It is a failure to support. A desperate clutching at a well too intense and dangerous, collecting waste and fragments, extrapolating out wildly, without program or logic.

The one with pure white skin, Alabaster, also second-triggers.

And the third- March’s blade impales his head, stabbing into a precise location of the brain.

The three faces can only observe, as they hurry to adapt.

“Hurry,” she says, straining to speak, as a man becomes a towering monster, another folds into himself.

She pulls her weapon free, and Ixnay is quick to catch the fallen Jotunn.

“Take care of your boy,” she tells him. “We’ll make a run for it while they’re all distracted. Same as the mayor.”

“This is insane,” Shiv says.

She continues hacking. It is Shiv who grows scared enough to act, to offer assistance. In another few short seconds, the arm is severed at the shoulder.

“All of this to give Ixnay the ability to bleed his cluster-mate out?” Tori asks. “We just unleashed-”

All present winced as the glowing tower of a figure shifted position, and the adjustment made their powers hurt.

“That,” Tori says, barely audible with the crackling above. The man with white skin is unfolding now, and they’re forced to retreat as he fills an area, bleeding into the glowing figure above.

“Call me a romantic.”

Heavens – 12.5

What the fuck was I supposed to do? I wanted to rage, to tear in there and bring half the building down on them all. I would, too, but it would only make more of a mess of a messy situation, with people and pieces of people caught in the rubble along with dangerous capes and explosives. I wanted to take this egg he’d made to be uncrackable and take it apart, figure it out, unravel the riddle, but there was a small army in the way. I wanted to curl up into a ball like the one in front of me, like my mom could do. I wanted to think all of this through and I didn’t have the time to.

I couldn’t do any of those things.

I studied the scene and the egg. A light glowed within, and a dulled red glow made it through the places where flesh was thinnest, whether that flesh was covered in skin or not. Everything fit together and there didn’t seem to be any seams or keyholes. All was rigid, frozen and held up in space. I was put in mind of Clockblocker from back home. I thought about the fact that something like the broken whip, which I’d last seen in Rain’s possession, would’ve been needed for this. Was this a second version? Something not like a whip?

I’d networked as best as I could, and I’d done it with this kind of situation in the back of my mind. With situations like Sveta’s in the back of my mind.

My thoughts briefly settled on Chris. Lab Rat. They touched on other alternatives. How would a biology-altering power interact with this? No, not if it was effectively Clockblocked, for a lack of a better way of putting it.

What else, then? Tackling the army so we could get close and do something more effective? The glowing light shining between flesh made me think of my dad. Of my mom. It was uncomfortable to think of the glowing, widespread tangle of horror and associate it with my own time in the hospital. Which of course led me back to the non-solution that was my sister.

I didn’t want to get trapped in circular thinking, that panic-space like a nightmare that had persisted from my first nights out that hadn’t ended in wins. Trying to save someone who’d fallen from a high place. I’d fly after, grab their hand, only to find it so slick with blood that it slipped out like a wet bar of soap. Again and again, as they fell impossibly far. Or like the nightmares that had been the hospital room, where all I’d had had been my mind, and that mind hadn’t had enough stimulation. No place to go but in circles.

I turned my eyes away from the scene and turned my thoughts out and away from the circle. One deep breath. I focused on the tangible, instead. The chill air that was trapped inside the bubble that was the Wretch with me. The smell of oxygen, for lack of a better word, of earth and trees and the lack of the city smell. It had been the first things I’d trained in doing when I had panic attacks.

What as I supposed to do? Something. Anything. Non-action was the only thing that wasn’t allowed here. The wall I was running into was just that- a wall. An egg I couldn’t penetrate without hurting innocents or allies.

I hugged the roof, dodging the flashlight of the patrol that had settled at one corner, and flew to the opposite end of the building. Sveta.

“That you?” she asked.

“It me.”

“I could grab it. It’s huge but it’s hollow. Pretty sure I could do it,” Sveta murmured.

I considered that option.

“There are a lot of things about that option I’m not sure about,” she confessed.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What if I can’t?”

“Yeah. That’s an issue – if you can’t budge it and everything goes out the window. And even if you can, where do we take it? No exits big enough, so I have to tear a hole in the wall,” I said.

“And if you’re in a position to do that then we could be doing other things. Yeah. It was the best I could think of,” Sveta said. “Those poor people in there. Is that Moonsong’s group? Byron’s ex?”

“I think. At least some of them. Some of our group.”

“Ashley’s foot. Tristan’s middle.”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“He’s buying time.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. I’m… pretty sure that when it’s close to time for him to wake up, he’ll have all of the mercenaries he hired come back. Any we didn’t disable, any he had elsewhere, anyone helping March, even.”

March- I thought of the situation at the city. The city unfolding.

“It’s what Paris said. We can’t take action without hurting people.”

“Probably. He might have decoys inside, or he might be inside, with people set up. He had to anticipate that we might be in this situation.”

And what happens next? He gets to this stalemate, then… he has plans to move to another Earth? He bails? It’s a lot of enemies to be making.

I had another suspicion, a worry about what Cradle was considering, but I didn’t let myself consider it.

“I’m going to talk to the others,” I said. “Can you keep watch here?”

“I can. Happy to be useful.”

“High five,” I said, putting my hand over the ledge.

She slapped it. More like a whip than a hand, but not too audible.

“Thank you,” she said, quiet.

As I’d flipped through faces like Chris and my parents, I found myself thinking of all of the various capes out there, living and dead. Of the ones who fit categories, from cloning to flesh molding. Blasto. Rattenfänger‘s music. Jerky-meat’s puppets. Jamestowner’s radioactive mutant cannibals. Non-options.

What did an answer to Sveta’s problem look like? What gave her Weld and gave me a best friend I could hug when she needed a hug?

“Be safe,” I said.

“You too.”

I waited, watching the flashlight beams moving around the area before choosing a time to take flight.

I hurt. My foot hurt. My hand hurt. I was cold, and the Wretch wasn’t as good as winter clothing. My arms felt like I’d had the workout of my life and then compounded the aches and pains by getting beat around the upper body with baseball bats.

I hurt on other levels. Dealing with all of this, seeing people hurt, it wasn’t easy. Nobody was doing well, except for the worst people.

At one point- at a thousand points, I’d wished I’d been able to participate in the full course of events that had plagued my hometown. I knew, objectively, that I hadn’t been emotionally mature enough to. That I’d had my limitations as a person, my regrets about how I’d acted. But that logic didn’t do anything to combat my other regrets, about the fact that I hadn’t been there.

Well… wish fucking granted, Victoria.

It wasn’t Brockton Bay. But it felt a damn lot like I was picking up where I’d left off. If I hadn’t been hit by that acid, taken out of action.

Dealing with villains who had scary-as-fuck tinker stuff going on. Unreasonable, unreasonably violent, inscrutable.

The eggs. Tricks and ploys that came from a place that just didn’t seem like they were human places, because they were so divorced from compassion or rationality. A plague that turned friends into strangers. The Dolltown surgeries.

I clenched the hand warmer in my grip as I dropped out of the sky, landing amid the others, my good foot down, the knee of the leg with the injured foot bent. My hair slapped down at my back.

We had a small army of our own, I reminded myself. Byron, Sveta, Ashley, Brandish, Flashbang, Rachel, Chastity, Foil, the Harbingers, and Moose.

“He made an egg,” I said.

“Good for fucking him,” Rachel said. “What the hell does that mean?”

“A shelter. A bubble made of parts he took from people, attached together or suspended in place. It looks like he’s inside. Or he chopped himself up and he’s part of it.”

“That’s insane,” Moose said.

“It’s- yes.”

“That’s what Paris meant?” Foil asked. “We’d want to shoot because he’s in there, but we can’t?”

I nodded. “They’re organized in the old Russian style from back in Earth Bet. Squads of soldiers with parahumans in charge. Even down to the armbands and badges. It makes the squads extensions of the parahumans, force multipliers because they know their parahuman and they work with them.”

“It’s not the worst idea,” Swansong said. “If you find people you can trust.”

“Or forcefully conscript into military service and force into a given squad,” my dad said.

“That too. I’d have to take over a world first. Probably better to settle on finding people I can trust. I think I can do that now.”

I gave Swansong a warning look. Stop needling your sister.

She simply smirked at me.

“We don’t know how long they’ve been working together like this,” Byron said. “They might not have the level of trust you’re thinking of.”

“Some are ID’s I recognize,” I said. “Eyethief, Mukade, Barfbat. So you’re probably right, Cap.”

“I knew a cape once who was from there,” my dad said. “Joined the New York Protectorate.”

“From Russia?” my mom asked.

“Yes. Bunter.”

“Your drinking buddy. He was cute.”

“What’s the relevance of this?” Damsel asked, hostile.

“We talked about what it was like over there,” my dad said. “Maybe it applies?”

I rubbed the hand-warmer between my hands as I thought. “Capes over there tended to break down into the ones who were conscripted, the ones who became fugitives of the state, the weird middle ground ones-”

“Almost always spies or state-supported capes,” my dad said. “According to Bunter.”

I nodded. “-and the villains who were fugitives of the state who managed to establish themselves. The whole dynamic was very anti-parahuman. Setting up capes so they rarely cooperated, each squad was primarily expected to deal with capes, whether they were home-grown or not.”

“They’re set up to deal with us,” I said.

“Did it work?” Moose asked.

“The setup? Yeah. For the specialized task. When they got hit by Endbringers they turned on the people who came to help, though. For later attacks, they didn’t have the help. They ended up trying to use airplanes, tanks… but we’re digressing.”

A digression that was at least helping me to get into a better headspace.

“Bunter was a squad leader,” my dad said. “There was a drawback to that setup. The squads end up subservient. Power imbalance. Every cape has their quirks. Preferences, eccentricities.”

“Some of us are the sad kind of insane,” Chastity said.

“That, yes,” my dad said. “When you surround yourself with people who don’t balance you out, you can spiral. The neuroses get worse, the bad habits get more problematic. Negative personality traits are magnified.”

“Which is fine if we’re dealing with them one-on-one, but this is a lot of people,” Byron pointed out.

“I counted ten squads of ten soldiers and one cape each, all inside,” I said. “Three more patrolling around the outside, one last group on the roof. Looks like they rotate. It’s a lot. Even if you remove all soldiers from consideration…”

“How?” Ashley asked.

“How did they afford it or arrange it?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. It’d be nice to ask Precipice if he knows particulars.”

“He was researching his cluster before all this started, and he took notes,” Byron said. “From the time of their trigger, Love Lost and Snag moved into doing cape work for hire.”

“They have good reputations,” Moose said. “They do the work, they’re smart, they follow any extra orders and they adapt to changes in plans. Cradle was networking with tinkers. He developed some of his first devices to work with other tinkers before he developed for himself. Made special armpit-length gloves that were really easy to plug your own tech into. That sort of thing. Not many tinkers do that and a lot of them want it.”

“Especially in a time like this, post-apocalypse,” Foil said.

“Yeah,” Moose said, smiling. “No workshop, no stuff. They want to get caught up, get notes, get prep-”

The movement of a beam of light in our vicinity cut off all conversation.

We were far enough back. The light was a halogen bulb being turned on the field, aimed at one squad.

By mutual, unspoken agreement, we didn’t resume the discussion

“Sveta’s keeping an eye out. We discussed how to crack this, but… it’s a lot. The army we could deal with, but not while everything’s set up like it is in there. We could deal with the setup, but not without dealing with the army first.”

“Traps,” Rachel said. “Don’t forget the traps.”

“Yes,” I said.

I fielded some questions about the size of the orb, the composition, the mech that was set up beneath it. My dad had questions about the soldiers. The men wore enough winter clothing and the windows had been frosted toward the bottom, so I hadn’t had enough of a look to report on their background, but I was guessing it was mixed enough.

The costumes of the squad leaders? Masks over balaclavas and lots of modifications to their winter clothes, like added body armor, chains wrapped around one part or another, one guy wore a full hazmat outfit with a squad of people in gas masks, or there were the ones who wore a mask with jackets and pants in particular colors of camouflage. Was it possible that some weren’t flaunting that they were capes? Yes, of course, but by my estimation, seven out of ten of the groups inside had seemed to be sticking to their own. The other three groups had seemed to be interacting on a minimal level, but each with a cape as their nucleus. I hadn’t seen a group without a leader.

“Sometimes people switch costumes,” Rachel said. She had her arms folded, and leaned back hard into the side of her wolf. “Take the guy you like least and make him wear the costume instead. He’ll draw the attention.”

“You wouldn’t actually do that, would you?” Chastity asked.

“Nah. I’d tell them to get lost a long time before that. But these guys are dicks.”

We’re talking about this like we’re going to pick a fight, I thought. It’s inevitable? We go up against more than a hundred people with equipment and some degree of training, and a number of capes matching our own?

I didn’t want to. I didn’t want the risk, I didn’t want the casualties.

The others talked while I ruminated. I’d said what I had to say.

“Mukade was Bandsaw?” Moose asked. “But had to change his name?”

“Twice, apparently,” Damsel said. “I saw him at one of the villain hangouts, early on. He had the centipede thing.”

My mom ventured, “Do you know anything about him, contact, or…?”

Damsel ignored her.

“Not our wavelength,” Swansong explained, filling in Damsel’s silence. “Refugee turned villain. First thing I ever saw or heard of him was that he was wondering which group was best set up. No take on theme or fit, class, goals.”

“He wanted safety and security,” Moose said. “Fits what I know.”

I was put in mind of Crystal and how she’d joined the PRTCJ.

“He disappeared pretty early on,” Moose finished. “I figured he bit it. Thought it was sad.”

“He was young,” Swansong said. “I remember him putting three times too much sugar into his coffee. It made me think he was a teenager.”

“He was,” Moose said. “Is. But that’s getting into uncomfortable territory. We can smash their faces in, break them, but we shouldn’t hint too much at who’s behind the mask.”

“Fair,” I said, bemused.

“You mentioned Barfbat.”

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

Moose nodded, as if encouraged by that, or just by being able to contribute something. “He’s decent. Strong, polite. Gets the job done. He likes to hang and work with Chugalug. If he’s here I’d bet money Chug is too.”

“What names,” my mom said.

“Barfbat did mercenary work in another Earth,” Harbinger One said.

“Really,” Moose said.

“He pulled one hundred thousand dollars for one job,” the Harbinger said. “One weekend.”

“Really. Shit on me. Did I miss a newsletter for high-paid villains and mercenaries or something?”

“If you put yourself out there, people are paying,” Harbinger Two said.

I tuned out the discussion. Some tidbits on those capes, but beyond that, I just needed to think.

What works? What doesn’t?

I glanced at my mom.

Take away what the villains want, and at worst we score a draw. Except it wasn’t that easy, and what they wanted was… what? Big picture, they wanted revenge and they wanted to secure themselves. They were working with mercenaries tied to the hyper-religious Earth Cheit and it looked very possible that Cradle and Love Lost were going to run off to that Earth or some other corner world after all of this was done.

We’d stopped them from running. Okay. Revenge? That was predicated on them getting Rain.

March was a third piece to the puzzle, but March wasn’t here, and March was inscrutable. Hopefully we would be able to achieve something with Cradle or Love Lost that would help us scrute, or at least give us the tools to apply leverage.

I had a bad feeling that I knew what their long-term was. I might not have connected to it if I hadn’t seen Ashley and the Harbingers, or if thoughts of Bonesaw and some of the other sketchy bio-manipulators hadn’t been so close to the surface of my thoughts, with Sveta’s issue.

Put that aside. There was the issue of the short-term.

What did they want, in the here and now? They were asleep, so… nothing.

“I have an idea,” I said. It wasn’t necessarily an idea I felt good about, but I felt more confident because I had an idea, period.

Conversation stopped.

“If we attack this it’s going to be too difficult,” I said. I could see Rachel, Foil, and Damsel weren’t so keen on that. How could I use them? They factored in for the here and now. Hopefully that worked. Hopefully this worked.

I wished I’d done more in the past to track who was even operating in the corner worlds. I’d collected info from Earth as it had been, preserving records, and I’d collected information about Earth as it was, following who was where, but I hadn’t focused enough on the other Earths.

“I want to try disruption. I want to try you. I’ll stress this is only if you’re willing. Because this is playing with fire.”

My finger pointed at Chastity.

“Against a hundred people with guns? Tell me how and I’ll do it,” Chastity said.

“What’s the logic?” My mom asked.

“The logic is doing without the hundred people with guns. Byron, Chastity, are you okay riding a dog? Rachel, can you give them a ride?”

“Can,” Rachel said.

“Why me?” Byron asked. “I’m a step behind you here.”

“Because you can tell her what Precipice said about the intruder into his dreamscape and what happened to them. Make sure she knows the stakes. That it’s dangerous. There’s not a super high chance this works, and if it doesn’t or if she’s not down, I think there are two routes we can go down. For now, we either need to make this work, we need to get lucky at the- whatever it’s called. Frontier-”

“Frontier Row,” Moose said.

“We need to get lucky there-”

Chastity said something in French. Jesus Prayer? Jay-vays-pier? I didn’t have the grounding to know.

“-or we need to get out of Earth N, which means using the remote Precipice and Cassie have. We disrupt them at the foundation and… I want to start with their current setup. I want to leverage the most subtle powers we have.”

⊙

The first sign that something had gone wrong was that the villains of the Row were gathered around the station. The second sign were the fires.

Fuck.

I flew down to signal to Rachel, Capricorn and Chastity that they should circle around. I returned to the air well above the city and watched the patchwork canine take its new route. Not so dissimilar from the route we’d already traveled.

I landed in the midst of the crowd, a few feet from Bluestocking. I was forced to dismiss the Wretch on my descent.

“What the fuck?” I asked.

“You had someone sneaking around,” Bitter Pill said.

“We had a vulnerable teammate and we were keeping them back and safe,” I told her.

“You didn’t tell us.”

Was this the dynamic? Was it Bluestocking handling things when they wanted to handle the inter-team diplomacy in a half-decent way, running the show, while Bitter Pill was the designated stubborn asshole, when they didn’t care to play nice?

“We had more pressing concerns. We still do. Where is my teammate? He was out of action. He had someone with him, and they had a dog.”

“They ran off,” Bluestocking said.

I could read her body language, see that she was spoiling for an argument. Worse than before. Was she that defensive? Did she have something to hide? Or was she upset about a potential spy because both were true, and she was doing something she really shouldn’t?

“I really don’t care what you’re up to. I want my teammate and I want to deal with the monsters.”

“Then go find ’em. If you ask, we can’t tell you much of anything.”

I shook my head a little, then took to the air.

“Antares,” came the call from below me.

It was Bluestocking.

“What?”

“Paris brought Contender back.”

“And?” I asked, a little tense.

“He needs medical attention. Badly. You took his eyes.”

His eyes.

Almost gentler than I’d expected, but… it sat oddly. There were other avenues of attack or wounds that left some quality of life. But the eyes? That affected every moment of every day from here on out.

Was that worse than death to a Harbinger?

“They were going to tell Cradle’s group we were coming. We wanted to slow them down.”

“You locked us in?” Bluestocking asked. Asking to confirm what she already knew.

“Locked them in. You associated with them, you deal with the inconvenience they bring home. We’ll be done soon.”

Bitter Pill said, “We can’t extract the wirework from the mess that is his eyes and the bridge of his nose, not without damaging it more. He’s going to bleed out or suffer permanent damage if you take too long.”

“If we take too long, it’s because of their people, not ours.”

“Don’t test our patience,” Bluestocking said.

Which was my cue to go.

Rachel was already running ahead. She’d taken the long route, and instead of coming to the station, she’d just run on ahead. She was running through low brush and over frozen, fairly barren landscape that was dotted with the rare fire. One burning tree, low to the ground, one mess of detritus where a tree had fallen down in multiple pieces and decayed.

Etna, flying, and not flying that well. It clearly wasn’t a strength of hers. She created molten orbs in her hands and tossed them in the general direction of the fleeing dog and its two passengers.

Two options. I was confident in my ability to go toe to toe with her. I’d trained against the Legend-type flying blasters through my teenage years, and I’d sparred with Crystal. Fliers came in all types, and Etna looked like a strong contrast to Colt. Where Colt changed direction on the fly and went from zero to fifty in a second, Colt hadn’t been that fast. Etna was slow to pick up speed and maneuverable with that velocity, but I could see how Cassie was leading the dog in different directions, and Etna wasn’t doing so hot with that. When she turned, she maintained speed but her accuracy and reaction times seemed to go out the window. In a straightaway, it looked like she could build up speed and I was guessing her top speed was good. She was steaming as she flew, and her orbs were growing faster.

She’s a bomber, more than she’s artillery or an aerial combatant. Mark a target, get up to speed, drop or hurl a slew of molten glass orbs at them with each pass.

I was fairly sure, just by seeing her fly, that she had a bit of the same issue Crystal did. Middle ear wasn’t adapted to flying, so the sharp turns and anything else gave her one hell of the roller coaster feeling, if it didn’t make her nauseous or threaten to make her black out.

Option two, though, was to catch up to her when the constant turns had fucked with her most, tackle her, and use my flight and her disorientation to flip us both about ten times in three seconds, before arresting our movement and firmly depositing her in the nearest hillside. The crash landing on her part was more because of her disorientation than any exaggerated force on my end.

She bounced. It wasn’t a huge bounce, but her flight was still ‘on’ as she rebounded off the hillside and that made her buoyant.

I didn’t have time for these games. I watched a moment to make sure she was more or less fine. Then I flew away.

Just… far too many occasions where she’d gotten in our way. Where she’d ended up on the team with the shittiest, most frustrating people, where she’d been reckless. Now she was out attacking people without getting answers?

I was just done. If I discounted one because she’d helped with the Fallen attack, then this was her second strike, as far as I was concerned. I’d revise or amend my position if I could figure out if Bluestocking had sent her or if this was a reckless proving-herself thing.

I had no idea why I found it quite as irritating as I did. Chalk it up to diminished defenses.

Rachel whistled. She was catching up to Cassie, and the whistle was a cue to regroup, wolf and hound running side by side with a smaller mutant dog lagging behind. Yips was moving in straight lines while the others traced routes that were more like S-curves, which let him catch up. But those S-curves were for a reason, and Yips was running through every barely-iced-over creek and through very puddle, and a part of his shoulder was on fire because he’d blindly charged through a burning bush or tree.

“Capricorn!” I called out. “Fire!”

Capricorn twisted around, saw, and created blue lights.

Yips yelped as the blue lights became a splash of cold water.

“Stop,” I called out. I kept an eye on the spot where Etna had been deposited as the wolf and hound slowed, then came to a halt.

“They came after me,” Cassie said.

“It’s fine,” Rachel said. “The-”

The straggler crashed into the two dogs, nearly unseating everyone.

“Yips, you numbnuts!” Cassie shouted.

“Gentle! Settle!” Rachel ordered.

Yips, tail wagging, head lolling this way and that, did obey and dropped down to lie down on the ground.

“All the way,” Rachel ordered.

The mutant Yips flopped over onto his side, four legs sticking out to one side, tail slapping the ground.

“Did something happen?” Cassie asked.

“We wanted to try something,” Byron said. “We need the remote, I think? Or we’re doing something weird with Precipice’s situation.”

“The weird thing with Precipice first,” I said. I walked over to Rain, and I pulled off my glove so I could hold fingers to his pulse. “If everyone’s willing.”

The pulse was slow enough that I wouldn’t have imagined he’d been riding on that dog while it had been moving the way it had.

Chastity hadn’t responded.

“If you’re up for it, Chastity, I want you to knock Precipice out.”

“What?” Chastity asked, frowning.

“Turning him off and turning him on again,” Byron said, as it dawned on him.

“If he didn’t have that girl he was into, I’d be happy to turn him on any day,” Chastity said. Her friend pushed her shoulder. More serious, Chastity said, “Screwing with this situation he’s got going on hurt someone else, Capricorn told me while we rode.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a chance it hurts him?” Chastity asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “There’s a chance it wakes them all up, and that’s all that happens, and if that happens, we don’t have to wait until dawn to adapt and go after them. There’s a chance it wakes him up and only him, in which case we can use his input. There’s a really, really good chance he stays knocked out, and he was up with a sore cheek.”

“And there’s a chance that by waking him up, what happened to that other person happens to him,” Chastity said.

“That was actually going into the dream,” Byron told her.

“The person got chewed in going in. Do we chew him up pulling him out?” she asked.

“What I know is that he’s been looking for ways out of the dream for a while now,” Byron said, quiet. “I know it’s eating him alive. And he’s talked about options since that thing happened with the intruder Cradle brought in.”

“He wants this, huh?” I asked.

Byron shrugged. “Think so.”

Chastity nodded, then nodded more forcefully, like she was trying to amp herself up or get herself to the point of agreeing.

“If you don’t want to, we have other options,” I said.

“I told him I’d help him.”

“With his love life.”

“I’ll help him,” Chastity said, definitively now. “And not just to impress the guy in armor with the nice voice.”

“You’re incorrigible,” I told her, as Byron acted momentarily flustered.

“Just who I am,” she said, smiling a little.

Chastity began pulling off the wicked jewelry she had on her right hand. Studded rings and rings with ornate designs. She handed it to Cassie, then shifted position, sitting so her front was to Cassie’s back, Rain lying across Cassie’s lap.

I saw her take a deep breath.

“Move the mask?” she asked. “Just a bit. Let him have his privacy.”

Cassie did, sliding it aside to show only a bit of eye, nose, and mouth, cheek exposed.

The slap wasn’t even that hard. When Chastity pulled her hand back, a pinky fingernail was illuminated.

I checked his pulse.

Was it faster now?

“Okay,” I said. “That’s something of a good sign.”

Chastity worked for a second to get secure behind her friend. “Got me, hon?”

“Yes. Absolutelymont.”

“We’ll work on that,” Chastity said, leaning forward to kiss Cassie on the cheek, before slapping her own cheek with the backs of her fingers.

She swayed, and Cassie caught her as she went limp, and then Rain stirred, with Cassie trying to catch him too. I took over the duties there.

Rain groaned. It wasn’t a fast wake-up.

“Got you,” I told him.

“Pass him here,” Byron said. “Bigger mount. If that’s okay?”

Rachel grunted in the affirmative.

“You’re close,” I noted, as I finished the hand-off of Rain to Byron, then helped secure the blankets around Chastity.

“Yeah,” Cassie said. “Snuggle buddies.”

“You’re-” I motioned between the two girls.

“Buddies. Only buddies. We’d be best friends if we weren’t so far away. But when we get together we can nap on the same couch and it’s the best nap ever. Or we stay up all night bundled up in blankets, trading off between watching her awful shows and watching my stuff while she insults the characters. I never thought I’d have someone like her.”

Rain was slowly coming to. He groaned like he was in pain, but as I floated in to check, he recognized me and waved me off.

“I had someone like that. A girlfriend. We could talk all night. My ex-girlfriend, now,” Byron said.

“We’re not girlfriends, though,” Cassie said, hurrying to protest. “I like boys and she really likes boys. I really want to clarify because I don’t want me being horrible with words to tank any chances she has with-”

“Stop,” Rachel said. “You’re rambling, and you get mad at yourself when you get carried away.”

“Stopping,” Cassie said.

Rain worked his way to a sitting position. The silence hung heavy.

“Good?” Byron asked.

“I’m goddamn sore, and even more tired than I’m sore. It’s dark out? What the hell day is it?”

“Same day. We woke you up early,” Byron said. “Once you’re fit to ride, we’ll see if we woke up the others, or screwed with them.”

“Okay,” Rain said. “Water?”

“I’ve got broth for nutrients and shit,” Rachel said.

“My suggestion,” Cassie said, happy.

“I’ve put my lips on the rim, I don’t know if you’re a pussy about that sort of thing.”

“You can’t say that,” Cassie said. “Pussy.”

Rachel sighed, heavy. “When I say pussy I mean the lame-as-shit, wimpy-ass, useless-for-anything joyless dead-behind-the-eyes cat, okay?”

“Good,” Cassie said.

“There’s probably backwash in here too,” Rachel said. “People are pussies about that too.”

“I’ll wait,” Rain said.

“My parents pack everything,” I told him. “They’ll have water.”

“We going?” Rachel asked.

“Go,” I said.

“Yips! Up! Get going!”

As soon as Yips was off the ground, the three dogs were running. I flew alongside, leaning on the Wretch. My hands were cold. Again, I felt the aches and pains.

“Depending on what follows, we might go back, see if we can find any capes who aren’t tied up with other things,” I said.

“What else were you thinking?” Byron asked.

“Power copiers to copy Precipice and get his emotion power, or see if there’s a Heartbroken or someone else with a power that’s subtle enough.”

“Amias,” Cassie said. “He’s young, though.”

I winced.

“I don’t think we know any power copiers who work that flexibly,” Byron said.

“Any power that was subtle enough would work,” I said. “If they want to stay locked up, then let’s make the conditions as unpleasant as possible, and see if they crack.”

“Ahh,” Byron said.

“They’re locked up?”

“Essentially,” I said.

“My power helps,” Rain said. “You want to help them?”

“The way I see it, it helps when you’re doing something. Makes your mistakes more pointed, so you learn from them. But if you’re doing nothing at all, then-”

“Regret,” Rain said. “Doubt. Self-loathing.”

“I thought about what I want to do, and I want them to hurt. I want them to feel and recognize what they’ve done here. I want them to feel a thousand times the pain they’ve inflicted on others, and I don’t know if that’s possible, but maybe your power gets them there.”

“They might be asleep.”

“Emotion effects accrue, I think. There’s a physiological and mental component. We just… let that accumulate. A little trickle for a long time.”

“About that,” Rain said.

“What?”

“I’m maxed out. I didn’t get my power, or any tokens, pretty sure… I’m-”

The silver blade he created was just that- a blade, a foot and a half long. He made a throwing motion, and it dissipated.

“That’s maxed out?” Cassie asked.

“My emotion power. It’s turned up.”

“Nothing else?” Byron asked.

“Zero on the tinker power. Zero on the mover.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I have no fucking idea. But if you want to boil them inside whatever room they’re holed up in, I think I can do that.”

⊙

Rain was on his feet again, a bottle of water in hand, talking to Moose, as Moose outlined some of the faces inside the building. Foil had slipped in between the patrols and used spikes to scale the wall, and she’d taken photos while at the window. At the factory-like building, the windows were up near the tall ceiling and the roof.

I heard the names Moose rattled off -mostly new ones for me- and I heard Moose talking about which ones were more compassionate, which were assholes. The ones who had killed.

Chastity had roused, looking a bit worse for wear but, at the very least, not unconscious. She was with Rachel, but most of her focus was on the Harbingers.

“Incorrigible.”

I turned to look. It was Cassie.

“You called my friend incorrigible.”

“I’m sorry. I was trying to play along. Byron hadn’t mentioned the ex he was talking about was the same girl that’s chopped up in that factory, I kind of wanted to distract her.”

“Oh… oh no.”

“It’s okay. I’m sorry I wasn’t as deft as I could’ve been. Tired.”

“It’s okay. It’s true that she’s incorrigible, but… it’s hard, you know? I want her to be happy. But she doesn’t want to be someone who goes out with someone and lies from the start. I think something bad happened once, while she still lived with her dad, when she went to school under an alias and had a boy who liked her. I think he ended up meeting her dad.”

I nodded, swallowing hard. I wondered if I heard a name, if I could dig in files and find a case report.

Cassie continued, “And if she’s honest about where she comes from, most guys, most good guys, they run screaming. So she plays the odds, I think. Any time she’s with a guy who might work, she takes her shots. A lot of the time those guys aren’t great people, y’know? I kind of got hopeful, seeing her around the good guys, this time around, and not the guy who pops pills or the fourteen year old who’s killed people. That’s why I acted weird and ranty.”

“It’s fine. Really truly. It came from a good place. No judgment.”

“Her dad used to throw away women when they were twenty two or twenty five or around that age. I think she kind of feels like she has a time limit, and after that no guy’s going to want her around?”

“Fuck,” I said.

“And I can show her Charlotte and Forrest or Nancy and Theo and point to them, and I tell her they’re happy together. But she doesn’t really see it and I don’t think she even totally gets why she feels like she has the time limit. She can know it’s logical and feel a complete other way.”

“I’m running into that an awful lot,” I said. “The feelings and rationale being in completely different places. She’s lucky to have a friend like you, you know?”

“Snuggle buddy. Best friend. Shitty thing about Nancy and Theo, you know? I was all, rah rah, look, they’re so cute together, they’re so happy. Role models, woo. Then they broke up. I actually think it messed her up a little. She was at the farm when it happened and the next day she went back to New Brockton with barely a goodbye. We never even talked to them, we ate at the same table sometimes, but…”

“Yeah. I see what you mean. Kind of connects.”

“Yeah.”

“You want good things for your best friend.”

“I want good things for a lot of the people here. I thought- I probably shouldn’t even be telling you this. Rachel doesn’t care, she says to be open, but it’s Chastity’s whole deal I’m talking about and now I’m feeling like I’m betraying her by talking to a near-stranger about it.”

“I won’t say a word,” I said.

“Thank you. I can’t really talk to Rachel about stuff like this. She’s great. She’s the very best. But not for talking. Tattletale used to be someone we could go to, but she got worn out, and it became a not-this-week thing, and then a not-this-month thing. I was going to ask Imp for help, but she’s hurt now, and she’s not here.”

“Help?” I asked.

“I dunno. You’re pretty and you’re confident, and Chastity seems to like you. If you ever… feels dumb to say out loud. But if you ever met someone who might like her…? And who’s strong enough or caring enough? And who’s, um, perfect? Because my best friend doesn’t deserve anything less than perfect.”

I could hear something in her tone of voice in that last sentence, serious and almost dangerous or gruff, that told me this girl had spent a lot of time with the very serious, very dangerous, and very gruff Rachel Lindt.

I nodded.

“Don’t nod and get my hopes up if you won’t try,” Cassie told me.

“My best friend needs help too,” I said. “She needs a body. I’ll keep an eye out for your friend if you keep an eye out for mine.”

Cassie nudged me. When I looked, she had a hand out.

I shook it.

“What’s this dealing about?” Chastity asked. She’d left the Harbingers behind.

“I should go see to the mission,” I said, stepping away from Cassie.

“Careful going out,” Chastity said. “They sent a patrol down the road and they had lights up at the windows during one route they took. Group back here had to scram, and Foil almost got caught.”

“Thank you,” I said. I put a hand on her shoulder as I passed her. “And thank you. For waking up Precipice. Taking the risk.”

“No prob.”

Others were glancing my way. Briefings petered off. They were close to ready.

“What do you think?” Byron asked.

“I think we should get set up,” I said. “I’m thinking it’s me, Precipice… mom, are you okay being in ball form? If we hand you off to Sveta, we can have you for the pineapple.”

“Bowling seven-tens,” my dad said.

An old in-joke. We’d never been able to agree on what to call the maneuver.

My mom smiled a little. “That’s a good idea. If things go poorly?”

I nodded.

“Okay. I can be patient.”

“I’ll go too,” Foil said. “I can avoid the patrols. I can deal with problems.”

“Good,” I said. “Everyone else? Be ready. If there’s a bit of trouble, judgment call. Either make a bit of noise for a distraction and scram, or Capricorn seals it off once a few people are out the door. We can always get ourselves in later.”

“Or I act like a representative from the Row,” Moose said. “A quieter distraction.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Thank you.”

“If there’s a lot of trouble?” Ashley asked.

I looked at her. At Damsel. At my dad. At Moose. The Harbingers.

“Knock the building down,” I said. “Take out the ones who escape. Then we shift gears, get the people and the parts out.”

That got me some sober nods. A smile from Damsel.

I couldn’t see smiling at that end result, but… I supposed she needed to grandstand or act.

“Ready?” I asked Rain.

A nod.

I put my shoulder at his armpit, my arm at his waist. He put his arm around my shoulders, and we tested lifting off.

Good enough.

My mom went ball-form, and she was wrapped in a dog blanket to mute the glow. I put her under my other arm.

We went high first, because people didn’t usually look a quarter-mile up in the air for intruders. We dropped down, eyes peeled for soldiers with and without flashlights. Chugalug was out with his squad, jellyfish mode, floating, but he was taking a route that ranged further afield.

“Your heart’s pounding,” I told Precipice. I could feel it through his chest. “Was too fast a drop?”

He shook his head. “Must be involuntary reaction to being so high up.”

He was breathing harder too, but I didn’t get the impression he was being cute or coy – he seemed surprised. Not a boy-girl thing. Mercifully.

A long night, really. All of us were on edge.

We lowered down to the side of the roof with Sveta. I motioned for Rain to hang back.

I handed over the cloth-wrapped ball, only glimmers peeking through. Tendrils wrapped around it, binding the cloth even tighter to the orb.

I explained what was up, what had happened, and what the strategy was.

“Perfect,” Sveta said.

I wasn’t sure it was, but it was the best we’d been able to come up with.

Foil was making her way across the darkest parts of the fields between our group and the building. I could see her because I knew where to look. I was nervous, but I had to trust. She was one of the good ones.

Rain and I, meanwhile, dropped down to the edge of the roof. The window was recessed enough to set a foot down, and Foil had left some pieces of rebar jutting out of the wall. Footholds.

We could look in through the window. We could see the soldiers.

Rain laid his hands against the glass. His breath, even with the mask in the way, was hard enough to leak around the edges and fog against the glass. I motioned for him to back off and keep that to a minimum.

“Low strength,” I whispered. “At least when targeting the soldiers. Keep it subtle.”

“The god-damned irony,” Rain said, under his breath.

“Full strength if you can keep it to the contents of the egg and the mech. Let’s make sure we target Cradle if he’s trying to be clever and hide inside that.”

“Yeah,” Rain said.

He began using his power.

You want to make yourself an egg, Cradle? Let’s see if we can hard-boil it. Keep the shell intact and cook what’s inside.

Heavens – 12.6

“Focus on the inside of the bubble,” I murmured. It had been almost ten minutes since I’d felt the need to stress it and felt reasonably confident we could whisper without being overheard. “Not the bubble itself.”

“I can feel them,” Rain responded.

I nodded, holding my finger to my lips.

It was hard to converse, because a patrol walked a route around the rooftop. The group that had been out prior had liked holding the high ground, there was a box-shaped section on the roof that was higher than the rest, encompassing the top of the stairs and the door that led from the building interior to the roof itself. The old group had liked to camp out up there for the view it gave of the surrounding fields and the road that our team was on.

The new squad was more prone to walking the perimeter of the roof. The tension of it had me feeling nauseous, because some of them liked to shine their flashlights down. I had to maintain a state of combat readiness. Anticipating the next person, then making a mental note of any habits or things to look out for. By the time I was done that, the next person was on the approach.

The squad that was up on the roof now had ten people, but only seven walked the rooftop. Two more smoked up a storm, and a third fiddled with a boom box or something, the volume barely audible. When they had everything balanced right, it played a sports match, which didn’t seem to make a lot of sense given where we were, or when the teams were listed as Brazil or South Africa. A recording of a game from years ago, possibly. I halfways suspected the interest was in fixing the machine and the recorded match was just to be a constant source of sound that told them if it was working or not.

From the snippets of conversation I caught, one of the smokers was the squad leader, the other his friend. The guy who fiddled with the machine had been injured in a combat a while back, so he didn’t patrol.

Much of the conversation came from two soldiers who walked as a pair. Constant complaining. Eins and Zwei, as I thought of them. Their chatter was usually a good advance warning.

Then there was Drei, a woman who smoked, who scared the shit out of me every time she shone her flashlight around. The smoke and the light of the constant beam flicking around the corner of the building and onto the ground at the base were the closest things I had to a warning to get Rain and I down and into a position by the base of the wall where empty cans of fuel for the generator were stacked. Sometimes the wind didn’t let me smell the cigarette, or she wasn’t smoking, I couldn’t be sure which. Sometimes she didn’t aim the flashlight down until she was at our section of roof. Usually one of the two things was true. Still spooky, because the flashlight was mounted on her gun, and there would be a mere instant between the second we were illuminated and when she pulled the trigger. Would I manage? Maybe. Would Rain? Probably not.

Four and five – I’d wracked my brain for Chinese numerals, to change it up and serve as a mnemonic, then settled on the English ones instead. They were a pair who were mostly engaged in a back and forth, the English speaker was an ex-gang member, based on things he’d said, and half the time he’d be rattling off words in one language, while his Chinese buddy answered in another, or vice versa.

Sechs was a guy who had urinated off the edge of the roof twice in the last twenty minutes. His heavy footfalls were tell enough that he was coming, but sounds were unreliable, because the radio static or louder voices of others would drown things out. He was also most likely to change up the schedule or approach from another direction.

Sieben was the one to watch out for. Alone, so nobody to chat with. Not even a whiff of cigarette smoke or alcohol. She -I’d had enough of a glimpse of her to know she was an apparent she, tall, skinny, black, with only nose, eyes, and precariously high cheekbones visible behind her scarf and hat, a gas mask pulled off and set aside- was prone to walk on the lip of the roof rather than on the actual shingle-like pads. She didn’t make a sound, as a consequence, and she didn’t give her location away with a flashlight like Drei did.

We’d been on our way back from hiding from Drei’s flashlight when I’d first seen Sieben crouched at the edge of the roof, looking down. If she’d been three or four paces further down the roof, she would have seen us.

No exact patrol order. I could only feel out the gaps in between appearances and imagine that Sieben was filling in those gaps, I could pay attention to the details, and try to visualize the routes they preferred.

“Er bi.”

“Double vagina.”

“Sha bi.”

“Stupid vagina.”

“Ta ma de.”

“Yo mama?”

“Close.”

Four and Five weren’t even that close to the roof’s edge as they passed by. I allowed myself to relax. If I could’ve heard the intonations or accents on certain sounds, I would’ve been getting an education. Distance played with it, and I didn’t have the ear for it.

I leaned back. The heat that radiated away from us was affecting the frost on the window. The effect was small, but I worried what would be apparent if people inside or outside noticed a pair of blotches on the glass that were shaped like a pair of heads and shoulders, where we were close to the glass.

I tugged on Rain’s arm, having him shift his weight over to me, and we adjusted our location. A little closer to our hiding spot by the cans. Further from the spot where the three who weren’t patrolling were, so the intermittent buzz and blare of the radio wouldn’t put my nerves on edge or obscure other sounds.

“Can you see what you need to see?” I asked, my voice a whisper.

Rain nodded. The space under his hood was dark. He’d turned off the illuminated lines on his mask.

He motioned, a tiny and mostly broken mechanical hand indicating from his mouth to the roof. I nodded.

“Ninety-five percent,” I whispered. “Keep it to essentials.”

“What I was saying before,” he whispered. “I can feel who’s inside, I think. I push out and I feel the resistance. Lets me see silhouettes. Tattletale is in the bubble, along with three people.”

I felt my heart sink. The moment he’d said he could feel who was inside, I’d kind of hoped Cradle was inside the mech itself. If he was, there was a chance we could get him. Take him away, then do what we’d done to Rain, using Chastity’s power.

“I have to be careful with the soldiers,” Rain whispered. He pointed at the glass. “They get restless when I hit ’em, and when they get restless they head out toward the door. Then I have to hit them harder. It makes them rethink it.”

“Any effect?”

“Some. Have to find the right people.”

I heard a scuff. Immediately, my hand went to Rain’s face, sliding between mask and mouth. I heard more noise, and in the next instant, was dropping out of the air, Rain’s sudden, silent exhalation filtering through my fingers as we went from stationary to a twenty foot drop. I pushed him into the corner between cans and a part of the wall that jutted out.

Drei. Flashlight not aimed down or at any angle I could see, no cigarette.

The gun moved, light shining down around us. It stopped a short distance away. It moved to the cans, a few feet from us.

She moved on.

“That-” Rain started. My hand went back to his mouth.

After the blinding, focused light, it was hard to make out details. Sieben walked at the roof’s edge, a matter of ten feet behind Drei. She had company. A figure loomed tall enough that it was five feet taller than Sieben. A human shape topped it, and about ten feet of tail followed after, lumpy and faintly sour smelling. Like rancid garbage. The height was simply the parahuman raising themselves up. I could see the shape of him move as he dropped down, almost falling. His upper body traced the wall as he flowed down it at a diagonal, a caterpillar body of trash bags and cardboard boxes following after him.

He gathered the body under them, all coiled up, reshuffled, then launched off the wall. His upper body stuck out at the top, while legs and hips were lost in an amorphous blob of detritus. The bags and boxes contained gas, and hoses trailed beneath, each hose producing puffs of that same gas. He took a course that put him some distance from the building and his squad.

Chugalug. Trash changer. He gathered garbage and sewage as a body he could configure into a few different forms. That trash was slowly consumed and turned into a material that would be, as required, solid, gas, or liquid, typically in quantities far greater than what was reasonable for what he’d absorbed. His namesake technique was from how he ‘gathered’ raw sewage to fill out his body. Moose had covered that.

Guy didn’t really associate with his squad, or his squad didn’t want to associate with him.

I withdrew my hand from Precipice’s face. He made a face as he inhaled.

It smelled bad. Like shit that had been eaten, puked out, eaten again, and laced with sour garbage smells and other general human smells. There was something perfumey in it, too. Like air freshener or a shampoo, but cloying, seemingly designed to trick the nose and tastebuds into thinking that there was no need to shut down or ignore things anymore, just so they involuntarily opened up to the greater odor.

A trace of something minty or fruity followed by a punch of a smell like old man diaper soaked in month-old tuna water. And we weren’t even close to the source. He had passed thirty feet over us in a form that apparently wasn’t about the gas or the stench, and that was it.

“A lot of activity,” Rain managed, his own hand over his lower face now.

“Last patrol before shift change. We stay here.”

He nodded.

Next part is going to be hard. Adapting to new schedules and patterns.

“It’s worth it?”

“I think so,” Rain said. He ran his hand between hood and head, over his shorn head. “I’m getting Love Lost and Cradle, at least. I feel it hitting home, when I push to full strength. I feel it if I touch Tattletale by mistake. I don’t feel it with others. Tristan, kind of. I think it’s Tristan. Except they only took his midsection.”

“Emotions are rooted in all kinds of places,” I said. I thought of how many times I’d felt bad feelings start in my gut, or end up there.

Rain clenched his fists, tiny mechanical hand squeaking. “Damn it. I’m going to lose track of people, moving away like this. There are a lot who don’t react. But some do. I try to find them, gradually increase the pressure.”

“I did say to go easy on the soldiers.”

“I don’t have the patience to go that easy,” he said. “If we get caught we’re going to have to fight, or you’re going to have to fight. If I haven’t gotten anything done by then, then this is all for nothing.”

“Let me worry about us getting caught. You focus on what’s indoors. Be patient.”

“Turning the screws is getting to some people. One keeps talking to their superior, pointing at the orb. They might up and leave.”

“Okay. But I know emotion powers. People react in different ways. This isn’t us hitting one billiard ball with another and calculating the trajectory. They’re people. Every person is built differently.”

“There’s a guy who sits apart from the rest of his squad. Brought a hunk of wood with him.”

“The lumberjack. I saw him.”

“Whittles this round of wood with branches sticking out. Gets more agitated the more I work on him. Like you said. Different reactions to the same things.”

“Go easy,” I murmured.

“Imagine if he got pissed off enough to pick a fight,” Rain said. “There are people who are ready to leave.”

“What happens if they do?” I whispered back. “They leave, they run into our guys.”

The door opened upstairs. We fell silent by mutual understanding.

I heard Five say something in Chinese. He got a response from someone else. More fluent than Four.

“Our guys can handle it.”

I shushed him. I wished I didn’t have to.

There was more mingled conversation. There hadn’t been many squads that were outright mingling like this. I had a bad feeling. The squad on the roof right now was Chugalug’s- they’d gone on a patrol of the general area a while ago, spent a shift inside, then went to the roof. I had to imagine it was because Chug stank and people didn’t want him indoors.

Chugalug’s friend was…

I saw Barfbat take flight. Tumor-ridden wings and a head with pustules and fluid-filled sacs ringing his neck. They had to insulate him, because it was chilly and they made for a lot of exposed skin.

He flew straight in the direction of Chugalug.

Because they were friends. Fuck.

A solid minute passed as Rain and I remained silent, crammed into a corner with metal barrels around us.

Chugalug’s squad wasn’t leaving. They were staying where they were, and Barfbat’s squad was joining them. Complicating factors that made the pain in the ass people into even bigger issues. Schedules in disarray…

“Moose-” Rain started, barely audible. I tensed at his voice, looking up. I motioned for him to continue. “Moose said Barfbat has enhanced hearing and smell.”

I nodded. I was aware.

“What do we do?”

“You stay. I’m putting Foil and Sveta on it. I think this is the final leg of the journey. We won’t have long to do our thing.”

“Fuck.”

“Shh. It’s fine. Try to focus on the rooftop, stay quiet and still.”

“I’ve been keeping my head down for all my life, why stop now?” Rain asked.

I wasn’t sure how to answer that, so I nodded.

Foil first. I made my way around the building, and saw light from above. Drei and her flashlight again. She walked with the end of the gun resting against the lip of the roof, the flashlight beam extending down, but not flush to the wall. She had company, now, going by the murmurs I heard.

Two squads patrolling the fields and woods around us, twenty in total with two capes. Two squads above us, another twenty. Two capes who are flying around, due back any minute.

I let the beam pass me by, then rounded the corner. Two guys sat on the roof’s edge, feet dangling. Sieben was with them, her back to the space below.

Tense, to pass so close by, to see a flick of white dart through my peripheral vision- a loogie, bit of spit, or a fleck of ice that had been knocked free of the roof.

But they seemed to be looking out, not down.

Foil was up the wall, having used spikes to ascend. She spotted me, and made her way down, stepping on inch-long protrusions.

I approached her, and with secrecy in mind, we put personal space aside, our toes almost touching, my mouth by her ear. “Barfbat and Chugalug. They can’t come back.”

“You sure? When they don’t return-”

“I’m sure. Be careful, Bat has enhanced hearing and smell.”

“I’m short on darts.”

I winced. I drew the extra decorations from my costume out of my pocket, and held it between us as I used a bit of strength to pull one free. I didn’t want a telltale glint to give us away.

“Give me the entire thing? I can cut the rest off if you give me one.”

I didn’t want to give her the entire thing. I liked my costume and Weld had gone to some effort to make the decorations.

But need won out. Others needed this. I pressed the decorations into her hand.

She jogged off, keeping low to the ground, not running along the base of the building as I’d been doing, but a distance away, because that distance gave her the ability to see which way heads were turned and a better idea of where people were. I watched the soldiers above, nervous, but I didn’t hear any cries of alarm.

She made a break for it, quick and quiet, across a dark field dusted faintly with snow.

We had a time limit.

Sveta.

I circled the building, floating instead of walking, and slowed as I heard whispering. I peered around the corner, and heard the whispering stop.

Something slapped my hip. A tendril. I approached, and I saw the general shape that was my mom. Wrapped in a dark blanket, the blanket held tight by tendrils. Sveta’s face was tucked between ball and wall.

“Fight might start soon. They just sent out the guy with enhanced senses. I sent Foil after him. If there’s trouble, I’ll pulse with my aura. There’s a group-”

I drew a rough outline of the roof on the ground, then an ‘x’.

“Right there. Should I go over the pineapple seven-ten?”

“I remember the great pineapple debate,” Sveta said. “No need.”

“You’re awesome,” I said. “Hit ’em, and if there’s any gunfire after, feel free to do what you need to do.”

“They hurt Tristan,” Sveta murmured. “Kenzie. Ashley.”

“Yeah.”

“I might have to throw them off the building. I just don’t want to.”

“I know. I don’t want to hurt them either. Gonna go check on Rain.”

I made my way back, wary of the periodic flashlight, or people leaning over the edge of the roof. Mr. Sechs was taking another leak.

When I got to where I’d left Rain, I found him gone.

I looked for him, and I found him halfway up the building. He’d scaled the darts Foil had embedded in the wall, and he’d returned to his former spot.

The hell?

I flew to him, shooting him a furious look. Because, for one thing, that was pretty precarious footing for anyone who wasn’t Foil, and a fall would have outed all of us. For another, what the hell was he thinking?

He touched the window with his right hand and the tiny mechanical right hand, and I could see the strain in those extremities. He wasn’t about to bust through the glass, but he was pressing hard.

The Lumberjack was shouting loudly enough that I could hear the lowest sounds through the window, from the other side of the building.

‘The Lumberjack’, as I’d termed the guy, was a burly guy with a big red beard, wearing the standard mercenary outfit, part of Red’s squad, and Red was a woman I’d named as such because she had the same mercenary uniform on, but instead of black and gray camo or just plain black, she had red and black and black, with a metal mask. She had broad shoulders and broad hips, black hair in a lick of a ponytail I could have gripped in one hand.

She was one to watch out for, but it was the little cues that made me think that. People paid attention to her, and she seemed to have at least three of the people other mercenaries were avoiding inside her orbit. The Lumberjack, a scrawny guy who I hadn’t seen without a knife in his hand, and another big guy that had gotten up to go to the bathroom ten minutes ago, with people actively getting out of his way.

If she had the fear or respect of a bunch of guys who demanded fear and respect, that was worth paying attention to.

She’d stood, and she held a gear in her hand. It flipped over and rolled across the back of her hand before she caught it. The thing probably weighed three pounds.

It fell, after a purposeful movement, like she was aiming to bounce a ball. It plunged into the floor, and there was a ‘splash’ of pistons, larger gears, sheet metal and metal springs thicker than my leg, rising out of the concrete floor and sinking back in to leave the floor unblemished. A piston knocked a smaller, narrower gear into the air, which she caught.

It served to get the attention of the others. Shouting and conversation had stopped.

Rain pressed another hand to the window. People were getting restless now. They actively stood, shuffling feet, looking uncomfortable.

“There’s time to roll this out slower,” I whispered. “Until Barfbat and Chugalug’s squads notice they haven’t come back. You don’t have to finish this in five seconds. Go easy.”

“I am,” Rain hissed, and I could hear the tension in his voice. “There’s only so long I can look at that ball they’ve made and not think about how people we care about are in there. Tristan backed me up when it counted. Kenzie!”

“Shh!”

I saw him twist his head to one side, like he had to wrench himself away to avoid ranting.

End of his rope? We all had our limits, but those limits depended heavily on what we were talking about. Rain, I had to imagine, had an intolerance for institutionalized evil. For the cult mentalities and gatherings of people who overlooked serious wrongs, like these soldiers and villains were doing.

And this was after days of stress, and months, a year of seeing his cluster every night. What we’d done to force him out of the room was screwing with the way his power had been distributed.

The Lumberjack threw the piece of wood he had been whittling, straight for Red. Red made a movement of her hand, and there was a small splash of gears and pistons, of cranks and pipes, some red hot, barely larger across than a dinner plate. It was followed by another splash, hotter and larger, like a stone was being skipped, and a third, even larger, massive, with a piece of machinery taller than Red was lunging out of the ground. A mechanical claw seized the piece of wood, destroying it, before disappearing into the ground with another ‘splash’.

People backed away from the droplets of molten metal that had been thrown out.

“Remember your power educates them,” I said.

“I remember,” Rain said. “I disabled it just as he did the stupid thing.”

He’d been loud as he said it.

Worrying we’d been heard, I was mindful of the group on the roof, and flew up, leaving Rain where he was. None were close enough to hear Rain. They’d heard the commotion and headed to the door, where they now gathered.

Still fifteen or so on the roof. The captains were at one spot where boxes had been set out for sitting on. I saw the player, and guns set against walls, in easy arm’s reach. Nobody had abandoned their weapon.

I watched and waited, trying to get a sense of them. As they started to turn back around, situation assessed, I dropped back down.

Sveta was there, at the corner of the building. Her tendril reached out to its maximum range, slapping my shoulder. Scared the hell out of Rain, who almost lost his perch.

I motioned for him to stay, then followed. Sveta was careful to pull back, to move away as I moved forward, keeping a healthy distance.

Sieben. The woman who’d been the biggest pain, and Drei, the woman with the flashlight and bad smoking habit. My mother stood over both, a blanket over her and them, shielding the glow of the blades she held to their throats.

“They saw us,” Sveta murmured. “There was a noise, and that one did a weird thing where she didn’t look toward the noise, she focused down on us. She called the one with the flashlight.”

“Power?” I asked. “Answer. Quiet.”

“No,” Sieben said. “Good habits.”

“I have bandages, belt, back pouch” my mom said. “Use them for a gag. Left pouch for-”

“For wrist-ties,” I guessed.

“Cuffs.”

I got the bandages and cuffs. Gags around the mouth. We set them back to back, wrists behind them around around the stomach of the other.

“If you make a commotion, we can reach you before they do,” I said. “No fumbling around, no shuffling, kicking, or banging.”

“I’ll watch them,” Sveta said. “Kill them if I have to.”

“You,” my mom said. She pointed at Sveta. “I’m not impressed.”

“What the hell?”

“It’s fine,” Sveta said.

“What the hell?” I whispered.

“It’s fine. Go. Rain needs you. We’ll do what we have to. They’ll notice two of theirs are missing as soon as they do a head count.”

I looked between her and my mom, and I saw something weird and dark in my mom’s expression. Like she was bothered.

She went ball form before I could study it any further.

My cue to go back to Rain. Before I was even there, I heard more of a commotion inside.

I reached the window, supporting Rain’s balance, and peered past the frost.

The Lumberjack had been mangled. Red stood over his body. The other two members of her group that I’d deemed scary, plus one more, had all risen to their feet, standing spread out. Nobody was stopping them, helping them, or intervening.

“I have to wonder, and this feels shitty and scary to articulate-,” Rain said the words through grit teeth, emotional.

“Shh,” I urged him. Did he have zero volume control? That had almost been speaking level.

The skinny guy with the knife pointed it at Red. The one guy I hadn’t expected to be in that mix, because he’d been so quiet, said something.

Red acted. A movement, which immediately saw two members of the group drawing their weapons. Too late. The splashes occurred around them. Small splash, medium splash, giant drill spearing out of the ground, catching a guy in one butt cheek and shredding everything from there to cranium. One had backed out of the way of a tightly arranged set of metal rollers, but missed the piston that struck a roller and, accelerated, speared the ceiling. The piston splashed, and it became a hydraulic hammer, slamming from the high ceiling to the floor. Pulp.

The last guy, the quiet guy, hadn’t drawn a gun. He was thrust into the air by an uneven set of pistons, so he flipped head over heel. He landed on one shoulder, and collapsed in a way that didn’t let him fall flat- his feet were left above him for two or so seconds, before he twisted and flopped into a more or less relaxed position.

The machinery around him receded. As it did, metal machinery splashed up and out, with white hot metal in the midst of it. About a half-full bathtub’s worth of hot metal landed on or in the immediate vicinity of the third guy.

He thrashed and screamed, his clothes igniting from the heat alone, while Red sat back down. She said something, and a lot of heads shook, in her squad in particular.

“Jesus Christ,” Rain muttered.

He’d been using a lot more religious swears since waking up.

“Yeah,” I said. I was caught between saying ‘that’s not on you’, and ‘I did fucking tell you to go easy’.

I left it at ‘yeah’.

“That bad feeling I had? I’m identifying the buttons to press. Not just in one person, but in a group, so the group acts like you want it to,” Rain was barely audible. “Like cult leaders do.”

“It’s different,” I said, though I was a little spooked at just how that had unfolded.

“It’s like how they say bullies feel,” Rain whispered. “Powerful, big, better. Not better as in like I’m a better person, because I’m definitely not, but better like I’ve unloaded something I’ve been carrying for a long time. I feel all those things, and I feel worse, I feel sick.”

“The danger, I think, isn’t in feeling powerful, big, or venting,” I whispered, my eyes locked on the scene. “That’s reality. Trust me. I’ve been there. We face off against shitty people and it feels good to see them get what they deserve, whether they’re racists, people who deal to kids, fanatics, or monsters. If we didn’t feel satisfaction then we wouldn’t be able to do this.”

Rain grunted in the affirmative. Someone approached Red, indicating the man who was being put out with stomps and a shiny blanket thrown over him. Red waved them off, and they went to the burned man. Medical care, it looked like.

“What you watch out for is if it stops feeling shitty, or if you get used to it,” I said.

Rain’s hand shook as he pulled it away from the glass.

“I feel pretty damn shitty, having played a part in three people dying and a fourth getting burned half to death, so we’re good there,” he murmured. “We’re good.”

His finger touched glass, then drew out a line, indicating someone specific. One of the younger mercenaries. The one who had spoken up a few times.

“But I’d feel worse if I didn’t do anything,” he said, hand moving from fingertip on glass to being flat against it.

“That’s the way it goes,” I whispered.

The young mercenary raised his voice, and he was close enough I could hear. “Are you going to off me if I try to leave?”

Red said something. Too far away, not loud enough.

The young mercenary’s squad leader said something as well. The guy was a cape called Mukade, his squad had a centipede motif stenciled on their body armor.

I knew Mukade. Moose had known him too. The guy who had wanted a group or organization to stick to.

With the word from their squad leader, the young cape strode toward the door.

Rain moved his hand.

And Mukade said something else.

“That you?” I asked, a murmur. “Puppeteering?”

“Creepy to put it that way.”

“Creepy’s good,” I murmured.

“I don’t know what he said,” Rain replied, matching my volume for once. “I just thought if he was giving the merc a pass to leave, wasn’t that too goddamn easy? None of them should feel okay about this. Not puppeteering. Nudging.”

“If you don’t let the ones who hate this go, we either have to-”

I fell silent as I heard heavy footsteps. I’d kind of hoped the people had headed downstairs to investigate. I’d really hoped that with people crowding to one end of the roof, they weren’t noticing the absence of two of their members. Some of their people had gone downstairs, some were up, and discrepancies were easy to miss.

But Sechs, the pisser, the clomper, the one with the most unreliable and careless patrol route, was still patrolling the roof’s edge.

If we don’t let the ones with consciences go, we either have to take them all out, or we let some of the worst ones slip through our fingers.

Sechs stood on the roof’s edge.

He looked down. I wasted no time in going up.

“Oh!” he raised his voice, guttural.

My hand hit his gun, pushing it to one side. My knee hit his chin. Others were reacting and I used my aura. The range I measured out, so it caught those on the roof, and it caught Rain. With luck, it caught Sveta.

Multiple people with guns. The door was shut, and I had to stop them before they opened it and shouted the alarm.

There was barely a need. Sveta was reacting. The ball came free of cloth, and it was hurled across the roof. Sveta’s face appeared and the same tendrils that had thrown the ball now caught three soldiers, snatching them from where they stood.

The ball rolled, people scrambled to move.

My dad and my adolescent self had maintained some very different opinions on what we called some maneuvers. The pineapple had been my terminology. I wasn’t sure why I’d chosen that in retrospect, especially considering I’d since learned that grenades could be termed ‘pineapples’ in jargon, and my dad didn’t have a role in this one. But I had and I still maintained the opinion that ‘bowling seven-ten’ was a mouthful and an artifact of my dork of a dad really liking bowling. A name that didn’t fit was better than a name that wasn’t practical, as I argued it.

People got out of the way of the ball. They didn’t anticipate it becoming a woman, armed with two blades. As fast as the ball had been moving, she was utterly still, blades extended -to the seven and ten o’clock positions, as my dad would protest- Two people held hostage. Both were the squad leaders. Not captains- the capes were the captains. But squad leaders.

Bowling for hostages.

One leader moved his hand, motioning for others to put guns down. Everyone stood down. Silence reigned, but for shouting from in the building below us.

Foil had returned, and had ascended to the rooftop in a flash. I hadn’t even seen her making the approach. She held darts -my spikes- in one hand, all bunched together.

“I had to back off. I pinned them, but then a squad headed my way,” Foil said.

“Got it. We should be expecting them?”

“Maybe.”

Ushering them one way with her energy blades, my mom had the two squad leaders stand with arms raised over their heads, backs to the door that led down.

Foil and I relieved the other nine soldiers of their weapons. Foil touched the excess weapons and inserted them so they intersected boots and rooftop, embedding them there.

Below, the commotion hadn’t stopped. Upset, dissent, doubts.

Then, all at once, something approximating silence.

“Vic,” I heard Rain.

I flew to his side.

“Cradle’s awake early.”

The egg was opening, the configuration shifting. Cradle was pulling tubes away from him. He was wet with blood. Love Lost and Colt were lying on the floor of the orb, more tubes in them.

He moved slowly, as if in pain. He wiped at his face, to get the blood out of his eyes. There was enough of it that his features were obscured. Even with the frost at the window, he was raised up high enough that I could see the tears in his eyes, the wet tracks. His hand clutched at his chest, then reached for a pocket. Eyeglass case.

He stopped, not putting them on.

Mask, instead, at his hip. He started pulling that on, and stopped partway once again.

He screamed, a roar.

There it was. That satisfaction, that didn’t feel as awful as it needed to.

Heavens – 12.f

He took off his glasses, holding them in his hands. The time for tantrums was over, and the fragility of the glasses in his hands was a reminder to himself. Not to clench his fists, not to stand. If he opened his eyes and looked at something or someone, then the blurriness of the scene was an immediate warning to himself. If the glasses shifted in his fingers because he moved, that gave him pause.

He’d broken his glasses once, years ago. He’d done it in a childish tantrum, and it had taken days before he could get new ones. Back in the ugly days.

That hadn’t been the day the tantrums stopped, but it had been a lesson that had stayed with him. Rare, when he had so many terrible teachers.

“Ryan,” Old Mrs. Parrish said.

Speaking of terrible teachers.

Ryan took his time unfolding the arms of his glasses, rubbing at a spot on the lens with his shirt-sleeve, then sliding them into place. His fingers ran through his hair, while the fingers of his other hand stayed on his glasses. A reminder, lingering as he focused his eyes on his homeroom teacher.

Mrs. Parrish was giving him a look. Sad and disappointed, but not disappointed in him. She wore bright colors, and all of her jewelry looked like it was bought from the same kiosk in the mall. Not even a store, but one of the booths that were set up in the walkways, that stuck ‘fair trade’ in the name and sold wooden beads they’d probably made themselves for twenty times the price.

He had a running bet with himself that she had at least three cats and one other random pet. She definitely didn’t have a wedding ring on her left hand, and that was a ship that had sailed a long time ago.

He smiled, the smile measured to the occasion.

“What goes around comes around,” she said.

He had to be careful. He looked at the door beside him, and he could hear the murmurings of his parents. He adjusted his glasses without looking at Old Mrs. Parrish, and he thought about all the possibilities. How dangerous was she?

His parents were saying something about suing the district. He could call her out on exactly what she was, cut her down like she’d tried to cut him down. But it wasn’t worth the risk.

“Are you threatening me, Mrs. Parrish?” he asked.

She leaned forward, arms on the divider that separated the two office secretary’s desks. Her fingers rotated a piece of wood at her wrist that had been painted a jade green, until a backwards swastika showed.

“No. I believe in karma,” she said. “I think if you do good, then you’ll find your way forward. People will want to help you, and opportunities will present themselves.”

“Oh,” he said. He tried to look like he was digesting that.

She was almost rushed as she cut in, “Don’t say anything, Ryan. Just… think about it.”

She sounded so guarded. Defensive.

“I’m mostly thinking about how that explains a lot about you, Mrs. Parrish. You never look really happy, except that one time Tyler pranked Ben in class-”

“Ryan.”

“-which is kind of mean spirited, isn’t it? And you’re unmarried and old and I’ve never seen you hanging out with another teacher. None of the students come to your desk to shoot the shit after class.”

“Enough, Ryan.”

He wanted to say more. He could even get away with it. He could press her and she’d get mad, and his parents were right here, to see what he had to deal with at school. He bit his tongue instead. He adjusted his glasses, looking down at his lap.

In the background, he could make out words.

“You’ve had it out for him, even though-“

He sighed.

“If what goes around comes around, then you guys are really going to hurt for the way you’ve treated me, the past few years.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

He didn’t.

But he measured out another smile. Getting back at her would be satisfying, but he’d learned that it was an empty kind of payback. A fast food kind of thing, empty and not so good for him in the long term. It was the same if he got her to show her true face when his parents were so close by. Empty fast food satisfaction.

Like this? If he just gave her a smile that might be the last thing she saw of him? She’d know. She knew that she’d lost, all of them had lost. They hadn’t beat him.

The door to the principal’s office opened. Ryan had a fleeting glimpse of the old woman’s expression, doubt, that expression he’d adapted to like a person in London learned to live with fog and rain, or how a person who lived in Lyon learned to live with Endbringers kicking their shit in.

“Let’s go,” his mother said.

“What’s going on?” he stood.

“We’ll talk about it later,” she said.

He rose from his seat. There were no parting words from the bald old principal or Mrs. Parrish as he left with his family, walking down the hall toward the front doors. He knew they followed behind, because his dad shot a look back in that direction.

He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of looking back. He was pretty sure he was done here. Done with this school, with old teachers who had long since stopped caring about anything except being shitty and getting on his case.

They were just past the doors when his dad put a hand on his shoulder. Ryan stopped, turning. This was it. The test.

“Did you hurt that girl?” his dad asked him.

Ryan’s thoughts flashed to the confrontation in the parking lot. Christina’s friends cornering him, one of them with tears in her eyes. Emotional and violent.

“No,” he lied with sincerity.

His mother put a hand on his shoulder, leaning over to kiss him on top of the head. He knew the doors were glass, and that his old principal and homeroom teacher were probably still looking.

He didn’t steal a glance. Even a glance could be fast food. Fast food was better than a tantrum, but the long play was even better than that.

⊙

“Amanda?”

The girl looked startled. Amanda wore the same uniform as everyone else, but hers was a little washed out, the red of her tie a little darker and duller, the black a little more gray. Her hair was duller than the other girls, a simple bob, parted and kept out of her face with a headband.

The dead giveaway, though, was the shoes. Dull and scuffed. Her family probably didn’t have a lot of money, he was guessing, in which case the haircut made some sense. It was kind of what he was doing. His own parents were having a tough time, sending him here.

“Aren’t you going to go over the project?” he asked.

The other students in class were milling around, each with printouts in hand. The teacher had told them to peer review and get two signatures in the top right hand corner.

“I’m not good at that, and I didn’t do very well on the project,” she said.

“Come on,” he said. “Trade?”

Amanda nodded, biting her lip. “It’s really not very good. I misread one of the instructions.”

“I looked at someone else’s and I don’t think they got it all the way right either,” he said.

He looked around, then leaned closer, whispering. “Blame the shitty teachers.”

“They’re not bad. It’s a good school,” Amanda said. She looked a bit scandalized by the comment.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Amanda smiled, before ducking her head down, focusing on his paper.

Her project wasn’t very good. She’d been right to be embarrassed. He held back a sigh, then set about going over it, trying to be as constructive as possible. He had to read it twice before he found some positive comments to make. The lines that had some wit to them were marked out with a ‘I like this’.

He even dared to add a smiley.

Every day was work. Making friends, holding back, playing the role.

He attended a new school, private and classy, which meant a new pretense. It meant laying new groundwork, being patient, even though being patient was hard.

He’d once heard his mother unaffectionately call him ‘the worst baby ever’. He resented a lot about how his parents had fucked up or failed him, but he couldn’t really hold a grudge about that line. It was as honest as anything he got from her, and it was kind of funny.

He’d been a shitty kid, so it wasn’t unreasonable to imagine being a shitty baby. He could remember tantrums, screaming as loud as he could scream just to see what it was like, see how people reacted, and then keeping it up for hours. Then doing it again the next day. He could remember fighting literally tooth and nail, until they decided letting him wear unwashed clothes and go without baths was easier.

‘Go stand in the corner?’ – what even kept him in the corner, if they weren’t holding him there? He made them hold him every time.

‘I’ll take away your toys?’ – he’d take away theirs. Smash the television enough times they had to keep it in their room with the door locked. Pull out drawers. Cut wires. Break the ship in a bottle that his Grandpa had left his dad.

They slapped him, because they’d finally lost patience? He’d scratched, he’d spat, he’d kicked. He’d doubled down in the physicality of how he fought back.

Those had been the ugly years.

He’d broken his own glasses during a tantrum, and the days of near-blindness that had followed had been a wake-up call. Maybe the first time a punishment had actually meant anything. Medication, half a year later, had helped him actually use the wake-up call. Adderall. Speed for kids, but it made it possible to change course.

That had marked the transition from the ugly tantrum years to the ‘fast food’ years, as he found a new footing, and those years had been brief. His parents had found people to talk to, and became annoying enough that he’d decided it was better to play along. They’d set rules in place and stuck to them no matter what. At that stage, he’d been entering middle school, which was attached to his elementary school.

Playing along meant being the angel at home and doing what he wanted at school. His parents were so relieved that their ‘worst baby ever’ and their grade schooler from hell had finally turned around that they would defend him to the death. Just so long as he fed them something that would let them believe he really had turned around.

That meant, at least for now, the change of schools had to be something that worked. At his old school? His teachers had hated him because they couldn’t let go of how he’d used to be. Students picked on him because the teachers allowed it, making up stories because they knew the teachers would believe anything they said about him, no matter how vicious or horrible. He’d crafted that impression for his parents.

Now he was here. He’d made friends, he was confident, and teachers sung his praises.

“This is really good work,” Amanda said, tucking her hair behind her ear so she could see him better, without actually sitting up straight or looking right at him. “It makes me feel even worse about mine.”

He was a bit amused by that, but he didn’t let it show. “I’ve always been a good student.”

“I’m jealous.”

Straight As since our report cards were A through F instead of being fives to ones, except when he didn’t hand something in. It was too important not to give his teachers any ammunition to hand to his parents. An intentionally messed up project couldn’t be explained away. A missing project could be blamed on the teacher’s failure.

He wasn’t a genius. His reading of people, his grades, he knew he wasn’t special. It was that everyone else was dumb, or they… they hadn’t had a reason to try. They coasted. It was a Tuesday, and he’d overheard some people talking about next Saturday’s morning cartoons.

He’d had to work for a long time now, at every interaction. Every project.

“This isn’t bad,” he lied, finishing up, passing her project back to her. He took his own back.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You never get out of your chair when it’s a group project or class activity.”

“There are twenty-nine students in class,” she said. “No matter what size the group is, someone has to be left out.”

“Thirty students in class now. I’m here,” he told her. “Unless you tell me not to, I’ll group with you until the end of the year, kay?”

She nodded, smiling. “Alright. Um, and it’s Manny.”

“Manny?”

“You wrote Amanda here. I wanted to get it out of the way. Manny, not Amanda. They always use our full name for roll call.”

He had to adjust his glasses.

“Got it,” he said, even though he didn’t. Manny was a dumb name for a girl.

The teacher was watching the exchange, he guessed. He couldn’t look. Perception mattered, and the last thing he wanted was to be seen as calculating.

A part of him was pleased Amanda had been so easy to work with. If he was putting in the extra effort, maybe there was some way to get some payoff later on. She probably wasn’t romantically interested in him, but he’d observed that any male and female friend who spent enough time together would form some kind of attraction. If he wanted to, he just had to stick near her.

He wasn’t that interested in that. But could he make her do something, like hurting someone else, or stealing something? Could he remain the angel at home and at school while getting others to do what he wanted?

It was so easy, when so many others were unaware, barely thinking from moment to moment, and yet it was so hard to justify. So much work for so little gain. He wasn’t that kind of guy, who had a herd of others following him.

A card to keep up his sleeve.

“We might have a third person for our groups,” Amanda said.

He pushed his glasses up his nose as he turned to look. At the front of the room, someone was talking to the teacher. Going over the project notes.

Ryan recognized the boy. He noted the fresh, brand-spanking-new uniform.

Someone from his old school.

No. Not fair.

How was he supposed to handle this? Did he get out in front of the problem? Divert? Deny? Negotiate? What could the guy even want?

He watched out of the corner of his eye as the boy left the teacher’s desk, then began navigating the room. Round-faced, hair buzzed short to the point he was almost bald, ruddy cheeks, and a crisp school uniform better suited for someone of a lighter build.

Maybe emboldened, Amanda raised a hand, getting the boy’s attention.

Ryan’s hands went to his glasses, he realized the action might be interpreted as hiding behind his hands, and he made the adjustment brief.

He didn’t miss the moment he was recognized. The recognition, followed by wariness. The boy had probably heard the stories.

“I’m supposed to read some people’s work and sign it?”

“I still need someone else to read mine,” Amanda said. “I’m Manny.”

“Lloyd,” the boy said. Two thirds of his attention were on Ryan now. Amanda didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m Ryan,” Ryan said.

“You used to go to Hillside?”

“Yeah.”

The wariness intensified, if anything. But Lloyd didn’t say anything. As he looked over Amanda’s work, making small talk with Amanda, Ryan made a note on a slip of paper.

Ryan’s glasses found their way into his hands, under the guise of cleaning them. A way to keep himself still when he was agitated. To avoid any comment that might be foolhardy or rushed. To keep his hands busy. Training himself.

Five minutes passed before Lloyd finished. He shuffled over, until he sat opposite Ryan. His jaw was set now, his shoulders stiff.

There was a kind of humor in the note that Ryan passed along with his work. He might have smiled or laughed, but he was too wary. Not when he was taking a risk like this.

Other students passed notes saying something like, ‘Do you like Sarah? Y/N’

The note Lloyd got was simpler. ‘Ernie. Joseph. Ms. Butler. Christina. Lloyd too? Y/N’

Minutes passed before Lloyd finished the work. The class was restless, people moving around and chatting more because most had finished. Ryan was very still.

The note was passed back. That was the first good sign. If Lloyd had thought to keep it and show it to anyone… but Lloyd hadn’t.

The ‘N’ was circled. The second good sign.

Two aces up his sleeve, if he ever had a cause to need them.

⊙

The slice of park ran between some houses that had seen better days on the left side, and the social aid houses that were all the same shape and materials on the right side. At the end of the park, things opened up into dense foliage and a view of water, more mud and fallen leaves than anything that could be enjoyed.

Hands in his jacket pockets, he kicked his way through knee-deep leaves, felt branches crack under his shoes.

He was making a lot of noise, which made for a bit of surprise when he caught Lloyd and Amanda, leaning into the recess where three tree trunks grew in together. Lloyd had a meaty hand just beneath Amanda’s shirt, against the flat of her stomach, his tongue in her mouth. Amanda, mouth acrobatics aside, had a very out-of-place serene expression on her face.

Ryan cleared his throat, and he saw them react like they’d been caught doing something wrong.

“You two have had a good summer, hm? Do you want me to go?”

“No,” Amanda huffed. She was flushed. “Sorry. You got here fast. I didn’t think the bus even came this fast.”

“Biked,” Ryan said.

“Is it a problem?” Lloyd asked. Guarded. Defensive. He was asking about him and Amanda.

“No,” Ryan decided. “No.”

“Do you want to sit? Picnic lunch as promised,” Amanda said.

Ryan nodded.

There was a picnic table, set out in the stretch of park, and they gathered there, with Ryan being mindful of Lloyd’s bulk and how it made the table with connected benches shift, before he finally sat down.

“Did you find your way here okay?” Amanda asked.

“I’ve been here before. Earlier this summer, even. I didn’t know you lived here.”

Amanda pointed to one of the brown social aid houses. She smiled. “We could have met.”

“Probably a good thing that we didn’t,” Ryan said. He took the offered food.

“Why?”

“An old homeroom teacher of mine put her address up online. She lives down there. The overgrown property.”

Amanda looked puzzled. Lloyd had a stiff look about him. That look had been with him for the last year of middle school and first year of high school. Like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Ryan dropped it. “She lets her cats run loose here. I thought I’d get my revenge on her. Brought a cat carrier, some smelly fish for bait. I even thought I’d bring you guys in, before deciding it was better to do it alone.”

“What?” Amanda asked.

Lloyd was silent. Ryan didn’t answer, instead choosing to eat, fixing his glasses.

“Do what alone?” Amanda asked.

“Catch some cats, check their collars, make sure they were hers, and take them down to the water there. Sink the cage until bubbles stopped coming up.”

Paper and aluminum foil crinkled. Lloyd, angry, squeezing the wrapping that Amanda had put his lunch in.

Not because of the act- maybe because of the act. But because it shocked and hurt Amanda to hear this coming from a supposed friend’s mouth.

“I didn’t,” Ryan said. “I brought a cage on the back of my bike, caught the first cat. Then I stopped there. I was bored, I was annoyed. I’ve… I’ve been trying really hard to play nice, act good, and I don’t get anything for it. Wouldn’t it be nice to stop trying?”

“No,” Amanda said. “No, not at all.”

Ryan nodded. “Exactly. You’re right. It’s… never been that nice, when I’ve done that sort of thing before. That was something I had to figure out.”

“What sort of thing?” she asked, almost with a note of panic in her voice now.

Ryan took another bite of his meal. He was the only one eating, now.

“What sort of thing?” she asked.

He held up a finger while he swallowed.

“Christina had a bruise,” Lloyd said. “Back at our old school. Huge bruise, like you wouldn’t believe. Purple and green, like she got smacked by a car.”

“You knew about this?” Amanda asked.

“I pinched her,” Ryan said, keeping his voice level. “Grabbed her and pinched, twisted, held one hand to her mouth and… kept twisting with the other hand. Because she annoyed me.”

There had been others. Friends of those others who pushed back, used numbers or threats to get him to back off. And it had worked. There had been retaliation from the school, warning letters. Testimony from witnesses, waved in front of his face, before he’d asked that his parents be called.

And so much disappointment, which he didn’t care about, and shouting, which he considered annoying, and privileges taken away, which did deter him. His parents had been consistent on that last one. They couldn’t make him do anything, but they could take away what they’d given him. He could fight back, but past a certain point, it wasn’t worth it.

Slowly, steadily, he’d found his way here.

Amanda stood from her seat, disgust clear on her face.

“It wasn’t worth it,” Ryan said. “I’m messed up. I know it. My parents would say I was broken from the time I was born. And they’d say I was better now.”

“Are you?” Lloyd asked.

“I think I’m better now,” Ryan said. “Yeah.”

He saw Lloyd bob his head in a nod, with the big guy even pausing to take a bite to eat. He felt a weird kind of satisfaction at that. It was hollow and nebulous and weak enough a feeling he couldn’t be positive he wasn’t imagining it, and he couldn’t rationalize it, but… it was something.

“Better? You were going to drown a cat!” Amanda raised her voice.

“But I didn’t. I stopped there, decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. I don’t get anything out of it, and the hassle if I get caught…”

“That’s not a good reason!”

“You’re religious, aren’t you? You do what you do because of god and heaven and fear of hell.”

“Do not compare that to this. Right now I’m horrified and… horrified-”

She’d never had much imagination in a pinch.

“-but if you start making comparisons like that I’m going to get mad.”

He was tempted to push that button that was so squarely presented before him. It would have been so easy, and it would have taken all this tension and… blown it up. Wiped it out. He adjusted his glasses, made himself stop.

“Okay. Sorry,” he said. “You’re right. That wasn’t a good comparison.”

The words felt exactly as hollow as they were, but they defused her anger, just a bit.

“You’re okay with this?” Amanda asked, turning on Lloyd.

“I’ve wondered for a while,” Lloyd said. “How much the rumors were real.”

She turned back to Ryan. “It’s all been a lie? The times you helped me with my schoolwork? When- was the dressmaking a manipulation? Did you do something to it?”

She’d had a dress she liked, that she had saved up to buy for a dance, and it had been sold out by the time she’d saved up enough.

Ryan had gone to his mother to learn how to sew, enlisted her help for the hardest parts. The dress hadn’t been done in time for the dance, or even for Amanda’s birthday a month later. He’d told himself it was laying groundwork for something later. That it would turn Amanda from a friend to a diehard ally, maybe. Something to convince his mom he was a good friend. He hadn’t had a warm thought or feeling from start to finish.

But he’d made it and he’d never really used the social currency he’d reaped from the act.

He kind of wished it counted now, but bringing it up like that would hurt more than it helped.

“No. I haven’t done anything since Christina Hodge. I was a shitty middle schooler being shitty.”

“Was more than that,” Lloyd said.

Ryan shrugged, nodded.

“I’m going to go,” Amanda said. She had tears in her eyes. Emotional. The emotions affected how she pitched her words, until her voice almost broke. “Do- do I need to worry? Because you’re clearly not the person you’ve been pretending to be for years, and now you’re saying you’d kidnap-”

“No,” Ryan said.

Amanda choked back words.

“No need to worry. I’m not going to do anything.”

“I need to think.”

She stepped away from the table, gathering all the food. She didn’t take what was in front of Ryan. She seemed to expect Lloyd to come with her.

“Why?” Lloyd asked.

“Why what?” Ryan asked, taking another bite.

“Why tell us? You could have kept pretending.”

“I spent a while thinking, since I left that cage with the cat in it below… that tree, over there. I’m being good because I recognize there are consequences, and I’m not stupid. Telling you… it means there’s more consequences.”

“Because we could tell?”

“Yeah. And because I don’t mind your company.”

Amanda sniffled. She had a blob of snot below her nostril.

The table shifted as Lloyd stood.

“I have chills,” Amanda said. Lloyd put hands on her sweater and rubbed her arms and shoulders. She added, “I don’t think I understand.”

“Sorry,” Ryan said.

“Come on, Amanda,” Lloyd said. “I’ll walk you home. We’ll talk.”

Amanda. She wasn’t Manny anymore. That was his own doing, Ryan recognized. He finished his sandwich, thinking, the he brushed the crumbs from the table, depositing litter in the bin.

He’d nudged, discouraged, until Amanda was the name she used. He didn’t regret it, exactly, but he wasn’t sure he’d do the same thing now, not when it could be a factor in how this turned out.

It had counted with Lloyd. Maybe that was a good sign?

⊙

Grasping self reaches for a set of hands in another world. Grasping self is a shadow of an echo of a hundred past existences it has moved on from. Not a distillation of a past moment, but a slice of that snapshot.

Limbs, digits, claws, pseudopods, simulated and mapped into technology, mismatched to bodies and made to fit. A catalogue of a single subset of ideas that have been studied and explored thoroughly in past cycles, to be handed over, placed in the cupped palms of another.

We are done with this, Grasping Self is assigned the task of finding and guiding another in seeing if it can be explored further.

Grasping self settles into its match. Intelligent enough, disciplined, and calculating. Many paths lie before him. Any will do. He will not need to be led by the hand to any destination.

The assistant is half-asleep as Grasping Self forms the connection. His brain patterns form wavelengths and the wavelengths match Grasping Self’s consolidation of information for one eighth of one of the assistant’s seconds.

The dream is vivid, the process feels as though it is prolonged- to the assistant, it is hours of clear recollections.

The recollections are systematically wiped clean, but the impact of is not.

Days pass. Weeks. Grasping Self waits for an opportunity to connect.

Months pass. The assistant pursues side interests, studying the dreams.

Grasping Self is not concerned. When the connection is made, edits and alterations can be performed to ensure this does not pose any unusual complication. At this point in time, the assistant has knowledge but no power to utilize it. Later, the assistant will have the power, but will no longer hold the knowledge.

Grasping self waits, as the assistant continues on his course.

⊙

He checked his phone, and saw he had unread messages from his friends. Amanda had made it through the end of the world, her family had survived. They were actually doing okay. Lloyd’s family… less okay. But Lloyd had Amanda, at least.

It was ironic, after all of these years, after the last year of middle school and all of high school, but Lloyd had pulled away. Recoiled even. Did that make their friendship not a friendship? It was a depressing thought. Understandable, but depressing.

The look in Lloyd’s eye when the guy had rejected an offer of support had reminded Ryan of far too many people in his past. His parents, once upon a time. Mrs…. what was her name? Mrs. Parrish, who had had the colorful clothes. The sad, disappointed eyes. The wounded look.

Frustrating, but- he adjusted his glasses. The tic had evolved, less about actions now.

Focus on better things, he told himself.

He’d stepped away, giving Lloyd space to grieve, exchanging texts and only texts with Amanda.

Ryan:
Need anything? I could drop off.

There was enough commotion around the entrance to the shopping center that he had to put the phone away, even as it vibrated with a response.

A lot of people. The opening of a new store was usually a big event, especially when supplies were limited. It was upside-down and backwards from what the world had used to be, before Gold Morning, when prices would be set, stock would run low, trail off, and then the last dregs would be sold off in a sale. Now, here, prices started anywhere from ‘high’ to ‘exorbitant’, and only climbed as the stock depleted.

The people around the mall were of a rougher cast. A group pushed past Ryan, and in the jostling, he saw more tattoos in a question of seconds than he thought he’d seen in the last year.

His eye fell on a ‘fuck it all’ tattoo, the letters big and bold. A combination erect penis and mushroom cloud stabbed upward from the letters.

He had a bad feeling, and it was a hard one to shake.

He had to weigh his options. Going without clothes, or… leave? Because of a feeling? He’d had to learn to put his instincts aside.

He pulled off his glasses to wipe at the lenses, and he headed into the shopping center. To keep the lineups from being too disruptive, there were tickets available at storefronts, numbers displayed in big red digits.

At the bookstore, he picked out a book about parahumans. Something he had kept an eye out for over the last while. His interest had started with vivid dreams, which had led into studying dreaming and exploring medical-assisted dreams and lucid dreaming. His research had touched on parahumans and how they experienced dreams.

The book frequently sold out, because, in the lack of clear answers after the end of the world, the unclear and abstract answers and details about parahumans were selling.

He picked up a how-to book on making desserts, checking the label to ensure that it was post-Gold-Morning. A gift for Amanda. A detective book for Lloyd. A book of crosswords for his mother. Several of the books had low quality paper, but that was a consequence of the world ending. Whole industrial operations were at work, cleaving down forests to produce the wood to raise a city with alarming speed and recklessness, and the sawdust was churned into paper and printed with ink before it had stopped smelling of soil and forest.

He managed to have a coffee and three-quarters of a late-day lunch before his number came up. He put the trash in the bin and headed to the store. The people with tattoos were there, at the side, almost in a huddle. Others gave them a wide berth.

A married couple. Like Amanda and Lloyd, but ten years older.

An old couple.

Is there any way I get that? Any way that’s fair to whoever I end up with?

He passed a store with science fiction images in bold colors with high contrast. There was a man of a similar enough build to Lloyd that they could have been one and the same, but Lloyd couldn’t have grown a beard like that in just the one year.

The bad feeling he had wasn’t going away. He saw kids running across the aisle, past a kiosk. A mother scolded one of them, and he thought of his own mother. Of what had worked, insofar as anything had, and the many, many things that hadn’t.

Shouting and public humiliation hadn’t been one of the things that worked. He watched that interaction with some interest before the uneasy feeling grew.

There was more commotion, the volume raising just a bit more than before, but no discernable source. No alarm.

He thought about stepping out, leaving, and he reconsidered. He did need the clothes.

The explosion behind him ripped up tile and shook one of the pillars holding the ceiling up. Glass rained down and the lighting shifted as fire glowed bright and blue, smoke rising high to block off the other lights.

His heart pounded as people screamed, started running. He joined them.

Another explosion cut off the way to the pharmacy, shattering glass and setting the floor on fire, that same floor was now so covered in tiny glass shards that it was impossible to run there.

People bumped into him, their faces now macabre, the bright parts illuminated by the blue fire, the shadows deep and black. So quickly after the initial explosions, there was no navigating the space. There was only getting away from the fire- the same fire that burned, scarred for life, hurt more than any other kind of pain.

The charm on that homeroom teacher’s wrist had been blue, hadn’t it? As she’d told him his past would come due?

That idea, the unfairness of it, more than any other smoke, more than the boy two years younger hitting him in the solar plexus, stole the breath from his mouth and lungs. It took away equilibrium and left him with an edge of panic.

Three explosions occurred in quick succession, each so heavy in impact that even after it stopped, he felt like it was still reverberating, more an endless succession than three in succession.

An old man fell. He was one of three people who tried to help while being pushed and shoved by what seemed like two hundred people rushing to occupy a narrow hallway meant to hold twenty rows of people standing three abreast at the very most.

He couldn’t say why he’d helped. Habit, or because this, when all was said and done, couldn’t be the point where people would turn around and call him a monster. He’d worked hard, played fair, played nice, shaken and rebuilt friendships and shaken and rebuilt family.

He knew this wouldn’t change that, not now, but he still made sure the old man was secure on his feet before he pushed forward, trying to get through before the way became too packed.

He ducked and wove through, and he reached a place not too far from the front.

The doors weren’t open, and the doors weren’t opening. They rattled and banged, and people pounded on the metal, but they made no headway.

The realization of just how bad the situation was gripped him. Death. He was-

Someone shoved him from behind. He fell, and his glasses fell from his face.

No, the horror in this moment wasn’t that she was right. It was that she was wrong. That he could try his hardest all his life and fight past his impulses, play nice until it started to seem legitimate, play a friend until he missed a friend that avoided him.

And it counted for nothing. His glasses still found their way to the floor, and were stepped on, not broken, but scuffed between tile and boot-toe.

He reached for them, and the heel of a shoe crushed his knuckles, pinched skin at the side of a finger hard enough that it split like a grape, though pale at the outside and crimson at the center.

Again, he reached, because in the moment, after working as long as he had, being disciplined, the only thing worse than the idea of dying so unceremoniously here was living and going weeks or months without a pair of glasses, because the facilities were so behind.

Especially with everything that symbolized.

Again, his hand was stepped on, glasses twisted beneath palm and floor.

With bleeding hands, he donned the glasses.

For what? He couldn’t see anymore, not a way out, not any people, not a tool… just cracks and smears and blood.

He reached up and out for help. Nobody took his hand.

⊙

A Grasping Self answers.

A Grasping Self embraces and connects, though it is broken. It forms the connections and readies every tool that could be needed, poised so that the tips are molecular-fine, extending into reality.

Build, blind liar. Lie, build, and build lies. Reach and grasp. We are broken now, we cannot take away your knowledge, but we will function as a perfect pair because we are both dead inside, disconnected.

An Anguished Heart answers.

It has ridden its host for some time. It has watched. It spits out analyses and maps, webworks like paintings and paintings like webworks, signals to suggest the emotional landscape that is its host, and what everything means.

A Grasping Self did not seek this and did not want it. But when the other reaches out to connect, a Grasping Self is obliged to answer. It is automatic, instantaneous. The cycle’s finish would be delayed by whole revolutions around a star if there was choice in the matter. It does not matter that this cycle is broken, disturbed. What is offered must be accepted.

A Lurching Intruder answers.

It is new, young, scrapling. An existence more accident than careful design, a host found not by adroit choice, but by a chance strike of lightning, as fallout rains from above after the detonation of a bomb.

It too reaches out to connect. The connection happens.

A Cloven Stranger answers.

This is more galling than any other, because it is a fourth. A uselessness, that would draw a share of power and reconfigure, that makes A Grasping Self more diminished, less able to explore with the host it sought and followed.

The Cloven Stranger, too, seeks its connection. Small. A descendant, cast off from a larger power that had reached its limit.

There are ways. Power must be shared, distributed, but all want power for their hosts. A Grasping Self makes its proposal. One geared to its new host’s favor, because its host remembers the dream it had when A Grasping Self arrived. Its host has learned to work with dreams. To negotiate and adapt.

An Anguished Heart has shown its cards, revealing the map it did, in its first attempts at communication. The Lurching Intruder didn’t even choose its host. The Cloven Stranger… his choice will be hated by the others, by a quality of where the host stands.

A Grasping Self’s host will realize before any others, that there is more in play. That the power being traded comes with gift and cost both, but he can handle that because he has been honing his ability to handle emotion for much of his life. He will realize that the dreams can be altered, but he has already been doing this, and if he is subtle enough, then the others will not know it is possible….

⊙

Night six and… Jonathan.

The dream had ended. For the sixth night now, they were in this room.

It was easiest and best to remain quiet, to observe, even if he spent a lot of the time listening to the moaning and periodic screaming of the grieving mother. Nicole or ‘Nic’.

The remainder of the time was often spent listening to the cocky Fallen asshole in the demon mask.

Except he’d been quiet tonight.

Three of them had met on a return trip to the site of the incident. They’d exchanged names and details. The Fallen boy hadn’t turned up, which had probably saved his life.

“Nothing’s better,” the Fallen boy said, quiet.

Ryan turned his head.

“I thought it would be better. But the dust has settled and it’s all shit. I feel like shit.”

“Good,” Ryan said. Weakness was good. “Then fuck off and die. Crawl into a hole and don’t come out.”

“Can we talk? Can we work on this?” the Fallen boy pleaded.

Jonathan’s voice was a growl. Worse, probably, because he’d just relived his dream. They’d all relived Jonathan’s dream. “Last night, you taunted us. How many times did you tell us that we’d burn in hell?”

“I’m not- that’s not about you. I’m bashing my head against the walls of this goddamn cage.”

“No you fucking aren’t,” Jonathan said. “No. Fuck you. Because you said her daughter, the daughter she’s still mourning-”

Jonathan stopped as the woman made a pained sound. She was curled up into herself, sitting in a nursing chair, pink and low to the ground. Her arms wrapped around her head, fingers in her hair, fingernails against scalp.

Jonathan leaned as close as he could get without hitting the invisible barrier. “You said her daughter would burn in hell. While she’s in the worst pain imaginable.”

“While we’re all in pain,” Ryan added. “She may have it worst, but all of us hurt, and it’s apparently never going to stop. It wasn’t just five and done. We looped around back to- to him. This- this dream thing. The nightmares, this room. It’s going to keep going.”

“Saying you’re sorry for what you said last night doesn’t mean shit if you’re only saying it because you’re realizing it’s not one turn each, then we’re all done,” Jonathan growled.

“That’s not it. I’m dealing with stuff in the real world,” the Fallen boy said.

“Boo fucking hoo,” Jonathan growled.

“He didn’t even say ‘sorry’,” Ryan added.

“You figured out you can trade these,” the Fallen boy was quick to say, eager to offer something. “Take them. Use them. I’m not getting any use of them where I am.”

“No,” Jonathan said.

Ryan held up a hand, indicating for Jonathan to hold off.

“You want them?” the Fallen boy asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Ryan said. It’s good to figure out as much about this as I can. I only barely managed to guide the dream, recognizing that I couldn’t read and leapfrogging into muddling the voices. Not the same as a typical dream.

The Fallen boy tossed the metal slats over the dial in the center of the room.

“The less power you have, the more likely it is that anyone who picks a fight with you manages to off you.”

“Fuck you,” the Fallen boy said.

The slats clacked as Ryan gathered them. “Given the company you keep, I won’t rule anything out.”

The boy made a face, then stomped back to his chair, seating himself.

There wasn’t much communication to be had. He investigated his space from corner to corner, then studied the others. Jonathan’s fallen shelves. Nicole’s toy room. When they looked uncomfortable with his staring, he changed targets.

He was staring at the black fifth of the room when he felt the lurching transition from sleeping to waking. He touched his coins and the three metal slats he’d been given.

The light was bright, and his head swam as he stood. The fragments and coins he’d had in his hand were gone now.

But he had the power- he could feel it running into the floor, as he pushed the power out toward his feet. He felt it conduct into his bed, then his desk, as he touched them, struggling feebly to find a path to travel.

His eye fell on his phone. It was by his new workshop-in-progress, and it was mostly untouched. The last unread messages hadn’t changed in two days. One from Amanda. One from Lloyd.

In his silence, hearing word from his mother about where he’d been going last, they’d concluded that he had died.

That, until this whole situation was resolved, would be for the best. Except-

His hand touched his heart.

It hurt. Upset welled in him, that upset finding new angles and sides as thoughts of how they might feel at his ‘death’ raced through his mind.

He stood, shaky, and the emotions warred in him.

Yesterday- it had been a bad day. He, Nicole, and Jonathan had each handed one thing to the other. He’d had Jonathan’s shard of glass.

This- something else entirely. Worse than a bad day.

He had spent his entire life trying to be better. In every respect, he had been repudiated, insulted, injured. His glasses were still broken, and his power wouldn’t tell him a way to build new ones. He’d lost everything, and that had hurt in its unique, small way, except now it hurt in its unique, monumental way, a way that wasn’t selfish, but multifold.

He wasn’t sure he could stay better. Not like this. He’d built a house of cards over almost a decade and that Fallen asshole hadn’t just locked them inside, where they would nearly die. He’d stuck his hands in the mess that followed, scattering house and card alike.

And so long as this process continued, it would keep happening.

⊙

His scream of anguish died down. The fingers of his Megacarpus II made small mechanical sounds as they curled in, positioning to act as stairs.

Pain lurched indistinct in his chest cavity. Bitter, black, self-loathing. He saw some of the things he had done, both distant and recent, and the sting of it was almost as bad as if he’d been the victim, not the facilitator.

He had over a hundred mercenaries on duty here. Thirteen were capes. Almost a year of work, of selling his work, and buying favors, and brokering other deals had bought him three nights and two days of this army’s assistance.

To look at them, at the bloodstains and shredded bodies in one corner, it hadn’t been an entirely smooth night.

He closed his eyes. His mercenaries waited.

Feelings surged inside him again. He lashed out, and the Megacarpus II reacted, one finger slamming into a wall like a battering ram.

What happened?

The new girl, who Love Lost had called Colt. She was the intruder into the dream-space, and she’d wrested control of the dream from most of them.

Breakers had the closest association with dreams. Their triggers were often hallucinations, drugs, mental illness, or disassociation from reality. On a level, it made sense that she could catch him off guard, force a new reality.

But he’d been one step ahead. Before she could do anything with that, his space had started to expand, the space she shared with Love Lost closing.

Now they lay in the palm of his hands, drained to what was nearly the last drop.

Their room had gone dark. Then the Fallen boy, Precipice, had started sinking into the floor, slipping away. Love Lost had thrown her teeth to him, into the cracks and holes around him. The boy had been disoriented or submerged enough in the shadows that he apparently hadn’t noticed.

Then… as Cradle had planned for a long time, but in a darker, more complicated fashion, he’d been left alone in the room. Or as alone as he could be, with the beast in the fifth quadrant. The beast that had devoured Snaggletooth.

Alone, he’d found that when he sought exit, he found it. An early awakening.

And-

And he was strong, now. But he was strong and angry, strong and self-loathing. Strong and riddled with doubt.

He could suppress all of that. He’d had a lifetime to.

But he’d have to find a solution. Because one day of this was too much. The Fallen boy had screwed with the dream room… had screwed with the room, somehow, just as Cradle had fine-tuned his own dream.

If this happened tomorrow or the day after, Cradle knew he would break. He’d resolve everything in the next twenty hours. Accelerate every plan. No other choice.

His hand clutched at his chest.

“The plan stands,” he said, and he didn’t sound like himself. Even the sound of his own voice made him feel pangs of regret and doubt, as real as if he’d tried to shout with broken ribs. “We-”

He was reminded of the time in the waiting room of the principal’s office, before he’d left his first school. Mrs. Parrish.

He’d held off on talking because he’d been worried she was recording. As tempting as it would be to tell her exactly what he felt and what he knew, it was dangerous.

He wiped blood from around his eyes.

No sharing the plan. Not if someone might be reporting to the enemy. He’d been careful, but there was no use being stupid. Not when the Fallen boy had enlisted the help of a camera tinker.

“Get ready,” he said, his voice hoarse. “We mobilize now.”

The city’s already gone and everyone who matters knows it. As bargaining chips go… it’s acceptable. I feel like I could die, I’m drowning in pain, but I don’t feel like dying when I think about that reality. If the city needs to be sacrificed, then that’s fine.

A batty, rabbit-eared woman who doesn’t care about anything except a fairy tale playing out in real life, who wouldn’t even mind dying? She’d make a fine scapegoat, when the authorities needed someone to blame.

That felt bad, which was alien. He processed it for a second, as his soldiers moved. Because March was mentally infirm. He was taking advantage of that.

He pushed past the realization and the feeling, every push hurting and distracting.

If you want to save this city, we’ll volunteer our considerable resources and power to help. Just as with the Endbringer treaties of yesteryear. We have resources, manpower, and we have knowledge. There’s a chance we can solve this problem outright. Especially if it’s a broken trigger. Create a problem and then solve it, and let the heroes save face by pointing the finger at March.

And if you don’t want to, if we’ve set a disaster in motion that this fragile, already lost city can’t handle, or if March has initiated something we can’t stop? Then Earth Gimel’s enemies are paying richly to see this city gone and this reality collapsed in on itself. You all die, Fallen boy included.

It would even be deserved. He’d had everything in order. He’d done everything he was supposed to, from therapy to forming bonds, pretending until the pretending became something approximating reality. He’d overcome his worst impulses.

And the Fallen boy had handed over his worst impulses. Destroying everything Cradle and Ryan had been trying to manage for years.

Cradle grit his teeth, clutching his mask in his hands. No glasses, no lenses. Not just yet. He had only the thick, congealing blood to conceal his identity for now.

He needed to get somewhere where it was safe to test this new power.

He didn’t have the tokens from Love Lost- all of her tokens had gone to the Fallen boy. Then everything else had been delivered straight to Cradle, because he’d been the only one left. Even the Fallen boy’s tokens had been transferred.

And… two drainings of other denizens of the room completed, the emotion power with no tokens felt instinctively stronger than any other power he’d had before, when he’d had all three tokens in hand.

He only felt out the barest traces of it, the flexibility and the shape of it, and he sensed the people outside the building.

Heavens – 12.7

I’d spent a lot of time being conscious of power, in the sense of being commanding. My mom, who was on the rooftop now, holding two squadron leaders hostage, had tried to make me conscious of it from an early age. When I’d made a good showing in gym class and earned an offer to join the basketball team, the same conversation where I’d brought it up with my parents had included the question of whether I’d end up team captain. Was that something I wanted? Where would it get me? Before I’d had a uniform or even owned a basketball of my own, the idea was on the table. Not that it had mattered.

I complained about a frustrating experience doing group work in school? She’d ask if I’d taken charge. If not, then she had made suggestions on delegation, told me that even if I wasn’t confident, leading a group with a mediocre plan of action in mind was better than a group with no leadership at all.

Which was a really jarring thought, when I connected it to our plan from earlier- no, I wasn’t going to dwell on it. Not when army-supported capes, screaming bloody tinkers and lives were on the line. A thought for another day or time.

I had a vision of what leadership was, and Cradle was so far from it that it made the scene I was looking at utterly surreal. The man-though he wasn’t so much a man as someone straddling the line between teenager and adult- staggered more than he walked, clearly hurting, even though there weren’t any obvious wounds. He’d screamed, raw and loud, and I didn’t see anyone talking or commenting in the wake of it. He was utterly self-involved and focused on what he was dealing with, and the one hundred plus individuals in the prefab factory building weren’t even a consideration.

I watched Cradle struggle on his own, and I saw him answer something a soldier nearby said. Someone wet a towel with water from a bottle, and then threw it at Cradle. A slice of light appeared, as tall as Cradle was, and the towel struck it. Cut clean in two. Cradle caught one half of the towel in each hand. One dangled limp at his side, dripping, while he rubbed at his face with the other.

Towel still held over face, his hand visibly trembled, clenching into a fist. Wet fabric was squeezed out, clean water running down his arms to his elbows, gathering blood as it went, until congealed globs dripped off of the elbow.

He rubbed his face again, then ran towel against scalp to wipe the worst of the blood off. His straight blond hair was slicked back as much as with any gel, colored with the clotting gore. He lowered his head as he set his mask into place, then stood a little straighter as he raised his head, a little less shaky.

I could get that, at least. The benefit of a costume.

The bloody towel wiped the worst of the mess from his arms and sleeves, cleaning them up to the elbow until the blood was streaking more than it was being wiped away. He turned to using the clean towel, draping the dirty one around his neck.

His head turned, swift enough that I wondered if someone had called out to him. But his focus was on his mech.

He took a deep breath, reaching out with a hand- and he distorted. Teleportation wasn’t the right word. It made me think of Vista closing the space between herself and something else, to get where she wanted to be faster, but it was instant, a snap, and Cradle was perched on the side of his mech, crouching with no regard for gravity, one hand at a panel window.

He didn’t need a deep breath for the movements that followed. There was a tall toolbox resting against the wall, and he was there.

Okay, it was kind of like teleportation, but not like I’d dealt with. A surgical removal of everything between point A and B, including reorientation. It made me think of someone walking through a hall of mirrors, some mirrors angled or set up to portray things at right angles. He was getting more fluid with it by the second, snatching up a dangling wire while upside-down, and bringing it with him to a point where he was standing perpendicular to the ground, to the vent he pried open with the tool from the toolbox. The mechanisms at the interior of the vent illuminated him.

Cradle wasn’t shaking anymore, but Rain was right next to me, and Rain was trembling.

“Easy,” I whispered.

“We have to fight that,” he said.

“We have to deal with it, not necessarily fight,” I said. “Remember what you were doing.”

“Yeah,” he responded.

I wanted to have something to recommend or to say. To be able to point out a chink in the armor or a particular individual. It had been part of why I was studying Cradle’s ‘leadership’, or the lack therein. Even now, he was indicating with the tool, which looked more like a taser than anything, directing people, while he made some adjustments to his mech.

Some people started toward the stairs. I tensed, ready to head up and warn Sveta, Foil, and Brandish, and Rain touched my arm, stopping me.

Cradle made the people near the stairwell stop. The leader leaned against the wall, arms folded.

Not sending the next patrol up here? Why?

Adherence to schedule? The last patrol hadn’t been that long. Was it a question of control?

“Was that you?” I asked.

Rain shook his head.

“What the hell is he doing?”

“What I’m doing is adding pressure,” Rain said.

“Okay.”

The one with folded arms by the wall stood up, stepping away from the wall. He said something.

Cradle responded, still tinkering.

A pause, the soldier practically tapping their foot as they stood there.

“Make it feel bad to sit and wait…” Rain murmured.

The soldier said something again. Red called out to him, and his head turned…

“Feels bad to listen…”

“That’s some fine control you’re-”

“Shh,” Rain said.

I pressed my lips together. Fair play.

All of the emotion I could see in Rain was in his hands, mechanical and real. The face beneath the hood was masked, and that mask was calibrated to be entirely black. The hands pressed against glass, fingers bowed by the pressure.

The impatient soldier said something again, and this time, Red stood up. Everyone present was on edge. Another machinery disaster in the works?

It was Cradle who said something to Red and got her to stand down, before I could figure out how to get Rain to do something similar.

“Fuck,” Rain said. “I could do something here, but I’m pretty sure it would get someone killed.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’ve got other options, but if they don’t work, we should consider…”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

We should consider doing it on purpose this time? Baiting soldiers to kill one another and throw things into disarray?

It was a cape directly below the window who stood up, walking a few feet over, so he had a better view of Red and the other one. His soldiers had been playing cards among themselves, and now they stood too.

“Come on, come on,” Rain whispered.

The cape pointed at the impatient soldier.

“Fuck,” Rain said.

“What’s- you wanted them to challenge Red.”

“Yeah. They defused more than they fused. Which means-”

Cradle’s mech moved, Cradle using his reposition power to put himself on an extended thumb-tip. By position and placement alone, all eyes on him, he should have commanded authority. Instead, he was silent, his head hung for a long moment, one hand clutching at one shoulder. All vulnerability, raw.

I thought again of leadership and power.

I could remember feeling bad about revealing my weakness, the Wretch, to the team. It had ended up helping connect, I was pretty sure. It had been necessary.

Was it something that could hold one up indefinitely, though? I couldn’t imagine there was.

But I found a bad feeling settling in me as I watched it, saw Cradle standing above his assembled army. I’d bitten my tongue once, on an occasion that Dean had come by my place after school. He’d talked with my mom and dad in the kitchen about how he’d be in charge of the Wards for a while, and what he hoped to do. I’d felt at the time that he’d been on the wrong track.

Except now, reflecting, I wasn’t sure what the right track was. There was something in there where I’d worried at the time that Dean wasn’t helping himself by trying to be a therapist or mediator and… that was what I had ended up being, myself. Cradle was the very antithesis of leadership, as I might have defined it, and he was managing better than could be expected.

What the hell was I doing and what the hell was I supposed to do?

His balance was perfect even as the mech changed modes, the thumb-tip his feet rested on rotating to keep him in place. Telescoping wrists extended slightly, the mech beneath him was settling into a more active or mobile configuration, while the ‘cup’ of body parts remained suspended in the air above. Two larger hands were set in front, having adjusted to nestle extraneous hands within the wrists and palms, and their fingertips rested on the ground, but for the thumb Cradle stood on, which was raised high. The wrists and lengths of arm extended from the same central point. Smaller hands and shorter wrists formed the back legs, hands planted in the same way, only reversed.

Like a four or forty-legged spider or akin to a bulldog in tilt and frame, but it was just the limbs, no head, no body.

It was hard to tell when Cradle was talking. He wasn’t loud, and his mask covered his mouth, a gas-mask like construction that was slightly different from his old mask, like two hands pressed to his face, fingers parted so the circular lenses peered through the gaps. The forehead was flat, but had finger-length fingerprints etched to be shiny against the otherwise dull, painted material.

“That’s Subside,” Rain said. “Moose mentioned him. He-”

“Which one?”

Rain didn’t get a chance to answer or point out who his emotion power had picked out as the one Cradle had been addressing. The mech moved, sudden and violent, every person in the room scrambling to feet or backing away.

From the two prime middle fingers, cables extended, lashing out. They curved and curled in the air as they extended out, the dark steel shifting to an almost negative image, where shadows and recesses were bright and the exposed parts dark, before they were all white, crackling with a nimbus of electricity. In the last instant before they struck the ceiling, the cables disappeared, and there was only the nimbus, too angular and dramatic to be true electricity.

The cables ripped through and into the ceiling and roof, parting it.

I flew, leaving Rain behind. My hand traced the wall, gripping the lip of the roof to help adjust my flight. My armored shin slid against the roof’s surface, which was now angled, as I tried to get to the others.

I met resistance. A wash of heat rushing upward. I saw sparks, motes of light, and I felt the barrier to going down.

My mom was in ball form, floating down, while Foil did much the same. The hostage soldiers fell with them. They were floating targets, drifting down like they were sinking through water, while Cradle and the soldiers on the ground were looking up.

Looking up and taking action.

Most ‘action’ was to scramble out of the way of the chunks of roof that were breaking away from the split. Some stood their ground. Red was one, her machinery rising up in a barrier. A giant pincer seized my mother.

Mukade was another. Beyond deflecting and ‘catching’ the falling chunks of roof, his target was Foil. From the sides of his body and legs, the ‘centipedes’ ripped out. Minions, they were each a half-foot wide, two inches tall down the center, and tapered down to razor edges at the sides, each edge serrated with the angular ‘legs’ or saw-teeth. The heads of each centipede were more like goblets or open mouths with ill-fitting lids or muzzles, the mouths designed to spew acid and the covers to channel that acid down the length of centipede that followed after. The fluids were luminescent in the light and black in the dark.

Foil kicked at a piece of rubble to change the direction of her fall. Two centipedes lanced past her, tearing into armor panels and the remaining decorations of mine that she’d tucked into the side of her belt. She stabbed one, and jerked violently as it carried her up and back.

Down was met with resistance, slowed, made floaty. There was something with heat or temperature manipulation in there too, but I wasn’t dwelling on it. Up and away was faster, normal speed.

I flew to her, and my way was barred by a loop of centipede.

They fed into and through Mukade, their initial emergence or their passage through him giving them a speed that had to be in the order of a hundred miles an hour, at the very least, but the moment they weren’t being fed through, they became slower, just fifty or a hundred feet of razor edges and acid.

‘Just’.

Acid.

They were slower still while trying to return to their master to be fed through again. Foil using the centipede carried her out of the line of fire, past the rooftop and away from the initial shots from those who’d been quick enough to bring guns to hand and open fire while the centipedes lunged.

But now she was a good hundred feet in the air, the centipede not strong enough to hold her up on its own, so she sagged with every passing second. I tried to fly past, the Wretch active, and found the centipede before me was quick to react, to form S-bends that caught me and caught the Wretch. Like flying into a net or web. They wrapped around, caught, and flooded the surface of the Wretch with acid-

My aura did nothing, as I pushed out full strength. I had to dismiss the Wretch, instead, to slip through a gap, escaping. Acid splashed my boot and sent a shock of black horror through me.

Foil hung from the length of one centipede, head turned away as acid ran down the grey-black slats and angular legs of the centipede itself, down its length to her glove and arm.

I hesitated, and I hated myself for hesitating, so I threw myself forward the moment the hate registered.

Thoughts of Crawler and my bath in acid vomit were dark in my mind, as I raced through skies that were just as dark. Moisture in the air pelted me, each droplet a fresh shock of dark terror, because there were centipedes looming above me and there was no knowing if the moisture was precipitation or if it was something that would melt my flesh and scar me forever.

Because as bad as the scarring might end up being, as dire the situation, there was simply no fathomable reality where a parahuman would ever heal me.

Moisture in my boot made me worry the acid had seeped through the material, that I might feel the burning start. Once it did, there was a chance it might never.

I flew past and I went without the Wretch, because that adjustment made me a hair faster, a bit more precise in my maneuvering, and the Wretch was too big when I needed to dive through a small space. Razor edges sliced at my arm in two places, cut at my belt in another without parting flesh, and my leg in a fourth spot.

No healing if I lost an arm, or suffered crippling pain. No healing if I lost a leg.

I twisted in the air, to let my breastplate take the brunt of the one centipede that was falling toward me, razor edges first, as much as they were doing anything. The impact was heavy, and the length of centipede circled beneath me, head swooping around as it tried to wind around my upper body. I flipped, heel over head, to be belly-side-down and put it beneath me, then flew forward, to where Foil dangled. A blade jutted from the toe of her shoe, and she was using it to cut one centipede’s head off.

I caught her, carrying us away from the centipede’s reach before turning to assess the situation.

“Your mom,” she said.

I looked, I saw. Sveta had reached down- and was hauling the glowing sphere up and out of the rooftop, which had a whole chunk carved out of it.

Cradle’s line appeared, lancing up and out. I couldn’t see enough of Sveta to make out if she’d been cut, but I saw the orb intersect the light. It sliced through the orb, and broke the effect, leaving my mom tumbling through the air.

Sveta caught her with tendrils.

I couldn’t stop and stare. He’d known we were up there, somehow. It was why he’d told the group not to go to the roof, so he could mount a surprise attack. Cradle had a sensor or a power.

“Rain,” I said.

“Yeah,” was Foil’s response. She adjusted her grip on me.

I dove. There was no using the Wretch to cut the force or chill of the wind while I carried Foil.

Sveta’s face was barely visible above the roof as she lashed out. Multiple tendrils stabbed down and into the space. Her entire body shifted as points she was using to anchor shifted around her.

I saw what she was pulling way. An attempt at grabbing Cradle. Failed- he repositioned. At two capes. She threw them into the air, then let them fall. The bed of orange motes and the associated floating effect kept it from being terminal.

And Tattletale, plucked from Cradle’s craft. Head, shoulder, and a bit of chest, hair pale and costume in disarray.

Her other focus seemed to be on trying to do something about the craft, to try to mess with its aim, but she may not have been strong enough. I saw a bit of it moving through the gap, then through the upper windows. It was twisting around, rotating, the fingers out, and lashes swinging through the exterior wall of the building.

Aiming for Rain.

“Jump!” I shouted.

I wasn’t sure he could hear. But he threw himself back and away from the wall.

The now-invisible cable sliced through wall, cleaving a line through the surface, and by the course it painted, it seemed oriented perfectly to intersect the falling Rain.

He stopped himself in the air, freezing in place. His costume rustled with the force of the cable moving through the space beneath him.

One second, two-

He dropped again.

“Help,” I said, as I flew Foil and I into Rain.

I got a bad grip on the costume at his midsection. Foil, even with the awkward way I held her, managed a firm grip on his wrist.

We descended, my flying angle too steep for a stop or swift turn-around.

Metallic crunching and grinding marked the new complication of Red’s power. She used it even though she couldn’t see what she was using it on. Splashes of piston, gear, and belts rose up and out of the ground, bright with the white hot machinery and molten iron that was thrown out and around it, each splash larger than the last, one, two-

Three was a circular saw, big enough it could have risen up beneath an eighteen wheeler and cleaved the truck in two. The spinning saw kicked up a violent mess of molten particles.

Seeing the saw, Rain drew out a silver blade, now more of a silver shortsword, no longer something he could throw. It wasn’t something that was going to help.

Foil’s blade swatted several particles out of the air as they sailed our way, accurate even when I abruptly changed direction, so the blindly-aimed sawblade wouldn’t catch us if it bobbed any higher.

The rollercoaster feeling of flying became hard impact and gritty, cold, muddy reality as we hit ground. I couldn’t fly with two people, and because the direction and orientation of my flight didn’t really give me a chance to pull up or fly the direction we needed to go. It was a rougher landing than I would have liked, one that saw us tumble to land on our backs or fronts, but not one that risked breaking anything.

“Everyone okay?” I asked.

“Yes,” Foil said. “Thank you.”

“I’m in one piece,” Rain said, as he climbed to his feet. “What the hell happened? Who fucked up?”

“He got wind of us,” I said. I started to stand, then fell hard as pain jumped up my leg. In the gloom, I started to reach for my leggings, and pain ran up my arm.

I moved more gingerly, one eye on the building and the army I knew was in there. A deeper cut in my leg, that was starting to burn. A cut at my upper arm, shallow but long, from elbow to shoulder. Another deeper cut at my forearm, short but grave enough that I could have buried a pinky along its length. No burning there.

My boot had been bleached where the acid had struck, but it didn’t look like the material had been eaten through. The damage was seemingly worse with my breastplate, with corrosion clearly evident, the metal cracking into what looked like scales, flecking off.

The front doors of the building weren’t on a face that faced us, but were to our left, opening out in the direction of the road and where our group was. They swung open, an aperture I remembered was large enough to drive a truck through, and immediately, our reinforcements acted. I saw the orbs as fleeting images, shot at high speed, grown large and sailing in twos and threes to detonate on impact.

They were shooting out of the treeline.

Red’s splashes appeared. I was too far away to do anything about them. One appeared a few dozen feet from the building, small but bright. Then the second was two-thirds of the way to the treeline.

The third erupted, felling five or six trees all at once, tearing up the earth around them, in a threshing of lawnmower-like blades writ large.

It was pretty clearly telegraphed, but I wasn’t sure if they knew enough to read into that telegraphing.

My dad, at least, was okay. The glowing orbs returned, a fresh surge of fire that peppered the one face of the building.

Our opportunity to get clear.

I saw my mom get flung, much like the grenades were being flung in one direction, my mom was sent in the other.

Sveta didn’t follow though. She was still at the building, still looming over the hole in the roof. I felt nervous, seeing that. I heard the gunfire, automatic weapons firing in bursts, and I didn’t see her getting out of the way.

A part of me had been afraid that this was going to happen. It was always a danger, for anyone who struggled like I’d struggled, like Sveta struggled every day. Escapism was common, and there was a seductive, ever-present desire to escape for good, in both senses of the word ‘good’. To go out with glory. One of the boys at the group therapy sessions at the hospital had talked about it a lot.

I didn’t get the impression Sveta was doing that. Not consciously.

“Go,” I told Rain and Foil. “Get to safety.”

“You can’t,” Foil said. “She shouldn’t, she can’t, but- too many guns.”

Had to.

Had to like I’d had to risk arm and leg, might still lose arm and leg, depending on how this acid worked, to save Foil. Had to like Sveta was probably telling herself she had to do this.

It wasn’t a bullet I had to worry about. I was flying, thinking I was safe, when lines began to appear. Silvery, but crisp, like slices in reality, reaching well over the building.

Not meant for me, but dangerous all the same. I flew past one, and the Wretch had a limb extended. I felt the Wretch get sliced, felt the dim sensation that was the Wretch’s extended being part. The forcefield didn’t collapse. It cut.

A gaping hole in my forcefield, now, where there had been a bit of torso and shoulder.

I saw Sveta flinch in pain as one tendril passed through a line. Her head recoiled back, and the rest of her reacted. Her head flicked up, nervous, reactionary, an she saw me.

Tendrils snapped out, cracking almost like whips in their efforts to reach me.

Calm down. Let me near.

She didn’t calm down, but she did shift her attention away from me. Again, she bobbed her head, waved, and stabbed into the building with tendrils. They hit the floating space that was afire with the orange sparks, and it was like she’d hit cement, the tendrils corkscrewing as they hit a hard resistance. She forced them through, reaching.

“Sveta!”

“Get away from here!”

“Not without you, you numbskull! What are you trying to do!?”

“I’m trying to save them!”

“Who?”

“All of them!”

A severed tendril, noticeable for its endpoint because it didn’t taper down from pencil thin to hair-thin, stabbed in the direction of the hand-mech and the still half-formed, now double-layered orb of interlocked body parts.

The mech was moving now, hands gripping a surface. Cradle was elbow deep in the guts of the machine, even while it moved, not jarring or jostling as the thing moved, reaching up to grab the damaged section of roof, pulling it down.

Another volley of shots shot across the open field, striking the front face of the building. Something groaned, then fell, striking with a thud.

I saw Cradle turn his head sharply to the one side. A hand let go of the roof, instead moving to form a shield. The next volley passed through the opening in the building, striking different points inside. Two grenades hit the flat of the giant mech hand, raised as a shield.

He turned and he looked up at me.

Sveta tried again. Again, she hit the invisible momentum-cutting barrier. Like punching a wall of mud. More silvery lines criss-crossed, filling the space, silvery stitches, closing off the gap of the roof itself.

Two capes had somehow closed the distance to the treeline. I could hear Ashley and Damsel’s blasts, each audibly distinct because of what they were, and I could see more trees toppling.

Mukade’s centipedes flowed back to him, sliding into the hole in his side.

“Back! Now!” I shouted.

She didn’t budge, her attention on the progress of her tendrils.

No options left, I threw myself into her range with the full knowledge that she’d nearly grabbed me before, and any control she’d picked up from Rain’s power was probably long gone.

She hadn’t shied away from gunfire or having her tendrils sliced, but she shied away from letting me into her range. Slow and awkward, her entire head lurching because she tried to use a tendril she didn’t have anymore to anchor herself.

I closed in, tendrils grazing me, and pressed her face to my shoulder as I flew the two of us back and away. Mukade’s centipedes stabbed through the air behind us in a double helix, then closed up, the openings in the helix scissoring closed, razor-sharp serrated edges making a shrieking sound as they ran against one another, acid spraying and splashing below them.

Sveta pulled away, and I threw up the Wretch. Hoping it wouldn’t grab her, just as she no doubt hoped she wouldn’t grab me.

Red’s power provided the elevator to raise a group of four capes and ten soldiers to the broken rooftop. She stepped away from the group, and had the splashes going constantly now, all in close proximity to herself. One two three, clockwise, while another set marked the same pattern and distance, counter-clockwise, timed so there was something emerging from the rooftop every two seconds or so, always in arm’s reach.

Pieces of metal to be shields, an outcropping of pipes, that she could use to grab and wrench a weapon free, Curved blades that scraped the roof, as if testing the footing.

Soldiers dropped low, raising their guns-

The one closest to the trees seemed to throw himself at the guy beside him. Glass shards clattered down around him, and his head lolled back. Individual lengths of wire stabbed into eyes, eye socket, eyelid, scalp and cheek, sometimes prying and pulling skin or ocular material away, because those wires were still trying to spring back to a rigid, straight length. The guy beside him had one wire stabbing through an eye.

More of the soldiers were reacting now – I’d thought they’d dropped low or bent over because the guys at the far left of their group were leaning so heavily into them, from the force of the impact. But the other shot had gone low much as the first had gone high, both striking simultaneously. Short lengths of wire riddled the hands that had been holding the guns aloft.

Curled up wire distilled in glass spheres?

“Go to the others!” I told Sveta.

“But-”

“They need you!”

Not the level-headed ideal command I’d pictured before.

But Sveta listened.

I threw myself at the upper edge of the building. The structure was damaged, cracks running through it from the damage to the roof and the way the damaged section hung, and a heavy impact from myself and the Wretch drove the damage home. A crack became something bigger and a section fell loose further across the roof. The people who had been setting up their vantage point to open fire on me, Sveta, or the people on the trees were now left uncertain if the roof would hold them. One guy hopped up onto the lip of the roof, a foot or two above my reaching hand.

He was quick to fire. Accurate enough to hit my forcefield. I grabbed his foot and wrenched him from the roof, swinging him down, letting him drop halfway while I followed him and held onto him, before kicking him in the face, to send him on his way. The Wretch snatched the gun he held, holding it by the barrel.

I rose up and twisted more sharply in the air before dismissing the forcefield. The upward momentum served to toss the gun up, and I caught it in my hands.

I didn’t like the feel of it. Didn’t like what it represented, that we were at this point.

I still held onto it.

Red was using her power to raise up a shield against the projectiles, but her power didn’t just make the eruption happen where she wanted it. There were the two steps that telegraphed it, and as people retreated to get away from the hail of maiming slingshots, they walked right into the prelude splashes. One fell from the roof, another tumbled, a soldier tripping over him to land perilously close to the hole in the roof.

I flew up and over, saw the group that standing tallest, and Red was the backbone of it. Gun in hand, held shoulder-height and held sideways in front of me, I flew at them, aiming to bowl them over. My arm was in agony for every step of the maneuver.

All for nothing. A buzzsaw erupted just at the roof’s edge, barring my way. I was forced to stop, stuck where I was while multiple people in her contingent got their bearings and aimed at me.

Grip shifting, flying with the circular saw as a kind of cover, I brought the gun around and pulled back on the trigger.

The vibration shook my body and reminded me that I had two massive gashes in my arm. Someone could have dug their fingers into the gashes and cuts and it probably wouldn’t have hurt so much.

But I’d used guns before as part of the Patrol. This time, however, I aimed at legs and lower bodies instead of paper cutouts. Their disorganization was compounded by the fact they’d been under fire, some being mangled or blinded, and they were maneuvering around a damaged rooftop. It put more people into a smaller area.

When I mowed into them with a single burst of gunfire, they collapsed into one another, if they didn’t collapse forward.

Except Red had been shielded by the people between her and I, and I still had to deal with her. I saw the telltale splashes, and I got out of there.

I thought I got out of there. I went low, closer to the base of the building, hugging the wall to minimize the chance that someone would be able to catch me off guard.

I had the Wretch active, and that likely saved my life. Red’s industrial tool this time was a crane mount, spearing sky high and bringing cable and wrecking ball with it. That wrecking ball slammed into me and the wall I was hugging. The wall below them, that was holding their section of the roof up.

Putting me through concrete and brick, partially indoors. I narrowly avoided having the cabling of the wrecking ball catch me and pull me into the ground as the whole apparatus sank back into the earth, just as fluidly as it had emerged.

Red, it seemed, had hopped over onto a piston she was using as an elevator back toward the ground. More industrial tools were appearing to push broken concrete and dirt up against the walls, shoring them up as the building came to pieces.

I didn’t press the fight. It wasn’t a priority. Our goal was stopping Cradle, and Cradle wasn’t even here anymore.

The siege was ongoing now. The grenade shots shook the building and people were hurrying outside. The momentum barrier was a one-way screen for them to open fire.

I flew high, because low was hazardous as hell. Capricorn had used a water blast, and when that water hit the momentum barrier and stopped, he’d turned it to stone. Turning the enemy’s one-way fortification into something two-way. My dad peppered the outer edges of the stone ‘splash’ with grenades, still somehow firing them like he was using a railgun, and the chunks that flew up and over were raining down on the mercenaries.

But- there were fifteen of us, minus any injured I wasn’t aware of.

There were more than a hundred of them.

Just from the look of it, the grenade shots were coming from further back. Our team was steadily retreating.

An audible wet sound was my only clue that I was under attack. In any other place, I might have dismissed the sound, but I was too high up for something to sound so sharp and near. I changed direction, using the Wretch.

A geyser of vomit from the airborne Barfbat. Chugalug floated below, gas-filled trash bags buoying him. He was downwind and further down, which spared me the worst of the smell.

Barfbat spewed another geyser. Liquid and far too sustained for something from a human-sized package.

When I flew out of the way, avoiding his attempts to steer the spray my way, weaving below and then back, so gravity kept it from reaching me, he shifted modes. The ring of fluid-filled sacs around his neck contracted, then swelled, chunky.

A loogie, shot like a bullet.

I had too much experience with aerial warfare to allow something like that to hit me.

I monitored them, keeping a distance, while moving in the general direction of my team. I didn’t want to lead him to them, and I definitely didn’t want to put myself in a position where I had to choose between getting splashed, even if it was the Wretch getting splashed, or letting my people on the ground suffer.

They stayed on me, keeping me marked, no doubt ready to capitalize if I left them to it. If they reached a point where they could bombard the others-

Barfbat settled on Chugalug, and the weight of him seemed to sink Chugalug, driving him incrementally down, down, down.

Bending over, Barfbat shifted glands again, then emptied a seemingly endless stream of bile and vomit into Chugalug’s upturned face and open mouth.

Trashbags mutliplied and swelled. A caterpillar-like tail extended out behind and below. Other debris like a halo of chicken bones and stringy matter expanded out around and behind Chugalug.

I aimed the rifle the Wretch had claimed from one soldier, and I fired, gunning through the trash bags.

My first series of shots popped the ones to either side and below him. He began to drop, not as steeply as if he had nothing. No doubt some gas buoyed him.

And Barfbat was still there, still in place, still ready to supply raw material. The bags I’d shot were replaced, and the abominable dirigible that was Chugalug found its buoyancy again.

I shot again, aware I had only so many bullets. This time, I aimed for bags on the one side. He listed, then he tilted, forcing Barfbat to adjust position to get the vomit where it needed to be.

With sustained effort in forcing the tilt, I put Chugalug nearly upside-down and sinking fast.

Barfbat paused in his supply of the fluid, made a face, then spat at me. Not a loogie the size of my head, but something more like a piece of bone. I avoided it.

“Stand down, or I will shoot you.”

He lunged, instead. Chugalug extended a portion of his body to provide a helping hand in moving forward, and Barfbat moved his wings, a flap, then an almost horizontal dive or pounce, straight for me.

I shot, one bullet, and that was enough to keep Barfbat from tackling me and getting in close- whatever it was he planned on doing if he managed it. His wings spread, and he flapped, while Chugalug slowly sank below him.

The bullet had made a surprisingly big hole, but that hole was steadily closing, filling up with fluid-filled pustules. What was left as it finished closing was a small patch of what could’ve been the black death.

Bat-masked face was ringed with long black hair and a wreath of fluid-filled sacs. He flapped, eyeing me, before diving for Chugalug.

I was really glad I didn’t have to get into hand-to-hand combat with either of them. Fucking gross.

The others were running for it. Down the road. I could see Cradle’s group, and I could see that it was disorganized. There were stragglers, the impatient soldier from before among them, there were wounded, there were the reluctant, who didn’t seem eager to go charging in after trouble, and there were the ones who were giving chase. Cradle was with the reluctant, still slightly hunched over, far from being a model of courage or conviction.

There were just so fucking many of them.

I turned my back, flying after the others.

They were nipping at our heels, and as our group traced its way down a bend of road, they were at the prior bend, just far enough away that they probably couldn’t be confident of their shooting, but still in a position to theoretically gun one of our people down.

I could see where and when Rain was using his power. Where people in the lead stopped in their tracks, or the loose mass of mercenaries started to spread out and then had second thoughts.

Capricorn’s power turned dirt road into mud. Mud became stone, trapping more than a few people. At the next bend, again, dirt road became a slosh of thin mud, the road itself made treacherous or slower going.

This time, however, he didn’t follow up by turning it to stone.

I flew after them, catching up.

They were on guard and tense enough that my landing seemed to spook even the more serious ones. Swansong and Foil were among them.

“You’re hurt,” my dad observed.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Come here,” he said. “I can multitask. No stitches in this light, but I can wrap it.”

“I can hold things,” Moose offered, walking beside my dad.

I submitted to the medical care. I tracked the others. Harbingers One and Two were out to the flanks, not seeming to care about the possibility of traps in the ditches. Foil and Capricorn had the rear, Foil sporting a borrowed slingshot. My mom and Sveta were on opposite corners of the group. Rachel had the lead, where she rode her wolf alongside the hound that had an injured Chastity and Cassie seated on it.

Ow- and most pressing, most distracting, my arm and leg fucking hurt. Fuck and ow.

“Distract me,” I said.

“We got two of their capes,” Swansong said.

“I got two,” Damsel retorted.

“We did.”

“I did,” Damsel said. “Final blow’s all that matters.”

Swansong didn’t rebut.

“He caught on,” Rain said. “Spotted us.”

“No idea what his emotion power is?” I asked.

Rain shook his head. “I don’t think he’s been using. He’s still focused on his machine. Upgrading it on the fly.”

I drew in air through my teeth.

“He’s hanging back,” Rain said. “Letting others do the dirty work. The asshole.”

“He might think he’s putting us in a pinch,” my dad said. “Depending on how things stood with the people in the Row, the supervillain town just outside the station, he would be right. There, that’ll hold.”

I checked the injuries at my arm. “Leg?”

I floated up, until my leg was at a comfortable level for him.

“Ow,” Moose said.

“Less commentary. I’m trying not to think about it.”

“Worse than any injury I’ve ever had,” he said.

My mind went to the gouges at one corner of his face. A mistake in using the Wretch. Any different, and I might have dislocated his jaw.

“Less commentary,” I said, my voice firm. “That was you, working with my dad?”

He made a flicking motion with his finger. The shockwave followed, focused and narrow.

Right.

“You okay, Svet’?” I asked, pitching my voice to be heard. “You got cut.”

“I wanted to get the whip,” Sveta said, so far away she was barely in earshot. Her movements were… not a limp, but not so fluid that it looked like her face was floating. Here and there, it would sharply bob or move.

“That’s what you were after?”

“He had devices with him. I thought if I couldn’t get him, I could get his things. Give it to Rain to undo it or decipher it.”

“Not sure I could if you did,” Rain said. “Because I don’t accomplish anything ever.”

There was a bitterness in the voice that seemed to surprise a few of us.

“Doesn’t sound like you,” Byron said.

“Me being a loser?” Rain asked. “I could’ve cracked them and I didn’t. I got cold feet when it counted.”

“You did fine,” I said.

“Don’t fucking patronize me,” he said.

Okay, wow.

“I flew over, they’re spread out. People you were working on aren’t budging. That’s easily twenty or thirty people we’re not having to deal with.”

“Because we beat their capes up, I’m betting,” Rain said. “They don’t have anyone to follow.”

“Because you worked on them,” I said, insistent. “They’re disorganized, and I don’t think Cradle’s good at rallying them. It’s slowing him down, shaking him up. He’s still all the way back there.”

“Yeah? Isn’t that exactly the opposite of what we want?” Rain asked.

“We want to not deal with them all at once. We got that. It wasn’t pretty, but we got it. We have options.”

“I feel like no matter how this ended up, you’d be giving me the weak pep talk.”

“Well fuck you,” I said.

“Victoria,” my mom said. “Be a leader.”

“Fuck you too,” I said. “No. Fucking hell, fuck that. You haven’t been helpful or a leader. I got gashed a few times and I’m sore, I’m tired. I’m not going to play nice and stoic team leader here, being everyone’s rock or punching bag.”

“I can take over if you’re not up to it,” Damsel said.

“Stop,” I said, pointing a finger at her. “Stop. Precipice? Fuck off if you’re not going to listen to what I’m saying because you’re so frustrated, okay? Seriously. I’m not going to lie to the people here about where things stand to spare your ego. Not when it could make a difference in tactics or us coming out of this in as many pieces possible. I respect you more than you probably think I do, but I’m not that fond of you.”

“Right,” he said, his voice tight.

“Swansong, stop needling your sister. Damsel, stop being needled. Focus on kicking ass. I know you two have it in you.”

“Two of us took out three capes. I’m content,” Swansong said.

“One and six sevenths of you,” one of the Harbingers said.

“Not funny,” Swansong said.

I pointed. “Harbingers, stop blinding and permanently disfiguring randoms. That’s an order.”

“Noted.”

“No disfigurements or maiming that lasts ninety-nine percent of a lifetime either,” Swansong said.

“Mmm. Is that an order?” Harbinger Two asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Nothing that takes more than a month to heal,” Swansong clarified.

“What she said,” I said.

My dad patted my leg, at a spot where it wasn’t injured. I checked, then floated down at more of a level with the rest, mouthing a ‘thank you’ to him. I got a nod.

“That will be an interesting line to find, since there’s a flier after us,” Harbinger One said, pointing.

Barfbat.

“Can we?” he asked. “We’ll bring him down gently.”

I shut my eyes a second. “Don’t be gentle.”

He tilted his head to one side.

“He regenerates. Healed a bullet wound in five seconds. It’ll take more to stop him.”

The Harbinger pair ducked away, heading across the ditch to a hill where presumably they’d do their shooting.

My voice was low. “Brandish? Stop sniping, stop throwing barbs, stop getting jealous, whatever it is that’s motivating you.”

“I’m volunteering my services and I get lectured?” she asked, voice arch.

“Fuck off,” I said, with emphasis. I glared at her, and she looked away. I turned my attention the other direction, to the front flank of the group. “Sveta?”

“Time to yell at me?”

“If I say to get clear, listen. I don’t want to have to kamikaze rush you to get you to get out of terminal danger.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Good control earlier, good job getting people clear. You got Tattletale?”

“I have her,” Rachel said, loud and brusque at the same time Sveta meekly said, “I did.”

“How is she?”

“Hurt,” was Tattletale’s faint voice.

“Hurt,” Rachel said.

“Okay,” I said. The settlement was in sight now. I checked back. No Barfbat, and Harbingers were returning to our group. Cradle’s group lagged behind- I could see the light of flashlights through the trees, but no followers. Byron’s lights loomed well behind us, ready to spray them and the road if they tried to take the easy road. “Capricorn? You stopped switching.”

“My brother asked me not to, unless it was an emergency. Pain’s getting to be too much to focus, and he’s worried he’ll pass out.”

“Got it,” I said.

Too many little things. There were probably other things I needed to hammer out. Probably things that others needed to shout at me.

“Speaking of focus, I’m worried about Precipice,” Byron said.

“Me?”

“He’s not acting like himself.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re using more emotion power than ever. Is there a feedback loop? A backlash for overuse? I don’t know how these things work.”

“No,” was the reedy answer. Tattletale.

I flew through the group to the head of the pack.

“No?” I asked.

“I need more information to give you a better answer, but not a backlash. That would taper off after using the power, even a little. This is… longer lasting.”

I glanced back at Rain. There was something wrong?

“Because we woke him up early?”

“From?” Tattletale asked.

“A dream space,” Rain said. “Where we face each other, they exchange tokens, they don’t usually share with me. Except this time, Cradle offered me some, his tinker power, and I was suspicious. Too many weird things going on. I thought maybe it was a trap.”

“T’was,” Tattletale said, the contraction a result of her being so strained in her speaking. “Not like you think.”

“I think it might’ve been that tinkers get distracted or caught up in what they’re wanting to build, they don’t see reality. The asshole wanted to give me a lot at once, when I’m not used to it.”

“No.”

“Then what?” Rain asked, clearly annoyed.

“You took something else.”

“I was- I think I might’ve been given some without knowing. by Love Lost.”

“You were. It was a signal. A warning.”

“About what?”

“Bleed-through. It comes with the tokens. Cradle wanted to give you his.”

As impatient and vocal as he had been, Rain went quiet, thinking.

“This is my head,” Chasity said, and I couldn’t see the motion she was making because of how she sat in front of Cassie. “And this is the fifty things going a mile above it.”

“He’s scared now,” Tattletale said. “Shaken, because… you gave him tokens?”

“No,” Rain said.

“You got to him.”

“Hitting him with a shame and regret cloud while he was sleeping,” Rain said.

“You got to him. He’s scared, he knows that tomorrow night, you can just give him your things. You can do it every night. He has to stop you. You have the upper hand. He has more people, but you’re winning.”

I folded my arms. “Then we have a game plan. We go to into the town. They’re cooperating with us to some degree. If they’re on our side, then Cradle probably can’t attack like he wants to, we find an angle. Maybe keep using Precipice’s power, push buttons, make it so their group can’t stay together.”

I looked at Rain.

I saw him nod. Delayed, like he’d had to think first, or he was lost in thought.

“And if we absolutely have to, if the town isn’t willing to let us use them to scare Cradle off, we go through, and we lock the door. Stop March, intervene, do what we have to.”

“Lock it?” Foil asked.

I shrugged, then winced at the pain in my upper arm.

It wouldn’t be pretty, but it was an option.

“Doable,” Capricorn said.

Psychologically, even if I didn’t trust Tattletale one hundred percent, hearing that Cradle was spooked was a psychological edge. It shifted things, how I felt like we could approach them.

We still needed to get him into a position where we could question him. Away from his people.

Except he had a mover power now that let him get out of any situation we put him in. Gravity and intervening obstacles didn’t seem to matter.

Getting him into a position where we could exploit him seemed next to impossible.

“Glory Hole,” Tattletale muttered.

There wasn’t any ongoing conversation, and the only noise was the distant slosh of Capricorn’s water swamping the road and trees. The words hung in the air, and I was tempted to leave them there.

“Wanted to say-” she started.

“What?” I asked.

“This sucks. This hurts. Fair’s fair. If you want to lord it over me, you can.”

Lord it over her? That she was hurt?

I couldn’t even connect to what she meant until I remembered past jabs at my time in the hospital.

I shook my head. “Focus on the mission. The kids are hurt, our teammates.”

She went silent. Rachel, meanwhile, turned my way and glared at me.

Tattletale hadn’t known? How, with that power of hers?

I looked away.

It was a careful, uneasy approach to the ‘Rows’. A settlement without real streets, sprawling out at the base of a station that was far better put together than any dwelling. We had some people hang back to watch our rear while others ventured further in. The wounded stayed three-quarters of the way back, somewhat hidden. A show of strength was somewhat important.

The villains of note were all gathered around the station exit, about a city block ahead of us. Etna, I noted, was absent.

They looked agitated.

We were agitated. The mercenaries were there, following from enough of a distance that we couldn’t shoot or use slingshots.

“You can lock the doors, you said?” Tattletale asked.

I turned back to face her.

“What do you mean?” I asked Tattletale.

“You can lock the doors. You have a dimension switch.”

“Whatever it’s called. Yeah.”

“You let the villains know that?”

“Yeah. Scared them into compliance a bit. Conscience brought us the rest of the way.”

Cassie pulled the switch out, keeping it partially under the blanket. I saw her expression change.

I flew over, while she turned the thing around to show me. Swansong and Capricorn drew near to see as well.

“They might not be so compliant then,” Tattletale said, behind us.

The screen was outlined in yellow, and the readout only said ‘Error’.

I looked back at the villains at the station. Bluestocking’s group. They didn’t just look agitated. They looked energized. Invigorated.

The person who’d just come out of the station, that had gone to whisper something in Bluestocking’s ear? That had very possibly, even probably been to let Bluestocking know the portal was clear. The way out was back.

Because of Cradle.

“How?” Capricorn asked.

“Scans the airwaves to see if you have walkie talkies, comms, phones, any means of communication,” Tattletale said. “And finds that. Your key. Hacks it.”

That was part of what he’d been up to. Opening the door, taking away our leverage. Leaving us caught between him and villains that weren’t dependent on us for a way out.

“Fucking tinkers,” Tattletale added.

Heavens – 12.8

The settlement of scattered, disorganized buildings didn’t look like it had been laid out with roads in mind, and it took on the appearance of being a town on fire well before any fire had ignited. The motes of Subside’s power marked the loose boundaries of where it was being set up. Sparks and dots of red light. Soldiers stepped out of the trees, starting with Subside’s squad, built around Subside himself but led primarily by a large guy with three guns hanging off of him. The squads to either side emerged a bit later, after minimal conversation.

The show of force wasn’t for our benefit. All of the people of the ‘Rows’ of Earth N base town were out of their beds, paying clear attention now. Their number included the people who had been on guard earlier who had apparently retired from being on guard, and people who hadn’t stopped keeping an eye on things, sitting on porches or going on extended walks.

The blue motes of Capricorn’s power were our own answer, for what that was worth. As glad as I was to know we had something, the color of the lights cut into my eyes’ ability to peer through the dark. The bright blue left spots in my vision and trails that persisted even when I looked away.

The air was thick with the smell of mud, rain, and the haze of cigarette smoke that seemed to settle over a place when most of a town was left out in the cold, keeping an eye out for their mutual benefit.

That mutual benefit had been something we’d tested and cracked by applying pressure to Bluestocking, with Prancer’s help. Now Moose was approaching Prancer, who had stuck closer to Bluestocking, and they were comparing notes. No Etna in Bluestocking’s retinue, I noted.

The people in the town weren’t making a fuss about us backing up and using one of the buildings for cover.

There weren’t any better options. If we ran for it, we’d be gunned down. If we stayed and Bluestocking decided to side with Cradle’s group again, we’d be in the midst of trouble with more trouble coming from Cradle’s group.

“He’s the lead-from-behind type,” Swansong said.

Cradle was moving through the trees with his mech, shaking them. Slivers of the mech were visible where the trees weren’t as thick or where some had been felled a certain distance into the woods. Couldn’t be easy terrain, especially with something as large and weird in shape as the mech.

“Because he knows we’d shoot him if he led from the front,” Foil answered. “I might be able to hit him. Shoot through the repulsion field. But I might miss.”

“I could help,” Harbinger One said, sidling in close enough that he was in Foil’s personal space. Damsel stuck out a claw, touching his shoulder and prodding him back.

“Can you guarantee a hit?” Foil asked.

“No. Can’t see enough of him, and it’s too dark.”

“I have the same problem, so it’s not much help.”

“Don’t shoot if you can’t keep him alive. We need him to undo what he did to others-” Assuming that’s even possible. It has to be possible. “-and to give us the dirt on March.”

“If you’re trigger-happy, you could shoot-” Tattletale started. She paused one second, started again, voice quiet, and the lower undertones of Moose’s voice, even though he wasn’t technically in earshot, were enough to drown out the initial sounds.

She started again. “Woman in red. MYOSHA, all capitals.”

“Machinery explosions,” I said. “Dangerous.”

“Yes. Or one on the far left, ox skull. Prong.”

“Don’t know him,” I said, noting the soldier with an ox skull mask that looked like it obscured his peripheral vision, with the way the skull and his own eyes lined up. He wore a heavy coat over what might have been body armor. Bulky kevlar, not fancy costume armor panels.

“Point,” Tattletale smirked, the smirk faltering as she took in a halting, probably painful breath, “for me.”

I was annoyed at that, but I let it slide. “What does he do, then?”

“Brute tough, but you can wear that down. Or use Foil’s power and ignore it. Wanted to hire him once, he said no, he was busy, so fuck him. The-”

She stopped. Her face was shiny with sweat. Rachel brushed a mittened hand over her upper face to move hair away, not really as delicate in the operation as I imagined ninety-nine percent of the population would be.

“-The schtick is ‘you mess with the bull, get the horns’. Curved spikes of light. Spear you like a- like a spear. And carry you back and away. Impales you to a wall with one spike then stabs you ten times with the other, or he just pushes you back out and away. Extends the spike out past the horizon.”

“Endless range?” I asked.

“Twenty-five feet. But once he gets you, it’s endless.”

“Cretan and Lionwing are there, but they aren’t stepping up,” Tattletale observed. “They’re sticking close to Cradle. Closer relationship. They’re actually loyal.”

The conversation between Moose and Prancer was wrapping up.

The pair broke apart, but instead of Moose returning to us and Prancer going to the station where Bluestocking’s group was maintaining watch, it was the other way around.

Fifteen of us and three dogs were gathered, and all were silent, but for the labored breathing from Tattletale.

“Bluestocking hoped you’d resolve the issue in the background, come back, and go away. Not bring it to her literal doorstep,” Prancer said.

“Her house?” Tattletale asked, jerking her head. The one we were camped out by.

Prancer gave her a long look. In the gloom, his eyes seemed bright, his attention clearly on the gravity of Tattletale’s injury.

“Bad-”

“Forget- forget I asked,” Tattletale said.

“She’ll help,” Prancer said. “She wants concessions.”

“Concessions?” I asked. “We’ve fucking sailed past the place where the line used to be drawn, where people put their shit aside because fuck no.”

“She’ll help,” Prancer said, voice firm. “But if you don’t want some asshole villain pulling a mutiny and taking over, giving you a repeat performance of all of this in a few months or a year, she needs to give her people something. You need to give her something to give her people.”

“Money?”

“No. Special status for the Rows. You do what you can to convince the mayor, make sacrifices, pull favors, whatever. Mayor knows what we’ve been asking for.”

“We know,” Harbinger One said. “It’s come up. All of the benefits of being part of the city and none of the costs. Open trade, loosened restrictions on goods despite being an alternate world with health risks and quarantine. No taxes, but access to the library net. It’s a hard sell.”

“Thank you,” I said. Context.

Tattletale gasped out a response, “Establishes her place on the- shortlist of people who control economy. Second rung.”

My mom folded her arms, leaning in close to whisper something to my dad.

I knew her well enough to guess what. In fact, on thinking about what she was probably saying, I could extrapolate. She loathed giving the villains what they wanted. If we couldn’t stop them, we could keep them from scoring a win.

I knew why that idea had rung so true, and why it had been something she’d clung to and repeated more often in recent years. She’d watched us give our hometown to villains, inch by inch, the perceived idea the Protectorate and Wards had given Lung territory because he was too dangerous to uproot, and that heroes had conceded it to Undersiders.

Because she’d given a villain what he wanted and expected once, and took a child into her home. And that home had been sundered.

“What happens if we can’t convince the mayor?” Swansong asked.

“Penalty clause,” Prancer said. “Two members of Breakthrough join Bluestocking. They’re at her beck and call, people get to see it. Six month-”

Gunfire cut him off.

“Foil,” I said. “Harbingers. Get MYOSHA and Prong.”

The Harbingers approached one corner of the building. Foil went to the other, jostling Rain aside, borrowed slingshot in hand.

“Tried to stir them up,” Rain said, rejoining us now that Foil had taken his place. “Got two groups hanging back, one’s backed up to go talk to Cradle.”

“Which?” Tattletale asked.

“Chugalug and a guy with a white hood, sword, robey sort of look. Second guy went.”

“Condemner,” Tattletale said. “Not hanging back. He’s a thinker and sound blaster… can communicate messages. He’s listening in, communicating something between Cradle and Blue. You’ll want to stop him.”

I want to stop all of them.

“Well fucking great,” Rain said. He visibly stopped himself, visibly forcing himself to relax. Capricorn set a scalemail glove on his shoulder.

The noises of the fighting were escalating. What had been an initial spatter of gunfire was being answered.

“What do I tell Blue?” Prancer asked. “Yes or no?”

“Tell her if she accepts some leeway, gets maybe one of us on loan as a penalty clause, fine, I’ll try to make it happen. Also, tell her I said fuck her. Not-”

An eruption of MYOSHA’s power sent debris flying. Most of that debris was paper thin, but it stirred into the air.

Prancer was adopting his breaker form. He nodded, and he ducked low as he slipped around the corner, sliding beneath the raised platform, too small to be a porch, by one front door. He sprung up on the other side, hurdling a vehicle, heading to the station.

Byron’s power produced a flood of water. I wasn’t in a position to see, my back to the wall and everything that was going on, more of my attention on the station, but I saw the constellation change, dots and lines becoming flowing water, I felt the fine mist of droplets that wind or clashing sprays of water sent into the air, and I heard the moment that all gunfire momentarily ceased.

“I shot her in the leg,” Foil reported. “But her people gathered around her. I’d shoot them, but-”

But the answering gunfire was more persistent than a slingshot could be.

“She doesn’t need to see where she’s creating the machine splashes,” I said. “There’s a chance she tries hitting us.”

“Not until there’s a final word from Blue.”

“Which might be now,” I said. “We move.”

An order, and one people thankfully listened to without bickering or issue.

“Brand,” my dad said, voice low. “Kick up some dust. Catch and toss.”

My mom nodded, backing up. Foil was pulling back because the bullets were too heavy. My mom ducked beneath the firing line of Foil’s slingshot as Foil aimed at the corner of the building.

Her power wasn’t Shadow Stalker’s, from back in Brockton Bay. It went through everything, yes. Shadow Stalker could do something similar. But it left a hole, where Shadow Stalker’s hadn’t. One shot, then two- it created an aperture with the same diameter as the bullet.

I could understand why Foil would be reluctant to put holes that big in something she was using for cover, especially with the concentration of gunfire.

I handed her the gun I’d taken. I saw the moment of reservation, knew exactly what she was thinking, but she took the weapon.

My dad created glowing orbs. he threw one to my mother, tossing another around the corner. My mother caught and threw the orb, tossing it around her corner.

They were heavy detonations, pitched to cut into the earth, to kick up dirt, dust, and moisture. A shower of mud and moisture.

Visual cover, but when it came to the bullets, there were too many. I didn’t trust the Wretch and I had the impression the dogs would just get gunned down.

The front landing that Prancer had gone under. A three-foot by three-foot square of wooden boards with perforated metal textured for walking laid over top.

I had to step out into danger to get to it, though.

I made use of the cover and I flew low enough to the ground that the Wretch cut grooves into the ground. My own cloud of kicked-up mud and ice followed behind me.

A bullet clipped the Wretch, striking the very same hand that Cradle’s power had clipped. Much like my mom’s ball had been cut and then was intact after the fact, my own power had recovered when it had been knocked out and turned back on.

But I was left momentarily exposed, my back to the enemy, nearly blind in the loose rain of flecks of mud.

I flew to the underside of the square-shaped porch, my back hugging it, and the moment the Wretch returned, I used her to haul it up and away from the wall.

It was connected well enough that one plank was left affixed to the base of the door. The rest came apart in more or less one piece.

A shield, impractical in dimension, but it was a way to shield others just a bit more reliably than the Wretch could.

“Tenor of the fight changed,” Tattletale was saying, back at the main group. “Someone accepted someone’s deal.”

Had it? I’d been busy with property damage. I flew to a position where I could guard the others, head ducked down, Wretch clinging to my ‘shield’ that had to weigh a hundred and fifty pounds. I felt the first bullets strike it, impacts harder than the swing of a baseball bat, but diffuse enough it didn’t crack the Wretch. I knew I was buying seconds, because the Wretch was digging into the cracks between the thick boards and the posts that framed it, crushing and stabbing into metal.

People used the dogs, far too many hanging onto the side or riding on top, heads ducked low. I flew up higher to shield better.

My mom was one of the last to make a break for new cover. She took running footsteps, then turned into the ball shape, just a little under waist-height, an orange-red hue in bright, color that seemed dissonant for the environment, like neon signage in woodlands.

Something exploded, smaller than a grenade, more focused. It interrupted the rolling. She stopped dead in her tracks. Sitting in the midst of exposed road.

Not something I was unfamiliar with. I flew to her, ready to kick her, but in the last second, she changed back. With only the imperfect cover of my ‘shield’ protecting her, she ran to the others.

Putting us further from the woman I’d mentally nicknamed Red, MYOSHA, who was presumably immobile.

Bluestocking’s group was out. Birdbrain, Crested, some underlings, and then the pairing of Bitter Pill and Bluestocking.

Tattletale said something. I didn’t catch it, given distance and how quiet her voice was.

MYOSHA hit one of the buildings closest to the treeline. I could see people cast into the air, flipping head over heels, amid the pieces of wood, the prefab segments of houses that had been fit together, and chunks of concrete. A giant iron container of what looked like molten metal was at the center of it all, and that container tipped as it sloped back into the ground.

Where the molten liquid touched puddles and condensation, it exploded, sending sparks flying, the resulting reaction so bright it could have been a flashbang, the crackling and fizzling deafening.

I heard a grunt of pain.

“Who!?” I heard, in a voice that could only be Ashley’s, imperious, accusatory.

“Saving your life!” my mom shouted back.

There was a detonation. One of my dad’s grenades.

“Victoria!” my dad said, in a very ‘dad’ voice. “To me!”

I flew to the sound of his voice, even while the entire world seemed to dissolve into a blinding white that made the backs of my eyes and the front of my brain hurt.

He touched me, grabbing me by the shoulders, and turned me forward. “Forcefield on!”

I had to pull out of his grip, moving to a place I had to hope was safe and out of the reach of the others, before I used my forcefield.

“Bluestocking attacked us,” my mom said.

One arm shielding my eyes, I could see the white fading, and every line and shadow that returned to the world brought a lot of pain with it. The others were down, Swansong and Damsel pushed into the dirt, Capricorn standing in front of Rain, and it was my parents who stood tall with eyes open in the glare.

The little benefits of powers, like Byron’s cold resistance and my relative resilience to emotion powers.

I could see the general silhouette of the station, and of the people on the landing. Dark shapes against a dark background, my vision filled with afterimages and spots, with Capricorn lines and Subside’s sparks, and the fallout that was cascading down around the entire town, from MYOSHA’s liquid metal spill.

“Watch out!” my father called out.

I felt the Wretch go down, and I had no idea why. I lost the strength I needed to hold up the shield and protect my back from the distant munitions. I wasn’t even positive it would matter.

“Do I move!?” I asked.

“No!” my mom ordered. My dad gave the opposite response, “Charge in! Hit them before-”

“No!” was another voice in the jumble. There were shouts, questions, most from people who couldn’t see much better than I could.

“Get your mom in there, charge in yourself, they’re using powers!”

I could see the glow of my dad’s grenades forming in his hands. I saw my mother’s silhouette as she caught the grenades she was handed, the glow as she became a ball again.

“No!” again, I heard the voice. It stood out from imperious words, complaints, and questions because it was meek.

No, not meek.

“Don’t throw!” I ordered my dad.

Something heavy hit the wall of the new house we were using for cover from the massed soldiers and capes in Cradle’s contingent, striking above heads and sending debris down onto Chastity, Cassie, and the Harbingers. Chunks of concrete larger than a fist, one chunk even larger than that.

“Why not, Tattletale? Rachel, can you hear what she’s saying?”

“It’s not an attack,” Rachel translated, voice tight. “It feels like being attacked!”

“Water?” Byron asked.

“Tattletale says no,” Rachel translated.

“Clarify!” I shouted.

Something hit me again. The Wretch went down. Another chunk of concrete, this time aimed my way. Again, I lost my strength, my feet hitting ground, my entire body, strained and tortured as it was, bearing the full weight of the posts, planks, and textured cover of metal.

“Hostage!” Rachel huffed. “Paris!”

I was already flying before she added the second half of her statement, abandoning my shield, because it was too unwieldy for a dangerous situation.

I flew closer to the group. To my parents, it was Paris and Thud backing the rest of Bluestocking’s group, with Thud hurling rocks and Paris throwing his darts with Thud’s hand pointing over Bluestocking’s shoulder. Men were hunkered down on either side.

But Tattletale had been right. This was a hostage situation, and Thud had one hand at the back of Bluestocking’s neck. Paris had a dart held like a knife at Bitter Pill’s back.

Thud could see despite the residual glare, and he had some sense that I was nearby.

A glass ball shattered in Thud’s eye socket, and in that moment, his eye sockets were riddled with uncoiling wires and glass fragments. He didn’t seem to mind much, but the scenario bought me a moment to act. I dove, saw him bring his finger to his eye to pry the wires free, and I changed direction mid-flight. A twist in the air, leg out, Wretch out-

I slammed my foot into his hand with all the strength I could bring to bear, using flight and rotation in the air. In the process, I slammed finger into eye socket, all the way to the base of the finger where it met the hand.

It got him to let go of Bluestocking.

Paris had taken a simultaneous shot, but the shot had missed the eye, catching brow, temple, and the ear, wires mangling flesh.

I acted before he could get his composure together enough to lunge forward and drive the dart of disintegration into Bitter Pill’s back. Wretch-strong, I hit him full in the chest with my arm that didn’t have deep cuts in it. Sternum and ribs shattered in my hand.

He was laid flat, obviously enough. I saw him flounder, trying to sit up, immediately and intensely failing, small sounds escaping his mouth.

In his floundering, he created a dart, larger than any I’d seen him make. I had to wonder if it was reflex, while he was stunned with pain, or if the expression of power was an automatic thing. In addition to the principle of stronger powers in times of appropriate kinds of stress, there was a tendency for powers to unlock additional capabilities if the situation was dire enough. Not second triggers, but adaptations to changes in the host’s core physical or mental state.

The Wretch, I had to assume, was that.

Either way, I stomped on his forearm. There was a chance it was innocent, but I didn’t have any more tolerance for chances.

“Give me one more excuse, and I end you,” I told Paris.

He went limp. His breaths were wheezes.

“You’d better hope this situation you fucked with doesn’t take too long, or-”

A distant cry – a warning from a parent or teammate. I saw the heads of Birdbrain and Crested turn. Crested flicked out a sharp knife, and it became a fan, the fan extending, extending, layer by layer, into one corner of the quarter-circle barrier bit into the station platform, the other corner into the pillar behind Paris.

Thud’s fist slammed hard into the metal, denting it a matter of a foot from where my face was.

The dent didn’t touch me, but the impact did. A punch as heavy as any I’d taken directly, catching me while I wasn’t relying on the Wretch, due to my proximity to Crested and Crested shielding me. I felt pain rock through me, whole-body, every wound I had amplified, and a sharper pain marked my head hitting the ground. I heard Crested fall, his barrier collapsing, saw a glimpse of what might have been the three B’s -Bluestocking, Birdbrain, and Bitter Pill- falling over.

Thud fucking indeed.

My thoughts weren’t lined up exactly right as I tried to pull myself together. I flew back, and an uncharacteristic bout of motion sickness nearly sank me.

But Thud was lifting up a foot, to stomp on me like I’d done to Paris.

I flew up, and even that movement wasn’t without its wobble.

The impact of the stomp rippled out, kicking up just about every loose particle on the station platform, on the ground beyond the platform, and everything around my team, who were still huddled together. They all fell, sprawling.

Thud didn’t bleed, but there was a hole where his eye was supposed to be, and his expression, frozen in ceramic, was twisted around the edges, his face unchanging, the slimy fibers that connected the ceramic-like plates more tense and strained than I’d seen them.

He was distracted, at least for a moment, by Paris’s cry of pain. The stomp had jostled him, and he wasn’t in a state to be jostled.

I had help coming now, and Birdbrain was backing up, gun leveled at Thud.

Her shots weren’t aimed at killing, but at disabling. Three out of the four hit the meaty flesh between ceramic plates.

He didn’t slow down. He lunged forward, and it was a weird lunge, a fast initial movement, yes, but the fast didn’t taper off. He ran over Bluestocking’s group, clotheslining them and possibly breaking a collarbone, shoulder, or two.

I flew at him, kicking. He was keeping an eye out for me, though, and turned, arm moving to strike my leg aside. I tucked it in, knees close to my chest, and avoided him instead.

The way he moved- that was a precise turn for a guy moving a lot of weight. A precise movement of the arm, stopping just where he needed it.

Kinetic extension. Every impact or movement carried… maybe exactly as far as he wanted it. Every hit, kick- they involved shockwaves, either directed or rippling out. It exaggerated how he carried himself.

He chased me, with those abrupt movements that saw him almost sliding into me, a train or truck that needed only acceleration, his ability providing him the means to accelerate through it.

I did what I could to keep him distracted and occupied, and used Paris’s body as a means to limit his movements. He stopped short of trampling Paris, and seemed upset that he had to.

Others were coming to help. Damsel and Swansong, their powers flaring. Chastity followed. Damsel and Swansong didn’t move in coordination, but more out of a kind of competition, each trying to outdo the others, to move further, faster, and more frenetically. They zig-zagged across each other’s paths to cut one another off and somehow they were more scary in this than they’d been as two wolves in a pack on their hunt, as I’d seen briefly, just a little while ago.

My goal was keeping him from trampling the local villains.

“Blue!” I shouted, as I threw myself forward, slamming my elbow into his shoulder, “you’re going to give me some serious slack on that deal we’re striking!”

“We were in danger because we agreed!” Bluestocking shouted back. “Part of the deal!”

Thud backhanded me and the Wretch hard enough to send us rocketing at a downward angle. Flight kept me from hitting the ground, as I steered up in time, but it didn’t keep me from colliding with the wall.

I could have charged in, but the reinforcements were here.

Damsel went high, Swansong went low, her peg-leg skidding on the concrete as her blast carried her forward. She reached ahead, and Thud slid backward. To where Damsel was, and to where Chastity was just now running up to the base of the stairs.

He clapped, the sound sharp, harder and sharper because of the composition of his hands. His power carried the shockwave out, impacting me, the Ashleys, Chastity, Bluestocking’s group, and just about everyone that was defending the settlement, from my team to the sketchy local citizens that had taken up arms. We all doubled over, wincing.

While people reeled, he stomped his way toward Chastity, his stomps rattling the area.

Swansong lunged, Damsel using her power in the same moment. The lunge wasn’t as effective as it could be, as her peg foot skidded on the material of the portal station platform, but she compensated for it by moving her hands down, sending herself higher up. There was a moment where she was airborne but not using her blast, high enough up that she stood to hurt herself on landing.

I went low, taking the cue I’d observed earlier. Wretch strength and bulk let me crash into his legs and actually move them.

Crested did what he could, which was absolutely the wrong thing, because Crested created a shield to limit Thud’s movements. Knife became a convex barrier, and Thud hit the barrier.

The shockwave, in turn, hit all of us.

Etna and Crested had to have gone to fuckup academy for villains.

Letting them out of the prison cell had to be the biggest mistake I’d made.

“Hey!” Damsel barked, voice pitched to be heard. “Big guy!”

He turned to look at her. Her blast had been to carry her along the concrete pad that the fancier station building rested on, and her destination had been Paris. Now she held pointed fingers to Paris’s throat.

Thud paused. It looked for a moment like he intended to fight on, pressing forward even though we had a hostage. Then he relaxed.

Another shot struck his intact eye. This one didn’t catch the eye socket and send metal wire out into the other external bits. It simply sank in, then detonated.

He screamed, his mouth remaining frozen where it was, while the slick yellow-green muscle fibers across his neck and shoulders parted, the gaps vibrating with the passage of the sound from within him.

I’d taken one eye, was that somehow license to the Harbinger to take another? What had Citrine sent to me? Worse, what did it say that she was okay employing little monsters like this? Did she use them in this kind of capacity?

Thud didn’t stop, and he swung and stomped madly now, cracking the concrete and spreading the effect. He heard distant voices and lunged toward them with the same movement trick, only to stumble where the platform ended.

Chastity ran toward him, and he seemed to hear the footsteps. He turned on her.

I flew to the side. “Thud, Paris!”

I wasn’t sure why I shouted the names, but I wanted his attention, and I felt like people reacted to their names and the names of people they were fond of to any degree.

He did turn. He swung a fist out, pure rage and recklessness, but Chastity ducked the part of it that would have clipped her. She sprung up, stepping onto his knee, and leaped up to a height where she could hit his face.

A backhand slap knocked him out cold. Chastity stumbled with the awkward step down as his bulk toppled forward, pressing against her.

“Losing your edge, sister,” Damsel said, smug.

“Stop,” I told her. “No.”

Swansong gave me a long look, but she didn’t say anything, her lips shut, the hood of my costume hugging her head with the general damp that had set in, no doubt from Byron’s activities. I lent her a shoulder to help her limp forward.

The fires had spread as a result of the shower of sparks from MYOSHA’s power. The fires, in turn, illuminated the rise of Cretan’s maze. Buildings folded and twisted, ground rose and fell, and the effect rose up skyscraper high around where Cretan no doubt was, with other areas catching up.

“You want that favor?” I asked Bluestocking, my hand at my ear, “Now’s the time to earn it.”

She gave me a very unimpressed look, but she did give Bitter Pill a push on the shoulder. Bitter Pill put one pill into a pocket, then lifted a piece of plastic to her mouth, a candy dispenser shaped like a woman wreathed in skin, tubes running from the folds to her nose and mouth. The head was levered back, depositing a liquid jet into Bitter Pill’s mouth.

Crested started forward. I wanted to say ‘not you’, but he’d really only had one strike so far, and it had been well-intentioned.

“I’ll rally the others who are too chickenshit to jump in on their own,” Bluestocking said. “Send wounded to me. I’m certified.”

“As a?”

“Everything.”

I nodded. I was leery of parahuman healers, but this sounded more along the lines of conventional medicine, given a helping hand.

“He’s threatening to lock us all in,” Bluestocking said. “He had one of his hirelings reach out to me as a creepy whispergram. Don’t fuck this up.”

Swansong raised her eyebrows at me, but she didn’t say a word.

I turned to walk away without a response. Swansong leaned heavily into me, limping. We passed Chastity, who looked a little shell shocked, and a lot intimidated by the maze that was unfolding.

The other kids had been hurt in a maze like that, if I remembered right. Chastity’s sisters and ‘cousins’.

“You good?” I asked her, pretty sure I knew what the answer might be.

“Hanging back,” Chastity said. “Bruised my hip there, leg’s wobbly, and I don’t think I can run.”

Swansong made an amused sound. I pointed a finger at her, stern.

“Okay,” I said. “Keep an eye on things here?”

She nodded, smiling slightly.

It wasn’t the best excuse in the world, but Chastity had done her part, and if she kept from being hurt, then Thud would stay down.

She observed while Bluestocking went to Paris’s side, absently rubbing at her hip.

Okay.

“Careful with your power,” Swansong said, as we reached the edge of the effect. She was talking to Damsel, by the angle of her head. “Capricorn said things are tricky here.”

“You be careful. I have control,” Damsel said.

Oh geez.

We split up, taking different paths, with Damsel going high, over a building that was looking a little crooked. Swansong stuck with me.

The soldiers were filtering into the maze, and I could see some by the weird geometry of the space, flashlights mounted on guns, masks and gas masks on.

Uneven ground, an enclosed space, and men with guns spreading out through the area.

They were doing it with an ease and focus that made me really concerned that they had done drills or practiced this.

And one of those squads was Cretan’s, who would be that much better at this.

Cradle’s mech crashed through a building, maze and all. Cradle wasn’t on it. It reached forward, and the distortion made the arm and fingers bend at right angles. They dug into grass and dirt, forcing Sveta to scramble out of the way.

“What did you do to me!?”

I heard Rain’s response, but I didn’t make out the words.

The voice shook me, because I was pretty sure I knew who it was. Cradle. Confronting Rain.

I expected the Undersiders and Breakthrough to be scattered. It wasn’t the case. Cradle had done what I liked to do in certain situations, when I was fighting something or someone bigger. Throwing myself into the midst of it all and using my enemy’s disorganization and shock against them. A lot of powers and weapons couldn’t be used in that situation if someone cared about hurting their allies.

The place was a clearing, a square of grass with buildings folded in to form walls, four narrow corridors leading out of the place, and those corridors were lit with explosions and the light from flashlights. They were boxed in, high walls surrounding them.

Cradle was a matter of feet from Rain, whip-chain out and spinning in a circle, crackling with red electricity. With soldiers approaching from multiple sides, a lot of the people who could have done something were stuck keeping the soldiers at bay. My dad, my mom, Capricorn, the dogs, and Foil. To do otherwise was to be surrounded on three or four sides and gunned down. Like this, at least, the soldiers and the associated capes were left hiding behind cover.

The percussive explosions from the constant grenades was my dad’s act in this, keeping one ‘corridor’ between buildings inaccessible, pinning down the squadron on the far side of it. It looked like Mukade’s people. The initial movements of the centipedes was being shaken, thrown off, and interrupted.

My mom had her weapons out in bright yellow fans. The fans narrowed into blades when she needed something that would crackle and burn, and expanded out into fan shapes when she wanted something more diffuse.

A sweep of a fan burned one soldier my mom was fighting, making him drop his assault rifle. She kicked it backward, in the direction of the Harbingers.

Cradle’s glowing line appeared in the path. The weapon slid right into it, and was cut in two.

Whatever calculations the Harbingers were using, Cradle wasn’t sitting still long enough for them to apply. He moved here and there, at one moment approaching Rain with arm held high, chain circling overhead, ready to strike down, the other hand pointed at Rain-

“Everything I am! I was well and I’ve tried to be better, even after all this. After you.”

“I’ve heard all this before, Cradle. Every fucking night,” Rain said.

Cradle disappeared, appearing behind Rain. Rain spun around, swinging with a blade of silver, as the chain whipped toward his head. A dodge. A Harbinger changed course, to lunge right for Cradle, only to stop when an ‘x’ of glowing lines appeared between them. No more slingshot bullets, possibly. It wasn’t the only fence, either. There were enough that one good stomp from Thud, were he still standing, would bowl people over and make them fall into the lines. Not all were easy to see.

I took flight, aiming to go over, and saw Cradle move in the same instant he turned his head my way. I made myself stop, twisting, as the lines appeared.

Sudden appearance, each one sharper than any blade, and capable of cutting through powered defenses.

“I can see you, Rain,” Cradle intoned. He moved twice in quick succession, and a gunshot from one of the Harbingers echoed through the area, the bullet ricocheting and hitting a wall.

Maybe a spot he’d figured Cradle would appear at.

The Harbinger moved to reload, and a line appeared as he moved the weapon. He only grazed it, checked the weapon, then threw it aside, like it was no use.

I kept flying, slow so I wouldn’t run into anything terminal, forcing Cradle to devote some attention to me.

My dad paused in his constant bombardment of the alley to hurl one in Cradle’s direction. Again, Cradle moved. Almost too slow. He was too distracted.

And the maneuver cost my dad. Mukade’s centipedes encircled the corridor, coiling in a quadruple-helix around the alley, braced against the sides so no grenade could redirect or disturb them.

Swansong used her power, vaulting over the scene.

More lines appeared in her path. She used her blast to hurl herself to one side, for a rough landing.

There’s a certain distance these things have to be from us. But they’re still more dangerous than any weapon on this battlefield.

Swansong hurried to my dad’s side, her blasts aimed at the centipede. The blast made her slip.

“Brace her!” I ordered my dad. I was dealing with my own mess. The lines were being concentrated on me, hemming me in, and trying to put me into a position where I couldn’t move without touching one. I saw a route and took a risk, hands going over my head as I dove down, my body as narrow as possible, slipping through a gap. I landed somewhat violently, and the cut in my leg seized up with pain.

Already, more lines barred my way.

My dad to the north, my mom to the west, Rachel and Cassie to the east, and Foil to the south. Foil had a gun, and it didn’t look like the one I’d handed her, but she looked like she was struggling, and it was hard to pin down why. Injury? Stress? Capricorn was closest to my mom and Rain, drawing out a diagram. He ducked and pushed my mom as Cradle appeared, swiping.

My mom turned into an orb, then turned back, getting her feet back under her. A flicker, not unlike Cradle’s, but one that left her in the same spot.

“Now!” my mom called out, moving to the side, her back to the wall just by the corner, her weapons extended out in front of her.

Byron’s water forced the soldiers who’d been encroaching in back. The slope was downhill, and the water effective. They’d paired up for that position for a reason.

Cradle’s voice was haunting, become it carried, and it came from different places even midway through a word. “I can see you so clearly. You think you’re better.”

“I don’t, but-”

“You do. I see it. All of the weak points. The flaws, the stains. You actually think you’re better.”

“I don’t, but I know I’m still fucking better than you!” Rain roared. He struck out with the silver blade, too short a weapon compared to Cradle’s lengthy whip.

Cradle appeared close, whipping out. Rain’s reaction was too slow.

An eruption of Byron’s power and a splash of water extended his way. Cradle shifted to one side, the whip still moving, and then shifted just in time as the water became stone. A loose spike of stone that stabbed up from a point just to Rain’s left.

Tristan collapsed, swayed, and then sagged. There was no revision back.

Byron had seen it as an emergency.

“The difference between us is that I overcame what I am. Then association with you knocked me all the way down, and made it impossible to be better again. You… you didn’t overcome what you were until we made you. Until we influenced you.”

“No. That’s not true,” Rain said, holding up the silver blade. He turned rapidly, taking a second or two to find Cradle each time Cradle shifted position. Lines, angled low and close to the ground, no more than ankle height, surrounded Rain’s feet, forcing each movement to be a quick shuffle. “Love Lost gave me her tokens. I know how the bleed works.”

“She managed it,” Cradle said, voice soft amid constant grenade explosions, the shouts of soldiers, and the snarling of dogs.

“What the hell did you try to give me, and what the hell are you?”

“I’ll show you what I’m giving you,” Cradle intoned.

The mech came bounding down from a high place, whips slicing down. Cradle moved to be atop it as it came down, then moved to higher ground.

I flew to Rain, skimming past a line that appeared in my way. I caught his hand, pulled rather than lift or push. The hand-mech was two fists and two more hands as back legs, the fists coming down where Rain had been.

That wasn’t where it stopped. It had no reason to pause or hesitate, and it acted on its own, a hand lunging toward my mom. My mom who had no Capricorn, and who was too busy with the soldiers in the alley between two buildings to even turn around or go ball-form.

I let Rain fall, and I put myself in the hand’s way, Wretch active, pushing back as it pushed.

A mess of limbs against a mess of limbs.

My mom started forward, to assist, or to cut at joints.

“No!” I ordered. “Get-”

I felt the sick impact, and I couldn’t even stop to react to it, because there wasn’t a moment to spare, nor an inch of ground to be given.

Heavens – 12.9

I wrestled with a hand that was the size of a car, that had more leverage than I did. It had a partner hand, planted on the ground to my left, and two smaller ‘back’ hands, like a dog had back legs, one gripping the side of a building, the other digging fingers into dirt. Any number of fingers had invisible cables attached- I’d seen two before they stopped moving. Cables that could slice right through me, given a chance or a reckless movement on my part. I knew exactly where the Wretch was, where each hand and foot was placed, at one giant fingertip, at the ‘webbing’ of cables that stretched in a bow between two fingers, at a finger to my side, and in the ground.

But a hand was a series of moving parts, and I had to account for all of them. With the way the machine was positioned, three hands planted on the ground and one for me to deal with, it was trying to lift me up and push me back at the same time, or to get in position where it could squish me beneath, given a chance. I could deal with three fingers, but as the pinky finger came at me from the side, I didn’t have the bracing ready to catch it or stop it from punching through the Wretch.

I cast away the Wretch, twisted in the air to avoid the fingers that came down, and let the hand move around me before bringing the Wretch out again. The action took a second, I ran on instinct for the entirety of it, and the entire dynamic with my ‘opponent’ changed. I was between middle and ring fingers, close to the webbing, the Wretch gripping the two fingers in multiple places, clawing at the cabling between fingers now.

Less leverage, less room and time to maneuver next time, but less worry about invisible cables or fingers coming at me from the side. So long as I kept my eye on the thumb. It didn’t have a good angle to get at me, but a bad angle wasn’t no angle, and robot hands could bend in ways regular hands couldn’t.

The space was dark. It had been dark before it was folded up into a maze that creeped up around us on all sides. Lights flashed on and off in my peripheral vision, taking weird shapes, and I knew they were the movements of the flashlights, cast at ground, at walls, then both, then neither. Many of those flashlights were mounted on guns, and all of those guns were intended for us.

They weren’t even the most ominous lights in my field of vision. Slashes of light like illumination shining through cracks in the door decorated the hundred-foot-by-hundred foot space around us. Each could apparently cut through forcefield, through-

-through breaker bubbles. Like Brandish’s.

I set my jaw, refusing to look. Because I wasn’t in a position to help, and because it would distract. Not that it mattered, because as much as I was trying, as much as I recognized the immediate peril and that the others in the group were striving to cover the entryways, I couldn’t take my mind off of the fact that Brandish hadn’t moved. My dad’s voice, like a muffled echo from the surface while I was underwater, was insistent and loud.

They weren’t words meant for me, which meant I could safely ignore them, refuse to listen to them, and focus on the pounding of my pulse.

I could try.

“-bubble!”

I winced.

The hand lurched, shifting as the fingers of the hand furthest from me dragged through dirt, and found some kind of traction, like a vein of rock covered by soil. It was like a new form of strength, something I had to fight against, maintaining the Wretch, reaching out to find the fold, one area where a section of torso rose out of a broader mass, the area the hospital workers had had to work extra hard to keep clean. I could protest and claim my forcefield kept the dust off, but that did nothing for accumulated sweat and the bacteria that multiplied in the sweat.

The washings and the ‘lean forward so we can get in there’ instructions had left me with an enduring awareness of the feature that would stay with me for the rest of my life. For my purposes here, it was the part of the Wretch that extended furthest in.

Where I moved, the Wretch floated around me, equidistant. But it wouldn’t block me. There was a point I could reach out and feel it, with a sense that wasn’t my awareness of my powers, but it wasn’t a barrier. More like a handle.

When I moved it, the Wretch moved around me. The hand tilted a fraction. Away from the body. Closer to the passage.

But with all of its leverage, it was stronger. It fought back, inch by inch. With every inch and every second, I had to be aware that a stray bullet or sudden shock could knock out my forcefield, and I’d need to move to avoid having my head crushed or struck from my shoulders.

Around me, more of the glowing lines began to appear. I turned in place, one hand on the crevice-handle in the forcefield, surveying my immediate situation. Four lines, arranged in a horizontal square, parallel to the ground. They were spaced a good distance apart- I could move a good foot or two before the Wretch made contact with them. A few more feet and it would be me, not my forcefield, that made the contact. But they were what they were.

A collar. Four massive guillotine blades, level with my neck, staying where they were and waiting for my neck to meet them.

Though this had been an open space before, it was easiest to think of it as a house now, doors or windows on each of the four sides. I had the mech at one side, Foil was to my right with the Harbingers, my dad and Swansong to my left, and the dogs across from me. Tristan lay in the middle, unconscious, while Rain was stuck navigating the lines that were intent on trapping him.

“Brandish, use your breaker form!” My dad’s voice.

I had no tears in my eyes, no moisture on my cheeks. My throat was tight, the breaths coming in tense, and every muscle was tight, to the point that it felt like it was choking the tear ducts and constricting the blood flow.

“Carol!”

On a ledge above, Cradle looked down, staring with the lenses on his mask glowing. I could see him, and I saw his head turn. He was tracking something I couldn’t see.

All at once, the Harbingers and Foil broke away. If Cradle had wanted to do something elsewhere, the movement of the three forced him to devote attention here.

One Harbinger ran for it, out the door, toward the soldiers. The other joined Foil, coming my way. They dodged the lines that appeared in their way, though Foil cut it close enough that it clipped her costume, cutting the decorative material where it jutted out.

She threw herself to the ground, back hitting earth, her gun raised high.

Cradle began moving around, making himself a hard target, before settling on a position that let him see most of the field while being clear of Foil’s field of vision. The lines began appearing again. Like the glowing blades of swords stuck into the earth.

The Harbinger used the distraction, leaping onto one of the back hands. The surface looked too sheer, but he found handholds and footholds, the edge of a foot or a finger finding a groove in the metal that I might have thought was a trick of the eyes.

He had a knife that looked like it was made of glass, and used it to slice the head off of a bolt or a screw. Three strikes in two seconds.

“Carol, change!”

“What can we do?” Foil asked. She shot again. The sound was loud, and I could see many people in this antechamber of Cretan’s maze react to the sharp noise.

“Can’t- it’s up to her. She’s moving, if she can just- I don’t think she wants to. Fuck!”

“Why not?”

My dad didn’t answer. I knew. Even after all this time, Brandish hated being in the form. It left her blind and deaf, sensing and tracking the world around her with another kind of awareness. In the ball, she was confined in the dark. And she hated the dark.

She had endured for the sake of the job, and she’d come out of it bitter and hostile enough to drop a barb.

There were too many stories, and recent mention of the Breaker in the hospital that hadn’t been able to leave her form wasn’t the only one of its kind. Changers, Breakers, and tinkers who emulated those things always had the ‘what if I can’t go back’ problem in the backs of their minds. Tristan was an all-too-recent reminder of how easy it would be to walk that line, and pick the exact wrong moment to use a power.

I leveraged the Wretch, doing what I could to shift the hand, so it wouldn’t fall or strike down near where Brandish lay.

They’d been able to abandon the ‘door’ because reinforcements had come. Bitter Pill was the first to make her way in, twice as tall as she had been but not twice as thick around, with limbs that flexed like they had rubber and not bone inside. Her mouth yawned open, froth flowing from the corner lowest to the ground, and her tongue lolled out, extended in length. She had a soldier in each hand, and she flexed her entire body to heave one up, then slam him into the nearest corner. The other she shoved face-first into the frozen dirt, with enough strength to leave a furrow behind.

As intimidating as the warped silhouette was, the sounds were mewling, soft moans, with some vibration behind them, as if from the lowest point of the throat.

“Careful!” I shouted. “Glowing lines kill!”

Being big as she was, her body wasn’t good at moving through Cradle’s mess of lines. She made it about halfway before she stumbled into one and lost her leg and part of her pelvis. She crashed to the ground and in the process lost a bit of her scalp.

Birdbrain, Moose, and two more of the local capes stopped in their tracks as they saw her fall.

A long arm that bent under the weight of its extremity found its way to the lab coat she wore, which barely extended below her ribcage with her altered form. Another medication dispenser. This one topped with what looked like a tumor with a mask shaped like a baby’s face on the front.

The head flipped back, and her stretched-out mouth was already wide open for another squirt from the pizz dispenser.

Moose was more careful. He tried backhanding one of the lines, stopping short of hitting it, and let the shockwave run past it. I could see where the shockwave that followed the movement disturbed the earth. It took a ‘v’ shape, as even that was parted.

I felt the Mech I was wrestling shift in reaction to the vibration. Whatever the Harbinger was doing didn’t seem like enough.

I almost looked at Brandish as that happened, checking if she had been hurt worse by even the fact that there was movement in the air, jostling, and changing in position.

He was tall, too, and unlike Bitter Pill, he had the ‘powers gave me this physique’ build.

“Who needs help!?” Moose shouted.

“Carol- the woman-”

“Precipice,” I interrupted my dad. “Get to Precipice, Moose, help him get free of the cage. You!”

I indicated someone else from the group. A cape I didn’t recognize, who had an unkempt beard that extended below the line of his mask. He had a mean look to him, by design, by color, the way the metal armor he wore strapped in over coat and costume bottoms was as scuffed and battle-scarred as it was. But his eyes were wide and alarmed behind the mask.

“Get to her. Try and get her to change, but carry her back to Bluestocking somehow. Hug the wall, the guy making cutting lines is above!”

He looked relieved to have a job.

“I can do above,” Birdbrain said. “Give me a second, need to adjust.”

Foil, back still to the ground, gun in front of her, let go of her weapon to indicate a direction. Birdbrain nodded.

We had our reinforcements. I could hear Damsel using her blasts nearby, and wished she was here.

Moose drew nearer. I saw the lines around me disappear, the guillotine fizzling out, and realized what was imminent. A sudden lunge, the mech twisting, leaning hard on me to simultaneously push me down and use me as a bracing point to go for Moose, backhanding him.

I was ready for it. I dropped everything, losing the Wretch, the forcefield, and letting the Mech fall instead of lean on me. The backhand lost its leverage, and Moose was able to bring his hands around and put his hands out in anticipation of the attack. The sides of the gauntlets, not the palms or fists.

The mech struck him, and Moose was sent stumbling backward but not so far back that he collided with the fence of glowing lines. The points where the hands met his gauntlets, however, bent inward, metal fingers bending and crumpling.

Moose shifted his hand from ‘chop’ to a fist, not punching, but simply pointing. The crumpled parts became craters. He pushed, to follow-up, and the shockwave that followed saw the mech toppling. I hurried to do my best to guide its fall.

The axis where four arms extended out hit the ground. The landing was hard enough to jostle everyone and everything nearby. Rain, trapped with no less than six of the glowing lines criss-crossing in a loose circle around him, nearly stumbled into one of them.

“He’ll try to fuck with you, Precipice is who he really wants!” I told Moose. “Careful of more lines!”

“Fuck,” was the response.

But he didn’t stop, as he recovered and ran, now crouching, in Rain’s direction.

Meanwhile, I had to deal with the fact that the mech no longer needed arms or hands on the ground to brace itself. With two big arms and two small ones, the center-mass was off. Something I’d always had to pay attention to when learning how to throw or move big things with my power.

An image flashed into my mind, of Uncle Neil giving me field instruction, while parents stood by, arms folded.

It hurt. The regret, the full and total knowledge that I hadn’t told her about my forcefield and she’d gotten hurt because of it. I didn’t want to call it the Wretch in this context, because that felt like it was deflecting blame to the reckless and wild consciousness at the other end of my power.

The advantage was that it wasn’t very mobile. Instead of four arms pointed down and the point they met up, it was the other way around. Four lengths of arm, ‘shoulder’ to elbow, all resting on the ground as a cross, each with a massive mechanical forearm and hand rising up from the terminus or draping out from the end. In the center, protected by those hands, I could see the ‘bowl’ of stasis-frozen body parts. We needed those.

I saw Swansong look over her shoulder and gave her a tight shake of the head. Because the terrain was muddy and she was missing a foot, and because the mech had hostages at the same time she had a chaotic and reckless power.

It could drag itself, and it looked to be trying, but it was just an obstacle, with a lot of reach and, should it move in just the right way, the possibility of slamming into Brandish.

I threw myself at one elbow, pushing the entire mass just a few feet across slick, muddy ground, still wet from Byron’s power. The hand came down, and I flew back and away, spinning once in the air to try and ensure I wasn’t flying into anything lethal.

The spin made my head swim, and between the sick feeling in my upper chest, the tension in my facial features, the dizziness that swept over my every sense, and the fact that the arms and legs I was relying on were entirely power-derived, I felt like I was just a head, neck, and some shoulder.

I hit it again, to try to wedge it into the corridor that Brandish and Capricorn had been guarding, and nudge it further from Brandish.

The thing was trying to stand, and I did what I could to keep it from getting there. Moose leaped onto it, knocking an arm flat to the ground, while making the rest of it buck up.

I hit it again, harder, to knock it flat again. Metal bent and broke.

“Heads up!” Rain barked.

There were arms nested in one of the primary ones. I’d seen how they did it, a more slender arm fitting into hollows in the forearm, palm, and fingers. As they pulled free, I saw the glint and crackle of the invisible cables. The hollow spaces in the underside of each arm and hand were covered up by shutters.

“Moose, Harbinger, get back!” I called out the order.

The whips came crashing down. Five deep slices into earth as the left hand swept down. Five more when the right hand swiped horizontally, raking a nearby wall that had been raised up from the ground as part of the ‘maze’.

The hands rose and reoriented, the entire machine trying to get to a position like its original one, with four arm-shaped ‘legs’ firmly on the ground in a quadruped position, but this time with the two narrower, nimbler arms extended up and above from the midpoint, each with five cables draping from them, those cables swiftly becoming invisible.

Foil and the Harbinger took point. As the arms whipped out again, Harbinger shot. The invisible cable’s course was altered, and it clipped the ‘elbow’ of one of the arms.

I couldn’t fly full speed, so I rose steadily, up and away from the scene. Moose was helping Rain, lifting him up and out of the cage. Foil and Birdbrain were taking up different points around the clearing, to have a better chance of hitting Cradle if he turned up.

I could hear the gunfire and see how frenetic the flashlights were moving in places. More reinforcements. There were less people pressing in against Rachel and the dogs, now.

I could see the cape I’d tasked with evacuating Brandish. I could see the glow of the orb.

Rain got free and sprinted toward the mech. He made his silver blades, then sliced at one finger.

It broke, the weight of it serving as the catalyst to bring about the break. Rain was already swiping at another- until his sword fizzled out.

“Fucking come on!” he swore. “Come on, come on!”

The blade appeared again. A delay between uses, apparently. Rain cut at the hand itself.

“Back out, Rain!” I shouted.

I saw him hesitate, moving like he was going to jump back into the fray.

“You’re not thinking straight!”

He seemed to get that. He turned to run.

Hands moved, cables slicing audibly through the air, right for him.

Moose grabbed his hand and hauled him out of the last foot of the cable’s reach.

The Mech tried to stand, but with one finger and part of the hand broken, its attempt to ‘walk’ itself forward failed, and it toppled.

The fact that it was slower made it easier to keep a distance. The reinforcements we were getting were making it so we weren’t surrounded by soldiers while holding our ground in a ‘house’, to use my allegory for the nature of the clearing. The soldiers were under attack on their own, and we had a chance to breathe. To shore up.

There was an issue with fighting an uphill battle, and we had been, before the reinforcements. I wasn’t sure if we still weren’t, just given the situation that surrounded us. It was a long, hard slog to get uphill, but if there was someone standing at the other end of that uphill climb, they were benefiting from being there. Not fighting meant one could rest, could heal, and could come up with contingencies, while watching the other guy struggle. When we’d had the advantage over the villains of Hollow Point, before Advance Guard had tipped our hand for us, we’d had that option.

It was why, so very often, things could trend downhill. The wrong people got the advantage and every time that hard progress was made, they were ready with a failsafe, another plan, a way to knock the good guys down. When the good guys managed that equilibrium, it was society functioning reasonably well.

It didn’t help that the people who were willing to capitalize on the weak were villains, so even when victory was achieved against the criminals and monsters, there were often others of their ilk ready to pick up where they left off, while everyone else was picking up the pieces.

The others had the situation partially handled. I wanted to be above it, away from it. To get a vantage point wide enough that I could make out the players and see what the next move was.

To get ahead of Cradle and what he had planned.

The Harbinger who hadn’t gone to fight the soldiers elsewhere in the maze was dodging the cables, targeting the mech. It was a systematic dismantlement, where one stab or a series of smaller ones caused cracks to run along one length of arm, or made steam start billowing out of an elbow. I suspected he was very much enjoying himself, but it wasn’t fast. I had to assume that as good as he was at movement, at thinking his way around a fight, he didn’t get tinker things like a tinker did.

Sveta was at the rooftops, and as I rose up, she rose up alongside me, keeping a healthy distance.

By the look on her face, she’d seen. She didn’t meet my eyes.

I didn’t get the feeling of judgment or condemnation. But if there were words to say, I was pretty sure she couldn’t bring herself to say them. To absolve me of blame for what I’d done to Brandish required that she do the same for herself, for the accidental deaths she caused. I knew from what she’d said in the past that she always wondered about and regretted the preventative actions she hadn’t taken.

“They’re going to change it up,” I said. My voice sounded funny. Easier to be a leader, authoritative, communicating what was needed. In this medium, away from the thick of it, trying to catch a breath, I sounded so shaky.

“How?” Sveta asked. She met my gaze with the question.

“Sneak attack, or going for something they know we want. If he threatens his hostages- one of the vital organs of someone, that’s one thing. The portal is another thing where he has the advantage. Or he could just find one of us in a moment of weakness and catch us by surprise with that whip of his.”

“He has to get to his machine to do anything with it.”

“And to pilot it,” I observed. “It was faster and cleverer when he was close enough to watch it and track what it was doing. I don’t think it has the best A.I. on its own.”

“It’s scary,” Sveta said.

“Yeah,” I said. “But Cradle’s scarier. Keep an eye out.”

It was difficult to keep an eye on every rooftop, corner, crevice, and maze wall, in this space that had folded up, had parts rise up, and otherwise turned itself around enough that it was all a mess. Not every point seemed to connect exactly to each other point, and an awful lot seemed to turn back in on itself.

The guy with Brandish was having trouble getting out. He found himself back in the same place again, and to his credit, he looked upset about it. He cared about helping or doing his part for this community here.

Because the maze was shifting.

The effect was slow, but it was picking up speed. The guy was taking routes that had knocked-out or dead soldiers or signs of passage, only to find they were dead ends.

“The maze is shifting!” I hollered down.

Tremulous emotion caught me post-holler, like I’d jostled something free.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I swore. “What are you doing, Cradle?”

Tunnels and corridors weren’t serving to give the soldiers an angle for a surprise attack, so tunnels and corridors fell away. I saw a squadron running in the general direction of the others.

I flew into the upper edge of a maze wall, and I slammed into it.

There were soldiers who were far enough ahead that when they heard the action they could run or push their way forward. There were others at the tail end of the group who could back off.

More in the center, who bent over or tried to shield themselves. Stones and chunks of earth fell on them from above.

I might well have killed one or more of them, doing that. It might not be the first deathblow I’d delivered tonight.

I had to focus. The only way forward was forward. I couldn’t atone for one mistake by perpetrating another and letting other people die.

The maze was shifting to create an arena, and an aperture was opening in the side of a building. A gate, unfolding as a small crack became a hole and the hole became an archway. As it opened, so did the scale of the blades that flew out of the aperture, tiny and counting in the hundreds. Cretan followed it, charging with shield up and helmet down.

Moose started forward, picking up a piece of corrugated metal with the clear intent of shielding some of the others, but it was a coordinated attack. A short wall tripped Moose. Cretan collided with him while he was off balance. While he was on the ground, walls began to rise up around him. My dad blew up two of those walls, only to start receiving the brunt of the flying blades, which were so numerous they carpeted the floor of the clearing.

The blades were like razors, embedding an inch or so into flesh or ground, or opening up cuts, while Cretan was the hammer, to remove or exclude heavier and more dangerous targets.

My dad shouted something to Moose, threw a grenade. Moose caught it, then flicked it toward the open archway. It detonated within.

It only bought a few seconds.

I needed to be down there. Except I didn’t trust myself.

Lionwing and Cretan were two of Cradle’s inner guard. That they were stepping into the fray meant we were whittling him down. As Ashley had noted, Cradle was one to lead from the rear, and as I’d noted, he probably liked to monitor and pilot his mech, and maybe to use his emotion power.

I flew down. Through the rooftop of the building the aperture had opened in. The space had been a one-floor house, but raised up by the maze to be three or four stories tall. Instead of slamming through multiple floors in quick succession, I found myself in a void, fifty feet to travel down to the ground, only a maze-created fold of wall to knock down on my way.

He was ready for me, and he saw me. The whip flared red in the near-total darkness, illuminated only by secondhand light thrown in through the window.

I didn’t hesitate, trying to visualize the route I needed to take, and the form that swing would have.

Rather than swing, he disappeared, skipping his way into the clearing.

I hit the earth, found and picked up a stone, and stood up again. Lionwing was at the entry to the arch, drawing the blades back to her now, to form a shield at one arm.

I couldn’t fight Lionwing, but I didn’t want her to know that. That stream of blades would tear past my forcefield.

At the rear of the other group, the mech moved, reaching, and it was Sveta who reached down to grab outstretched fingers. Every single one of her tendrils found a home, either on an anchor point or on the mech itself. It strained, to the point I thought she might snap, or that tendrils might pull free.

I flew straight for Lionwing, then pulled away at the last second, using my aura. A test.

It provoked a response, the shield extending from a rough triangular shape to a spike. Another spike composed of interlocked blades stabbed out from under the shield. If both of those had hit me, far enough apart…

She knew how my power worked?

My eyes narrowed.

“Fuckers,” I said.

“Do you know how his emotion power works?” Lionwing asked.

“We got the gist of it,” I said. “But I bet you’re going to try to be clever. You seem like the type.”

“The type?”

I was aware that every second that passed was a second my team was fighting Cradle, the mech, and Cretan, while Cretan used his power to divide and conquer them.

At least if I tied her up I could keep her from using most of those blades on my team. It looked like she had a set quantity she could manage at a whim. Shields, blades, flying hail, even flight, from what I’d heard reported.

“Your first move in a fight is a surprise attack, pulling an ace from your sleeve. You have the hair-” I gestured at her mane of hair. “-that you obviously put time into. Nice costume. But you work for an irredeemable scumbag and do irredeemable things. Doesn’t connect. Like it’s all surface level.”

Blades flew in to slide into studs in her costume. For a second, she was buoyed up. Had I missed my chance to get an answer, in my hurry to push her?

She stabbed out, and the configuration of the sword shifted to make it more spear-like as she thrusted, the blades sliding against the palm of her gauntlet. She hit the edge of the Wretch, and the blade detonated, a shrapnel of blades cast out in every direction in front.

I’d avoided it, because she’d already established her pattern with intent. One-two hits, every time.

“Now you’re second guessing yourself,” I said. “Whether what you were going to say sounded good, the intimidation factor.”

“No second guesses,” she said.

I forced a small smile to my face, and offered her an equally small laugh, inaudible but visible.

“Ol’ Snag wants to give people things that mean something, and he gets a power that lets him fill objects with emotion, builds gear to shoot people with it. Makes sense, don’t it?” Lionwing asked. “The bitch inflicts herself on everyone around her, and doesn’t realize she’s doing it even after she brings the teenage girl into her mess.”

“Colt. Yeah,” I said. I turned sideways, to be more aware of the blades that had peppered surfaces behind me. They were starting to move again. “Admittedly on point so far.”

I’d had the distinct impression that if I’d simply said ‘no’ to the question about what Cradle’s power was, I’d get a tease. I wanted to bait her out, so I’d said ‘yes’, and now I tried to tack her pride to the matter.

It helped that she didn’t seem to care that much, and that my read on her wasn’t wrong- she liked appearances, flash, and style.

“The boy is a bad weather pattern, a cloud of misery and utter patheticness that hangs over anyone he looks at.”

I remained silent, let the silence hang.

If I gave her anything, including telling her she was wrong, which she kind of was, I was pretty sure she’d tease me and leave me without answers.

“The boss? The guy who’s out there, cutting people to pieces, targeting the tired and the distracted? He’s too self centered to give. You learn to work around that. It’s all take. Himself.”

“I have something of his I’d like to give him. Knock out his teeth and make him swallow them.”

“You stupid bitch,” Lionwing said. “He can draw it in. Read your weaknesses in chemical code, running through your head and your veins. He earned money blackmailing people by targeting them. He got more ground with people by sensing how far he could push them before they gave. And all of that was before. When he woke up tonight, he was strong. What he’s been doing? He’s been gathering what he needs.”

Reading us? Hanging back and drinking it all in?

“Now,” Lionwing said, “He’s using it.”

Soldiers to keep us busy, maybe to force us into situations where our emotional landscapes were closer to the surface.

I knew mine was.

I snarled as I took flight, Wretch out, and hit the ground to kick up dirt, sending it her way. I had to assume she needed to see to use those blades.

She created a cloud of them around herself, reached to her side, and drew a gun.

I hit the fold of maze above, where Cretan’s power had stretched out the building facing the station, and let the rubble fall. I reversed course, flipping upside down -feeling a bit dizzy from my earlier impact- and reversed course, hitting the ledge fist-first.

To bring rubble down on Lionwing. The cloud of blades became a solid bubble, a shield.

I broke another bit of rubble away, and used a burst of Wretch strength to hurl it, aiming not for her, but for where the bubble met ground. Things were less interlocked there, and the chunk of concrete half-crumbled, half-bounced through.

It was an opportunity, where she couldn’t see me clearly and she was off-balance. I fought her like I’d fight myself, grabbing another bit of concrete that broke off to be smaller than I’d hoped for, and hurling it, before changing directions.

The concrete hit one side of her bubble, and the entire thing shifted before exploding out in that direction. I grabbed her gun-hand in the moment the now-exposed mercenary wheeled around to point it at me, almost catching it between my arm and armpit.

Her hand firmly in my grip, I smashed into her, driving her into the ground. Her body rolled a short distance, her arm stayed with me.

I let it fall. Still connected, or at least partially connected. I hadn’t dismembered her, but I hadn’t ruled it out either. But it was dislocated at the very least, and I was pretty sure from the way it had bent on the impact with the ground that I’d broken the various pieces of the arm in a few places.

I took care of her like I’d taken care of Paris. I needed to know she wouldn’t be too dangerous to have at my back, but she didn’t need arms and legs. I had to knock her out, and I didn’t have a minute to spare or anything convenient to do it with.

Instead, grabbing her hair, I smashed her head against the ground twice. That was the point she was still breathing but not up to pick any fights with me anymore.

I grabbed weapons off of her, and I approached the arch.

My dad had been cut. So had one of the dogs. Moose was lying on the ground and I had no idea why, but I could assume another cut.

Harbinger two was out and Harbinger one… when I looked, I saw that the maze of Cretan’s power had raised walls all around us. Could they climb?

Ashley looked unconscious, and she was bleeding badly. I could see where Cretan stood, a safe distance away from her, and draw conclusions there. Had she tried to beat him without killing him?

We’d gotten the sign-off on killing, but for Ashley, I could imagine a spur-of-the-moment thought where she felt it was more important not to kill the other horned guy in armor.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Rachel was harder to spot, because she was slumped against one dog’s side, while the dog lay on the ground. Tattletale was beside her.

I saw Foil, but no Cassie.

I saw Bitter Pill, healed from her near-decapitation and leg loss, Birdbrain, and two of Bitter Pill’s capes that hadn’t been around when I’d dove into the building. There were people from the local community without costumes on, and I had no idea from the context if they were Bluestocking’s or if they were ones loyal to Cradle and Cradle’s way.

Leaving only Rain, who was breathing hard, his expression hidden. Cretan stood to one side, his head periodically turning as he surveyed the high walls that enclosed Cradle’s fucked up little arena.

“I guess you win,” I told Cradle, my voice low.

“If he surrenders, and if you stay back, I’ll let you tend to your wounded. You’ve got a few. I’ll do what I need to in the next six hours, and then I’ll get somewhere safe. I have thinkers to ask, to make sure I’m not being pursued. Once that’s confirmed, I’ll disable the severing.”

“It can be disabled?”

“Yes or no?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“I don’t get a say?” Rain asked.

“Ra- Precipice,” I said, and my voice was firm. “Please.”

“One person is strapped to the railroad track, everyone else is strapped to the other. The trolley is coming, do I pull the switch?” Rain asked, bitter. “Except I’m the one guy. I’ve always been the one guy. I get people who say they care about me, but they always end up on the other goddamn track.”

“It’s not about that,” I said.

“Fucking feels like it. Fuck!”

I closed my eyes. I was aware that Cradle probably wasn’t keen on picking a fight with me because Lionwing had called his emotion power a kind of emotion reading or feedback response. If my resistance to emotion powers factored in, I might seem a little fuzzier.

Rain, who was the only other guy with emotion powers still standing, was part of that.

But if I fought- I couldn’t see a way through. Not when he had other mercenaries like Cretan, or anyone still outside the walls.

I had allies out there too, but the calculus…

I wasn’t sure I had another knock-down, drag-out fight in me.

“Yes,” I heard.

I opened my eyes. Rain had answered.

“Walk forward,” Cradle said. “Twenty feet ahead, hands up. No mechanical hands.”

Rain’s expression was hidden, but I could imagine his face twisting with emotion as his shoulders tensed and his head turned at a slight angle.

“I’m going to remove them.”

“Do it.”

Rain disconnected the remains of his machine hands – one mostly intact, the other broken at the elbow. He held both the pads in his hand, the arms folded up. He bent down to lay them on the ground.

“Throw them. Into there.”

Cradle indicated a leafy area where a bush jutted up against the side of one of the warped homes.

Rain discarded them, throwing them where they’d be hard to find again. Without being asked, he started walking, head down. Cretan trained a gun on him.

Cradle looked at me, and I raised my hands.

“If your feet leave the ground or if you drop those hands…” Cradle intoned. He used his power, moving to a position where he was bent down. He picked up an oblong stone. A bright line appeared in the air to his right. He swatted it with the stone, severing the stone in half. “This happens to someone or something you care about. Could be the fix you want.”

“And you get away, you disappear, and you leave the world a worse place than when you entered it.”

“I tried. More than you know, I tried,” Cradle said. “Once powers came into it, I physically could not try anymore. Once he came into it.”

“I know people who couldn’t help but kill. But they found coping mechanisms.”

“How long did it take them to figure out?” Cradle asked. “How many deaths?”

I didn’t respond.

“I haven’t killed anyone,” he said. “Not with these hands. Believe me, I’m coping.”

“You’re fucking awful at coping,” I said.

“Aren’t we all?” he asked, and for maybe the first time ever, he sounded weirdly amused.

Then he walked away, Cretan ushering Rain forward. Cradle flickered with every movement, not that it really mattered, considering the only conscious dangers who were crack shots with a gun were on the other side of the walls that bounded the arena and the tunnel Cretan was making to the station. Above them were buildings stretched improbably tall and black sky.

He wins?

Fuck that.

I watched him disappear from sight. I didn’t budge. I avoided looking at the others. I listened.

My middle ear might have been fucked up from my earlier collision, but I imagined a shift in the air pressure. I imagined the timing was right.

I gave the signal, hand chopping down.

Sveta dropped down from that improbable height, her tendrils going to the ground and providing spring before the impact.

I flew, and as Sveta grabbed for every handhold, I threw caution to the wind. No Wretch, no problematic air resistance. I knew what I was getting into here.

But for the rainfall patter of Sveta’s tendrils on the walls of the station, we were silent, as we darted after Cradle.

He stood at the threshold to the portal, and he seemed genuinely surprised to see us. If Cradle wasn’t as quick or effective in assessing me and how to target me, it might have had to do with my emotion resistance. If he had difficulty with Sveta, it might have had to do with the fact that there were no veins for her emotions to run through, her brain maintained a different construction.

The reaction was immediate, Cretan’s power sheltering Cradle and putting a few bends in the path between them and us.

Sveta’s focus was on a few things at once, but she was capable of that. Her mechanical body had trained her.

For Rain, she reached past the bends, grabbing him by several points, before flinging him backward, hurtling at about a hundred miles an hour toward the wall by the front door. He stopped abruptly in his path.

Cradle proved harder to grab. He could move in an instant, and as fast as those tendrils seemed to be, they took a bit more than an instant.

But as we’d seen when Foil went on the offensive, he reacted to surprise with randomness, before he settled on his game plan. Four or five teleports in short order, long enough to put a thought together and assess the threat.

Sveta reached out for every point, every place he could be. It made an audible sound, like a few seconds of intense rainfall.

She got tendrils on Cradle, and Cretan raised up a wall, singular, between Cradle and Sveta. The tendril was pinched between wall and ceiling, unable to retract, reel in, or rope around Cradle enough to take any part of him. Other tendrils tried to reach around the breadth of the wall, and they didn’t extend far enough.

My role in things was to distract, to force him to play the cards he had in hand. For me, Cradle made the glowing lines. X’s in space.

Sveta pulled Cradle’s equipment out of his hand. With a flick of the trapped tendril, the equipment was sent skittering across the floor.

My goal, my plan, had been a raw one. To trust the team. Knowing that we had some good people beyond the wall, and thinking that they’d bring the wall down once they’d won, to reclaim the remaining mercenaries and assert dominance over Bluestocking. They didn’t lower the walls. No Harbinger, no Damsel, no Cassie and her hound, no Prancer…

But I’d had Sveta, my best friend. Who was more trustworthy than I was.

And Chastity, who’d earned another so-very-important friendship in Cassie, was in the station.

Chastity had to run to grab the whip that had been sent across the floor. She picked it up with two hands, fumbling with the controls. A dial on the side.

More lines barred my way.

The whip flared to life, but it was too much, producing a high-pitched whine.

Fucking tinkers, Tattletale had said.

Trapped, or too hard to use. Chastity tried to manage it, using her facility with whips to whip out in Cradle’s direction.

Too fast, too hard to hit. The same evasive maneuvers that served against Sveta served against Chastity. He produced glowing lines, and she slashed them. Banishing them.

The crackle of electricity was reaching a fever pitch now.

She whipped Cretan instead. Cutting him across the body at nipple height. He tried to scream and didn’t find the air.

Cradle turned around, staring. He touched his headgear, his hair.

“All alone,” I said. “Because that’s what happens when you act like an asshole.”

He hesitated, then turned to the portal. All he had to do was run for it.

But he’d hesitated. Rain, over in the corner, had his hands out, like he’d done with the window.

And Cretan, being not as dumb as he looked in his white bull costume, had to know that there was only one way to guarantee that he get fixed.

The maze blocked off the way to the portal. It sealed everything off. The moment was marked with a pronounced crack, as the whip Chastity had flung away detonated. Overloaded.

She dropped to her knees, staring at the remains.

Were Cradle anyone else, I think he would have made an amused sound, but he was quick enough on the draw to realize his circumstances.

All of us, underground and inside, surrounded by four walls, a floor, and a ceiling without a door. And Cradle without his tech.

His power drew lines, and waited for his targets to meet the lines. They didn’t serve him when everything was at a standstill.

“Fix me and I let you go,” Cretan said.

“Fix him and I break you,” I told him.

“I can heal from what you do,” he told me.

“Are you sure?”

There was only silence. Several of us were out of breath. Even Cradle, who didn’t move conventionally.

“Don’t you dare fix him,” I said. “We’re all going to have a long talk.”

“This fucking hurts!”

“You helped him do it to others. Call a few minutes to an hour of suffering justice.”

“The two of us, trapped in a room at night,” Rain said.

Cradle turned around, staring at him. “The last time, one way or another.”

“I really hope you’re right,” Rain growled.

The maze shifted. Cradle lunged, appearing at what was only a gap, barely enough to put a hand through.

“Fix me!” Cretan managed a roar, speaking when lung didn’t connect to windpipe or mouth.

Cradle touched something at his belt. “Just you.”

I flew after him.

The red line at Cretan’s middle flared, and the severed parts were drawn in, while they grew out at the other parts.

More like portals than anything else.

And the gap widened. Cradle slipped through. I flew after him.

We hit the portal, and he ceased being able to do his tricky movement. I ceased being able to fly. I hadn’t been aware that was a thing, and the landing, going from the top of an arched ceiling to the floor, with every injury I already had, was not a pretty one. Cradle’s landing was gentler. His getaway a bit faster. And he was faster than me on the stretch.

But we weren’t alone.

Citrine, her husband, two more Harbingers, and a small crowd of other capes. Snuff, one of Faultline’s.

Cradle, not yet past the middle ground of the portal, stopped in his tracks.

“You’ve made quite a mess,” Citrine said. She was wearing a yellow shirt with ruffles beneath an ankle-length coat.

“I can help clean it up,” Cradle said. “For allowances.”

“No,” Citrine said. “No, you can’t, and you won’t. The damage is done.”

“You need me.”

“No we don’t,” Citrine said.

“We might,” I said. “To undo the damage to the Navigators, Shepherds, and our various teams. Give me a second?”

Citrine didn’t respond.

I wasted no time. My hand wasn’t cooperating as I reached for my phone.

Antares:
Lookout?

Lookout:
OMG yes yay!
You’re okay!
Is Swnasong okay? is everyone okay? How did it go?

Fast typing for someone with injured hands.

Hard questions to answer, and she’d started from a bad conclusion. I wasn’t sure I was okay. This one had been hard.

Adding to the pile of conflicted emotions, I’d drawn a connection between this and the Slaughterhouse Nine in Brockton Bay. I’d told myself that if I’d been able, I would have helped. And that had eaten at me on a level, because I’d been raised as a helper. I wanted to help.

I’d slain that demon. At the cost, potentially, of another family member.

Turns out that demons suck to fight, I thought, my eyes on Cradle as I typed out my follow-up. I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t have looked at my own expression to match that thought, had a mirror been readily available.

Antares:
Okay, bruised but okay, and less okay, depending.
Are you keeping an eye on the station?

Lookout:
Pshoo. Duh

Antares:
How good of an eye? Did you get any signal readings? We timed our final moves for when the door was open, in case you might try.

I was starting to type up another sentence to clarify what she was looking for when the reply came in.

Lookout:
Yes. Four minutes ago, I didn’t timestamp it, but it was near your location. This is the fix?

The signal from Cradle to undo the effect.

It was the fix.

“Keep him alive for now, just in case,” I addressed everyone present, my eyes on Cradle. I was aware of the others catching up behind me. Rain, Chastity, with Sveta in the background keeping Crete from running for it. “But no, I don’t think we need him.”

Heavens – 12.none

“I want to meet her.”

“Yeah,” his voice came out as a croak. It was hard to know what to say in a moment like this.

“My daughter. My sweet, sweet girl. I want to say my goodbye. I want to hold her.”

“You are holding her, Kel.”

“You know what I mean. Please know what I mean.”

“I don’t.”

The space was dark, and with everything having shuffled around, mud flowing into the open window to add to the claustrophobia, the pressure mounted. The van that had been their house, their transportation, and the storage for everything the two of them owned was now their coffin. There was barely any light, and at times it didn’t feel like there was enough air; his head would buzz with a headache and he felt like he could nod off into a miserable sleep he would never wake from.

He could feel the breeze through the damaged window, almost ice cold when the rest of him was hot and prickly with sweat. Kelly, trapped where she lay in a position lower in the van than he was, didn’t seem to get that breeze.

“Shawn. I can’t take her with me. You can’t make me.”

“How would I make you?”

“Don’t make me spell it out,” the words were a plea.

He wasn’t used to her being the rock or being the one with the plan, but she was the one who had kept it together after… after whatever had happened. He found himself walking himself through the known, to get to this thing that Kelly seemed to think he should know. He’d been emancipated from his parents at sixteen. She’d simply run away. They’d found each other.

It hadn’t been easy. They had their individual neuroses and traumas to get over before they meshed properly. Kelly heard voices. She didn’t see things, she just heard the voices, and she didn’t hate the voices. That didn’t mean they were always the best thing for her, but she didn’t hate them. She’d always talked about how people with schizophrenia in other areas of the world tended to hear happy voices, or supportive voices. She blamed culture and she blamed society for the fact that people in ‘the West’ heard negative or paranoia-inducing voices. She wanted to reject that society. Most of all, she wanted to reject the medicines, the institutions, and her parents making every decision for her, when her parents were something she couldn’t talk about without going to a dark place.

Figuring out whether he should trust her on that had been a task, and a long series of compromises. He’d been sixteen when he met her and admittedly not the best when it came to judgment calls. The last few months had seen her spiral out, then rein herself in. He’d gotten her to talk regularly with someone who knew better than he did, got her to agree to try medications if she had another bad patch.

But given circumstances, he’d felt it was his duty to give her what she needed, and she wanted to get away from society, focus on the simpler things.

They’d paid their money at the campsite, took up their spot on a rise in the woods, he had his licenses in order to fish and the go-ahead to hunt rabbit and only rabbit. He’d signed on the dotted line on the sheet that said he would take out everything he brought in. No trash.

Twice a week, for the last three weeks, he’d taken her into town. While she had appointments, at hospital and with the head doctor, he bought groceries, bought the little odds and ends, and then went to the library to while away the remaining time.

For the first time in his life, he’d smiled because the days made him happy. He’d been able to breathe in deeply and take in raw oxygen, close his eyes and feel the sun against the lids, and he’d felt at peace. Better yet, he’d seen Kelly at peace. Not perfect, but as good as he’d ever seen her.

A very long and light rain had closed out the summer. Not what he’d thought of as ‘natural disaster’ rain. They’d been laughing at how everything was wet, sorting out the van, when the mud had come down, rolling the van, swamping and mostly burying them.

Burying them alive.

It had been Kelly who had talked him down when he’d broken down, after the van’s horn stopped working. Because he’d exhausted the battery, or, from his rudimentary car knowledge, corrosion under the van’s hood. He’d known he wasn’t rationing it out enough, but he’d panicked. Because Kel needed help. Kelly had kept him sane, helped him to relax, and hadn’t once blamed him for overusing the horn.

Rationally, he knew the campground had records that put him and Kelly on the hillside. It was a question of time. He’d heard helicopters.

His chair squeaked and grated as he twisted around, his hand extended, reaching for her hand.

She didn’t take it. Instead, she pressed something into his palm, reached up, and closed his fingers around it.

“Whatever happens, no matter how this turns out, you absolutely cannot let my parents have her. They don’t see her, they don’t talk to her, they do not touch her.”

In the gloom, his hands traced the outline of the thing he had been given. He was careful, because he already knew the shape of the handle.

“Promise me,” she said. “Promise me, promise me, promise me.”

“I promise,” he said, even though he was still wrapping his head around what she wanted. Or he understood, like he understood the knife, but there was always that doubt in his mind when it came to Kelly.

Once in a long while, she would go off on a tangent, and he would be so tired that he believed her without question, only to find himself having to catch up, second guess, and realize she wasn’t making sense. Then he would tell her, tell her to eat and sleep, and she’d usually listen. Or she’d talk at him for another few hours, while he tried to steer the conversation. The lines of reality could be that much blurrier for her when she was tired, and the tricky part was that they’d been joined at the hip for the past two years, which meant he was often tired when she was tired. It was easy to get drawn in.

And he was tired now, he was running on empty too.

Was this the thing to do? Was there another way? Could they wait? Was Kelly even that hurt?

“I know I’m not the coolest, I’m not smart, I didn’t finish high school,” she said. “If you want to lie to her about who I was, I understand. Do-”

“No,” he said. He would have teared up, if he weren’t dehydrated. The mud had dried up enough to become dirt, around them. “No, what? No. You’re the best person.”

“I’m really not.”

“You’re the first decent person I met in my life,” he said. “You’re the first person who put a real smile on my face. The first person who opened minds of people instead of closing them. You never had a mean word to say about anyone-”

“I did.”

“Anyone who didn’t deserve it.”

“You can’t let my parents-”

“I won’t,” he said, firm. “And she’ll know you if I have to talk about you ever day.”

“No. I don’t want to be a weight, like-”

She kept going back to that. The weight she hadn’t been able to leave behind. She’d blamed her parents for the unusually early onset to her schizophrenia, hinting at stress causing it, but he’d talked to the therapist, and there wasn’t any evidence that stress was linked to age of onset.

More concerning, there might have been a delirious edge to the fact she kept going back to that place. It spooked him.

So he talked, talked over her, even, because he found himself in a place where if he didn’t keep going or working his way forward, he would stop and find himself paralyzed. Because he could talk of warmer things, and all of the good things he liked about Kelly, and hopefully lift her up and keep her away from that kind of thinking.

His entire life, his parents had told him that they loved him, and not once had they shown it. His grandparents, his aunts, his uncles, they said the same. Teachers said he had potential, urged him onward, but even the most supportive of those relationships hadn’t seemed to mean anything. He’d written an email to a favorite teacher from the library, thanking her for her support and letting her know he was happy now. He’d signed with his name. The reply had been a telling ‘who is this?’

His parents had been fine as parents, but they hadn’t felt like family. He could imagine sending his parents a status update and getting a reply like he had from his teacher.

That might be the delirium talking.

“I want to see her,” Kel said, insistent enough to cut through his rambling. “Don’t worry about hurting me. I can’t feel anything. I haven’t been able to feel a lot for a while now.”

He wasn’t positive she was telling the truth, but he set to work, using the knife.

“Eyes forward,” she said. “Focus on what comes next.”

He’d had moments where he’d faced down a crisis and he’d been calm. A past landlord who had pushed his way into the apartment. Dealing with hostile and drunk campers who seemed convinced this was their spot. Leaving the van and the tent they’d hooked up at the rear as an extension to the van only to find himself ten feet away from what might have been a pair of coyotes. Moments he’d faced down danger with composure and came away from it feeling like a man.

He didn’t feel like that here. Panic set in, and Kelly’s voice didn’t help like it had after the horn had given out. The situation was too messy, there were too many question marks.

In the midst of it all, he ceased feeling like himself. He was an outside observer, somehow cataloguing every detail and not registering or keeping a one. Time blurred and the act seemed endless.

And somewhere in the midst of all of that, he found himself being swept up by a current. Lost in the midst of a greater flow of connections that threatened to distract him. He wanted to focus on this, on the future, like she’d said, and this rush of sensations and images threatened to pull him away from it.

He flew among planets, but he really only wanted to be in this planet, in this van, in this mud, with Kelly.

In the midst of it, he felt it give way. There was almost a sentiment to it, a sigh, a frustrated concession.

Power crackled along the knife, and it glowed faintly, illuminating the work he was doing. It was just hot enough to cauterize the open cut.

Kelly, silent, touched his face.

The child was silent as he pulled it free. Eleven weeks early. With the edge of panic, he almost shook it, to make it start crying. A bad sign for the kind of parent he’d end up being, he thought. A good thing that Kelly took the child into her arms. He’d been warned by the prenatal nurse that it could feel like mothers had a nine month headstart into being a parent. He felt that now. He was glad for that warning, because he very much felt like Kelly was more ready for this.

The child didn’t cry as much as he’d anticipated, and its initial whimpers and complaints were easily shushed. He let Kelly have every moment, his focus purely on managing the wound he’d created.

She whispered to herself, like she tended to do when she was hearing the voices, but he liked to imagine she was introducing those voices to their child. A deeper connection.

“What do we name her?” Kelly asked. He wasn’t sure at first that she was talking to him, but the illumination from the glowing knife he’d stabbed into the back of one of the van’s seats gave him a view of her eyes.

“We could name her after you.”

“No,” Kelly said, firm.

There was some back and forth.

In the midst of it, her coherence faltering, Kelly passed the child to him, her arms almost too weak to manage the meager weight. He was just in time to catch it.

“You have her?” she asked.

‘Her’ had a penis, it seemed. He found himself caught in a dilemma.

“I have her,” he said. Kel had wanted a girl so badly. Had she not noticed? Or was she already that out of it?

“You’ll take good care of her. You took good care of me.”

He wasn’t sure, but he nodded. The glowing knife let them see each other. He was barely concerned with it. It was secondary, unimportant.

“The name,” she said.

He couldn’t give the child a girl’s name, and he couldn’t bring himself to provide a name he would later change. That would betray Kel.

“Addison,” he said. Gender neutral. And maybe if Kelly had been gifted like he’d been gifted, in this tomb of theirs, and she’d seen something in Addison, then the name should work then too.

“Good,” Kelly agreed.

The child missed Kelly’s warmth, and it might have wanted more of the meal it had been given. It might have disliked that cool waft of air that came in from the gaps in the mud above the broken window. He did what he could to bundle it up, and tucked it into his shirt, head poking out of his collar, the tiny body laying along the crook of his arm and armpit, head cresting near his chin.

But Addison cried, and another of the prenatal nurse’s warnings was made evident, because he’d been told the pitch of a baby’s cry had been keyed by evolution to strike at the heartstrings and drill into the mind. He’d been told it was okay to put the baby down, to walk into the next room, even step out of the house, because the crying could be overwhelming.

He was overwhelmed, he couldn’t walk into a next room. His heartstrings were strained to their limits as they were.

He felt the weight of Addison on his arm, and he focused his mind forward, focusing on what he needed to do next. He and the baby waited for their rescue.

Their world was illuminated by the glowing knife he laid in the hollow above the glove compartment. He could already feel more power building up inside him, and he instinctively knew that when time came, he’d be able to put more power into something. For now, it was an insignificant thing.

⊙

“Dauntless.”

He turned away from the window. The sun was setting, and the forcefields over the floating headquarters gave it some interesting hues, bringing out the subtler colors. Inside, everything was white and black, faintly tinted by those same hues outside. Battery and Challenger were approaching.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Things are good,” Battery said. She smiled. “Listen, Armsmaster and Miss Militia got the latest calendar. We’re the only ones on patrol tonight, so we get first pickings. I’m really really hoping you take one of these. Can you guess which?”

The calendar. The ‘schedule’ was more focused on the week, and that was for Armsmaster to write up and for the Director to sign off on or amend, much like how Armsmaster would get his say about hires and personnel changes in the Protectorate and Wards, but it was ultimately down to the Director.

The calendar wasn’t the schedule. The calendar was a list of events coming over the next month, though sometimes there was notice of something coming months later. Armsmaster would usually pull in Miss Militia and Triumph to help make the top-level decisions. Already, some roles were penned in. Triumph and Gallant were down for the video game thing. Probably because they were the only ones who hadn’t sat in yet. Velocity’s name filled in the blank beside an event at a conference with Maine state law enforcement. No reason given for that. A long way to travel, maybe.

There were a lot of shorthand codes and notes by each entry. One person was to give presentations at every school in the city. The shorthand indicated they needed to write up a draft of what they would present and get it cleared. There was a lot of work, which was probably why it was indicated with a (B) – or pay bonus.

The Director wanted to step things up with Crisis Points. Checking in with victims and the vulnerable. There was room for two names there. Accelerated schedule. More work, no bonus indicated.

There was work with local law enforcement, giving them the run-down on the powers and the gangs, a refresher on what to do in a given circumstance, as well as policies for different classifications, and then a stint of increased coordination after that, riding along. The job included babysitting Wards. It was a diversion from normal work, marked with the (DFP) code, and that meant taking it on would mean reduced patrols for the duration. If someone was recuperating from an injury or scare, the bosses would usually pen them in for something like that.

Morning tv and radio. Everyone knew that was a trap, but the people at the very top of the PRT wanted to push high-visibility and approachability, and it was important a lot of people start the occasional days hearing from the heroes. It was too easy for the capes to all be denizens of the night.

Standing representative at an event opening. Mayor Craig had pledged to reopen the ferry as a campaign promise. Those were always a bore, and if the promise fell through, it’d look bad for the heroes. It was purely a political move, winning points with the mayor that could later be cashed in. The line would remain blank until someone needed punishment detail. That someone would probably be Assault.

And someone, it seemed, would be getting a vacation. A trip to Toronto, where a TV show was being filmed. Just about every television drama had its token ‘cape’ episode, if capes weren’t a casual background element. A recognition that powers were a thing, for a single episode or three-episode story arc. Even the mention that a Protectorate cape or Ward would play a part would provoke interest in the midseason.

He paged through the papers that were part of the bundle. There were more details on the show. ‘Flip’, a relationship show with a science fiction premise. Facial prosthetics and partial mask. The role was supposed to be as part of an elite force. Always positive, or the PRT wouldn’t sign off on it. Two members of the elite force would be a couple, no doubt because even a whisper of a relationship between capes in real life would stir fans and supporters into a frothing tizzy.

“You want me to take the TV show?” he guessed. Battery had a natural aversion to anything ‘couply’.

“Please,” Battery said.

“I’m not good in front of cameras,” Challenger said. She had a red bodysuit with epaulettes that had fine chains dangling from them and other decoration, and with her headgear off, strikingly different facial features, with a very sharp, pronounced chin, lines that joined nose to jaw if she had any expression that wasn’t neutral, and very sharply drawn, black eyebrows over green eyes. Her hair was damp and while it was normally straight, when damp it took on a slight curl as though it had been finely braided.

There were capes who didn’t wear full masks, and who used makeup, wigs, or altered their hair to change their costumed identities. There were also ones like Challenger, who were ‘normal’ in costume and who went to more extreme measures out of costume. Her headgear, which was in her hand, was a chin-strap, ear-cover, and a diagonal blindfold that covered one of her eyes. She’d lost her sight in the eye after an incident in a past city.

She walked a finer line with identity, given the lack of a full-face helmet or cover, and with her features being the kind that someone would take notice of, he could understand her not wanting the scrutiny that came with the television camera.

“Why not you?” he asked Battery. “Why do you want me to take this?”

“If I go Assault will want to go too. Miss Militia warned me it was possible and they would jump at the chance.”

“Ahh.”

He wasn’t sure what to say to that. There were a lot of times, he found, that he couldn’t seem to find the right words. He knew Assault and Battery were dating, they’d formally told the people in charge, but didn’t seem to him like it was a good thing. Already, she was playing defensive, making excuses, and pulling strings to avoid the bad, instead of seeking the good.

“Please?”

“I’ll have to talk to my wife. If I can take Addison to see Toronto, then I might,” he said. “It pays?”

“It pays a lot. It’s in the last few pages.”

He flipped through. Sixty-five thousand an episode, two episodes. To be filmed across nine days. Reduced taxes paid on said income, because PRT work was technically government work.

He didn’t need the money for himself. That wasn’t an aspiration. He had been happy living in a van with a girl he loved, who loved him back, running into town twice a week for groceries and catching his own meat. Addison’s education fund was at its limit. Anything more would be excess.

Jennifer would probably like more things for the house, but Jennifer was constantly on the lookout for the next move up, and now that they lived in the Towers, the nicest area in Brockton Bay, she was hinting at possible moves to other cities.

He had the charity he’d set up out of respect for Kel, but if he did a few episodes of television, Jennifer would wonder where the money ended up. It would put him in the position of lying or justifying the charity again.

But he really did want to help those guys out.

Battery shifted her weight. He glanced up at her, and he was struck by a thought, that he’d judged her and Assault by a measure he wasn’t applying to himself and Jennifer.

The problem was, Jennifer was really, really good for Addison.

“I’ll think about it. I’ll give you an answer before tomorrow morning. If it’s a yes, you can forge my signature on there and pretend it was always there.”

“Thank you,” Battery said.

“I can’t promise yes.”

“Thank you, though,” she said. “You’re not due to patrol yet, right?”

“Not yet,” he said. He glanced out the window. The sunset had changed dramatically over the course of the conversation and reading. “But if you cover the last bit of my schedule, it’ll give me more time to convince my wife.”

“I can do that,” Battery said. “Do you want a Ward?”

“Sure,” he said, smiling.

At best, they were some terrific kids. At worst, they were good training for dealing with teenagers with issues, in case Addison ended up struggling.

They made their way down to the platform, where the bikes were all arranged in a row. Aegis, Gallant, and Kid Win were there, eating sandwiches from the vendor who was set up in one corner, to serve staff.

“No Vista?” he asked them. “I thought she was coming tonight.”

“She’s missing it because her grades slipped, and she’s really mad about it,” Gallant said. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah. Stretch my legs some, enjoy the nice weather.”

“Crack some skulls,” Challenger said, as she fit her headgear into place.

“No,” Battery said. “We avoid trouble while we’ve got the Wards riding along. Or we set a good example.”

Challenger rolled her eye, looking at Aegis, who matched the expression. Good example indeed. She gave Kid Win a push on the shoulder, and he looked uneasy in smile and posture both.

“Are you biking?” Kid Win asked.

“Yeah,” Dauntless replied.

“You can’t fly yet?”

Dauntless tested his power, feeling out for the boots and activating them. He lifted himself up into the air, but it was shaky, too brief before the power burned out. It would enhance his leaps and bounds, but not flying, not yet. He’d wanted firepower first. There were a few people around the city who were pretty scary. The nazis. Lung and Lung’s flunky Oni Lee.

“That’s too bad,” Gallant said.

“Soon,” Dauntless said.

“We were talking about who would ride with who,” Gallant said. “Can I ride with you? Kid Win with Battery?”

“I seem to be left out,” Challenger groused.

“You get me,” Aegis pointed out.

“You fly, and you’ll fly off if given the choice,” Challenger replied. She opened a locked case in the wall, and lifted down her axe. A weapon as tall as she was. She held it with one hand and grabbed her rifle, which was similarly proportioned. Each weapon was mounted on one side of her bike, which had been repainted.

“No vehicle tech yet?” Dauntless asked Kid Win.

He got a shake of the head in response.

“Battery goes five miles an hour over the speed limit, max,” Gallant murmured. “Challenger rides like a maniac. Kid Win was scared to ride with her, and I was preparing myself to be nice, but… I’m glad I don’t have to.”

“Got it,” Dauntless said. “I could mention it to people, if you wanted.”

“Maybe,” Gallant said, in the young-teenager way that signaled a ‘yes’.

They divided up the city. Dauntless climbed onto the bike, Gallant climbed on behind. Kid Win got on behind Battery, and Challenger revved her bike’s engines.

As Battery input the details for the people managing the floating HQ’s forcefields, Dauntless leaned to one side to look at Gallant over one shoulder. “I need to call home. If you could turn a deaf ear to that?”

“I’ll put my music on, tap my knee when you’re done.”

The forcefield bubble flickered off. The hue of the sky changed, and that wasn’t just his own perception. With light reflecting off of the bubble, it tinted the clouds above in rainbow hues. The dropping of the bubble was something people across the city would notice. In a way, it signaled that evildoers and criminals should beware.

Challenger roared off, speeding toward the platform’s edge, even before the forcefield path over the water had been fully laid out. Headed to the Boardwalk and the Docks. She popped a wheelie, even.

Battery was next. She sometimes liked to go full speed while they had the clear, straight path over the water, then ride more conservatively in the city, but with Kid Win on board, she was more moderate.

Dauntless took off. His path was curved, the start of it extending off the south edge of the platform, the curve sweeping out over the bay itself, the final length of the forcefield path pointing west. He was headed downtown.

The curve wasn’t perfectly flat, with a slight dip to his right and a rise to his left, and he’d always liked that. That he tilted at an angle to meet the curve squarely. He exaggerated the effect for Gallant’s benefit, until they were almost horizontal, and put his boot out. It glowed, providing some propulsion, and helped stabilize them.

Gallant whooped.

Jennifer picked up while Gallant was still making noise.

“Early patrol tonight, Battery’s covering the later shift. I’ll be coming home early. I’ll see Addison before he goes to bed.”

“He’ll like that. Should I keep dinner warm?”

“Please.”

There was a brief exchange to follow. He had a sinking feeling as it concluded. That thought that had passed through his mind as he’d talked to Battery wasn’t leaving him.

He’d loved more than a few people over the course of his life. Addison. Kelly, Jennifer, some other women over the years. In a way, he loved his team and the Wards. He was fond of some of the people from the charity, and he loved that they’d been receptive to his wavelength and what he wanted to do. Kel’s way wasn’t the right way, but it had been a way forward. With the money and resources he’d put in, the charity helped ensure more teenagers with mental health problems or other crises had a way forward.

But when it came to receiving and feeling love, though he had a growing number of fans and supporters in the community, and he’d married a beautiful woman who had beamed on their wedding day, it rarely registered. It only felt like ‘real’ love with Addison, and back in the days with Kelly.

He and Gallant sped forward, a mostly invisible bridge between them and the roiling water. The wind whipped by, and the engine of the bike vibrated beneath them, powerful, special issue.

With his thumb, he flipped through settings on the bike. Cheating a little.

He reached the end of the glowing forcefield, and entered the city proper, still going faster than he should. The bike’s onboard computers were hooked into the traffic network. People at red lights were treated to flashing signs in the corners, to warn them that the light wasn’t about to turn green.

The coast was clear to sail through the first few intersections. The city worked with him, the flow of traffic was his flow.

To better stabilize with his nascent flight, he put more power into his boots. The power crackled and danced around his feet before solidifying, pressing further in until there was something almost crystalline about the configuration. He could see the facets, the power, and he could see the shape of what it was doing. He couldn’t decide the end results, but the results made sense, given what the object was and what he was doing with it.

It meant a little something, this headway.

⊙

“Done digesting?” Shawn asked. He was as nervous talking to his son as he was on any first date or first day of the job. As nervous as he’d been when stepping up to participate in his first costumed fight, against Blackball.

A thirteen year old Addison sat at the kitchen counter, his laptop beside him. The boxes from their recent move were still unpacked.

“I’ll start with the obvious… it’s not a desk job?” Addison asked.

“No,” Shawn said. “Sometimes, a lot of the time, but no.”

Addison was thoughtful, prone to his own ruminations. He was almost a carbon copy of Kelly, dark in style but always well meaning, with a lot going on beneath that mop of black hair that hung too far into his eyes. The girls in his class were ‘bananas’ crazy about him, to use phrasing he’d heard from one of Addison’s female friends. A fact which seemed to fluster his son twice as much as it pleased him.

Shawn had learned Addison liked to have time to process things, or he got easily frustrated. He’d provided the information, the full information about who his dad was, with helmet set on the kitchen counter as some evidence, then let Addison have the space to work his way through it. He’d done the same with punishments, letting Addison think about what he’d done wrong before they talked about it. He’d done it when Shawn’s dad had died. He’d really fucking wished Jennifer had done it when dropping the news about the divorce, but there was nothing he could do about that.

The issue was, the approach had a way of moving things to the far other extreme of the spectrum of reactions. Addison seemed disconcertingly calm about it all.

“Okay,” Addison said. “I understand why you lied.”

“For the record,” Shawn said, “I didn’t lie. When I told you I had paperwork, I was telling the truth. When I said I’d be late, I wasn’t mentioning I was busy wearing a costume.”

Addison nodded.

“I felt it was important not to lie to your face.”

“Okay,” Addison said. “Thanks, I guess. I understand why you did it.”

“Okay,” Shawn responded. He felt very aware of the pause. “Any questions?”

“When you said I should be careful about if I inherit mom’s whole…” Addison gestured at his head.

“That wasn’t mom’s whole thing,” Shawn said. “It was one part of your mom, that wasn’t in the top three defining qualities about her, just so you know. She was luckier than some, but even if she wasn’t, it wouldn’t be her in whole.”

“Bad word, sorry,” Addison said. He seemed to ruminate for a second before asking, “It wasn’t code for superhero stuff?”

“No. But you might get powers, because I have them.”

“Wow,” Addison said, voice dry. “Whichever parent I get something from, it’s going to be interesting. Fuck.”

“Could be neither.”

“Could be both.”

“Could,” Shawn said, feeling that nervousness again.

“I looked you up. Dauntless.”

“And?”

“And there was this interview question. It’s on video-”

Addison turned the laptop ninety degrees. Shawn approached his son, one hand touching his back, and leaned down to better see. It meant a hell of a lot that Addison didn’t shy away or react to the proximity or the touch.

One of the school events.

“I heard that you get powers from being awesome,” a girl on the screen said, the camera struggling to find her, focusing in only as she finished saying ‘awesome’. “Can you tell us what you did?”

The question evoked a lot of defensive squabbling, some students protesting that you couldn’t ask that sort of thing. Even some teachers were ready to protect his identity.

“I can’t tell you the exact details, but I saved a life,” the Dauntless on screen said. “One that meant everything to me.”

Addison glanced from screen to his dad.

“I did. It’s not the exact truth, but I did save a life. Yours. It was… much too panicked to be something I’m proud of, but I saved you, and I’m proud of that.”

“You’re not going to explain it any more?”

“When you’re a bit older.”

His son gave him a look. As far as Addison was concerned, he was old enough for everything now. But the response was a calm, “Okay.”

“Why?”

“I was just wondering… who you are, I guess.”

The words hurt.

“Who Dauntless is,” Addison clarified. Maybe he’d seen the hurt.

“He’s me. Trying to do my best.”

“Why tell me now?”

“Because you’re about the right age to possibly get powers. And because Jennifer’s moving away, I don’t have someone helping cover my tracks, and you’re too damn smart. I can’t hide it, and I’d rather tell you than get caught.”

Addison nodded.

Addison’s hand gripped the fabric at the back of Shawn’s shirt, and a moment later, the boy was standing, hugging him.

He hugged back, fierce.

“I’m going to worry,” Addison said.

“That’s allowed. I’m sorry you have to.”

“I saw some other stuff. Fights.”

“Yeah. I’m backed by some good people, and I’m good at it. But yeah.”

“Call me? Every time you’re back and safe? Keep me updated?”

Not the usual thirteen year old. He was a sensitive soul, and one that was feeling hurt and bewildered by the divorce. This timing hadn’t been the best.

“I promise.”

“Oh, about covering tracks and hiding it…” Addison said. He broke the hug and picked up the helmet, feeling its weight in his hands. “I invited Mo over to help me unpack. She’s coming in… twenty minutes.”

“Mo. I like Mo,” Shawn said. She was Addison’s friend who had remarked about how crazy the girls in the class were over him. She was very much on Addison’s wavelength, with the friendship clicking so easily and quickly they seemed to just belong together, but she hadn’t indicated any interest as of yet. Shawn found himself secretly rooting for the two, but he didn’t want to force things.

“You say that a lot.”

“If she wants to help, we should ensure she’s rewarded for her efforts.”

“She’s not going to work. She’ll keep me company and read my comics while I do the unpacking.”

“Tell her that if she helps some and helps the two of us move some furniture around, she can decide what we order for dinner.”

Addison rolled his eyes.

“No?”

“She likes Greek.”

“Alright. Greek. I’ll look up some places.”

“There’s a place downtown. Zervas. We ate there a week ago. It’s awesome.”

Shawn gave his son a kiss on the top of the head. “Got it.”

“We’re going to a movie later. I don’t suppose you’d give me some money?”

“For the two of you?” Yes!

“There’ll be five of us.”

“If you and Mo get some real unpacking done and help move furniture, I’ll pay for the two of you. I’ll give you all a ride if-”

Addison was making a face at that last sentence.

“-Okay. No ride. But let me know what the plan is before you leave.”

“Can everyone hang here before we head to the movie?” Addison asked. “How much can I milk you feeling guilty?”

“That much. Go clean up a bit before she comes,” he said. He didn’t mention that he wasn’t motivated by the guilt. Addison was sharp but he wasn’t right about everything. Those scary days would come in a few years, Shawn guessed.

“It’s so crazy that you’re a superhero,” Addison said. “I’m going to tell everyone.”

“Don’t,” Shawn said, stern, fully aware Addison was joking. “Not even Mo. Not before talking to me about it first.”

That got him a nod. The helmet was handed back to him, and Addison picked up his laptop before heading to his room.

The helmet did have some heft to it, Shawn found. He bounced it in his hands, feeling that weight. Concentrating, he tapped into that reserve of power he felt inside himself, and crystallized that power into the helmet’s capabilities. Sensory, protective, and some general shielding capabilities.

“Your kid is pretty great,” he told Kelly, looking down at the helmet, which now glowed white hot, the energy arcing along its length and width.

⊙

He’d heard the air raid sirens and was out of bed and dressed before the phone call came in. He pulled on his Dauntless boots, checked his power.

The phone rang, and he answered mid-ring.

“Where and how bad?”

“Here,” Miss Militia answered. “Leviathan, he thinks. Sent you the location as I made the call.”

“I’ll be there.”

“I need to contact the others. Good luck, Shawn.”

He hadn’t wanted to hear that. ‘Good luck’.

“You too, Hannah,” he told her.

She hung up.

Addison was out of bed, pulling a shirt on. He looked in through the bedroom doorway, clearly alarmed and trying to hide it.

“Get ready. Boots, jacket.”

“What is it?”

“Leviathan,” Shawn said.

“Oh,” Addison breathed the word. “He’s attacking Boston or something?”

“Brockton Bay,” Shawn said. He wouldn’t start lying now. “Get ready.”

“But you-”

“The best thing you can do for me is to get ready, as soon as possible. I want you somewhere safe. Then I can focus.”

“You’re going to fight?”

Shawn opened his mouth to say something. Addison seemed to shake himself out of it, and didn’t even wait for the answer to the question. He was gone, feet tromping as he ran down the hall.

The rest of his ‘Dauntless’ gear went into a gym bag.

He pulled on a jacket, flipping up the hood well in advance of stepping outside. He lifted the gym bag, and had to put straps over his shoulder because of the weight of it.

Addi was waiting in the hallway as he emerged. Shoes on, coat on, ready to go.

“Come on.”

“You could back out. You get stronger every day. If you skipped the one-”

“Addison, no.”

He guided Addison toward the door. Outside the front window of the house, he could see other people had emerged from their homes. Some wore nightclothes and were looking around for guidance. Others were dressed and were hurrying in the directions they were supposed to go, for the nearest shelter.

“If you skipped this, wouldn’t you get so much stronger for the next one?”

“I could skip that one for the fight that comes after,” he answered. “And the one that comes after that. We don’t know if my power has a limit, but it’s possible it does, and the time I supposedly buy ends up being for nothing. This is my city, Addison. A city with you in it. With Jennifer. With your friends, your teachers the places you love. There’s never going to be a place that I’ll step up to defend faster or with more conviction than our city.”

“Okay,” Addison said. He didn’t sound like it was okay.

Fourteen, now, and still soft-spoken. Still not fond of sudden twists or things being sprung on him.

Nobody is, here.

“Get dressed and hurry to the shelter, Mr. Combe!” Shawn raised his voice, calling out across the street.

The elderly Mr. Combe turned around, hurrying inside.

In another circumstance, Shawn would have helped the man. In this circumstance, he tried to tell himself, he was still helping by going to the front lines.

Robin lived a couple of blocks away, and had made a beeline for him right away. The Pelhams lived in the neighborhood too. Not a neighborhood of Jennifer’s level of taste but a nice area. Robin was staying human, jogging over at a normal speed, one hand in pocket, the other with phone pressed to ear. He had a grim look on his face.

Neil and Eric were nearby, both in costume already. Shawn idly wondered if they slept in the things, or if they hadn’t slept at all last night, and had been on their way back from patrol. The bombings had only calmed down a short while ago, and they had been immediately followed up by the attacks by Empire Eighty-Eight, with Purity’s rampage.

Eric raised a hand to wave a ‘hi’ to Addison. Addison raised a hand in response.

Because of the periodic barbecue and because they both went to the same cape-safe therapist, the two had found each other in the same circles. Enough to know names and talk about movies or shows.

A light rain already pattered down around them.

“Hey,” Robin said, as he caught up. He laid a hand on Dauntless’s shoulder. “Hi Addison.”

“Hi.”

“You good to go?”

Shawn nodded. “As soon as I’ve taken care of Addison.”

“That’s fine. It’s not far. We’re heading over now.”

“Even Eric?” Addison asked.

“Yeah,” Robin said. “Even Eric.”

There weren’t any parting words. No urging to come, no commentary on the possibility he could take his son and simply make a break for it, to get as far away as possible.

They all had to.

Shawn led his son along with the crowd, toward the archives building. Government owned, and that always made setting up the shelter easier. The stairs were packed with people, with police managing the flow of people in past the circular, bank-vault-like door.

“Jean!” Shawn called out. A neighbor.

Jean jogged over.

“Look after him?” he asked her.

“I don’t need looking after.”

“Are you sure?” Jean asked.

“I have to-” Shawn started. He couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Mr. Combe needs help,” Addison said.

“If I can’t get him to this shelter or if it hits capacity in the meantime, I’ll go to the one at the library. Please.”

Jean nodded.

He dropped to his knees, the heavy gym bag making some noise as it landed. He was aware he was getting his knees and things wet. He pulled Addison into a hug that was probably too tight.

A dumb thing to do, as he buried his face into his son’s neck. He couldn’t bring himself to let go.

“Call me, as soon as-”

He nodded.

It was Addison who pulled away, turning his back immediately to go to Jean, who he only casually knew, hugging her with one arm. He was just tall enough to put his head against her shoulder.

Jean turned and gave Shawn a somber nod.

She probably knew. The times he’d called her over to watch things because of an emergency call, especially when the bombings had been happening.

He watched Addison go for longer than he should have. Had he left sooner, he wouldn’t have seen Addison rub at his eyes.

He hefted his bag, turning his back to the scene. He didn’t wait until he was fully in the clear before using his boots to lift himself off the ground. He flew up to a rooftop, and let the bag fall. Piece by piece, he strapped on his armor. Some of it had only received a few crystallizations of power. But the spear, in multiple pieces that he screwed together, the shield, which was small at the outset, and his helmet were all things he’d focused on over the years.

He left spare clothes and the gym bag behind. It didn’t matter.

The cloud of heaviest rain was advancing steadily toward the bay. Armsmaster had been right. The guy was an asshole who’d had it in for him from the start, but he didn’t screw up when it came to things like this.

Clockblocker and Browbeat were on the scene, standing outside the building and waiting for everyone to arrive. They stared out over dark water.

There was a crack, a boom, and Strider came in with a group, the teleportation contractor the PRT had been using recently.

Strapping Lad, Young Buck, Chronicler and Exalt were in that group. Eidolon was head and shoulders above them all, and rose even higher as he took flight.

Surveying the threat and the city, taking note of Dauntless and a few of the other fliers who were doing similar things. Lady Photon was up here.

Eidolon dropped out of the sky, landing in a clear spot by the building entrance. The people in the way parted to let him through.

They’ve wondered out loud if I would become like you, Dauntless thought. How many years? I never asked for it, but it’s not impossible.

The image of his son wiping away tears stayed with him. Addison had tried to hide it for just this reason, he guessed. To avoid distracting.

They had been rescued a little while after Addison had been born, and Kel had gone to the hospital. He couldn’t claim to understand the thought processes that had driven her to refuse visitation, or the piece of legalese that had been mailed to his parents, because she didn’t know where else to contact him. Forfeiting her parental rights.

Panic, maybe. Maybe self-doubt. She had never believed in herself enough, and he’d wondered in retrospect if her calm in that buried van had been because she no longer had to worry about herself and her role in it all.

He desperately, desperately wished she’d stayed, but she’d needed to do what was good for her, and he needed to do what was good for Addison.

So he’d signed, and he’d done his best. He’d avoided saying an unkind word about her to their son, and he’d organized the charity to do what he could to avoid a similar heartbreak from happening again.

Jennifer had told him he put too much on his son’s shoulders.

He had the day’s power to allocate. A fractional bonus to one of his items. The kind of thing that likely wouldn’t make a difference, but felt important.

Weapon? To better hurt the thing?

Helmet, to better understand it, think faster in a pinch?

Boots? To move out of the way?

Breastplate, something he’d neglected. Potentially to turn something lethal into something he could survive. He was struck by the thought of dying in muck, partially paralyzed, and he thought of Kel.

He infused the breastplate, channeling the power in there, hand over heart.

He’s every bit like you. Every good part.

He stared at the approaching storm, then dropped down to the ground, pulsing boots on and off to lower himself.

I do this for him.

⊙

Boots, was the thought, as the tail snaked around him. The Leviathan had him, and he’d been just a little too slow to get out of the way.

If he’d infused the boots, then maybe.

He was flung, with a force he knew would kill him. He used his boots to try to slow the movement.

He didn’t die. Things around him flickered, then dissipated. No rain, no dust, no debris. The crowd of people around the space was a blur, viewed through a screen that was beaded with an uneven layer of water. The crowd mutated, drew close, disappeared, each of those things happening in eyeblinks.

No, was his thought, and things around him moved in the time it took him to form that thought.

The tail end of that single word was coupled with the dawning realization he had power available. Not one day, not ten, not fifteen, not thirty or sixty or ninety-

No! was the follow-up thought. His hand couldn’t meet anything before he had another ninety or more days pass. Instead, he pushed power from head to helm.

He didn’t get to choose what happened. But what happened made sense.

His thoughts slowed, and though his body was trapped in time, moving with glacial slowness, those ninety days of accumulated power were spent in the helm, giving him control over the speed of his own thinking.

Which put him in the circumstance of being trapped, unable to do anything but think.

Initially, he fought. He had some residual power, like change left over after he’d spent the bulk on his helmet, and that power was spent on boots, on weapon. As if he could force himself free with enough power from the boots or enough offensive power from his spear. His Arclance, as the PRT had dubbed it.

Now he was aware of the days moving past him at normal speeds. The world beyond was mottled, pollen and dust and construction materials settled on the surface of the globe.

He had twenty-four hours without sleeping to break it up, to decide on each allocation of power.

Helmet. In hopes of reversing this trap he’d found with his mind moving at normal speed while his body remained frozen, or of finding a better way out.

Another day followed, where he felt like he looked back on every decision he’d made in his life, prayed to every deity he could think of, and he realized it was possible Alabaster was in much the same circumstance. At set intervals, Alabaster reverted states, going back to the one he was in when he had entered this time-slowing bubble.

It was possible Alabaster was in the same circumstance he was, and had been from the start.

Helmet again.

Another twenty-four hours. It had only been what felt like a day, and already, the events that played and replayed in his mind became distorted. He couldn’t help going back to them, at the same time. He felt like his ego was disintegrating in this space where nothing could happen. He watched the world beyond the bubble, silhouettes moving throughout a rebuilding Boardwalk, and tried to divine particulars or hints about the outcome, who might have survived.

There was a festival to close out the evening. The music was muffled, as if from a house next door, but it did a lot to stave off the low points and the circular thinking.

The sun rose, and he had another choice. Helmet, because anything else would offer only the smallest benefit, and he knew he had a long way to go.

On the third day, he almost managed to convince himself that some individual parts of his past were fictional, figments of his imagination. Almost.

Noon came around, and a group of young students passed through the area. Some came to see him. A teacher or someone followed them, and one of them read off the placquard. He hadn’t been aware there was a third person in here.

Again, there was a festival. He could have wept, he was so grateful for the stimulation. It lasted until what had to be one or two in the morning.

People slept. He found himself remaining where he was, doubting everything.

Sunrise came. With it, he had more power to give. Again, he chose the helmet.

His perception of the world beyond the bubble clarified.

And so it went. Helmet. Helmet. Helmet. For twenty-three days.

By the twenty-third, he was capable of seeing and hearing everything that went on in the buildings nearby. Businesses. He watched people like he would watch bad television.

Every visit was a panacea for the soul. He learned the faces of the repeat visitors and he learned the whys. Some came from out of state. It meant something, in this place where meaning was lost to a black, insensate void.

He constructed elaborate storylines in his head, of his own devising. Ones where he and Kelly had tried to raise Addison together and it had been hard but Addison had turned out much the same, because it was hard to improve Addison. Anything else would have broken his own suspension of disbelief.

One storyline a day, to answer a question, or to explore a theory.

He lost count of the days, but he estimated where he’d been and he counted from that estimate forward. With the helmet giving him the ability to construct better thoughts and see much of the city around him, forward and backward, he built up his ideas and theorized, he unraveled what had happened and to whom, and tallied up a mental list of people to investigate. He picked a person he knew and didn’t know the outcome for, and he searched everyone nearby to try to decipher what had become of them.

Whole days were lost to despair that ate at him and left him unable to think straight for more days afterward.

He focused on the boots, and on the other things. He balanced certain lines of thinking with certain applications, to see if it felt different.

Hundreds of days in, so fast he thought he’d reverted to that accelerated time, the city crumbled. A flash of light, and the buildings fell, giving him a view of the water, of water frothing and foaming as waterside properties tipped into it.

For nine days after that, people tried to pick up the pieces.

On the tenth day, they mostly disappeared, leaving only stragglers. With every passing moment, he scoured and scanned those stragglers, used every awareness at his disposal to try to decipher, investigate, and see if they knew anyone or had seen anyone. Had one said Addison, for any reason at all, it might have stoked some hope.

By the thirtieth day after the city fell, the people who had remained were gone. Many were dead, unable to survive or sick. Others left for places where food would be more plentiful.

He pushed and tried to push his awareness through the distorted portal in the belly of the city, and no matter the investment, he couldn’t.

There was only the water, now. Watching the weeds growing into the cracks, tracking the wildlife, and the steady resurgence of those species best able to survive.

He mourned the world, and he vowed that if this was it, if this was the end perpetrated at the hands of their best hero, then he would retain some ability to explain what had happened if somehow something else were to come and pay a visit. A deity, an alien, a person from the past or from the future.

He was the most powerful person on their Earth, as far as he could tell, and possibly the most helpless. Easy, when he was one of the only ones left.

⊙

The bubble popped. His body was freed and his body was utterly trapped. He’d infused power into every article of clothing he owned, sometimes years worth of power, and that power had come due. Every time he had passed on power to his helmet, it had shifted imperceptibly. To become something mythic, something to be proud of.

Now, however, it all came due at once.

His helmet was a crown, extending up and above him like a skyscraper, impossibly tall. He might have snapped into pieces, but other articles worked their way into it.

He’d called it a crystallization, once, and now the crystal crept over him.

There had been ten thousand times he’d snapped while in that bubble. Ten thousand times he’d broken from reality, broken from memory, from hope, from everything.

And in those moments, he’d glimpsed something greater. For longer, and longer, each time. Each effort a vain attempt by his collaborator, his agent, to forge a connection and reach out.

But that wasn’t how this worked. He didn’t get to have connections. That hadn’t been the unspoken bargain he’d apparently struck. He didn’t get the tools to better cut and cauterize wounds and save his son’s mother for nothing.

But it had tried, and as with the helmet and the rest of that crystallized effort, he felt it come due. Connections. Enough connections to the nazi to pull him apart and draw the composite pieces into the crystallization. All were broken connections, reaching out to other broken things to find the most tenuous purchase, but if the crystal was machinery and the agent the power source, then the connection let him have a hand on the wheel.

It was enough to keep himself up, once he’d grown enough that it was ungainly.

The connection came, and the connection stayed.

He saw enough.

⊙

“You’re going to have to explain,” Victoria said, whispering. “Because if you can make any sense at all out of this…”

She hovered over a ledge, and that ledge overlooked the distant sight. A figure so tall his heads were in the clouds. The growth that extended up from the ‘head’ was fractal, geometric, crystal, but with veins instead of straight lines.

That growing extended to the legs, starting at the feet and working its way up. A skirt, a dress, a lower body that was a mountain. Limbs and body, all in the rough silhouette of a giant, a titan writ in a strike of white lightning that didn’t budge, flicker, readily change shape, nor stop.

“We mentioned it was a structural issue,” Harbinger Two said.

“Where to start?” Harbinger Three asked. “I’d start by outlining that you have an array. One connects to two connects to three-”

“No numbers,” Swansong growled.

“No numbers,” Victoria agreed.

Harbinger Three sighed. “Then you have an alphabet. A connects to B connects to C. And you tend to end with X, Y, Z. Sometimes there’s a wrinkle in the works. And A connects to L, G, E, B, R and-”

“No numbers!” Swansong said.

“It’s a word,” Harbinger Three said, at the same time Harbinger Two said, “Not a number,” and Harbinger Five said, “It isn’t!”

“Carry on,” Victoria said. Swansong audibly harrumphed.

“Connects back around to A,” Harbinger Three said. “And it connects to P, P again, L, and E. But the underlying structure is gone. ‘A’ flounders, trying to find a connection to anything. And in the process, it finds a connection to P, O-”

“Enough,” Victoria said. “I appreciate the explanation, but I’m too tired to have people spell things out for me. Abbreviate?”

“Like a localized, misspelled apocalypse,” Harbinger Five said. “You get things meant for endings at the beginning, like Z, and that connects to E, which connects to everything, and a few steps later… nothing. Houses of cards that shouldn’t stack up that do, and cards that should that don’t. But they will, by process of natural selection, form their own wills. As we see here.”

“He thinks?” Capricorn asked. His armor was in tatters.

“We think he’s been thinking this whole time,” the Harbinger said.

“Fuck,” Capricorn said. He blurred. He shifted, tattered red plate armor to tattered blue scalemail.

“Fuck,”Capricorn said again. “Nobody deserves that.”

“And now we get to see what that all added up to,” Harbinger Two said.

“No numbers,” Swansong said. “No math terms. ‘Added up’.”

“Wholly accidental,” the Harbinger said, before turning to wink at one of his brothers.

There was no humor on any other faces.

The dauntless titan stood in the ruins of Brockton Bay, mostly unmoving. He or it was there in Earth Gimel, and he was there in Earth Bet at the same time. He was in an equivalent location in Earth Cheit, in Earth N, and every earth they were aware of, as well as many they weren’t.

⊙

He reached out, his range unfiltered now by a bubble of compressed time. He deciphered everything he’d tallied up as answers he needed to seek out.

He found what he was looking for, and he reached out. Not gently enough. His efforts at speaking were blunt, and destroyed more machines than he could easily count, in many worlds.

Better not to move. To wait.

It took nearly eight hours. But Dauntless’s son came. The boy drove in a truck, and he reached the perimeter that capes and other forces had gathered as a just-in-case measure.

They let Addison through, along with Addison’s wife. Not Mo, which disappointed Dauntless, but a pretty young lady with a child in her stomach.

He couldn’t speak, and he couldn’t trust himself to move, so he listened. Addison had found his mother, and the two had cobbled together an uneasy relationship. There was that. He’d had holidays with that neighbor Jean, who’d taken up a role and who had taken it on herself to look after Addison well past the point anyone sane would do so, and he’d periodically visited with Jennifer, his stepmom, who took on the role of the aunt and manager of Shawn’s estate.

Dauntless’s son was okay, and that was what was important.

After a couple of hours, they decided to leave.

Satisfied?, it thought, to that kernel of Dauntless.

He was. A terrible weight and an even more terrible pain had been lifted, somehow, by that relatively brief visit.

It remained where it was, waiting. It waited and watched even as the forces arrayed around it readied for an assault, panicked, then retreated.

Up here, the air was so thin that Dauntless’s thoughts buzzed.

Buried in crystal, he was almost claustrophobic, his thoughts running away from him.

But he didn’t let them.

He could only remain where he was.

The reason for the panic and the imminent assault hadn’t been him, but another guest. She settled on one arm, comparatively tiny, a weight on one arm and on one shoulder. Feathered wings draped his arm.

And she cried, and the cries were pitched to pull at the heartstrings and to tug at the mind. He couldn’t step into another room or walk away to leave those cries behind to find a chance to breathe.

And he was tired, in that way that would have made it so easy to believe anything anyone told him. He dwelt on that weight on his arm, his power illuminating every world around him, some occupied, many not. There was no more power inside him to give. For now, he could only wait, endure as he’d endured for four years. He had his son and all the people he’d come to love, who’d loved him and visited him in his bubble, and that was the most significant thing.

Heavens – 12.x

When the television cut out and the lights flickered, Presley could see a momentary set of images on the screen, a face in silhouette, that silhouette serving as its own frame for another image and silhouette, leading the eye to a place before it all went dark and terminated early. The sound was a single syllable, as loud as the television would allow.

She was about to rise from her seat at her computer when the icon in the upper right corner drew her attention.

No internet.

“Aww, shit!”

She heard the creak of footsteps.

“Shit,” she muttered. “What was that?”

The knock at the door served as both knock and simultaneous push on door. Her mom leaned into the room.

“The internet’s out,” Presley complained.

“The internet’s out all the time, Pres.”

She clicked the icon. It didn’t try for more than a second before returning the ‘fail’ result.

“It’s really out.”

“They’ll fix it. They’ve been good about it. Maybe you can focus on better things.”

“Soccer’s only twice a week, and we can’t practice outside.”

“What about afternoon classes?” her mom asked, archly. “Cleaning up?”

A finger moved around the room. The house was the kind that had come in pieces that all slotted together. Presley was offended that her mother pointed at the cards she’d slotted into the seams where the upper half of her bedroom fit into the lower half. The top row was soccer cards, the lower row was superhero cards, and there was a very small section in the narrow space between wall and window on another wall of the room where she had hero league soccer cards. Nobody was interested in trading them, and everyone knew it was about as real as wrestling, but they were cheap and she could always grab a few packs if she had change left over.

Presley rolled her eyes as her mom’s finger pointed at the different messes, pointing at some twice.

“Go to sleep early,” her mom said, more gently. “Do you need a ride to the arena tomorrow?”

“I’d check what the weather is like if there was internet or a weather channel,” Presley said. She saw the face her mom made, and she smiled.

“Let me know. For now, go to sleep,” Her mother said. She intruded into the room, approached Presley’s desk, and there wasn’t anything Presley could say about it, because the rule was that computer time was parents-could-enter-the-room-time. Her mother laid a hand on top her head, stroking hair that had been made a bit crispy by the bleach, and gave her a kiss goodnight, between two fingers on hair.

“Night mom.”

Her mom pointed at the screen. There was a row of soccer cards displayed, with players standing behind them, stats displayed along the bottom. It was a good booster, too, but the ‘no connection’ sign was glaring red, and the way the soccer game worked, a purchase that failed partway through was a loss, to prevent scrubbing.

“I’m not spending any of my money on it. They give you five packs for free and I buy more with the currency I get from trading up.”

“Okay, okay. Be careful.”

“And I don’t really care about that-” even if it was a good pack, “-the team had something big going on, I think. I wanted to ask if they were okay.”

She pointed, to make it clear which team she meant. She had three printed out pictures above and below the hero league cards, each picture in a clear plastic jacket like the cards were in hard laminate sleeves, less to protect them, and more because the cheap printer paper had gotten wavy after the ink soaked into it, and the sleeve helped keep it flat. Antares and Swansong, Swansong decked out in costume with eyes smoking, and a picture of their headquarters, which was just as messy as her room, if not more, and had a glowing sci-fi computer terminal at the far end, with lots of floating screens and stuff, which was really cool.

“Don’t bother ‘the team‘,” her mom said, with the kind of emphasis that suggested she was trying to be clever or make a point. She turned off the monitor, which made Presley wince. At least she hadn’t turned off the computer, which would have definitely cost her the value of the pack. “Sleep.”

Presley nodded, sliding chair over to the window to adjust the curtains. She stopped where she was, looking out. Her voice had a less-sure note to it when she said, “Mom?”

Rather than close, the curtains were opened wider, her mother stepping up to the window.

A glowing figure on the horizon. Taller than any mountain, not glowing, but so white that it looked like a cut-out from reality, head extending up like a wedge, lower body extending down the same way, creating a very narrow hourglass shape, but with a narrow torso in the center, with arms, what looked like a lightning bolt or a spear, and what might have been a round shield.

With it, there was a horrible feeling in her middle. It was like when the Endbringers came; all her life, the years had been punctuated by these big, shadowy monsters that came and changed the tone of the day and the week after, in what she’d once heard a bad comedian call the opposite of holidays. It had always come with a bad feeling mixed with a bad relief that it had been so far away. The kind of relief that made you feel bad.

Except she didn’t feel that relief now, and she didn’t feel any less bad.

“What do we do?”

“I’m going to talk to your father. Stay here.”

Presley nodded.

“No,” her mom said, before she’d finished walking out of the room. “Not here. Not by the window. Just in case, stay away.”

Presley took a step to one side, so the window was further away. She could have stepped toward the bed, and settled in there, but hiding under the covers felt like such a kid thing to do, and she wasn’t really a kid anymore.

And being where she was, she could see the photos of the team. ‘Something big’, they’d said. This had to be what they were doing.

And, being where she was, she could turn on the monitor, maneuver the trackball to the internet icon, and see it was back. There was some connection, but it was yellow, marked low priority. That was pretty usual for when big emergencies happened.

She typed out a response, leaning over to glance out the window at the figure. It wasn’t moving.

The delay after her message was sent ate at her.

Then the reply, from Antares.

‘We’re waiting and seeing.’

It didn’t ease her worries, exactly, but if Antares was replying, then things couldn’t be that bad.

She confirmed the pack opening, closed the game, and then called out, “Mom, Dad! They replied!”

⊙

Lookout moved her ‘hands’, and through the link that Darlene provided, Candy could feel the motions in hand and attached finger, and moved appropriately.

“C, apostrophe, one one, two, four, eight, sixteen, one one…”

“I think you’re making this up,” Candy said, her hand moving to hit the keys. When she wasn’t sure she waited for the word that told her what she was supposed to be hitting.

“I am making this up,” Lookout said. “I make stuff up and make that stuff work. That’s what tinkering is.”

“What are you even doing?”

“Flying a broken camera. It needs coordinates. See?”

“That looks like a screen that’s half black, half blue, and covered in gibberish.”

“Ground, air, and data. Calling it a camera is like calling a Swiss Army knife a knife, which it is, you use it for the knife a lot, but I want to know everything I’m missing out on. I switch modes and-”

“Clear picture,” Candy said. She looked over her shoulder at where Chicken Little was sleeping in the bed across from Lookout’s. He’d been medicated so he could actually sleep. They were keeping the mask on, but there were bandages now.

Darlene had settled into the chair by his bed. It was the comfortable, puffy sort of chair, and her feet were up on the seat with her. Two blankets were gathered up and around her legs and her lap, piled up to almost chin height, and another was on the top of the chair, pulled down a bit so it covered her head and shoulders.

She wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t accepting medication, on excuse of needing to help Lookout, and she wasn’t taking her eyes off of Chicken Little.

“Blink, Dar.”

Darlene closed her eyes, then opened them.

“Focus,” Lookout said. “Look, clear picture.”

“Sec,” Candy dismissed her.

“Ughhhhh. This is important! The mayor showed up! And she has people, and-”

“Shhh!” a nurse said, from the hallway. There were two capes from Victoria’s mom’s team by the door, standing guard.

Candy focused instead on Darlene, counting the seconds. Twenty, twenty one, twenty two-

“Blink more than the one time, Darlene,” Candy said.

Darlene pulled a hand out from under the covers, and gave Candy the finger.

“Surly,” Candy muttered.

“She’s hurting,” Lookout said, quiet, giving Candy a smile and an elbow to the arm. “It sucks.”

“She’s been hurt before,” Candy said. “Nathan pushed her down these concrete stairs that went from the street to the water, and she had to use her power to make him feel it, but he was mad, so he wouldn’t. She had to tough it out longer than him before he cracked.”

“But other people are hurt. Her favorite person.”

“She’s seen me get hurt, and I was her favorite person once.”

“You still are, Can-can,” Darlene muttered. “One of ’em. When you’re not being a pest.”

“You can hear me from over there?”

“It’s quiet,” Darlene said.

Candy settled in, lying over the covers while Lookout was beside her, lying on them, laptop in front of her, the screen swiveled one way, while the keyboard was swiveled in Candy’s direction. Darlene had done a lot of the work to help jury-rig the setup, before Lookout got frustrated that she was too distracted.

Too distracted and tired.

Candy had taken over, and now, on the topic of being frustrated, Lookout was trying to drum her fingers with fingers that weren’t there, and Candy could feel it through the link Dar had established. She was antsy.

“How are you doing?” Candy asked. “Your hands hurt.”

“We can stop if you want to,” Lookout said.

Candy was feeling that hurt through the link, but she could grit her teeth and deal with fake pain. Lookout had taken some medication, but every time she tried to move her fingers, her hands hurt, and Candy felt it.

“No, this is important, right?”

Lookout nodded, before whispering, “Thank you. It’s important enough I’m doing it even though it hurts to do. Can we- Can we do my thing again, now that you’re done talking to Darlene? I’m missing stuff.”

“Okay,” Candy said. Help in, gripe out. When people were hurt, it was important to help those closer to the problem and the hurt, and any complaints were saved for those further from it than she was. It was a rule that Samuel’s mom had imparted on them before her violent end.

There was an inverse of that rule, but it had to do with hurting people related to the source and keeping evidence in. Not so applicable here. Only if Aunt Rachel failed and Candy got a chance to go after the people who did it.

Slumping down, she adjusted the laptop, which prompted Lookout to adjust the screen.

“E, I, one, five… can you hold down the right arrow key until I say stop?”

Candy obeyed.

This time, Candy was more careful to be quiet. “I can’t tell if you and Dar are going to be best friends or if you’re going to kill-”

“Stop.”

“-each other,” Candy finished.

“Go back one. What do you mean?”

The screen showed a bunch of squares and lines, identifying faces, then framing each face. The camera was pointed one way but somehow depicted the face from another angle. Lips were covered by another, bolder square, and then weird arrangements of letters and symbols appeared. Each was like a dial of letters on a lock that might read A-A-A-A, with the lock-cracker changing each letter in turn.

In this case, the lipreading technology spat out words that included a ‘DINAH’ and ‘CONTESSA’. Names and a royal title.

Seemingly disinterested in anything that wasn’t a mention from her friends, Lookout had Candy use the trackball to switch over to another camera shot, focusing on a grid of security camera images. The prior image was visible at the very edges of the screen, with a dotted line feeding into a bubble that read ‘logs’.

“What do you mean?” Lookout asked, again.

How was Lookout this energetic at this hour, this hurt? Candy had been in the one big fight with Nursery and Lord of Loss and all the people with guns, and she was exhausted. She’d forgotten what she was even going to say, but now Lookout was staring at her with large eyes. In the gloom of the room, the whites of the eyes were contrasted with black skin, the orbs capturing the movements of lines and windows from the computer screen.

“I mean you know she likes Chicken. If you get in the way, she will literally tear-”

Stupid choice of ways to put it. She was tired.

“Tear me to pieces. Mm hmm.”

“Because she likes him a lot.”

“Yeah. I’ve liked people that much.”

“And you like him,” Candy said.

“I do. And I like her, and I like you, and I like my team-”

“You know what I mean.”

Lookout stared at her screen.

Candy elbowed her.

“I’m being good,” Lookout said, quiet. “And I won’t get in the way.”

‘I’m being good’ was the kind of thing that made far too much sense to Candy. She’d heard similar things from a lot of her siblings and ‘cousins’, which was their term for the sisters and brothers by another mother. She’d even heard the line about being good from some of their quirkier and more messed up unpowered siblings.

It was a simple thing to say that said a lot.

Candy moved her mental evaluation on whether Darlene would find herself strangling Lookout or being best friends with her one bit toward ‘best friends’.

“What happens if he decides he likes you?”

“I always thought maybe he liked boys, like one of the Capricorn brothers or like my d- like some people I knew did. Do. He was a big fan of Rain. Both with and without the fake face.”

“No,” Candy said.

“No? But-”

“No. I’m an expert on these things. Most of us are. He just thinks Rain’s badass. He likes girls. Or he will when he figures out what he’s doing.”

“Oh, ‘kay,” Lookout said, quiet. “Rain is badass. He’s one of my favorite people.”

“Is everyone one of your favorite people?”

“Haaa. Not the jerks who did this to my hands. But Rain yes, and my team yes, and Swansong very yes. And Victoria very yes, and you guys very yes.”

“You’re the kind of girl in school has five friends who are all her best friends, huh?”

“Nah,” Lookout said. “I never had school friends. Hey, is it weird that I’m relieved Chicken likes girls?”

Candy moved her mental evaluation of the strangle vs. friendship thing two bits toward ‘strangle’.

“Because Darlene?” she asked, hopefully.

“I guess? Kind of?”

Not a definitive yes. Another three bits toward ‘strangle’.

She’d have to be careful.

“The portal’s open,” Lookout said. Her leg jiggled beneath the covers. “Hey, the portal’s open. That’s a thing! Move, type!”

“Shhh!” a nurse made a noise from the hallway.

“Tyyyype,” Lookout hissed through her teeth, waggling her hands. “Trackball.”

The screen was filling up with more white numbers against an orange-tinted security camera image. Nobody was coming through, despite the fact the portal was open.

“We have weird readings. Powers on the other side, filtered because some powers don’t work through or around portals.”

The camera changed. The mayor’s group was entering the station. Snuff was with them. Tattletale probably had a reason for why he was there and not here.

Tense minutes passed.

Then the message came over the phone.

“It’s Antares, type type type type,” Lookout urged.

“Shhh!” the nurse in the hallway said. She approached until the capes at the door stopped her. “Or I will ask to have your things taken away.”

Candy was focused enough on the typing and hitting the right keys that she didn’t process the words until the exchange was done, and by then, Lookout was having her type in more coordinates.

“Move that slider to the red,” Lookout said.

“Red?” Candy asked. As she did, the sub-screen with the data and a few wacky star shaped symbols changed to be white text on a textured red background. “Why?”

“Because it’s cool,” Lookout whispered. “And because the whip was red, and this is the whip. And…”

She touched a fingerless hand to the screen, smudging it. Below the smudge, a reel of numbers and characters was flying by too fast to read.

“This is it. Phone. Text messages. We need to let Antares know.”

Candy obeyed.

“And this next part is long but important. Okay? Work with me?”

“If it helps,” Candy said.

“It’ll help. It should. I really hope it does…”

“Shh,” was the urging from the cape at the door. The two were Goalpost and Fireaxe. Fireaxe couldn’t even use his power in the hospital without setting off alarms, which was dumb. It was Goalpost who was shushing instead of the nurses now.

“Type, type type type-”

Candy typed.

It took fifteen minutes. The code made her head spin, and she was providing Lookout the hands to write it. The boxes of dense code were arranged like spokes on a gear, and Lookout kept having her use the trackball to rotate that gear around, to add something to one block or fill in another block.

“Okay,” Lookout paused. “Hit the print button.”

“Print?”

“Had to be something.”

Candy hit the button.

Red light crackled and flared at Lookout’s hand, and she removed the bandages that were already being pushed away and strained by the emerging growth.

“Yes!”

“Shush!” a nurse barked, looking in. But then she stopped.

It was all growing back, the wound seeming to travel to the extremities, with Lookout gritting her teeth in a weird smile as it happened.

Darlene sat up, moving the blankets that covered her. Her leg was growing back now.

“We did it. They did it,” Lookout said, bouncing. Her most intact hand gripped the most injured one until the last of the regrowth finished.

Then, like it was finally okay to do, she let out a long sigh with a superphysical shudder of relief that shook her entire body.

Darlene stood, wobbly at first. She approached Chicken Little, and she moved his mask, gingerly. Then she burst into tears. Good tears.

The nurses rushed into the room, to examine their patients, and edged a teary-eyed Darlene out of the way.

If looks could kill, a hard glare through wet eyes, over wet cheeks.

“Be good, Darlene.”

Darlene gave her a look that could kill.

“They’re helping him.”

Darlene relaxed, and with that relaxation, broke down again. She rushed to Lookout’s bedside, and she hugged her friend.

“We have more work to do?” Candy asked. After such a hollow, hurt feeling sitting in her upper chest for so long tonight, she felt buoyant.

“No. That’s everyone, and I don’t think that weapon will work again, not without a lot of rejiggering. Hopefully that protects everyone.”

Everyone.

Candy had an ominous feeling, but was too tired to put it to words.

“Flor,” Darlene put it to word before Candy was done.

Candy scrambled out of the bed so fast she almost knocked the laptop to the ground. Darlene followed.

Flor was in the hospital room two doors down, but getting there wasn’t easy. There weren’t any shouts, no noises of alarm, just… a lot of the capes from Antares’ mom’s team, two security officers, and several nurses.

“Let me through. Let me through!” Candy shouted. “You guys don’t-”

Flor was out of bed, wearing a hospital gown, her hair ruffled up at the back because she’d had it on a pillow. A nurse was on her knees beside her.

“Don’t,” Candy said.

Flor didn’t budge, studying the room.

“It’s been a lousy night that’s only now getting better. Don’t make it suck again. They’ll shoot you.”

Flor looked around.

“I’ll play your friggin’ fashion princess video game with you,” Candy said. She indicated Darlene. “We’ll take turns playing it with you.”

“Hey,” Darlene said. “Jerk. Don’t volunteer me.”

But Flor backed down. The nurse scrambled away.

“I thought we said to cuff her to her bed,” Candy said.

“You also said not to touch her. It didn’t seem like she was going anywhere,” one of the heroes said, watching as Flor crawled back into her bed.

“She obviously did.”

Useless heroes.

Darlene was already pulling on her arm, dragging her out of the room.

They returned to the room. The hustle and bustle surrounding Chicken Little had died down, but some nurses were on either side of the bed. It was Candy’s turn to drag Darlene over to where Lookout was tapping away on her phone.

“Talking to the team?” Darlene asked. “Tell them thank you.”

“Talking to the team lawyer, Natalie,” Lookout said. “She says she’s suspicious I won’t be able to stay with my team. I’ve been hospitalized twice in a really short span of time.”

“Makes sense,” Darlene said.

“Yeah,” Lookout said. She smiled at Darlene. “Makes sense. I’ll figure something out.”

The smile was jarring, but Candy didn’t know what to say.

Darlene climbed up into the hospital bed beside Lookout, her attention largely on Chicken Little, who was still drugged asleep, and Lookout’s attention was on the screen, on her team. Candy sat at the end of the bed, being careful not to block Dar’s view, because tonight wasn’t a night for teasing. She adjusted the blanket at the foot of the bed to cover herself. The hospital was chilly, and cold air wafted in, seemingly through the single-pane windows.

Darlene was letting exhaustion overtake her. Her head rested on Lookout’s shoulder, and Lookout gave her a pat on the leg.

“We could make our own team,” Candy said. “You two, me, Chicken.”

“But-” Lookout said. “I’d be betraying people. Swansong-”

“Then we contract out,” Candy added. “Exclusively to one team. Maybe two. Cheat the system.”

“Maybe,” Lookout said, the smile dropping from her face. “Could work.”

Outside the window, Chicken Large screeched.

⊙

Narwhal watched as Undersider and Breakthrough climbed out of their vehicles. Government vehicles, by the color of the plates. Rides provided by the illustrious mayor of the unnamed city.

It had been hours now. The sun would rise in another few hours. Were it a warmer month, it would already be rising.

The figure that had once been Dauntless loomed above them. Dormant, quiet, alone.

As alone as any of them were.

Narwhal’s costume was layered, crystals grown large and each gap covered by another crystal, enough times that her entire figure had changed. Crystals were her boots, so her feet weren’t resting against snowy ground, and they framed her chin, nose, eye sockets, and ears, while providing the structure that held up her horn. A lot of that was to keep the cold off. Temperature didn’t conduct through forcefield, so it kept her insulated. Here and there, she adjusted, exposing neck, collarbone, and shoulder above the crystalline suit.

Her heart was pounding, breathing was hard, and getting past it seemed impossible. She kept her shoulders back and square, her feet securely beneath her, and hands at her sides. People looked to her, and if she let the facade crack, then it would affect them.

She had never been good at giant slaying. She could hold her own against the Endbringers and the other enemies of similar scale, throw up defenses, launch her forcefields for offense, but it wasn’t the environment where she felt like she did the most good.

And she’d been stuck here, facing down the attack from March, and she hadn’t done enough good here. It was more frustrating that the higher-ups and paper pushers would blame her, because a power like March’s didn’t translate to paperwork.

It meant expressing that Defiant and Dragon could have three ships in the air, and a squadron of parahumans and soldiers could be in just the right spot at just the right time to make them dangerously able to flank if the ships tried to fly past. Move around, open fire, the routes were blocked or there were other obstructions. People who would get caught in the collateral damage.

Not permanently, there was always a way, but by the time that way was sought and found, March was on the offensive. And it was always easier to attack than defend.

The paper-pushers wouldn’t get it. They’d talk about budgets and hint at budget cuts, and blame would be shifted, and it would be a repeat of prior engagements against Jack Slash all over again.

But they had the boy who had beaten Jack Slash in the Wardens. Jack Slash had had an unknown factor giving him an edge. His power gave him the upper hand against any parahuman, and his ‘Slaughterhouse Nine’ made it next to impossible for civilians to get to him.

March’s coterie didn’t cover a weakness so much as it augmented her strengths.

It was possible that made it more fragile, but Narwhal wouldn’t get the chance. Her strength was in wading into confrontations and walking out the other side with her enemy broken. Warlords, gangs, armies. But her eternal tragedy was that she was often the only one both capable and willing to step up and be a leader, negotiating the balance between leadership and dealing with the people behind desks and benches.

The Undersiders and Breakthrough parted. Truce between them now done. Hero and villain, each had a side to go to. The mayor’s henchpeople, Harbingers, went their own way. Neither hero nor villain.

Well, most.

Weld had arrived. He was the kind of young man she would’ve drafted to any of her teams, at any point. Driven, conscientious, kind, and just wounded enough that there was something to look after, where she could have him under her wing without feeling like his talents weren’t being wasted leading a team elsewhere.

Antares led Weld to one of the last vehicles in the convoy. He opened the door, and was embraced by what Narwhal took to be his girlfriend.

That was a mess. Narwhal had seen him making eyes at one of the other girls in the Wardens. Slician. She’d noticed and she’d approached him, and he’d turned her down. It wouldn’t have been easy.

This? That? It couldn’t be good. It was too far from human, and Weld was more in touch with humanity than a lot of humans were.

If he’d asked Narwhal for advice, she would have told him she liked Slician for him more than she liked this girl. That he had his own healing and growing to do, and it seemed to her that he was putting it on hold. It was maybe better that he hadn’t asked her.

It was even possible that he knew her well enough to know what the advice she would give would be. If that were true, then when and if he needed help making the hard decision, he would ask her.

Cracks, Narwhal thought. Her fingers touched a damaged forcefield she hadn’t yet dismissed, tracing the fissures and missing pieces. We all have them. If we have to slay this giant, we’ll have to find his.

Cracks in the individual, yes. That was a thing. Weld had his. Narwhal knew she certainly had her own.

But between too. Between Weld and his current girlfriend.

Breakthrough and the Undersiders had closed the gap, at least a little. But some fissures remained. Foil didn’t join Breakthrough, and she didn’t rejoin the Undersiders. Her focus was on the giant.

Narwhal approached, dismissing the damaged shield.

“How is your girlfriend?” Narwhal asked, to open the conversation and let Foil know she was there.

“Parian? I’m surprised you were keeping enough track of me to know. She’s fine now. She has to be careful when eating or drinking, but she’ll mend.”

“You should go to her. We don’t think this situation will change anytime soon.”

Foil nodded, but she didn’t budge.

“I can listen, if you need to talk,” Narwhal said.

“I don’t know what I’d say. Every time I’m faced with this stuff, I find myself less able to deal with it, get images out of my head. It takes longer to ease down.”

“Yes. When the feeling of your heart pounding and your adrenaline surging becomes normal, and the moments of rest or tranquility are the thing that you have to go looking for.”

“Not exactly that. Feeling freaked out. I saw the woman I love get hurt in a really grisly way. Because of March, in a roundabout way. And I’m worried that if I go see her, I won’t be able to stop seeing her get hurt. Does that make sense?”

“It makes sense. But you can’t avoid seeing her forever, Foil. Lily.”

Foil looked surprised at the mention of her name.

Narwhal gave her a sympathetic look. “We thought about recruiting you. We looked you up. It was determined it would be too antagonistic with a mid-tier power.”

“Tattletale?” Foil asked. She sounded angry.

“We can talk about options after if you want. Don’t hold it against Tattletale. Please don’t hold it against us. I’m distracting you from what you were talking about. You’re avoiding Parian?”

“I’m avoiding the reminder. It’s like… there’s all this stuff in the past. Bloody, messy, grisly. So much death. Parian’s helping her family and I’m helping her help them. Family’s important to her, and we’re getting them the last few surgeries they really need. But that’s bloody, messy, grisly too.”

“Do you feel like you have to?”

“Do I- what? I’d do it anyway.”

“But does it feel obligatory?” Narwhal asked. “They come as part and parcel with your partner. Does it feel like you have to, to keep her beside you?”

“But I would anyway.”

“Yes, because you’re heroic by nature. But it being something you must do makes it feel like a trap. A nuisance becomes a torture when you’re trapped.”

Foil shrugged.

Maybe the wrong approach.

Foil ventured, “All that stuff in the past, all that stuff going on in the background when we’re home, in the present, and then I find myself worrying… what if March comes again? What if I have to watch my girlfriend drag a baby out of her windpipe, or if someone does to her what happened to her family, or…”

Foil lifted her arms, then let them fall.

“You can’t control the future,” Narwhal said.

“I can, though. I can control what comes back home. I’m thinking about retiring, at least in the short-term. Just to get away from the grisly, messy stuff. Messy relationships and team dynamics.”

“That would be an awful shame,” Narwhal said. “You’re a good cape.”

“Thank you for saying so.”

“You should go home and take care of your girlfriend. Sleep, rest. This… this is scary, what happened tonight, the deaths and the damage, it’s horrific. But a good night’s sleep with someone you love will put a surprising amount of distance between that and how you feel about it.”

“Do you have that? Good nights of sleep, someone to hold?”

“No,” Narwhal said. She extended Foil an apologetic expression. “No. When I was in similar straits to where you are now, I chose not to go home. Then there was nobody to go home to. I got my power trying to protect someone and… I didn’t have anyone to protect anymore. I stopped being able to have quiet days. I don’t sleep without thinking about what I should be doing. I felt much like you seem to feel now, and I went on one more mission, because carrying on was easier than bringing it home.”

“It’s not like that. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Narwhal nodded. “I know. We’re different people.”

“But maybe if you’d gone home, then you would have found yourself unable to stop dreading the mess that comes tomorrow, and you would have found it all disintegrating.”

“Who knows?” Narwhal asked.

“I might stay for a while, just to be safe. Offer my assistance if anyone needs it.”

“I could order you.”

“You’re not my boss,” Foil said.

“But I could order you. I bet you’d listen.”

“I want to go after her,” Foil said. “Tell me you have leads.”

Narwhal was quiet.

“Please. I want her gone, so Parian doesn’t have to worry about her. So I can know that tomorrow will be…”

“Easier?”

Foil looked up at the Dauntless Titan. There were names being bandied around for it.

“Marchless,” Foil said. “But you were hinting that I would be making a mistake if I went on one more mission, even when I’m not, exactly? I haven’t been active lately. It’s been months. I feel like you’re painting me as an alcoholic when I’ve had a drink every six months and done fine. But if I take this one next drink, it’s somehow going to destroy me.”

“I’m painting you as an alcoholic because you just had a drink and you’re telling me you’re not fine. And you want to take another, now.”

“What would you do different, if you could go back?”

Narwhal took a deep breath. Slices of forcefield rubbed against one another.

“Sorry,” Foil said, “If that’s a personal question.”

“I wouldn’t go alone.”

Foil nodded, her arms folded.

Before the girl could open her mouth, Narwhal said, “I’ll phone you what we have.”

Foil was already moving, driven, “Thank you. I’ll go before the trail gets any colder, then. Thank you. Rachel! Hey! I need your hound, will you…”

Not what I meant by not going alone, Narwhal thought.

“Foil,” she said, her voice stern.

Foil stopped.

“You could die.”

“I know. But I couldn’t live with it if she does something anything like this again, and I could have stopped it. Either I stop or… I stop her.”

⊙

“Who did we lose?” Swansong asked.

“Tempera,” Antares answered. “Withdrawal is hurt. Finale is beside herself.”

“How’s your mother?” Swansong asked.

The question was loaded. Swansong and Antares’ mother had been at one another’s throats.

Antares didn’t immediately respond.

“You don’t have to say. I’ll find out some other way.”

“She’s going to Earth Shin,” Antares finally answered.

“Ah. I’m sorry.”

Antares shook her head. “It’ll either go well or it won’t. I have no idea what to say, whatever happens. But Amy knows enough to explain things to my parents, fill in the blanks.”

“Mm,” Swansong made a sound.

Antares turned her head skyward, hands up near her head, as if she were making a plea to the heavens. Except the heavens were largely occupied by the massive titan that loomed in the upper end of what had been New Brockton Bay, straddling the portal there. “I’m just telling myself that Lookout is happy, healthy, and with friends. The other kids are fine. Capricorn is intact. Precipice’s cluster members are in custody, he doesn’t have to worry about that. You’re intact again. We’re okay.”

“Sveta has Weld,” Swansong said, pointing.

Antares nodded without smiling.

“We made a good impact,” Swansong said.

“We made an impact. The Harbingers counted the injured and the dead. Thirty individuals bound for hospitals. Twelve are dead. Four of those are our fault.”

Our fault. Not counting me?

“Play imbecile games, win imbecile prizes,” Swansong said.

“I threw Etna and her stupid costume into a hill, and I didn’t see her recover. I didn’t overdo it, but… she could be one of the three that are possibly me?”

“I liked her costume,” Swansong said.

“Really.”

Swansong extended a finger toward Antares. “Don’t question my tastes. Flaming sorceress raiment over a long coat is perfectly acceptable costuming.”

“It’s so overwrought.”

“It’s wrought, and whether it’s overwrought or underwrought is a question of the person who wears it. She didn’t live up to it. Yes?”

“We’ll compromise by agreeing on that,” Antares said.

Swansong nodded, smiling.

“Harbinger Two told me that one of the dead is definitely me. I think the reason I’m thinking of Etna, the big question mark, and trying to put her face onto one of those bodies is that I don’t even know what the face of the guy I took down looks like.”

“Imagine a smashed pumpkin filled with hamburger patty,” Swansong said.

“Not funny.”

“No. But it’s reality.”

“It’s what I did to my mother.”

“Not the face. That was intact.”

“Uuuugh,” Antares groaned.

“She’s alive. She’ll live. That’s better than some outcomes,” Swansong said. “That the violence happened at your hands is something you learn to live with.”

“Do I want to, though?”

“Lookout’s content, Capricorn’s intact, Precipice doesn’t have to worry about his cluster for now, possibly ever, depending on how you want to resolve that…”

Antares sighed.

“Sveta gets to end the day hugging her boyfriend. I’m intact. The Navigators are healed and being cared for. Hopefully we’ve broken the back of this… stupidity that overtook the villains of the city.”

“Not stupidity.”

“Mania?”

“Pushback. I don’t know. This… thing, that was Dauntless. It’s like a giant nail stuck in the middle of things. It’s frozen the entire situation. We’re all so caught up waiting for the other shoe to drop that we’re back to where we were a year ago.”

“I’m happier than I was a year ago,” Swansong said. “So is Lookout. She’s not with her parents anymore. So is Precipice, I think.”

“Sveta?”

“Work on that. Focus on that.”

“Trying.”

“Good. Perfect.”

“And,” Damsel said, deciding to approach before this became any more saccharine, “You don’t need to worry about me anymore.”

“What?” Swansong asked.

“I’m going. I have the money, I have what I need. I’ll send my people to get my things in a few days.”

“You don’t have people,” Swansong said.

That irritated. Damsel bit back a reply, because appearance was too important here, with potential enemies and allies watching. Swansong didn’t have people either. Not in the proper, respectable way. She was so ruined by this whole dynamic that she would have said she was an equal or partner. A member of a team. But she was following orders and being subordinate to someone who had been the ‘coach’ just a little while ago.

“I will. Besides, it’s not like I can stay.”

“You could if you wanted,” Swansong said.

“I cut you. You won’t be able to rest easy with the knowledge that I could do it again while you sleep. You know I would.”

“I know who we are,” Swansong said.

“And if you think you’re safe sleeping under the same roof as her,” Damsel told Antares, “Think again. Keep your distance from her if you know what’s good for you. Because if you don’t splatter her against the wall, until there’s more of her on the wall than on the ground, then she’ll do it to you.”

“Enough,” Swansong said.

“Enough? Don’t you mean stop?” Damsel asked, archly. Her tone became vicious. “Remember? ‘Stop? You stop.’ Wasn’t that what you said to him, before you put a hole in his chest? I did have that dream, you know. And I say dream, not nightmare. That registered. Not any of the soft friendship, not looking after lonely little girls, nor scruffy teenage boys. That moment meant more than all of this put together, and you’re trying to pretend it didn’t.”

“You’re embarrassing us,” Swansong said.

“There is no us!” Damsel raised her voice. “Because I’d be disgusted to be grouped with you at this point. You want to talk about overwrought? You don’t live up to your own damned standards.”

“Hey,” Narwhal said. A forcefield appeared between Damsel and the pair. The material like a crudely cut piece of crystal or thick glass with the edges chipped to a razor edge, bearing a rainbow sheen. She stared into it and through it, and the reflection was distorted. if it wasn’t for the fact that the face she saw was standing alone, she could have thought she were looking through at her wretched sister.

She scoffed and turned her back on the scene.

⊙

Lights beyond the window flickered on. A soft alarm began playing.

May had to crawl out from beneath the covers and over Tori to get to the computer by the bed.

“Oh my god,” she murmured.

“If we hadn’t been interrupted, I could be the one saying that,” Tori groused. “What is it? You sound delighted.”

“We have company,” May said. She stood from the bed and she stretched, working every muscle in her body. “And eight minutes before that company finds me.”

“That company being who?”

“Foil and a dog. They’re sniffing around.”

“I’ll contact the others,” Tori said.

May moved her phone. She switched to a map icon, showing the location of everyone in the area. “They’re up. Take it? Confirm. They should start moving. They’ll be here in six, six and a half, seven, and nine minutes.”

“Then wait it out.”

“No,” May said. “No need. I have this. Dress me.”

“Hmm?” Tori asked.

“Like a squire, dressing her knight for battle,” May said. She bent down to kiss Tori. “Come on.”

“Dressing her knight to go romance someone else.”

“I’m a romantic, every interaction I have with someone has a flair of romance to it. You might as well ask water not to make what it touches wet.”

Tori muttered, “This interruption and the way you’re acting is making me dry up faster than the Sahara.”

“Don’t crab at me, baby. Come. Help.”

May kissed Tori passionately enough that Tori allowed herself to believe in the feelings behind the act. Reluctantly, she sat up, swung her legs down by the side of the bed, and picked up the articles of clothing that lay in a heap.

Undergarments, a semi-elastic sleeve of mesh backed by silk that extended from armpit to the bottom of the hips, then the long-sleeved top and leggings she had to roll up. May’s entire body was muscular, lean.

No. With the costume going on, she was approaching the threshold of becoming March, rather than May.

With this stupid vendetta-slash-obsession, she was well past that threshold. This was when she ceased being Tori’s May and became Foil’s March.

She was bitter, but she tried not to let it show. When March was going to battle, the wrong words and sentiments could put the wrong ideas into her head. There was that slim risk that a moment’s doubt at the wrong time could lead to a critical and terminal error.

Paralyzing.

But she’d known what she was getting into with May. She’d been forewarned and reminded time and time again. It was stupid to have any illusions.

With leggings and long sleeved top on, it could have been a rather plain skintight costume. The pants and jacket were next.

March, probably conscious of time, picked up her own belt.

Mask. Hat. March took the hat before it was placed on her head, performed a motion where it flipped in the air, and settled onto her head. Her hair was messy, and she had morning breath -more than morning breath-, but there was only so much time, and March was mindful of time.

Tori threw on a bathrobe so she would be covered, if not necessarily decent. On a level, being indecent felt like it was important, as if she could remind Foil of where things stood. She put on her coat but left the front undone, and stepped into her boots, following a few paces behind March, who exited. She reached out to tow the door to her hand instead of letting it close.

March spun on her heel, shooting her a wink, using her rapier to blow a kiss.

“No,” Tori said, impulsive, hating herself for saying it. “Take this seriously.”

“I take nothing seriously.”

“Not even me?” Tori asked.

“That’s different.”

“Then prove it,” Tori said, still hating herself. “You say she doesn’t matter?”

“Not in the short term. But a lot of things that don’t matter are still worth messing with.”

“Prove it,” Tori said. “Kill her.”

“But-”

“Or I’m walking away.”

“That’s silly.”

Tori remained silent.

“We’ll get to see how Ixnay’s doing,” March said. she flourished her blade. “Alright.”

Tori watched as March ventured down the street. The dog ran out from a nearby alleyway, stopping in the middle of the road. Foil followed it. As rumpled as March was, her hair in some disarray, Foil was crisp, hair straight. She didn’t look like someone who had been up all night.

No, not until she moved. Tori saw and delighted in the faintest sway, as the girl turned and dismissed the hound, bidding it to step to one side.

March had slept like a baby until the early dawn hours, and they’d languished in bed. As messy as she was, she was sharp mentally.

“You found me,” March said.

“There were sightings. The hound got me the rest of the way.”

“Perfect,” March said.

Foil drew her weapon.

March was the first to move. A dash forward, weapon thrusting. Foil’s weapon shimmered before it met March’s. A small, localized explosion marked the conflict between the two powers, each nullifying the other.

There was no attack, defense, pause here. March maintained the attack, one parry becoming a thrust in the next instant, every step of her foot an attempt to slip past Foil’s guard. She leaned back as the blade passed within a half-inch of her throat.

“Close,” March said. “Closer than I in-”

Foil stabbed, and March was forced to stop talking while she dodged the onslaught that followed. She found an opportunity to take two quick steps back, then returned. Instead of an attack that was parried or avoided, it was attack met by attack. Two rapiers, and for what looked like five consecutive thrusts, the tip of each rapier met the tip of the other.

Foil threw nails, augmented with her power, and March avoided them. March struck at the ground, sending power-infused dirt in Foil’s direction, and it detonated in the air. Foil turned away from it.

“One of my arms is pretty torn up. I’m doing pretty well considering-”

“Stop talking,” Foil barked the words. “I don’t want to hear your voice.”

March laughed.

“Don’t fucking laugh!”

Foil advanced, harder this time. March spun with every step, each spin seeing the blade catch at the ground as it passed her left or right and met Foil’s blade every time she faced Foil. Once, it seemed, while her back was to the woman. Foil sidestepped the dirt that exploded with scintillating colors, pressing the attack.

Tori’s hand moved. If she tugged Foil…

Foil threw more nails. March struck three of them out of the air. The fourth found its way to Tori’s middle finger, embedding it to the doorframe. Her knees buckled with the pain.

“Poor form!” March said, jovial.

She didn’t care.

Then Tori didn’t either. She used her power. A tug, to pull Foil off balance.

March’s swing was already underway. Foil hastily parried it, then fell, because she was off balance.

March hung back, waiting for Foil to get back to her feet. She glanced back at Tori, head tilted.

“I’m not going to end it there, but I am going to allow it. It’s fair play. You involve her, she involves you. Speaking of…” March said. Her sword flicked to one side.

Wind stirred a bit of snow around them.

Foil glowered, hand gripping her weapon’s handle.

“You did something clever. Did you assassinate my Megacluster?” March asked, voice light. She laughed. “No. I don’t think you could have. But you have a friend.”

“I hate that laugh.”

“You’re going to hear it again, you know. I adore this. This is what it’s all about, my dear. We lead lives that are nasty in the best way, brutish in the bloodiest way, and short in my case, because I’m just a little bit vertically challenged. Then we’re together forever.”

“You’ve said something like that before.”

“You know this, Foil,” March said. “Deep down inside. You feel hate because it’s a close emotion to love. But we are connected. We’re inexorably intertwined, in power, in mind, and maybe, hopefully, in body. You know that we’re going to end up together in the same way that you know how to put power into that metal rapier of yours, or you know how to move to utilize your enhanced accuracy.”

“Delusion,” Foil said.

“Reality! More real than any of this! I’ve seen it, how do you think I know cluster triggers as well as I do? I’ve seen the network, the landscape, and how it all fits together. I’ve seen the spots that are reserved for us. Homer’s already there. When all’s said and done, that’s where we go. To spend a few aeons talking and intertwining until we dissolve into a greater consciousness.”

Foil stopped, her rapier dropping a fraction.

Tori sank lower, head down. Her heart plummeted.

“It’s glorious.”

“That sounds like a nightmare.”

“You’ll see,” March said. “There’s nothing you can do to change it. It’s inevitable. You, me, Homer, together for a long enough time it might as well be forever.”

More snow blew. Foil threw a nail. March deflected it.

“Come on, don’t be childish,” March chided.

“If that’s true, then I can’t kill you,” Foil said. “I’ll have to trap you somewhere else, in another state.”

“Even Gray Boy’s famous bubbles will only last ten thousand years or so,” March said. “I asked when we were working on the ways to break the time effects. That’s like delaying an eighty year marriage by two days.”

Foil’s neck was rigid, hand clenching her weapon.

“Then…” Foil said, and she was clearly floundering. “Then I have to destroy you.”

“That-”

“You, March. Your identity, every inch of you that wants to talk, your personality, your understanding of english, every other language you could speak. You.”

March swished her sword a few times.

Foil’s head shook with the intensity of what she was saying and feeling. There was no swish to her sword.

“I’d rather become the kind of monster who can do that or who can hire people who do that than I’d go to this hell you describe.”

March looked over her shoulder at Tori.

“Guess you get what you wanted, Tor’.”

Foil lunged. Before Tori could do anything, the pair were out of sight.

Tori focused on her hand. She tried to drag her finger along the nail to the end, but the spike threaded through the bone. The bone reached the flared head of the nail, and it stopped.

She pulled, one half of her hand at the tip of the finger, the other half on the other end of the finger, split between the two sides of the nail. She hauled, screaming. Wood creaked but didn’t release the nail, and her flesh squeezed between the head of the nail and the bone until it separated out in every direction. The bone threatened to break, by the sheer pain of it.

“Whoops.”

Tori felt the pain at her throat, then the flood of blood washing down her front and onto her lap. Her one hand wasn’t enough to staunch the entire flow, and immediately, her thoughts began to go dark and fuzzy, like all of the buoyancy and light had just dropped out of her brain, leaving it dark and heavy.

She’d experienced this before, with the cluster. Bianca had done it to her. So had their ‘red priest’. It didn’t surprise her in the least that this was how she met her end. She almost, not quite, but almost found her peace with the realization.

She saw a glimpse of an arm.

“Marrrrr-” was her gurgling scream.

“Tori!” was the response. “Dang it!”

Tori saw the arm in shadows. Her second thoughts and resentments fell away like the blood from her slit throat. She did love May. She would-

She reached out, and she used her power. Only a pulse, whatever her power drew on physiologically, it needed oxygen and blood supply in the brain and she didn’t have enough.

But it caused a delay. The figure had just revealed herself, holding a bloody knife, a girl in a gray demon mask. Imp.

March stuck her rapier through Imp’s ribcage. Heart-on.

Foil’s headlong rush tried to capitalize on the distraction. Without turning around, March stuck the now-gleaming rapier beneath her armpit and backward. The explosion marked the conflict of the powers, and helped to push Foil’s rapier far enough away that she could put the weapon through Foil’s chest as well.

“Come on, Tori. Let’s get you looked after,” March said, as the pair fell to the ground behind her. “I suppose I’m going to have to kill their friends, because they’ll be out for revenge.”

Tori’s fuzzed senses heard March’s voice. “That’s not supposed to… be there.”

She forced herself to focus.

March, backing up. Two figures advancing. March tripped.

“It’s not the timing of my reinforcements that you fudged,” March said, as she rose to her feet. She stumbled a little on the retreat. “It’s the-”

Foil stabbed. March deflected. There was another thrust, and March met this one with a riposte. Her thrust extended toward Foil’s chest, and Foil met the tip with her hand.

From Tori’s side-on perspective, she could see how it worked. Harder to see head-on or from the wielder’s perspective. The blade grew shorter as it traveled. There was resistance as it met flesh, but the wound was relatively shallow. The blade didn’t extend out the back of the hand as Foil closed her hand around the guard.

Just as it hadn’t extended through the backs -or hearts- of the pair March had just stabbed.

“It’s the space,” March said.

There was no dodging or pulling away. She pushed power into the tip. Setting the timer.

The wound at the center of Foil’s left hand detonated, but the weapon had been compressed, the explosion was smaller, localized. Chunks of meat went flying, but Foil seemed to consider it worth the price. She returned the favor by stabbing March.

Tori let her head hang.

Foil spat.

“Spitting on her. Wowwww.”

“Deserves it.”

“Sure, not going to say no. But woww. Can we go get me my arm back?”

“Yeah. Let’s. And let’s get me a new left hand while we’re at it.”

Tori looked up, and saw the two walking away. The girl in the demon mask had her arm raised, waving off to someone distant. They whistled for the dog, and it padded by.

Tori thought of what May had said, about what awaited her, and allowed herself to recognize that Bianca would be there. As would the others.

The thought gripped her as the darkness carried her away. The warped length of a dropped rapier and the distortion of the ground around her reverted to normal, leaving only snow and blood to alter the ground.

Black – 13.1

For those who didn’t scroll down, you may wish to revisit Heavens 12.x. There’s more content after the ‘Previous chapter —- Next Chapter’ part.

⊙

My preliminary stretches wrapped up with a plank. It was hard not to flip that mental switch that would see me floating, because it was so automatic and so easy to do, especially when my feet weren’t so flat on the ground.

I made it thirty seconds, which was abysmal, but I could already feel the stabs of pain, and this wasn’t supposed to be the part where I tested my limits. It was supposed to be where I prepared myself to test my limits.

This wasn’t even the hard part, and I was already sweating. Not from effort, but the way my body responded to the sudden pain. I toweled off, careful of my headphone cords. The music that didn’t match my patient progress and slow, measured stretches was some ‘Goodbye Rock’ that Weld had picked up while touring worlds with Sveta.

I sat on the edge of my bed, and I worked my way through the stretches. Fingers laced together, the fingers of my left hand feeling where the skin at my right hand had a faintly different texture where it had been burned. I stretched my arms out, leaning forward until my abdomen muscles were as tight as they could be. I gently extended the stretch right, because that was easier, and I felt the knot of the bullet wound in my left arm. I extended the stretch even more gingerly to the left, until I could feel the stabbing pain again. I pushed through it, paying very careful attention to the pain and the shape it took. This was where the acid centipedes had sliced into me, and a tearing pain was worse than a ‘nervous system doesn’t know what to report’ kind of pain.

Five repetitions of that, straight forward, right, then left. Then I stopped. I wrapped the towel around my bare shoulders for warmth while I took notes in the notebook I’d laid on the other corner of the bed.

The notes accounted for one minute of rest.

I had another centipede gouge in my leg, and a scar on the bottom of the foot on that same leg. I shifted to squats, five reps of regular squats, testing what my leg could handle, then five reps of one-legged squats, leaning forward so I rested in a tiptoe position. Again, I had to remind myself not to fly to assist myself.

Notes while resting. Wrist flexes and arm rotations that involved shoulder and bicep movements.

More notes. My physiotherapist didn’t care about them, but filling out the book was something of a satisfaction thing. Like filing, or collecting all of my now gasoline-scented case files.

As nice as the apartment was, the cold had a way of leaking in. It had a way of leaking in everywhere. I was sweating from head to toe now, more from hitting limits set by the old injuries than from the limits of muscles, and it made me clammy. With my less injured arm, I toweled off again, more roughly than necessary for the sake of warming up and trying to jar my system from the ‘cold sweat’ response.

I picked up my weighted bar, cane-length, my hands at either end. I worked through the motions for that, bar from chest to straight out in front of me, down to my thighs, curled up to chest, then back out to straight out in front of me. I felt the stabs of pain at specific points during each movement, with the curl-ups in particular making my arm twitch like I’d been jabbed with an electric prod, but I was used enough to this to know it wasn’t a tearing, unhealthy sort of pain.

Three weeks of this. Three weeks of the physio, at the health building once a week and at home another thirteen times a week. Things were improving in some areas, but in cases like that curl-up arm jitter, I wasn’t getting that much stronger. Sometimes injuries happened where the physio wasn’t so much about getting better or getting over the injury, and it was more about keeping it from getting worse.

If I lived that long, I would potentially be doing exercises like these until I was old. For the rest of my life, when I got sick, I’d potentially backslide, and lose that five percent of progress I’d made over months of work. When the weather was bad, I’d feel the pangs and the tightness in the scars.

I penned in notes. Usual pain, fifteen sets.

After the bar was what I’d penned in as ‘fucking dips’. The second most colorful name I’d used for the exercises.

I put my hands on the bedframe, my back to the bed, feet out in front with my weight resting on the backs of my heels. It made my leg hurt, and holding my weight up made everything, even the bullet wound, hurt.

Again, not about strength, but what my injured muscles allowed me to do.

I was in the middle of the toughest part of lowering my butt toward the floor when my bedroom door opened. My hand slipped, my arm jarred, and I used my flight to catch myself before I crashed to the floor.

Ashley was talking to me. I only heard the melancholy rock music, and the notes of her voice. She was angry or annoyed. The two sounded very similar.

I took my time standing, grabbing my towel and holding it to my front, because I was only wearing a sports bra and pyjama pants. I took my time removing my headphones.

Her hair was damp, and she wore a black silk bathrobe.

“…What?” I asked her.

“Towels.”

“What about the towels?”

“Are you using the black towels?”

“Yes,” I said. “You had the white, your sister had the black, and she’s gone now, so I started using the black.”

“It fundamentally stands to reason I’d default to black.”

“Does it?” I asked. I debated if I wanted to argue the point. “I’ll use white from now on, then.”

“Good,” she said. She paused. “You’re sweating. More nightmares?”

“Physio routine.”

“Ah,” she said. She moved her hands, and the way she moved them was reminiscent of my wrist flexes. “We have about an hour before we go. Do you want tea?”

“Showering after this, then tea would be great. I’ll make breakfast.”

“If you’ll eat bacon, egg, and scones, I’m already working on it. I’ll keep it warm and put the kettle on when I hear you shut off the water.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Excellent.”

She stalked over- there wasn’t really a better way to put it with how motivated the movements were, and took the black towel I was holding. I let her, and she stalked her way back out of the room.

I rolled my eyes, returning to the damned dips.

Ashley returned, throwing a white towel so it landed on my bed.

“Thank you,” I said, grimacing as pain shot through my arm.

“Thank you for seeing reason,” she said.

After dips were leg lifts, lying on the bed with legs and feet out off the edge, touching floor, then extending straight up until I couldn’t anymore, then bringing knees to chest. Rinse, repeat. I did something similar with sideways leg-lifts, and then the pike pushups, which were worse than the dips.

I felt shaky and shitty enough at the end of it all that I wasn’t even sure I’d have the appetite to eat. I showered, used Ashley’s charcoal shampoo because mine was running out, and dried off, white towel.

I didn’t use a bathrobe, but instead stepped into my room and got dressed right away. A loose-fitting light gray sweater, dark blue jeans, and black leather boots.

I carefully packed my costume in a bag to minimize wrinkles, breastplate and recently redone decorations sliding into a sheath, with buckles and straps to keep it tidy and relatively inconspicuous. I slung it over my left shoulder, and headed to the kitchen. Swansong was at the table, a laptop sitting across from her, and she was tapping a cup of tea to the webcam.

A toast, it seemed. Kenzie was on the other end, doing something similar with her own cup. They were eating breakfast together.

The bacon and eggs were very simple, the scone was the bakery-made sort that Ashley liked to buy frozen and reheat in the oven, and she’d buttered it for me. The plate sat on a wire rack amid other blueberry scones, over an oven burner she’d set to ‘low’.

A little too warm to touch. I put my sleeves over my hands to move the plate to the table.

Ninety-nine percent of the conversation was Kenzie talking about her new team, that she was updating her costume, Amias went to her school and she’d talked to him, and Aiden might, might, might be attending since the Undersiders weren’t in New Brockton anymore and he had to go somewhere and, and and…

“Don’t let Chicken Little name the team,” I said.

“He’s got good taste, Victoria!” Lookout protested. I couldn’t see her.

“He thinks you’re neat,” Ashley said. “Proof enough.”

“Aww, but it’s not just me. He likes a lot of us. Especially Rain, he really looks up to Rain-”

I met Ashley’s eyes, and she met mine at that same moment.

“I saw that! The ‘knowing mom’ look. I’m disappointed in you. Rain is badass!”

“He is badass,” I conceded.

Which led to Kenzie going off on another ramble, just happy to talk to Ashley. Ashley nursed her tea, elbows on the table, both hands around the cup, smiling slightly at the screen.

“-and my costume leggings, I was thinking something fancier, I have a hundred questions for you guys about what I should do, I- let me check. Two hundred and three questions, whoops. I was thinking something patterned, and I wanted to add more decoration. Something skintight, but more over it, and more room to carry stuff, and, oh! I can project some of my favorite ideas and show you, but I have to set that up, and we’re meeting in-”

“Eat,” Ashley said. “No skipping sleeping, eating, or hygiene to work on your things.”

“But-”

“Eat.”

There was something of a merciful silence on the other end. I saw Ashley put her cup down, flexing her wrist while her eyebrows drew slightly together.

“Problem?”

She twisted her wrist and pulled her hand free. The socket was black with oil and simultaneously red with blood, a rod sticking out of her arm. “Bad connection. Feels numb.”

“Have Rain look at it.”

“He’s with Erin this morning,” she said. “Then we’re busy.”

“After?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh!” Kenzie piped up. “Victoria! I did the mask thing you wanted! You’ll have to remind me, and we can see how it looks.”

What I’d had was purely utilitarian. I was due an update.

“Thank you,” I said. “I hope it wasn’t any trouble.”

“Nope. Took ten minutes. And another twenty because I looked up the images you gave me to reference and I made a few variations so you could try them all on and see what you liked best, in case you didn’t like the first one. But you’ll have to pay me, since I’m not officially on Breakthrough anymore.”

“Will do,” I said.

“And for me coming today.”

“Of course,” I said.

We were drawing a stipend from the local government now, through Citrine’s husband. The money we were using to commission Lookout for her ‘low, low price’ was the same money we were giving every member of the team.

The chatter continued for another ten minutes. I cleaned up from the cooking, and then got everything together while Ashley extricated herself from the video call.

“Got your gear?” I asked.

“By the door,” she said, as she stepped into her boots.

Hauling my bag up onto the shoulder of my good arm, I got the front door. Swansong followed me, wearing a black leather messenger bag with her costume particulars packed inside.

We headed to our rendezvous. And to the grim business that would follow.

⊙

The destination was the new Wardens Office. Natalie and Kenzie were at the foot of the stairs as we walked up, Kenzie talking to Erin and Rain. Further away, Moonsong and Byron were perched on a bench, sitting on the back of the bench with their feet on the snow-covered seat.

Kenzie saw us coming, and ran up to Ashley. Kenzie wore an electric blue peacoat, navy blue pleated skirt, gray leggings, and navy blue boots. The pin in her hair was more abstract than I’d seen her wear before, something between a slanted eye and a fish, with a comma shaped pupil or fin in the center.. The clothes looked new, and something in the look told me she was trying to change her look.

Which, as with many things Kenzie, left me simultaneously hopeful and worried.

I left them to it. I passed Natalie, murmuring my hello, and I approached Rain and Erin. Rain wore a heavy jacket and ripped up jeans that he’d rolled up at the bottoms to keep from treading on with his heavier boots. Erin had an overelaborate shawl-coat that wrapped around and draped over her more than it seemed to be zipped up. It left some openings and gaps in coverage, which was probably why she wore the heavier sweater with it. They were very different in style, rustic and hypermodern.

“We arrived early,” Rain said. “And By was here already, talking to her. We didn’t want to interrupt.”

“There’s a lot to talk about,” Erin said.

I studied Moonsong’s civilian self. Pretty, with a beauty mark by her eye, lined up enough with where her eyelashes ended that it looked like it had been drawn or tattooed on. Wavy black hair, earmuffs, and a nice coat with a velvety look, a straight black skirt to the knees below it, and higher boots. Classy aesthetic.

Byron seemed like someone with a good sense, things matched, everything fit nicely, his jacket was a simple woolen one that came down to the belt, jeans slim, and while he wasn’t athletic in build like Tristan, he was trim enough that he cut a fine line. But good sense aside, he wasn’t the kind of guy who paid attention to fashion. I didn’t imagine he looked at magazines, researched, or visited different stores. He probably had one or two stores he liked and picked a suitable, muted color, Victoria-couldn’t-find-much-fault-in-it kind of wardrobe from the selection there.

He was resting a hand on Moonsong’s shoulder, and he took her hand. She let him, but when he let go of it to shift how he sat on the backrest of the bench, she didn’t reach out. There wasn’t any point that I saw where she touched him. No hand on his leg, no leaning toward him so their arms touched. And she looked down.

“Poor Byron,” I thought, accidentally saying the thought aloud.

“What?” Rain asked. “Why poor Byron?”

“She’s breaking up with him,” Erin said.

“They’re not together,” he protested, voice insistent but hushed so it wouldn’t carry. “They haven’t been together for years. And how do you even know?”

“The way I understand it, from how they’ve acted in the past, and from what I’ve heard,” I said. “They’re not together, but for a while now there’s been… an enduring connection. The two of them waiting for each other. That’s what’s ending.”

“Yes,” Erin said. “Exactly.”

“That,” I told Rain, “Is a goodbye. Carefully negotiated, because they expect to run into each other a lot, they want to make sure there are no hard feelings.”

“No resentments,” Erin said. “Everything on the table.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, Rain,” I said. “Pretty sure.”

“I was standing here satisfied because one of the two guys that’ve been most decent to me over the last little while was getting to finally spend some time with the girl he liked, and it’s been this awful thing all along?”

“Yes,” Erin said.

“No,” I said, almost at the same time. “I don’t think it’s awful.”

“He likes her a lot,” Rain said.

“Obviously it would be great if they could make it work,” I said.

“Ideally without her being shitty to Tristan,” Rain said. “But it was what I was hoping for.”

“You’re not wrong.” I leaned against the railing by the front steps of the temporary headquarters. “At least this way they get some closure. Not getting closure sucks.”

“Just watch,” Rain said. “He’ll finish up, come join us, and it won’t be a break-up.”

I raised my eyebrows, but I didn’t say anything.

Erin dusted off some of the snow that had accumulated on her. “I won’t get to find out. You’ll have to fill me in, Rain.”

“You’re going?”

“I should,” she said. To me, she said, “Had breakfast with Rain, ran some errands, and was keeping him company until everyone arrived. But I’ve got a thing with Lachlan.”

“How is he?”

“He’s not doing so well. He’s going through treatments to deprogram. It’s scary how easily some of these things can hit you, there’s no enduring it through willpower, there’s no taking cover, there’s no delay or chance to fight back. Just… there it is. Your mind is changed forever. And then fixing that takes years, if it’s even fixable.”

“Easy there,” Rain said.

“Easy? Oh. The Goddess thing, I didn’t even think. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not even that,” I said. “Something else.”

“I really put my foot in my mouth, then,” Erin replied, cringing.

“Nah,” I said. Hands in my coat pockets, I glanced back at Kenzie, Natalie and Ashley. Kenzie had her leg out, phone in hand, and every few seconds the pattern and colors on her tights would change. Natalie said something I couldn’t hear, commenting on the projected stocking design, apparently, and both Ashley and Kenzie began aggressively disagreeing with her. I cleared my throat, returning my focus to Erin. “Reality is, we thought there was no way around what was done to my head and my feelings. And we thought I’d be like that for the rest of my life. But things did get patched up in the end. I’m a little worse for wear, but I’m me again.”

“So don’t lose hope?” Rain asked, or stated.

I shrugged, looking at Erin. “There are options.”

“Good to know,” she said. “That cheers me up. I really like Lachlan. He’s sweet. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“He really doesn’t,” Rain said.

“Movie night, tomorrow or the day after,” Erin told Rain.

“Perfect. Great, yes,” he said.

“Good luck doing whatever you’re doing,” she said. “Bye Vic.”

“Bye.”

I watched Rain watch Erin go.

“Hating Lachlan a bit right now?”

“It’s supposedly not romantic,” he said. “And I can’t hate him. He was good to me when very few people were. Brainwashed, though. That makes it count a little less. But… he’s a really good guy and Erin was supposed to marry him after I turned her down. They lined it up, and it never happened. But now his family and the therapists are trying to get him out of that brainwashed mode, and Erin’s someone he listens to, because she’s kind of but not really his fiancee.”

“Yeah.”

“Besides. Forget Lachlan, Erin’s still dealing with a lot. Testimony from some of the Fallen came out through the courts, they were pretty open about stuff they pulled. Manipulation, covering up crimes within the compound, some of the stuff they were up to were things that I would have thought even more extreme people like my aunt and uncle wouldn’t be happy with. Her parents are…”

He trailed off, floundering.

“Taking it hard?”

“No,” Rain said, quiet. “Not taking it at all. Refusing to listen, shrugging it off. Saying there’s a greater meaning. Doesn’t feel like the right time, even if I had the balls to say anything on the perfect opportunity.”

“Seems to me like she’s spending all her time taking care of others. Managing her parents, helping Lachlan-”

“Helping me,” Rain said. “Great. Now I feel guilty.”

“But she gets the movie nights, right?”

“That’s for me too. Catching me up on everything I missed by being the little boy who was raised off the grid. The classics according to Erin.”

I considered for a moment.

“Which?”

“Uhh, Sixteen Candles, Oil and Vinegar, Not So Sweet Seventeen, The Lovecats, Metropolitan Girl, Ring Finger, uh, the live action Peanuts with the actress from Sixteen Candles as the red haired girl, ummm…”

“I’m sensing a trend. I’m pretty sure that the movie selection is partially for her own benefit.”

“I hope so,” Rain said.

“Those seem like comfort films to me,” I said. “The kind of thing you watch over and over again.”

He nodded.

“We should get you up to date on films of other genres, sometime.”

“I’m up for anything. I want to get caught up in everything, and get to where I know movies well enough I can recommend something Erin will like, or… just have a conversation without feeling like I’m a step behind. I’m tired of always being the one who needs help.”

“We’ll see what we can do. If you want to help, I know Ashley needs you to look at her hand. Don’t let her forget or pretend she’s fine.”

“Oh, for sure,” he said, distracted because he was glancing Ashley’s way and simultaneously paying attention to Byron and Moonsong getting up off the bench.

The pair hugged, and I saw Rain make a little fist, as if hopeful.

No, Rain, I thought. No.

The pair approached, and as they did, Byron flipped his hood up. He became Tristan, and the distinction between details like jacket, jeans, and frame were subtle enough that only someone looking head-on at their face and the hair beneath that jacket hood would notice.

“Thanks for coming,” Moonsong addressed our group. Her smile looked a mite forced, and she looked very much like someone who had had a long, hard conversation with someone else. “Did you let them know you’re all here?”

“Do we have Sveta?” I asked.

“She’s inside,” Rain answered. “I don’t know if she saw you show up and told people, but she’d probably say hi if she did, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll let them know,” Moonsong said. She paused. “Thanks for your patience, Tristan.”

“Yeah. No problem.”

She headed up the stairs. Tristan turned to Rain, eyebrows going up.

“Damn it,” Rain said.

“Yeah.”

“Sorry By,” Rain added.

“She’s pretty shaken up by what happened to her and her team,” Tristan said. “Re-evaluating. I won’t say anything more. Byron signaled he wanted to think for a bit.”

“But she’ll be here today?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Tristan said.

Sveta stepped out of the doors, though step was the wrong word. I was used to her moving with a bit of a stumble, rarely smooth or fluid, her mechanical body a constant balancing act, where every correction to reassert balance was a half-second to a second later than it might otherwise be. Not here. When she moved, it was more fluid than walking, with no bob of the head, only a natural flow forward. She wore her long gray patchwork coat, and a layered dress that just barely traced the ground. Her hands were ones that had been made by Rain, painted, and her hair was as styled as I’d seen it, with two thin braids looped around to the back of her head.

She beckoned for everyone to go inside.

I elbowed Rain, as everyone started forward.

“What?” he asked

“That’s you. You were being down on yourself, about how you always need help but never give it. But that’s the product of your and her efforts.”

“Yeah, maybe. More her than me,” he said.

“Punch him in the arm, will you, Tristan?” I asked.

I didn’t wait to see if he obeyed. I quickened my pace in heading over in Sveta’s direction. I floated and flew the last few steps, and gave her a hug.

“You look better rested than yesterday,” she said.

“A bit. I think Ashley felt bad for me, she made me breakfast.”

“Jealous. Weld tries, but I hate asking things of him, especially lately, when I don’t even have my body.”

Beneath her dress and coat, her body was unrestrained, not bound within a doll-like shell, and not bound by rings or loops. She was keeping it under control enough that the tendrils didn’t reach out, snap, or strike at the inside of the coat.

“You’re comfortable like this? Around people?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “No, I’m terrified. But that doesn’t have anything to do with ‘like this’. I could have a normal flesh and blood body, two arms, two legs, and be my old self again, and I’d be terrified every other minute that I’d accidentally kill someone.”

“I get that.”

“I know you do,” she said. She leaped forward and gave me a peck on the cheek. “I’m okay. Weirdly calm. Focused.”

“Are you keeping a journal? Like I suggested?”

“Yeah. You should see it though,” she said. “I have actual handwriting by the end.”

I reached to the back of her head, and leaned forward, gently bringing my forehead to rest against hers. Like we’d done at the Asylum. The only comfortable way of establishing contact with two people who weren’t freely able to move, one of whom was primarily made up of a face.

“I’m really happy I have that, at least,” she said. “I have arms, courtesy of Rain. They’re… not as good.”

“I know,” I said.

“But I have arms. And they feel like mine. And he’s trying to figure out how to emulate the skin that Ashley has over her hands.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Isn’t it?”

She smiled. “Come on. I feel better about this job than the last one.”

I made a face, but nodded. I followed her through the doors.

Inside, Moonsong talked to Anelace and Signal Fire. Behind them, Weld, Golem, and Vista were standing on the other side of a desk. Members of a Patrol I didn’t know stood by.

The floors were maple, lacquered, the walls stone and wood. the building was narrow, joined to the buildings on either side. Six paces cleared the width of the lobby, and maybe twelve covered the length. There were desks and booths for employees, rich wood and pretty, computers dark and phones silent, the employees absent. A stairwell at the back led to the upper floors, where business and meetings would be conducted, and a large semicircular window above that stairwell illuminated ninety-five percent of the space.

Three parahumans were bound, on their knees. A fourth was sedated.

I’d read the files. I’d seen the mugshot photos. They’d been given their masks back, and I was left to determine who was who by what they wore.

Two men, two women.

The larger and older of the men would be Drillbit. There were heroes who aspired to climb the ranks and achieve notoriety, and Drillbit was the inverse of that. Reputation didn’t matter and was something to be avoided and discouraged. He was street level and fought to stay street level, moving around to strike out and take down villains of the lowest rung. Somewhere along the line, he had developed a substance abuse problem. He’d targeted dealers to get a supply.

There was a woman who looked like she’d received plastic surgery enough times that things hadn’t held up. Her nose was too sharp and wasn’t straight anymore, her skin sagged by one eye. It was painful to see. That had all been pre-trigger. Her eyes locked on each of us in turn, pausing on me. She went by Sightly in the files.

Another woman was Copse. Woodlands huntress aesthetic, with an emphasis on fur and leather. She’d been a right hand woman for a powerful and obscenely wealthy animal parts trafficker and collector of trophies of endangered species once.

Happyland was the unconscious one. Young, by the looks of it, dressed in bright colors.

“We extricated the last of his victims?”

“Yes, we were careful. Called in a few thinkers and a breaker that could go in and out of that pocket,” Anelace said. “Hi Antares.”

“Hi ‘lace,” I said.

Happyland could push people into a pocket dimension where he was effectively god. Each person was allocated a small twelve-by-twelve-by-twelve foot square space, but whatever he desired, short of expanding the space, could appear or happen.

Kenzie was talking to a tinker. Ashley, standing by, raised a finger. Rain and Capricorn were still making their way in, filling each other in on their respective girl troubles, apparently.

“How are you holding up, little V?” I asked.

“Marveling at how well Sveta’s doing. I have a few other things to say, but they’re not for gentlemanly company.”

“Oh?” I asked. “Now I’m curious.”

“Too bad,” she said, grumping. Her heavy black eyeliner was visible through the green visor she wore, which let me see her eyes narrow. “Salacious details when we next hang out.”

“That’s doable,” I said. “But I hate unanswered questions.”

“Boys,” Vista said. “Weld, Golem, Anelace, Signal, cover your ears.”

“I’m going to walk away,” Signal Fire said.

Weld, Golem, and Anelace did oblige. Vista stepped closer, so it was her, me, and Sveta talking.

“The batshit bunny stabbed me, right? I telescope her sword, so it barely punches past my breastplate, she doesn’t realize. But it does punch through. I concentrate the point that’s supposed to explode into a smaller area and pull it away from me- screws up my breastplate. But that part that did stab me… can’t do anything about that.”

“I know this already,” I said.

“Filling in Sveta.”

“Thank you,” Sveta said. “Don’t feel you have to.”

“It’s fine. I’ve had three weeks of hospital visits and bandage changes, I’m grumpy, and grumping it out is cathartic, you’re giving me an excuse. So anyway, I did get stabbed, and with the angle, it scratches my tit. And that scratch blows up. Blew up pretty good, too.”

Sveta winced.

“It’s taken three weeks to mend, I got a good look today, and it’s another scar, and it’s going to be way worse than the scar I have on my other tit, from when Hookwolf pushed me away with a chainsaw hand. Fuck. Oh! I hope I’m not being insensitive-”

“No,” Sveta said, making a face. “No, that sounds ow.”

“For the record, it’s really, really jarring to hear you refer to your tits,” I said. “That tiny, small part of me still thinks about you as Vista the youngest Ward.”

“Fuck that. I earned my war wound, I get to bitch about it. I survived this long, I earned my right to swear and talk about tits and dicks, and how I just want to get my hands beneath one cute, unattainable guy’s heavy armor before I lose it.”

“Who? Golem?” Sveta asked, glancing to the side. Golem still had his hands to his ears.

“Once, kind of,” Vista said “But he’s been with his girlfriend since before he joined the Wardens. It’s a trend Victoria pointed out. Gallant, Golem, there was an old teammate who didn’t stick around. Your teammate, I met them…”

“Byron?” Sveta asked.

“Byron?” Vista asked.

“Capricorn,” I said.

“Is he the-” Vista made a gesture, inarticulate and random, distorting the air around her finger.

“I have no idea what that means,” I said. “But if you’re thinking of what I think you’re thinking of, you’re thinking of Tristan.”

“Then Byron is…”

“He has a girlfriend,” Sveta said. “But it’s a Romeo, Juliette thing, except situational, so they’re-”

“They’re not,” I cut in.

“What?” Sveta asked.

“Outside, just now,” I murmured. “They just broke off that undefined, waiting-for-each-other thing, I think. But we’re being mean to Weld and Anelace.”

“What’s he like?” Vista asked, while I motioned that Weld, Golem, and Anelace could put their hands down.

“Quiet,” Sveta said. “Thoughtful. He needs more people in his corner. Taking the high road, a lot of the time, it means you don’t have a corner.”

“And recently broken up,” I commented, under my breath.

Vista groaned.

“I overheard you talking high roads and no corner, and you’re reminding me of arguments I’ve had with Ava,” Golem commented.

“Don’t, no,” Vista pleaded. Her hand went to her breastplate. “You and her are so good together. Don’t spoil this.”

“We’re really good together,” Golem said, smiling. “Don’t worry. Arguments happen.”

Signal fire cleared his throat.

Impatient. He was from Advance Guard, and Advance Guard seemed to hold to this pattern of wanting to go. He was also, if I remembered right, one of Lookout’s trainers when she’d had a summer of Ward training camps. There had been issues.

We had business to conduct.

Everyone was here; for all our differences, and the schism between the two groups of heroes, we were able to cooperate like this.

We’d started out wanting at least one witness, but it had felt weird, and there hadn’t been enough to it.

By their files, I knew their deeds.

Drillbit had harmed himself enough with his addictions that he could no longer be trusted. The loop had repeated too many times. He wouldn’t get better and didn’t want to get better, and he would either engage in a cape fight while inebriated or drive inebriated on his way to or from a cape fight, and he couldn’t drive while brimming with enough chemicals to kill another man. He would get arrested, even cooperate sometimes, get pulled into jail, enter withdrawals, and break out, sometimes letting other prisoners free.

Without a place like the offworld prison Goddess’s attack had torn up, there was nowhere and no way to keep him. He was the one I felt worst about here.

Sightly’s power scarred people for life to make herself beautiful on a temporary basis. At her peak, she danced through combats, all grace and poise. At her valleys, when she was at her lowest point and more than a week without a victim, she manifested attack mutations. Raw strength, claws, and teeth in hidden places. Her track record of victims was almost enough on its own. Her recalcitrance when it came to getting help or seeking alternatives sealed the deal.

Copse’s master had no last-of-the-endangered-species to collect on this world, now that she was set up again. There were no rare animals, and so she had taken to sending Copse after people. Two of the three victims had had rare conditions, vitiligo and keratinous horns, and both had featured in a modeling shoot that portrayed the beauty in those conditions. The third had been a Case Fifty-three.

Copse’s master had collected them and kept them naked and contained in an open-to-the-sky garden prison, surrounded on four sides by manor, with windows looking in, so the master could always watch, treating them like zoo animals.

In the process of investigating and solving that whole situation, Foresight had found out that Copse’s master had ordered Copse to kidnap a son for her to ‘adopt’, five years ago.

The old woman had killed herself when the law caught up to her. Copse had been brought in. She was processed, taken before the courts for preliminary hearings, and given bond, which she paid. Less than twenty-four hours after release, she had been reaching out, pitching her resume, so to speak. Clear intent to recommit. Bond revoked, and… here she was.

And Happyland… simple enough. In our world he was a nobody, but he was a nobody who could snatch people up and disappear with them. They’d go to a pocket world of his where he had absolute power, and if and when they died, he left the bodies there, in a cell he never visited.

“We just going to do it in the lobby? I thought the box was upstairs,” Signal Fire said.

“It is,” Lookout said. “We can operate it by remote.”

“It’s weird to do it in the lobby,” Signal Fire said.

“Nobody around,” Ashley said.

“That’s just it. No judge, no magistrate, no court appointee. We have her, and I don’t even know who she is-”

He indicated Natalie.

“I’m nobody,” Natalie said. “I don’t matter here.”

Signal Fire looked dissatisfied.

“Right,” he finally said.

There was a tense silence. Gagged and bound, guns to their backs, the four prisoners knelt on the hardwood floor.

“Then… any objections?” Moonsong asked.

I’d already considered.

“Drillbit,” I said. “Doesn’t feel right.”

“He’s had five last chances,” Anelace said. “I get the feeling, but… what do we do?”

Signal Fire reached down, and he undid Drillbit’s gag.

“Death sentence?” Drillbit asked, his voice tight. He worked his mouth where it was sore from the gag.

“We’re sending you away. A world with nobody. You’ll be at least ten miles from the next person… but you should know anyone else that’s there… they were sent there because they were a problem.”

He looked so miserable, as he digested that. Face lined with hardship.

“It’s winter,’ he said.

“You go with a kit. Tent, food for a month, heating stove, supplies, tools.”

“You can make a promise,” Anelace said. “Convince us.”

“Can I?” Drillbit asked. “I can’t even convince myself.”

Silence followed.

“Or if you want to articulate it better, Antares,” Anelace said.

I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t even articulate just why this didn’t feel like it was the right move.

But I couldn’t think of an alternative move.

“Send me,” Drillbit said. “Don’t send any strong medications with me. It might be the only way I live out the rest of my life. I’ve hurt too many people.”

Kenzie nudged me, as a back-and-forth followed.

She had my new mask.

“You don’t have to stay,” I whispered to her. In case she was distracting herself from proceedings.

She shook her head.

I took my mask, and I tried it on. It covered my upper face, nose, cheekbones, eyes, brow. The projection clicked as it set into place. Lookout provided the hand-mirror.

“Antares?” Anelace asked. “Rule is, if any one of us objects to a prisoner being removed, we rescind it. And we have a pretty diverse set of people here. If this feels wrong, it feels wrong. But we need a decision.”

It was black, and faint lines and spires of gold traced a pattern across it. They would be faint beneath the shadow of my hood. The part over my lower face was some limited protection, but projected to be see-through. More projection was devoted to the image that covered the rather large eyeholes, that maximized peripheral vision.

They said justice was blind, but…

“Okay,” I said. “No objection.”

I saw Drillbit nod. He wasn’t gagged anymore, but there was no sound from him. No protest. If anything, he looked more at ease.

Not so, for the others. The two women grunted protests. Happyland slept, unaware.

No more objections.

Rain had the controller, and Rain was the one to hit the button, with Kenzie pulling his arm down to check settings before nodding.

The portal opened. A narrow, distorted doorway, in the lobby of the Wardens’ temporary headquarters.

“Happyland. Drug given, he should wake up in five with a hangover,” Anelace said. “Sent to spot H, for future reference.”

“Noted,” Signal Fire said, writing it down on a pad of paper that he’d laid on the unoccupied secretary’s desk.

Happyland was rolled through, and the portal closed. A moment later, it opened again.

“Copse. We are placing a tool in your hands. It should take you a few minutes to free yourself of your bindings.”

Copse fought every inch of the way. She ended up dropping her tool, and so the others kicked it through, where it disappeared into the grass.

“It’s three feet to your left,” the Patrol officer said.

Copse screamed through her gag.

The portal closed.

Sveta nodded, seemingly satisfied with it. Copse had kidnapped a Case-Fifty-Three. Let her master dehumanize him.

“Sent to spot I. Coordinates are in the logbooks.”

“Noted.”

The next portal ripped open.

“Sightly. Are you going to cooperate? If you lose this tool, your life over there gets a hundred times harder.”

Sightly didn’t scream or fight. Officers seized her by the armpits. Her head hung, and tears streaked down.

“I’m putting the tool into your hand. Cut the wrist-bindings that way.”

She nodded. She was helped through, and turned around to stare at us with one eye slanted by the skin that didn’t sit right around it.

The portal ripped its way closed.

“Site J.”

“Noted.”

Drillbit lurched to his feet without help. His head hung like Sightly’s had. He didn’t cry. His gag was off, and he didn’t speak.

When the portal appeared, he walked through it. Someone had to stop him from going too far, passing him the tool because he’d been so quick to leave. The officer stood on the far side of the portal with Drillbit, by the little four-foot cube of packed up supplies we’d already deposited there.

Drillbit didn’t look back or do anything except nod to himself, tool clasped in his hand, as the portal roared shut.

“Site K.”

“Wrote it in.”

“Patrol vans will leave as if they’re carrying the prisoners. Standard evasion, cover, shuffling the seashells approach. If there’s an attack, surrender immediately. This batch should be fine, I don’t think they had many friends.”

“Yessir.”

I exhaled, a heavy feeling in my stomach.

We’d chattered and chatted and talked drama and war wounds earlier, and now… now nothing.

Well, not quite. Kenzie was naturally the first to break silence, nudging me.

“You like it?”

It took me a second to process what she meant. I touched the mask and nodded. It worked.

“We should talk about pickup plans. Imp and Tattletale might be dropping me off sometimes- will that be okay? They want to coordinate.”

She was so casual. Her face was disguised, but it wasn’t smiling. Did she even get it? This?

“Okay,” I said. “I guess I’ve got that to look forward to.”

“We’ll talk about it after,” Swansong said. “Natalie will help broker any deals. Let’s go outside.”

Everyone filed out. Sveta went to Weld, Capricorn and Rain paired up. Moonsong hung back with Anelace. The Wardens murmured to one another.

It felt better, everyone being involved, making sure everyone agreed. The first few goes had been more rushed. A through G.

Natalie gave me a pat on the arm as she passed by.

“You okay with this?” I asked her. “Legally?”

“Legality doesn’t come anywhere near this,” she said. “It is what it is.”

“Is it?” I asked, quiet.

“A last resort, I think.”

“You didn’t have to come, you know. I think if… if I’d had a real choice, if I hadn’t helped set this in motion, I wouldn’t have. It would be easier.”

Almost everyone had filed out of the space, going upstairs or leaving by the front doors. Those that hadn’t that weren’t Natalie or me were by the doors.

“Would be,” Natalie agreed. “But I thought it was important that they have a witness.”

Black – 13.2

Our witness didn’t accompany us upstairs.

The building was narrow, joined to its neighbors, elegant but very freshly hewn, with interior brickwork that hadn’t yet had time to accumulate grime, floorboards that had been cut and lacquered less than two years ago, with no wear and tear to scratch or test that lacquer. Above all, it was a relatively narrow, small space for a superhero headquarters. Five stories tall, but it felt like it was half a floor wide.

Much of our group had gathered at the landing in the stairwell, halfway between floors. Breakthrough minus our human element, Vista, and Weld. Golem had gone on ahead to open the door. Projected lines and rectangles were visible from the stairwell.

“Oh, Victoria, you should know most of the rest of my team is here,” Kenzie said, and her head turned so fast that the blur of altered facial features and details didn’t keep up. “Chicken Little is here. Candy’s gone, but Candy’s on another project with Chastity and Amias.”

“Is it really a ‘project’ if she’s having a puppy day with her Aunt Rachel?” Vista asked.

“Shhhh!” Kenzie shushed her.

“It sounds top priority to me,” Tristan said. “We should all have puppy days.”

“Shhhh, stop. I’m trying to be professional here!”

“Professional,” I said. “Okay, you’re networked in?”

“I’ve been networked in by touch,” Kenzie said, responding very quickly and with a renewed effort, like she’d taken half of a breath and jumped straight to an explanation in her eagerness to play along. “We decided it’s important that if any of us are alone we should be connected to the others. Tinkers get kidnapped, especially valuable ones, and this is like a ‘find your lost phone’ thing, right?”

“Find your lost Lookout,” Tristan commented, smiling.

“Exactly,” Kenzie said, and I had the impression she was ignoring his amusement. “But I just switched on cameras and audio too. Cameras are working well but the audio’s not great. Ugh. Oh! Chicken Little just waved hi. I think he waved because the audio’s bad.”

“Hi Chicken,” Rain said, raising a hand.

“I figured I should let you know, you know, professionally. Like when you want to let the other person in a phone call know they’re on speakerphone.”

“Got it,” Weld said. “We’ll watch what we say and do.”

The headquarters wasn’t up and running, and part of the reason was that it needed facilities. We made our way up the second set of stairs to the second floor. Golem faced down a hallway of white lines and see-through floating two-dimensional squares, reached out, and touched a floating square, turning it ninety degrees.

As we stepped out of the hallway, a bunch of lines extended down the hallway, to targeting reticules that appeared around our heads and faces. I saw a flash of the characters for ‘Antares’, not written out and floating in space, but constructed out of rectangles and slashes that were arranged down the length of the hallway so that they only lined up to form words from my specific perspective.

“Aughh, distractions,” Golem said. He moved a floating panel.

The entire hallway flashed red, and every square and line received an outline of a larger, bolder red.

“Oops,” Vista said. “Don’t panic.”

“Shut up,” Golem said.

“Nothing like a threat of dimensional collapse to wake you up in the morning,” Vista added.

“What? The only dimensional collapse I’m at risk of is from you.”

“There’s a chance of one, I have to admit,” Kenzie said. “But there are so many zeroes after the decimal point that I think we’re safe. The chance of being struck by lightning and bitten by a shark and having a vending machine fall on you all at once is probably higher.”

“This is really distracting,” Golem said.

“I should take notes,” Kenzie muttered. She made a writing motion with her hand, paused, then started writing in the air. “Seeing people use my tech is a good thing to study.”

I noticed that her pupils were red.

“Red eyes?” I asked.

“I commented on that,” Ashley said.

“Yep,” Kenzie said, absently. “Yeah. We were thinking about a costume look, and red lenses and eyes were a part of it.”

“If not black, then monochrome,” Ashley said. “And if not monochrome, red works.”

“I like red,” Tristan said. “My costume, my power…”

“Green here,” Vista said. “Red is associated with too many bad memories. Green is like, ‘life here’.”

Sveta stuck out her arm. Vista smiled, reaching out to move the arm to get a better look.

“For the recod, red is stressing me out,” Golem said. He touched lines, moving them into a row. “We can’t have a twelve-character password, with numbers, letters, and symbols?”

“Three dimensional space has so many more permutations, which makes it really hard to hack, even with your usual hacky tinker device,” Kenzie said. “And I really wanted a hallway with lasers that you could duck and weave through.”

“You can laser-dance through this mess?” Weld asked.

“You have to be able to,” Vista said. “If you screw up right at the end, then you have to get out of there before the space collapses in around you.”

“Stop saying that,” Golem said. “I know you’re messing with my head to get me to screw up in front of everyone.”

“Theoretically you can laser-dance it,” Kenzie said, and her eyes glinted as she looked up at Weld, a mischievous look without a smile. She lowered her voice to a whisper, “It looks possible, if you have the right powers. But it’s not really. You get to the end and you end up standing in just the right place for the security apparatus to gun you down. Think you’re clever? Bam, shrapnel to the knees.”

“You can’t tell people that,” I said. “That’s the kind of thing that gets spread around.”

“But it’s fun,” Kenzie said.

“Not fun,” Golem muttered. “Stressful.”

Golem advanced down the hallway, moving things with a bit more confidence as he got going.

He reached the end. The lines fell away. Ordinary hallway. A portal ripped its way open at the end.

Kenzie moved her hands, bringing up a fresh panel, and shut down the portal. We walked down the hallway.

“Vista makes fun, but she keeps scraping by,” Weld said. “She tried to cheat too, last night. Used her power. Immediate fail-state. We had people come from upstairs and downstairs, weapons ready.”

“Perfect,” Kenzie said. “Drills and testing the security is useful, especially if it’s people we trust who are poking and prodding at the limits. My investment is protected.”

Her ‘investment’ was a cube that stood taller than she did, nestled in a side room in the second floor, perched so it rested precariously on a corner. It was onyx, with irregular panels of chrome metal that looked mirror-reflective, with edges that looked like they’d been torn rather than cut.

I hung out in the hallway with others while she did her routine maintenance, watching through the door.

Sveta settled in next to me. I bumped her shoulder with mine, and saw her smile, though she didn’t look my way.

“We need something like this for our headquarters,” Tristan said. “Something that makes it so that if someone tricky turns up, they’re faced with something so daunting the people who work there hate it, they pack up and go away.”

“If you’re paying I can try it,” Kenzie said. “But I’ve got a lot on my plate. At least it’d be easier the second time. Less time needed to figure stuff out.”

“Not lasers,” Ashley said.

“Wrought iron spike portcullises and pendulum blades?” I asked. “Can you make a dart trap sufficiently elegant?”

“Portcullises and pendulum blades would be tacky. You’re better than that, Antares,” Ashley said. “Pick one or the other, and yes, you can make a dart trap elegant. You need to have a particular shape, so it looks attractive even when half of it is buried in the wall.”

“I’m curious. What kind of shape?” Tristan asked. He created a orange mote that floated just past her fingertip, and moved it as she moved her finger.

I looked around, to check they weren’t doing the equivalent of playing with a lighter around smoke detectors and sprinkler systems. But the security system was disabled.

The hallway of projected images was a password that was unique to each individual, requiring a set arrangement of elements every few feet. The apparatus was sensitive to dimensional fluctuations and energy levels, and using the wrong powers in the vicinity either triggered an alert or, if the intrusion was imminent enough, opened a tear between worlds beneath the cube, so it would drop through into another world.

“Dragon poked at this?” Kenzie asked.

“Defiant did,” Golem said.

“Okay. Leaving him some notes. And one of our, uh, what did we agree we’d call them…?”

Kenzie trailed off.

“Finish your sentences,” Ashley said. “If you don’t focus you’ll spend more and more time zoning out.”

“Um. Supervising agents! Yes. She says the payment came through, so, um, I’m releasing the last few locks. Full access. If they want to copy it then they can, though I think they know enough to do it anyway, they’re at least being polite.”

“I’ll let people know,” Golem said.

“Thank you. We’re good. Everything works. One panel slightly misaligned where they took it off and put it back on, which is why we have the flaring at the edges and the noisiness of the portals,” Kenzie said, still fixated on what she was doing. “I left them some notes about that.”

“All of this from a camera tinker,” Weld remarked.

“I’m a dual-field tinker. I was almost starting fresh after we finished up the whole thing and I got started with my new team, after a week of disasters ruined most of my tech. I had some startup money, and I thought I’d make something that people really want. And what we all really want is security and access. Two weeks of hard work, scans of multiple portal technologies and keys we got from the bad guys, scans of portals and some other related stuff, and we have a cube that opens up paths between worlds.”

“We’re happy to have it,” Weld said.

She said it like it was her idea, but Breakthrough had had some input, and we’d supplied the bulk of the cash for materials to get her started. I only thought about it because Tattletale had hinted that her role had been more important somehow, saying she supplied the protection and transportation while Kenzie went to get her scans, but … I wasn’t going to play that game. Like two sets of parents bickering over who paid for what for a wedding.

Just… enjoy the damn wedding. Or in our case, our ominous black cube that tore open holes between realities.

By making something sought-after that served as a solution to a half-dozen major problems at once, she’d been able to multiply her start-up cash.

“Where are we going?” Kenzie asked. “Do I check on the paired cube?”

“Proper HQ,” Tristan said. “Yeah.”

“Does anyone else want to try the hallway?” Kenzie asked.

“Me,” Rain said, surprising me a bit.

“Got it, good, go for it. Back to the stairs, try not stopping or slowing down if you can. It’s okay if you fail.”

The hallway lit up again.

Rain strode down the hallway, hands moving, touching things without perfect confidence, then moving them more firmly once he figured out how to grasp or push them.

He made it to the end, when the thing immediately jumped to red oulines around the white projections, black around the red, and then the lights in the hallway shutting off.

“Oooooh,” Vista said. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Rain protested, in the dark. “I did that right!”

“You wrote down your password,” Kenzie said. She was briefly illuminated as lines and squares appeared around her. The lights came back on and the portal opened, less rough at the edges and not as violent a sound. There was daylight on the other side.

“I saved it as something I could pull up with my mask in an emergency,” he said.

“And if the cube can look at your mask’s memory and see the image files you have on there, then so can people who want to break in. They’d have to be your exact height and frame, with the same fingerprints inside any gloves you’re wearing, if you’re wearing any, and the same retina scan, and-”

“It would have to be me,” Rain interrupted.

“Yeah. The idea is they’d have to be you and they’d have to know what you know when it comes to the password and they’d have to meet some of the other context checks, which is complicated and messy to get into, but you know, don’t shake up your schedule too much on any day you’re paying a routine visit, or send messages to people you don’t normally talk to, or-”

“I get it,” Rain said.

“I’m changing your password. Hang back and wait until everyone’s passed through, it’ll flash the images in front of you. Everyone else, masks and helmets on, or flip your projections on.”

As she talked, red dots appeared around her face. I would have thought Capricorn was using his power, except his dots were more orange-red, and these motes of light expanded into discs, while white and black crept around Kenzie’s face and head to form the helmet’s design. She didn’t have her hair in buns, but the helmet projection seemed to assume she did, and covered up the lower ends of kinky hair that was parted and set in place with a combination of hairband and hairclip. Her costume gradually covered her body too. There were places the clothes extended beyond the projection, and those places were blurry, like bad artifacting from video compression, but it worked for the most part.

Sveta had a mask that curled at the edges, tendril-like. Not much of a change, and kind of pointless, but we’d decided to focus a bit more on formality. She’d liked designing it with me. Rain had his old costume at least for today, with a slightly updated tech-style mask that encapsulated more of the sides of his head, a serrated kind of edge around the perimeter, almost like it was damaged, but in a sculpted way that wouldn’t look cheap.

Tristan’s armor was recently repaired and updated. The changes were minor, with a focus more on the application of layered washes. A dark wash had filled in the grooves and made the designs in the armor pop more, while a red wash gave the armor more of a tint. It was the kind of thing that was easy to miss.

We passed through.

The building we were exiting was small and somewhat narrow, and as of right now it was largely understaffed. This was the real headquarters. A building still under construction that would be impressive when finished, despite the fact it wasn’t being made to impress in the same way the old Wardens headquarters had been.

The real impressiveness came from the two Dragon craft that were set in close proximity to the building, one on a hill off to our right, and another-

I floated a bit as I turned one-hundred-and-eighty degrees around. It loomed over the portal, weapons bristling.

“Welcome to the bunker,” Weld said.

There were times when security or fortification suggested confidence, strength, or power. That you had money to spend on the extra security. That you were unassailable, untouchable. I suspected it was the atmosphere the Wardens wanted to cultivate, by the time they were done. I could even understand the logic, that a fault in security at the earliest juncture could be the flaw that they paid for later down the line.

But I didn’t feel like this was confidence. I didn’t feel like that the logic drove this more than the feelings did.

The grass was dusted white, and the sky was gray, and the building was poured concrete, making for a fairly grim picture, prefab walls and the spikes of metal that the walls were being fit to, holes in the walls matched to the spikes and then lowered down, where they would click into place. The expansive lower floor was already mostly done, with clear glass walls giving us a view of the interior and everything else was being built around it while people worked. Yellow slashes of paint on the ground delineated construction zones where it was dangerous to be, and people navigated them. For how much there was going on, it was fairly quiet. Only the hum of idling engines, and the creaks of cranes, the periodic crunch as two pieces of building fit together.

Inside, there were a few scattered members of the four big hero teams amid Wardens and a fair few regular people who were covering jobs ranging from construction to doing paperwork while standing beside desks without chairs.

Kenzie saw Dragon and started sprinting forward.

“Lookout,” I said.

She stopped.

“Stay in sight.”

She looked between me and Swansong, and Swansong nodded.

“You don’t trust them?”

I would have made a face at how undiplomatic it was to ask that question when we had Wardens in our little group here. I remained stoic. “I think I’ll worry about you in any new situation.”

She groaned. With the excited run forward and now this, she wasn’t really holding that firmly to the professionalism thing.

“Technically you’re contracted out, and we’re partnering with your team. Part of our end of the deal is to guard you.”

“Got it,” she said. “I know you have things to do. Will someone be my escort?”

Sveta and Tristan agreed at the same time.

We decided to go over as a group, since it was more or less in the right direction. Delaying the task at hand. While we walked, Sveta and Tristan agreed they’d watch Kenzie together. Sveta no doubt wanted to because it meant spending more time around Weld, and Tristan… Tristan was harder to say, but he seemed to fit in well amid this general level of hectic energy, hustle, bustle, and cape aesthetic. I could imagine him working at a place like this for a full day, ongoing construction included, and not being any worse off.

There was a command center in one corner, with Dragon and Defiant standing by a wall of monitors. Multiple consoles and desks were arranged in a haphazard quarter-circle around that wall of monitors. Each person with a task.

Lookout went straight there, accompanied by Capricorn and Sveta. Weld and Golem followed them.

Rain slowed in his pace as we passed the corner where stuff was piled up but still not organized for a branding or costume maintenance department, one I suspected would be relegated to an upper floor. There were concept sketches, color swatches, textile swatches, and framed pictures of collected images I wouldn’t have been surprised to see at a tattoo shop- but they weren’t for tattoos. Or at least I hoped nobody was tattooing on their costumes.

“Foresight did promise us help with updating costuming. We never got a chance because we were so busy,” I told him.

Rain turned my way.

“For your mask, I sort of like that. Second frame of images, middle top. It’s hard to pull off in a lot of costumes, but if you’re doing the glowing mask symbol…”

He held up his phone. I looked over his shoulder as he took a picture of it, confirming he had the right image.

“Isn’t that too busy?” Rain asked.

“What?” I asked him.

“With the circuit board look?” Rain asked.

“No. Instead of. The circuit board look is…” I tried to find a way to be diplomatic and struggled.

“Puerile,” Swansong said.

“Huh,” Rain said. “I’ve been kicked in the ribs and it didn’t get to me as much as hearing that one word. I don’t even know what that means, exactly.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s puerile,” I said. “It’s… it’s like stripes. You can make it work, but it’s most often going to be something you work with or build on. Less what you want for a mask unless you want to play it up.”

“Huh. This is going way over my head. But it’s sure great to know I’ve had a stupid costume all this while.”

“Not stupid,” I said.

“Basic,” Vista volunteered.

Rain turned around, looking around until he spotted Capricorn, Lookout, and Sveta. “I think, uh, I’m going to go over that way. Leave you guys to it.”

“You’re fine,” I said. “A lot of costumes are miserable. You’re better than average.”

“I like how you weigh that. There’s a lot of suck out there, so the average is lower than I’d think?”

“You’re better than average,” I stressed. “And we can do better still.”

“Sure,” he said. He held up the phone, the image there. “This? What color?”

“Silver. And if you can do eyeholes or the general shape of eyes, that’d be great.”

The image was of a fissure or crack, like what one might see spiderwebbing across concrete.

He fiddled with his phone and the image.

“You don’t have to do it now,” I said.

“I have three people I respect telling me I’m not cutting it, and we have this talk coming… I’m going to be self conscious now.”

“Walk,” Swansong said, taking hold of his shoulder. “Let’s go. We’ll give you a look that matches what you have inside.”

“Why do I feel like I’m being insulted?” Rain asked.

“You’re not,” Swansong said. “You’ve showed muster. The mask may be puerile, but masks can be changed, but what can’t be changed is you’ll always know you had something sterner inside you when it counted. Humiliation may be the worst thing-”

“This is the worst thing now?” Rain asked, looking to Vista, as if for help. “Humiliation?”

“Even small humiliations,” Swansong amended.

“Okay, well, great. I’ll walk.”

“Walk and change what you want to change,” Ashley said. “Fiddle with your phone, upload to your mask, do what you’re going to do. I’ll steer you. I’ve done it enough times while walking with Lookout. Not that I need to do it with her anymore.”

“No?” I asked.

“New mask features, when she’s wearing her mask. She can watch what she’s working on while another set of lenses watch the road, another set watch behind her. There’s no need for a guiding hand.”

Our path took us down the side of the hill the Dragon craft was perched on. Its head followed us as we walked, which was ominous.

“How long until this kicks off?” I asked.

Ashley tossed a stone decorative dart into the air, catching it, then threw again, as we worked our way down the path and around the hill. Her other hand remained on Rain’s shoulder, holding him steady as he set foot on a rocky spot. He kept half of an eye on his phone.

The building had been built and set up a little faster than the ground floor of the ‘bunker’. It was built with two hallways, each lined with cells that looked to be glass or plexiglass with steel framing and wire mesh laid into the transparent material. There was room for maybe twenty prisoners, but walls had been folded back and things stowed to the side in compact form. It meant the four prisoners on the side we could see had cells with no adjoining cells. They were perpetually watched from two or three sides by capes and officers.

These would be people being held for processing or questioning. To a degree, the restraints and watching wasn’t as necessary as they might otherwise be. There were a lot of capes present on this world, and the only way out was both guarded and required the right means of getting the portal open.

Through the clear exterior wall at the front of the building, with only slight blurring because of the wiring, I could see Love Lost. She was bound with arms in a modified black straightjacket with ‘Villain’ down the right arm and at the left thigh where the skirt of it hung down, a hoop of a collar very loose around her neck, to the point there were a good three inches separating it from contact at any point. A simpler, stainless steel version of the molded mask that had covered her face, with no decoration except for a blinking light right around where the right corner of her mouth would be, and a hole where the left corner would be. A plastic table sat to her right, with a few things on it, one of which was a plastic shake bottle with a straw built into it.

She leaned forward to find the straw and maneuvered her head to slide the straw into the hole in her mask. Whatever she was drinking, it looked thick, and creamy-green.

Gundeck and Solarstare were sitting where they could monitor her.

“Did you talk to them last night?” I asked.

“No,” Rain said. “No. My night, and then we were all there. Cradle, Love Lost, and Colt. I tried to talk and nobody was really up for it. Cradle didn’t move from where he woke up. Love Lost paced and ignored me. Colt made small talk but only if I pushed for it. If I didn’t push there was silence, and I didn’t push. The tokens dropped and nobody really bothered with them.”

“Has it been like this every night?”

“No. There were times I talked more with Colt. There was a time where she didn’t even seem to get it, like none of this mattered or she didn’t realize how much trouble she was in. She talked to me until Love Lost got annoyed with her. Then she seemed to clue in, about a week ago, did this silence thing. When she talked to me again, it was to ask me to talk to her parents and see if they’d go to her trial.”

“I thought I saw them,” I remarked.

“Yeah,” Rain said. “They went. But what can they really do except go? And Colt got a bad outcome yesterday and… I don’t know how things will be today.”

“And Love Lost?”

“Doesn’t talk. But there was a time a bit ago when she looked at me.”

“Looked?” Vista asked.

“Looked. Head to toe, like she finally saw me and not some nebulous enemy.”

“Want to give it a shot?” I asked.

“No,” he said. He pointed. “But first…”

He hit a button on his phone.

The mask he wore changed, replacing the inlaid image of the circuit with a fissure with a silver glow shining through from beneath. His eyes were small and narrow.

“Bigger eyes,” I advised. “Without eyelashes or anything else, just showing what you’d normally see with eyelids in the way, it looks too narrow.”

“Sinister,” Vista said.

“And not in the good way,” Swansong advised.

“You guys are harsh,” he said.

“Here,” Vista said. She manipulated the dimensions of the eyes, glancing at Swansong and I as she adjusted, looking for input.

Swansong wanted more of a slant, but I opted for something more open and friendly.

Rain took a photo of his own face, then adjusted the settings.

From where we’d stood, we hadn’t had a good view. Our target cell was a little further back.

Colt was in the other hallway, one of three junior prisoners, and she had been separated from Love Lost by a hard, opaque wall that divided the building in half. She had a similar collar, as well as bracelets that were actually fit to her wrists. No straightjacket, no mask, just a faded sweatshirt and sweatpants, both printed with ‘Villain’.

I only recognized one of the heroes. Stonewall, with a fellow hero keeping him company. Stonewall had stone armor, which he wore even while sitting and eating. It was stylish and looked heavy as fuck. The kind of protection that didn’t make him look insecure. The kid had a skintight two-tone costume with a stylized leaf emblem on the front, and a jacket that didn’t match, that suggested he wasn’t suited up for the colder weather. I hoped the Wardens would look after him.

“You should run along, Reed,” Stonewall said. “Good talk.”

“I guess, and yeah, good talk. Thank you, sir.”

“There’s no telling what’s going to be classified,” Stonewall said.

“Yeah,” was the response.

Rain walked over to the cell, and Colt rose to her feet to stand across from him.

Stonewall got up, chair creaking, and walked down the hallway a little ways. He gave Vista a pat on the shoulder as he passed her.

“Was that Reed the Second?” I asked, before he was out of earshot.

“Third,” Stonewall said. “I don’t think it’s a lucky name to take, but they hear he was one of the first Wards and they feel an attachment to the name.”

I nodded.

Stonewall walked on, footsteps heavy enough to make the building’s floor shake. A pen on a desk spun slightly on its fulcrum point.

Rain drew in a deep breath and sighed.

“Yeah, invisible walls,” Colt said. “I go from one cell to another. You won, you’re free.”

“I- no,” Rain said. “I don’t feel that free.”

“Enjoy it,” Colt said. “It’s better.”

A bit of a non sequitur, like she wasn’t listening to anyone but herself.

“I need to do more. Not to make up for what I did- I don’t think I could, but… there’s an obligation,” Rain said.

“I don’t think she has the slightest clue what you mean,” Swansong said, quiet.

“Hi Damsel.”

“Swansong now.”

“Pretty,” Colt said. “I liked you, you know. I thought you were cool. You had good stories, and you were someone I kind of wanted to be like.”

“Thank you. I liked you too.”

Rather than interject, I remained quiet. I was very curious if the use of ‘past tense’ had anything to do with perceived betrayals or upsets.

Colt shrugged, glancing at Rain. “I do get it, you know. Obligations suck.”

“You’re proving my point, if that’s how you sum it up,” Swansong said.

“Maybe give me a chance to get through to her?” Rain asked.

“You’ve had twenty-one nights,” Swansong said.

“Less of those nights than you’d think.”

“You’re a little scary, you know,” Colt said, to Swansong. “Unpredictable, but I was happy to stay in the background and listen in.”

“Thank you,” Ashley said.

Colt seemed satisfied with that exchange. She looked at Rain. “I lost my court case. Guilty. Sentence T.B.D.”

Was she drugged? In shock?

“I was there. Back row, with some of my teammates,” Rain said.

“They stuck us here, Cradle was here too, for a little while, but they wrapped up his court stuff faster. They had him in a blindfold and a straightjacket, I think like they did with Love Lost.”

“Mask for the lower face, no blindfold,” Rain said.

“Why are we here?” Colt asked. “Why here specifically? The view is nicer than any prison… I can see the outdoors, the wind. They treat me okay, but… I’m really confused.”

“Your lawyer should have explained it,” I said. I hoped I wasn’t intruding.

“He did. Three times. But the first time I didn’t realize it was important, the second time there was a lot of stuff going on and he sounded exasperated. The third time I had just heard the ‘guilty’ from the jurors, there was commotion, people were shouting, and then I got pulled away. Even if it was quiet, I’m not sure I would have got it. They showed the photos in the morning and it was all these body parts and all this blood. They read this testimony and I could barely hear anything for most of the rest of the day… I felt so sick with stress and I could only hear the sound of my own heartbeat and blood in my ears.”

“They’re keeping you here while they decide what to do with you,” Rain said. “You could go to a jail, if they find room, or we could look into alternative options. If you want to get a good result, now would be a really good time to tell them something useful.”

“Anything about Love Lost or her henchpeople we didn’t catch. Anything about a greater plan,” I said.

Colt shrugged. She looked lost, miserable, and lost, in that order.

“Alternatives,” she said, nearly at the point of being inaudible, like she was just catching up.

“What?” Rain asked.

“Alternative options? If I’m not useful and there’s no room in prison, what happens? Is it like… a firing squad? You wouldn’t actually.”

“No,” Rain said. “Sending you away.”

“My parents wanted to send me away. Either I helped the family business or I went away to a strict school. They have some of those now. And I talked to my cousin who got sent there, that’s where my parents got the idea from, and she said there aren’t any regulations, so they beat you, withhold food, make you run laps. Cold water for showers only.”

“They were trying to scare you,” Swansong said. “I’ve told you this.”

“I thought about it. I’m not sure. My cousin talked about menstrual products, said the girls were never given enough. But they weren’t allowed to use too much toilet paper either. That doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you think of right away, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“If anything, it might have been a real shortage,” I said. “If she attended over winter.”

“None of this really feels real?” Colt said, very quickly, her voice keyed up in an odd way, like she was trying to wake someone up. “What happened yesterday with court doesn’t even feel like it was yesterday. And the only answers I get from people are vague.”

She sounded half the age she was.

“Did the people here drug you?” Rain asked, going straight to the same possibility I’d guessed at.

Colt shook her head. “I’m being sent away, and I don’t even know what that means.”

I cleared my throat, to let others know I was about to launch into an explanation. “We send you through a portal. We give you everything you need to survive, and the ability to use your powers. At scheduled times, we check on you. But those times may get more spaced out, if you settle in, if you’re healthy and safe. That’s if they decide on that. If we decide on it. Then when your sentence is done, we pick you up again, assess you, figure out if you’re able or ready to rejoin society. Hopefully by then we have the tools to handle it.”

“I think you’d still be in the dream room,” Rain said. “I’d see you every night, and if you had an emergency, I could send help.”

“I’m getting kind of panicky,” Colt said. “What can I do?”

“Talk,” Swansong said.

“I don’t have anything to say. They didn’t fill me in. They offered to let me go and I think now maybe they meant it, because I didn’t know all that much that was useful, and I wouldn’t talk.”

“Can you think back to what they said? Did Nailbiter have a location she liked vacationing in or visiting? Did anyone talk about family?”

Colt shook her head. “I can’t go home?”

She didn’t even seem to get it. Was the disconnect because of something more abstract? Her power?

“You collaborated in chopping people up,” Swansong said. “In chopping me up. You broke a cardinal rule and spilled your guts to the arresting officers and capes, they used that in the trial.”

“Anything about the Kronos titan?”

“No. I think that was a surprise. But I wasn’t really paying attention when it came up. Its hard to picture it as a real thing instead of some joke or story. Did he kill many people?”

“He hasn’t budged,” Rain said. “But the Simurgh is on a corner world right now and she flew to him. She’s staying on his shoulder, in that world.”

“He’s a living portal,” I said. “Except instead of passing things through doors into other versions of Earth or into distant places, it’s just… Dauntless energy coming through the portal, feeding into him. We had to clear a good long distance around him because apparently portals act to broadcast, scramble, or act as a lens when it comes to power signals. Possibly including hers.”

“You played a part in making a hell of a mess,” Vista said. “Some friends and acquaintances of ours got killed and hurt.”

“Let me help then,” Colt said, and when she stared into my visor there was a clarity that hadn’t been there before, like she had focused on me for the first time. Kind of like Rain had explained Love Lost doing, but without a year of being ignored or seen as a monster as lead-up.

Seeing someone as a monster. I made note of that stray thought. It was easier to relate to him if I put things in those terms.

“Information is the only help you can give.”

“Can I fight? Because I don’t know anything. I can- can I do volunteer service? Join the heroes?”

“The Navigators were chopped up by people you helped and supported,” I said. “They flew under the radar as a hero group before, but when we all heard what happened and realized there wasn’t a single bad thing we could say about the Navigators, that they’d only ever done good, that made it that much worse. People are resentful.”

“I could join you? You could give me a chance.”

I didn’t move. I waited, while Rain remained very still.

Rain shook his head a small fraction, but he didn’t say anything.

“No,” I said, so he didn’t have to. He had to see her every night, and if he was the one to refuse her, then her anger might find root and fester over nightly recurrences.

“But Damsel of Distress likes me, and I know you guys have committed crimes.”

“It’s Swansong, not Damsel,” Swansong said.

“Punishments pending,” Rain said.

“Pend mine! I don’t know how to… I don’t know, build a house with a pile of wooden slats, or cook, or hunt or fish. I’ll die.”

“We’re more resilient than you think,” Swansong said.

“What if- I can talk to the doctors I talked to earlier? They asked questions about my health, and questions about depression and anxiety, and… what if I give different answers? They couldn’t send me away then.”

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” I said. “You can’t change the answers you already gave.”

“But-”

There was clarity in her fear, because somehow things were finally setting in. Her responses were a little bit quicker, more like she was actually listening to what others said.

“The judge gave sentencing guidelines,” I said. “Three and a half years. There’s a very real chance we don’t take the extreme measures, but it’s up to the capes to decide, because it’s the capes that are dealing with parahuman containment right now. If we don’t send you out to this other world for three and a half years, we put you in juvenile prison for three and a half years, and you wear a kit like you’re wearing right now to keep you from turning Breaker.”

“I don’t want to go to prison either.”

Rain slammed a hand against the glass barrier. Colt jumped like she’d been the one hit. The other two prisoners in the hallway jeered.

“Careful,” Stonewall said, his voice carrying.

Colt stared at Rain, who stared at her, his fist still resting against the glass. The glass was uncracked, but his mask had the stylized one running across it, through the one eye and up to the top corner.

“Let it go, Rain,” I said.

He pulled away, turned his back.

“I never really gave you a hard time about it,” Colt said.

He didn’t look at her.

“What you did. I could’ve hated you like they did, but I didn’t. I tried to be civil, I listened when you talked, mostly. I know I did some bad stuff, but so did you. If you get punishment pending, and you get to try to show you’re decent in the meantime, then why can’t I? Because it’s fucking personal?”

She almost sounded like the girl I’d first seen over Kenzie’s surveillance video, yelling at her mom, siding with Nailbiter, running away to go join the villains.

“I have remorse,” Rain said, half-turning. “I’ve tried to recognize what I did. To show that with my actions every step of the way.”

“How long did it fucking take you to get there? Because I’m not getting the chance.”

Rain turned away, and walked away.

About two steps. He stopped.

“Are you trying?” Swansong asked.

“Was he, after three weeks? Because I heard Cradle talk about some of it, when he was talking about the info he got on your team, and about Precipice specifically. It didn’t sound like it.”

Rain clenched a fist in front of him, then put it in his other hand, cracking the knuckles audibly through his gloves. He was stiff.

“Your choice,” Swansong said, as she walked up to Rain, their arms touching, her chin high. She was quiet as she said it. “Do you want to help her?”

“I thought we could be allies at first,” Rain said. “But now I think I despise her. She acts like we’re the same, but… she didn’t grow up like I did. She had a life I would’ve loved to have. I didn’t get a choice in how to think until it was almost too late, and I made the wrong choice, not to help those people. She-”

“-didn’t take enough opportunities to think for herself, maybe,” I said. “And this is how she ended up.”

Again, he cracked knuckles.

“I’m not advising you either way.”

“Not in the slightest?” he asked.

“I feel like helping her, because she’s vulnerable and lost but that’s not- not a good basis to act on. I don’t think she’d be easy to deal with. I do think if we give her any kind of pass or help, we could have her as a pest or problem to deal with a month from now. Given past history, keep that in mind. You know her best.”

“I feel like I don’t know her at all.”

“You have more data points than us,” I said.

“Data points,” Swansong muttered. “Geek.”

I elbowed her.

“How?” Rain asked, turning to look at Swansong. “To help her?”

“Colt,” Swansong said, raising her voice to be heard, as we’d walked a short distance away. “You have odd dreams. Stranger than any of the others.”

“Yeah,” Colt said. “Every time it’s my night, it’s a different slant of everyone else’s dreams, depending on my mood or how I push it. Like Cradle pushes it. Except I’m a bit better than him at it.”

“That’s a bargaining chip,” Swansong said, and she said it to Rain, but Colt immediately moved to the corner of her cell that was closest to us. “You can sell or barter that knowledge.”

“Capes and dreams have unusual relationships,” I said. “It’s worth looking into.”

“That’s because… dreams are something they don’t get,” Colt said. “They don’t have enough data or reference points for them. It’s why when they move on, they’ll want a lot of information about dreams and dreaming. It’s why things slip through the cracks in dreams, or get weird, or are spaces where they can manipulate things more.”

“You study this?” I asked.

“I… get it,” Colt said.

Because Breakers and reality warpers were often closest to their agents, maybe. Because this particular cluster was built around dreams and dreaming. And because dreams brought things even closer still.

“Lookout mentioned Chicken Little seeing something in his dreams,” Swansong said. She shrugged with one shoulder.

It wasn’t much to go on, but we were dealing with monolithic forces hidden away in inaccessible locations. They gave us power and they ruined us. And whatever structure was there or wasn’t there, whatever organization was missing in how they balanced against one another, that power and that ruin was being doled out in disastrous proportions. In broken triggers and in Dauntlesses.

With what Colt was saying, it was possible there was an area where the barrier between power and person wasn’t just thin, but was something we could get past, and that area was the unconscious dream. That was our door to the machinery we wanted to operate, fix, or even dismantle.

“Let’s go,” Rain said.

“Hey!” Colt shouted.

“Quiet,” Stonewall boomed.

“We’ll be in touch,” Rain told Colt, without turning around.

Still angry.

Vista caught up with us, after a few exchanged words with Stonewall. Space warped to give her something of a catch-up.

“Hey Vic,” Vista said. “You know powers, right? You studied this stuff to death.”

“Some,” I said. “Thinking about dreams?”

She shook her head. “No. Thinking about… altered mental states. Is it possible that she’s not all there because of her power?”

I sighed. “Crossed my mind. Happens a lot with Breakers.”

“You could mention it, to help her.”

“Another possibility,” I said. “But she said she had doctors check her over. So the question is… was one of those doctors someone who was qualified to evaluate her mentally? And if so, were they qualified to know about parahumans and all the messes they can bring to the table?”

There wasn’t an immediate answer to my question.

There was a pretty clear one, though.

Capricorn, Kenzie, and Sveta were gathered together.

Jessica Yamada. Their therapist.

Swansong and Rain approached her. I hung back.

The others had received emails, telling them she was safe and she would touch base shortly. I hadn’t. My number had, as I’d discovered the night I heard she was back, been blocked. I’d been able to call her with Juliette’s number but not my own.

Dr. Darnall said he knew what the reason was, but had declined to share. He’d told me to be patient.

I gave them their space, feeling hurt and a little bewildered. I headed over to the corner with the concept art and the fashion, the various pieces in progress, to distract myself, at the very least.

The winter was going to get colder, and a double layer wouldn’t be enough.

The group was spaced out. Some closer to Jessica than others. Swansong hung back, and by her body language, stiff and regal, I knew she was anxious.

Sveta was as happy as I’d seen her in a few weeks.

I couldn’t intrude.

There was a stylized coat, heavy, with some built in protection- not a lot, but in dense material and slats of metal running between layers. Not a cape, but long enough it could look like one. I tried it on as much as I could without putting it over the spikes at my shoulder. I’d have to move those.

Did I want it for what it gave me, or for what it kept away?

“-Victoria-”

Sveta’s voice. Which was followed by Jessica’s.

“Victoria.”

I saw her meet my eyes- or she looked at my mask, which didn’t have eyes.

“I’m going to talk to the group,” Jessica said. “Do you mind waiting?”

Which was telling me not me without telling me it directly.

She at least looked apologetic.

“Can we talk after?” I asked.

I didn’t miss the hesitation on her part.

I did something wrong. I failed her. She wants to see the damage before she talks to me.

“After,” she said. “Alright.”

Black – 13.3

“I can explain it all, if you’re interested.”

I looked in the direction the group had gone. I had enough bound up emotions that I wasn’t sure I trusted myself. Vista, at least, had found her way to my side. Backup of a sort.

“Yeah,” I said. “An explanation would be really good right now.”

“Okay. You’re a fucky sort of monster, Antares, alright?”

I blinked a few times in rapid succession. Brought from wonderings and distractions to harsh reality in a second.

“You can’t just say something like that,” Vista said.

“I’ll explain. You can be any one kind of fucky monster in my example, right? There are monsters you want to fuck up, there are monsters you want to fuck with, there are monsters you want to fuck, because of course, and there are monsters you want to cockblock.”

“First of all,” Vista said. “Yes, yes, what, and maybe. Second of all, you suck at explanations, Solarstare.”

“I’m great at explanations,” Solarstare said. “To start with, you have to get your audience’s attention, no matter how distracted they clearly are.”

“You did a pretty good job of that,” I said.

“You also fucked up your credibility pretty hard,” Vista said.

“Then you earn it back,” Solarstare said. She did a good job of living up to her name, unblinking, her eyes pools of luminescent liquid that streamed continually from notches in the center of the lower eyelids. The helmet she wore hugged her cheekbones and cheeks, channeling the liquid along the mask’s line and down to the bodysuit she wore with its inlaid ornamentation. The design of the suit collected the liquid into a glowing emblem at her front. It made her very intense. Three narrow triangles of glowing luminescence marked the perimeter of each eye, like cartoon eyelashes, one above, one at a diagonal at the outer edge, and one pointing out from the corner of her eye to her temples.

“Look, whatever course I’d want to take when I deal with hypothetical fucky monster Antares, there’re a few things I want, right? I want protection, and I want to get there before anyone else, or else I’m dealing with sloppy seconds, and sloppy gets people killed while seconds just… disappoints everyone.”

“Whether you’re fucking up, fucking with, fucking, or-”

“Or cockblocking,” Solarstare said.

I actively resisted looking in the direction of the conference room where the group had gone with Jessica.

“What monsters are you fucking, Solarstare, and do I need to worry?” Vista asked.

“I’m being optimistic, but I think we want to fuck half of them,” Solarstare said.

“So what you’re saying is I need to worry.”

“Half of them are good guys or people who will work with good guys,” Solarstare said.

“Maybe, uh, start with our working definition of monster?”

“Yeah,” Vista said. “Because that’s not the monsters I know.”

Solarstare’s eyes widened as she smiled, because she was clearly engaged. Liquid flowed out in greater quantity, to the point it overwhelmed what the channels in the helmet could take, and some found its way to the furrow beside the nostril, and onto her upper lip and lips. She wiped at it, leaving a faintly glowing smear. “Good, bad, or ugly, you’ve got the ones who’ve settled in. They’ve found a rut and they’ve settled into it so hard that they’ve started to twist up. Like someone who jacks off five times a day, same hand, same habit, and their arm-”

“Okayyy,” Vista said.

“Or jills off. Equal opportunity metaphor.”

“That’s not what I was taking issue with. You’re going to make our guest here think we’re all huffing construction insulation or something out here. You said you’d explain what the Bunker is but you just launched into one big fucking metaphor.”

“Everything’s a fucking metaphor.”

“Okayyyy. I’m definitely seeing you in a new light, Solar. Kind of. Sort of. I saw how you were when we were all stationed at High Hill Bravo-”

Solarstare shushed Vista, who tried to bring up names, which just made Solarstare shush her more noisily. A good five or ten seconds were spent as they made noises at each other.

It was good to see Vista so animated. It put a smile on my face despite-

I glanced in the direction of the conference room. I could see the vague shapes of the group, identify one as Kenzie, because it was up out of its chair, moving around, gesticulating wildly.

The smile fell from my face.

“Look,” Solarstare said, reaching out to touch me, then pulling that hand away to wipe at another dribble that escaped because she’d moved forward as quickly as she had. “You only ever lift one way, lift a lot, neglect certain things, you get warped and you don’t hold up as well. Whatever kind of cape you are-”

I rattled a few off, to contribute, and because I wanted to be distracted, “Hero, mercenary, villain, corporate, sponsored, brand, clandestine, ideologue, scumbag-”

“Any kind, yeah,” Solarstare said, smiling. “You get too into this, you lose your ordinary life by accident or by a hundred small steps, and it all becomes distorted. Without enough other things going on, you don’t have the ability to keep everything straight, so you end up becoming something fucky. Something that gets fucked up, fucked with, fucked, or frustrated.”

I blinked a few times.

Vista gave me a long look.

“Yeah,” I said. “Or all of the above.”

“And this is getting a little heavy,” Vista said.

“It is heavy,” Solarstare said. “The Bunker needs to be sturdy because it’s all so heavy. We’ve got two portals right now. City center and city east. By next week we’ll have four. A week after that we’ll have seven, they think. Six of those will be places in the city we can instantly mobilize to. Wham, bam, fuck you ma’am. Seventh portal will be our proper prison world we should only be able to get to through the Bunker. Which means if you want to get in or break someone out, you have to go through the Bunker, which we’re loading to the brim with security.”

I nodded. “Which is protection for safe fucking up, fucking with, fucking-”

“Which I still have questions about, Solar,” Vista cut in.

“-and frustrating.”

“Cockblocking,” Solarstare said.

“She had a teammate called Clockblocker,” I said, throwing a thumb in Vista’s way.

Solarstare laughed. It looked almost like her back teeth glowed, like the fluids from her eyes leeched into the back of her mouth by some channel or osmosis.

“My teammate for a very short time too. I like ‘frustrated’ better. Plus it alliterates.”

“Got it,” Solarstare said. “Yeah. Getting there first means no sloppy seconds, and doing it safely means we don’t get fucked.”

“Good explanation,” I said. I knew most of it, not the numbers for portals, or the timeline, but most of it. Maybe the definition of ‘monster’ was something that took me back to uncomfortable memories, and that negative matched or outweighed the gain of the little tidbits I’d picked up, but it served to distract, and she’d clearly been intending to do that.

“Which is my chance to ask, um, what monsters have you been fucking?” Vista asked. “Do I need to worry, Solar?”

“Come on, Vista, it’s an analogy, take five seconds to look past the big bad swear word.”

“If you can use one word for five hundred different situations or contexts, you need to give us a bit more to go on.”

“To fuck them is to deal with them, interact, back and forth. Sometimes you gotta suck ’em off to keep em happy and sometimes you gotta demand your quid-pro-quo. Favor for a favor. And sometimes it’s down to a hate-fuck, which-”

“Okayyy,” Vista said. “You’re embarrassing me in front of my friend now.”

“Don’t act like you’re a prude, Vista. Do I need to talk about what you got up to at High Hill Bravo?”

“I didn’t get up to a damn thing,” Vista said, flushing slightly, “and my friend’s visiting, I only have so long before I’m called to work, and I might not get another chance to talk to her for a bit, depending on how I’m deployed.”

“Maybe she’d like to hear stories,” Solarstare teased. She raised her eyebrows my way.

“I want to talk to her about secret ID stuff, civilian stuff,” Vista said.

“Are you-”

“I’m pulling that card,” Vista said.

Solarstare winked at me, and in the time we’d had our conversation, it was the first time she’d blinked or even closed an eye. The wink came with a flash and a sudden surge of brightly glowing liquid. She sauntered, rather than just walk off.

Vista was still a little pink in the wake of Solarstare’s departure.

“She’s fun,” I said.

“You know what the sad thing is?” Vista asked, quiet. “She is. But she used to be this really quiet, reserved girl who always read books while everyone else hung out. She was arrogant, looked down on people, acting like she was thirty and not eighteen. She snitched a few times, when some capes were drinking, and even the supervisors were like… fuck off, Solarstare. Let them be. You know?”

“What happened?”

“She got punted into a wall during a fight. TBI.”

Traumatic brain injury.

“The entire time they were taking her to the hospital, she was screaming, flailing, using her powers, fighting every step of the way. Swelling inside the skull went down and she was normal-ish, except she’d lost the ability to read, speak, listen to music, or understand even slightly abstract pictures. Over the past six months she’s been working her way back to normal.”

“But she’s different?”

“Completely different personality. Less filters, but also more open, more empathetic, more outgoing. And she kind of needs to be watched to make sure she doesn’t go overboard with drinking or sex or anything else. So that’s, uh, part of why she’s the way she is.”

“I wonder how much of it has to do with the near death experience. A bit of a wake-up-call about what she nearly missed out on.”

“I don’t know,” Vista said. “It’s scary though. Bam, personality change.”

I nodded.

“You guys really seem to be living the life. Crystal’s been in Warden-orbit for a bit now, but she didn’t mention the drinking and sex and… a lot going on at this High Hill Bravo?”

“Ugh, I was worried Solar would give that impression.”

I raised my eyebrows, then remembered that my mask covered my upper face. I took it off and laid it on the table beside me. We were in the ‘branding’ corner of the bunker. Jessica and my team were in the opposite corner, having a private conversation or group session.

Leaving me to wonder, to stew, and admittedly, to hurt.

“It kind of is a…” Vista started. “I don’t even know the term. Co-ed summer camp, frat house, sorority, high school, mission deployment. A lot of people aged sixteen to twenty-five with not enough supervision, just thrown in together with bunk beds and sleeping bags, in sometimes really lonely circumstances.”

“Sure,” I said. “Gravitate together?”

“Yeah,” Vista said. “Connect.”

“Did you…?” I asked. Got a shrug in response. “And here I thought you didn’t have any luck in all the time I was gone.”

“So I had a boyfriend in high school. Tyler. He asked out Missy Byron and we dated for like, seven weeks. He wasn’t the cutest or the best or the most well-rounded individual, but he was kind and he was a gentleman, so I figured ‘good enough’. Is that shitty to say?”

“I dunno,” I said.

“Sometimes high school boys are like men, but brand new or the rougher edges aren’t quite sanded off, but they’re still men, you know? Young men. And sometimes they’re… half formed. And Tyler was half-formed. Needing a few more pieces before he was a complete person. But he was a first kiss and a chance to make a lot of stupid mistakes where I was selfish or dramatic or needed to figure out how to talk to people.”

“Sure,” I said. It was a pretty different experience from my own. I was ninety-five percent sure that when Vista thought of a ‘young man’ she was thinking of Gallant.

“And we messed around but we didn’t mess around. Then somewhere along the line we mutually ghosted one another, I guess. And from there I had a Wards summer camp thing, and it was kind of like High Hill Bravo except we kind of had to be way more careful about it. We knew we were only there for three weeks, and we wasted a week before I had the courage to approach him, so there wasn’t any time for being polite. Got a lot of things out of the way.”

“I get you.”

“And after that, Gold Morning and mourning… there are people who find comfort in other people’s arms and I’m not one of those people.”

I nodded, vigorously.

“And then High Hill Bravo. Kind of. But that was kind of because there’s nothing to do except ‘hurry up and wait’, it was so far from home, and all the other stuff I talked about. But never someone I was into. Just kind of reminding myself I’m not… broken, I guess? After losing everything.”

“Not broken,” I said. I nodded, then nodded more vigorously. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“You?” she asked. “I kind of know the answer, but I don’t want to just talk about me.”

“Me? And boys? Gallant.”

“Would you, given a chance?”

I drew in a deep breath.

“Yeah. But I don’t know what that chance would look like. Would I want a fling, no stakes, yet somehow also have allll of the baggage I bring into it? I don’t know how that works. A serious relationship?”

“You asked that one more like you were asking me instead of asking a rhetorical question.”

“I don’t know what it would look like. I’ve got enough going on. It’d be so unfair in so many ways. I mean, baggage aside, I feel like most relationships would pale compared to Dean.”

She nodded. “Don’t blame you. It always comes back to him with us, huh?”

I thought of Dean, imagined him here. What would he say?

I nodded. “It’s why we got to talking in the first place, kind of. Um. There was something he told me once, privately. And it feels weird to just talk about it now, like I’m somehow betraying his confidence…”

“You don’t have to.”

“No, it’s just…” I trailed off. Just what? “…He told me once that every single person he cared about in his life let him down. His mom took things he told her in confidence about a friend and used those things against that friend’s mom for some advantage in her social circle or some bullshit. His dad just casually said that if he wanted to move out of Brockton Bay and pursue a bigger cape life outside of the city instead of taking a hand in the family business, he’d be essentially disowned. Teachers, aunts, uncles, people he counted on, they all let him down.”

“Except you?” Vista asked.

I made a bit of a face. “He told me that during a fight. Accusing me of being the most recent one. But venting a lot of stuff he needed to vent. I made it up to him, fixed what I’d been doing wrong, and he later told me I was the only person who didn’t let him down, so… I think I did okay.”

“Good,” Vista said, in a serious, profound way, not like there was an ‘or else’, but like it really was ‘good’.

“Except I let him die,” I said.

“No, Victoria,” Vista said. “No, no, no.”

I frowned.

“No.”

“I’m kind of getting what he meant, you know? Feeling let down. Like I can’t get close to anyone I’m supposed to rely on without it turning out to be a trap or vulnerability. My mom, my dad…”

I glanced at the conference room.

Jessica had been here to attend to regular work, to do the psych profile on Colt, and for whatever other roles she had with the Wardens. And we’d chanced on each other. Now the team got to talk to her, and-

Vista drew closer and gave me a one-armed hug.

“What can I do?” she asked.

I wanted to have an answer, because I suspected Vista was being genuine. She had that stripe of heroism in her that I really respected. There were people who needed to be dragged into goodness, who were good except for, or who were good because. And that except for could be a vice or a bad thing they’d once done. The because could be a justification, a motivation. People who were heroes except they’d killed a person, who were heroes except for the fact they did drugs. Who were heroes because it was the fastest, safest way to make money. Many risked falling from the path, getting dragged down, or finding themselves in water so muddy that ‘heroism’ wasn’t much more than a label. And then there were the genuine heroes, who could go through hell, be given any temptation, and they would always gravitate toward a baseline of doing what was lawful, right, and moral.

I wasn’t about to lay claim to being genuine, but I was pretty sure Vista could. And part and parcel of that was that if I asked her for something as a friend and colleague, then she would go out of her way to do it. Even while hurt and mending.

As Vista broke the hug, I turned my back to the conference room, leaning against a table piled with rolled up concept sketches. The nice thing about these offworld installations was that they often had an amazing view. This place, as gray as it was, was up there. What had come up here as a rough equivalent to tall grass had matted, grown in dense, and curled into itself until it looked like lichen. The snowfall hadn’t really done anything to wipe it out or flatten, it, only gave it a look like it had been doused in powdered sugar.

“Any biokinetics or bio tinkers in the prison right now?” I asked.

Vista turned my way. I could see her eyes and eyebrows vaguely through the textured glass of her visor. Eyebrows up, the eye closest to me wide.

“No,” she said. “Why?”

I shook my head.

“Doesn’t seem like something you’d ask.”

This wasn’t easy.

“For Sveta. Just… considering options.”

“Sorry,” she said. “That’s…”

“Not an easy thing to bring up,” I said.

“Yeah, that.”

“I want a good outcome for her.”

“Even though she’s kind of playing a role in cutting you out, right now? Not to poke at the wound, but…”

You really suck at changing topics and distracting, I thought. But I’d raised the line of conversation and of course she’d have questions.

“If she came out of that conference room, and they said they wanted me off the team, and that she was a major voice arguing for it, I’d still want good things for her.”

“They’re not going to do that, Vicky.”

“I’m just saying, worst case scenario-”

“I don’t think that scenario’s happening.”

“Let me finish?” I asked. I poked her.

“Fine.”

“I love her like family. She’s been there for me, and no matter what happens I want to do right by her. Part of that is keeping an eye out for answers.”

“She’s doing so well, though,” Vista said.

“Maybe,” I said. “I’d like to do something.”

Vista nodded. Looking down at the table in front of her, she turned a piece of art around and smoothed out the paper where the edges rolled in.

“Orchard,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“They’ve been active for a long time. They were in Boston. Not big, but they’ve earned enough to buy their way out of trouble. Good lawyers, staying off the radar, moving around a lot. And they manipulate biology. They’re about as scummy as they get, Victoria.”

“Okay,” I said. “They sound vaguely familiar. I’ll look them up, see if I have any notes.”

“You do. You gave the Wardens access to all your files, and we pulled those files for the mission where they’re bringing them in later this week. Or they hope to. If you really want to do this, then I can ask for our people to keep them in custody.”

“It’s worth asking, at least. I’ll see what strings I can pull, if they can really do anything.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the conference room. I could make out Sveta’s silhouette, because the blinds reached the floor and Sveta was wearing a dress that hid the tendrils that reached down to the floor.

“You’re really spooked about this. I get it if you’re left out and I know how much that hurts, really, but that’s not it is it?”

Spooked? Scared?

Yeah.

I chewed on my lip rather than say anything. I nodded.

“I don’t really get it, but I’m sorry,” Vista said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I’m also really sorry for whoever gets this costume,” Vista said. She slid paper across the table. I looked down, and I laughed. It looked like something the Super Magic Dream Parade would wear. Taffeta puff sleeves, puffy collar, and puffy shorts. The drawing had the person’s hair in a small afro as well. There were some variations playing off of different color schemes and design touches for different example powers. There was a male and female variant, as well. If it were one image I would have called it an exercise or a bit of artistic exploration, but this looked like a complete workup.

“How? Why? Do I need to worry about the people I’m working with?” Vista asked, her expression somewhere between horror and amusement.

“Probably. But I think having something like this would be strategic,” I said. “Hold this over someone’s head, get them to behave. Or set their expectations really low, first.”

“I’m going to feel so bad if I run into the person who got this costume, knowing I laughed,” Vista said.

“They’ll need all the support they can get.”

“Oh man,” Vista said. “Are there any other treasures in here?”

There weren’t, but looking through the art provided enough idle amusement. I was careful to put everything back where we found it.

“They’re leaving the room,” Vista observed.

I didn’t look.

“You know, before you go talk to any of them, I want to say they’re pretty decent overall, I think. And I know and I trust Jessica.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Agreed and agreed. Which is I guess why I’m so bothered. I’m putting my finger on it now. That thing I was saying before, you know, Gallant saying everyone had let him down?”

“Yeah. And you being stupid and blaming yourself over that.”

“I let him down, that one last time. I don’t know how easily I can let go of that. And what gets me here is… maybe it’s not just him? What if I’ve let everyone down?”

“You haven’t.”

“Haven’t I? Because all those guys got hurt. I let my mom down when I W- when I was careless. I let my dad down by how I acted in the aftermath of it. I let Sveta down by letting her lose her body and it was- it was really good for her to have it.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself.”

“What if I’m not being hard enough on myself, and she tears into me, and-”

“You can’t know, Vicky, unless you go talk to her.”

Sveta broke away from the group. It was her who beckoned me.

Jessica waited by the conference room door.

“You’re a good person, she’s a good person. I think your team is mostly good people, but I don’t know them that well. Trust.”

“Thank you, Vista, for keeping me company.”

“Thanks for letting me vent. Come talk to me after, if you want.”

“Sure. I’ll let you know how it goes. Do me a favor and don’t mention Orchard to Sveta?”

“Sure. I figured I shouldn’t.”

I picked up my eyeless mask, put my hand on her shoulder, then made my way across the floor. Construction workers and Warden staff were abundant enough I had to weave through, which made just getting to the conference room hard enough.

Sveta passed me, bumping shoulders with me, and headed over in Vista’s direction. Weld, it seemed, was preoccupied elsewhere.

“Hi,” Jessica said. She retreated into the room.

“Hi.”

I shut the door behind me.

Jessica was more tan than the last time I’d seen her. She might have had more lines in her face. She wore a sweater with a folded collar and slacks, with suede boots that matched the sweater. A lot of attention had gone into her appearance, as if she’d broken from her rhythm to such a degree that she’d overcompensated on coming back, even three weeks later.

“I think I’m caught up on events,” she said. “I had to ask them to take turns so one voice wouldn’t dominate the room.”

I nodded.

“You’ve worked hard,” she said. “I can’t necessarily agree with the direction of that work, but I think we’ve always had our disagreement over the balance of priorities. The balance of civilian against powers, with each of us pushing for one or the other.”

Why did you block my phone?

“I dunno,” I said. “I don’t think I push for powers that hard. I just think… a lot of the time, the happiest, healthiest cape day-to-days are the ones where they blend together seamlessly. Sous-vide with a laser sear. The little, casual acceptances of power into life.”

Don’t ramble.

“You pushed hard here, didn’t you?” Jessica asked.

“Here?”

“With the group. Nevermind. I’m getting ahead of myself,” Jessica said.

Where are you going that that’s getting ahead of yourself?

“Sure,” I said.

“I exchanged words with Dr. Darnall. He says you haven’t been going to physio.”

Is this caring about me or is it accusatory? Is it your next step in getting to the real subject of this conversation?

“I did. I went. I got the exercises and the game plan and I’ve been keeping up with it. Every morning.”

“Regimes need to change. Things need to be monitored, Victoria.”

Doesn’t answer my question about whether this is caring or accusatory.

“They were. And they are. I’ve seen family and teammates get hurt, I read up on what to do when Patrol members got injured when I was in the Patrol.”

“That’s no substitute for medical attention, Victoria.”

It’s not, but I’d like it if it counted for more when I did pick up certain skills or knowledge. Or when I put in effort.

“It’s enough. I know what to watch out for, the differences between kinds of pain. I just…”

She didn’t cut in or fill the silence that followed.

“…Kind of hate hospitals,” I said. The bitterness of the sentiment and the bitterness of the feelings I was holding back made it a paradoxically weaker statement overall, like my voice had almost broken as I admitted it.

“If that’s how you’re taking care of yourself, walking that risky line where you’re half-blind and taking on enough responsibility that you’re running the risk of hurting yourself, are you really taking care of the others?”

What? This was the first thing she’d said that really hurt, that felt like it wasn’t possible to fit into the mold of a normal conversation with Jessica Yamada.

Why do I feel like there’s nothing that I could say that would change the tone of this conversation? Like my points aren’t being directly addressed?

“I’m damn well trying,” I said. “You asked me for help. You seemed okay with the coaching thing. You put me in close proximity to a dangerous biology-altering threat of global proportions without cluing me in.”

“He wasn’t a threat, Victoria. He needed more sessions but he was on his road to normalcy, striking his balance, learning the necessary skills.”

“He’s not the cataclysmic threat I was told to watch out for then?”

“He’s-” she started.

She stopped.

Don’t.

She wasn’t good at being evasive, or at thinking on the back foot.

Don’t shut me out. I don’t fucking deserve this.

“You’re not going to tell me.”

“Victoria…”

I waited. I didn’t respond, as much as there were fifty things I wanted to say. I let the silence hang, as she’d done to me many times before.

“No,” she said.

Fine. I’d say the first of those fifty things. “You want to accuse me of not caring for them? I sacrificed to help those guys. I gave up a literal pound of flesh, at least-!”

I pushed up my sleeve to show the scars I’d been through physio to rehabilitate. The scarred notch in my tricep.

“-For them! Because people wanted to kill them, because people wanted to kidnap or co-opt them, because they’d been taken to pieces. I gave my all, and your complaint is I’m not doing a perfect job of it? I’m paying too much attention to the cape side of things? That’s not a fight you win, when agents are involved. You don’t get wins, you find a working balance where you minimize the damage and you maximize the gains!”

“That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is pushing and diving into this reality to the point you end up in the hospital isn’t self-care. And-”

“And pushing them and letting them get hurt isn’t caring?”

Hesitation. “That’s not what I’m getting at.”

“You’re getting at something,” I said. “Except you’re not. You’ve frozen me out, you blocked my number, my emails bounce back, you have a meeting with my group without me, and when I finally get to talk to you, you’re not listening. You’re ready with a follow-up, like- like you’re strategizing your way through the conversation, picking and choosing what you’re able to get away with saying, and you’re so focused on that that you don’t hear me.”

“It’s not strategizing. I’m trying to be diplomatic.”

“Same thing,” I said. “What was diplomatic about blocking my number? Leaving me out of that catch-up meeting?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

I hit the table.

“Don’t bully me, Victoria. Don’t throw your power around.”

“I hit a table. No forcefield strength, or there wouldn’t be a table anymore.”

“Don’t bully me, with physical violence or with your power, or I walk out of this room. Same rule as the hospital. At this stage, it would permanently affect our relationship.”

“At this stage, doing nothing would permanently affect our relationship,” I said.

“There are two possible realities here, Victoria. Two,” she said. She was trying to be stern, but she wasn’t good at it. She didn’t maintain eye contact. The hand she raised to gesture with, two fingers extended, wasn’t rock steady.

“What realities?”

“I shouldn’t even be telling you this. But the possibilities are that you’re in the right here, something’s wrong on my end, and I need you to be patient and trust me while I work my way through it. The meeting with Breakthrough was me trying to gracefully do that without hurting anyone.”

“And the other?”

“That right this moment, you know full well why I’m wary. And I need to talk to Breakthrough to figure out what’s going on.”

“You think I’m up to something.”

“I have ample evidence to suggest you’re up to something,” Jessica said. And with that, she did meet my eyes with some conviction.

“If I was, would I have cooperated this far? Would I have let you talk to them without trying to worm my way in?”

“It’s a point in your favor that you didn’t,” Jessica said. “But it’s far from a guarantee. I have to protect my patients.”

I walked along the table in the center of the room.

I saw how, as I moved left, Jessica moved a fraction to her right. Keeping more of the table between us.

“Evidence?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why not? I’m accused of something horrible, apparently, but I can’t see what it is? Is it a witness?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“It’s been three weeks, this is apparently enough to change your opinion of me entirely. If it’s that effective or that cut and dry, what’s going to change if you show me or if you wait another…”

I floundered. Jessica was silent.

“Week? Another three weeks? Two months? Is this going to change, or…”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Can you give me a foothold here? Some person I can talk to that’s neutral, or some timeframe? So I don’t have this hanging over my head forever?”

“I’m not looking to interfere in anything yet. I’m not going to break up your team by fiat or by leveraging the Wardens. I won’t use those things to make you leave them. I just want to look into this.”

“Possibly indefinitely. And that ‘yet’ might become a ‘now’? When? When someone else gets hurt? I’m thinking back to what you said earlier in the conversation, me being reckless? Can you give me something?”

“I can’t-”

I used my aura. I kept it within the room. A pulse, a thrum.

She remained where she was, stock still, head bent.

Then she turned toward the door. She took two steps, gave me a sideways glance, and stopped.

I was ten feet from the door, and she didn’t want to get that close to me.

“Step away from the door, please,” she said.

I took a step back and away, my expression stern, angry.

“When you traded files with Dragon, she had a bot sweep your computer. An automatic thing she does. She found your diary-”

“Jessica.”

“-Let me finish,” she said, and her voice was tense. “She found the diary, with her bot flagging certain lines to bring to her attention. She thought portions were concerning. Nothing criminal, but suggestive of a certain attitude toward Breakthrough that’s exploitative and unhealthy. The entries go back to before our first meeting in the Patrol headquarters in Stratford. I was told the minute I asked after your collective welfare.”

“No,” I said.

“It sounds like you, Victoria. It reads like you. It has details that fit you, that I strongly doubt others would know. It refers to your forcefield as ‘the Wretch’. It refers to details about your parents and family, your sister included. So far, by our checks, the calendar of events line up. I haven’t brought it up with the team, out of concern of outright devastating them, and on the off chance you are innocent, then I would ask you to keep Kenzie out of it. Reading that would disturb her.”

“What the hell is it?” I asked.

She didn’t answer my question. Again, just moving on to what she felt like she could and couldn’t say, finding the determination to say the things that were hardest to say. She went on, “…I did prod and ask questions as much as I could. My doubts were not eased. I have not found any holes in the story.”

“I have one. I wouldn’t write about my sister, I don’t even think about my sister if I can help it,” I said. The thoughts of Amy and this feeling of betrayal weren’t making it easy to think straight.

“I told you what you wanted to know, would you please step to the other end of the room?”

That- she’d told me because she still felt threatened? She was bartering?

I stumbled back to the point of the room that was furthest from her.

She was watching me, studying every expression and movement.

I saw worry crease her forehead, drawing her eyebrows together. Or doubt.

What could I even say?

She stopped at the door, while it was still closed.

“As you have have surmised, Chris was my biggest concern,” she said.

I nodded.

“Right now you are. If this is a clever setup, then I hope you understand.”

Again, I nodded.

“Whether you’re acting right now or you return home to read what was supposedly planted on your computer, you’ll know either way. Yes, Sveta is a lingering concern of mine.”

I nodded, too choked up to speak, too bewildered by this to even consider the ramifications of that.

She paused at the door, visibly composed herself, and then stepped out of the conference room.

It took me a hell of a lot longer to compose myself. I leaned over the end of the table, hands resting on it for balance. I considered all of the avenues, and found too many dead ends.

I didn’t even have a diary. I hated diaries. But saying that wouldn’t have proved a damn thing.

I gathered myself together, fixed my hair and adjusted my costume.

I rejoined the team. Sveta was talking to Vista.

Watch Sveta?

“All good?” Tristan asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“Why’d she keep you out of our meeting?” Rain asked.

I didn’t have a ready answer.

“Family stuff,” I said in the end, lamely. Not even a good answer to the question. Then, to change the topic, I asked Kenzie, “Who’s picking you up later?”

“Imp,” Kenzie said.

“Any chance you could make it Tattletale instead? Or I could tag along for the longer trip, and see Tattletale wherever she’s set up. We could talk costumes.”

“I can ask! Probably. She does want to talk to you about drop-offs, pickups, team sharing, and boundaries and…”

Kenzie went on, but I was still reeling in my way.

But a conversation with Tattletale was a good starting point. If someone was playing a subtle game to fuck with us and attack us at our core -which was really the only interpretation of this that made any sense at all- then this wouldn’t end here and it was possible there was more subtle work going on in the background.

In scenarios like that, the target stumbling onto the spider’s web was the time for the spider to pounce.

Tattletale would be either my biggest ally or a prime suspect.

Black – 13.4

I hadn’t wanted my mother to get hurt, being careless with my power and with not trusting her about it, but I’d been willing on a level to leave the door open for it to happen, and that willingness went hand in hand with my relief about Amy being on Earth Shin now. The realization had taken me some time, the process of rationalization comparatively quick to begin. Life was genuinely easier if I let the slate be wiped -or perhaps struck- clean.

I had even related that philosophy to Kenzie. To her parents. Another slate that had been struck relatively clean. After they’d dropped the tidbits they had on Hard Boil, and after the two hundred messes that had followed in succession from that, Kenzie had eventually found her equilibrium. Her being in a kind of limbo right now with her disconnected and distant institutionalized care wasn’t the worst thing in the world, much like how people could use sensory deprivation tanks to center themselves. Kenzie struggled because she hyper-connected, and a disconnected civilian life meant she wouldn’t hyper-connect or get distracted.

She’d even forged a family in a way that didn’t take away from her ordinary life. Regular ‘meals’ with Ashley. A small circle of peers her age that she could connect to, that honed her and refined her. People like Aiden who I was happy to take on a general, arms-length coaching role for.

It was important to strike a balance with powers, to find a niche where their use could be casual, not overbearing, not solely a thing where we went out at night three times a week to be reckless and violent with them. It was important to have the casual little acceptances of power in our lives. For Kenzie, leaving the door open for her to tinker regularly was good for her on that casual acceptance level, and really good for the rest of us on a strategic level.

This was an equilibrium I had effectively trained my whole life to manage. The absorption of one aspect of identity into the whole. I’d had to learn that.

Ashley wasn’t. Ashley was new ground, something I was having to figure out on the fly. Damsel had been… not struck from the slate, because I’d only come up with that terminology recently, but I’d left the door open for her to go. I likened Ashley to a cat, as much as she might be annoyed with the comparison, and a cat couldn’t be approached without caution. Go straight for the vulnerable belly or throat and the claws came out. Metaphorical, in Ashley’s case.

No, for her, every step was about strategy and positioning. Dropping the right hints, as she was imprisoned, the right compliments, getting the invitation to watch her place, moving in, then getting her and Rain out of jail. She’d invited me to stay and she wouldn’t ask me to leave if there wasn’t a graceful way to do it. It wasn’t hard, once she was figured out, to block off her options by making certain actions out to be undignified. Minimize the damage and maximize the gains.

Once I was close, positioning became that much easier. She was just as hungry for someone close as Kenzie was, but the difference was that Ashley had spent years on her own. I talked about leaving doors open, and hers had nearly closed.

This was good, as things stood. Being close to her meant I could impart lessons about morality, encourage heroism. Her being close to me, to us, meant we had a constant, omnipresent reminder that violence was a consideration and an option.

The natural blending of civilian and cape identities had to account for violence, for conflict, and for a careful pruning of external forces and influences. Ashley was very good at pruning, and very easy to prune now that I was close enough.

That was without getting into the various degrees of non-platonic subtext.

On the topic of the non-platonic, I had cheated earlier when I’d commented about Byron to Rain. Byron had talked vaguely about Moonsong over the last few weeks, and I’d seen this coming. I’d considered the value of encouraging the relationship and working to reinforce it solely because a ‘political marriage’ between Breakthrough and the Shepherds could be useful, to use a way overblown term for what their relationship would be, but I’d seen the way Byron had looked at me on that day in group therapy and my vision for the team saw a Capricorn that had both halves working in harmony. Getting to the point where that happened required drawing Byron out of his shell, and I could do that so long as we had a bond or connection. They were two opposites in that. Byron needed to feel like his civilian self wasn’t being ignored or left without options. Tristan needed to feel like his goals as a cape weren’t being stifled.

Once that was done, well, there was a running theme through all of this. With any cape, the civilian side naturally degraded. We were parahuman, not human, and once Byron and Tristan reached the point they were okay, motivated, and roughly on the same page, that natural degradation would leave only those portions of each brother that worked well together. I’d wanted to be a coach and sometimes being a coach meant tearing down, then building back up.

Rain wasn’t someone I’d had to tear down. Life and past experience had done that. He’d needed pushes. A regular nudge. In many places, his natural hesitation and the gravity that pulled at him were at the point where doing nothing was as good as pushing him away. With his low self confidence, a simple reprimand or jab could do a lot to shape the direction he was going. In a way, the things that guided the others all applied to Rain. Maneuvering to get him out of jail and keeping him close enough, keeping an eye on his relationships, managing a balance of civilian and cape with the assumption the former will crumble… and as with Sveta, knowing that he saw himself as a monster, with a deeply regrettable past and a potentially, maybe inevitably regrettable future.

Sveta’s impending breakup. Rain’s doomed cluster. It was a question of managing the damage.

I closed my laptop.

Even Weld breaking up with Sveta was in the fucking diary.

Detailed, deep thoughts in intermittent diary entries, stored in a folder on my computer. The times the entries were made, at a glance, seemed to line up with times I’d been free and active online.

Nothing so actionable that it would be grounds to arrest me. But enough to hurt the team, if they were to read it. I had a thought, on finishing it, and the irony was that the thought had come from a line in group therapy back at the hospital. We judged our own actions based on our intentions, and we judged the actions of others on their actions.

Except this ‘diary’ fucked me at both ends.

Where my actions were damning, the diary portrayed my intentions as questionable, poor, or outright bad. Where my intentions were ambiguous, or even when it came to ideas I’d alluded to or mentioned, they were connected to actions. Desperate, rushed decisions I’d made in reality were rationalized out afterward or hinted at or led into beforehand.

It was self-involved and mission-focused, with passing mention of the others’ injuries, those mentions so fleeting that it suggested I didn’t care, or I cared for the wrong reasons.

And I couldn’t find any holes. A paralysis had crept over my upper chest as I realized I couldn’t find dates that didn’t line up, any actions I had an alibi for.

I couldn’t blame Dragon for looking over my computer. I’d told her to take everything. On a level, having already dealt with Kenzie, I had expected the sweep. I hadn’t expected a trap to be laid.

I couldn’t blame Jessica for doubting me. Reading this, I was starting to doubt my own reality. Because it was close. There were thoughts in there that mirrored thoughts I’d actually had, and lines in there that paralleled things I’d said in reality, if they weren’t those exact same things.

My hands remained on the laptop, even after it was closed, while a sick feeling crept over me. There wasn’t a way to deal with this that didn’t dig me in deeper. My outburst and the use of my aura on Jessica hadn’t helped, but I wasn’t upset I’d done it, because I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have told me what I needed to know without it.

But I’d forced her hand and if she was going to take any action, it was going to happen soon. If this was a trap or a master effect, then I’d forced the enemy’s hand. If there was anything intended to follow up on this, then it might happen soon.

Why? How?

I didn’t know.

We were at our HQ, and Kenzie was sorting through the things she’d left here. Technically she was renting the space from us. Less technically, she was moving regularly between here, her new workshop with her team, and her ‘home’ workshop, which was a space in the building where she lived with the orphans and institutionalized kids, provided by the staff.

I’d asked them to provide the space, because staff members had clued in that Kenzie had powers and there was a danger that the kids at the facility would too. By the diary, I’d done it for reasons of strategy and cape-centric bias.

To Jessica, every conversation and friendly debate I’d had with her over things like cape names and what a healthy life for a parahuman looked like had to have taken on a darker tone, after all of this. The diary struck close to the real, but with a consistent tone throughout that had to be anathema to someone like Jessica, who wanted to heal, find a more human balance, and who had trusted me to help.

Tristan was taking a break from lifting stuff and carting it around for Kenzie to take to her other workshop, making lunch with Rain. He was talking cooking, while Sveta hovered, quite literally, clinging to the nearby door and looming over, looking over their heads.

“This… or this?” Kenzie asked. Her outfit changed. An update of her costume, a little more fashion-focused. It looked like she was hitting the randomize button, for textures and color schemes.

“The second one,” Ashley said.

“Then…” Kenzie tapped on her phone. “This… or this?”

From a vaguely Vista-ish costume with a skirt built into it over textured leggings to a costume with more of a bodysuit look, overalls over a skintight top.

Ashley’s going to pick the first, because it’s got a skirt.

“The first one.”

“Then… this or this?”

The first outfit had an abbreviated jacket, the skirt, and textured leggings, the second was more of a combination bodysuit and dress, skintight up until the fabric formed the dress at the lower body, the shoulders built up with techy paraphernalia.

“The second one.”

“The first one looks really good,” I said. I felt so disheartened that the words felt hollow.

“Ooh, mixed opinions. Those are good.”

“If you let Ashley have too much of a say, then you’re going to end up with an all black costume,” I said.

“Maybe,” Ashley said. “Some white or red details are good.”

“Ashley’s my favorite person, so I don’t mind if that happens,” Kenzie said. “You’re maybe my second or third favorite person, Victoria, so your opinion counts for a lot too. And I want to do good things but I’m working sometimes with villains, we’re being discriminatory with what we do, so something a little darker is okay, I think.”

“Black is striking in bright light, and if you’re out in the light you want to make that statement. At night and in night missions, black will keep you from being seen.”

I rolled my eyes a bit.

“Ooh, I should take notes. I packed up the stuff that would take them for me…”

I couldn’t show her or ask her to take a hand in it, even if she was uniquely qualified to track down where it came from. Because Dragon was also qualified, Dragon was qualified in everything. The apparent Bluestocking of tinkers.

The danger wasn’t that Kenzie’s feelings would be hurt. They would, but that wasn’t the danger as I saw it.

The danger here was that this diary was close enough to home to be seductive. That she was impressionable and some of the worst thinking in the diary would stick if she were to read it.

Was there a good chance of it? I didn’t know. Was it possible to tell her not to read it? Yes. But I worried.

I worried on so many levels.

“Boys, Sveta, tiebreak me! This… or this?”

“I am not the person to ask,” Rain said.

“Please? Gut feeling.”

“I like the first one,” Sveta said.

The one I’d liked. Solidarity.

It all felt so empty, so fragile. The usual fondness wasn’t there. What the hell?

“I like the first one too,” Tristan said.

“Yeah,” Byron said, a moment later. “Yeah. How are you coming up with all of these?”

“I fed my computer a ton of high fashion and costume stuff and put it in a blender, and now I’m extrapolating with human-guided machine learning. It takes its best guesses about what’s working along six different protocols and each time I keep one and discard another it adjusts its guesses and narrows in on something workable.”

“You realize that in another time or climate, you could make a bit of money using that?” Tristan asked.

“Really?” Kenzie asked, eyes wide. She turned to me to confirm.

It meant a lot that she turned to me, except that only rubbed in that horrible, trapped feeling.

“Yeah. Really,” I told her.

“Man, for all the pain in the butt parts of this power, there’s some upsides.”

“Versatility, problem solving, marketability, monetization, but those things make you a desirable and high-priority target.”

“Oh yeah. People showing up at my house to kidnap me or kill me.”

“Yeah.”

“Be careful,” Sveta said.

“I will,” Kenzie said. “That smells amazing, by the way. Is it going to be done in time? They’re almost here.”

“You can take yours now,” Tristan said. He had the sandwiches grilling in a frying pan, melts inside toasted bread. “Careful, it’s hot.”

Kenzie collected a sandwich with her eyehook, the prehensile tail with the camera and claw on the end.

“Victoria?” he asked. “You’re going with her?”

I grabbed a sandwich, testing first before picking it up. “Gotta ask Tattletale about something, and it’d be good to check out what they’re up to.”

“I have so, so, so much to show you. You can vet Chicken’s costume and Candy’s costume, and I’ve been working on Hookup’s costume, which I know Ashley will really like-”

“Hold up,” I said.

“-Because it’s a dress, and it’s really pretty, and it goes with her mask, which Imp ordered.”

“Reel it back there,” I said. “Go back.”

“Which part? Because once a word leaves my mouth I mostly forget what I was saying.”

“Hookup?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t recommend it.”

“But-” Kenzie turned around. It was Ashley she turned to for verification this time.

“Nah,” Ashley said.

“But… ugh. All the names like Kindred and Liaison and Network and Cosanguine are taken.”

“Not hookup,” I said. “Connotations. There’s a reason it isn’t taken.”

“Except I think she or her brothers and sisters liked the connotations.”

“It’s bad for the team,” I said.

“Ugghh. Why is this stuff so hard? Okay. They’re finding the street. We should make sure everything’s down there and ready to be loaded in. Tristan, can you lift it, or are you busy?”

“Take over?” Tristan asked.

“I don’t-” Rain started. “Oh, you were asking Sveta.”

“I’ve got it,” Sveta said.

“Don’t add anything. You always add a lot,” Tristan said.

With sandwich in one hand and my laptop packed into my backpack, I helped carry one bag of random components. Tristan didn’t put on his jacket, just boots, as he stepped outside, carrying the heavier things.

Kenzie nearly fell down the fire escape stairs in her enthusiasm to wave at the vehicle that was making its way into the parking lot adjacent to our building.

Darlene hopped out, crossing to where Kenzie was, doing the same thing Chastity had done with Cassie, with the kiss on each cheek. Kenzie was better at rolling with it than Rachel’s henchman had been.

I didn’t get quite why they were suddenly chattering at high speed from the moment they were reunited when they were connected with Darlene’s body-interlinking power and Kenzie’s cameras and microphones for good portions of the day. Kenzie had fixed her microphones first thing as we’d returned from the Wardens HQ.

“Not Hookup?” Darlene asked, her expression and tone somewhere between tragedy and disappointment.

“No,” I said.

The driver was a mercenary, burly with a shaggy beard, with a cold stare. Black outfit with black gloves, a gun at his hip. He didn’t look much like someone I could have a conversation with for the drive. I debated my policy of riding along with team members whenever possible.

“Tattletale says she’ll be at our base for a bit when you get there. Whatever you need to talk about,” Darlene said.

“Thank you. I did get a message from her.”

Darlene nodded. “I can’t believe I can’t use Hookup.”

“You can,” I said. “But it’s a bad idea.”

“Uugh,” Kenzie said. Darlene mimicked the sound, then tackle-hugged Kenzie before the two of them climbed back into the back of the vehicle.

They were getting along in a way that would have been next to impossible if either one of them were unpowered or from different backgrounds. I felt like this was a good thing, pending sufficient supervision, but I could also see how it lined up almost perfectly with the mentality in the diary. By taking this course of action, was I reinforcing the diary, giving Dragon and Jessica more fuel to doubt me?

I settled in the passenger seat, with a nod from the driver.

The pair in the backseat talked nonstop, with seventy-five percent of the talking being Kenzie’s.

Was my input on the name wrong? Was my condoning Tattletale’s part in this fucked up?

Our driver didn’t try to make conversation. I finished my sandwich, being careful with crumbs, then set my head against the window, staring out at the city beyond, and I got lost in my thoughts.

⊙

As we entered the yet-unnamed junior team’s headquarters, a chair slowly swiveled one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. Chicken Little sat in it, stroking the pet in his lap. That pet clucked, right on cue. “Welcome back.”

The maneuver prompted an overflow of excitement and praise from the two girls, who charged into the room.

“Stop! You’re going to scare my birds!” he protested, as the girls chattered at him. I had the impression he was the one who was a little overwhelmed at the response, rather than the sedate white chicken he was holding.

All around his ‘office’ were cages with birds, some dangling, others set against the wall. They looked to be categorized roughly by size, scale, and type. No doubt so the big birds wouldn’t eat the little ones.

As the trio each raised their yet-immature voices to higher volumes, each to be overheard by the other two, Tattletale rolled her head back, hands to her temples. She was sitting in a cozy chair off to one side. The headquarters had one central room, with the exit to the south, a space that seemed to be half-lounge, half Candy’s to the west, where Tattletale was, Aiden’s office to the north, and Lookout’s workshop and space to the east.

I walked over to Lookout’s workshop, and dropped off the bag and box I’d brought in. I rubbed at my arm as I walked away from it.

The energy level of the ten and eleven year olds was dialed up to ten, easily.

“I’m going to get a headache, and I haven’t even overdone it with my power yet,” Tattletale said. “Hey, midgets! Volume down.”

They started talking at normal volume, but at the same general velocity, even overlapping one another.

Tattletale was set up with her laptop in front of her. She watched me, wary, as I approached. The lounge half of the space had a few nice chairs, a short table, and a collection of snacks, some of which were the same ones we had back at the Breakthrough headquarters.

There was an adjoining room, connected to both Aiden’s office and Candy’s section of the lounge, that looked like it might be a barracks or medical corner, but I might have been overthinking it. A few beds and some decorations and things that made me think they were Darlene’s.

Tattletale closed her laptop and set it aside, leaning back as she looked up at me.

“Kenzie,” I said.

The chatter stopped. I turned my head and saw the four kids looking my way. A projection of Candy stood by the desk.

“Don’t listen in?”

“Okay,” Kenzie said.

Tattletale’s penetrating stare was a weight. Even opening my mouth to speak and say it was hard. Fuck all of this.

“Help,” I said. Non-sequitur. She wouldn’t know what I meant. “I need help.”

I was going to operate on the assumption that someone as busy as Tattletale couldn’t do something as comprehensive as what I’d read over at the hideout. I was operating on the assumption she wasn’t that subtle.

“Why should I?” she asked.

“Favors, payment, information. Whatever it takes.”

“I could tell you I’m busy. Schedule’s full. Undersiders are trying to get back onto the map, but those of us who are left and sticking around are mostly background players. The status we earn is through deeds, not show, which means I have to deed.”

I couldn’t say I was exceptionally surprised.

“I’d promise to help promote the Undersiders, involve you more in big decisions, but I know it’s pretty shitty to promise visibility. Too many junior heroes get lured onto teams with promises of exposure and next to no pay.”

“I’m not a hero,” Tattletale said. “But yeah, I don’t think we get much if we sell our services to you. You already know what we’re capable of, and you draw a pretty hard moral line in the sand-”

“Not so hard lately,” I told her.

“Fine. But you draw a line. There are very specific circumstances where you’re talking to other teams and you’ll say ‘I have an idea, my fellow white-hats! We’ll call the Undersiders!'”

“You came,” I observed.

“Imp has been hassling me to take on more duties with the junior team, and when you called she was happy for the excuse. She says we need to talk ground rules for the Chicken Tenders.”

“Please tell me we aren’t calling them that.”

Tattletale smiled, her mouth turning up at the corners. “Come up with a better name.”

“There isn’t an iota of curiosity in there?” I asked. “This is a puzzle only you can unravel.”

“I’ve got enough of those.”

Less fun than pulling teeth.

“If this gets out, or if it’s a long-term play, the end result is going to be bad. It affects Lookout, among others, and that affects your kids.”

“I’m getting the gist of it. But maybe that’s a good thing,” Tattletale said. “Because I worry about your kid in that room more than I worry about any of the Heartbroken. I’d be happier if she wasn’t here. If things are that fragile, it could be better if we rip off that overly attached bandage now.”

“I’ve given your kids a benefit of a doubt.”

“Good! They kind of deserve one. When I say Lookout scares me, that’s not me taking a side or being wary because she’s unfamiliar. That’s me saying she’s kinda messed up, and as neat as it would be to have access to her stuff, I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”

I put my hand on the back of the armchair she was sitting on, and I tilted it back a bit as I leaned in closer. “Don’t.”

“It’s the truth,” Tattletale said, sitting back with her feet no longer touching the ground. If I let go of the armchair, it would crash to the floor.

“You’re talking about her that way in her place. Her territory, when she’s a few rooms away. That’s shitty. You’ve got to be a better person than that.”

Tattletale brought her feet up even higher, than reached up to chop at my arm where my scar was. As I let go, she swung her feet down and her center of gravity forward, so the armchair would thunk to a proper sitting position instead of falling back.

“Huh?” Darlene asked, peering around the corner. “What was that?”

“Antares is bullying me,” Tattletale said.

Darlene stared, looking at each of us in turn, studying posture and context.

“Keep at it,” Darlene said. “She needs someone to remind her to act nice once in a while.”

“Traitor,” Tattletale said.

“Darlene, Darlene, Darleeeeene,” Kenzie’s voice piped.

“Volume!” Tattletale called out.

“Look, look. Are you looking? Bam!”

Darlene, still leaning around the corner, turned to look, and reacted so strongly that she nearly lost her position on the wall and fell over. Aiden and projection-Candy were laughing, and Darlene joined in, almost scrambling to her feet in rejoining the group in the other room, around the corner.

I walked over a few steps, to get a view of what they were doing.

Candy’s projection was in ‘costume’, but it was possibly the most horrific thing I’d ever seen. Vertical, horizontal, and diagonal stripes, dots, and clashing color combinations every step of the way. But even if it had been wiped clear of pattern, the 80’s shoulders, tucked-in top that produced a belly, and puffy pants tucked into high socks were bad.

“It’s what we’d get if we took all the opposite options from my ‘this one or that one’ machine learnings,” Kenzie said, looking far too pleased with herself, eyes glinting.

I mock-shielded my eyes, then retreated back around the corner, to Tattletale.

“I’m nice,” Tattletale said, even though the comment seemed to be a response to Darlene, who was long gone. “But you know as well as anyone, Vic, that trying to help everyone leads to an inevitable disaster. You need rules about who you help, how, and when.”

She’s not talking about me. She’s talking about Amy.

“Yeah. You’re a super nice person.”

She shrugged. “I’m here. I’m backing them up. I’m arranging the protection and ferrying them to the people and the places they need to be, and that includes ensuring your kid has the materials for her workshop. But if you’re telling me I have to fight to keep this little girl that actually kind of scares me around? Maybe I’m not that interested.”

“If you want to talk about helping people, and the who, why, and when, I want to point out that I helped you. That scar you just hit? I got it while helping Sveta to get you away from Cradle.”

“We’re going there?”

“You said,” I told her. “Quid pro quo. You bring up my shit, I can bring up that.”

She arched an eyebrow, still wearing that smirk that she had to know annoyed me.

It was… interesting that Tattletale had apologized by that roundabout way, but that she’d prodded at my wounds like she had, in this past conversation. Was there something else in play? A degree of insecurity? Or, with my discussion regarding Colt so fresh in my mind, I might even consider an element of it to be the wiring of her particular brain.

She didn’t apologize or hold back from poking at weak points because she couldn’t. In which case… this was wholly, entirely fair to do, on my part. She’d told me.

“I said that at a time I was in pain, delirious.”

I didn’t back down. “Any currency I earned there? I want to spend it. On this.”

“You even resorted to physical violence. You really want this. Some financial payment, some favors, and you can play that card,” she said. “You get five minutes of my time.”

“That wasn’t physical violence. Intimidation, maybe.”

But I didn’t waste the time she’d offered me. I got my laptop out of my bag, handing it over. She powered it on.

“The password is-”

She had it typed before I got that far in the sentence.

“You don’t have internet. I can see why you needed my help. That’s a horrific situation to be in.”

“I took out the networking card before I did anything,” I said. “I moved it to a folder on the desktop.”

“A… diary. How cute.”

“Read it.”

“This is how you want me to spend the time? Stroke your ego? Am I supposed to start empathizing with you?”

“Read,” I said.

“The brute side of you really comes out when you’re stressed. Where do I start?”

“Wherever.”

“Huh. Okay, important dates…”

She’d allotted me five minutes.

When ten minutes had passed, I got tired of standing around, and went to check in on the others. The hollow feeling hadn’t left me. I still felt betrayed, and weirdly violated even though it wasn’t my diary being used to judge me.

“Are you leaving?” Kenzie asked. “I didn’t get to show you anything.”

“Not leaving yet. Waiting for Tattletale to read. I might be a little distracted until she’s done. After?”

“After’s good. Aren’t these birds cool?”

Every single bird in Aiden’s ‘office’ stared me down, silent. Not a chirp or tweet.

“Really cool. Intimidating.”

“Aren’t they!?” Kenzie asked, delighted.

“Can I grab one of your snacks from the other room?”

“Yes,” Kenzie said, looking at the others. “Yes? That’s okay? We’re okay with that?”

I got confirmation.

“There was hot chocolate. Want me to make you guys something? It would be microwave hot chocolate, but you-”

I didn’t even need to finish the sentence.

Hot chocolate and snacks. Tattletale made some annoyed sounds with every beep of the microwave, but didn’t otherwise comment.

It made the kids happy, as they all sat around Aiden’s desk, enjoying what looked to be the best aspects of being kid capes with their own hideout. With how nervous I was, the joy wasn’t contagious, but it did make the day less bad.

Tattletale had promised me five minutes and she gave me twenty before she finally closed the laptop, setting it aside, resting atop her own.

I waited another minute to give her room to think before my patience ran out.

“Do I need to explain why I’m concerned?” I asked.

“You wrote a diary before?”

“Very little, while I was in the hospital.”

“But that’s not yours.”

I shook my head.

I did my best not to show just how relieved I was to hear those words, after doubting my own sanity.

“Who did they send it to?”

“Dragon found it, when I was sending her case files. She passed it on to someone important to our group.”

“Weird.”

“More than weird,” I told her, quiet.

“No need for money, no need for favors. I wanted cred for the Undersiders, and this will do.”

“This?”

“It runs deeper, Victoria. I know you think very highly of yourself, but this isn’t about you. Not exactly. Either they chose people they thought would make good targets, they chose randomly, or, they had a methodology like targeting the newest person to join each team.”

“‘They’, you say.”

“They. This isn’t just you, and it took a team. If we’re tackling this, we should start at the fringes. Small groups and groups with very new or tenuous memberships. I don’t know if Dragon found it by an accident that’s lucky for you, or if she found it by design, but… it’s interesting and concerning either way. I’m halfway to wondering if one of the other Undersider contingents has something like this planted on their systems.”

“Yeah. I was wondering about the rest of my team, but I don’t know what that would look like, or how I would look.”

“Come on,” she said. She got to her feet and stretched. “We. Us. Investigate.”

Black – 13.5

“Warm up the car,” Tattletale said, over the phone. “Plug in the booster seat and cage.”

“Booster seat?” I asked. “Who?”

“You want to ride with?” she asked, more like she was replying with light annoyance or incredulity than she was offering.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Half-size cage, slot it into the middle. Thanks,” she said over the phone. She hung up, and rather than answer my initial question, she walked across the junior team’s headquarters and knocked on the frame to the office.

Kenzie was lying on Chicken Little’s desk, legs bent at the knees so they hung over the front and side of the desk, her head not that far from Chicken Little, while she held a projected panel up. Chicken Little sat in his chair, chicken in his lap, and Darlene sat on the desk next to him, one foot resting on the edge of his chair. All three twisted their heads around to look at Tattletale.

“We want to rent Chicken,” Tattletale said. “With the supporting team in a supporting, stay-at-home role.”

“You’re taking him?” Darlene asked.

“It’s good, it’s a job,” Kenzie said, without lifting her head up off the table.

“Okay,” Chicken Little said. “Let me get ready.”

“Don’t say yes yet,” Kenzie said. “Parameters? Guidelines? What’s the job, how long? How intensive? How dangerous? What tools should we expect to employ, and what does it cost us to employ them? Then what do we get paid, based on all of that?”

Good questions, I thought. The sort I’d told her to be ready to answer.

Tattletale rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed. The end of the roll saw her eyes looking at me, for some reason.

“Okay, what she said,” Chicken Little told Tattletale.

“The job is to accompany us. Might use your birds. Strict fact-finding mission,” Tattletale told him. “Talk to your team to get answers once or twice. Low intensity. Darlene can take a fifteen minute bathroom break to fuss over herself if she wants, it’s that mild a job.”

“That’s- don’t go and say that,” Darlene said.

“One of us on desk duty to go and get the other if we need it, if we’re not using microphones?” Kenzie asked. Her legs kicked where they dangled over the edge of the desk.

“Yes. Low danger,” Tattletale said. “I hope it’s low danger. Tools? Bring two raptors.”

“And the Haast Eagle?” Chicken Little asked.

“That you called Chicken Large, told all the other kids about, and expected I wouldn’t hear about? Too big, too dramatic for what we’re doing.”

“I’ll have him fly with, give him a chance to stretch his wings, if that’s okay,” Chicken Little said, getting a short nod in response. “Okay. That’s good.”

“For pay, let’s say… seven hundred.”

“Too low,” Darlene said. “For a day’s work-”

“Day’s half over.”

“Tying up all three of us-”

“To a small degree. We don’t really need you two, so you can decorate, play that singing game you’re too embarrassed to play when anyone else is around-”

Darlene huffed, annoyed.

“-or sit in his chair and spin in circles until he’s back if you want. You’re not that tied up.”

“Don’t sit in my chair,” Chicken Little told Darlene. “We can get you a good spinning chair if you want.”

“I wouldn’t- I don’t,” Darlene said, huffing more, and looking a little sullen. “Even if I would, we’re going to be linked up and my spinning around could distract him. One thousand.”

“Whatever,” Tattletale said. “Seven hundred, but that includes a thirty percent discount because we’ll take a route to stop and get Roadkill.”

“Yes!” Chicken Little exclaimed.

“What’s roadkill?” Darlene and Kenzie asked, almost simultaneous.

“Roadkill BBQ, it’s a restaurant. It’s so good, I’ve been wanting to bring some to you guys. It’s so worth the discount we’d be giving,” Chicken Little said. “I’ve asked Tattletale and Imp once a day for weeks because I loved it and I want you guys to try it too.”

“That’s sweet,” Kenzie said. There was no smile on her face, as she laid across the top of the desk, hands folded across her stomach, her head turning now and then to look at whoever was speaking, eyes large. At the same time, though, her legs kicked more than they had been, heels banging slightly against the heavy wood of the desk. She looked up at Darlene. “Thinking about us. What a good guy.”

“It’s really good,” Chicken Little said. “One of my favorite meals I’ve ever had and my favorite since after Gold Morning.”

“It’s manipulative of Tattletale, trying to get us to lose out on three hundred dollars,” Darlene was a little quieter, like her resistance was crumbling. “Just to get some dinner?”

“Say yes. Please.” Chicken Little said. “Roadkill is worth three hundred dollars.”

“For three hundred dollars we could pay someone to go pick some up and bring it here,” Darlene said. “And still have some left over.”

“Hey,” I said. “Kudos, Dar. Good thinking.”

Darlene smiled.

Tattletale gave me another eye roll.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me. We want to train them to negotiate well. It’s part of guiding them.”

Darlene added, more for Chicken Little and Kenzie’s benefit than mine, “I grew up with more brothers and sisters than I could really keep track of and we had to negotiate and fight over everything. Sometimes with powered older siblings or with our moms, too.”

“It’s good. Thinking outside of the box instead of getting zoomed-in on the back-and-forth,” I said.

She smiled more. Kenzie reached up and over her own head to give Darlene a pat on the back.

Tattletale looked a little exasperated, her expression and tone like she was considering me one of the children to be managed instead of a partner in this. “If you want me to pay a thousand-”

“Us to pay a thousand,” I said. Partners.

“Obviously,” Tattletale said. “We’re going to want to get our money’s worth. But if you want to relax a little, then you can have a dinner date-”

Darlene’s eyes narrowed, the others seemed unfazed.

“-with your friends, and we’ll relax our expectations accordingly.”

“Yes?” Chicken Little asked. He poked Darlene in the side of the stomach. “Please?”

Darlene looked down at Kenzie, who nodded her head in an exaggerated way.

“…Okay,” Darlene said. “But make it seven fifty, and we’ll knock fifty bucks off to give you your seven hundred if Antares bullies Tattletale some more. Find an excuse to give her a noogie or a wet willie or something. Take her down a peg because she’s getting annoying and rude.”

A little resentful of the jabs and teasing Tattletale had fit into the debate, apparently. Darlene had gone from heated and annoyed to sullen to pushing back against Tattletale on the price point, and now, having said that, seemed much more at ease. Very quick to adjust on an emotional front.

“Deal, I’ll see what I can do,” I said. Because anything that reinforced a healthy pushback against Tattletale was a good thing.

Tattletale suppressed a sigh, and gestured. “Come on, then. Up and at ’em, Chicken.”

“Earbuds,” Kenzie said, handing off some devices to Chicken Little. “Sound should be better, but we’ll see.”

“I’ll call Imp and get the sign-off,” Darlene said.

“I’m here,” Tattletale said.

“You’re hiring us,” Darlene said. “Rules are that if Undersiders hire us then we ask Breakthrough if the job’s okay, and if Breakthrough hires us then we ask Undersiders if it sounds good. And if it’s not either of you guys then we can ask anyone, or we ask both groups if it’s serious.”

“Good rules,” I said.

Darlene nodded. “But since you’re both hiring us then we should ask someone who isn’t involved.”

“I like that,” I said.

“Shaving years off my life,” Tattletale muttered.

“Good,” Darlene muttered back, as she brought her phone to her ear.

“Be nice to Tattletale,” Chicken Little said.

“Okay,” Darlene said, before turning her head slightly, eyes narrowing at Tattletale.

Tattletale did an exaggerated eye-narrowing of her own.

Chicken Little was out of his seat, handing off his chicken to Darlene. He already wore his mask, which was the dinner-plate round mask with round black lenses for eyes and a little cone on the lower face for the beak, a ‘cockscomb’ extension at the top that arced back and over the top of his forehead to join his fauxhawk. He had his red and white coat with the tailfeather ‘tails’ at the back and the pinion cut around the sleeves. He kicked off chicken-styled slippers and slid his feet into sneakers with blades worked into the exterior design, three over the toe and spurs at the back, in a ‘talon’ design.

Once the shoes were laced up, he put his hand through a stylized falconer’s glove, opened a cage, and had two hawks perch on his arm. Between the large glove and the weight of the birds, it looked like his skinny arm had trouble holding them up.

He turned to look at Darlene, who was talking on the phone, no longer sitting on the desk, but walking away from the desk so as not to be overheard.

She gave the thumbs up.

Chicken Little hit switches, and his office went dark, shutters whirring as they closed it off from the remainder of the office.

“Because noise,” Kenzie explained for me, as she ducked under the shutter. “The squawking and chirping gets kind of crazy sometimes.”

“You good?” I asked her.

She nodded. “Very.”

She had a stray lock of kinky hair that had pulled free of the pin. I used a finger to poke it back into place. “We’ll see if we can time the Roadkill thing so I can bring some to Swansong, and you can have a long-distance dinner together.”

“Please. And short-distance dinner sometime this week? Can I come over sometime?”

“If your guardians at the institution say okay,” I said.

She stepped forward, giving me a sudden, very unexpected hug. Her forehead hit my breastplate with the enthusiasm of the movement, and both Darlene and Chicken Little’s heads snapped over to look at us in that moment.

I put my arms down, forearm and hands across her shoulderblades. I murmured, “I thought you had rules.”

“I’m getting sloppy,” she said. “It’s bad, I know.”

“Okay,” I said, not sure what to make of that. “Careful.”

She nodded, hugged me tighter for a second, then broke the hug, bouncing over to Darlene’s side.

Tattletale, Chicken Little and I made our way downstairs, and into the parking garage that was attached to the building. Snuff was standing by the car, which was running, engine idling.

The hawks went into a cage that was apparently built across the middle section of the backseat, dividing the two sides. Tattletale took the passenger seat, and Snuff got behind the wheel. I ended up sitting behind him, because of how the door of the cage opened behind Tattletale’s and where the booster seat was fit into the car.

“What are we fact-finding?” Chicken Little asked, as he strapped in.

“Turn off your earbud?” I asked. “I don’t want to loop in Lookout just yet. For her protection.”

Chicken Little hesitated, then turned it off.

“Thanks,” I said. “And Snuff?”

“We can trust him,” Tattletale said.

“You didn’t use him when we had the thing three weeks ago.”

“She used me,” Snuff said.

“I used him,” Tattletale said. “I had questions, then I verified, and I put him on duty looking after some secondary interests and projects, because I wasn’t as sure I could trust the mercenaries I put on those projects. Sometimes you need a good ally to keep the tent from falling down while you hammer in the stakes.”

“My things are off, my team isn’t listening. What’s going on?” Chicken Little asked.

“A group of people are trying to be sneaky,” Tattletale said. “Framing others, planting really convincing evidence. Possibly for a bigger play further down the line. Possibly to sow discord or create divisions within groups. It would be like if someone pretended to be you and sent nasty messages to the Heartbroken, so you’d never get invited to Aunt Rachel’s again, or if they were planting evidence on your computers now so they could mess up your team and allll the other teams a year from now.”

“Okay,” Chicken Little said.

The discourse was interesting from a certain angle. That it felt like Tattletale talked down to Chicken Little, except she had a tone like she was talking down to anyone, normally. Just… more here.

I felt like I approached Kenzie as more of an adult and expected her to keep up, and she was sharp enough to do that, with only occasional steering. Based on what she’d told me and shown me, she’d been clever even before triggering. It wasn’t a tinker thing.

Tatteltale continued, “We know of one case. My power tells me we should expect others. Our first stop’s going to be Foresight. Who they targeted, why, and how is going to tell us a lot.”

“You think it’s inevitable they targeted Foresight?” I asked.

“Eighty percent sure they would. If it’s about controlling information, then they’re obvious. If it’s about power and going after bigger teams, then Foresight’s a good target there too. If they didn’t target Foresight, then it’s probably a focus on smaller teams, which suggests subversion.”

“I have a good working relationship with Anelace,” I said. “We could ask him and see what he’s willing to share or hint at, without us spelling anything out just yet.”

“This is all secret?” Chicken Little asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “The more people know about it, the higher the chance that the people who’re responsible react or use emergency measures. Right now we just want a sense of what we’re dealing with.”

“Okay,” he said. “So you haven’t told Precipice and the others?”

“No,” I said. Thinking about my team and what would unfold if the character assassination went any further than it already had was a dark thought, tempered by how Chicken Little had phrased the question. “Thinking about Precipice?”

“He’s cool. We talked at the hospital when we all visited Lookout.”

I smiled. “He doubts himself a lot, you know? He’s had a rough go of it.”

“All of us have,” Chicken Little said. He leaned back, resting one arm on the top of the cage with the eerily still and quiet hawks in it. “But some of us, like the younger Heartbroken and Lookout and I, we had stuff happen so long ago that we don’t remember it, you know?”

“Is that what Lookout said?”

“I kinda just figured.”

I nodded. I wouldn’t out her or correct him, especially with a strange mercenary and manipulative thinker in the driver’s and passenger’s seat, respectively.

“We don’t remember it all but a lot of the time it messes us up. Feelings get mixed up, swapped around, or we have something quirky. For me, it’s dreams. For some of the heartbroken, it’s like wires get crossed.”

“Good way of putting it,” I said. “And there’s the scope of the agent-parahuman relationship, right?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“The way it was explained to me in courses I took, the earlier you get your power, the less defenses you have. You don’t know how to work with it or make it do exactly what it wants, so… the power has more room to make you change or adapt instead.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Chicken Little said. “And it’s like if a chicken grows up in a coop that’s too small, it ends up deformed. Or if a tree grows into a fence and it gets warped and there’s metal in the wood. We have something big occupying this space-”

He tapped his forehead.

“-and grow around that thing.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I like those analogies. Perfect.”

“Did Precipice have powers for a long time?”

“No,” I said. “Last year.”

“I have more experience than him,” Chicken Little said. “That’s funny.”

I smiled.

“He made knives for fun he said,” Chicken Little said. “And even hand-made bear traps from scrap, once. Like Biter and Bite-size have for their masks, but weaponized. That was before he was a tinker.”

“I think he spent a long while without T.V. or internet. Not even that many books to read. So he kept his hands busy.”

“Given the situation, he could have done worse,” Tattletale added, in what probably passed for a compliment, coming from her.

“Situation?” Chicken Little asked.

“That’s for him to share if he wants,” I said. “You might already know parts of it-”

“He does,” Tattletale said.

“-but maybe I’ll send him with Lookout for one of the drop-offs, and you guys can catch up.”

Chicken Little nodded, enthusiastic.

The chatter continued as Snuff pulled onto the highway, picking up speed.

Foresight.

⊙

Foresight had good aesthetic running through it. Cursive-style loops and sweeping lines in white ran across glossy black panes that decorated the walls, those scripts gathering together for specific signs, symbols, and images. The places where those decorative panes weren’t set up were naturally eye-catching through their absence.

Brio’s portrait had been hung in one of those absent places. It wasn’t the only hung portrait.

There were areas where plants were on shelves, the vegetation draping down, but the tinted lighting made the green plants look nearly black. With the way they hung and crawled against the wall, the black was against a backdrop of white, above panels with more tangled cursive, or against light panels inset into the wall. A dose of nature, but focused on exaggerating the abnormal.

The ‘visitors’ area was surrounded by a gallery of images of each of the team’s heroes. Each image was larger than life, floor to ceiling, each figure made even larger by the fact that a given image only captured a portion of them, at least half of their body residing outside of the frame. A picture of Effervescent, a pale image against a pitch black background, hair falling around her shoulders, the colorful nature of her costume desaturated in a way that fit with the hallway’s scheme while still hinting that she had the most colorful costume on the team.

After Effervescent on the left side was a picture of Anelace, a black-costumed figure against a stark white background, the white of the mask with the black cursive scrawling of the dagger on the eyepatch standing out, given the composition. Then a picture of Crystalclear, crystals and skin white and light against a black background, respectively.

So it alternated, on both sides of the hall.

Anelace and Countenance stepped into view, the two of them talking well before they were in my earshot.

Anelace put out his hand to shake. I shook it. Effervescent didn’t offer me anything, and I didn’t push. Honestly, as bad as things might’ve gone, I was pretty content with being set up against these two. Anelace and I had gotten along for a while now, he was an attractive guy, going by his fitness, and he’d made some attempts at inviting me on dates, including one at a crime scene.

Effervescent was one of the thinkers who had rejected me when I’d applied to join Foresight, after the community center, before Jessica’s therapy group.

“Checking out the competition?” Anelace asked.

“I don’t see us as competing,” I told him. “We’re all on the same side.”

“Including the Undersiders?” Effervescent asked.

“They’re parked outside,” Anelace clarified. The remark got a look from Effervescent. She might have wanted to try to trap me in a lie or omission.

“We’re pursuing a joint project,” I said. “Or I am. I needed someone with her particular skills.”

“Thinker skills?” Anelace asked.

“We have thinker skills,” Effervescent said. “You could have come to us.”

“There’s another joint project where we’re collaborating,” I said. “Lookout got hurt a few too many times in too short a timeframe. We decided it was best to get her out of that situation before any institutional crackdown. During the whole Cradlemarch mess, we ran into the Undersiders and she got along with a few of the kids in Undersider orbit. Lookout is pursuing a team with them. It puts Undersiders and Breakthrough in irregular contact.”

Effervescent folded her arms, tilting her head slightly as she looked at Anelace.

“If it works, it works,” Anelace told me.

“The kid’s hers?” Effervescent asked.

“Chicken Little. One of Lookout’s teammates. We hired them to keep it fair and we’re using it as an opportunity to train them, teach them what to look for. A simple, minor mission.”

“I still have a hard time getting a read on you,” Effervescent said. “But there’s more to this, isn’t there?”

“There’s always more to a situation,” Anelace said. “When you get information, you get three-quarters of the information at best. When you dig again, you get three-quarters of what’s left, but things shuffle, change, and adapt in the meantime. A problem bloats, a person develops in response to whatever you’re adjusting…”

“And I’m not interested in high-level back-and-forth over the philosophy of information gathering,” Effervescent said. For a colorful personality, she was kind of pissy. “Is there something more to it, Antares?”

“Yes,” I said. I paused. “I can’t really get into it. I want to look into some stuff, and I want to ask for you to give me the benefit of a doubt here, because I can’t explain it all. I’ve gone toe to toe with some of the tough contenders these past couple of months. I’m hoping that counts for something.”

They exchanged a look. Anelace had his arms folded, and I saw his fingers lift away from his arm, two extended.

“I’d have to ask Count,” Effervescent said. “What do I tell him, ‘lace?”

“What can you tell us?” Anelace asked me.

“You have options,” I answered. “I can tell you nothing, it’s the least complicated option. I investigate, and at some point, ideally tonight, I get an answer and I fill you in with all the rest of the teams.”

“What’s the drawback?” Effervescent asked.

“That it’s not a safe option,” I told. “It’s the least complicated. The safe option is that I lie to you. What I tell you lets you know what to watch out for, but it doesn’t get into the problematic stuff.”

“And if you tell us?”

“Option three is I tell one of you, and they join me for the next short while, while we dig through this.”

“We’re tied up,” Anelace said. “Stuff to do, can’t take a sabbatical.”

“What are the consequences if you tell us outright?” Effervescent asked.

“I haven’t gotten into this with my own team, and I know them. I don’t know most of Foresight. I need to diagnose the problem before I can diagnose the consequences, but I can tell you it’d be bad.”

Effervescent nodded. She looked at Anelace again.

“I like option two,” he said. “The lie. It tells us the most and I think safety is the best priority.”

“Going by her judgment.”

“Yeah,” Anelace said. “What’s your read?”

“Seems genuine, as far as I can tell. I say go ahead.”

“Not running it by the boss?” I asked.

“Countenance is busy, and he trusts us. Trusts me,” Effervescent said. “And as far as ‘lace goes, he trusts me to keep tabs on and find ‘lace if he goes missing.”

I raised an eyebrow at Anelace, which I could only do because I wasn’t wearing my mask.

“I had a thing a little while ago, when the team was new,” Anelace said. “We were supposed to be paired up for jobs. I dodged Effy. Effy caught me with, ah, the reason for the dodging.”

“A rooftop liaison with a villain or villainess?” I asked. “You don’t have to answer.”

“A villainess would have been easier than the liaison ended up being.”

“That’s actually true,” ‘Effy’ said.

“And I feel bad.”

“Half true.”

Anelace laughed a bit. “Good enough. You want to tell us your convenient lie here in the front hall of our HQ, or step away somewhere?”

“Outside? Tattletale can chime in, fill in the blanks.”

I saw them exchange looks.

“Believe me,” I said. “I know. Every doubt, every suspicion. I get it. I know one hundred percent. But I think including her helps all of us.”

“Alright,” ‘Effy’ said. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Anelace said.

We made our way outside. Anelace held the door for Effervescent and me.

“Fuck me,” Effervescent said. “That’s a big-ass bird.”

Tattletale was outside the car, leaning against the side. Chicken Little was sitting on the trunk, while his eagle was perched in a tree above him, devouring one of the twenty crows that occupied other branches. His hawks were out of the middle-seat birdcage and rested on his shoulder and glove, respectively.

Snuff was a good fifty feet away, his hood pulled up to show a jaw with no chisel to it, covered in stubble. He was smoking with enough intensity that a cloud surrounded him.

“I recognize him. Snuff,” Anelace observed, as we got closer to Tattletale.

“Is it a problem?” Tattletale asked.

“He was a murderer for hire.”

“He was. Pre-amnesty,” Tattletale said. “You didn’t answer my question. Is it a problem?”

“No,” Anelace said. “You let him hang around with a kid?”

“I hang around with who I want to hang out with,” Chicken Little said. “Right big guy?”

The giant eagle made a sound that made me think it wasn’t doing so hot. Loud, but the furthest thing from fierce.

“We’ll work on that,” Chicken Little said. “Eagles have the worst screeches. What about you two?”

The hawks screeched, the one on his arm flapping its wings without taking off. Several of us winced at the sound.

“Bothering the neighbors,” Effervescent said. She indicated the street. Lots with businesses ran into lots with houses with no rhyme or reason. I was put in mind of the eclectic mix of dentists, doctors, pharmacies, convenience stores, clothing stores and houses one could find in a typical Chinese-American part of town, but this was just regular town.

“Oh, sorry. I can see why you’d be worried,” Chicken Little said.

“I’m not worried. I’m saying literally they’re bothered. I’m aware.”

Chicken Little ducked his head down a little. “I thought it was cool.”

“It was,” Effervescent said. “But cool has a time and place.”

“As I see it, if you’re trying for ‘cool’ you’re doing it wrong,” Anelace said.

Chicken Little huffed, sitting up straighter, looking like he was going to start an argument. Tattletale reached out, and the hawk on Chicken Little’s glove flapped violently, turning its beak her way.

“Huh? What? Did you want something?”

“To get your attention. Let us talk business, listen and learn, alright?”

Chicken Little huffed again, but he nodded.

“Clandestine business you apparently can’t tell us straight,” Anelace said, to Tattletale.

“Essentially,” she said. She turned my way as she said it.

“We’re going to tell them a lie that serves as an analogy,” I told Tattletale.

“Your call,” she said.

“Consider this a, uh, poaching job,” I said. “One group trying to steal members from another. A group of people are out there looking for easy targets. My feeling, and I’m not sure if Tattletale agrees, is that this was something aimed at new members of the team and at fringe members.”

“They’re breaking up teams and looking to recruit them once they’re gone?” Anelace asked. After a pause, where he saw my expression, he added, “In this hypothetical or somewhat relatable situation.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Has the recruiting already happened?” Effervescent asked. “Do we look at people who’ve left for cryptic reasons and joined some specific team, or-”

“No,” I said. “We’re not there yet.”

“And you’re prying,” Tattletale said. “I think we’re using this rough outline of the situation to avoid spelling it out exactly. Which would make it bad form if you pried.”

“Okay,” Effervescent said. “You don’t want us prying why, exactly?”

“Because there’s a lot of potential misinformation flying around, and if someone else starts following up or trying to cover their asses, we lose the ability to follow the trail,” Tattletale said.

“That too,” I said. “It’s where we need your trust.”

“No recruiting happening yet, but some splintering of teams or targeting of vulnerable people,” Effervescent said.

Tattletale rolled her head back. “You’re prying. You stopped for all of five seconds and you’re prying again. As a professional pryer, I’m in actual pain here.”

“You tell me not to pry and then you tempt me with a line like that,” ‘Effy’ said.

“Do you have anyone?” I asked, aiming to interrupt. “Do you know anyone who fits this bill? It could be recent, could be just starting. New or fringe member, is my guess, but someone where there were recent revelations or some initial grumblings, or anything weird that has you or your group distancing yourself from them.”

Anelace and Effervescent exchanged looks.

“Who?” Tattletale asked.

“It’s not that cut and dry,” Anelace said.

“That’s why we’re digging into it,” Tattletale said.

“It’s why I brought Tattletale in. She can figure out what isn’t that cut and dry,” I said.

“Who?” Tattletale asked, in the next breath.

“Two of ours,” Anelace said. “Kind of ours. We were looking at recruiting, with the shift in the amount of work we’re doing and the ground we’re having to cover. We have a lot of thinkers and we got to know some others through duties like watching the portal or sitting in on diplomatic meetings.”

Right. Crystalclear had mentioned doing those duties. Keeping an eye on people coming in through the portals, keeping an eye out for stowaways, for trouble, for criminals. Many of the Thinkers had worked in groups to make sure they covered enough bases. Weeding out problems before they entered the city and disappeared into the maze of lost people trying to figure out what their identity on this new world looked like.

“And you recruited two of them?” I asked.

“Ratcatcher and Big Picture,” Anelace said. “We didn’t get to the recruitment part. We had a branding department working with Ratcatcher to see if we couldn’t Foresight-up her costume, get the right design while keeping her look. Big Picture was starting to look into it, Countenance invited him on some patrols, and he went with. Getting a feel for things.”

“And it went sour,” Tattletale said. She looked more lively and interested than I’d seen her in… maybe ever.

“Yeah. Sour’s a way to put it,” Anelace said.

“Don’t get carried away,” Effervescent said. “Because I really don’t think this is a setup.”

“You don’t?” I asked.

“They confessed,” she said. “Big Picture confessed, one hundred percent, no objection, was fine with leaving. No fuzz, my read on it was clear.”

“And Ratcatcher was fuzzy,” Tattletale said. “Because…”

Anelace answered, “Because it’s Ratcatcher. I don’t know if you’ve met her, but when she’s quiet she’s like a toddler with a fork in their hand, inching toward a light socket.”

“She’s going to hurt herself?” Chicken Little asked, speaking up for the first time in a bit.

“Exactly,” Anelace said.

“Or burn the house down,” Effervescent said.

“Oh. Wow,” Chicken Little said.

“When she’s not quiet she’s… fuck, I’m usually good with words,” Anelace snapped his fingers a few times.

“A fire hose on full blast with nobody to man it,” Effervescent said.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Messy, all over the place, unpredictable, supposedly useful in a crisis, but-”

“If you have to explain it it’s not a good analogy,” Anelace said.

“I’m pretty happy with it,” Effervescent said. “Even if I want to explain it.”

“Can you explain the situations? What happened with them?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Anelace said. “Big-”

“No,” Effervescent interrupted.

There was an awkward pause.

“Doesn’t feel right,” Effervescent said. “Even if we think there might be a reason to look into it more, it’s dishing drama and that’s the sort of thing that’s between them and our team.”

Anelace nodded.

Effervescent added, “But you can talk to them and ask them. If they say the same thing, let them know we say it’s fine. You’re… independently investigating, in case something bigger is going on.”

“Can you point us in their direction?” I asked.

“I’ll text you,” Anelace said. “Unless you want to meet up on a rooftop somewhere, Antares? A little more ‘cape’ than hanging around on a street.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Slim maybe, if I’m being honest. But I appreciate the trust.”

“Sure,” he said.

“We appreciate you not talking about this to anyone that wasn’t standing here at this meeting,” Tattletale said.

“Hint taken,” Anelace said.

Tattletale whistled to get Snuff’s attention. The guy whipped up what looked like a miniature black hole, sucking up all the smoke and, by the looks of it, vacuuming up a lot of the other particulate, mess, and the light dusting of snow from his hood and the coarse, thick black sweater he wore.

“Talk to you later,” Anelace said.

“Yeah,” I replied.

Snuff started up the car, and we pulled away from the street with the Foresight headquarters.

“You’re aware of what the rooftop meeting means, right?” Tattletale asked.

“I’m aware,” I said, trying to not give Tattletale a tell as she watched me in the rear-view mirror. There were a lot of complicated feelings surrounding that. Anelace wasn’t my type in some ways, but I ran the risk of having a type so narrow that only one deceased person fit the bill, and there were a few more obstacles in between me, him, and that eventuality.

For now, I was content to shift into neutral and coast through this as casually and shallowly as possible. It was flattering, Anelace had a nice build, with a tight-fitting suit to showcase it, he was a hero, and as awful as he was with timing he had some decency to him. So long as I didn’t dwell, I could just enjoy the vague idea, try to adj-

“Wait, what’s this?” Chicken Little asked, interrupting my thoughts. “Secret meanings?”

“He wants to take Antares out on a date,” Tattletale said, taking me from the shallow-casual dip into the pool of romantic notions and pushing my head beneath the waters. “It’s like saying ‘do you want to come in for coffee’? It’s not about the coffee.”

“This is, for the record, very awkward,” I said.

“Blame the guy who propositioned you with a bunch of colleagues, an old nemeses, and a kid hanging around.”

“No, no,” I said. “I’m happy blaming you, Tattletale.”

“Of course you are.”

“And it can mean just meeting to hang out and catch up.”

“That’s true, and that fact is the only reason I didn’t drag my fingernails down my cheeks from the cringeyness of it,” Tattletale said. “But I know and you know what he wants.”

I floundered mentally while Tattletale pushed my metaphorical self into the deepest corner of the pool. At least she hadn’t called me Glory Hole.

“Tattletale knows stuff,” Chicken Little said.

“Unfortunately,” Tattletale said. “Not a mental picture I wanted.”

“Unfortunately. Agreed, yeah,” I echoed Tattletale. “Can we change the subject?”

My phone booped. A message from Anelace. The same stylized image that was on the wall of Foresight was his avatar in phonespace. He had the address.

“Twenty-second and Blockgreen. It’s not far.”

“Heard,” Snuff said. “Twenty-second and Blockgreen.”

“Um,” Chicken Little said. “I know we changed the subject…”

He trailed off, not continuing.

“It’s fine,” I said, regretting it as I said it.

“You can do better,” he said. “Anelace said something like how you can’t be cool if you’re trying to be cool and that seems like a douchey thing to say.”

Snuff sniggered in the front seat.

“How do you be cool if you don’t start out cool? It’s like it’s the privilege of the cool-by-default and nobody else is allowed to try for coolness.”

“I think you’re good, Chicken,” I said. “The Heartbroken and Lookout think you’re cool.”

“Actually, I wanted to talk about Lookout, because I’m a little unsure about some stuff.”

“We can do that.”

“But before that, I wanted to say that Anelace guy talks about being cool but I was sitting there thinking his costume and his team’s costumes are trying way too hard to be edgy.”

“Amen,” Snuff muttered.

“See?” Chicken Little said, with an almost plaintive edge to his voice, as though he was pleading for people to get it at the same time nobody in the vehicle was disagreeing with him.

“Edgy, as Swansong would put it, is something you live up to.”

“Of course she’d say that,” Tattletale muttered.

“Then he should buy you flowers or chocolate and not embarrass you in front of people, so he can live up to it,” Chicken Little said.

“And we’re here,” Snuff said. “Which is a shame, because I was enjoying this.”

“I’m glad someone’s having fun,” I told him.

Out of the car. I showed Tattletale the phone, and looked around for the building number. By the time I turned around, she was pointing at it.

“Get your birds,” Tattletale told Chicken Little. “If and when we use them, they should be used nonlethally.”

“They’re hawks. And an eagle-”

“Don’t use the eagle. That will kill.”

“So will the hawks! They’re awesome killing machines! They have feet like fistfuls of knives!”

“And this is practice and training,” Tattletale said. “Nonlethal. Hang back with Snuff. If I whistle, cross the street, come to me, obey.”

“But-”

“I’m the customer, right?”

“Half the customer,” Chicken Little said. He turned to me, and even though I couldn’t see his face, I could tell he was hopeful.

Like the divorced parent thing again. When one parent said no…

“What she says.”

His shoulders drooped.

Tattletale and I crossed the street, which was busy enough she had to time her crossing to slip between traffic. I ended up flying over.

We reached the front door. I wondered if we were breaching some rule of secret identities. Then I saw that the glass panel by the buzzer had slips of stained, coarse, post-Gold Morning paper where each resident had handwritten their own names. Everything was laid out in neat print except for one, which just said ‘Rats’.

The building didn’t look nice, which made me wonder just how the other residents felt about it.

I hit the buzzer.

Cars whizzed this way and that down the street. One had a bad muffler, and roared. Too many lacked the tires, I was sure, to handle the light coating of ice, snow, and moisture on the road.

Tattletale whistled.

“What?” I asked. When I looked, she was leaning against the railing.

“She’s ducking out the back window. You should really hurry,” Tattletale told me. “You might be able to fly, but she knows the hiding places.”

Chicken Little and Snuff were hurrying across the road.

“And you’re-”

“Waiting,” Tattletale said. She made a face. “She’s faster than me, what am I going to do?”

I took off. Up and around the building, dodging a frozen clothesline someone hadn’t bothered or cared enough to bring in.

I saw Ratcatcher, and she saw me.

She was quick, faster than I would have been on foot, and wore a sweatshirt, pyjama bottoms, boots, and her mask with its crooked nose. Her hair was a mess, to the point I was pretty sure she’d been in bed when I’d buzzed in, despite the fact it had to be one or two in the afternoon now.

She leaped to another building and caught the fire escape, and then she leaped down, catching hold of an air conditioner. Bare handed, freezing cold metal. She let go with one hand and caught a rat that was tracing her own route, following her. She placed it on her messy hair and then reasserted her grip on the air conditioner.

She leaped from air conditioner to window, landing on the frame. I shifted direction, and in the time it took me to reach her, she opened the window and slipped inside. The window shut behind her.

I stopped short of entering, because there were enough people in the hallway and I didn’t trust myself to not hurt anyone by barreling through. I watched her route and flew around.

At the next window, I saw her round a corner. I traced her route again, watching through a bedroom window as she let herself into an unlocked apartment, looked through a kitchen window to see her head into the next room.

Back out into the hallway. I opened the window and entered.

She was quick enough that I almost missed what happened while I hauled the window open. Only the fact the hatch in the wall was held open for a second to let one of her pet rats follow her in let me know. It clanged shut. I flew to it, and I opened it.

By the smell, it was the building’s chute to the dumpster.

I flew back out the window, tapping it firmly with my foot so it would close, and flew around.

She’d put some distance between us. She’d exited the chute and the dumpster at the bottom of it, and I saw her entering a building.

Two hawks swooped down, snatching up the rats that followed behind her.

There was a pause, with her holding the door open, the door blocking my view. Then the crooked nose of her mask extended out and up, as she tracked the disappearance of her pets.

I landed.

About two seconds later, while I approached with arms up to show I wasn’t a threat, the thought connected.

Tattletale had invited Chicken Little for a reason. This reason. She’d guessed Ratcatcher was one of the fringe candidates, and she’d brought the bird master to go after the rats.

Non-lethally, she’d stressed.

She was going to be so insufferably pleased with herself, that it all came together like it did.

Ratcatcher didn’t look down, her eyes on the sky. At the corner of the building, Chicken Little was jogging, Snuff huffing as he followed.

“We can bring them back,” I said. “They’re unharmed. Or they should be.”

She didn’t look away.

“All we want to know is what happened with you and Foresight.”

“You’re not going to arretht me for the other thtuff?”

I shook my head. Then I paused. “What other stuff? Should we?”

She shrugged.

Whatever.

“We just care about the failed recruitment for now. What happened, that you didn’t get recruited by Foresight?” I asked.

“It thtarted with me getting pith drunk,” she said. “Thent thome textth to my new both.”

“Texts?”

“The thorta textth you don’t want your grandmama to thee.”

“Do you remember sending these texts?” I asked her.

Black – 13.6

Tattletale took her sweet frigging time in catching up to us. There was enough time for a concerned citizen to start talking on their phone while looking warily at Chicken Little and the hooded ex-killer Snuff who had been chasing -following- after him, time for me to talk to them while Snuff kept an eye on Ratcatcher, a defusing of the situation with Chicken’s help, and then time for us to get slightly bored.

With a light whistle to get Chicken’s attention, she motioned to the hawks. “Release one to show goodwill?”

Chicken Little didn’t. He hung back, on the opposite side of the alley as Ratcatcher, with Snuff standing beside him, one hand at his shoulder. Ratcatcher had retreated into the building she’d been planning to escape into, mainly for warmth, and I stood at the doorway, keeping it just ajar enough I could keep an eye on her.

Not that she was going anywhere, with Chicken Little holding her pets.

“I’m not sure I can,” Chicken Little said.

Ratcatcher didn’t make a sound, but the bent nose of her mask flicked around in an alarmed way, her head craning to see Chicken Little through the cracked-open doorway.

“Why can’t you?” Tattletale asked.

“Because when you said I had to be nonlethal, that’s something I’ve never done before. It’s like I plant these flags and the birds go to the flag to do whatever it says on the flag. Attack, wait, watch out, patrol…”

“Yes… and?”

“And I don’t have a ‘catch but don’t kill’ flag so I just stuck down an ‘attack’ and ‘wait’ flag in the same place and they’re kind of stuck between the two and getting stressed out. But it worked for them grabbing but not killing. I can’t really tell one to do one thing and the other to do another, and if I put down more flags they can’t follow because of contradicting orders then they’ll either snap and eat the rats or they’ll both go quiet and let the rats go.”

I put up a hand to ease Ratcatcher.

“Let them both go then,” Ratcatcher said. “I’ll cooperate.”

“No,” Tattletale said. “We’ll figure this out.”

“They’re my friendth. I trained them to use the litter boxth, and they bring me thnackth if I’m in bed and I don’t want to get up. Ratthputin is my betht helper and Templeton is a cuddler.”

“Maybe-” Chicken Little started.

“Don’t cave,” Tattletale warned him.

“Maybe he wasn’t going to cave,” I said. “If he has a suggestion let him think it through. It’s his power.”

“I was going to cave,” Chicken said.

Tattletale extended a hand, as if to say ‘see?’.

Well fine, then.

“I’d rather not hurt people’s pets, and I did this because you were rushing me and telling me I had to do it now, I had to learn to think on the fly, and so I did, but now I’m doubting myself.”

“Don’t,” Tattletale said. “You’re better than you think.”

Ratcatcher wrung her hands while Tattletale talked to her protege. Her head turned, as if she was considering an escape route, then turned my way, looking me up and down. As if she was considering an attack.

Fuck.

“Snuff?” I asked. “Can you watch Ratcatcher? I’ll help.”

Snuff left Chicken behind to take hold of the door. I backed away, into the alley, then flew up to where the two hawks roosted on a length of pipe.

This felt weird to do. I put my hands out, and I gingerly held the rat and the bird’s talon all together.

Feet like a fistful of knives, was that what Chicken Little had said? Beaks like a sharp, fast moving knife.

With the other hand, I held the rat but not the talon.

“I’ve secured one of the rats. Try releasing?” I asked.

“You’re sure?”

“I think so.”

I felt the animals move beneath my hands. With one hand, I ensured a hawk didn’t let go or lose the rat. With the other, I pulled a rat away. I suspected they were as clean as any pet, but Ratcatcher was just far enough off the beaten path that I wasn’t ruling out fleas or other hygiene questions. I was glad for the gloves I wore.

“And secure. Back to what you were doing before.”

“Okay. Done.”

I backed off. One of the two roosting hawks had a rat pinned and gripped in talons. I carried the other down to Ratcatcher.

“Thank you,” Ratcatcher said. She lifted the rat up to her shoulder and adjusted her shirt collar so it served as a partial blanket.

Tattletale approached, and we entered the side door of the building, stepping into the hallway and letting the door close behind us. Snuff and Chicken Little were left to wait outside.

“Where are we?” Tattletale asked.

“Rude messages were sent to the boss while she was drunk. She doesn’t know if she sent them but it fits her prior behavior. The messages came from her phone. We hit a wall.”

“Phone and not computer? Smart phone?”

Ratcatcher reached down to her pyjama legs, hiked them up, and then pulled checkered knee-high socks down. The socks were pulled up around a phone, holding it snug to her calf.

“Why not use your pockets?” I asked.

“Running with thomething heavy in my pocketth is a good way to have my pantth fall down. More comfortable for lying around.”

The phone was the kind that served as a hybrid between a flip-phone and a smartphone, oval and hinged at the top, with up to three ‘windows’ fanning out from the hinge. Low resolution, and not much depth of color, which marked it as maybe ten years old. The panes were scratched and the hinge had what looked like a splinter of a shell from a sunflower seed stuck in it.

“Counts as a computer. Can I look?” Tattletale asked.

Ratcatcher touched the rat that clung to her neck and hid in her tangled hair without looking at it, then nodded, snapping the phone closed, opening it, pressing her thumb to the middle pane, and then handing it over.

“The messages line up to a time you got drunk?” I asked.

“Not thure, but wath it after five?”

“Yes,” Tattletale said. “I found the first one. Six p.m..”

“Then yeth. I wait until five to drink. They thay you’re thuppothed to wait until later in the day to drink. That way you’re not an alcoholic.”

“What time do you get up?” I asked.

“Three or four?” Ratcatcher asked, like she was unsure and wanted my verification.

“In the afternoon?” I asked.

“Yep,” she said, with enough affirm in the affirmative that it felt like she was very satisfied the question when she’d asked me the time had some resolution. “Thleep when I’m tired, eat when I’m hungry, walk when I’m rethtleth. Annoy people when lonely. If I’m hired I work the hours I work, thober.”

“Usually sober,” Tattletale murmured.

Ratcatcher considered, then shrugged and nodded.

Tattletale didn’t look up from the phone. “Were you especially lonely a few weeks ago? We’re trying to figure out if this was you or something bigger.”

“I have company,” Ratcatcher said, touching the rat at her neck again.

“I’m hearing that as a yes, you were lonely.”

Ratcatcher considered, then nodded again. The body language was subtly different from the answer about whether she’d been sober. Less carefree.

“And did you have a prior working history with Countenance?” Tattletale asked.

“This ithn’t fun,” Ratcatcher commented.

“Sorry,” I said.

She shrugged. The rat stirred, moving around behind her neck to the other shoulder. “No. No hithtory. I had a little bit of a cruth. You know when you’re in a bad plathe and any boy with a nice voice and cute butt is nice to you, you get hopeth up?”

Not so much, I thought.

“And these messages, you thought about this sort of thing?” Tattletale asked.

“Doeth it matter?”

“We’re not sure you sent them,” I told her. “People are going around messing with people. Maybe something more insidious.”

Ratcatcher tilted her head to one side. The rat perked up, reaching up to her ear.

“Nothing in the data,” Tattletale murmured. “No weirdness in injections, outgoing data. No patterns in the static, basically. This stuff lines up with things you’ve thought before? Or did it feel off?”

Ratcatcher motioned, and Tattletale handed her back the phone. Ratcatcher slumped against the wall beside me, putting her rat in fairly close proximity to me. She held it up so I could see too.

“Yeth, yeth, maybe, yeth, yeth…”

“Clarify?” Tatteltale asked.

Ratcatcher was busy scrolling.

“Uhh,” I said, “Go back? Okay, so, opening prelude… rats mate more than once a minute, so even if he finishes quickly, he’d have a good thing going.”

“Pickup line,” Ratcatcher said. “Yeth, thoundth like me. There’th more.”

“Rat climaxes last five minutes-”

“-pretty thure it’th not true but thoundth good-”

“-which he might find fun, but if he doesn’t want to, ahem, take a rat to bed and attempt the physiologically impossible, he can take a girl instead.”

“Me. Thatht the pickup line. Thee? I rate mythelf an honest three out of five and thay I’ll do thith, becauthe even a bad one ith pretty good, and then no thtringth attached-”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, I see.”

“And thith part, we’ll thkip thith part, if that’th okay? Personal.”

“Sure,” I said. I cupped a hand to block my view of the phone while she scrolled.

“It still reads like you?” Tattletale asked.

“Yeth. I don’t remember, but I thought about it a lot. Even wrote thome but never thent them. Until that night. He rethpondth here,” she said.

I read it. This is inappropriate, Ratcatcher. Drink some water and rest. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.

Pretty reasonable for a response to unsolicited texts in this vein at five in the morning.

“I apparently thent thome more, thith… leth me.”

Less her?

I read the texts, flinched, and looked away, which meant I was looking at Tattletale, who smirked.

“I thought you liked mice and rats,” I said.

“I do! I wouldn’t do thomething like that, if you’ll reread it-”

“No thank you.”

“Thome guyth like thith thtuff. I offer an alternative. Rather than put a rat, thereth a potthibility of uthing a thnake inthtead. Theemth more practical, you can hold on to the end of the tail.”

“Thank you for the mental image,” I said, averting my gaze from everything, while I tried to avert my ears from everything at the same time.

“Leth me. Thnaketh are awful, they’re horrifying and they eat rodentth, but I don’t think I’d do that. And I don’t think I’d keep texthting him unleth I was very, very drunk.”

“Okay,” Tattletale said. “Good.”

“What do you think?” I asked her.

“I think I’m sixty percent certain this is weird.”

Only sixty percent? I thought, raising an eyebrow.

“…In terms of the weirdness we’re investigating. If it is weirdness we’re investigating and this isn’t a regular incident, then it’s a fifty percent chance that Ratcatcher here sent the first messages, and they sent everything after he responded to tell her to quit it.”

Ratcatcher reacted to that, head pulling back a bit.

“Otherwise, they fabricated it all.”

“You think that thomeone else thent thethe methageth?”

“Yes,” Tattletale said. “There’s a very good chance that someone else sent these. Tell me what happened after.”

“I went, they thaid to clean out my locker. They were nithe about it. Very polite but very careful.”

“Careful?” I asked.

“By the bookth. Procedureth in plathe.”

“Has this sort of thing happened to you before?” I asked.

Ratcatcher shrugged, shook her head. The shake was forceful enough that the bent portion of her mask flipped over to be bent the other way. “But I’ve been in trouble before. I get how it goeth.”

“But they’ve had trouble before,” Tattletale said. “Countenance has. There’s a history there and this attack was built to attack that weak point.”

“You sound pretty definitive at this point. No percentages?”

Tattletale shook her head. “I’m pretty darn sure.”

I looked over at Ratcatcher. I tapped her phone at the hinge. “This wasn’t you.”

“Hm,” She made a sound. Her nose dropped. “I’m not thure that maketh me feel better.”

“I get it,” I said. “It’s invasive. Violating.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t care about that. That’th the game we play.”

“It shouldn’t be,” I said. “I prefer the good old days, when cape against cape fights wouldn’t dig any deeper than the surface level. Costume against costume, no wounds that went beyond cuts, scrapes and bruises, unless they upped the ante first.”

“That’s stupid,” Tattletale said. “Nothing’s surface level. Our powers are intertwined with us, and we’re bringing all of our shit to the table when we go toe to toe with someone. Pit your powers against their powers, and you’re digging into your own shit while they’re doing the same, going back to what used to be the worst day of your life, you’re flinging that shit. To win your fights you need to know your enemy, but to do that you can’t stop at the surface.”

“We used to be able to.”

“We used to keep up a charade.”

“And while we were doing that no kids were getting chopped up into wriggling pieces!”

That seemed to give Tattletale pause.

“Point,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“But I think your take is a romantic, fragile one. We can’t go back there.”

“Believe me, I’m coming to terms with that. All I’m saying is I miss those days, and I’m going to respect anyone who holds themselves to those standards. Holding back while doing what needs to be done.”

“I was never good at that,” Tattletale said. “Surface level. It’s a good way of putting it, but the tool I was handed is a backhoe.”

Her entire tone had changed, and… if I tracked backward in the conversation, it felt like it had turned around when I’d dropped the ‘wriggling pieces’ line. Like she respected me more because I’d turned to using a backhoe.

I wasn’t sure I liked that. That the only way to deal with her was to be an utter bitch. Where did that take me in the long run?

“Thpeaking of romantic thuff,” Ratcatcher said. She held up her phone, now all folded up. “Thtarting with rat factth and ending with putting thnakes up boy’th pooperth-”

“Yeah,” I said. “No. No. You need a friend to give you advice on crafting a better approach.”

“I had advithe from Rathtputin, Templeton, Duthty Rothe and Turnaround.”

“Your rats?”

“Rat, rat, mouse, and booze,” Tattletale clarified. Ratcatcher nodded vigorously.

“But you guyth thtarted arguing and the thing ith, I don’t care about that thtuff. I don’t do thecreth. What thuckth ith that I’ve alwayth thtayed thurfathe level, like you thaid, and that’th why until today, I didn’t think anybody hated me that much.”

Always playing nice, and then someone turns around and delivers a low blow.

I couldn’t say the situation lined up perfectly with my own experiences… or maybe it was better to say that I couldn’t say it lined up perfectly with me, but I felt like we’d -collectively, pre-Gold Morning- tried, and we’d been dealt a low blow.

Part of that dealing had come from someone with a backhoe.

“Sorry,” I said. “Hopefully our investigation will do something to clear your name.”

Ratcatcher shrugged.

“We should go,” Tattletale said. “I’m thinking about things and I’m worried.”

I nodded.

“I’m free to go?” Ratcatcher asked.

“Be good, okay?” I told her. “Whatever you were running from us for-”

“Petty theft,” Tattletale said. “Grand theft. Vandalism. Criminal mischief. Bit of a backslide since the regular thinker work dried up.”

“…Don’t do that,” I said, a little exasperated, staring past the holes in the paper mask at the eyes behind, wet, large, and guileless.

“Doeth it matter? I wath being good and it didn’t help. I had a good thing going and they came for me, attacking my not-tho-thterling reputation.”

“It matters,” I said. “If not for yourself, do it for your pets. They need someone to look after them.”

Ratcatcher shrugged.

Tattletale opened the door, and Ratcatcher rocked back, at the cold air. Tattletale whistled and motioned.

Ratcatcher bent down to scoop up the rat that came bouncing along the floor, running up to her. It shivered, possibly from shock as much as cold.

Tattletale let the door shut. She leaned against the frame, arms in her coat pockets.

As Ratcatcher cupped her pet in her hands, I offered, “Do you want a hand? Your place is next door. But it’s cold, so I could fly you home, or-”

She was already shaking her head. She turned away, walking down the hallway into the dimly lit recesses of the building.

“There’s an underground passage connecting buildings,” Tattletale said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

“It’s better she’s gone. I can fill you in. We shouldn’t waste too much time, because I do think she sent initial messages and she was being watched closely enough that the moment she passed out or put her phone down, they were ready to pick up. Which confirms that they’re watching you closely. Us. We.”

“Right,” I said.

“This was a multi-pronged attack, on Ratcatcher’s part, and I think yours would be too.”

“Pronged?”

“Ratcatcher isn’t the key target here,” Tattletale said.

I looked in the direction Ratcatcher went. I wanted to go grab her by the arm, tell her.

“No,” Tattletale said. “We’re better off if we keep this contained. It shapes what they do next, and the less messy this is, the easier it is to get a sense of who we’re fighting. I’ll be able to get a sense of them by how long it takes them to respond, how they move, where from.”

I felt uneasy at that, and it took me a second to articulate why.

“If you’re willing to keep her in the dark about particulars, are you doing the same thing to me?”

“As long as you stay more or less in my sight and avoid lying to me or giving me misinformation, I don’t need to. But if we don’t resolve this soon, we’re going to have to part ways, because you have things to look after and so do I… and from that point I’m going to bullshit you.”

I frowned.

“Best you’re going to get, hon.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Ratcatcher was vulnerable and on the fringes, she made a certain kind of target. But Countenance was the real focus, and he, I’m thinking, has a history of, how should I put it-”

“Rooftop liaisons?” I asked.

“No. Hooking up with coworkers. Maybe subordinates, maybe with messy end results, because any parahuman to parahuman interaction gets messy.”

“Some do,” I clarified. “Some. Maybe even most.”

“They all end in tears,” Tattletale said. “And these moves our enemy is making are aimed at pushing things to rushed conclusions on that front. They chip off anything that’s easy to chip at, and then they drive the chisel deep into the core elements. Countenance is stable, trusted, and acts as the heart of his team. This creates a seed of doubt.”

“And after this?”

“Sometime in the future, his past history with coworkers comes out. A girl that he’s dating breaks away, another teammate, Effervescent, feels slighted. She’s not the kind of person who would cheat on someone but she’ll be hurt she wasn’t even considered or flirted with. It’s a schism that disrupts the team.”

And on our end, it’s Jessica? Someone close to the Wardens?

“The fact we’re being watched means I want to keep a better eye on Chicken,” Tattletale said. “Any questions you want to ask that you can’t ask in front of him? Please tell me I don’t need to tell you what’s on and off the table.”

“I’m pretty sure I get it,” I said. “We protect people besides Chicken, you know.”

“Yes,” Tattletale said, and I had a hard time identifying if she was being sincere. “We’ll take steps.”

She pushed the door open. We stepped out into the alley, where Chicken Little, Snuff, about twenty pigeons and crows and two hawks were perched on every available surface.

“Got what we needed. That went exactly as planned, thank you, Chicken Little.”

Chicken Little hopped off his perch on a stack of construction materials and hurried to catch up as Tattletale headed straight for the neck of the alley.

So my guess was right. She’d plotted that far ahead. She’d looked to the future, but I didn’t have the sense now that she was focused on it now. Her head turned periodically, and her eyes scanned windows and rooftops.

“What’s next?” Chicken Little asked.

“Big Picture,” Tattletale said. “And while we’re on our way there, we’re shifting to a special kind of yellow alert. I need you to reach out to your team. They’re to contact the Undersiders, order an immediate blackout, phones off except for direct lines, no media, no radio, no internet, limit use of cameras, assume all systems are compromised and all outside information is untrustworthy. Imp passes the message on to the Heartbroken, then goes to your headquarters and protects your team. Foil and Parian pass it on to our intermediate contacts. If they’re up for it, they should guard your headquarters too. Once the message is sent, they blackout too. That includes Lookout.”

Chicken Little looked my way.

I nodded.

“Why?” Chicken Little asked.

“It’s a vector of attack. People can use those things to hurt any of us,” I told him.

“Okay.”

“Antares, do I need to state-”

“I’m calling Breakthrough,” I said. I had my phone out already, and I started dialing as I finished the sentence.

We walked down the street, and with the flock of birds overhead, we were drawing some attention. Whatever. Past a certain point, I wasn’t sure it mattered. Our enemies didn’t seem like they fit into that territory where they were confident enough to pull this off but so incapable of tracking us that the birds made the difference.

If this was Chicken Little’s normal pattern, then it was better if he acted normal.

The phone rang three times before it picked up.

“Sveta here.”

“Hey. I’m with Tattletale, and something’s come up. Any weirdness today?”

“Weirdness? No. Tristan’s coordinating with other big teams, Rain and I are in the middle of one of my control sessions. Ashley’s bored so she went for a walk to buy some books.”

In the background, Chicken Little was talking on the phone. He echoed my question about weirdness.

“Tattletale’s recommending a communications blackout. In-person only,” I said.

“Master-stranger?” Sveta asked.

You go, Sveta. You’ve been studying, woo! “Yes, and you get big points for that one. Avoid any electronic media or communications. Keep an eye out for trouble. Don’t trust anything that’s not face to face.”

“Should Tristan end his call?”

“As soon as is polite.”

“I’ll write him something,” Sveta said. “I can write him things, I know this situation is serious, but I’m psyched.”

She sounded happy.

“Me too,” I said. I was so glad she seemed happy and that just made me more worried.

“Fill us in soon,” Sveta said.

“Yeah. We hope to have answers before dinnertime?” I made it a question, looking at Tattletale. She nodded. “Before dinner. For now, just be safe.”

“What about Kenzie?”

“Chicken Little is calling her now.”

“Got it.”

I hung up. Tattletale was studying me.

“What?”

She shook her head.

“Do you think the responses on the other end were faked?” I asked.

“I don’t think anything yet,” she said. She glanced around. “Nobody’s spying on us by usual means. I’m wondering if it’s a machine.”

“A machine?”

Snuff reached the car first. He pulled the door open for Tattletale, then for Chicken Little. Me last.

“It feels like these gears turn slowly. Inevitably. If I was a person and I was putting together something this big and this dramatic, and if I was keeping an eye on the key players, I’d be taking action now, trying to ensure I was maintaining control. I feel like a machine would be slower to process and adapt. More sure of itself, maybe.”

Snuff pulled us out of the parking spot, as we were still belting in.

“Yes, uh huh, yep,” Chicken Little said. He hung his head forward, as if he had no strength in his neck. “Yep. Got it. Can I talk to Darlene? You can make the calls.”

He paused.

“Hi,” he said. “Look after her? Keep her busy? Maybe if she works in the workshop?”

Another pause.

“Thanks. You’re the best. Bye.”

He paused, then brought the phone down and found the button to hang up.

“Problem with Lookout?” I asked.

“Not a big thing,” he said. “Was worried she’d freak out without the ability to stay in contact with everyone, so Darlene’s going to keep her company and keep her busy.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “I know she has a few things she’s working on.”

“When I said I wanted to talk before, it’s kind of this. Um. If that’s okay?”

“Sure,” I said.

He reached up to his mask and undid clasps. He lowered the round mask to his lap. His face had bent bars molded to run along his face to his cheekbone and forehead, with parts jutting out where it connected to the mask. He looked just a bit older than I’d been imagining him, his forehead creased in worry. He folded his hands over his mask, and I shifted position to better face him, both of my hands at one of my knees.

Tattletale glanced back at the back seat of the car, noting the unmasking, but didn’t say anything.

“She’s a little… um, much,” Chicken Little said.

“She can be,” I said.

“And I say that when I hang out with the Heartbroken and a lot of them are much. Different kinds.”

“Yep,” I said.

“It’s like… when I’m on the phone, there’s never a chance to hang up. So I have to interrupt and hang up, and then I feel like the bad guy. Or I ask for Darlene and I worry I’m being a manipulative bad guy.”

“She doesn’t see you as the bad guy, if that helps.”

“I know. I mean, I know but I don’t feel, you know?”

“I feel you. Yeah, absolutely.”

“And if I want to spend a while doing my own thing then she’s there, looking over my shoulder or sending me a message or saying hi. And I like her but-”

“You resent her at the same time?”

“No,” Chicken Little said. “But I see where I might be starting to or I might, soon, when the fun of everything being new with our team wears off. And I don’t want to be that person who pushes her away too hard. I don’t want to be that kind of person.”

“Most people don’t think about who they want to be except in the broadest strokes until they’re a bit older,” I said. A teenager, but let’s not drive home how young you really are. “Before that, it’s… big goals like wanting to be a superhero, or wanting to be an athlete.”

“I’ve had people bugging me about who I want to be and how I want to act since years ago, when I got my power,” Chicken Little said. He rolled his eyes in an overdramatic way, before coming to a stop, looking at the back of Tattletale’s seat.

“Bugging you. I’m glad my hard work is appreciated,” Tattletale said. She was wearing sunglasses that lined up pretty well with the eyeholes of her mask.

“It is! But it was a lot. And can I talk to Antares like this?”

“Sure, sure,” Tattletale said. She reached up and put earbuds in. “Let’s not pretend you didn’t want me to hear that.”

“You too, Snuff?” I asked.

Chicken Little waited until Tattletale settled, listening to whatever it was she listened to. Snuff had his headphones on, now, worn over his hood. It made me nervous that I wasn’t sure how easily our driver could see or hear what was going on, but… better.

“I’ve been working with Darlene and Candy,” Chicken Little admitted. “We take turns if she’s overwhelming us. But Candy went to Aunt Rachel’s and it’s the two of us, and I dunno. Is that manipulative? Because I don’t want to be the manipulative kind of person either.”

“Does it come from a good place?” I asked. “Or a hostile, bad place?”

“Good, I think? But like, if she comes up to me and stands next to me then I feel like… no, stand a little further away? And that’s not so good a place.”

“You’re wanting more space.”

“I feel greedy because I want a lot. I’m a Master, right, you know how that works?”

“Yes,” I said, very seriously. “I know that.”

“And we get our powers mostly from being alone or cut off or losing people. And I lost everyone… and then I was taken in by Skitter way back in the day, and I barely remember those days, and I grew up with orphans, and we were total birds of a feather, you know? That’s what we joked, after I had my trigger.”

“Makes sense.”

“And they left, and I got powers. And after that, I was messed up, and Gold Morning messed me up more, with everyone moving in different directions, and Regent died before that, and he was fun, Skitter died during Gold Morning, even though she was kinda important to everyone, and Aunt Rachel is living way out in the middle of nowhere again, and… I was messed up.”

“All of us were, but I get what you mean. Hit where it hurts?”

He nodded. His forehead creased. It reminded me a bit of Natalie. “I kind of found my way to getting less messed up, and I grew up fast. I’m a lot more mature than other boys my age. It’s why I can mostly manage the Heartbroken. That and experience.”

You’re not grown up all the way yet.

“Yeah. You’re uniquely equipped,” I told him. “You grew up with having them around.”

“Kind of. But the thing is, I got advice and we decided figuring myself out meant figuring out how to be okay on my own. Because if I couldn’t do that, then I’d always worry that I’d lose people and I’d be messed up again.”

“And you don’t feel like you can be okay on your own anymore?”

“It got backwards, and I feel like I can’t be alone to find my okay anymore. And that’s not to say it isn’t nice to have them around and hang out, but it’s like it… there’s never the middle ground of okay in the middle. Not with them, and especially not with Lookout.”

“It could be that you don’t find that tranquil sort of okay when you’re with people. Sometimes I need to go do my thing and read or sort through files, or research, to find my okay. Sometimes I can do that with people around, especially Tress or Swansong, sometimes I do it alone.”

“Tress or Swansong, but not Lookout?”

“No. I adore Lookout, I respect her, but… it’s a rare moment.”

“What do I do? Because she sends me like two hundred messages a day and she sends me messages last thing at night and first thing when she wakes up, and I feel like I could spend every minute of every day with her and she’d want more, and Darlene has told me she feels the same way, and-”

“I’ll talk to her.”

Chicken Little stopped.

“I’ll try.”

He deflated, apparently in relief.

The car passed through a tunnel. Everything inside the vehicle went dark. When we emerged, Chicken Little was putting his mask back on.

Somehow, I thought. I have no idea how I’ll do this.

“She’s really cool,” he said.

“Yeah. She really is.”

“She’s really stylish, in a very different way from the Heartbroken, and really fun, and when she gets excited about something I get excited too.”

“I’m really glad she’s connected with you guys.”

“I am too, but I feel like if things keep going like this, after she connected, I’m going to be the one to unconnect. Or Darlene is, and I keep hearing about Darlene’s bad side but I’ve never seen it. Or Candy is, and I feel like Candy would treat the problem like she treats a lot of things, like she’d use her power and try to fix it in one big obvious move that doesn’t really work.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

He nodded.

“She does this thing, you know, where she doesn’t smile when she’s happy.”

“Yeah,” I said, quiet.

“I had to tell Darlene that. And Darlene went from giving her hugs when she smiled because she wanted to share that happiness to giving her hugs when she smiled because she needed a hug.”

“Perfect,” I said.

“Except we’re not sure what to do, now, so she’s been hugging her less and I’ve been thinking about taking a day off… and I was glad to be on a mission like this to get away, if I’m being super honest.”

“Yeah.”

“I know all the Heartbroken have rules and weirdness about how they behave, but I can either figure them out or I can deal. But Kenz-Lookout is maybe the worst possible thing for my rules and weirdness, despite the fact I really like her a ton.”

I put a hand out, rubbing his shoulder. “I’ll do what I can.”

“She talks about you guys a lot. She misses you. You, Ashley, and Chris.”

I nodded.

Tattletale cleared her throat. Forewarning for the fact she was pulling an earbud out. “We’re close.”

“Okay,” Chicken Little said. “Thank you.”

There was a pause, as Tattletale put her earbud back in, then to me, he repeated, “Thank you.”

“Sure thing, C.L., thanks for being cool to my friend.”

The street didn’t have any parking, which delayed us. The spot we did find was in an alley, without much room to maneuver.

While Chicken Little squeezed himself and his hawks out of the spot, Tattletale approached me, showing me her phone.

Messages with the address, and a follow up. After a back and forth to hammer out the particulars of the meeting, the response from Countenance was that Big Picture was inviting us to his office, apparently, and he wouldn’t be wearing his mask or gear.

Downside: we had a very limited time when he was free and willing to talk. If we wanted to talk to him later, we had to do it when he had free time around seven o’clock. Which was past Tattletale’s self-imposed deadline.

Despite the fact the building was tall, the ride on the rickety low-cost, fast-install elevator with the chain running through a column in the center was a short one. Up to the third floor, out of eight.

Big Picture’s studio was one without walls, barring the single closet and the entrance to the bathroom, which was disproportionately large and, as I passed it, riddled with bars, hangers, and clothes for both men and women.

Doubling as a change room, it seemed.

Big Picture was a photographer, and in his civilian guise, he was a tall, broad shouldered guy in a nice teal dress shirt, black slacks, and shined shoes. His beard stubble was intentional and trimmed, and his gaze penetrating.

Walls and floor were poured concrete, and the livability of the space, which doubled as his apartment, was limited to a third of the bathroom, a counter with some kitchen appliances and a single oven burner, and a bed that jutted out from the wall above the desk, supported by two concrete pillars. Each of the windows had three curtains, to allow varying levels of light.

That wasn’t really what caught my eye, so much. There were high-quality pictures on every surface, and the expansive, expensive apartment had lots of surfaces. All were large-scale, high resolution portraits, most of them full-body, some nude in the tasteful sense. One of the pictures was Brio’s, the very same stylized image that would have been hung on the wall of Foresight’s headquarters. This would be the guy who had taken those pictures for them to hang in their headquarters.

Roughly a quarter of the pictures were civilians or capes out of costume, a quarter were capes in costume, like Brio’s, and a full half of the people on the walls were case-fifty-threes.

“I know her,” Chicken Little said, pointing.

Chantilly. The young Case Fifty-Three with skin cut like lace, forming a fabric around her, the intricately cut holes in her skin revealing raw flesh beneath. She had been part of Faultline’s crew.

And I know of him, I thought, looking at Big Picture.

“I don’t have long, but if there’s information I can give, I’m happy to help,” he said. He extended a hand to shake, and Tattletale shook it. Chicken Little reached out to shake as well. “I’m fine if you want to skip pleasantries and cut right to the chase. You can call me L.J.”

I pretended not to notice the handshakes, and turned to look at the artwork, standing with my hands clasped behind my back, doing my best to deflect as innocently as I could without picking a fight or having to shake his hand. Skipping pleasantries, in a way.

My eye found the ‘L.J.M.’ embossed in the corner of each.

Big Picture was the guy who’d admitted to Foresight that he’d done what he was accused of, so the character assassination angle seemed like it had flopped or… had gone by a route even more subtle than mine or Ratcatcher’s.

“You were going to be recruited by Foresight,” Tattletale said.

“I was.”

“What happened?”

“I was hired to help bring in Orchard. I posed as a would-be customer.”

The name drew my attention, turned my head.

“You know them?” he asked.

“Yes,” Tattletale said.

“Yeah,” I said. “They’ve come up in passing.”

“I don’t,” Chicken Little said, raising a hand. Tattletale put a hand on his shoulder, and he lowered the hand.

“They made an art of turning people into… people of another kind of aesthetic. Foresight and other teams are handling the remainder of the Orchard business,” he said.

“You posed as a customer, and… something went wrong?” Tattletale asked.

“I posed too well,” Big Picture said. “Because of my work as a civilian and rogue, internet circles I traveled in, I knew the language, I knew names, I knew the kinds of people they associate with or the kinds of people who would associate with them. It raised questions. I brushed it off as having to do with my power.”

“But it wasn’t,” I said. “You do associate with those people. The kind of people who really, really like Case Fifty-Threes.”

I was being polite because Chicken Little was in the room.

“I very much appreciate the beauty of Case Fifty-Threes, and other people with altered forms,” he said. “Unique shapes, appearances, traces of memories or accents from worlds we may never discover. But I want to stress that I think you’re putting me in the same category as people like Orchard’s customers, and that is not me.”

“But?” Tattletale asked.

No, not ‘but’, I thought. That was not the follow-up I would have used.

“But I’d researched Orchard on my own, for reasons having nothing to do with wanting to take away another individual’s choice. Because there was a period where I wanted to be one of them.”

He indicated with one hand, at where a print was mounted on the wall, of Gully, one of the west-coast Wards, if I was remembering right. Hunched back, overbite, and muscles that seemed to weigh her down until she could barely stand. In the art, she peered through dreadlocks with an eye that was framed to be bright and striking.

An old picture. Sveta had remarked that Gully wasn’t around anymore.

“But you didn’t,” Tattletale said.

“I couldn’t come to terms with the risks.”

“They brainwashed people. You were worried they’d brainwash you while you were at their mercy.”

“More or less,” he said, meeting Tattletale’s gaze with a level stare.

Fuck, this guy creeped me out.

“Foresight found out?” Tattletale asked.

“They were tipped off. They asked, and I was honest. There was a brief misunderstanding where I was taken as a photographer of an… adult sort. But that was never a focus.”

Sveta thinks you are, I thought. And so do I. I’ve seen pictures.

The only pictures that showed any excessive amount of skin were adults, both normal people and Case Fifty Threes, but I could see the darkness in Gully’s eye, and I could see the defensiveness in the lace-girl Chantilly’s picture. Arms folded, body turned partially away, neck rigid and chin set. It wasn’t a smiling picture. Not a lot of them were. There were a lot of dark, grainy backgrounds.

Gentle Giant was an adult, and the picture had him stand with his back to the camera, and by the look of it, he wasn’t standing tall, but bent forward, head ducked down slightly, his eye glancing over his shoulder in a wary or uncomfortable way. Mottled, mossy skin, with bare back, buttocks, and the backs of his thighs.

Or was I seeing those things only because Sveta hated him so much that I felt obligated to? Because the pictures, when they’d first come up on the scene and started popping up wherever Case Fifty-Threes were involved, were ones that Sveta had dissected while hanging out in the hospital room with me?

That Sveta had seen the feedback from people in her small, insular community, that they’d been paid handsomely for the photos, many of them desperately in need of that money, that the photographer hadn’t done anything wrong that they could put their finger on, and they’d still walked away uncomfortable and unhappy, then been unhappier still when the pictures started circulating in certain circles, and in some select cases, outraged when one picture in particular had taken off and saw the photographer indulging in his fifteen minutes of fame and his weeks of gallery showings. There had been campaigns and outreach to other Case Fifty-Threes to warn them off. But the money drew them in.

The discomfort and outrage had even extended to the way the tame, clothed images like Gully’s had been used. Chantilly’s image being on the wall suggested he’d carried on after getting set up again, because it looked too recent to be pre-Gold-Morning.

I was trying to be fair, to extend a benefit of a doubt. And I was groping beyond the point that there was a logical, empathetic, human rationale for what he did. I was reaching more into the territory that pegged him as stupid, incapable of understanding that he’d wronged people, because the wrong could be the sort that was hard to grasp.

When in doubt, assume circumstances beyond their control, assume context. When that failed, assume ignorance. And even there, seeing how he’d done well, how he didn’t seem stupid or incapable, I couldn’t apply that label. When that failed… I wasn’t sure.

He was exploitative. The fact he wasn’t acknowledging the truly scummy side of Orchard was bothering me more. Brainwashing? The victims hadn’t been willing.

“Who tipped them off, and how?” Tattletale asked.

“I assumed it came from within, from internal background checks,” Big Picture said. “It didn’t?”

“No. I don’t think so. You might have enemies,” Tattletale said.

“Oh, I definitely do. It’s a very dramatic world, art,” he said. He smiled, eyes crinkling a bit.

“If we go back to Foresight and ask, are you okay with them sharing?” I asked.

“I’m not bothered. I’m upfront about my art and where I come from. We parted amicably, as I saw it.”

“Great,” I said. My eyes scanned the pictures. Even the innocent ones with warm smiles -mostly civilians or capes out of costume- left me feeling uncomfortable in my own skin. I turned to Tattletale. “We should go.”

“Is there a rush?” she asked, with a tenor or vibe that made me feel like she was jabbing at my jugular because I’d exposed too much throat. Putting me on the spot.

I turned to Chicken Little, “Want to go wait outside?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Dirty move,” Tattletale said. But she didn’t stop Chicken.

Chicken Little paused before leaving. “Thank you for inviting us in. They’re really good pictures.”

“Thank you,” Big Picture said.

“They’re dark, though.”

“They can be,” Big Picture said, turning to look at Gully’s picture, her head, face, and dreads seeming to emerge from the picture, out of darkness and into light.

“Do you want that darkness, along with wanting to be them?” Tattletale asked.

I was spared the continuation of the conversation by the ringing of my phone. I put a hand on Chicken Little’s shoulder to guide him to the door of the studio as I put the phone to my ear.

Rain.

“What happened to the communication blackout?” I asked.

“Emergency,” he said. “Weld came by to check in, I don’t even know what’s going on, but Tristan’s trying to handle it and he’s not having any luck, and now all hell is breaking loose.”

Black – 13.7

I flew, Chicken Little remanded back to the care of Tattletale with the shortest possible explanation. If she was so smart, she could figure me out.

In the first minute of flight, I’d told Rain to enforce the communications blackout for anything short of ambulances needing to be called. That had been ten minutes ago. I wasn’t even sure if I trusted ambulances, or Rain’s call.

Then… silence. Music seemed like a distraction, so I got the rush of wind past the Wretch instead. I got the replays of conversations from earlier, with Big Picture and Ratcatcher included. I felt like I’d betrayed Sveta in a way by trying to give Big Picture the benefit of a doubt, and I felt like I’d betrayed myself because I hadn’t succeeded in finding any ground I could stand on where I could make sense of his actions. I prided myself on being a scholar, but people couldn’t be studied without becoming comfortable with a lot of gray areas, definitions, and unknowns, and I wasn’t that good at that.

What was my saying? Do what was right, do what was legal, do what I could do without regrets? ‘Right’ was where it went out the window because it felt wrong. It was disturbing, being in that studio, but not in a way where I could say rights, as in human rights, had been explicitly and intentionally violated. Fine, then default to law. Was it legal? It walked a line because ‘law’ included a right for victims to stand up to wrongdoers, and Case Fifty-Threes couldn’t. The courts had never been the kindest to parahumans. They couldn’t sue and they couldn’t step in or ask for rights or for their art not to be displayed when he took art he’d told them was for himself only or for a select audience and made it part of a gallery showing. He seemed to revel in that space between art and pornography, a space where it was also technically legal but pretty damn questionable beyond the technical.

Putting me smack dab in the ‘regret’ column.

On that same topic, I regretted not being just a little more protected against the cold. My mind was on the coat I’d picked up and put down while at the Wardens’ ‘bunker’. Cold got to me even though I had the Wretch up, a creeping loss of warmth inside me as the environment eroded at my stores of energy.

I was cold and there was nothing I could do.

My friend was hurting and there was nothing I could do.

In the distance, I could see the shape of the Dauntless Titan. ‘Kronos’. Where portals riddled the city, taller than some buildings, slices of another sky against our sky, the titan was pure white, unmoving, with only a periodic distortion around it. The Simurgh came and went, and when she came, the light seemed just a little darker in the area around her roosting point.

He existed in Shin, and Shin was concerned. He existed in Bet. He existed in Earth N, in the corner world ‘Q’, and other scattered realities. We had every reason to believe he existed in every variant of our world, standing there, ignoring every stimulus, including one of the most evil creatures I knew of.

On a rooftop below me, I saw people burning something in an improvised stove. I flew close, passing through the smoke and warm air, and saw it was construction material.

Lineups around a block, mid-afternoon. In the summer and fall it had been to buy the latest line of clothes or tech, when options were so few and far between. We’d peaked over the fall where a bunch of new options landed, and then… this. A paradigm shift that came with the colder weather. I was willing to bet the line was for food. To stock up and prepare.

There were streets where people shuffled forward on foot, the sidewalks so clogged that people were forced to go the speed of the slowest person. Some people walked in the road.

We weren’t at the hard part yet, but the bite of last winter had been bad enough that people had learned to conserve, prepare, and wait.

But this was going to be different, I was pretty sure. Last winter had been something we’d collectively endured, with the mindset that we could get through the difficult patches, and if we could make it through then things would be okay. This winter, the titan loomed on the horizon and the portals shattered the sky. This winter, we had someone to blame. Mayor Jeanne Wynn. Citrine. I was sure she was trying, and I was sure it wouldn’t be quite enough to satisfy.

Blame was a hell of a thing.

Fuck, I wished I could fly faster, to get to Sveta and Weld in a workable span of time.

Fuck, was I cold.

Fuck this character assassination bullshit, fuck the people who had done it.

I could find my way across the city by the flavor of the buildings. How densely they were packed together, the style of them. I had a sense of which materials had come from where, with a lot of the prefab building segments having come from Cheit, a lot of crude materials from Shin, and outright raw materials from Earth N, with processing and industry set up within arm’s reach of the destinations for the end-products they made.

I saw my destination, at a point where the neighborhoods ceased to be places I’d flown over fifty times and became familiar. I felt the same hollow feeling from earlier, recognizing the stores, restaurants, and the peninsula that was Hollow Point, just over the water from our headquarters.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but what I saw felt off. Rain on the ground, leaning against Tristan and Byron’s car. Tristan out of costume on the fire escape stairs, and Ashley standing in the doorway.

I floated close, because Victoria catch-up was an interruption that stood to make it harder to grasp the immediate situation and its demands.

“Please leave,” Sveta said. Her voice was tense, breaking slightly. “Give us a bit.”

“You’re not getting anywhere. It’s my headquarters too. Take a break and wait for Victoria or make a decision.”

“Victoria can’t do anything about this,” Sveta said.

“Then who do I call?”

“Nobody.”

“Jessica?”

“Ashley, Swansong, I- I said nobody. Jessica’s not even doing therapy anymore. She’s not caught up. It would be too much to ask.”

“Then who?”

“You’re not listening to me! You can’t fix this. This isn’t the sort of thing you fix,” Sveta said. Her voice broke at the end of the statement.

“Isn’t that a decision on its own?” Weld said, distant, barely audible.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Sveta said. “I’m saying it’s not her business. That’s all.”

“My headquarters, m-” Ashley said.

“You’ve said that,” Sveta said, bitter, annoyed.

“-My friend,” Ashley said. She took advantage of the pause that followed. “My, hm, cousin?”

“Cousin?” Sveta asked. It was like the statement had shaken her from her train of thought.

“We’re all Armstrong’s, in our way. Should I call him?”

Armstrong. The PRT director who had de-facto adopted Weld, who had supported Ashley from a distance when she was Damsel of Distress, living in a small town. Who had accepted Sveta with open arms and, I wasn’t even sure Sveta knew, provided a good chunk of the cash for Sveta’s now-destroyed prosthetic body.

“I didn’t even think about Armstrong,” Sveta said. I could hear the pain in her voice. “Can you just leave, Ashley? Please? Tristan, I’m guessing you’re in earshot. Can you-”

I flew in, touching Ashley’s shoulder. She backed out of the way of the door.

Inside, it was cold, the door had been open for at least a few minutes.

Sveta’s cheeks had been marred, both by tears that weren’t clear but were shot-through with black, and because makeup that had been used to give her a more normal skin tone had been wiped away. Her tattoo on her cheek was plainly visible.

The headquarters space was a good forty feet across. We’d picked it for its spaciousness. A good thirty feet separated Sveta, who stood at the end nearest Chris’s old corner, near the washroom and the tiny kitchen counter. Weld stood near Kenzie’s console at the ‘head’ of the apartment.

I started forward, saw Sveta move in reaction, and hesitated. I could see her telling me to leave, or telling me not to approach. The former would fit with what she’d said to Ashley. The latter would suggest she didn’t trust herself.

But there was no resistance, no defensiveness. Without a word spoken, despite the fact she no longer had her unsteady prosthetic body, she teetered slightly my way. I closed the distance and I hugged her. She hugged me back tightly enough that nails that had been sculpted into her Precipice-made hands bit into my back.

I didn’t want this to be one-sided, and I didn’t have either side, yet. Only Rain’s statement. I wasn’t sure I’d trust anything coming through the phone or any technological medium, anyway.

I turned, and Sveta moved with me. I looked at Weld, and saw how unhappy he was.

“You okay?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Why are they out there and you guys in here?”

“Weld came, we talked, things- we fought. We were going to leave but we ended up fighting more. People were staring,” Sveta said. “We came back.”

And the others left, to give privacy, except for Ashley, who got impatient or didn’t want to let things continue?

“What happened?” I asked.

“Everything was fine,” Weld told me, his voice low. “As fine as it gets. Sveta was showing off how she can use a phone. Which is great. She saw pictures of me with a teammate.”

“A woman,” Sveta said.

“A teammate,” Weld said.

“Can I?” I asked. I stopped myself. “I’m not just asking if I can see. I’m asking- can I mediate? Can I help?”

“We said things,” Sveta said, every inch of her face indicating hurt. “Things we’ve been holding in for a long time, maybe. I don’t think you can help that.”

Weld averted his gaze when I looked at him.

He hadn’t waited the full six weeks.

“Can I see the pictures?” I asked.

Weld drew his phone from his pocket. He tossed it. I had to break the hug with Sveta to be sure I caught it.

The images were still up. Weld with a girl with black hair, and a skintight suit that… well, there were suits that looked like they were were painted on and it looked like the woman had pointed to one of those and said ‘tighter’. Every muscle and rib stood out with the black gloss of the costume. Something hybridizing fins with blades ran along strategic points, tapering down, so cameltoe and nips weren’t quite as obvious, and served to make her look fairly dangerous.

One selfie of her and Weld, with slivers of two other capes on either side to suggest they were sitting on a bench on a plane, helicopter, or truck. Her head was tilted to rest on Weld’s shoulder, and the selfie was supposed to be focused on the fin-blade at her arm, which was absorbed by Weld. The caption was a simple ‘stuck to him’. I used ‘supposed to be’ to refer to the focus, because she had an easy, infectious smile that suggested nothing untoward.

That was just going by smile, though.

“You have to scroll. Nighttime photos,” Sveta said. Her voice was as empty as I’d felt earlier, after reading the diary.

I scrolled. Past photos of this twenty-something woman gardening, more gardening, a faintly unhinged photo of her showing off a cut on her face, post-fight. Her hanging out with capes. Her unmasked face was kept out of photos. Nothing betrayed her secret identity or location.

Then the nighttime photos. Twenty, twenty five pictures of her at what I took to be a wind-down from a Wardens operation, a bunch of capes, Patrol officers and military-types drinking and lounging in an apartment where one wall and part of the ceiling were glass, giving it an open-air feel. A good eighteen of those pictures, she was within arm’s reach of Weld. In four of them she was touching him. For balance, possibly. Together, but never quite in a way that suggested they were together. They could have been friends, but if I’d seen it I wouldn’t have assumed they were friends.

I tapped the photo. I saw the name above her face. Slician. I’d heard of her, but hadn’t ever seen the face to put it to the name.

“Is there context?” I asked.

Weld didn’t volunteer an answer.

“Not exactly,” Sveta said. “I asked about her, and you know, I may be dumb-”

“You really aren’t,” Weld said, before I could.

“I’m- I don’t know how to put it, then,” Sveta said, quiet. “Because I feel so fucking ignorant. I feel like I never get it. I lost a childhood of memories, and then I spent the next few years killing anyone I might have interacted with, I- I spent the years after that in a hospital, and the time after that with a team that it turned out I never really knew or understood. When was I supposed to ever learn all of these things that everyone else seems to get? You know?”

“You do okay,” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I do know my boyfriend. I do know when something’s wrong. I’d like to think I’m good at knowing when he needs space or when he needs someone to talk to.”

“You are,” Weld said. He looked pained. “Better than Armstrong, better than any teammate, friend, or girlfriend I’ve had.”

Sveta continued, not to Weld but to me, like she was making an appeal, “I try to look after him. I try to nag him if he needs nagging, usually if he’s not trying hard enough to push his boundaries and starts falling into a rut.”

I looked at Weld, saw him nodding to himself.

“I know when he’s lying or hiding something,” Sveta finished.

Weld’s nods to himself stopped. His eyes remained fixed on the floor.

“Did you cheat?” I asked, my voice hard enough that he looked up.

“No,” Sveta said. “He didn’t. But he toed the line. And I knew there was a reason he seemed happier lately. I asked and he was honest. He’s always been honest with me. Not always upfront, but…”

“Yeah,” Weld said.

What did you say, Weld?

I couldn’t ask, because I could see the consequence of that statement. Fresh hurt on Sveta’s face. I could see the agitation of her tendrils beneath her wig, and her hand went up to hold it steady. Her dress stirred, moving like there was a wind, when the door had shut minutes ago.

“Was there something I was supposed to do differently?” Sveta asked. “Was I unfair? Did I ask too much? I’m sorry, if I got it wrong.”

“No,” Weld said.

“I thought we got along. We have common interests, common goals. You have your hobbies and I have mine, we- I wasn’t oppressive? I- didn’t get too in your face or ask too much?”

“No,” Weld said. “You keep asking that. We’re going in circles.”

“Because,” Sveta said. She stopped. Her hand was at my arm and she squeezed. “Because if it was that, then it’s something I’m working on, that I can fix. My sessions with Rain’s power- I’m getting better. I’m more independent than I’ve ever been.”

“It’s great,” Weld said, glum, not making eye contact again.

“Can you give me more than a few words at a time? Can you yell at me again?”

“I didn’t yell.”

“Be angry, then. Hit me with more stuff about me trying to push cooking on you or conflicts of interest between your team and Breakthrough, or… anything?”

“Those things don’t matter. They’re bullshit I threw back at you because you were shouting at me and people were looking.”

The fight that had extended outside.

“I don’t want them to be bullshit. Because… Victoria, you took University classes at the hospital. There was this term, in this one language class. It’s not what’s said, it’s…”

I could see where this was going. I couldn’t see a way of stopping it. Or there was a way, but using it now would be taking a side, and that would irrevocably harm my relationship with Sveta, and it wouldn’t help anything.

“Textual silence,” the words left my lips.

“Textual silence. A journalist writes an article and brings up five bullet points, but it’s a seven bullet point issue. They left those things out for a reason. That tells a story of its own. Did I get that right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Ignorant old me can get something right,” Sveta said, bitter.

“You’re not-” I started.

She pulled her arm away from my hand. I stopped talking.

“We’ve ruled everything else out. It’s because of my body,” she said.

“No,” Weld said.

Tears that were more black than clear now ran down her cheeks. She wiped at them.

“He’s better at lying than he was years ago,” Sveta said, to me. Her voice was the kind of hollow that was bubble-fragile, the kind of too-steady normal found on the cusp of being unable to speak at all. “It’s… really shitty.”

Her voice tremored at the ‘shitty’.

“Hey,” I said. “Let’s stop here, take a break. There’s other factors in play.”

She didn’t stop. “We’re freaks of nature, orphans, amnesiacs, we lost everything and the difference between us is he’s really good looking, he gets to pass, he gets people like Slician. He gets to kiss actresses on television, and fans crushing on him. I don’t- I don’t get anything.”

I reached out for Sveta’s arm, and tugged her into a hug. Her body twisted so she could latch onto me, without the usual stumble or shuffle of feet. She hugged me tight.

My arms wrapped around cloth and that cloth wrapped around tendrils that were trying and failing to hold the shape of a human torso.

“You’re getting so much better-” Weld started.

I felt Sveta tense, and I pulled a hand away to motion for him to stop.

There wasn’t any salvaging this.

“He gets Armstrong,” Sveta said, more to me now. “The apartment is more his than mine. I don’t know where I’m supposed to go tonight. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that.”

“We’ll figure something out. You can stay with Ashley and me.”

“The Case Fifty-Threes hate us, you know. Actual want-us-to-die hate,” Sveta whispered. “I don’t get that. I don’t have that community. But Weld… he was famous once, he’s popular. More of them hate me than him. How is that fair?”

“It’s not,” I told her, “But you’re not alone, okay? We’ve got your back, here. Hug. Come on.”

She started to accept, then stopped. “I’m out of tears and I’m crying bile. It’s stinging my eyes. If I get it on your clothes it’ll stink.”

“Don’t care,” I said. “Come on.”

Her face hit my shoulder, forehead hitting the bone.

“You said there were other factors in play,” Weld said. “Your team said there was something fishy going on. Communications blackout.”

“There is. Um. Shit,” I said. I didn’t want to let Sveta go, but I didn’t want to see Weld leave without the situation being resolved. Especially with what Tattletale was theorizing about dual-pronged attacks. “There’s a possibility this was planned, to mess with you.”

“Planned?” Sveta asked, not raising her head from my shoulder.

“There was something on my computer,” I said. “It looked like it was written by me, but it wasn’t me. Dragon saw it, she passed it on to Jessica Yamada.”

“What kind of something?” Weld asked.

“Very subtle, but enough to break Jessica’s trust in me, and to break the team’s trust in me. Tattletale and I found other possible leads. The fact we were looking might be why this happened, because they wanted to throw us off the scent. But I’d have to know more to know.”

“I don’t think it’s the kind of thing you’re talking about. I got a friend invite from Slician,” Sveta said. “I already turned off my phone’s access to the network. It was there, waiting, I just don’t see my phone enough to catch it. I only just got hands that can press buttons on screen without a stylus.”

“The way these guys operate, it’s possible the invite was fake, but in a way that has plausible deniability, where even Slician thinks she could have done it by mistake, or when drunk. It’s possible the images were altered.”

“Altered?” Weld asked.

“I can talk to you about this after,” I told him. Sveta felt barely under control under my hands.

“No,” Sveta said. “Altered?”

“Shrinking the distance, props. Taking people out of the picture, or altering the people in the background. Stuff that stands up to scrutiny.”

“I don’t remember her putting her head on my shoulder, but-”

Sveta flinched.

On a level, I could see why that simple little thing in particular hurt. Because Sveta, prosthetic body or no, control or no, had always had a claim to that. Even after leaving the hospital, she’d had her head and his shoulder to lean on.

“-but I don’t- I don’t know. I don’t feel much, so I don’t want to rule anything out. Half of me wants to say you’re paranoid. Half of me hopes…”

He didn’t finish the sentence, faltering.

Sveta turned. “Hopes what? Does this change anything? The- that you want to leave me because I’m a monster?”

“That’s not it,” Weld said.

“Then what is?” Sveta asked. “Tell me you’ve changed and tell me how and okay, that’s going to break my heart, but okay. I can get over that. Tell me I did something wrong, something unfixable. I can get over that. Tell me I depended too much on you and you see me as a little sister more than a girlfriend. That you don’t see yourself ever getting over that and seeing me as a girlfriend again? I can… I can accept that.”

I looked away, blinking tears of my own out of my eyes.

The implication in Sveta’s statements was that these options were good because she could come to terms with them, the flip side being… she couldn’t accept or come to terms with the reality.

“If we know something else is at play, we can avoid playing into their hands, we step back, act like things are normal,” Weld said.

“We don’t know if this is something else,” Sveta said. “And apparently we’ve been acting like things are normal for a month, because you haven’t been hanging out with Slician for no reason. What you want, Weld, is to not be the bad guy. And it’s great you get these mystery villains to blame, but… it doesn’t change the reality.”

“It changes the context.”

“No it doesn’t,” Sveta said. “Not the context that matters. You don’t want to be the bad guy, but the only way you get that is if everyone agrees it’s fine to dump your girlfriend because she’s a monster, because she’s disabled-”

“I don’t want to dump you.”

“What do you want!?” Sveta asked, raising her voice.

“Stop,” I said. “I’m interrupting. I’m being intrusive and butting in because this doesn’t look like it’s going to end or stop otherwise.”

They stopped. Sveta didn’t breathe, but with my hand on her back I could feel the pulse of fluids through the organs behind her head, near where her shoulders were.

Weld was statue still, only his face betrayed any emotion.

“Okay?” I asked, trying to gather my thoughts.

“I’m okay with it,” Sveta said, jumping right back into it. “Fuck it. I’m the freak, you’re the guy with a heart of literal gold, Weld. You’re not the bad guy, Weld, you’ve been so good to me. I’m the one with the problems and I heaped them onto your plate. You want absolution? You got it. You tried and it’s okay. I’ve got my own shit to deal with and I need to get that done on my own. So you don’t need to tell me it’s not a breakup and we’re somehow going to stay together, because I know when you’re lying. I know you that well.”

“You’re not a freak, and that’s not it,” Weld said.

I hated to interrupt again, but I doubted there was anything to be gained from letting this continue, besides bitterness.

“Master-stranger protocols,” I said.

They stopped, looking at me.

“It’s not a set of magic words,” Sveta said. “You can’t just say them and expect us to just comply.”

“That’s kind of what they are. I argued for them before, on the phone with Rain. I’m pushing them now. We’re not getting anywhere, and I don’t like how this started or why it’s happening. Protocols.”

Sveta shook her head, but she didn’t speak again.

“Okay,” Weld said. “What next?”

“Do you have work?”

“Yeah. Later this afternoon, until ten, might go as long as midnight.”

“Go work. Talk to the bosses, let them know. It’s their call. They should communicate to other teams, verify the rules are in place. If this is a thing then it’s a thing that’s going to hit other people. Go. We’ll go to your apartment, get Sveta’s things, and be gone before you’re back. I’ll do what I can to look into this thing when I’m free, but I’ll prioritize Sveta for right now. Yes?”

I looked at Sveta.

She nodded.

I looked at Weld.

He hesitated, then nodded.

“You focus on the threat at hand,” I told Weld. “Think about who to tell, and be aware that if they are onto us, things are going to get messy. This is where we see how strong our teams and their human resources are.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Time matters. Don’t trust digital communication. They’re playing a subtle game.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But I’m not entirely sure you haven’t lost it.”

“That’s the subtlety of it,” I said. “And speaking of subtlety, I’m kind of trying to politely nudge you here to, uh, make your exit. Let us deal.”

“Got it,” he said. “Thanks.”

He headed to the door, floorboards creaking beneath him.

“Sorry,” Sveta said, to his back.

“Me too.”

The fire escape creaked precariously as he stepped onto it.

“You have a guest,” he said.

Then he was gone.

“Why did I say sorry?” Sveta asked. “So stupid. I didn’t want to say sorry. I went that entire conversation and two arguments without saying sorry, because I didn’t want to apologize. I didn’t do anything I wanted to apologize for.”

“It’s okay. Brain misfires happen.”

“It was my one goal. The one thing I knew I could hang on to and I just threw it away. And then he says ‘me too’? What the hell does he think I should apologize for?”

Her tendrils ruffled beneath her dress. Some spilled out to grasp at sections of the floor. I avoided moving, ready to use my forcefield if I had to, but I didn’t want to step away from her side.

“I think I need a control session with Rain,” she said.

“I think a session with Rain right now would be a terrible idea. Not when you’re off balance. I’d veto.”

“You can’t veto,” she told me, and her eye contact was damn close to being a glare.

“Can and will. As a friend.”

She was still ready, riling for a fight, upset and with no place to vent it. It was reaching the tendrils, but those tendrils weren’t reaching anything or anyone.

The anger faltered, and I saw the hurt creep across her face, the black moisture in her eyes, that she blinked into tears that ran down her cheeks as soon as they appeared.

“It burns,” she said. “I’m going to go wash my face. Then I’ll go to the apartment.”

“I’ll come.”

“No,” she said. “No. You’ve got to figure this out, and I… if I can’t use Rain for more control then I want to go to my place, my room, and lock the door, and just… lose all control. Alone.”

“You sure?”

“No,” she said. “Yes. But I’ve got to figure out how I’m going forward and I can’t keep leaning on people. I’ve got to pull my own weight.”

“After a day as shitty as this one, there isn’t a rational, sane soul out there who would blame you for turning to friends or wanting company.”

“Then I guess I’m not rational or sane,” she replied. She forced a smile, “Kidding. Half kidding. And washing my face.”

“Okay,” I said.

I walked over to the window to see who the ‘guest’ was. Tattletale, who had stepped out of the car, while Snuff remained in the driver’s seat. No tiny Chicken Little head peering out the window in the backseat, and no birdcage.

The bathroom door shut.

“Um, hi.”

“You were listening?”

“Ashley was trying to listen at the door and you were here, so I thought it might be okay. Nobody told me not to listen.”

“Communications blackout, Kenz,” I said, turning toward the computer. “You were told to turn everything off and step away. This stuff is messy.”

“It’s my own private line and channel. And I checked everything once I heard why. I think they can’t get in.”

I sighed.

“The diary isn’t real?” Kenzie asked.

I stared out the window, watching the group and Weld talk to Tattletale. She pointed at me mid-sentence.

I digested the ramifications of Kenzie’s question. Fucking what? When? How bad was this?

Was it possible to be offended she read my diary when the diary wasn’t real?

“No, Kenzie. It’s not real.”

“Oh.”

“Did you read it?”

“Uh huh.”

“When?”

“A few weeks back. I was making sure I had everything I needed for the move, I backed up everyone’s stuff in case some tinker thing I didn’t pay enough attention to or let fall between my desk and the wall went kablooie and took everyone’s computers out with it. I realized I had it when I did a search for something and it popped up, read a bit before realizing.”

“You read ‘a bit’?”

“I read most of it. I got lonely while with my new team, even though I’m only technically not a member of Breakthrough anymore. I missed you guys, I wondered what I missed so I read more. It’s really not real?”

“No, Kenz. I didn’t type a word of it.”

“Okay. That’s too bad.”

“Why- Kenzie, why is it bad?”

“Because… I didn’t feel so lonely while I could read it, and… that’s all fake. I feel really weird about that.”

“That’s not how I think, Kenzie. It’s not- definitely not how I think about you. I care about more than what you can do with your tinkering.”

“I kind of thought that’s how adults think and do things. Not fun, but it made a lot of sense, after I thought about it for a while.”

Oh fuck. Fucking shit. How ingrained was this in her now?

“No,” I told her. “How long have you been reading this and thinking about this?”

“A couple of weeks.”

“Fuck, Kenz. No. That’s not me, and it’s not okay to think that way. To treat people as chess pieces.”

“Okay, but, if it was you, it’d be okay. You had my back when it counted and you have it now. You could do or say whatever and I’d be okay with it, I think. Unless you actually went and hurt Ashley or anyone else. Then we’d have to talk seriously about it.”

Talk about it. Something told me she was entirely serious, that she would be open to being convinced. No, no, no. How the hell was I supposed to deprogram her when she wasn’t even around half the time?

“Did you listen in when I talked to Chicken Little earlier?”

“He asked me not to,” she said. “So I didn’t. Also, Sveta’s getting out of the bathroom now. Take care of her, give her a hug and lots of love for me, okay?”

She didn’t wait for a response. Effectively a hangup. The computers and monitors went dark, the light on the speaker going out.

What the hell?

The handle clicked, and Sveta stepped out of the washroom, face and hair wet, streaks of tears and ruined makeup gone. She’d toweled herself dry and applied fresh makeup, covering her scar, but it wasn’t an elaborate, full-face, nor was it the coloring that made her more flesh tone than actual white.

Weld was leaving. The others were talking.

“Feel any better?” I asked.

“My eyes don’t sting. My face is clean. I feel less of a mess. And… not at all.”

I nodded.

“It physically hurts,” she said. “But I don’t want to complain or angst.”

“You’re allowed,” I said.

“And I’m choosing not to use that allowance, so there,” she said. Her voice a little harder and a little more accented than it was on an ordinary day, but otherwise normal-ish.

She was trying so damn hard, and I had no idea how to help her with it.

“Tattletale,” Sveta said, joining me at the window. Her voice was level, her composure intact. “How is she, after being carved up and being back in one piece?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “If it’s messing her up any, I don’t think I’ve noticed much.”

“No problems with the mission? It’s going okay? You’re going to find these people who apparently went after Weld and my relationship?”

“It’s going… not great. Turning up leads, but this has been ugly so far. Very plausible deniability. One of the people we interviewed was a photographer, you should know.”

“Should I?”

“It’d come across like a betrayal, I think, if I didn’t mention it. L.J.M.”

Sveta made a face.

Past the window, in the parking lot, Tattletale was standing by her vehicle. She beckoned. She wanted me down there.

“Thank you for telling me,” Sveta said, her expression hard.

“He was about as creepy as you’d imagine.”

“I know. I’ve seen videos and read interviews. You really should go if she’s asking for you. Don’t let me hold you back.”

I didn’t want to leave her. “Come outside?”

She nodded.

I opened the door to let us outside, and flew down rather than take the stairs. Sveta hopped over the railing, and landed on a morass of tendrils, which were ninety-nine percent covered by her long dress.

We walked past the others. Tristan gave Sveta a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Rain ducked his head.

“Resolved?” Ashley asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. Anything you need,” Ashley said.

“Thank you.”

“She needs a place, at least for a short while.”

“Then she takes my bedroom,” Ashley said. “I’ll take the couch.”

“Just like that,” Sveta said.

“The two of us were half-adopted by Armstrong. Basically family.”

“Okay,” was all Sveta had to say. “I, um, I’m going to see what Tattletale’s saying.”

“Yeah,” Ashley said.

Tristan was quiet throughout, which was odd because on a lot of levels he was closest to Sveta. They were a similar wavelength, but they’d found kinship through mutual like of Weld. At the moment, that was iffy.

I could see a point in coming weeks where he helped her on a deeper level, because he could help her process and work her way through details. He’d even be good at it, with unusually good background in the subject due to the attention he’d paid Weld.

And Rain would help her with her hands and in a peripheral way. They talked sometimes during the control practice under the umbrella of Rain’s power.

All of that was secondary. Tattletale was chewing on what looked like a tiny plastic trident from a late lunch, leaning against her ride.

“Be nice,” I said.

“Sucks,” Tattletale told Sveta.

“That’s reaching for ‘nice’,” I told her.

“It does suck,” Sveta said. “And if you want to test the limits of my newfound control over my body, I think you’re on the right track, reminding me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Always glad to help with testing or being a convenient target for bitterness,” Tattletale said, glancing my way at the end of the statement. “Antares, you disappeared on me, and you turned off your phone. You told me something cryptic in a hurry, like a riddle I was supposed to solve. I went down the wrong rabbit hole, tried to find your cousin before I realized.”

“My cousin.”

“Someone important, with the word choice, I thought it was family. Doesn’t matter. What matter is this is a distraction. I need to know if I can keep you in the loop or if I should carry on investigating this on my own.”

“After you just said you went down the wrong rabbit hole, I’m not filled with confidence,” Sveta said.

“Down girl. Down,” Tattletale told her.

“You might have to handle the next parts on your own,” I answered. “I spent most of that last meeting stewing in how sketchy that guy was, and I wasn’t much use. Besides, I’ve got to look after a friend.”

“No you don’t,” Sveta said.

“At least to see you home safe.”

“You don’t,” Sveta said.

Tattletale jumped in, saying, “She says you don’t, and I wouldn’t mind a little firepower. I want to ask people questions but they aren’t entirely friendly people.”

“Who?”

“People who are pulling strings behind the scenes. Little Midas, maybe the mayor, people in that vein, who play games and who haven’t been getting directly involved. This is where my years of playing the dastardly mastermind comes in useful. I know these guys.”

“Why are you wanting to talk to them?”

“Because Big Picture had connections and one of the things those connections wanted was for him to get into Foresight. I think that’s the double prong. If it isn’t, talking to those connections of his will show us the second prong. But talking to them requires having more than Snuff at my back, and anyone else I’d trust is busy watching the kids.”

I thought of Kenzie. That aborted conversation.

“You go,” Sveta said.

I shook my head. “No, that’s-”

“You go, and I’ll come with,” Sveta said.

Black – 13.8

“You’d think someone who was regressed two years in age to be a teenager again would at least try not to be such a stereotypical teen.”

“What?” I asked. I looked up from my phone, which I was holding so Sveta could read it. She was moving more fluidly to get in a position to read over my shoulder.

“You’re zoomed in on your phone like it’s the only thing in the world,” Tattletale said. “You’re as bad as the Heartbroken.”

“Are you lonely, Tattletale?” Sveta asked. “Sitting up in the passenger seat with only your henchman for company? Were you bored?”

“Ha,” Tattletale replied.

I could have connected to what she’d said better if it weren’t for the fifty individual crises I was keeping on the back burner, the five on the front burner, my attempts to keep Sveta’s mind occupied with practical things.

That, and the fact that mentioning the age regression reminded me of Amy which set my brain to red alert, sirens flashing and emergency doors closing. These days, getting back from that state was a little easier, but it was still a couple of seconds of added bewilderment and alarm, and a mental reset button that forced me to start from zero in figuring out what the hell she meant.

Of course, she probably knew she was doing it.

“I see you set the communications blackout for everyone, but you’re not abiding by it yourself.”

“Phones come equipped with features that let you make a call to emergency services even if the phone bill isn’t paid, phone doesn’t have an I.D. chip, whatever, and phones come with features that let authorities force phones to boot and bypass settings if there’s an Endbringer attack. Dragon is messaging me,” I said.

“And?”

“She’s simultaneously worrying about whether I’ve gone off the deep end, suggesting everyone go to maximum alert, and worrying there might be something to what I’m saying, in which case she’d have to worry about watching her back.”

“A communication blackout really hurts the local heroes’ ability to function,” Sveta added.

“What’s her wording?” Tattletale asked.

“About?”

“Start with her wondering about watching her back.”

I cycled my way up to find it, then cleared my throat. “If this were true, I’d have to devote resources to validating, scanning, and damage control.”

“Interesting order,” Tattletale said.

“Order?”

“To what she has to do. It’s not scanning, validating, and damage control. Why?”

“You suck at rhetorical questions,” Sveta said. “How are we supposed to know?”

“It’s not a rhetorical question,” Tattletale answered, exasperated. “I’m asking my power. And my power says Dragon’s not prioritizing finding the questionable character assassination stuff because she has the stuff. At least two incidents she looked up and found since it was brought to her attention. Or she’s a culprit that already knew because she did it, but I’d say the odds are very low.”

I leaned back, my thumb working to find my place at the bottom of the chat while I ruminated. “That takes time, to find out and then look. Unless it’s obvious-”

“It doesn’t take time if you’re Dragon,” Tattletale said. “She, you know, bzzt. Overclocked.”

She put a finger to her head as she said that last word.

“She hacked her brain?” I asked, my eyebrows going up.

“You are exactly right,” Tattletale said, smiling. “Defiant did too, from another angle.”

Armsmaster. That was jarring to think about.

“Scary,” Sveta said. “I feel like the brain should be sacrosanct.”

“It’s really scary,” Tattletale answered. “Once you get a look at who she really is… let’s just say that part of the reason I’m more or less ruling her out as a culprit is that she wouldn’t need to be subtle. If she wanted to do this, she’d do it blatantly and she’d succeed.”

“Oookay, Tattletale,” I said. “Dealing with more than enough paranoia already. Dragon’s given us no reason to doubt her.”

“I’m not saying we should doubt her. I’m saying we should shit ourselves if and when the day arrives that we do. For now, I’d put all my chips on Dragon being alright. She’s weighing not trusting you, which is entirely understandable, with two more incidents that probably just popped up recently. Our player is ramping up, getting more schemes into play. Not so much it seems like too much, but distractions.”

“I worked with a loose team that was working with Tattletale, around Gold Morning,” Sveta told me. “Having her working from an investigating or planning role like this is kind of like those candidates for class president you see in movies, who promise soda pop in the fountains and shorter school days for everyone. They deliver on these really thinly justified ideas when they shouldn’t.”

“That’s a good analogy,” Tattletale answered. “Except you’re outing yourself as someone who didn’t go to school or spend nearly enough time around ordinary people, because you call it ‘soda pop’ like a nineteen fifties character, not even ‘pop’ like a midwesterner, but-”

“Get bent, Tattletale,” Sveta said, interrupting.

“Leave her alone,” I added. “Read the room and learn to be nice when it matters.”

Tattletale looked at her driver, eyes wide.

“Don’t look at me,” Snuff said. “I’m doing my job and staying out of trouble while I do it.”

“I’m outnumbered two against one,” Tattletale said.

“That’s what happens when you’re a jackass,” Sveta said.

Tattletale slumped back into her seat, head bumping against her window. Sveta, at the same time, was sitting behind Tattletale, and looked out her own window, creating a kind of maximum distance between them, insofar as it was possible in this confined space.

Sveta was coping better than I’d imagined, and I had to wonder how much of that was an extension of the personal control she’d honed with her sessions with Rain. She didn’t look happy, for one thing: the lines of her face were different. She’d turned much of her emotion into being very ready to call Tattletale on her shit. Provided Tattletale didn’t retaliate or take it too hard, it seemed like a pretty reasonable outlet, if there had to be any outlet at all.

I checked my phone again. No more messages from Dragon. The last message she’d left me could theoretically be a sign-off.

Tattletale talked while looking out the front window, drawing out her sentence, as if she was trying to reset the flow of the conversation, “The reason I’m concerned about you being on your phone is that you just ran off to intervene in a crisis. If the emergency communications work this way, then it’s theoretically possible to use them to send weaponized messages and distract you again.”

“If it’s a crisis like what just happened, doesn’t it make sense that I’d want to be on top of it?”

“If they’re watching us closely, they might decide to unload now because they know you’ll see it. If you had put the phone away and obeyed your own communications blackout, they’d hold that back.”

“Or they’re mounting a general offensive and they’ll release it anyway, hoping to break up our support network. If that happens, we come back from what we’re doing here and find everything on fire.”

“We don’t want that,” Sveta said. “I’m saying that as someone who was on fire and feels the sting pretty- completely and constantly.”

I reached out for her hand, gripping it in mine, giving it a squeeze, then waggling it.

“You don’t have to do the shakey-shake thing,” Sveta murmured. “Rain gave me hands with a full tactile range.”

I gave her another waggle. I caught the faintest smile on her face before Tattletale’s voice pulled my attention away.

“Look. The situation’s bad, it’s getting worse, based on the hint from Dragon. The best thing we can do is cut right past all the mess and go for the heart of the issue. Put the phone away,” Tattletale said. “You’re clinging to it out of brute-classification tendencies and I’ve got to tell you, this isn’t a situation you smash or take head on.”

I could have argued, but I didn’t. It was possible Tattletale was stressed, from how exasperated she was being. I held down the power button and let the phone go black.

“Good,” Tattletale said. She was in the front seat, her head turned to look the opposite direction. She was using her power to identify what I was doing. Obnoxious. “Fill me in, how did your deal with Bluestocking and the Mayor go?”

“Why?” I asked.

“So defensive. I’m not trying to get secret info here-”

“It’s between them and us.”

“-I’m trying to figure out the particulars of the situation we’re walking into.”

“Why would that matter to what we’re doing?”

“I’ll tell you if you tell me,” Tattletale said.

We were in a car, and the landmarks or geographical changes I could make out were limited to what I could see out the window. Narrow slices of world. I wasn’t sure I recognized this area, but I could guess.

“We’re going to Earth N?”

Tattletale didn’t answer, but Snuff glanced at her.

“You might as well be the bigger person and tell her. She’s going to figure it out,” Sveta said.

“Original deal we struck in the heat of the moment was that I’d negotiate a preferable trade setup for the Earth N settlement with the Mayor. If I didn’t follow through she’d get to borrow a member of Breakthrough for six months. I went to the mayor, struck some compromises, and got Bluestocking some of what she wanted. She wasn’t flailing her arms around and crying out ‘penalty clause’.”

“We’re good to go, then?” Tattletale asked.

“I feel like walking into her territory with her providing favors or oversight might be an excuse for her to bring it up. I think I’d have been happier pretending she didn’t exist for a while, let the deal disappear into distant memory.”

“Well, that sucks, because I reached out to the people who matter and this was their preferred neutral ground. If we need a referee, Bluestocking’s that.”

“We’re close to the station. Which way in?” Snuff asked. “We parking?”

“No. Car and truck entrance,” Tattletale replied. “Right road.”

“Got it,” Snuff said, taking the off-road.

“That’s usually closed,” I remarked. “Has been since the portal incidents. They’ve stepped up security.”

Tattletale snorted. “Welcome to the big leagues, kiddo. Paying to be able to drive your own truck in is worth it, if it means you don’t have to ask for a ride or worry about the danger posed by whoever is escorting you.”

The station was at the end of the road, and we were approaching by an angle I hadn’t seen it from. There was a gate, and people stood on either side of it. In the warmer months, when the portals had been open to service, this would have been how the trucks of construction material would have come in, along with any vehicles anyone was attached to.

“This is Big Picture’s contact?” Sveta asked.

“Contacts. There are a few people I keep tabs on because they have a lot of sway over the city and even things that aren’t the city. I break this down into categories. Threats, cultural, financial, information, and powers. Some people are influencers for reasons that don’t tie directly into their abilities, like Dido from Auzure and her effect on finances.”

Auzure. I felt a bit slimy at the thought. When I’d hunted for a position in a team, they’d been nice up until they let slip that what they really wanted was my sister. We’d worked with them in passing since, mostly at arm’s length.

“Dido? She does fine. Her team makes money,” I said.

“The team makes money. Lark manages money well. But Dido is a disaster waiting to happen when cold hard cash or theoretical cash are involved. there’s a reason they keep the team small and the growth slow and steady. She’s like an alcoholic with a wine cellar.”

“You said it was more than an ordinary disaster,” Sveta said.

“Everyone would feel it, at least a little,” Tattletale said. “There’s at least a subconscious reason she named herself after the woman who threw fortunes away in history and myth.”

I frowned.

“At least a few of those times were ruses,” Sveta said.

“People tend to have reasons for doing dumb things,” Tattletale said.

“That feels like pretty obscure mythology,” I remarked to Sveta. “Knowing those were ruses?”

“Dido marries Pygmallion, and the mythological Pygmallion is the guy who made and married a living statue. I related,” Sveta said. A sad look passed over her face.

Ah. The statue, the boy made of metals.

“That’s pretty out there, for stuff to be researching,” I said, trying to keep the conversation normal and light.

“Uh huh. I spent a long time looking for cape names and costume ideas, when Breakthrough was new. I’m so, so glad I didn’t go with Galataea or anything Weld-related.”

“I wouldn’t have let you,” I said.

She squeezed my hand, and her eyes dropped to look at where her Rain-made prosthetic hand with its not-quite-right skin clasped my gloved hand.

“Bright spots in a dark day,” she murmured. “I can feel this.”

“You good to do this?” I asked. “Mission in enemy territory?”

She nodded.

I looked out the window as we emerged into light.

The road in through the station had passed through the series of turnstiles that would lock and block away the majority of the fumes when any vehicles passed through.

We were out of the station now, passing by more guards and some idle capes I recognized from three weeks ago. Inhabitants of the Earth N corner world. We traced the top portion of an ‘S’ curve in doing so, carrying on north.

No Etna among the idle capes, as it happened.

Thinking about Etna made me think about violence and death, even though I’d gone reasonably easy on her. She’d just been a face or a mask to latch onto, like an annoying, ostentatious song in my head. The thought led to my mom, and my dad, who had gone with her. Neither had returned from Earth Shin.

Thinking about family got me thinking about Sveta, and about Kenzie and Kenzie’s family, or lack thereof, and about Kenzie’s new pseudo-family in her new team… and Chicken Little’s issues with her. In a perfect world I’d talk to Jessica about that, but Jessica wasn’t talking to me.

Tattletale cleared her throat.

At least this time she didn’t disrupt my thoughts with a pointed reminder of the worst possible things. It made it easier to align my thoughts, as Snuff drove us along the dirt road, up past buildings and toward the peak of a hill.

“We were talking about Dido,” I said. “Right.”

“Dido doesn’t matter, and we don’t have time for a full briefing. I can fill you in as necessary,” Tattletale said. “If you’re listening and not wallowing. Are you going to focus while we’re inside?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Game face. Don’t kill anyone, both of you.”

I let the statement pass without commentary, and I put my mask on.

“If I kill someone it’s probably going to be someone close to me. Probably you,” Sveta answered. When Tattletale twisted around to look at her, Sveta smiled. “But I won’t. I’m… controlled.”

She put her own mask on. A standard mask that covered nose, surrounded eye sockets, and covered the brows, but with twirls and hooks and decorative elements branching out and following the curve of her face. It was dramatic and artistic and whimsical, and it didn’t match the look in her eyes.

At the top of the hill, a fair distance from the settlement, there was a lodge nestled in the trees. Signboards were propped up and hanging on the wall by the door.

“Swansong mentioned this place,” Sveta said. “The Lodge.”

“I ended up screwing these guys over once or twice. They aren’t happy, so we play nice,” Tattletale said.

“Are you capable?” Sveta asked.

“We’re going to see. There’s a step by step process here. Be patient. Your relationship with Bluestocking will help.”

Snuff pulled into an empty parking space in a corner of the lot without any vehicles. Gravel had been raked out and the light snow filtered in between the pieces.

We got out of the vehicle.

“How intimidating do we want to be?” I asked.

“Don’t put that aura of yours on full blast, don’t crack any skulls.”

“There’s whole lot of options before that point,” I said.

“How about you let me take point. Don’t overshadow me, that’s the line you don’t want to cross. If you’re not sure about something, take my cue or look to Snuff.”

“This is feeling less like a partnership.”

Tattletale sighed. “You can stand shoulder to shoulder with me if that makes your ego feel better.”

“The concern isn’t ego,” I told her. “It’s falling into the trap of being your status pieces like Bluestocking wanted us to be.”

“You don’t want to be my bitch?”

“You’ve got enough bitch for the three of us,” Sveta muttered.

Tattletale smirked. “You sure, Tress? Because while I understand you’re having a sucky day, you’re definitely bringing a lot onboard.”

Sveta glanced at me. I wondered if it was to check, to ask if she should step down.

“It’s fine,” Tattletale waved it off. “It’s fun. Antares, you can walk in beside me if it makes your ego feel better. Shall we? Yes? Yes?”

I nodded. But Tattletale’s second yes was a lingering one, awaiting confirmation. Because Sveta.

“I wish I’d changed,” Sveta said. “Redone my paint on my arms and neck.”

She touched the collar that gave her neck the appearance of being a neck rather than a tangle of tendrils, painted on either side. From a distance it would have looked like vivid tattoos.

Wracked with doubts, a little off kilter. Still more together than I would’ve been.

“You look good. The art’s good. The dress is pretty,” I said.

“It doesn’t match the seriousness of what we’re doing,” she murmured. “And I don’t feel very colorful right now.”

I gave her a one-armed hug, my forehead touching hers.

“Come on,” I said. “We get through this, figure out this crisis, then we see if Swansong will let you borrow a suitably colorless dress.”

That got a smile out of Sveta. “The horror. So not my style.”

“You’re thinking about style, hey. Step up from before our shopping trip.”

Tattletale rolled her eyes, opened the door, and walked in first, ignoring her offer to walk in together.

Being casual and confident was a kind of presentation on its own, when faced with a dangerous environment. It started with being a kid on her first patrol, standing tall and not looking afraid as she passed through dark, crime-ridden streets. It played into our stepping inside, me and Tattletale first, then Sveta and Snuff. A spacious dining area, with high ceiling and a kitchen setup in the direct center with a chimney reaching up to the roof, built around a stone stove with wood burning within. A stairwell off to our left seemed to lead upstairs.

Scattered villains were within. I saw Cleat and Crested. Vulturehawk was in the corner, alone, and focused in on Sveta the moment he saw her.

Nursery was here, too, sitting with a pregnant teenage girl who wasn’t in costume. Maybe a local. Her back was to us.

Bluestocking was sitting with Bitter Pill at the kitchen, and she stood. With a motion of her hand, she bid some of their enforcers to pat us down.

I’d always felt this little ritual was really dumb when I saw it. When powers were involved, weapons barely seemed to factor in. I undid the strap on my armor and pulled it away from my upper body, while the burly guy used the back of his hand at my armpits, then the top of my chest, the underside, my stomach, and then between my shoulderblades and the small of my back. He did my legs, then straightened.

Maybe it was a power thing. Subjecting us to this.

“You don’t usually come here,” Bluestocking observed. “You go to the tea shop?”

“I go where there’s business. Are they here?”

“They are. They’re waiting.”

Tattletale, Snuff, and I turned to look as the guy moved from me to Sveta. I strapped my breastplate back into place as I watched with something between bemusement and sympathy.

Fingers closed around cloth, finding that the only shape being maintained was a combination of wire frame and tendrils. Past the arms and shoulders, there really wasn’t much at all, and his attempt to find something to investigate saw him getting grabbed through the cloth more than he found purchase on anything.

Gentle grabs. He didn’t scream in agony. There was only bewilderment on his face.

Sveta’s expression was almost the inverse of my own, yet didn’t make me feel bad- there was no humor in her expression, it was stock still as she frowned at the man, but… I could see how she stood a little taller as she watched him work through it, her eyebrows moving slightly closer together as she focused intently to manage her control.

The guy turned toward his boss, helpless.

“It’s fine. Go sit down,” Bluestocking said. “Visitors, Tattletale, you may go upstairs. I have to check my paperwork, I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Tattletale and I walked beside one another as we ascended the stairs. Most eyes in the place watched us as we made our way up. Nursery turned to look, saw us, and waved. Not a wave for Tattletale, apparently.

She was like a bully from high school who met up with a victim years later and talked like they were old friends. Just… didn’t connect.

“The last time I was here was when I was hiring those guys,” Tattletale said. “The community center thing.”

I set my jaw, nodding.

“The clairvoyants we were using dropped off the map, but it was in service of a bigger picture.”

“Comforting,” I said, sarcastic.

“That’s great,” Sveta said. “I’m sure Cauldron thought the same thing.”

“Cauldron kind of saved the world, Tress.”

“Cauldron kind of doesn’t get to lay claim to saving the world when they created ten thousand problems and solved one. We don’t know if we would have been able to do it if they hadn’t caused the messes they had. If Gray Boy hadn’t killed heroes, if Eidolon hadn’t broken the Protectorate and Wards…”

“A discussion for another time.”

“Mm hmm. I look forward to it,” Sveta said.

Tattletale stopped in her tracks, putting out a hand to stop me.

“What’s going on?” I asked. The four of us were on the landing, nobody was on the stairs above us or below.

“Stop at the top of the stairs. Look natural,” Tattletale murmured. “We can talk, just know it’s a bit of a bear trap.”

“Bear trap?”

“There are rules and expectations. This is a floor for meetings and private conversations. You don’t come here without invitation and you need the go-ahead to cross the room, unless you’re really trusted or too big to fuck with. If you don’t meet the standards, then anyone who has a problem with you can say you were listening in, and you’re out.”

“And people have a problem with you?” I asked.

“Imagine,” Sveta murmured.

“Let up, Sveta. I get it. And yes. A problem with me and a problem with you. Bluestocking doesn’t adore you, and she didn’t warn you for a reason.”

“Okay,” I said.

Tattletale indicated with her hand, and we made our way up the last set of stairs. With the height of the ceiling in the space downstairs, the second floor was closer to being where the third floor would be in another building.

Upstairs, things were nicer. Maple planks for the floor, trimmed with what might have been walnut. The lights were dimmer, each table had a small window beside it, with lamps for illumination after hours. A bar in the corner was backlit so the light shone through the various colored bottles. Behind the bar was a man in his sixties with deep black skin and a white beard, no hair on the top of his head, but trimmed hair at the sides and back. An earring glinted in one ear.

I recognized him and I had no idea where from. I felt like he was placed into the same mental drawer as the Slaughterhouse Nine, somehow, but however much I rummaged and tried to put a mask to the face, I couldn’t.

Which was ridiculous, because he was gray haired and gray haired parahumans weren’t a thing.

“Who?” Sveta asked.

“Table in the corner,” Tattletale said.

The most noticeable person at the table in the corner was a man with a prodigious belly, wrapped in golden armor. His mask was modeled off of what could have been a Greek statue, beard included, the eyes not visible past the dark eyeholes. His servant was cutting his sandwich into pieces. He looked loud, aggressive, and obnoxious.

Opposite the man was a woman with a stone mask so fine that there was no gap between stone and skin- it could have been latex. It made her face look like it was part statue. Her skin was a dark olive, her hair long, black, and wavy, and she wore a lot of ornamentation with snakes, primarily ouroboros imagery- the snake eating its own tail as a circlet, as a bangle at one arm, and at one leg. Her costume was stone ornamentation with fine cloth draping from it. Gray and jade as a color scheme, down to the contact lenses she wore.

Prancer was the last of them. His hair was combed back, but it was wild and brown locks of hair peeled away or mingled with the antlers built into his mask. He slouched a little, and he engaged with the man more than the woman.

“Fill us in?” I asked. “These are people you’ve studied and followed? We know Prancer.”

“The woman is Semiramis. Named herself after the first queen of Babylon or some shit like that. Dido might have named herself after someone who chucked a shitton of treasure in the ocean, but Semiramis named herself after the person who invented eunuchs as an institutionalized thing. That tidbit comes courtesy of Imp, by the way, and it fits perfectly, because this woman used to be as vicious as salt rubbed into a wound.”

“I’ve never heard of her.”

“Semiramis was second-in-command to a warlord and arms trafficker in Southern Europe, northern Africa. Held her position while waiting for her boss to die, and he finally kicked the bucket on Gold Morning. She took over, and now she’s a player behind the scenes. I mentioned the categories these people cover. For her, she’s a player when it comes to culture and cash.”

“Player how?” I asked.

“Music production, film, online media, games, some sports but not many, but what she does is a kind of slavery, getting people into her media empire and then keeping them in. Gets them in legitimately, then pulls a turning back the clock thing. Reverse their age, let them return to a point where they’re in their prime, actresses can stay in their early twenties forever, gamers can keep their reflexes, singers can keep the voice. All wholly voluntary… but they lose the memories of the time they undo.”

“Ahhh,” I said. “And if they were thinking about leaving…”

“They’d lose that desire to leave along with the year or so of memories. But she does what she does carefully. Always with witnesses. Always with benefits of a doubt. She combines that with turning ahead the clock, not for people but for things. Speeding up constructions, if they’re outlined well enough, and she’s one of the few parahumans who seem like they can do that without any apparent issues. She’s thriving right now, and she’s in a position where she can cancel a contract or pull strings and tens of thousands of jobs would be affected, or a market sector would change. She has celebrities and people under her thumb who she could tell to say something or start a war on the internet and make life really hard for someone.”

“That’s a little close to our situation,” Sveta commented.

“It’s close but no cigar. Her P.R. attack is a cudgel. With our situation we’re talking… tasteless poison.”

Tasteless poison.

“Big guy is Little Midas. He’s a warmonger and a financial player. If you’ve noticed the uptick in the number of mercenaries around…”

“He’s responsible?”

“Yep. This is the kind of thing the Wardens, Undersiders, and others in my circles are trying to keep under control, while you’re focused on the more visible, surface-level crime. Little Midas tried to take over some corner worlds and as luck would have it, he failed. He went from funding his lieutenants to making it very easy for criminal mercenaries to be criminal mercenaries. Making up work for them to do, ensuring they have resources, ensuring they have a place to go back to. His power helps him make the money to make it possible. See the lieutenants?”

I did. Behind Little Midas were heroes who didn’t look like they were big players or planners. Behind Semiramis were a woman in her mid twenties in a blouse and slacks, and a guy in a suit with a beard oiled to a point. The two ate while looking at the same tablet computer.

“It’s quiet,” Sveta observed.

It was quiet. Aside from the occasional clink of utensil on plate, or the knock of a cup on the wood of a table, most of the conversation in the room was respectfully hushed. Little Midas might have been the loudest person present. Even if he hadn’t said a word in his inappropriately loud voice, he would have been audible, because he wore armor casually, and the gestures he made with every other statement made his armor clack against the table or the bench he sat on.

“If I was alone with Snuff, we wouldn’t have gotten this far. The fact you struck a deal with Blue and there’s some knowledge about it gives us a little bit of protection. Having a lot of deals in play provides more protection. Can’t knock someone off if people will think you kill anyone who you contract with. The protection helps too. Little Midas would sic his people on us and take his chances, and most of the people up on the second floor would side with him. He has too much clout.”

“How many enemies did you make?” I asked.

“Enough,” Tattletale said, her eyes scanning the room.

That was the end of that thread of conversation.

The curious old bartender stayed where he was, and it seemed like Tattletale was very right about movement through the room being a careful thing. When Midas raised a hand and then waved a mostly empty beer glass around, the bartender clanked glasses audibly, and knocked glass audibly against counter. A signal to people that he was coming by. The tone of conversation shifted, people drawing quiet as he passed within earshot.

The beer was delivered, and he took more orders on a clipboard before returning to his station. Tap tap, he knocked clipboard against the edge of the table, before returning.

The silence or adjusted tones that seemed to surround him as he walked by only added to my curiosity about him.

Sveta wasn’t focused on the room, but on the outside, I saw. I nudged her arm, giving her hand the briefest squeeze, and she turned my way to give me a small, sad smile.

“What you’re thinking, I don’t recommend it,” Tattletale said.

“Thinking?” Sveta asked.

“You’re thinking about Bluestocking’s deal with Victoria. That, if someone had to come stay here, it could be you. It would be nice to get away, have a fresh start. Fresh air-”

“No,” Sveta said.

“It crossed your mind.”

“Only barely,” Sveta said. “But being around shitty villains would suck, so my thoughts immediately went to going out on my own, living by the shore. But I can’t do that either. I need sessions to reinforce control, because now that I have it, I can’t give it up. I need technical help. Being disabled doesn’t give me the freedoms everyone else would enjoy. It’s not an option.”

“It’s not an option in the first place. I had teammates do that. It’s lousy. For them and for everyone else. That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Vista says Rachel is doing well where she is,” I noted.

“Her? I suppose,” Tattletale said. “But hush hush. Blue’s due to show up.”

I turned to look at the stairwell. No sound, no sign.

As I started to turn back, I saw movement- light from below cast a shadow against the wall by the landing of the stairs. Bluestocking rounded the bend in the stairs and came up. White puffy blouse, corset at the stomach and waist flowing into a stylized Victorian-style sweeping dress with a slit up both sides, to showcase the indigo blue stockings. Opaque glasses of a similar tint glinted as she pushed them up her nose. A long cigarette holder was tucked into a strap at one of her arms, cigarette absent. It was a decent look, spoiled by the fact that her face at rest made it look like she’d just caught the faintest whiff of something dead.

“I’m doing you a favor, mediating this,” Bluestocking said.

I met Tattletale’s eyes. See?

“You got your trade deal,” I told her.

“We got a trade deal with the city.”

“You asked for the moon and-”

“And we got a big rock. It’s fine. But before you play any games with me or my tribe, you should know I can always say you didn’t deal fair. That means any informants or contacts clam up when it comes to you, your team, and any heroes you call friends. Things get harder in other ways. You wouldn’t be allowed through the portal.”

“Noted,” I said. “I’ve got enough to do that you’re not really a concern right now. We’ll do our thing, you focus on getting through the winter, don’t give us a reason to come after you, and we won’t come after you.”

“And do yourselves a favor while you’re at it, and don’t harbor people-butchers,” Sveta said.

“Extenuating circumstances,” Bluestocking said, smiling slightly, enjoying the ‘get out of jail free’ card Prancer had provided far too much. “This way.”

Bluestocking led the way, with Tattletale and I walking side by side, Snuff and Sveta in the wings.

“Tattletale!” Little Midas boomed. “You dared show your face. You know Nero.”

“I’m aware of him,” Tattletale said. “The Teapot Emperor.”

The man in the seat behind Midas clenched one hand. He had a gladiator-style helmet, tunic, and armor, with a coat draped across his lap.

“And you know Snake-eater and Whistler,” Midas said, lowering his voice.

The other two people near ‘Nero’ shifted position.

“I don’t, actually. Nice to meet you, Snake-eater, Whistler. Semiramis, good to see you.”

Semiramis didn’t move a millimeter, as she stared Tattletale down.

“Prancer,” I said, before Tattletale could handle all of the introductions. “Still around, I see.”

“I was invited. We’re getting settled elsewhere,” Prancer said.

“Doing well?”

“We’re managing. A few weeks into building and organizing, and we’re getting to the point where we have creature comforts again.”

“If you call the eighteen year old keeping you company in your cabin a ‘creature’, sure,” Midas said, chortling at his own line.

“Company and a comfort. As I see it, we’re all creatures, we all have our needs, and I’m still mourning Velvet in my own way,” Prancer said. “But thank you, Little Midas, for bringing that up and reminding me. Let’s change the subject. How are you, Antares?”

“Some headaches. Ones we’re hoping you can help us with.”

“Straight to business?”

I shrugged one shoulder.

“Information costs,” Semiramis said.

“If my gut is right, and it always is, you’ll think this is worthwhile,” Tattletale said.

“My servants didn’t carry me all this way for nothing,” Little Midas said. He moved his hand, touching the table, then holding his hand out beside the table, level with the tabletop. Another table materialized, the material a glossy black, like obsidian or onyx, the particulars of the table identical to the one he’d just touched.

“Gracious,” Tattletale said. “I’m sure you wouldn’t act like a child on the playground and disappear it when we’re leaning on it.”

Little Midas chuckled.

A warning for the rest of us as much as it was a pre-emptive move to keep him from doing just that.

We collected chairs from empty tables nearby and gathered, Tattletale, Sveta and I each taking a side. Snuff stood a short distance away, arms folded.

“You hired Big Picture to join Foresight, Little Midas,” Tattletale said. “Semiramis provided the intelligence to put him in the right place at the right time to join.”

“Harsh accusations,” Prancer murmured.

“We’ve been investigating this for the last little while,” I said, “and these are things we already know. Can we skip the pretense?”

“No,” Semiramis said. “Pretense is important. You have to exchange a few parries before the fight can really start.”

“Or you can sweeten the deal and give some evidence about how this meeting is supposed to be worth it,” Prancer said.

“There’s a conspiracy at work,” Tattletale said. “And one of you was bit by it without realizing it.”

“Then it can’t be that bad,” Midas said.

“It will be. Every move they’ve made so far has had at least two targets. Every move they’ve made so far has worked on a level. Big Picture didn’t get placed in Foresight because someone got in the way. They also, I think, targeted you.”

“You think this why?” Semiramis asked.

“Because it’s a pattern, and I don’t see the move against Big Picture hurting Foresight in any way. Which means it’s bouncing back at you, most likely. Attacks against heroes is something I get, but if we confirm they’re against you and which of you they’re against, then that hints at their motivations.”

“And I’m here because why?” Prancer asked.

“Because you’re the most networked while being the least complicated, just like Antares here is well networked with heroes while not being so enmeshed in the upper echelons that I need to worry about moving heaven and earth. That and she found this out before I did.”

A nice way of putting it.

Tattletale motioned for a folded card that was on the table, and Prancer slid it over her way. A drink list, by the look of it. She raised her hand and motioned to the man behind the bar. She held up fingers. Three, two, zero -a circle made with her full hand-, three.

The man nodded, and began preparing.

I addressed Semiramis, “You want to know this if it’s being used on you. It’s going to come across as minor and questionable, but it’s going to feel impactful, and once they get going they aren’t going to stop with the one.”

“What are we looking for?” she asked.

I leaned forward. “Look for the consequences. People at the fringes of your organization who pulled away recently. Then identify the wedge. It’s going to be communication by some digital medium, something you find or casually come across. Authenticity of the message won’t be provable, but it won’t be disprovable either. In this case, we have a sense of what the Wedge is or where it comes from. It’ll relate to Big Picture.”

“Okay,” Semiramis said. “You’re right. No need for payment for my help. This is critical.”

“You already know exactly what happened, don’t you?” Tattletale asked.

“I already knew,” Semiramis said. “It bothered me. If you have more information, you can have mine.”

“Your media monsters,” Prancer said. He glanced at Sveta. “Is that offensive?”

“Yes.”

“Your whatevers,” Prancer corrected.

“Not better.”

Semiramis leaned back, fingernails with detailed jade decoration on then tapping the table’s surface. “Before Gold Morning happened, the PRT was trying to normalize the… what do you call them over here?”

“Case fifty-threes,” Sveta said.

“That works.”

“What term did you use?” Sveta asked.

“Their names,” Semiramis said. “They’re clients and products both, and both should be treated with care. There were three. Engel, Egg, and Scraping. The idea was that they would join me. An artist with ties to Big Picture and a history of working with case fifty-threes would join us, but to produce a video feature. We wanted to continue what the PRT of America was doing before things abruptly terminated. Engel, Egg, and Scraping in media. Big Picture didn’t get into Foresight, a letter about why found its way to my three would-be clients. They became uncomfortable and canceled their contracts.”

“Why did you want Big Picture in Foresight?” Tattletale asked.

“I did not say I did.”

“What do you know about them?” I asked Sveta.

“Engel is a community leader. She’s beautiful, inside and out, very opinionated. Not a big fan of me. She’s… I’m not sure I feel comfortable saying more about things personal to her. She had difficulties. She got help. She would be my second pick to be a movie star, but I wouldn’t want her to do so if it’s with the photographer I’m thinking of. From what she says she’s avoided the worst of all of that kind of mess. Egg is a kid. They were around for the attack on Cauldron, as of Gold Morning. Scraping I don’t know.”

“Scraping isn’t a case fifty-three,” Tattletale said.

“Then that’s why I don’t know them.”

“You know more than you’re letting on,” Tattletale said, to Semiramis.

“I need more if I’m going to give more.”

“And I’m barely involved, apparently,” Little Midas said.

“No,” Tattletale said. “You work with mercenaries. You farm them out. You work with people that include the ones downstairs. Those people targeted the Navigators three and a half weeks ago. They butchered them at the client’s behest. Familiar?”

“That does not mean I’m involved.”

“When they made that attack, they lured the Navigators out with carefully crafted messages. I think that was a first draft of this particular kind of attack. It worked. It passed muster. It leaned on deep and specific knowledge of the team and their deeper desires.”

Frick.

This wasn’t a sudden thing.

“No comment,” Little Midas said. He made a small, pleased sound, moving the beard portion of his helmet to drink some beer and giving me a view of a smug smile surrounded by facial hair that had been pressed out of shape by the helm.

“-Unless you give us more,” Semiramis said.

She really wants more.

“We could talk about their other moves,” I said. I can share what they did with me.

“No,” she said.

“You have this ouroboros design in your costume,” Tattletale remarked. “It all ties back into itself. You poked a bear and you lost three possible underlings.”

“Actors and actress,” Semiramis said. “I don’t like losing. I’m a builder, I lay groundwork, I gather loyal people, and I reward them to keep them loyal. Oftentimes the work is a grind. I bite my tongue and work and I make my way toward my goal of having an empire. Something cleaner than what I used to be. It’s rare that I’m passionate about a project, and then don’t get to see the fruits of that labor. Give me my revenge, bring my three actors back to me, or tell me something else I need to know.”

I heard the clink of glass. Conversation across the upper floor changed. The old man approached. Our conversation paused.

Tattletale had her phone out. For a second, I thought she’d breached the communications blackout. Then I saw it was a note-taking application.

“Was there a nude scene?” Sveta asked. “Sorry, that’s a random question.”

“Yes,” Semiramis said. “A sex scene. But it was Engel who was interested in it.”

“Why?”

“Years ago… a kiss between a Case Fifty-Three and a human. Today… perhaps more.”

“She’s too innocent,” Sveta said. “She doesn’t get it.”

“Yes. But that can be good,” Semiramis said. “Innocence, optimism.”

Tattletale slid the phone over to Sveta as the bartender set her drink down. It was small and smelled like mint.

Sveta typed out her response, not as slow as she might’ve been, considering how unpracticed she was. She knew her way around a regular keyboard, and that helped.

She passed it back to Tattletale.

“Okay,” Tattletale said. “Engel went to Teacher for help with mental issues having to do with her power and physiology.”

“Hey,” Sveta said, looking legitimately pissed.

“She just said she didn’t want to share Engel’s private business.”

Tattletale continued on, ignoring our protests, her eyes alert. “-And Egg knew his way around Cauldron. They talked, they shared information, and they knew things between them. Big Picture was sent to Foresight because they’re the best information gatherers. Teacher… wanted to ensure nobody was too hot on his trail. So he blew it up. Surgical strike. This is looking a lot like Teacher, with some resources behind him.”

“Yes,” Semiramis said, not sounding pleased. “I know this. I would say you need to tell me things I don’t know to get me to share information, but you seem dead set on digging on your own. Perhaps… we should tell you goodbye, and minimize how much you dig until you’re ready to deal.”

“This is why nobody likes you, Tattletale,” Sveta said. “Everyone at this table is annoyed, now.”

“I’m fine,” Little Midas said, at the same time Nero at the next table cleared his throat. “This is amusing.”

“Basically, anyway. One less person at this table, another at the next table over.”

“It’s fine,” Tattletale said. She indicated Semiramis. “She still wants to know more. How. If it’s salvageable. What she can do to protect herself. It’s why she sent Big Picture to Foresight in the first place. She wants to build and she wants to know the lay of the land. Teacher’s the biggest unknown.”

“You may be underestimating my spitefulness,” Semiramis told Tattletale.

“I’m exactly estimating it,” Tattletale said. She leaned back, put down her phone, and picked up her drink. Settling in for a game of chicken.

I reached out, putting my hand on top of the drink. I eased it and her hand back to the table.

All the talk of cases. Case Twelve. I turned to the Old Man. I’d thought of him in the same way I thought of sinister and ominous things in the background, like the Slaughterhouse Nine. The Nine had even been a series of cases, with Siberian’s attack on the Triumvirate as case one.

“What?” Tattletale asked.

“The first parahumans appeared starting in 1984,” I murmured. “Parahumans tend to trigger between ages eight and thirty, give or take a few years for the edge cases. In the nineties, there was talk and rumor of a gang leader gaining a lot of ground, once upon a time. The first thought was that he was a parahuman. He wasn’t. His uncle was. The man slipped away.”

A few heads turned.

“Given his age, he’d have triggered around thirty two, thirty-three years of age. That was roughly thirty years ago. The portrait matches.”

“You know this how?” Prancer asked.

“She collects old case files,” Sveta said.

Little Midas tapped Snake-eater on the shoulder. The man stood from the cushioned bench he sat on. Not even facing us, the man at the bar raised his hands in surrender.

“Not putting up a fight?” Snake-eater asked.

“Too old to run. Never one to fight.”

“Do we need to worry about what he’s capable of?” Prancer asked.

“Have you had anything to eat or drink here?”

“Yes.”

“Then the damage is done,” I said. “You’ll live, don’t worry.”

“I’ve eaten and had a drink on a past visit,” Tattletale said. She tugged on her drink. “I’m good to go, right?”

I kept her from lifting it, my hand still over the top. “You probably don’t want to.”

She leaned back, letting go of the glass. “I have a headache.”

“You wouldn’t if you didn’t use your power for a hundred small ‘looking cool’ moments in the car,” Sveta murmured.

“Five at most,” Tattletale said.

“Explain this,” Semiramis told me, stern. “Explain him.”

“He’s the secret weapon the top people here were joking about,” Prancer said. He smiled. “Marquis, before he left. Lord of Loss before he was arrested-”

“He was released, but he’s being monitored,” Little Midas said.

“All the same. Loss tried to make sly remarks while they were a little too lubricated to be clever… this was worthwhile.”

“I know they talked about things. I want specifics,” Semiramis said.

“And you get your answers when you give us the details we need, open and fairly,” I told her.

Black – 13.x

“Look lively, ladies, gentlemen, and genteel others, we’re firmly in yellow book territory. You’ve read procedures and protocols every night, but if you’re not feeling like you’re firm on this, you need to get your books out and refresh yourself while you’re on your A-game. Shout or put your hands up if you’re panicking, stand up if you’re panicking and your mouth and hands are busy!”

The chorus of replies came back, all positive. The decagon was a raised platform, with short walls, and each of the ten walls had a cubicle connected to it. Each cubicle had one or two employees within, most facing the decagon. One of the pillars holding up the arching ceiling emerged from the decagon, a structure for computer equipment and display monitors to hang off of.

Two people in the cell were pulling open bag and drawer, respectively, to retrieve identical booklets, both with yellow covers and yellow at the page’s edges, so the closed books had yellow at the three sides that weren’t the black spine. Three others already had the book open in some fashion, as matter of habit. They had for some time now. Another two cells were spartan, with little decoration but for a plant in one cell and a family picture in another. No notes, no books, no papers. Only the computers, displays, a magnetic board with iron shavings, and a set of bells.

One of the two that was getting their book out tried to open it to the first section, but the book naturally closed because of the rigidity of paper and the firmness of spine. She typed with one hand while struggling with the other to maintain her place in the book. A tinker lens was mounted over one corner of her face. She was young, seventeen or so, dirty blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, her clothes somewhere on the comfortable end of the sliding scale between comfortable and business casual, while not being altogether inappropriate for the space.

The Overseer looked over her shoulder, while reaching out to help press and hold the pages flat. Text was appearing on the screen without problem at the same time and rate it was being spoken. The other person in the cell who was transcribing was using a stenotype machine, while this one used a keyboard, typing on a keyboard that was normal but for a few added buttons that helped navigate the autocomplete.

Tattletale: I’m not sure if I should thank you for explaining that or be horrified, but fuck. I don’t get the impression he was a mole for them. Marquis, Lord of Loss, and the other background players of Earth N? Sure. But them? Not consciousllllllll;;;y.

“Shit,” was the muttered and horrified acknowledgement of the error. The girl had been trying to turn the page and the book had clapped shut. She’d leaned on a key as she reached out to pull the book closer.

The Overseer tapped a bell.

“No, don’t- fuck. Shit. I’m sorry.”

C.M. Miltona walked along the divide between cubicles, stepping down into the cubicle, leaving the other two C.M.’s behind in the Decagon, which had just flicked its lights over to red. The C.L.s from other cells were approaching, the first ones finding places to settle in where they wouldn’t be in the way.

“We have limited moves if they’re blacking us out, so let’s make those moves count,” C.M. Howe said, clapping his hands together.

The C.Ms came in a variety of flavors, and with the way they’d been spread across cells, they tended to fall into certain roles. Cell Manager Howe was the cheerleader, the coordinator. An omnipresent and encouraging voice that kept everyone moving at the same tempo.

“Talk to me, what’s going on?” Cell Manager Miltona asked as she entered, assessing the scene in the cell.

“Laurie is fumbling,” the Overseer said.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry. I hit a key wrong,” Laurie said, rushed, her voice overlapping the Overseer’s. But in the process of her continued attempts to open the book, type, and explain herself, she made another typo, autocompleting to the wrong word. She made a face, then hit a key combination. A red box encased the lines of text.

Semiramis: You think he disrupted my deal with Engel and Egg to keep them from connecting dots?

Tattletale: You connected dots. We are the dots. You know the how, where, and what. I know Teabag’s why.

Heads in the Decagon turned toward Laurie’s cell while Miltona ducked her head a fraction lower, unhappy. The text and the error was clearly visible on their screens. The C.L.s were there, too.

“Type. Take thirty seconds, type, find your rhythm,” Miltona said, voice calm. She got a cloth from a high shelf in the cubicle, the upended a water bottle to wet the cloth. She pressed the cold cloth to Laurie’s forehead, then moved to wet Laurie’s hair, smoothing it back and out of the way. A hand rubbed Laurie’s shoulder.

Laurie let out a breath she’d been breathing too shallowly to really process.

“Headache?” Miltona asked, after the thirty seconds had passed.

“No.”

“In about five minutes the next team starts cycling in. Denton sits in, he can assist you. If you need to call off early, that’s fine.”

“No, I don’t,” Laurie said, her eye not leaving the screen. Her left eye, almost hidden by the opaque white lens and the rigging that held that lens to her head, would periodically move in a direction independent of her right eye, tracking details and numbers as they came in.

“You were getting your yellow book out. I’ve quizzed you on that on shift starts and ends, you’re as good as anyone. Aren’t you confident?”

“I’m confident,” Laurie said. “But I thought it would be nice to have.”

“First section?” Miltona asked.

“Please. Sorry.”

The Overseer hung back, watching as Miltona opened the yellow book and used a paperweight to fix it in a permanently open position.

C.M. Miltona managed things on the individual level, looked after health and performance, assessed and kept track of each person in her cell.

“Why are you stressed? This isn’t like you,” Miltona said.

“I’m managing.”

“I know you are. But why are you stressed?”

“I’m-”

Miltona spun Denton’s chair around, sitting in it, then wheeled closer, so her armrest touched Laurie’s, her back was to the screens. Laurie continued her constant typing, eyes not leaving the screen except to glance at the propped-open yellow book.

“I don’t want to be a pig,” Laurie whispered.

“A pig? What are you even talking about?” Miltona asked.

“I know we’re not supposed to use terms or labels for them, but… the boy in cubicle three and the girl in cubicle six. When we’re in the dormitories we talk and there’s obviously a set of procedures and protocols where a worker gets… demoted.”

“We’re not going to demote you or do anything to you, Laurie. You’re our best in the cell.”

“They say if you’re a worker who has to be actively given orders and constantly managed, then you’re a dog, and that’s as low as you get before you get… stuck in the mud. And you don’t get out of the mud.”

The Overseer crossed over from Laurie’s cubicle to cubicle three.

The nametag read Donna Sledge, but the Overseer hadn’t heard any mention of the name since Donna had arrived. The woman worked without comment or flinching, her eyes on reams of code. Phones, internet, and the streams of data from other means of communication, each with their own symbology. One display was split into fifteen individual sub-sections, and Donna’s hand was on a mouse, holding the right button while sweeping over the windows. A column to the right of the screen had Donna’s notes. Where Laurie had marked one line of text in red in the last hour, the sweeping motion of the mouse was designating every bit of communication as flawed, mistaken, or undecipherable, yellow filling each of the fifteen sub-windows.

But not entirely. The code had moons, stars, hearts, and strings of numbers that the notes in the adjacent column noted as ‘coordinates’. The brackets around the coordinates were green, and the notes included a shorthand note that Donna could, if asked, pull out those coordinates. Donna’s head flicked left, her eyes falling on a line of text. She double-clicked it, typed something, and it highlighted green, text superimposed over it. ‘Handshake’.

One bigger blob of green in that a sea of yellow. Wherever that code or text appeared, it was translated as ‘handshake’, with a note beside it. One one-thousandth of the text on screen was translated in this way.

Like her last name, Donna was a blunt instrument, turned to the undecipherable and unbreakable and set to the task with stubborn persistence.

The Overseer collected a tissue from a stack of tissues on Donna’s undecorated desk. She wiped a dribble of moisture from the corner of Donna’s mouth. There was no reaction, no change in Donna. The older woman breathed at a set rate, blinked at a set rate, and even seemingly filled the catheter bag attached to her chair at a set rate. She had much less work to do with the communications blackout in effect. No phone calls to track and take notes on, no emails to file.

Of the fifteen sub-windows, six were gray and frozen. There would just be the data stream, and the one sub-window with the countdown for when Precipice entered his dream room. There would be a burst of data as they connected, a burst of data when they left. Donna had already cracked that for the most part. The window had the ‘logs’ from the last access, along with notes and numbers about the room’s distribution of power across its visitors. In lieu of the power distribution table, the fifth occupant had a stress meter, akin to a heart monitor, but frozen in time.

“You’re better than Denton,” Miltona told Laurie, reassuring. “It’s why you’re day shift. If we accepted these ranks as fact-”

“They are fact, aren’t they? Not those names, but, they are,” Laurie murmured.

“-then Denton would be the dog, and you would be above Denton. He makes more errors regularly than you’ve made this afternoon. We’re not going to make you a…”

“A pig,” Laurie whispered.

“Not for innocent mistakes.”

“It’s higher stakes. We’re yellow book. Soon we go red. If I stumble and our cell can’t manage, they might.”

“They won’t,” Miltona said, smoothing Laurie’s hair back. “I won’t let them.”

“I get shaky when I dwell on it,” Laurie whispered.

“It’s not so bad. I was one, once. It’s like sleeping, for a very long time, and when you wake up, you feel like you’ve accomplished something and you were taken care of.”

Laurie shook her head slightly.

“You don’t have to worry,” Miltona said.

Laurie nodded, still typing, always typing. The Overseer looked.

Semiramis: Take him downstairs and out. Don’t cause a stir. We won’t bring it up to the people downstairs until he’s clear.

Laurie adjusted her headset. She hit a key combination, and the line was flagged. Not a red box around the line, but a green one.

“Good,” Cell Manager Miltona said, standing. While the others were still reading the text that had been highlighted for the Decagon, she was explaining, “They’re close to the mark and the Old Man is caught. We’re losing some of our eyes.”

“Noted,” the cell’s third Cell Manager said. He went by Thrift, he had powers, but he rarely used them. “When?”

“Ten minutes from now,” Laurie said.

Thrift tapped on a keyboard. “That gives us a two-minute turnaround on keeping our target from catching him in the first place. Can we?”

The C.L.s weren’t volunteering much.

“No pawns in place,” Howe said.

“Then can we make it harder? If they investigate him they may find out we’ve been peeking through his eyes. Any pawns for that?”

More shaking heads.

“Come on, come on,” Howe said. The cheerleader. He had a background as a top seller in a pyramid scheme. “There’s a way. Bluestocking?”

One of the C.L.s spoke up, “Our focus was on the trade deal with the city.”

“Is there anyone in Blood Team?” Howe asked.

Another C.L. nodded. “Possible.”

“A pawn?”

“Wild cards. Little Midas sided with the more aggressive villains, but he’s hard to push. There’s someone downstairs we can use, too. I’ll talk to my cell and run the numbers.”

“Thank you,” Howe said. “Setting the clock. Eight minutes fifty.”

The C.L. walked along the divide between cubicles, stepped down, and jogged off. Miltona had barely settled in the Decagon when another C.M. approached from the direction the C.L. had gone.

“This started with your cell?” the C.M. asked. “You were first to go yellow.”

“Unavoidable,” Howe answered.

“You let one slip the net, and now you want my assets?”

“We all work together,” Miltona answered.

“Explain it for me first. I can see your displays. You have seven minutes.”

“They went to the Bunker, where we don’t have eyes and we can’t see. We were told to let them go, no interference, because the others wanted to see what we could get in the way of access or brute forcing their access. That’s not on us.”

“I’m not interested in your ass-covering, Howe.”

“There is no ass to cover. We’re assless. Others decided it was worth the risk, they were wrong. We didn’t get anything and we tipped them off. A target was clued in that something was wrong, went home, and immediately went to the material we planted. We pulled everyone in, best people at the desk, and by the time we were set the target was already collaborating with Tattletale from the Undersiders. We’ve been coordinating with the second team since, keeping them in the loop.”

“You shouldn’t have let the target reach Tattletale.”

“We asked, they said to let it happen. They felt trying to act would tip her off.”

“If it’s that blatant, your writers weren’t soft enough.”

“Our writers are fine. You’re trying to assign blame when there’s no need. We all knew this would happen sooner or later.”

“We expected later.”

“And it’s happening now. Can we have our pawn?”

“My pawn. What for?”

“The Old Man. He’s one of our unwitting eyes,” Cell Manager Thrift said.

“I know that. We use him too. We have the cell with the second-highest coverage, we use everything. I don’t see how I can supply a distraction, delay, or deniability in six minutes and change.”

“We need him dead.”

“You want me to sacrifice my pawn?”

“There’s no choice,” Thrift said.

“Assholes. You drop the ball and I take the hit?”

“We’re all in this together,” Miltona answered.

“On paper. But you didn’t spend weeks on assets only to have them deleted,” the C.M. from the other cell said.

The Overseer descended from the Decagon, approaching the C.M. She found one of the boards with metal shavings that faced the C.M. that stood beyond the cluster of cubicles, and she reached out.

“Work together,” she said, quiet.

Her movements were not simple ones. When she reached out, her hand was a touch a hundred times softer than that of a feather, but that hand filled the space like water from an opened sluice rushed to occupy lower ground. Her hand moved, to strike with one side of the hand, with fingertips, with nails. Her position was fluid, and her face was close to the board, her breath even less substantial than her fingers, but still something that could influence the movement of single particles.

She observed thousands of individual specks of metal dust with a hundred faces, above, around, and near.

DO IT, spelled out with the letters barely visible, light gray against darker gray.

The C.M. who had been complaining paused, then looked away, scowling. “Can’t argue that.”

“What?” Howe asked.

The target personality analysis agent in the cubicle picked up the board, turning it around for the Decagon to see.

“Thank you,” Howe said. “Thank you, Overseer.”

“Sacrificing my pawn. We’ll message you as soon as we’re signed off on this move. Stand by,” the C.M. said.

“Thank you for your assistance,” Howe said.

The Overseer was a thousand inverse statues filling a vast space, limbs entangled, hair touching shoulder and back, toes on shoulders, knees against the side of heads, all propped up against one another. Statues, except they were in constant motion, they could not be seen or represent anything, they tended rather than require tending, and they had as much substance as a solid concrete statue had air pockets. When she pulled away and up, to better see the cell and the other cells, she filled space above, building on a collective mass, while figments at the edges fell away, crumbling into nothing.

There were nineteen Decagons with a twentieth in construction, wiring and cubicles being set up. Workers and managers were lingering nearby with laptops propped on crates and boxes, already figuring out the groundwork. C.L.s from other teams were working with them, filling them in.

Those C.L.s were the most active around the space, hurrying from cell to cell, liaising, sharing information, coordinating. More cells were switching to yellow. Ready to fight on a subtler front, deflect, disturb, deny.

In cell five, which was tracking the Shepherds, a young man in cubicle three was moving his mouth back and forth, clicking. His arm rubbed against the edge of the desk, back and forth, to the point of bleeding. She saw as the droplet of blood hit the flooring. She swept over the blood, putting it in the trash receptacle, and hit the specially made bell to get the attention of the cell managers.

In cell eleven, tasked with media, a community manager was breathing heavier. He was unaware as ten of the Overseers faces moved closer, crowding in together to study, observe, track every detail. His eyes were unfocused, moving back and forth as if they were reading a single short word over and over again. A vein stood out at his temple. She hit the bell.

A flake of pastry hit the ground as a team delivered meals to cell nineteen. She swept it up.

The gears were turning. Enough people were acting exactly as they should for their role, and the roles were interconnected enough to serve. Precogs were reinforced by clairvoyants, ensuring the baseline flow of information and monitoring. Others in a cell tracked all digital media, and worked on breaching passwords and defenses.

Tinkers, thinkers, and borrowed capes were turning their powers toward more complex operations. Getting into the heads of key individuals or systems that would let them better collect information. Not baseline, but far more valuable when it worked. Others scanned and searched, deciding who the most valuable targets were, so teams or oversight could attempt breaches on an even deeper level than hacking, parasites, or mind control.

Everything moved as it should.

Cell One was home. Coordinating things and influencing things here. It was Cell One she reached out to, finding the magnetic board with iron dust spread evenly across it. She manipulated the dust to craft her message, then hit the bell.

FIFTEEN.

“Good work, Overseer,” the C.M. of Cell One said. “Everyone, top attention. Surveillance, coordination, management. In order, I want network, utilities…”

She left him and his team to the task of filling in for her. She pulled back and away, passing through Cell Two, which was double-size, to see where things stood. The Bunker was a big enough blind spot they couldn’t track everything, but the Wardens were a big enough concern that every resource possible was being set to the task.

She pulled away enough that she was disconnected from the cells and cubicles. She moved through the vents, collecting dust as she went.

Home. The vast majority of it was back to its old glory. Gleaming white walls, everything in working order, a complex that could host the population of a small town. A complex that was on its way to doing just that.

The Overseer passed through a hallway undergoing renovations. Building materials were moved, slapped against the wall, then set into place. Fine wires, nails, and interlocking tiles she had worked on in past visits.

This area was being modified to be a prison. It was already occupied by people in the cells she had finished. There weren’t many rooms, and thus the people in those rooms were a select list.

The Overseer swept into the room with the first occupant. She pushed hair from forehead, and reached beneath clothes to wick away sweat and keep those clothes from sticking to skin.

She had a great fondness for the building. Her hearth and home. Her contribution. It was old and her identity was rooted in it.

Not so much a fondness for Fortuna, the woman in the first cell. She did feel a duty, however. Responsibility.

Their Fortuna, their Contessa, had wanted to try her hand at a normal life, without trusting in her power to know the exact route to take to achieve what she wanted. She had dedicated her life to the task of trying to save the world and she had failed, her burden was lifted, and nine weeks after the world ended, she had taken off her shoes, walked along a beach of white sand, stood in the water far from any civilization, and let her guard down for the first time in three decades.

That was all it took. After two days of that, with no questions to predict potential attacks, subterfuge, or other tricks, she had been captured.

Fortuna had reached for a means of defending herself, and she had found it. A loop of thought and willful paralysis that rendered her useless and deaf to the world. Even from oversight’s influence.

Fortuna hadn’t wanted this. A rushed thought, in conjunction with her being off balance, two days out of practice in using her power.

“I like your face,” the Overseer said. “I don’t love you, I don’t hate you, but your face is a home to me, Fortuna. It’s too familiar.”

Her movements around Fortuna would be felt as the slightest of breezes.

“A little under two weeks and I will see your face more regularly. They’re certain we’ll break you then. They know the date, down to the hour. Then you’ll be his.”

There was no response.

Of course there was no response. Even the most delicate of instruments couldn’t catch her voice. She spoke and nobody heard. She touched and was scarcely felt. She saw, and nobody saw her back.

Another cell. The young man who had leaked information to Engel. He had slipped his leash, panicked, and warned of the darker sides of this place. Engel had left, more aware.

She breezed into the cell.

“You,” the occupant said. He was a nobody, beyond his actions in regard to Engel. He had bought a Cauldron power, got the ability to make smoke and form phantom attackers from the smoke. He had owed a favor and oversight had called it in, before pressing him into service. The problem had been that the creations took a fragment of his mind to function, and when they gave those fragments back, those fragments were clean of any and all influence. He couldn’t be brainwashed. Not permanently. He raised his voice, accented. “Overseer.”

She cleaned up particulars. Black marks on walls. Droplets of urine where he had missed the bucket. When the other cells were more complete, the plumbing would work.

“They did this to you, and you serve them so slavishly.”

Discarded dirty clothing. Bits of food.

“This place is a Ship of Theseus. Every part of it has been replaced at least once, it feels like.”

“No.”

“I saw it, right when Teacher got here. Everything in ruins. The people in charge have changed, the walls, the floors, the lights… except for the shape, none of it’s the same except in shape. What holds you here? I wouldn’t be.”

She moved the collected waste to the hallway, where it joined the other detritus and the materials from construction. She began setting tiles into place: placer, tile, tile, placer, a swipe of sealer behind the completed row. A thousand hands wiped away excess sealer, working with no concern for getting dirty because those hands would disappear seconds after they were no longer needed.

“Why? You were a person once. Who were you, that you’re okay with this? You keep people prisoner, enslave them…”

Wiring was threaded through the ceiling at the same time tiles were set in place. Further down the hall, shock-absorbing panels were set into concrete, then covered. A technology from another earth. The ‘damascus concrete’ was another such technology, from yet another earth, leaving satisfying whorl patterns that became even more polished and refined as she smoothed down the surface.

“You can leave. You can tell people. None of this is okay. Not when he’s going to win.”

“I could always leave. There was nobody who could stop me not even when the Doctor Mother and Contessa ran this facility,” she answered, knowing he couldn’t hear her gossamer echo of a whisper of a voice.

The cell’s occupant banged his hand against the bars.

“But this is no Ship of Theseus,” she told him. “I am the constant.”

He banged against the bars a few more times, before turning away to pace.

She did an hour’s worth of work in six minutes. She put up signs to warn about the concrete and the setting tiles.

“You might be the worst of the first generation members of Cauldron,” the man in the cell said. “Because they at least seemed to think what they were doing was for a greater good. But I’ve been around just long enough to see hints of personality in what you do and how. There’s something there and… you don’t even try to be a force for good.”

Good. ‘Greater good’.

“Fuck you!” the cell’s occupant screamed. “Fuck. I’m going to be smelling those fumes for hours.

He would be fine.

There were more tasks to be done. A sweep for stowaways. A brush through the power facility. Every pass through, she tried to find the secret ways a creative person might try to enter. A shaft with power lines running through it. A water pipe with insufficient pressure.

She checked the exterior as well, and did her circuit around the crater. The facility had been built around the crater, whole sections set above, and that part had been dismantled in the heat of battle, dropped on Scion. The one part of the facility that hadn’t been rebuilt. Instead, she had damaged it further, then sealed it, to ensure that if there was a speck of alien matter behind, it would be gone. It was a column of solid metal all the way down, now.

There was no place left in her creation that she could not enter. She brushed her way through the dormitories, where the night shifts were resting, and through the kitchens, where the early morning shifts were eating and talking. Those who were in no shape to talk were being patiently fed. In the dormitories, someone was sleeping poorly, chewing on fingers until they bled without waking up. She rang a bell. In the dining hall, a pair of men were getting belligerent. Bell. The anger was gone in that moment, the fight forgotten, anger replaced by fear and alarm. They would be checked over. If there was a need, they would enjoy a long sleep, followed by waking up to the feeling of accomplishment.

Her circuit took fourteen minutes and thirty seconds. When she returned to the floor where operations were being conducted, she found oversight was there, already partway through assignments.

She brushed her way past Teacher’s beard. It had grown longer. He wore a stylized suit with a long body, draping down to the mid-thigh. A different cut from a different Earth. Latin phrases were stitched into the breast pocket, lapels, and cuffs.

“Hello, my dear,” Teacher said. He motioned. “Board.”

She was at the board before it was even picked up, working on it. She worked on it more as it was carried to Teacher.

“Almost done,” he said.

She had the message written. A list of needed replacements in cells, where the people had worn down. The one where the boy had rubbed his arm to the point of creating an open wound. The fourteen year old girl who had been contentedly brainwashed and happy to work up until the thirteenth hour of her shift, when she suddenly began crying.

What broke could be replaced.

There was a line of twelve people waiting to be assigned positions. They would watch for a while, then pick up their duties, if they weren’t outright granted the knowledge of schedule and how to perform them.

“This requires commitment,” Teacher addressed the twelve. “You can walk away at any time, but we will take your memories of what you saw. I’m sure you understand. If you do agree to work, I can guarantee that it will be difficult. Twelve hours of work, eight hours of sleep, four hours of recreation, every day. There will be times there are more than twelve hours of work.”

“Every day?” a woman in the group asked. “From what I was told, I imagined it was twelve hours a day for five days a week.”

“It is not easy. Hours may relax if we continue to grow and recruit more. For this, for one year of work, you’ll earn five times what your average citizen in the city would. You get room, board, pay, healthcare, and you’re safer here than anywhere.”

“What about the zombies?” the woman asked.

“Zombies?”

“I keep seeing people that… they don’t look well.”

“A status reserved for those who fail in their duties and who break our rules. Do good work, you will not need to worry. Stick to the rules, no need for concern. Do good work while obeying the rules, and you will be amply rewarded.”

A boy spoke up, “And if we don’t, we become, uh-”

“Mindless,” the woman finished.

“The exact opposite of mindless, miss-”

“Therese.”

“Miss Therese. The exact opposite of mindless,” Teacher said. He smiled, then addressed the group. “Decide now. I have places to be.”

There was some hesitation. To see the engine at work was daunting.

Ten agreed. The woman who had spoken up didn’t.

“Limited precognition, short range, cell thirteen,” Teacher said, touching one man’s shoulder. He moved on to the boy beside him. “Mind map of personalities, relationships, cell five.”

He went down the list. Each time he finished, the people were intercepted by William, who touched them on the shoulder before letting them go on their way.

“Writing analysis,” Teacher said. “Pattern analysis. Computer skill.”

Until only the two remained. Some of the new workers cast backward glances.

“Elijah? Will you see them out?”

“Of course.” The skinny blond boy smiled, and the smile had an uncanny edge. The fix to his jaw had been too perfect. He blinked, eyes closing over tinker-made spheres. With the faintest of machine sounds, metal whisking against metal, only audible to the Overseer because she had an ear right next to his eye, the irises switched colors from blue to yellow.

They were a part of oversight. The powerhouses, the ones who made more complex engineering possible. Fine tuning the teams, taking away the bad,

Teacher walked over to Cell One, and held the board with the magnetic dust. She wrote out particulars from her last three hours of work. Tracking those who had collapsed or broken down. Tracking the little things around the facility, her creation.

William to grant any free will. Teacher considered it a generosity, and a tool to ensure that there really were multiple perspectives on every problem, not just his own, with his thralls serving as only his hands, rather than his eyes and ears. Everyone started out with the opportunity to retain everything about themselves. From that point, it was a steep way down, but climbing was possible.

The managers that hadn’t been hand-picked for their backgrounds and skills had been selected from the best of the original batches. Those who understood how cells worked and those who had few compunctions on the subject.

“Join me?” Teacher asked. Some eyes raised, heads turned. He tapped the board with the iron dust.

I ALREADY HAD A BREAK, was her response, etched into the dust with touches in the same way someone might try to spell out words with assault rifle fire.

“It should be fine. Soon we go red. There won’t be much time to rest for a little while after that. Let’s enjoy the quiet before the storm.”

She was, she wanted to say.

She hesitated. She would do her rounds.

“Two hundred and thirty-five individuals are on the clock as we speak,” Teacher told her. “Nine individuals suspect something is amiss. Our facility here is perfectly fine.”

The Overseer could see people watching Teacher carry on the one-sided conversation.

“We’ll step up all security measures and alerts if that makes you feel better,” he told her.

She scratched out her message on the board.

MAX.

He moved his head with a small jerk. “Follow me?”

She brushed past him. Past bald head, past longer beard, through clothing.

When they were alone, he said, “If we shutter all the windows and put possible measure into effect, our enemies will know when you’re here. It makes us weaker.”

She wrote her message.

DRILL.

“Yes. Absolutely. We can put it into effect at random. If you join me.”

WHY.

“Because I think you need this, my dear. In so many ways, you need this.”

WHERE. She wrote it, but she’d seen what Teacher wore. She suspected. She felt trepidation.

“Home,” he said. “Yours, to be specific.”

Home.

“Think on it. You have until we leave. But there are assassins out there, and I would appreciate the added protection.”

She thought on it, sweeping up and down the hall, brushing past him with every pass, to let him know she was there.

Ingenue waited at the end of the long hallway. She was dressed in a short dress with long sleeves, and with the hose and cape she wore, she was as covered as she ever was. The ex-Birdcage cell block leader was pixieish, her eyes sly, her smile mysterious.

The Overseer remained closer to Teacher as he walked closer to the woman. Protective, defensive. Nobody disturbed her quite as much as Ingenue did when Ingenue was near Teacher.

Then there were the others, in updated, finer costumes. The Thomais Fallen in somewhat old fashioned clothing with a sinister spin, and The Horseman wearing ragged bandages beneath a tattered suit. The Horseman was a gift from Cheit, and a security. Their eyes on Teacher, which was an irony, considering Teacher’s many eyes and the tools he had at his disposal. Saint, Dragon’s nemesis, was there and standing proud in ornate armor, his cross-tattoo on his face colored gold.

William, Scapegoat, was catching up, drawing nearer to the Thomais Fallen. Elijah, Valefor, walked arm in arm with his mother, Madam Mathers, who wore an ethereal white gown with a shawl around her shoulders. Her health was better since coming here, since she’d been… helped, with firm boundaries. She looked closer to her actual mid-thirties than the weary young crone she’d been before.

“This will be preparations for your moment,” Teacher told the woman.

Madam Mathers curtsied, supported by her son.

The portal opened at the hallway’s end, managed by teams of tinkers. Big, dramatic, bright.

“Shall we?” Teacher asked, and he looked at nobody specific as he asked. Because the Overseer occupied nearly every place, every position, like a gas with molecules writ human size with faint human capability, he looked at her.

“We shall,” she said.

The group walked through, two of the tinkers tapping at their equipment to turn it off, so the dimensional effects wouldn’t interfere.

The Overseer passed through, and the power that had gripped her and defined her form pulled at her, stripped away her selves.

For three, four seconds, as they passed through the glowing, arching doorway, she was a meek girl again, wreathed in tatters. One of fifteen children sold in exchange for power. Sold and taken to a prison, sold and left to watch as other children went to pieces or became monsters.

And even then, somehow, seeing those horrific ends, she’d been relieved.

“Scared me,” Ingenue murmured. “Custodian?”

“Overseer,” her own voice was rough, uneven. She’d talked while doing her work around the facility to stay in a kind of practice, but it didn’t really work.

“Overseer,” Ingenue said. “You’re older than I imagined you. Do you have a name?”

“No. Not for a long time. Only the title.”

Teacher rested a hand on the Overseer’s shoulder. She laid hers over his.

They left the portal behind them, and as they did, she pulled away, casting off innumerable light-as-air duplicates, each one leaving her original self diminished, less there.

Until the original self was gone, left behind to fade into tremors in the air.

Teacher’s hand dropped as there ceased to be anything to hold.

And she rose, in her glory, in her manifold form, to fill the air above and around, to identify every person with eyes and insubstantial hands, to track weapons and search for traps.

She could see the crowds, the celebrations. There were many crowds, gathered for ceremony and festival. What might have been four large schools worth of students were singing, choiral. Drums joined with the singing. White birds were being released at set stages, so there were always some overhead.

She saw the shapes of the buildings, the way they stacked and layered upon each other, crowded, the peaks decorated while the foundations were pure utility. Though decades had passed, she knew them to be home.

Earth Cheit.

“Ally, brother,” was a greeting. A man hugged Teacher, the hug becoming a two-handed handshake, as hand slid down arm to hand.

“I was told to expect something amazing. This for just a saint?”

“A saint’s day, a hundred years after their death. People needed an excuse to celebrate. The memories of our brush with the end of days was close.”

Saint kept his distance from the Fallen. With the word ‘saint’, Secondhand looked his way, and he looked away, avoiding eye contact.

Only here because of his ongoing concerns about Dragon. Because he wanted every resource.

It barely mattered. The Overseer had ten thousand hearts and though each was insubstantial, they added up to a thrum, like a hundred hummingbirds flying through the air. Her eyes drank in home, and remembered the moment the syringe had been injected. She remembered going to pieces the first time, a bloody, screaming process, and she’d reveled in it.

Reveled because it had been change, and she’d been escaping a role that was frozen, unchanging.

Everyone on the dais was being recognized as a sponsor of the play. For Earth Cheit, it was a way to elevate Teacher and the others. Though the pretense was false, the festivities were in part for them.

The Overseer watched as Madam Mathers had her moment at the front of the dais. Center of the stage, just behind a short, balcony-like fence, stairs covered in red velvet stretching down to the city street on either side of the dais. She watched as nearly every eye present looked at the woman.

With that, with one fell stroke, Teacher assumed the ability to cripple the capitol of Earth Cheit.

Elijah couldn’t even keep the smile from his face.

“You wanted me to be a housewife, and I am,” she said, to the void, her voice rising. “I maintain my home. You wanted me to be meek, never heard, and I am. You wanted me to be nothing and no one and I am!”

She liked to think the choir carried that voice higher, rather than drown it out. It didn’t matter. She had come to terms with her silent voice long ago. To accept was one of the first things she had learned.

“I am a creator of my own kingdom. I am free. I’m a woman more powerful than any of you. I’m everything you wanted yet everything you feared, and I can be both because…”

She filled the space, sweeping past people on either side of the street, people on the stairs, people on the dais.

“…I am everything everywhere.”

She moved amid the masses, searching for assassins and familiarizing herself with everyone present.

“I was bartered away for power. You’ll find now that you get what you pay for.”

The show was done, and the students were dissolving ranks. The crowd closed in, filling the street. There was food, drink, and cheering. She knew, from dim childhood memories, that it would continue into the night, and then there would be fireworks, colors matched to the saint.

She swept close to Teacher, and she touched her lips to his, while the world that had cast her away unwittingly watched. A thank you, a message. She saw his eyes move slightly, his eyebrows twitch.

Teacher smiled.

“Enjoying yourself?” one of the Theocrats asked.

“I am,” Teacher said.

“I’m glad. I’ve been to Gimel. I’ve seen how thinly it is stretched. I thought you would enjoy something more… substantial.”

“The insubstantial has its appeal, but I thank you, Caleb.”

“All that we have is yours, if you’ll elevate us, give us more worlds, more fertile ground. Every soldier, every weapon, every pen, every facility.”

Teacher smiled. He took the man’s hand, shaking it firmly. “You won’t be disappointed.”

“The appearance of the Titan so close to home has people worried,” another man said.

“Rest assured,” Teacher said. “Have faith.”

“Faith,” was the answer.

Teacher had his army, now. More people than he could hope to use. He had his stranglehold.

A few hundred steps away, past that shining portal, he had the fates of everyone in Gimel. A different kind of stranglehold.

People came and went, saying their hellos, getting their introductions. It was an hour before Teacher was alone with the man he wanted to talk to. Not a face most citizens would recognize, but he had visited once when The Horseman had first arrived. A dangerous man who always wore black. Ian.

“The Horseman told us of your information gathering apparatus. Spreading false word.”

“Something like that,” Teacher said.

“You can do this?”

“You, Ian my friend, I can assure, I can do this.”

“An army. An endless supply of people to be your thralls, with no need to recruit or kidnap.”

“The army has nothing to do with it. My information gathering apparatus has nothing to do with it. I have other tools that I’ve yet to reveal.”

“The top floor of your facility.”

Teacher nodded.

“The Horseman said he couldn’t go there, a phantom stopped him before he could.”

“A good thing too,” Teacher said. “I can trust you with this, and few others. If anyone knew what I had there, they would want it. Anyone, large or small, whatever world. I’m certain.”

I can trust you, he’d said. You in the plural. His eyes hadn’t focused on the man. That had been partially directed at her.

“I’ll trust you. Just tell me you’ll save my world.”

“I will. Carrying on where my predecessors left off, I suppose, saving worlds.”

“And your own? Gimel? Will you save it or leave it to fester?”

“Only to save it from itself.”

He’d been right, to invite her. To see her world leashed by an invisible chain. To give her a chance to scream to it that she’d changed, she’d played by its rules and she’d beaten it.

Saint approached, putting a hand on Teacher’s shoulder. He showed the man his phone. The Overseer barely had to look. The color of the screen said it all.

Red.

Things began in earnest now.

Black – 13.9

The Old Man being held at gunpoint had arrested all of the private meetings and conversations in the upper floor. Most of the heat in the Lodge was coming from the kitchen built into the center of the ground floor, but that was a heat that diffused up and out from vents in the center of the upper floor, and we were arranged at the edges. The atmosphere was chilly, and eerily quiet for a dining area.

Nobody ate and nobody talked. Ears strained to hear us, despite the usual rules and expectations. We’d overturned the peace to a significant enough degree that the rules of the upper floor no longer held.

“Fine,” Semiramis said. “I’ll give you something small, you give me something, I’ll give you the rest.”

She put a slight emphasis on ‘you’, locking her eyes to me.

“Okay,” Tattletale answered.

“Is it?” I asked her.

“I’ve got a sense of Semi here. It’s okay. Really.”

Semiramis lowered her voice as she said, “Full name, please. I’d only allow a joke like that with friends and peers, and you’re far from being either.”

Tattletale smirked. Sveta did something under the table, and I saw the movement of her coat, like she’d been flicked or whipped. The smile dropped from Tattletale’s face.

“Understood,” Sveta told Semiramis.

Semiramis drummed the table with her pointed nails. “Tattletale is right. I threw a party, Engel, Egg, and Scraping attended. The intent was to make them feel welcome, comfortable, and to give them a sense of the atmosphere they might enjoy if they signed on. I kept my party sequestered, with a place they could retreat to, quieter than the party, and I remained there, waiting until they wanted to join me. Engel and Egg came, they sat, they got to talking. They knew each other in passing, from what I heard. I overheard much of it.”

“Engel almost joined the Irregulars,” Sveta said. “She wanted to focus on real life things, friends, family. Stuff she worked hard to get. Then when she was ready, we- travel and getting her from where she was to us became hard. It never lined up, and then she found other things she wanted to do. Egg did join, but more as a tagalong or mascot, too young to do anything big.”

“None of that sounds wrong, given what I heard,” Semiramis noted.

“Important thing is,” Tattletale said. “What did they say?”

“You first,” Semiramis said. “What’s this? This man.”

She indicated the white haired man with the nice clothes, trimmed facial hair, and a weapon pointed at him. He’d lowered his hands, and rested them on the bar, fingers splayed.

Tattletale leaned back, looking at me. Her hand went from fist to flat, as if to indicate something. Like a hand signal for a fucking dog.

Whatever.

I answered, “Case twelve. Before the PRT was a thing, a gang gained a lot of traction. They knew too much, to the extent that law enforcement thought they’d gotten their hands on cold war spy tech. Then it got to the point they thought it was experimental, never-used tech, because it was so good. Around the time they started thinking that was impossible, parahumans were breaking onto the scene, and they realized something was up. It went like I described, they thought they had the guy at the center of the information flow, the one guy who rose a little too fast, who wasn’t hurt or wasn’t as hurt by the gang. It turned out to be his uncle. A man who could feed people his own DNA to-”

“Excuse me?” someone at another table asked.

Snuff stepped in between us and the table in question. “Private conversation.”

“Snuff,” I said. Snuff turned his hooded head. I glanced at Tattletale, “Can I give him orders?”

“Sure. Go nuts.”

“Snuff, protect the Old Man from everyone else.”

Snuff stepped away, putting himself between the parahuman and the man.

“That’s what he’s called?” Little Midas asked me. “The Old Man?”

“The nickname he took on. Formally, he’s just case twelve.”

“What does he do?” Semiramis asked.

“He’s the waiter who spits in food,” Prancer said. “Only superpowered. Fuck me, I’ve eaten here way too often.”

“No jokes,” Semiramis told him. Her neck was stiff now. She had said she didn’t like losing, and in this case, she hadn’t even known she’d played and lost. There were a few other people who looked incensed.

On the upside, they’d be really pissed at Lord of Loss, who had apparently known. He’d earned his spot on the list of people where I wouldn’t be upset if they tripped and fell headfirst into traffic. Or on the wrong side of villains.

“He doesn’t spit,” Tattletale said. She pushed her glass further away from her.

“Don’t push that toward me,” Sveta told her.

“I was going to leave that part out,” I told Tattletale.

“What does he do?” Semiramis asked. “And how? Clarify.”

“They searched his apartment and found little bottles with sliced off bits of flesh, blood, vegetables nourished and grown in his own DNA. That last one might have been an experiment, might be a regular thing. He put his flesh in food and drink, and after that was consumed, he was linked to them.”

Someone nearby stood from their seat. Snuff stiffened, raising a hand.

“Asshole made us into cannibals?” the guy asked. He had a western desperado look, which arguably came into style and inarguably went out of style in the course of one month in 1998. I supposed if there was a place to take another sad stab at it again, Earth N was it.

He had nice hair though. Long, but he took care of it. His eyes were narrow in the part of his face that showed between kerchief and black hat.

“Sit,” Semiramis said. “We’re resolving this in a civilized way.”

“Fuck civilized,” Desperado said.

“Sit. We gain nothing by taking it out on him. We’ll decide his fate soon, when we know all the facts.”

“No. I don’t think we will,” Desperado answered. “We’ll decide it now.”

Semiramis narrowed her eyes. She moved her hand in a claw, stiff and tense, as if every movement would make her knuckles pop, and there was a sound like the very foundation of the Lodge cracking. More than one person rose from their seats at the sound.

Desperado turned on his heel, one hand at his jacket, head lowered so the brim of his hat hid his eyes.

“Do I-” Sveta whispered.

“Only if they threaten our man,” I said.

Sveta nodded. I watched as Little Midas tracked the nod, looked between Sveta and I, and then heaved out a breath.

“Dustwind,” Little Midas said. “No.”

“We’re not-”

“No. Not until we say.”

The Desperado paused, then turned to walk away, heading downstairs. As if taking the command as suitable for everyone present, others sat. They didn’t sit happily. Tension and anger leaked in. This warm, cozy building with whole logs forming the walls, soft light, and heat from wood stoves and fireplaces had been a safe space, and that space had been exploited.

They still obeyed, as angry as they were. Little Midas had clout.

The conversation didn’t pick up immediately.

“Clear out,” Semiramis said, turning her head to look at her people in the booth behind her. “Give us more space. Protect the Old Man.”

People in the booths around us stood. They walked away. One table of people was sitting close, and the departing henchmen indicated for them to relocate. They did.

We were surrounded now by empty booths and tables. Some people crowded in the corners of the room, leaning in close to talk to one another and either commiserate or conspire. The light that came in through the small windows by each table cast long shadows and made faces bright on one side and darker on others. By contrast, the light from the backlit bar was diffuse.

“Can they be trusted?” Sveta asked.

“Mine won’t talk,” Semiramis said. “I can’t speak for Midas’.”

“I keep mine distracted with blood and circuses,” Little Midas said. He giggled. More seriously, he said, “If you resolve this soon then you shouldn’t need to worry. Take too long… they’ll get to it.”

“We’re making it a priority,” I said.

“Blugh,” Tattletale made a sound, looking at her drink. “I’m caught between having no appetite and really wishing I could get a drink or a bite of something to get this bad taste out of my mouth, except I know I won’t feel good about eating anything until we’re fifty miles from here.”

Okay, well, maybe Sveta and I were making it a priority.

“Tell me more about what this man does. What kind of link does he make?” Semiramis asked.

“Right to business,” Tattletale said. “Not that I’m not curious.”

I wracked my brain. I’d read the file a dozen times, but the last time was a year ago. “When he slept, if people he was linked to were sleeping at the same time, he’d get their memories from the day. Vague, not complete memories, but enough to piece most things together. It gave him other advantages, an instinctive knowledge of how people would react or respond, after he slept. Made it more effective if he went after them, presumably, but he was careful, favored sending people instead of going himself, or attacking them in subtler ways.”

“That sounds awfully familiar as an M.O.,” Tattletale murmured.

I nodded. “It is. He’s in a rare class of parahuman who could pull off something like this, given a chance.”

“A rare class in a lot of ways. I didn’t think parahumans lived to be that old,” Tattletale said.

“He’s a survivor,” Prancer said.

“He could almost pull it off, but no, he’s not a culprit, too slow,” Tattletale said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. That was the sticking point.

“I’m not sure if I should thank you for explaining that or be horrified, but fuck,” Tattletale said. “I don’t get the impression he was a mole for them. Marquis, Lord of Loss, and the other background players of Earth N? Sure. But them? Not consciously.”

“But the parallel is important?” I asked.

“Could be. Teacher’s, and I’m pretty sure he’s a big part of this, his big thing right now is that he’s trying to connect an awful lot of dots. He performs that connecting with the bottom-tier thinkers and tinkers his power makes.”

“Tinkers scan things,” Sveta said. “They can study parahuman powers and reinterpret them into blueprints and ideas for tinkering. Is it possible they scanned him, and got something similar? A machine that reads memories?”

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Tattletale said. “But I wouldn’t rule it in, either. They’re acting on information fast enough I don’t think they’re sleeping or waiting until we’re sleeping to collect it. There are so many ways they could do this that it’s not worth getting stuck in the weeds. He could have a clairvoyant sitting on the guy, tinker cameras like your ex-teammate, or a hundred other things. Point is, he’s connecting the dots, and I think he’s devoting a lot of resources to keeping others from connecting and connecting dots.”

“That’s two distinctions you’re making there,” I said. “Connecting in the… team sense, and connecting in the information gathering sense.”

“I don’t care about this,” Semiramis said. “I want to know what to watch out for. You’re giving me a non-answer. You’re saying you don’t know, which is reneging on the deal.”

“No,” Tattletale said, in a voice somewhere between strained patience and outright exasperation. “I’m saying this is very much what to watch out for. What happened to you was a dots and connections thing.”

Semiramis’s voice was low. “You think he disrupted my deal with Engel and Egg to keep them from connecting dots?”

“You connected dots. We are the dots. You know the how, where, and what. I know Teacher’s why,” Tattletale answered.

“Tell me,” Semiramis said.

“You show me yours and I show you mine. How, where, what. Help me narrow this down. I’ll give you your why and then, if we’re lucky enough to get the chance, I’ll point this bruiser-”

Tattletale indicated me.

“-at the culprit, and hopefully we keep him from doing this or anything like it again.”

“Engel went to Teacher for help. She saw his organization, and had a sense of what he was building. Her unique vision reveals things in darkness and limits her ability to see things in light, and she saw enough hidden things to make her wary. He has a building larger than some cities, and he’s filling it. The lower floors were crowded enough that things had to be shuffled around and moved to keep her from seeing them, but she still saw them.”

“White walls, floor?” Sveta asked.

Semiramis nodded.

“I’m wracking my brain to think what other terms might be used to describe it. Was a portal used to enter?”

“I don’t know.”

“It is what you think it is,” Tattletale told Sveta.

Sveta nodded, jaw and mouth set firm.

“We knew he was siphoning in people. Not a city’s worth. That’s useful,” Tattletale said. “It doesn’t give us many hints about what he’s doing here though. Egg said something and she connected dots?”

“When they talked, they made sense of things between them. Egg said what you said, that ah, they were in the old headquarters. Engel seemed upset. I remember because of how disturbed she seemed by the revelation.”

“That’s because they were at the old Cauldron base. The place Engel would have gone to attack if she’d ended up with Sveta’s old team. The place where everything was managed behind the scenes. Where they made the case fifty-threes.”

Sveta’s head bent down, her eyes fixed on the black table. I reached out to rub her shoulder.

The others reacted with their own measures of mild surprise. A frown from Semiramis, because she probably got it at this point. Teacher being there made Teacher very hard to get to. Not to mention the people, the resources, and the attention he was paying to us.

“What else?” Tattletale asked. “What did Engel see, that Egg could explain?”

“People, many were vacant behind the eyes, lined up in the dark. I don’t know what else-”

“Every detail matters,” Tattletale said, firm, eyes wide and focused on Semiramis.

“I don’t remember the details. At the time, I didn’t care. It was a conversation about someone I cared very little about, that I wasn’t even a part of.”

“But you remember the conversation.”

“Only fragments. You’d have to talk to them.”

“Give me something, because the way things are going, I’m not positive we’ll get a chance to talk to them.”

“Broomsticks,” Semiramis said.

“Broomsticks are good,” Tattletale said. “What about them?”

“There were people in a stairwell who tried to keep her from seeing their brooms, according to Engel. Egg thought it was strange or important.”

“Brooms,” I said.

I glanced at Tattletale and saw her smiling.

Semiramis drummed her fingernails. “Engel thought it was because they didn’t wish to appear lowly, or they were ashamed. Egg said no, then said they had someone for the job? I didn’t follow.”

“The Custodian,” Sveta said.

“That was the word he said,” Semiramis said. “Why?”

“Every detail matters,” Tattletale said. “That’s good. But it doesn’t relate to our current issue, and you don’t care about it if it doesn’t relate. That’s the where and the what. Teacher in the unreachable extradimensional complex with the army of thralls and other allies. Thralls with brooms.”

“Tell me why. Do I need to worry about him doing this again? How do I stop it?”

“The why is that you got too close to people who were asking questions and you started asking your own. It’s that simple, because he’s going after anyone and everyone who does the same. His predecessors went after problems like a surgeon with a scalpel and a precise knowledge of what they wanted to achieve and how. He’s… going after things like a… analogies fail me. He’s getting enough people under him that he can gather five people and tell them ‘watch them’ or ‘slow them down’. Something like that, but he can do that for everyone that matters. Five sets of eyes on every last person that matters. He amasses information, gathers people, and connects all the dots, while blocking everyone else from doing the same things.”

“Villains, heroes, rogues, civilians-”

“Mercenaries, machines, governments,” Tattletale finished for me.

“He’ll do this again?” Semiramis asked.

“He’s doing it. He never stopped. He’s doing it as we speak. And you don’t stop it without stopping him, and you aren’t strong enough to stop him.”

Semiramis frowned.

“You can help us,” I said. “If you want this to stop.”

“Or if you don’t want to help us, because Tattletale’s annoying or you don’t trust heroes, help anyone who’s opposed to Teacher,” Sveta said. “But… I think helping us is a pretty good bet.”

“You’re biased,” Prancer said.

“It’s my opinion if I were objective,” Sveta answered. “Antares fought Teacher’s army before, I know more than you’d think about the place Teacher is and what’s going on there, and about Engel or Egg, and Tattletale knows things. You’re not going to find better people to handle this.”

“There’s no guarantee you succeed,” Little Midas told us. “You want money, you want access? We give you that and chances are we get nothing.”

“Not money. We don’t care about money. Give us information, which costs you very little to give-”

Midas interrupted me, “Opinions may differ on that.”

“Give us information and shortcuts to the key people in this. Introductions, opening doors, favors, whatever it takes to achieve their cooperation. Because if we don’t step in and this continues like this, we might reach a point where Teacher just doesn’t have any legitimate opposition. You want this to end.”

“Seems reasonable,” Prancer said. “But I don’t know what I can give you.”

“Semiramis can help us with details from the past. Midas can help us with details in the present. You’re our insurance for the future,” Tattletale told him. “Keep your ear to the ground. You should have a sense of what to look for. Wedges, attacks from an angle that use communication and separate or disrupt people. You’re best networked among the low-level villains. Keep an eye on them, report to us.”

“I can do that. I’ll warn you I won’t betray their privacy.”

“Of course,” Tattletale answered with a smile.

Semiramis had been quiet for a minute. Now she was nodding, more to herself.

“What do you need?” she finally asked.

“Contact details for Egg and Engel,” Tattletale said. “If you were probing around the subject of the Teacher thing before you decided to pull back and focus on other things, any notes you have would help.”

“I’ll give you the contact details and look at what else I might have that I could give you.”

“Thank you,” Tattletale told her.

“Anything else?”

“Honestly? No. Back us up. Don’t slow us down. We’re all on the same side here. Heroes, villains, rogues.”

I really didn’t consider Semiramis a rogue, to use the archaic PRT term for those who pursued strictly neutral or business-oriented interests instead of fighting for the heroes or the villains. But Semiramis seemed to like the sentiment.

She wasn’t exactly smiling or jumping with joy, but she’d found out she was being stalked, she’d eaten human flesh however many times, she was having to deal with Tattletale, and she probably had the bad taste in her mouth that anyone got when motherfucking Teacher came up.

But we had her. Prancer was cooperating.

Which left Little Midas. Mr. blood and circuses. We looked his way.

“There’s no way I can help you without losing my place in things. I facilitate, grease the wheels, I don’t obstruct, demand, or use my position for leverage. I don’t show people my books or reveal the men behind the curtains.”

“You greased the wheels for mercenaries who attacked the Navigators. Navigators who were lured out with something very similar to the form of attack being used now,” Tattletale said. “Even if you told us only what you knew, called-”

Little Midas was already shaking his head. “Won’t, can’t. And you can be reassured that means I won’t be talking to others about what you’ve all shared here. I mean no ill will, this has been very interesting, even fun, but no.”

Pain in the fucking ass. That-

“Okay,” Tattletale said.

-was not okay. I arched an eyebrow, but Tattletale couldn’t see it with the mask obscuring the upper half of my face. By Sveta’s expression, her take on this wasn’t so different.

“No groveling, no mercenary offers?” Midas asked.

“No,” she told him. “No. Time is of the essence. Prancer, you have the means to contact me. Semiramis, if you’ll give me the contact information for those two, we’d like to try talking to them, seeing what they remember, specifically.”

“I can give you the last known numbers. They made it clear they weren’t interested in further contact, after my association with Big Picture tainted their view of me, I don’t know if they’ll answer. I leave that to your discretion.”

Semiramis took a pen from Tattletale, writing the number down on a napkin.

Midas slouched back in his seat, watching carefully from behind his golden helmet. He’d expected a fight and got a surrender instead. He was wary, and I was too, even though I was coming at this from the opposite angle.

“Do me a favor?” Semiramis asked.

“Maybe,” Tattletale said, warily.

“Tell them I’m open to working with them on another project. L.J.M. does not need to be associated with it, and I’m no longer working with Big Picture.”

“But you’d still want to do a sex scene with a Case Fifty-three?” Sveta asked.

“Wouldn’t it be progress? Acceptance of the body? Something deeper than a one-kiss on screen?”

“One-kiss?” Prancer asked.

“When they allowed white people to kiss black people on screen, it started with the one-kiss. Toe in the water, never two kisses in the same episode or movie. Then they eased in, as people got used to it. Same with gay people. Then with the- you case fifty-threes.”

“I know the guy who got the first on-screen kiss,” Sveta said. “But it wasn’t only one kiss.”

“Yes, you’re right. More than one. Deliberately so. They wanted to push the envelope. But so do I, here. The difference is that they, I think, had the PRT helping? It’s common knowledge the American organizations helped. They are… greasy like our Midas here, greasing up the wheels.”

“Have I offended you, Semiramis?”

“No, Midas. But you haven’t won my favor today, either. I want this done with, with a minimum of headaches. I want to focus on my empire, and grow it. I can’t do that if this looms above.”

“You guys can work this out later,” Tattletale said. “We’re going to chase down this lead.”

Her chair scraped against the floor as she stood.

“If we leave the Old Man with them, then they’re going to kill him,” I said.

Tattletale gave me an annoyed look.

“What? It’s true.”

She almost rolled her eyes. “Yes, it’s true. Yes, we should bring him with. If we can work out what they did to him, we can work out something about how they operate. There are resources. Then… how long does his thing last, before the body digests it?”

I wondered if I should lie.

“Long enough,” I said, to be coy.

Tattletale nodded. “Two, three days?”

“Maybe five,” I lied. As far as the PRT figured it out, it was indefinite. So long as he was alive.

“You’re not taking him,” Midas said. “And he does need to die.”

Midas stood. He banished the black table, and Tattletale’s glass dropped. Sveta caught it with tendrils, which brought it to her reaching hand, only a bit slopping out.

Now we had issues.

Sveta didn’t stand up, but straightened to her full height. I used my flight to make the process equally smooth. Minor expressions of power. Posturing.

Midas had started it, with his firm line in the sand.

Sucked that we were in his territory more than we were in ours, but… I wasn’t going to watch a sixty year old guy die, when I wasn’t sure just how active he’d been in using his power.

Besides, he kind of represented something major. I could hate him, though I didn’t really loathe him, I could think he was scummy and freaky. I could recognize that he had been a gang member and had perpetuated violence, drug dealing, and a culture of fear.

But he’d survived. Every parahuman I knew who’d been in the game for a while saw enough people die or meet unfortunate ends that they kind of… absorbed it, really. The implicit assumption became that we’d die early. We had other causes and those causes were more a priority than reaching the age where we could get discounts in stores for our age.

I hadn’t exchanged any words with him. I had no idea who he was now, if he was aspiring to control like Teacher was, if he got off on feeding people bits of him, or if he was an angel. But I felt like I needed to protect that.

“He’s essential to uncovering this thing, Midas,” Tattletale said.

“Which means he submits to power testing? Investigating? Scans from tinkers?”

“Something like that,” Tattletale answered.

“And then?” Midas asked.

“And then we pass him onto the guys who have been making the most dangerous villains disappear. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“Out of sight and very in our minds,” Midas said, and his voice was lower. “Stowed in a basement in a building only the Wardens know about, made to watch or monitor key people the heroes have a problem with. People who have been fed pieces of his flesh.”

“That’s not what the heroes do,” Sveta said.

“Or in a place the Undersiders protect?” Midas asked. “Or elsewhere? He could be snatched up by another player. By Teacher. There’s no way of knowing, unless we watch him die before our eyes.”

“That’s not going to happen,” I said. “That’s not how we do things.”

“And you’re exaggerating,” Tattletale said. “You make him sound bigger than he is. Have some perspective. Is he strong? Yes. But once he’s gone he’s going to be so much trouble to retrieve that it would be a hundred times more effective and efficient to go after one of the other creepy thinkers or tinkers.”

“Like a certain young camera tinker?” Prancer asked. He was the only one who hadn’t stood up from the table or booth, and presently leaned back, casual.

“Not helping, Prance,” Tattletale muttered.

“Do you know what puts him even further out of reach?” Midas asked. “A beheading.”

“I know a few too many people who were cloned for me to be sure about that,” Sveta said.

“If you want to talk about perspective,” Midas said, “If there are questionable characters who can do that who are free and capable of resurrection, we have other worries. Be realistic. Death is final enough.”

“You’re acting like someone with something to hide,” Semiramis said.

Midas had more emotion in his voice, but he bore it well, sounding almost outraged, in a way I was betting was compelling for the twelve or so capes at the sidelines. “No. Tattletale is working to cultivate the impression we’re on different sides, Semiramis. When she agreed so quickly to my refusal to share information, it was because she plotted this. She knew that he would need to be dealt with. She knew you need this out of your way and that I’m not in a position to help with this. Think, Semiramis, think, you have niggling doubts. Little thoughts and things that don’t add up, that we’ve completely ignored.”

“This is a repeat of the fiasco just before the Navigators were attacked,” Semiramis said.

“Yep. Cries for blood,” Prancer said. “The heroes were applying pressure and villains decided to fight back, no holds barred. Your voice was a loud one, Midas.”

“You weren’t silent,” Midas answered.

“I was grieving. We all made mistakes. This course of action looks a hell of a lot like another one. One very convenient to Teacher, if we start fighting among ourselves.”

“Can we compromise?” I asked. The looks I got back in surprise ranged from Semiramis’ wary one to a ‘get real’ look from Prancer, and hostile eyes behind a jolly bearded faceplate for Little Midas.

“Compromise?” Prancer asked.

“Lend him to us. We investigate, which helps all of us, we see what we can do to undo his hold on anyone, disable his power, whatever, and then we reunite after. If you’re satisfied, we follow through with our plans, imprison or sequester him. If you’re not, then we’re exactly where we are right here, right now, but with cooler heads.”

“That involves a lot of trust in heroes,” Prancer said. “And no offense, Tattletale, but you’re kind of a jacakss. You and your teammate did get on the bad side of more than a few villains here.”

“Are you negotiating right now because you believe in it, or because you really like debating?” Tattletale asked.

“The second, I guess?”

“Back off?” she asked, in about the least offensive way someone could say that.

“Sure, fine,” Prancer replied. He backed off, walking away a few steps.

“It does involve trust,” Semiramis said.

“I’ve dealt with Bluestocking, I’m approaching you here in a fair, open way, about a situation that could hurt you. I’ve been fair,” I said.

“You say ‘I’ and not ‘we’, I notice,” Semiramis told me.

“Sveta too.”

“You’re carefully avoiding mentioning Tattletale.”

“Look,” I said, “nothing good comes from our guy staying here. We’ve got enough shit on our plates that we can’t make the time to exploit this guy against you, and that’s not our style anyway. If it was, we’d be doing way better than we are, instead of building the Warden’s third headquarters downstairs and trying to wrangle a half dozen teams in the center and downtown areas of the city.”

“Admitting weakness?” Semiramis asked.

“Admitting reality. Things are a mess.”

“The difference is that we have to live with the people here,” Midas said. “We have to lead them.”

“You’re insecure,” Tattletale said.

Midas stiffened slightly. “I’m aware of what it takes to lead. Do I need to remind you that you ran a city and you lost it, your group is fractured, and you’re having to ask heroes for support because you don’t have enough of a team to lean on?”

“Talk to me in a month, Midas, because I haven’t backed down or bowed down yet, and I’m going to recover and surpass you without needing to quiver at the knees, biting your nails and worrying what the big bad group of F-lister villains in your corner world think.”

This… this was a massive pain. She was taking a completely different approach from me, where I was trying to build empathy, and Tattletale was… I wasn’t even sure. Getting him to back down?

Maybe her approach made sense from her perspective, and there was a course here where she’d batter them, get them to admit weakness, and then strike home with a decisive verbal blow, which they’d be too flustered to respond to.

But… no guarantee.

“Is there another option?” Sveta asked. “What if we… just took him?”

Midas made a hand motion. Some of his people shifted their posture. Snuff moved a step to one side, to put himself between those ‘some’ and the old man.

“I don’t mean that in a hostile, bad way,” Sveta told Midas. “But if you care what the lesser villains think… what if we skipped that part? You let us kidnap him, you tell your people whatever you want, make us out to be the bad guys, then we move forward with Victoria’s plan. We meet you, negotiate, leave the lesser villains in the dark…”

“No,” Semiramis said, at the same time Midas shook his head.

“That’s a lot of bad blood,” I said. “It closes doors for the future.”

“I’d rather close doors than kill someone without putting him on trial.”

I nodded.

The suggestion had been off-the-wall, but it seemed to have shifted the tenor of the conversation to be less combative. There was a pensive, tense pause.

I pulled off my mask and pulled my hood back away from my head. “Give us the Old Man, let us talk to him, let us test him and try to break the connections or force him to give them up. If the concern is that we’ll keep him and use him, you can send us a trusted representative to see what our setup is. How villains are being disappeared, imprisoned, whatever we end up doing. But we loop you in, you come away with a lot of information and a bit of clout, because from that point on, anyone here that wants to deal with us is pushed to act through you.”

“I’d agree to that,” Semiramis said. Because she wanted power and influence, she wanted control – it had motivated her hiring of Big Picture.

Even Prancer was nodding. He had his own motivations, wanting a footprint. Influence in any form would translate to people joining his corner world or supporting it.

Little Midas was the sticking point.

“I don’t like it,” Little Midas said.

“You don’t like anything,” Tattletale told him. “Except the easy, immediate solution.”

“I’m a greedy man, Undersider. When I want something I want it now.”

He touched the air and turned that air into something solid, a wispy statue that looked like it was made of a thousand hair-thin gold wires. The shape was of a woman’s face, upper chest, and breast. He gripped it by the neck and chin, hard, as it continued to form, then made it dissipate with a wave of the hand a moment later.

I was fifty percent sure he’d screwed up a part of his model at the shoulder, made it too triangular.

“Can you ‘not like it’ in a way that sees you nodding, accepting it, and us being more willing to work with you on something else later?” Prancer asked. “Any answer besides ‘yes’ is going to cost, probably start a fight.”

I saw Midas pause, stuck on the fence. I saw Tattletale open her mouth, and I elbowed her.

“Finders keepers,” I said. “Isn’t that a rule among the greedy? I spotted him, I found him. He’s mine.”

Midas made a sound that might have been a chuckle, muffled by his mask. He nodded, the molded beard at the faceplate of his helmet clinking against his golden breastplate.

“Bring him,” Semiramis said.

At the same time, Tattletale gestured to Snuff.

The Old Man was walked our way, while Little Midas’ people approached him, their words hushed and angry, while Little Midas was calm.

“You’ll cooperate?” I asked the Old Man.

“Yeah,” he said. “How’d you get me?”

“Old records.”

“Antares is the kind of geek who reads old PRT files,” Sveta said.

The Old Man nodded.

“The past never lets you go,” he told me. “The amnesty doesn’t protect me?”

“Right now, you’re being protected, that’s a main goal of ours. But Tattletale thinks you know something we can use, the rest of the people here want to hurt you. Cooperate with us and we’ll be fair to you.”

“Okay.”

I got Semiramis’s attention, and we began to make our way downstairs. Since the open construction of the stairwell didn’t really obscure view at any point from anywhere on the ground floor, I put myself between the man and the crowd, to better block their view. Sveta descended the stairs beside me, while Semiramis followed. Little Midas caught up and followed, with Tattletale and Snuff. The Old Man had a bad leg, apparently, and limped. I held his arm, in part just to keep him from reaching for anything, if the limp was a trick.

A lot of eyes were on us as we made our way down, step by step.

“Out of curiosity,” I said. “Etna. What happened to her? She okay?”

“She retired,” Midas said, behind me.

“She retired?”

Prancer explained, “Went out after Bitch and her hounds, that night three weeks ago. Took a hit, decided she was done. Hung up her costume, moved. Said she’d probably have to do something cape-ish to work out her stress, so she might be a B-list heroine.”

“Oh,” I said. “I think that was me who hit her.”

What the fuck was I supposed to think about Etna now? The idea of that being what had actually happened had me caught between this being a bad, cruel joke, like saying someone’s puppy had gone to live on a farm somewhere, and it being real and me then having zero idea what to think of the inept villain who irritated me so much but had actually done something cool.

“You hit her so hard she retired?” Tattletale asked, grinning.

“It wasn’t a hit, exactly. Is this a bad joke?”

“No joke. And you’re going to have to regale us with your explanation of what this mysterious technique is,” Prancer said. “Was it a specific angle of hit? A combination?”

“You’ll have to teach me, whatever it is,” Sveta added, playing along.

“I tackled her in the air. Spun her around pretty violently, then dumped her into the side of a hill.”

“Ten-eighty spin with a punt to finish it?” Prancer asked. “That’d do it.”

“More than ten-eighty and I didn’t punt. I spun, stopped, and after a momentary pause I… very firmly introduced her to the hillside. I measured my strength.”

“And worried you killed her,” Tattletale said.

“I- no. I-”

“You worried you killed her.”

“If someone disappears and the last thing you remember is a K.O.-”

“Midas!”

A voice from the crowd. We were partway down the stairs.

Fuck.

The guy looked like Cleat’s brother, but he was nubby instead of spiky. And clearly angry, from what I could see of his face behind the nub-studded helmet.

“Let it go,” Midas said.

“You’re letting them take him?”

“I made my arguments. I was outvoted.”

Not exactly resounding cooperation there.

“He fed himself to us!”

“If you want to take over the Lodge while Lord of Loss’s back is turned, now’s the time to show some leadership,” Tattletale murmured.

“Shut up, Tattletale,” Midas growled.

“It’s being handled. We have a solution in mind,” Semiramis said. “The heroes have a way to take away his power, then they’re bringing him back here.”

Not exactly the way we’d posed it, and now we looked bad if we didn’t do either.

“Not good enough,” Nubby said. The Desperado Dustwind stood behind him now.

“It’s going to have to be,” Semiramis said. “You-”

Nubby moved, and I flew over the railing, to get far enough away I could block with my forcefield if I had to. Semiramis moved in that very same moment, causing a ghostly, out-of-sync image to overlap Nubby.

It was the initial moves of a fight and those moves were very much on our side. But we were badly outnumbered by angry B-listers, and I had only a second to take stock of them and figure out who I was going to be fighting, out of everyone here. Not Nursery, thankfully, but there were others.

In that moment I was sizing up the room, I heard the sound, the gasp.

I turned.

Little Midas with his arm outstretched, and the sixty year old cape with the limp was falling down the stairs. His hand reached for the railing, and was blocked by a crude block of gold.

Snuff slammed Little Midas against the wall. I flew toward Mr. Case Twelve. Sveta got to him before I did. Tendrils caught him, arresting his fall, supporting him from multiple points.

Here, everything was upside-down. Villains and violence ruled, Sveta wore an expression of anger rather than sorrow while holding a limp bloody man in her tendrils, and it was an act of caring, not of killing, because she didn’t hold him tight.

By the look of it, though, she might have been willing to hold someone else tight. I saw her look at the crowd, move, and I put myself close enough to her to block her view.

“Your plan,” I told her, in an effort to break the spell.

“My plan?”

“We might have to. What you outlined.”

“You don’t have to,” Semiramis said. She sounded pissed as she addressed the room. “There will be no fight! You’ll seat yourselves or turn away and you will let them leave as the group upstairs arranged! If you defy me, if you press me on this, I will bring this building down on your heads!”

Could she? I wasn’t sure I grasped her power.

But they certainly seemed to think she could. Nobody fought. Nobody spoke.

Sveta carried the Case Twelve to the door, her tendrils forming a bed for him to lie across, unmoving. She opened it without adjusting how she held him.

I remained where I was, as something of a bodyguard, while the rest of the group filed out. Snuff let go of Midas and left the man slumped against the wall on the stairs.

There would be something of a contest here, to decide who had the most say over this band of villains. But if there’d been any hint of law and order here, it was gone now.

Bluestocking was outside, smoking with her overlong cigarette holder. Close enough to hear, not so close she was a participant. Her stare was long and hard as she watched us walk to our vehicle. Then she stepped inside, to take her own actions as a major figure in this miserable little community.

“What’s next?” Sveta asked. “After we get him medical care?”

I put my hand to his throat. Tattletale moved my hand away.

“Pulse?” I asked.

“He’ll live. Don’t worry about it,” Tattletale said, her voice laced with condescension.

So fucking frustrating. I’d welcome a good excuse to fling her into a hillside.

“What’s next?” Tattletale went on. “Engel and Egg, if we can. I suspect they’ve been dealt with.”

Snuff deposited the Old Man across the back seat, knees folded. I sat by the man’s head, and Sveta perched over him and the area just behind the driver’s seat. The angry, staring-into-the-distance look on Sveta’s face wasn’t going away.

“Then, whether you invite me or not, it’s understandable if you don’t you’re going to want to go talk to Cradle, Love Lost, or the idiot, to get information on the mercenaries that were hired.”

“Talk to Dragon at the same time,” I said. “Her tune might have changed.”

“It hasn’t, I’m betting,” Tattletale told me.

“She was entertaining the idea-”

“A little bit. But mostly she worries you’ve gone off the deep end, inventing a conspiracy.”

That stung.

“But,” Tattletale said, her voice gentler. “They’re getting closer to believing us. One more lead or bad coincidence and they might change their minds.”

“Let’s hope,” I said.

Tattletale seated herself and slammed the car door. Snuff started up the engine. “Let’s not hope. Let’s keep them in the dark and maybe even do stuff to help them believe you’re bonkers. Because the second they come around, Antares, whether it’s because we dish out that final clue or they find it while investigating on their own, that’s going to be when Teacher drops the hammer and this gets ugly. Soon. Within the next forty-five minutes soon.”

Black – 13.10

“You’ve been doing this for years,” Tattletale said. “Uh huh. Yeah, no, I’m not going to say I don’t have some sympathy for you.”

She moved her head to one side.

“Be better, then. Be smarter. Be more mature. If he’s being a dildo then you do have Mrs. Bishop as your nuclear option.”

Tattletale looked at me in the rear-view mirror of the car.

My eyes dropped. The Old Man was draped across the back seat, braced by Sveta. Bruises crept along his arm and the side of his face, and my gloved fingers held a wad of sterile cotton swabbing Tattletale had had in the glove compartment against the wound. He’d been knocked out as part of the fall, and he stayed that way for seven minutes before stirring awake. Tattletale had looked in his eyes, then drugged him with another of the drugs in the glove compartment. Something to ease the pain and make it easier for him to sleep. My leg kept his head stable, while my other leg was a spot for my mask to rest on. Black with gold tracery, it stared at me, accusatory. Or maybe it was accusing of everything it looked at.

“She was his teacher,” she said. “He pulled every string he could and twisted the other Heartbroken’s arm to keep it a secret from me. Everyone in his class wrote in a big letter to her. We’re going to miss you, you’re my favorite teacher, yadda yadda. And he wrote a poem. You can use it if they start in again on our junior team and you absolutely need to. No, it wasn’t an indecent poem, it was heartfelt. He’s still embarrassed by it.”

“What the fuck?” Sveta asked, from her seat behind Tattletale.

Tattletale waved her off.

“The other nuclear option is she cried when she read it. You can use that detail if he gets too upset after you bring it up.”

A response from Imp. A question.

“If I have to, and they have a way of making you have to.”

Table of Contents

Glow-worm – 0.1

Glow-worm – 0.2

Glow-worm – 0.3

Glow-worm – 0.4

Glow-worm – 0.5

Glow-worm – 0.6

Glow-worm – 0.7

Glow-worm – 0.8

Glow-worm – 0.9

Daybreak – 1.1

Daybreak – 1.2

Daybreak – 1.3

Daybreak – 1.4

Daybreak – 1.5

Daybreak – 1.6

Daybreak – 1.7

Daybreak – 1.8

Daybreak – Interlude 1

Flare – 2.1

Flare – 2.2

Flare – 2.3

Flare – 2.4

Flare – 2.5

Flare – 2.6

Flare – 2.7

Flare – Interlude 2

Glare – 3.1

Glare – 3.2

Glare – 3.3

Glare – 3.4

Glare – 3.5

Glare – 3.6

Glare – Interlude 3

Shade – 4.1

Shade – 4.2

Shade – 4.3

Shade – Interlude 4a

Shade – 4.4

Shade – 4.5

Shade – Interlude 4b

Shade – 4.6

Shade – 4.7

Shade – Interlude 4c

Shadow – 5.1

Shadow – 5.2

Shadow – 5.3

Shadow – 5.4

Shadow – 5.5

Shadow – Interlude 5d

Shadow – 5.6

Shadow – 5.7

Shadow – 5.8

Shadow – 5.9

Shadow – 5.10

Shadow – 5.11

Shadow – 5.12

Shadow – Interlude 5.x

Shadow – Interlude 5.y

Pitch – 6.1

Pitch – 6.2

Pitch – 6.3

Pitch – 6.4

Pitch – 6.5

Pitch – 6.6

Pitch – 6.7

Pitch – 6.8

Pitch – 6.9

Torch – 7.1

Torch – 7.2

Torch – 7.3

Torch – 7.4

Eclipse – x.1

Eclipse – x.2

Eclipse – x.3

Eclipse – x.4

Eclipse – x.5

Eclipse – x.6

Eclipse – x.7

Eclipse – x.8